The Babel fish, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, translates any language instantly if placed in your ear.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved 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.
Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
AUDIO [Adams reading above]
VIDEO [clip from Hitchhiker's Guide about Babel fish]
Related:
VIDEOS [15ish hours of video from the Beyond Belief 2006 conference]
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