h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Okay...

"Okay..." meaning like: "i agree"?

Meaning it's time to adjust the meds...

lol, got this thread mixed up.

My apologies sayamalu.

But nevertheless i seemed to contribute, always liked that joke.

okay...

O.K.

Seeing as the foregoing is clearly a waste of time, may I address something Gif made reference to?

Gif, with respect to NOMA, I actually think you didn't go far enough in your criticism.

While I hold SJ Gould in enormous respect, it seems to me that there are some significant points that he missed in his essay (Non Overlapping Magisteria, 1997.) He seems to divide the world into two realms.

His realm, that of science and verifiability and testable hypothesis and all that happy stuff on the one hand; morals, revelation, and spiritualism and all that happy stuff on the other. He seems to propose that practitioners of each stick to their own bailiwick and there should be no problem with conflict.

Some serious problems exist with that slicing up of the pie.

It seems to suggest, for example that science minded people have no right or authority to make moral judgements, whereas the religious minded do. I submit that such a view is actually backwards.

It also seems to ignore the historical reality that the very existence of the one magisteriium (religion etc.) was predicated on its authrity over the other. I would submit that it is the assumed authority over all magisteria by the one that renders the concept of the two being non-overlapping absurd.

While I applaud Professor Gould's attempt to appease or at least pacify the anti-intellectual movement spearheaded by religious fundamentalists, it is a logical fallacy (called the "fallacy of the middle ground") to assert that a compromise position between truth and falsehood exists.

Niels Bohr (a great scientist): "there are two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are obviously absurd, and profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth"

And Henny Youngman said, "Take my wife...please."

Is there a point?

of course... if the rational scientific outlook is a profound truth (which it pretty obviously is, what with maglev trains and electric toohbrushes) then the spiritual religious outlook must also be a profound truth.

that's always assuming the scientist was right, of course!

Hi BCR,

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.



Gif

You bad people have mad me buy a second hand Crash Test Dummies album .

Doomed, wicked sinners the lot of you.

And I'm eating a bowl of kurma (that's dates - traditional Muslim fast breakers during Ramadhan...whatever the hell god feels about them). Of course, I'm eating between sunup and sundown, plus I had sex this AM. After dawn.

Dates and figs might piss god off, but they do keep one regular. And here in a Muslim country, that's important, because god apparently insists on regular prayers. If you want to be regular in (or in-beween) your prayers, dates are the way to go. Prunes'll do the job too.

With that and the Crash Test Dummies album. I'm hellbound for sure....

I thought you might find it interesting that a brewery in Denmark named Devil´s Brew is launching a beer called Godless. The money raised from the sales of that is meant for Atheistic Society, who are supposed to be trying to have church and state seperated in Denmark.

I think that's great, although it's hard to believe that such steps are needed at this point in history.

Put me down for a few shares!

I fully support the idea of separation of church and state.

However, as a big fan of Belgian Trappist beer, I cannot countenance the separation of church and brewery. Do these people not realise that western brewing is based on Christianity? Don Perignom was a Christian, and so was John Smith. We would have no basis for brewing if it wasn't for Jesus.

Gif

True, Gif. But we've gone so far beyond that.

While I'm sure that the plonk that the anointed one whipped up for the pissup at Cana was decent, if it's anything like the sacramental wine we used to nick when I was an altar boy, I'm glad as hell for the subsequent development of the art.

Hot on the heels of PZ Myers doing his cracker desecration here's some one on a mission from god to do everything he can to a cracker

http://www.youtube.com/user/fsmdude

Oh, sorry I've been gone so long... I'm dragging the conversation back a few posts here but anyway!

Re: abuse (and the abuse of this word!). My point remains: I am not convinced that teaching a child something you believe in is *necessarily* abuse. Note, "necessarily" (and yes it was there the first time I made this point), that does not mean that you can teach a child anything and be immune from charges/accusations of abuse just because it's a sincerely held belief. So yeah, giving a kid graphic imagery of their friends/neighbours/family members burning in hell (with or without the addendum that it's their fault for not being good enough) is probably, in most cases abusive. Teaching them the doctrine of eternal damnation for sinners I would say is not, seeing as I and just about everyone I grew up with (far as I can tell) were taught it without ill effect. Teaching a child that creationism is as good a theory as evolution is not abuse either. It's not going to help them, but, it's not abuse.

"I don't think you need to stretch a point to suggest that the indoctrination received by young men that will inspire them to strap an explosive device to their bodies and then go into a nightclub and detonate it might be considered abusive."

No, but teaching creationism is not on a level with teaching jihad. They do come from the same crazy ass place but they aren't the same thing. It's like a) telling your kid they shouldn't have any dealings with, or even speak to, people from the local dodgy estate for fear of the bad influence and b) telling your kid that the people on the dodgy estate are not proper, civilised people and we should fence them in ghetto-style to keep everyone else safe. Both positions come from the same thing (fear of the local scrotes and their tendency to illegality) but one is clearly worse than the other; a) is not abuse though you could say it's wrong because it engenders a sense of "us and them", whereas b) is abuse creating, as it does, a mentality of "lesser people"

>I don't consider it abusive to teach children that heaven and god do not exist.<

Obviously you don't as you don't believe yourself that they exist but say you did? If you genuinely sincerely believe that your child would be liable to be damned to eternal suffering and torment if they don't know about Jesus/Mohammed or whatever would it be abuse not to try and ward off this danger? Bear in mind, I'm talking about if you believe this danger is a real as the danger of getting in a stranger's car.