( Sunday, February 04, 2007 )

QED

I read this the other day in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and it made me laugh. So I thought I'd be a good guy and share. No sense hoarding these things, right? (Just smile and nod your head. Pause for reflection/emphasis. And continue reading.)

…if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language…Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
“Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book ‘Well That About Wraps It Up For God’.

--Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

*smiles* *nods* great excerpt!

12:53 PM  
Blogger Dan said...

I freakin love that book man. So good.

1:54 PM  
Blogger Rougette said...

Interesting use of the word "hording."

1. a large group, multitude, number, etc.; a mass or crowd: a horde of tourists.
2. a tribe or troop of Asian nomads.
3. any nomadic group.
4. a moving pack or swarm of animals: A horde of mosquitoes invaded the camp.
–verb (used without object)
5. to gather in a horde: The prisoners horded together in the compound.

Of course, you could have just meant "hoarding" but that wouldn't have made it nearly as interesting.

Kyle, I have just disproved your existence. You and God are in trouble.

9:19 PM  
Blogger the Stewart said...

I think I've just found my new editor...


Smarty pants.

9:35 PM  
Blogger Rougette said...

I do what I can. ^_^
Because... I can.

11:53 PM  

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