{"id":95,"date":"2010-12-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fearofwhales\/2010\/12\/misquoting-beeblebrox.html"},"modified":"2011-06-12T02:44:37","modified_gmt":"2011-06-12T06:44:37","slug":"misquoting-beeblebrox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/12\/misquoting-beeblebrox.html","title":{"rendered":"Misquoting Beeblebrox"},"content":{"rendered":"

WARNING: This article may contain spoilers to \u201cThe Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy\u201d. If you somehow haven\u2019t read that book yet, Go read that first! It\u2019s great!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One social group I tend to have an easy time getting along with is Atheists. Ultimately I think they\u2019re dead wrong about the origins and state of the universe, but they tend to be groovy people in the meantime, and typically they’re intelligent and logically consistent. And if there\u2019s one thing atheists love it\u2019s Douglas Adams, the author of \u201cThe Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy\u201d<\/p>\n

Atheists often use Adams as a poet laureate of their worldview, using his words and characters to make analogies about atheist thinking, and add spice to statements made about how great it is to live with neither gods nor masters. Much like the way we use Tolkien<\/p>\n

The New Atheists seem especially fond of this. For instance Richard Dawkins, in his book \u201cThe God Delusion\u201d in order to defend the premise that the world is wonderful enough on it\u2019s own, and we shouldn\u2019t need to invent a \u201ccreator\u201d or any such silliness to appreciate it, quotes Hitchhikers:<\/p>\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Or sometimes I\u2019ll hear another phrase from the book used as a rallying cry for logical atheists who find the whole idea or theism self contradictory<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd God disappeared in a puff of logic\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

That sort of thing<\/p>\n

But I must say, I finally finished \u201cHitchhikers\u201d this morning and I\u2019m disappointed.<\/p>\n

Not in the book of course, the book was brilliant, but I\u2019m disappointed in my atheist brothers and their interpretation of the text. I don\u2019t at all see what they seem to see in the book, and in fact I see some very Pro-Christian ideas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>First of all, all of the quotes I\u2019d heard before turned out to be taken utterly out of context. The bit about God disappearing comes from a very tongue-in-cheek argument against the existence of God that relies on 3 false premises that don\u2019t support the conclusion.<\/p>\n

In context it\u2019s quite clear that the intent of the author is to make fun of philosophy<\/em>, not theism. Adams is saying that Philosophers will argue about the existence of God no matter what, such that even if incontrovertible proof of intelligent design were to be found, it would be used by the philosophers to disprove God (who said He would leave room for faith) as much as to prove him.
\nAdams returns to this theme in a later chapter (25), introducing a philosopher called Majikthise who is upset that a machine is being used to calculate answers to life\u2019s mysteries saying<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s 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 you his bleeding phone number the next morning?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Same message, same point, but this time God clearly exists (the capitalization is Adams\u2019)
\nAs to the Garden with the fairies? That\u2019s from the mind of Ford Prefect who is appreciating a binary sunrise on what he thinks is a perfectly normal planet, rather than the legendary planet Magrathea. It doesn\u2019t have to be Magrathea in his mind, it\u2019s good enough already\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026Except that in the book it totally IS the legendary planet, and Ford is missing it.<\/p>\n

What a fitting analogy for Dawkins. Yes Dr. Dawkins, you\u2019re quite right, the earth would be enough if there were no God\u2026 But there is a God\u2026 So what\u2019s your point? You\u2019re acting like Ford Prefect visiting Magrathea while grumbling that this normal planet isn\u2019t enough as it is.<\/p>\n

Ultimately Adams, though an atheist, ends up writing a book which doesn\u2019t threaten Christendom, but casts a dark shadow on Scientific Naturalism.
\nThe Guide Itself is a comprehensive book written over many centuries by multiple authors about how best to get through life. Sound familiar? Within the pages, Adams consistently upholds the value and importance of asking how and why questions about the nature of the universe, while still expressing comfort in mystery<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He upholds creationism, with the earth having been intelligently designed and created by something which is, in his own words \u201cneedlessly messianic\u201d.<\/p>\n

He describes the burial of fossils, the sculpting of coastlines, calls glaciers \u201chigh art\u201d and as to scientific naturalism, in Chapter 30 The Planet Engineer says this<\/p>\n

\u201cScience has achieved some wonderful things of course but I\u2019d rather be happy than right any day\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Put that in your reductionist pipe and smoke it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WARNING: This article may contain spoilers to \u201cThe Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy\u201d. If you somehow haven\u2019t read that book yet, Go read that first! It\u2019s great! One social group I tend to have an easy time getting along with is Atheists. Ultimately I think they\u2019re dead wrong about the origins and state of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMisquoting Beeblebrox - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/12\/misquoting-beeblebrox.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Misquoting Beeblebrox - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WARNING: This article may contain spoilers to \u201cThe Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy\u201d. 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