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

Yes, free food is available. Which could perhaps sway your choices on such cosmic matters as 'Is there a God?'.

this morning as i was reading the paper, i managed to set alight to my newspaper by a tealight my wife had set upon the table to burn fragrant oil to rid the room of the smell of kippers.

as i shook the broadsheet, the image of george bush, so prominent on page one, was burning.

the smell of incense, the sight of the remaining bread and fish from breakfast and the image of the burning bush was topped only by the sudden onset of a violent storm outside. as lightning flashed i realised something was afoot.

and then the newspaper told me, or rather the burning bush told me:

'thou shalt not speak of god!'

and then everything stopped. the dog ate the remaining kippers. the storm stopped. and george bush disappeared in smoke. even the tealight blew out.

so there you have it kids. god says to stop talking about him.

hope i don;t go to hell for telling you.

>a tealight my wife had set upon the table to burn fragrant oil to rid the room of the smell of kippers.<



Yer big woos!

i had to get fire in there somehow. having the paper spontaneously burst into flames seemed a bit of a stretch....

didn't want folks thinking i made it up.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion-

Maybe it wasn't the candle.

>>Faith is often defined as believing without proof, as when I say that all prime numbers are odd numbers, not even, and you believe me without demanding a mathematical proof.<<

*choke*
Was this intentional? As the saying goes, 'all primes are odd, and 2 is the oddest of all'.

"Incidentally NPF, picking holes in the science surrounding the Cambrian explosion indicates that you accept that it happened. How does that tacit acceptance gel with your views about the predictions of ID?"

Really, I've got no idea whether it really happened - I'm not a palientologist. It occurs to me that Radiometric dating doesn't nessicarily tell us that the Earth or even the Universe has actually been here for X amount of years since, for all we know, it couId have originated with partially decayed materials. But as I said, I'm not an expert and I have only a high school education at this point. (Working on getting into college)

It seemed to me that the idea of a huge amount of evolution happening in just "a few million years" at most, with very little happening before or since, would seem to contradict Darwin's notion of slow gradual change - that is assuming you accept the dating methods, which many intelligent design proponents don't.

"The Christian Union at my university has just wound up its events week. It meant I spent the week dodging flyers coming at me left, right and centre. I know *why* they do this: they believe it's their duty to spread the word of Christ and thus save me from Hell."

I think the current notion of heaven and hell that many people currently believe in, as illustrated by the Looney Tunes cartoons and the "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" movie, is not in line at all with what the Bible teaches if you look at it without the lenses of (basically Catholic) tradition(s) telling you what it means.

Their idea basically is that God is basically going to send everyone to Hell by default unless they say the magic words so Christ's attonement will apply to them. Everybody else is, according to them, just out of luck - including aborted babies and Hindus who never learned of Christianity during their lifetimes.

I believe, for instance, based on the New Testament, that Hell (or the pit or the prison as it is called in different places) must be a temporary place for at least some people, and that it is not the heathen who are sent there - or at least not for eternity. That would be unjust - for God to create everyone, then to arbitrarily give a chance at salvation to one group and only allow eternal damnation to another. The notion of a God who would behave like that is, I msut say, a very disturbing one.

"But I'm fairly familiar with the word of Christ (well, in general). I have made my decision and no amount of evening events with free food and a 'short talk' will change that. I find it strange that these groups generally preach the *belief* rather than the *morality*. I think Jesus was an interesting guy and he said some stuff I really agree with. I find some aspects of Christian philosophy compelling, but find the organised belief system rather repellent. Why isn't it OK that I have thought a great deal about it and come to the conclusion that, yes, Jesus had some good ideas about being nice to people, etc?

It seems to me that your later comments disprove your earlier one that you are familiar with the word(s) of Christ, since Christ had a great deal more to say than "Be excellent to each other and party on, dudes".

"Why *must* I believe? The way I see it, if I live a good Christian life I can bag a place in purgatory anyway."

While I believe that Hell must be a temporary place for at least some people, I do not believe in the Catholic notion of purgatory. The distinction is that the Catholics believe purgatory is a place where people redeem themselves by their own merits. The Bible makes it clear in several places that this is impossible. I do not beleive that purgatory exists.

"Only it seems to me that most Christians place a higher value on the simple belief rather than the notion of Christian love and compassion"

You bring up an excellent point. As I've said, I have major disagreements with mainstream Christianity.

"...even our own observation and measurement of a particles properties can affect them. Under some interpretations there is no objective reality and things exist only when we observe them. NeoPathFinder, your Personal Space states: "1. Absolute truth is a universal constant.". Doesn't this aspect of quantum theory conflict with this?"

That interpretation does directly conflict with it. It is pointless to try to reason with someone who doesn't believe in objective reality since logic simply would not apply to reality.

"Also, I'd be interested to know why we must "accept these basic truths as self-evident (i.e. exercise faith in these points) at least hypothetically before it makes sense to try to reason with" us."

Because reason doesn't apply otherwise.

Taliesin:
AGNOSTIC:
True enough, agnostic is not synonomous with not interested; that would be apathetic, wouldn't it?

It's just that most agnostics with which I've discussed agnosticism don't really consider a god to be unknown and unknowable so much as they consider a god's existence irrelevant and would rather not know than have proof one way or the other. I may just have run across a weird subset of agnostics.

Still, I don't believe that atheists require an adjective, though it may help to describe some aspect of their atheism.

BTW, I absolutely agree that 'Saying something repeatedly does not make it so'. At the extreme, the best one could claim is that atheism is a non-belief state; but, once atheists begin to create, repeat, and spread a common doctrine, it does become a non-belief system. All the talk of Flying Spaghetti Monsters and Celestial Teapots have created such a doctrine for some groups of atheists.

DaveBlackeye:
I see your point as well. My concern is two-fold.
One, proving the existence and/or non-existence of a prime force (to avoid the god word) is always impossible. There are two many ways to counter objections on either side by changing the assumptions.
Two, proving the non-existence of 'A God' may be possible, but you'd have to knock down each of thousands, one at a time. Hardly worth the effort as more would be waiting in the wings and the gains would be negligible.

Taliesin::
I think that the point of the exercise (the original question) was god-independent. You could have picked from any of the thousands, or spoken regarding the god concept in general.

I have to admit that I only assumed that you were intentionally obtuse (def: slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity). If you really are obtuse, and it wasn't intentional, I apologize. However, the lucidity of your response led me to believe that you were perfectly capable of parsing the question to an answerable degree. Again, my apologies for such and egregious assumption.

Steve K:

It sounds disgustingly opulent. I shall certainly have to make a point of visiting if I make it to Texas someday!

Indeed, organized religions have been guilty of great periods of inequity, unrest, abuse, and machiavellian machinations.

Gee, I like a lively debate!

The Universe has to behave in predictable ways. Otherwise, you cannot perform experiments.

"Could you perhaps give us an example of something you consider irreducible complexity?"

DNA and the living cell. Couldn't have gotten started without a prohibitively large number of complex pieces in place - not added gradually but all at the same time, in order for the cell to be able to reproduce at all. That is probably the strongest argument in the book I linked to.

"No, this is nonsense. Science is limitless in scope, pretty much."

Well, now we're into "Yes it is. No it isn't." That doesn't get us anywhere.

I think logic is limitless in scope but science is limited to what we can directly observe and test. If we can't directly observe and test it, does that mean it doesn't exist? I don't think so.

"The Universe has to behave in predictable ways. Otherwise, you cannot perform experiments."

On most scales yes. But if I ask you to give me the precise three-dimensional location of an electron, you won't be able to.

"I don't really understand your answer. As I was writing I was thinking specifically of, for example, the requirement to sacrifice animals. I think it's fair to say that nowadays it is immoral to kill animals for no reason, or at least that it's not praiseworthy. Yet in the Old Covenent it was praiseworthy and necessary. I don't understand how a 'temporal perspective' fits in with that. Likewise slavery, which is allowed in the OT, but I'm pretty sure you will agree is not morally acceptable today."

I don't think the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament were for "no reason". An animal taking on the sins of a person and being slain for those sins was symbolic of Christ's taking on the sins of all humanity. The entire system was designed to teach the Jews about that. The current system of communion and baptism are direct paralells, and are designed to remind us (Christians) of the same thing.

The type of "slavery" that was allowed in the Old Testament would probably not even be called "slavery" today since it didn't last more than seven years. Modern ideas of slavery are obviously wrong based on both the Old and New Testaments.

"Incidentally, I'd just like to comment on how interesting it is to have someone who obviously has some fundamentalist ideas but also does seem genuinely interested in discussing other viewpoints. I think that the busyness of this thread reflects that."
My religion and worldview is rather a horse of a different color, as they say in the Wizard of Oz.

"based on what NeoPathFinder has posted here, do you think he is a Christian?"
That is something I have debated with other Christians before.

"Remind me, what is causing all the wars?"
Sin.

"Do you see how your question assumes the pre-existence of mutually agreed upon definitions?"

Yeah. The trouble is, I could have gone on for at least three pages to establish the symantecs beforehand, but if I'd done that, who would read the thread!?

>science is limited to what we can directly observe and test.<

Yes apart from anything else that's why I find science so much more interesting. It continues to grow, as we are able to test empirically more and more things by experiment, often due to improvements in technolgy, eg particle accelerators. It's a kind of 'living' 'breathing' thing.

Faith ideas appear to be mostly set in stone for perpetuity.