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

Nice piece.

For the record, I would like to think that I see organised religion of any form (including non-denominational free church ministry ) for exactly what it is - fraud on a grand scale - but I do recognise that there is an essential purpose in our need to believe something (including rationalism if that's what gets you through the day). Now I come to think of it, it feels rather odd, but right now I would reject any label.

"I do recognise that there is an essential purpose in our need to believe something (including rationalism if that's what gets you through the day)"

I'm often fascinated by the insistence of people who "have religion" for want of a better phrase, that everyone else in the world simply must have it too. They make this assertion in the teeth of the evidence, and despite the calmly stated contradictions of rationalists.

"Ah well", they say patronisingly, "atheism/ agnosticism/ rationalism/ evolution/ whatever is just your belief system".

No, it isn't. It is fundamentally, qualitatively different, and frankly I find it quite offensive to be told that it is similar - as I frequently am.

My usual response is to ask if people who are born with no eyes just have a different "seeing system", or whether in fact they have a fundamentally different experience of the world because they lack any sense of sight or, crucially, even any deep *concept* of sight as an experience.

I do not have a "belief" which "gets me through the day". I get through the day in any case.

I do not have a belief system. I'm not colour blind, but I am tone deaf, and you can call me "spirituality blind", if you like, because I can no more "believe", in the sense of spirituality or religion, than I can carry a tune. I just don't have any concept of it as an experience.

I can understand it on an intellectual level, of course, in much the same way as a blind physicist might understand the mechanism by which a photon excites a nerve cell which leads to stimulation of the visual cortex - but it doesn't mean he has any idea what it's like to see.

H.

Justin

"No paradox. You are seeing things from intellect, which, as I have shown you, God says cannot access spiritual things, and you are trying to understand spiritual things which are none of your business, as an outsider and enemy of God, with such wretched intellect."

You have so far failed miserably to show us anything.

You have attempted to preach using quotations from a book, but then deny their validity by stating that the "dry text" will reveal nothing to an unsaved person. We with mere intellect to guide us are reduced to seeking clarification, yet you refuse saying its none of our business.

"If the gospel was just a belief system as you insist it is, and I am telling you that it is not, then you may have had a point. The gospel of Jesus Christ is NOT a set of commandments, (though it appears to be so to blind outsiders like yourself), and it is NOT a belief system, but a Person, Jesus Christ, Himself."

I haven't claimed that gospel is a belief system (I didn't intend to), I have merely indicated that IMO the commandments of Moses and Jesus appear to be a generally applicable life model, irrespective of ones beliefs. A code of conduct if you will. You are the one making claims about law and belief systems.

"No Jesus DID NOT make any person, your neighbour, your brother in Christ. Since when did I say that anyone was the lowest scum of the Earth. Show me Scripture which says that all one's 'neighbours' are Christians."

Again I merely quoted your own source material back at you, yet you try to twist out of it. Justin, all people are your neighbours, your own scriptures tell you this; including homosexuals, liars, thieves and adulterers and normal people like Hoovooloo, me, Ste, Noggin, Kaz, et al.

Belief - n. Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something

(One of several definitions)

I don't use the word belief in a wishy-washy fashion to imply a philosophy based on unproven assertions, but in a very definite way that includes acknowledging your ability to rationalise your own experiences.

I agree with your points entirely, Hoovaloo, but I'm not sure they quite apply to Justine here because he isn't trying to rationalize calling us part of a belief system becasue he believes something and thinks everyone must. He seriously doesn't seem to thinik he believes anything, he is *certain* that everything he says is right and the word of God. He has said that Christianity (at least what he calls christianity) is not a belief system. Frankly, I don't think he understands what a belief system is. Although, if eveything he says is absolutely true, then his certainty isn't belief, he has rteasonable good evidence for it.

I'm not sure if this post makes any sence, or has any point.

Noggin,

There is no dilemma as those who know God and what he is like know the answer. It is only a dilemma to congenital enemies of God, who don't know Him and are cut off from Him by sin.

Madent,

I understand why you cannot see it. You need to come to Jesus and be born again of the Holy Spirit of God,and delivered from your utter evil,which is that which separates you from God. When you know Him, as Christians do you will understand, and you won't be blundering about in darkness as you are.

"I agree with your points entirely, Hoovaloo, but I'm not sure they quite apply to Justine here"

I don't think for a moment that it applies to Justin/God because apart from anything else I don't credit him with the wit to understand what I'm talking about. I wasn't addressing anything he'd said.

It was, rather, a reply to Madent's post at the top of the page, and his point about not meaning "wishy washy" stuff is taken - but if you get rid of that, what is left that is not simply rational experience of consensual reality?

H.

Not a lot. But you still have to mentally accept that your senses do not lie - this is a form of belief.

Not at all. I don't accept my senses at all. I KNOW for a fact they lie, all the time. Simple example: I know when I watch a film I am not really seeing a moving image but a succession of still ones. I literally don't believe my eyes. It doesn't stop me enjoying a film, but I know that my raw senses are not reporting accurately.

I'm very conscious, more so I think than most, of how the senses do not tell you reliably what's "out there", but rather form a cosy picture, based largely on what was useful to a savannah dwelling ape - pattern recognition, persistence of vision, that sort of thing. Recognising that is part of being rational, isn't it?

H.

Okay, lets not accept that we both know what we are talking about and leave it alone.

Your senses receive stimulation and deliver signals to your brain. Your subconscious analyses these signals and based on your memories and your ability to rationalise, delivers up to your conscious mind a model of the local environment which enables you to interact with it. That model contains inaccuracies and simplifications, many of which you may be consciously aware of (as in your example). Others will go unnoticed. You do not consciously challenge the inaccuracies that you are not consciously aware of, you accept them. This is mental acceptance of actuality.

Everybody believes as it is an essential element of the processes by which we interact with our local environment. Unfortunately some are more credulous than others and will believe anything that they are told (e.g. a small child), others require a higher authority (e.g. god, priest, MP).

Ben's belief project has some useful insights.

Can we drop the subject now?

Certainly. Bit of a red herring, really. Sorry.

H.

I just think its a shame that some people think I shall burn in hell because I wish to follow my own path. My spirituality is extremely important to me, and I try to life my life well. I do not wish to be a part of an organised religion because I wish to make my own decisions, and to be responsible for myself and my way of life. And yet I am somehow 'evil' and deserve everlasting torment. Yes because I see more meaning in communing with plants and other animals rather than being human-centric.

Christians feel free to judge me and condemn me to hell, without even knowing how I live my life, I maybe a better person, because I recycle or pick up bees from the pavement. And yet, hell is apparently where I deserve to end up, just because I do not wish to have a relationship with a voice in my head.

Oh well, I am happier living my life my way, luckily I don't believe in hell, it seems such an antiquainted concept. 'I will punish you if you don't do what I say'?! I will take charge of my own life and be condemned for it in the eyes of christians, rather than live my life the easy way - where you get told what to do without having to make any personal decisions on your own personal moralities.

Hi Justin .

Your favourite historian is back! Let me see what fast and loose interpretations do we have today, oh yes....

"'Christianity' did not arrive here, (I assume you are in the UK), in 600 AD either! The gospel was possibly here within three weeks of the day of Pentecost, and certainly within three years, so, around 33AD."

You are (a) right and (b) utterly wrong. The earliest archaeological evidence for christians being active in Britain is around 275 CE, based on artifacts from a site in London's Docklands. There is no documentary evidence of Christian involvement in Britain until both Bede and Nennius wrote about the early missionaries, which is where Kaz probably picked up his reference.

The fallacy of their being a very early (33 CE) Christian presence is based upon antiquarian Georgian theories, later picked up upon by Victorian romantics. This is similar to the Joseph of Arimathea tale, whereby English scholars proposed that Jesus's 'missing years' were spent in this 'Green and Pleasant Land'. You know as well as I do that this is all pish, tosh and the fantasy of imperial propagandists.

You refer, in a later reply to Kaz, to the Council of Nicea being a political convenience, which indeed it was. You then declare that your beliefs are not based upon the product of their deliberations but 'on Scripture'. I am suprised that you, a self-proclaimed Biblical scholar, could be so misinformed.

Where then do you get your scriptures from? If you are utilising the King James or any of its modern descendants, you should know that all James' work was done from greek manuscripts produced by the Council of Nicea and repeatedly copied over and over through the medieval period. One of the services James did was to compare and contrast these many copies and produce an authoratative, if not entirely accurate composite.

The only organisation that has a full set of the greek originals is the Vatican and they are not letting anyone near them for reasons of 'conservation'. Conspiracy theorists also have this organisation holding onto all the deleted Gospels (such as those of James - Jesus's brother, Thomas - the doubter, and Jude).

In recent times the discovery of thousands of documents produced by the Essenes (the infamous Dead Sea Scrolls) have begun to throw new light upon the scriptures, but the work of the scholars recovering these is far from complete and besides you would not have access to these.

So where then, if not from the Council of Nicea (whom you so easily disregard), do you get your scriptures? If it is directly from God then I would like to have a look so I can study His penmanship.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

From what I know of King James, didn't he manipulate his version of the bible to be supportive of kingship? Until he re-wrote the bible the King was never God-chosen/protected. Is every re-write of the bible is self-serving to the author, then what is the bible? Certainly not Gods word, but many authors words.

Oh and I would be very interested in what scripture Justin reads, if its not the bible - the bible that is, which was re-written after the council of nicea that is!

You forgot to mention Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism.

Every single version of the Bible since the Council of Nicea including the Vulgate, King James, Revised Standard, New International, Good News, Gideon, etc. including whatever text Justin uses, is by definition a translated, editted and interpreted (in the sense of while "such and such" translates as this, our panel of experts thinks that in this context and in a view of what God was trying to say it actually means that) work.

You can see why Muhammed insisted everyone learned arabic before reading the Quran and specifically prohibited its translation.

Kaz,

Well, that is an interesting assertion. If I had a 'religion in a book', that depended on correct interpretation by mere men, then you would have a point, but I don't, and no Christian does.

What you and others here assume to be Christianity, is not what God owns. I could not engage with you as I serve the living God, not a concept in a book.

So how do you know your God if you do not follow his scripture?