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

Just to go back a bit, to post 3090

from warner:

'If you are an Atheist that doesn't believe in any woo woo stuff, then you won't get it'


I believe that's known as the 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' argument, with a little bit of the 'Tinkerbell' argument.

A word to the theists:

Critical thinking isn't something to be scared of.

Believe in one god might as well accept the rest or your own losses equal creditability, it then left to semantics

>>Critical thinking isn't something to be scared of.<<

For some it is the most fearful thing.

Martin Luther, for example, seemed to fear it. He certainly hated it: "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but - more frequently than not - struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God"

Bertrand Russell clearly neither hated nor feared reason, but believed his was a rare perspective: "Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin - more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."

'the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.'

Indeed!

I'm of the increasing opinion that winternights wasn't born; rather they were divinely conceived inside a fortune cookie.



His aphorisms are sometimes enlightening:

>>Is not the blatant name dropping of book crude chest beating best left to ape and its kind?<< (3120)

I didn't know apes could read. (well...excluding the obvious one)

To..he..he.. 'ape' () Stephen Fry on this topic:

"Can I read books? Yes. Have I visited every star in the universe? No"

I guess we all have to start somewhere.




.... and sometime incomprehensible.


>>Believe in one god might as well accept the rest or your own losses equal creditability, it then left to semantics<<

I've read that now several times and I still don't get it.

'One in, all in' - is that it? Wouldn't that be an ecumenical matter?

>>Believe in one god might as well accept the rest or your own losses equal creditability, it then left to semantics<<

I take that to mean something like: If you believe in one supernatural entity, you might just as well believe in all of them. Otherwise, how can you pick and choose? Once you throw objective reason out the window, anything is possible, subjectively speaking, and debate devolves to quibbling semantics rather than rationality and logic.

Of course, I may be quite mistaken..

Some quotes from NT about souls:

"And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."

"And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord."

"And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common."

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God."

"Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins."

"Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul."

"And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."

In what state are your souls?

>>If you believe in one supernatural entity, you might just as well believe in all of them. << (Tal 3127)

Doesn't that also imply the inverse formulation?

If you can doubt the existence of one supernatural entity, you can just as well doubt all of them.*

Rephrased and expanded like that I can see it's kind of a fair question. How can you pick and choose? I'm tempted to say the answer lies in habit, convention and familiarity. I wonder what the rate of religious transfer actually is. Buddhist -> Baptist, Jewish -> Mormon etc.
I'll bet it's tiny.





*is that though, to commit an informal fallacy of assuming the...er properties or status of that part apply to the whole?** I can see for instance RC or Warner et al saying *of course unicorns don't exist*** but that doesn;t mean my doesn't!"

**
Assuming supernatural entities have something approximate to properties and that, and this is philosophically questionable, that existence is amongst them. (The ontological argument)

***Do unicorns exist? God thinks they do. He specifically mentions them to Job (Book of Job 39:9) Since this are the words of god, they are presumably infallible. Which not for the first time makes me question god's grip on reality.

Oh damn there I go doubting again!

>>In what state are your souls<<

I don't have answer. I don't know what you mean. I'm still no clearer on what a soul is.

By way of a kind of trivial example. I just read those scriptural extracts and supplanted the word 'consciousness' in each one. Just to pick up that theme from last night: if consciousness and soul are one and the same or somehow related shouldn;t it be possible to read consciousness for soul?


So here goes:

"And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the consciousnesses of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."

"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy consciousness, and with all thy mind."

"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own consciousness? or what shall a man give in exchange for his consciousness?"

Consider the man who decides to rob his neighbours of their wealth, murdering them in the process. The man is 'successful' in his quest and takes his proceeds abroad and lives happily ever after.

So, if there's no eternal souls and everything apparently ceases to exist after our earthly death, this man has had a wonderful life and the people whom he robbed have suffered greatly.
ie. there is no justice in the universe apart from mankind's struggle to apprehend criminals

My conscience tells me this is 'tosh'!

If I may paraphrase:


I personally cannot tolerate injustice.
There must be souls to ultimately account for wrong deeds and reward good deeds.
Only god can impart souls and judge their content.
God exists.
Therefore souls are real.



Few, I suspect would acquiesce about the premise, however, so I suggest the error lies in the 2nd proposition: souls MUST exists in order to account for the discrepancy.

This strikes me as a non sequitur. Why MUST cruelty be punished? I'm NOT saying it ought not to be, rather I'm remarking on the IMO naive idea that the universe owes us a favour. Can't we just accept the reality that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people?

I see that as an argument for developing a rigourous earthly justice - which would be my response, incidentally to the premise of the above argument. I don't understand:

1) Why it is necessary to have to invent an ultimate authority and an ultimate system of judgement, just to make you feel better.

2) How this is supposed to work. On a metaphysical level you've still go to explain how souls and bodies interact and are or are not unitary and not least how this entity survives dying. On a practical level how is the information recorded?

Presumably the soul acting as a ledger for miss deeds and good works records, what, remorse? So if say our hypothetical murderer was a psychopath, they feel necessarily feel remorse for their act. or take a better example.

A crime committed while sleep walking. This has really happened. And it kind of brings us about full circle again to thinking about souls and consciousness. The defence as I recall was that the defendant was not conscious at the time he committed the crime. He had no memory of committing the act of which he stood accused and as a result had no remorse.

Presumably you think his crime is nevertheless recorded on his soul, but then I speculate: souls and consciousness are I'm guessing for you not the same. so from that, he was unconscious but presumably for you he was still ensouled? So if soul controls the body not in fact consciousness, He was not responsible for his actions (but his soul still holds him accountable) nor has he any memory of his crime so souls don't consist of memories rely upon the person "knowing" what they did was wrong.

I have no soul. I'm a nice bloke who I think does more good than harm.

warner, look in to the cultural background of the bible.

>>Why it is necessary to have to invent an ultimate authority<<
I haven't invented anything, and nor has anybody else! The Apostles of the Supreme One are VERY real and recorded. Yes, there might be discrepancies in the 'recordings', but to any reasonable person, the common truth among them is very much decipherable.

>>How this is supposed to work?<<
I'll leave you, Clive, to find that out if you can. Do you really think that mankind can find out every little detail of the magnificent universe. There are some things that benefit our souls, and there are other things that DO NOT. One of those things is trying to prove or disprove the existence of Almighty God. Mankind has been given intelligence and the criterion of right and wrong.

When we die, we will see "who gets away with what", whether you're right that there's no eternal soul, or whether the Believers are right that there is.

I should listen to your mother if I were you, because IMHO, she's absolutely right that we have eternal souls and there is purpose for life.

Warner that SO not answering my questions!

Okay when I say invent (well first of all I mean it) but think of it this way: if trying to understand something like theodicy (the problem of evil); proceed by assuming nothing. That's why I broke your post down into premises and predicate approach. Because it makes it obvious how we can see the same premise about an example of injustice but the supernaturalist supposes there has to be extra dimensions of reality, in the language of William of Occam positing gods and souls to deal with the problem is to multiply entities unnecessarily. and my reply is just to say, I agree it's awful we'd better do something about it.

>>How is this supposed to work<<
>>I'll leave you, Clive, to find that out if you can<<

Not even trying to disguise the non answer. Ballsy. Stupid but Ballsy.

>>Do you really think that mankind can find out every little detail of the magnificent universe. <<

Dunno, but I reckon we can have a pretty good stab at it. And moreover what will uncover the magnificence will be science and NOT religion. (or for that matter Philosophy, I'm remarkably self deprecating of my own subject.)

>> There are some things that benefit our souls, and there are other things that DO NOT.<<

Ah. Arguing for the preservation of mystery.
'Damnit! Stop questioning my delusions!'

Can't. Sorry.

>>One of those things is trying to prove or disprove the existence of Almighty God. Mankind has been given intelligence and the criterion of right and wrong<<

See I don't see intelligence or morality in this top-down model. I see them as emergent.

>>When we die, we will see "who gets away with what", whether you're right that there's no eternal soul, or whether the Believers are right that there is.<<

Am I supposed to feel some sort of trepidation? 'cos I don't.

>>I should listen to your mother if I were you, because IMHO, she's absolutely right that we have eternal souls and there is purpose for life.<<

I love my mum dearly but she's flat out wrong on this one. Like you I engage her in debate, and I get the usual tropes about biblical inerrancy, divine authorship and the anthropic fallacy (that seems to be the limit for her) I've yet to hear a good argument or see a shred of evidence for why I should believe in any of this.

(it's a lovely day outside, sunny and cold, I think I might put on some Vivaldi... )

Peace be with those who follow Divine guidance.

There is no purpose in life. Life happened.

Br Roymondo,
>>There is no purpose in life.<<
Speaking for yourself, I presume!

Peace be with those who follow Divine guidance.

Actually Roy I don't agree with that. Possibly a matter of semantics (thus fulfilling Winternights earlier prediction) but.

I think there are purposes *in* life but not purpose *for* life.

It's the difference between having love for one's family and thinking this has any cosmic significance.



Warner, you know most people hold a dim view of health and safety legislation.

For your health and eternal well being, face Mecca and pray five time daily. OR ELSE!

>>OR ELSE!<<
Or else, what?

Peace be with those who follow Divine guidance.