The Babel Fish
Douglas Adams said in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about the origin of the “Babel Fish”.
“The Babel fish,” said The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly, “is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the 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 vanished 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.
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloddier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
Very clever, witty little snippet of one of the best selling science/humour fiction. I watched the 2005 Hollywood remake on DVD last night, and really enjoyed it. I think I shall start reading the series. I will also review the DVD later this week.
But the argument for the non-existance of God? Flawed right from the beginning, as proof has never denied faith, but rather, it can be an important building block to strength faith.
Nor can the absense of faith diminished God into nothing, as God is never a product of mental exercise. God, as the creator of this universe, reigns regardless how much faith his creatures have.
Comments
1) The babel fish argument is a joke contrived by a comical author,
2) Their is more proof to gods non-existence then to his existence, the only “true” proof is a book, which had been corrupted countless times.
and 3) If god truly existed, there wouldn’t be just one, there’d be many, the Christian “God” was created, per se, by many different “Gods” from around the world. the one “God” is the embodiment of at least thirty different gods.
oops, one last thing, I’m not trying to insult you, or your religion, I’m just trying to give my agnostic point of view, I have gathered some information on this topic, but not much, if I said something to insult, or hurt, you in any way, I apologize.
2) Atheists lack absolute, infinite knowledge and attempt to make an absolute, infinite statement.
So, a bit like when religious people claim that God ‘definitely’ exists then? ;)
Basically, it’s a matter of opinion. Nobody can prove or disprove God’s existence, making it a matter of faith whether or not one accepts the Christian system of beliefs. (I’m a Pastafarian. I believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster: http://www.venganza.org)
Frankly, though, this argument is mainly intended as a joke (similar to the Flying Spaghetti Monster) and it really burns my chocolate when people get serious about these sorts of things.
Mainly in response to Tooplark:
I am a little bit concerned and actually even slightly angry about this recent surge in popularity of FSM and the idea that it is some sort of joke. I was a believer in FSM long before it was made famous by the venganza.org site. We were a small peaceful group who worshipped privately and spoke little about our religion except to encourage a few trusted friends and family to join us in our worship of the mighty noodled one (pasta be upon him). But for some reason this guy “Bobby Henderson” took our beloved creator and decided to turn it into some sort of joke that he claimed he invented. Now the actual believers in FSM are not taken seriously and just laughed at.
I personally find it a little insulting that a valid religion has been turned into this huge joke. He should have invented his own ‘creator’ instead of mocking an existing religion.
I don’t mind a good joke, but please do try to show some respect. Thanks.
Mark Byers.
If a Hindu cannot show evidence of their gods, but truly believe and have faith then Christians cannot nay-say this belief as a Hindu’s ‘faith’ has as much validity as Christian ‘faith’, even more due to the length of time the Vedas have existed compared to the Bible! How can there be one god then?
Still, “The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.” – Delos B. McKown
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Thank you for the presentation of this fun little argument. I will explain some of the flaws of this argument.
It assumes numerous false premises.
1) It missapplies the term “Faith” in the Christian belief — the term “Faith” is not applied to “does God exist?”, but is applied to the “salvation offered to us through the blood of Christ, not of ourselves”.
2) It assumes that logic and reason cannot be a usable statement for Christianity.
3) It does not make the distinction between the term Faith and Fideism. “Faith” is something which is held to by a certainty, and warranted, justified belief whereas “Fideism” is something held to without evidence and proof, without certainty and without warrant.
By these three false premises the Babel Fish Argument thus attempts a flawed argument to attempt to disproved God, and also provides more danger to Atheism that it attempts to support it.
It missappropriates the term Faith and attempts to apply the miss-defined (the Atheist miss-defined the term) term to say that we cannot hold to the belief in God if he cannot be proven by logic. Thus the argument is using a false premises to prove an argument, while twisting statements to try to jam a piece into a puzzle when the piece just won’t fit.
Finally, it’s an even more damaging to the Atheist than the Christian. In it’s attempt to disprove Christianity, it actually disproves Atheism more than anything. If the Babel Fish Argument is applied to the Atheist, here’s how it’d break down.
1) Atheists claim “there is no God”.
2) Atheists lack absolute, infinite knowledge and attempt to make an absolute, infinite statement.
3) The Atheists hold to the belief of there being no God by Fideism (I’m using the correct definition now, which the Atheist missused) — the Atheistic belief that there is no God is a Fideistic one, thus being one with no ground.
4) There have been attempts to use logic and reason to prove Atheism (even though logic and reason cannot prove Atheism, they try to).
5) Therefore, in the attempt to use logic and reason to prove an Atheistic belief which is of itself ungrounded, the Babel Fish Argument thus defeats the Atheists.
As you can see, the Babel Fish Argument is a statement which 1) cannot damage Christianity under it’s 3 major false premises, and 2) provides damage to the Atheistic belief.
The Babel Fish Argument is a horribly flawed argument, and is best left to die on the shore for fear of misuse against it’s own creators.