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

To:
From:

You suck. I make a perfectly nice world for you guys, and you screw it up. Now behave, or I'll flood your e-mail!

Yours truly
GOD, Maker&Breaker of Worlds

You said you would use fire next time.

Has God heard of the concept of "reasonable force"?
Could an almighty being think up a more intelligent method to restrain youthful enthusiasm? Even the greek gods generally changed people to animals rather than slaughtering them, and they are rarely considered bastions of kindness.

But I'm glad you realise that killing children is worse than killing grown-ups in many cases. Which makes the 'passover' all the more horrific, wouldn't you say?

Personally I was planning on sky writing. Kinda like the hhgttg idea of sending stars into supernova to spell "Coke is Life"...

Or, as commented elsewhere, a miracle which everyone could easily verify and which left no room for doubt. Like, say, snow and rain miraculously never falling in the grounds of any church in the world. (except those in countries where there isn't enough rain, where there would be a continuous light drizzle).

Or, as commented elsewhere, a miracle which everyone could easily verify and which left no room for doubt. Like, say, snow and rain miraculously never falling in the grounds of any church in the world. (except those in countries where there isn't enough rain, where there would be a continuous light drizzle).

Rebecca, I´ll look into the Lot thing later. Right now I need to get over this flu that God gave me as punishment for my blasphemy.

You have one too? Oh my... there is a god!! I have seen the light... or at least the light at the end of a major sinus headache...

I won't even get into the translation thing, because I have absolutely no clue and am checking into it. Like you, I don't want to take anyone's word for whether a particular translation was "commissioned by apologists looking to give new meaning to the scriptures" or not; but if my version *is* faulty, I'll definitely change it. So, we'll ignore that for now. About Elisha- I still think that he was in bodily danger, at least in far more danger than just being made fun of. For now I'll assume these were just small children. But there were more than 42 of them - "two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the children to pieces" - the words "of the" presuppose that there were more than that. How many more, we don't know, because it doesn't say. And these kids really hated Elisha. Forty-two alone against one man isn't much of a fight, is it? Besides, I'd be interested in knowint exactly how you interpret their words "Go up." Go where? Back up the mountain? To me, it's completely obvious that they were referring to the ascension of Elijah that just occurred. To them, Elijah died, and they wanted Elisha to die as well. Unless there's another interpretation of this? And I'm not sure my reference is so irrelevent: wasn't Elisha one of God's messengers? And weren't these "small boys" mocking him? It doesn't matter that it was written a lot later. Elisha was just one of the many prophets/messengers sent by God to convince his people to wake up and look at what road they were travelling. By the time the verse in 2 Chron rolled around, He had sent a whole load of these messengers, and the people still weren't listening. So what's the major difference? In both cases, God's messengers were being mocked or threatened, and He got ticked and saved them. Why he had to kill those "innocent children" is still something I don't really understand, but (you're going to hate me) God must have had His reasons. Who am I to question God's actions?

And I still think that a lot of the arguments used by the SAB were far too nitty gritty. I tend to be skeptical of texts or court cases or whatever that have to point out every possible little flaw when trying to prove a point. They just seemed too desperate to me- but I do, of course, have a totally different perspective than you do. I'd encourage you to read a book called "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel, as it gives a lot of arguments for Christianity about the exact topics I'm debating with you, and he says them a whole lot better that I ever could. But this way you could get the other side of the story from somebody who was - initially - coming from the same place you're coming from. Well, I've made this way too long, but thanks for hearing me out!

Rebecca

Um, I would be interested in knowing what particular Biblical translation Col. Sellers is using, and how he knows it to be more accurate than the rest...

I have a question!

God says that he is the only god. That means we have this empty world with 1 (one, a single. Not two, not three, ONE!) god.
Here God creates Adam and Eve, who begot Kain and Abel. Two children, two boys. No more
Then Kain slays Abel!

As far as I can se, Gods human race ends HERE!
The, what are the rest of us?
We're not god's children, we're the ofspring of an outcast and someone who God wouldn't even call human. (one god)

God hates you!

To:
From:

I apologize for last e-mail. Correct punishment would be burning out your computer screens.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

GOD, Superior

re: "The Case for Christ" - I've read (some of) it. At least I think I have. It has one major flaw, which unfortunately invalidates the entire book.

It assumes the four gospels are accurate. Then it goes on to show that, if so, Jesus must have existed, been crucified, and been God.

Hands up who can spot the problem with that...
--
It's not entirely clear where you get that the kids really hated Elisha. Surely "go up" is exactly the same as the challenge to Jesus to "come down from the cross". Poor, misguided people, who actually wanted *evidence* for the godhead of what looked like a normal human. In all possibility said by religious people who were just being careful not to be duped by false prophets.

Here's a possible answer for why God had the bears kill the children... he's not omnipotent, so he couldn't stop them. A non-omnipotent God would make an awful lot of sense.
If you prefer, you can think that he wasn't omnipotent in the OT, but was by the time of Jesus.

This just strengthens my theory: God is one of many players in a huge (by our standards) game of strategy and manipulation. It's like Civilization Multiplayer. God (the Christian) was getting ahead and had a few "divine-points" to spend on miracles, but saved a few for laters, so he only conjured up "Nasty Creature" [Cost: 6, Attack: 5, Defence: 3, Move: 0, Beliveability: 1] instead of making an Appearance [Cost: 19 DP, Beliveability: 10] or a Deus-ex-Machina (aka Lesser Appearance) [Cost 10, Beliveability: 7]
Nowadays the game has proceeded so far that Miracles can only be performed in small groups and Beliveability demands are increasingly high (most Miracles are being performed by Technocrats (unbelivers, compare Civ: Barbarians))

More like Populous than Civ, surely?

Why all the fuss about the bears?
Isn't it more eyebrow raising that we're not even the people of our own god?

Yeah, it´s incredible that the whole Mrs Abel thing didn´t throw off Christianity at first. But perhaps Lilith has something to do with it. I saw a place on the Internet where somebody talked about how there was another type of semi-humans that they mated with. And then the different races are products of that depending on how much human and semi-human are in them. With the aryan man being the most human and jews and blacks being in the wrong end. I don´t know what they meant by it, because I couldn´t find racist remarks anywhere else on the site, so it puzzled me a bit why they said it.

Romans: I have said why I believe my translation to be more accurate... the notes acknowledge doubts and problems with the scriptures. It is the sign of an objective research project. Anyone who professes to have the answer to every problem is putting on a show to cover up their own ignorance. That translation is the New American Bible, which was undertaken by the Catholic Biblical Assosciation of America. I'll dig up some internet articles that describe the errors purposely introduced into the NIV, since I'm obviously not going to get anyone to read the sort of literature I read.

Rebecca: I still have not seen any evidence for threats or violence. They poked fun at the prophets, yes. They didn't listen to them, yes. But where does it say anything about anyone being menaced? Your only evidence is tenuous at best... when the kids (and I'm glad we now agree that they are kids) say "Go up, bald head," you are saying they wish to see him die. But others have made the point already that I would make... the children didn't believe what he had to say, so they wanted him to prove it. If he could "go up" into heaven like Elijah did, then that would prove what he had been saying. But he couldn't prove it, so the kids got mauled instead. When Elijah went up to heaven, he was very much alive. And there is no tradition for people going up into heaven when they are dead until Jesus and Paul's proselytizing campaign. It was a concept foreign to Judaism at the time.

And if you want to read a work by someone coming from your end, allow me to recommend "Losing Faith in Faith" by Dan Barker. A former evangelist, he rejected religion entirely when it failed to answer inquiries to any satisfaction, and is now a part of and married to the head of the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, Wisconsin.

Col. Sellers: That the notes in your translation acknowledge "doubts and problems" with the Scriptures proves nothing in and of itself--this will appeal to you as the most accurate because you BELIEVE that there ARE doubts and problems with the Scriptures. I would appreciate very much if you would find some of those articles you mentioned--I'd be interested in perusing them. Also, in my opinion the true sign of an objective research project has nothing to do with the results of said project, since what person can escape their own biases enough to evaluate whether the result of something is totally objective? Rather, objectivity comes through being able to point to statistics and actual data that back up the conclusion of the experiment, so to speak. Objectivity has to do with the way a project is managed, not its outcome. Your other statement (that something that has the answers to everything is covering ignorance) is exactly why you and I will never agree--I don't claim to have all the answers. I simply believe that God does have them.

Xanatic:
Wasn't the jews God's own people?
How can that be wrong end?
I think that site got something the wrong way up.

And, one man in a society of semi-humans, his genes can't survive for long!