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

hello . . . hello . . . am I doing this right?

If I am, thanks for welcoming me! And also thanks for your tips about getting around here, which I'm just beginning to realize is more complicated than I'd first thought.

It all looks like good fun, though.

In fact (don't tell anybody) I ended up here because last week I found The Salmon of Doubt in a bookshop. And I thought - oh goody, another DNA book. And it was ONLY THEN that I found out that Douglas Adams had died!! Where have I been, you ask? Well, actually, living in Spain, which I know is no excuse, what with having Internet and all. But I guess this wasn't big news over here and nobody else told me, so in fact I was quite shocked and upset, standing all alone in the bookshop thinking - Douglas Adams is dead???

Anyhoodle, then I read the book and there were all these references to h2g2. And so, here I am.

And so, I guess we'll see each other around. Thanks again for saying hi and welcoming me.

azahar

Noggin

hello again!

Just wanted to say that I enjoy reading what you post and feel quite challenged by a lot of it, though sometimes I know I may not be clear about what you mean. No doubt due to a basic lack of reading skills on my part! Raindog has often pointed this out to me.

Like him, I also never mean any harm, though I somehow seem to upset certain people on this thread of God-fact or fiction. Believe me, this is never my intention.

Mostly, since I KNOW I don't know anything as a certainty, I end up asking a lot of questions. I'm just basically very curious and especially about god and what that means to people. Because I think this is a very important question.

So, I hope you will take me in the manner that I intend - as just a very curious person who asks a lot of questions (even though some may seem very basic or even stupid at times - please bear with me). I don't think I am a stupid person at all and in fact I do 'get' most of the scientific stuff being bantered about, though I find it hard to relate to personally.

For example, the last question I asked you about 'effects', which you didn't answer, and which came out sounding a bit weird with so many repetitions of the word 'effect' in it - that WAS an honest question. It just came out sounding strange. Later on Hasselfree made some fun of me about that - but in fact, I had meant that question quite seriously.

Just so you know, Noggin, I only ever make light when I post my quotes or jokes - those are in fact meant to be just a bit of light comic relief. But the rest of my questions or comments - even if they may sound weird - are real and they are never meant to offend in any way at all.

yours in peace,
az

Hi there Azahar.

Don't worry. Short of actual personal abuse I don't get offended by what people post, and I've never been offended by anything you've said.

I'm often not quite clear about what I mean myself; the feedback I get, and the act of writing itself, help to clarify things a little.
I think the point of the scientific stuff here, and the related philosophical stuff, is to establish some kind of background against which THE question can be measured. Or even to show why it can't be measured that way. Toxxin and I both have a philosophy background (his formal, mine self-taught) which is why we get a bit impenetrable at times.

Sorry I missed answering your question; I think, if I remember it correctly, that the answer runs as "any given state of the universe is a cause of the next state of the universe, and an effect of the previous state of the universe." So any state of the universe is both a cause and an effect, with the exception (and this is one part of what the debate is actually about) of any putative First Cause. That God is such a First Cause is one of the traditional arguments for Theism. The other, related, part has to do with the role of Will, which Hass, and in a different way Toxx, see as "outside" the universe, and which I see as inside.

Hope that helps.


Nowt wrong with a little comic relief either. It's just part of the general banter and getting to know people.

Noggin

thanks!