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

That took me AGES!!!
I hope you're right.
I guess you're right

Well I am, it can be argued, learning something half useful.
Anyway I like my subjects - mainly maths/science - but school does sort of worsen them.

You mean assignments, or the sort of regime of it all?


... so if God can't eat, that's something he can't do




I know, but I like them. I thought you might have made up a couple.

Maybe I'll make a longer massege later

Don't mean to rush you again, just remind you.
*feels small*

do apologise, old chap. ... h2g2's being somewhat neglected by me at the moment, as you might notice from my user space. I'm sort of concentrating attention elsewhere. Which I shouldn't, really, because there are many nice people such as yourself who'd probably like to talk to me (Although if they do, I profess, I don't understand why).

I will try and post more promptly for you. I just have a lot on my plate.

Like last friday, when I got home (halfway up oxford high street, to be precise) to discover that somehow, during the day, my £300 (1200aud? not sure...) palmtop had had its screen smashed. *sob*

My entire life's on that palmtop, not to mention the fact I now have either a hefty repair bill or a hefty replacement bill.

*sigh*

still. Saw Lisa at the weekend, which's made me feel better. *nod*

I'd argue that god can eat, but doesn't have the necessity, or will, to. Just because, by common sense, an organism doesn't have to do something doesn't mean it can't. I don't have to jump through my window onto my patio, for example, and I don't intend to. However, that doesn't negate the possibility of my doing so.



Sorry for the lack of replyness. I will reply more speedily in future.



- Njan.

That's quite OK.
I did it to you too didn't I?
I made you wait MONTHS!!! (which I am sincerely sorry for)

I understand why people would like to talk to you
You remind me of me.


Damn, but how was your life on the palmtop?
When you press shift4, does it come up with the pounds symbol?


I think you're missing the point about the God thing - either he can't create a hamburger such that it is impossible for him to eat it, or he can't eat the hamburger that's impossible to eat. Either way, He's not all-powerful.

- new smileys!

I guess I deserve this

I do apologise... I've been playing a ridiculous amount of music recently. Playing with three seperate symphony orchestras, doing many concerts, and much practicing.

Sibelius No. 2
Haydn's Creation
Dvorak's Cello Concerto
Elgar's Caractacus
Borodin's Polovtsian Dances
Some Vaughan Williams
Mussorgsky's Night on a Bare Mountain

but to name a few...

anyway. Yes.

It was. ... but I've got a nice new one, which's had all my backedup data put back onto it.

No... 4's a dollar, 3's a £.

!"£$%^&*()... see?

Ah, but that's talking about finite concepts. God isn't a finite entity, he's infinite.

Which rather negates the point. He doesn't eat finite things. Or if he did, he could scale himself to eat the hamburger as he saw fit...

I, also, do apologise

Hey you must be pretty good

What do you need the palmtop for?

!@#$%^&*()


HA! God could, then, if He was all-powerful, create another God who was even more powerful, but, if there was more power to be had, He would not be all-powerful. Either that, or creating a more powerful god is impossible, putting it onto the list of things He can't do, and therefore rendering Him not all-powerful.
(Pretty much the same arguement I know)
Maybe God is also bound by some laws.

Would you kill one innocent person to cure all cancer or something? -Have you seen Swordfish?

Something really bugged me for a few days once, and has now returned.
- (I'll try and explain this properly) - what makes logic so right. I mean, the only way you can prove that logic (or reason or some other word) works is using logic. But then how do you find out what is right? (that's where your logical mind kicks in to figure it out ) We obviously can't think without logic.... This line of thought has also reminded me of what my religious studies teacher once said - that he thought there are two ways thinking - one's reasoning and one's faith. But how do you know what to put your faith in? (there goes that logic again.) There may be more ways of thinking.

I hope to improve upon my response time on the next one

hmm... I'm not great.

no problem!

Everything. My life's on my palmtop. :-p

Ah, but that negates one possibility. That god CAN create a being more powerful than him, but he then ceases to be the most powerful. Just because you're the fastest athlete in the world doesn't mean someone can't become faster than you. In doing so, you don't actually lose any speed, presumably... ...someone else just has more. ...what's so fundamentally wrong about god doing that? being dwarfed by something slightly more all-powerful doesn't negate your own existence, surely?

Your argument seems to be following the logic that Bill Gates isn't in charge of Microsoft and one of the richest man in the world because he can commit suicide, and if he did, he wouldn't be rich, or in charge of microsoft. Possibility doesn't deny existence.

That's ethics. I'm not sure about that one. .. .no, I haven't, but I keep meaning to.

*nods*... I know exactly what you mean.

no problem.







- Njan.

Yes, He would still exist, it's just that I'm trying to say it's impossible for Him to be all-powerful like the bible says.

Yeah, ethics is hard - I believe we should kill off more poeple than we do (I'll go first ) - good for the gene pool and good for the Earth - and then we can get on with thinking and it will be sustainable for more people to think. Maybe, anyway .

You know Zeno's paradox?....

no.. pray enlighten me?

Haven't heard of it? Sure you have.
Well, I think there are a couple or a few or something.
Anyway, Zeno said that it must be impossible to ... OK, a man is in a race, and Zeno said that it would not be possible for the man to get to the finish line, because, first, in order to get there, he'd have to go half way there, and then, once he'd completed that, he'd have to go half way towards the his goal again, and so on. Since you must always go half the distance between you and the goal, you could never get there because you'd have to go half way first.
Make sense? Probably not, right?
Another one goes something like this:
A man is racing a turtle, and the turtle gets a head start. The man can never beat the turtle, because (and a picture would really be useful right about now) when the man gets to the point where the turtle was originally, the turtle has moved on a bit. And then when the man gets to where the turtle was again, the turtle has moved on some more. And, thus, the man can't beat the turtle.
I believe that, for these not to hold, there would have to be a small "uncuttable" unit of space, at which point the person completing the race would not be able to half the distance across first, and a man would make it across at the same time as a turtle.
(The same principle, I believe, would apply for time to be able to get to its next stage, also.)
But, if what I believe is the case, there may be problems (and another diagram would be nice) when you attempt to rotate something. Say there is an object (keep it to 2 dimensions) that is one small piece of space wide and several long. It's OK to imagine it when it's straight up, and increments of 90 degrees from there, but what would it look like in between. (I'm imagining a bitmap like on paint here.) And if it was 45 degrees, would Pythagoras' Theorem still hold? Which is OK to not, as I don't think it's actually been proven (just through inductive logic). Or maybe it doesn't look like a bitmap.
Please shoot lots of holes through what I've just said -I'm sure there are plenty.

You're lucky - you get to study philosophy.
Gotta go

Ah, yes, I had heard of both of them, but not by that name.

A version of Zeno's paradox involving an arrow was the very first piece of formal philosophic thought I was introduced to (my musings of having thought philosophically independantly of any intellectual tradition prior to that being taken loosely). I refute it now as I did then.

*nods*... I'd thoroughly recommend it for anyone to study, particularly someone as bright as you. Philosophy, it has been said, is to mathematics what mathematics is to gardening. Far from being that which "clips an angel's wings", as Keats said, I thoroughly endorse philosophy as a way through which not only to attempt to understand the world, but better ourselves and derive pleasure from at the same time. It's wonderful discipline.

- Njan.

Hey. Miss me?

What do you mean you refute it? -What's it trying to say?
Is it what I said?
What's there to refute about what I said?

I'm a year too early to study philosophy. Next year they will be offering it in schools in year 12 in South Australia. I would study it if it were'nt for that fact. I did it in year 10.
You're lucky.

Mathematics is still a part never-the-less. If you were gardening, you would'nt not use mathematics because it's only a part of it.
Or something..



Yeah whatever

Lost your point in life too?
Perhaps that shouldn't have been mentioned.


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