Saturday, December 16, 2006

Michael Bywater: But How Does An Atheist Swear?

I found Lost Worlds this morning. What a rush.

I don't know what sort of minority this puts me in -- not one that gets government protection or funding for a No Faith School, that's for sure -- but I'm an emotional theist, an instinctive deist, a rational atheist and a philosophical agnostic (I am also a pretty poor philosopher, so my Huxleyite agnosticism isn't really worth the sacred holy text it's not included in).

And, of course, just like you are all going to do, I'm reading Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion. It's magnificent polemic and of course has holes in. (But bread has holes in, as does Gruyère, and bread and Gruyère and Dawkins are all equally nourishing.)

Source: Lost Worlds: But How Does An Atheist Swear?

But... why a rush? Because this author of Big Babies and Lost Worlds, references a 1998 speech by Douglas Adams called "Is there an Artificial God?"

This was originally billed as a debate only because I was a bit anxious coming here. I didn't think I was going to have time to prepare anything and also, in a room full of such luminaries, I thought 'what could I, as an amateur, possibly have to say'? So I thought I would settle for a debate. But after having been here for a couple of days, I realised you're just a bunch of guys! It's been rife with ideas and I've had so many myself through talking with and listening to people that I'd thought what I'd do was stand up and have an argument and debate with myself. I'll talk for a while and hope sufficiently to provoke and inflame opinion that there'll be an outburst of chair- throwing at the end.

Before I embark on what I want to try and tackle, may I warn you that things may get a little bit lost from time to time, because there's a lot of stuff that's just come in from what we've been hearing today, so if I occasionally sort of go… I was telling somebody earlier today that I have a four-year-old daughter and was very, very interested watching her face when she was in her first 2 or 3 weeks of life and suddenly realising what nobody would have realised in previous ages—she was rebooting!

Source: Biota.org - Is there an Artificial God?

What a great way to start the weekend. Douglas Adam's is brilliant. I love his work. I met him once, back in the mid 80's. He was doing a book signing at the now defunct A Change of Hobbit bookstore in Santa Monica. A group of us were playing the text adventure game based on Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. We were stuck on the bridge of the space ship and frustrated. Adam's gave us a few hints, it did not help. (play the game here),

There was a time when computer games didn't have graphics. Or at least they couldn't have graphics and sound at the same time. They certainly couldn't have graphics, sound and enough content to keep even a human being amused for more than a few minutes. So they had text....

Take that you playstation babies! I dare you to try this brain buster!

 

1 comment:

helensotiriadis said...

http://toomanytribbles.blogspot.com/2006/12/omd.html