So What Would You Do?

[packsaddle]

Candle flame dead ahead and I can't help myself. You're killin' me again.

Thought experiment? This is the second time that I can remember that I've read this term throughout the forum and I think there is a large distinction to make.

Unless there is a way for more than one person, preferably everyone, to share exactly and precisely the same thought (and there isn't), an experiment on such is improbable. This doesn't even begin to tackle the addtional sticky problem of providing a 'control' for comparison, not to mention a testable hypothesis in the first place.

Moreover, the claim that god can, for example, make a triangle whose angles add to 200 degrees is whimsical at best. Says who? Nothing about that in the bible. And, by the way, why would god trifle with a man-invented concept (the triangle) to prove some point anyway? I thought that was what floods and plagues and brimstone were for.

Not to mention that the definition of a triangle demands the 180 degree characteristic...the idea that a multiangle figure can total to 200 is possible - it simply, by definition, won't be a triangle.

 

And the primary color thing...eeeeaaaiaiiiiiihhhhh....a primarly color also has a strict definition. Now if you are considering our PERCEPTION of a color, that is just full of possibilities, few of which are easily studied because ("there you go again Jimmie") we can't exactly, precisely share the thought (perception).

 

Or for that matter, if we could, how would it be relevant to god anyway, much less some 'god test', given that it is all a matter of faith....

I'm liking Bokononism better and better.

Edited part: forgot the smiley thing, sorry.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[Zahnada]

You're killing me, Packsaddle. You're killing me.

 

Very well, I shall relent. I was wrong to use the term "thought experiment" because such an experiment lacks the usual criteria for being a "good experiment" (lack of control group, testable results, hypothesis, etc). I do apologize for any confusion wrought by such careless use of wording. Perhaps "thought game" or "thought experience" would be a better choice of semantics. I must say, I am surprised that you are the one getting into a war of wording with me. I just expected it from other people on this forum, but not you necessarily.

 

So we shall not have a thought experiment. However, I hope the use use of the word "experiment" did not discount my post in the eyes of everyone.

 

Now, as for the triangle, I just wanted to first state that triangles on astronomical scales do have angles that add up to sums other than 180 degrees. Actually, I was hoping nobody would bring up this point to dispute my arguments, but instead I was disputed on whether or not the Bible claims that God can create such triangles. Unfortunately, I do lack the Biblical evidence that God would engage in such a practice as creating strangely angled triangles to prove the validity of my thread. That's another point for you, Pack.

 

And then there's the color thing. Now, although I asked the question in a communal atmosphere, I meant for the thought process to be individually based. Sorry for the confusion. I didn't intend for people to start comparing the colors they were imagining, so your argument that this is all perception is a little off the point. The question was to see if anyone can imagine a color they haven't encountered before. It doesn't matter if I personally see colors that you can't. Can you see colors that you haven't?

 

But overall, I think you've missed the point, Packsaddle. This isn't a "God test" I'm administering. It's a "how different are humans than God" series of questions. It's not about whether God would do the things I've said but about whether we humans could do it or not.

 

The fact that these questions are either impossible to measure or impossible to do (like change mathematical truths) are just meant to show how we cannot even approach the level of God. We cannot imagine a triangle with 200 degrees or a new primary color. I was trying to show the boundaries of human mental capabilities. You have actually helped argue my point that these questions are impossible for humans. But for God?

 

Anyway, my main argument is not about triangles and colors. I'm arguing that we cannot compare to God and therefore, our logic cannot hold up against such perfection. God exists on a level that we cannot comprehend. Perhaps it's a world of triangles with angles equaling 175 degrees.

 

 

 

[NJCubScouter]

God exists on a level that we cannot comprehend. Perhaps it's a world of triangles with angles equaling 175 degrees.

 

This reminds me of the passage in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books where someone visiting another planet (because his own has been destroyed) is offered a drink called "Ouisghian Zoda." I think it turns out that by sheer coincidence, almost every civilization has a drink that is pronounced something like "Ouisghian Zoda," including the planet that had been home to the traveler in question. The thing is, though, none of the drinks taste the same or are made from the same ingredients (I hope I am remembering this correctly, if not, apologies to the late Douglas Adams, who presumably knows more about the nature of God at this point than any of us.) So our traveler may drink the Ouisghian Zoda, but it is nothing like the Whiskey and Soda he remembers from home.

 

In other words, words are just words, whether they are "triangle" or "Whiskey and Soda." (I believe on another occasion he is offered a Jynnan Tahnix or something like that, but let's not go there.) As collections of letters and sounds they are useless. It is our common understanding of what they mean that gives them their value.

 

[Fuzzy Bear]

Does Dilbert and free will

 

Dilbert, a character much like you and I, has free will. The cartoonist knows Dilbert's next moves but Dilbert believes that what he is doing is unique and that nobody could possibly know ahead of time his thoughts and actions. Dilbert could never go beyond the foreknowledge of the cartoonist. This does not bother Dilbert until he begins to think about it and get confused, which is ok because even that is written in by the cartoonist.

 

I also thought of a color that does not exist on the color wheel and is not the result of any existing color. I just can't spell it. I think that this exercise is known as Color Fiction though.

 

 

FB

 

 

 

[NJCubScouter]

OK, I found it, and in my opinion it is both funnier than I remembered, and more to my point (being, words are only what we make of them) than I had thought -- although, as you shall see, I had the details completely backwards.

 

I think that since I am posting this for an educational purpose, this very brief excerpt constitutes "fair use," as long as I say that it is copyright 1979, Douglas Adams, all rights reserved. The Estate of Mr. Adams should actually pay me since my posting this now can only boost ticket sales for the forthcoming film, of which they hopefully get a percentage.

 

It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N-N-T'N-ix, or jinnond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian "chinanto/mnigs" which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrackan "tzjin-anthony-ks" which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and names BEFORE the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.

 

What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.

[dsteele]

NJ:

 

I'm very proud that in spite of all the jabberwocky going on in this thread that you're able to remember and gently point out to all of us the importance of having a "towel."

 

I know, you never mentioned a towel, but It's my way of saluting you for brining in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I loved that book as a kid and will (hopefully enjoy the movie.)

 

Unc.

[packsaddle]

Like I said, sometimes I can't help myself, sorry.

Unc, now YOU'RE killin' me. You loved that book as a kid? Holy Toledo, you're makin' me feel really old right now. Gotta go look for some Gelphling's essence now....

[OldGreyEagle]

Dark Crystal

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

We interviewed Douglas Adams on Shockwave in 1993:

http://www.romm.org/audio/index.html (about halfway down; my real name is Brian Westley)

H2G2 was a radio play before it was a book.

 

By the way, DNA is yet another person who could not join the BSA:

http://www.americanatheist.org/conv26/photo1.html

[evmori]

By the way, DNA is yet another person who could not join the BSA

 

Ya gotta explain this one!

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[acco40]

Ed, I'm sure it was a tongue in cheek reference by Merlyn that Mr. Adams (Douglas N. Adams aka DNA) is not an American citizen and therefore could not be a member of the BSA. :-)

[NJCubScouter]

By the way, DNA is yet another person who could not join the BSA

 

Ya gotta explain this one!

 

Ed, didn't you read the next line of Merlyn's after the reference to DNA, the one that is a link to "americanatheist.org"? Click on it and it takes you to a page with a picture of Mr. Adams standing in front of a big banner with the word ATHEISTS on it. Then if you click on the link under the picture, it takes you to an interview in which the author states that he is a "radical atheist." I am just guessing that THAT is why Merlyn thinks Douglas Adams would not have been welcome in the BSA. Wouldn't you agree?

 

I myself did not know Adams was an atheist until following Merlyn's link, but I am not surprised. There are passages in some of his books that certainly suggest an "irreverent" attitude. One is the "Great Prophet Zarquon" sequence in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. And then there is the debate between the philosophers and the computer programmers in the first book, which ends with one of my favorite lines in the whole series:

 

"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"

 

[evmori]

Yeah yeah! I got caught up in the DNA abbreviation & thought Merlyn was talking genetics! Sorry!

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

[dsteele]

Actually, gentlemen, I almost hate to break this to you.

 

Even if Douglas Adams were a God-fearing American, he could not be registered as a leader in the Boy Scouts of America today.

 

He's dead.

 

Unc.

[acco40]

Hey wait a minute Uncleguinea. Aren't you adding to the requirements for membership? The adult application asks for a DOB but not a deceased date. I know that the signature might be a problem!