Babel Fish

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(Origin of the term Babel: Reworking. (It is a nice picture).)
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[[Image:Brueghel-tower-of-babel.jpg|right|thumb|300px|"Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, '''so that we may make a name for ourselves''' and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."--GE <sup>11:4</sup>]]
 
[[Image:Brueghel-tower-of-babel.jpg|right|thumb|300px|"Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, '''so that we may make a name for ourselves''' and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."--GE <sup>11:4</sup>]]
  
''Babel'' in Adam's ''Babel Fish'' has origins with the account of the [[cp:Tower of Babel|Tower of Babel]] in Genesis.
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''Babel'' in Adam's ''Babel Fish'' has origins with the myth of the [[cp:Tower of Babel|Tower of Babel]] in Genesis.
  
 
{{cquote|GE <sup>11:3</sup> They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. <sup>4</sup> Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
 
{{cquote|GE <sup>11:3</sup> They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. <sup>4</sup> Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

Revision as of 06:34, 30 July 2007

The Babel Fish, an invention of Douglas Adams, who used it in his series of books called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is a small creature, the existence of which, the Guide calls "the oddest thing in the universe". If worn in the ear, it feeds on the user's brainwaves and excretes a matrix which encodes every known language, thus allowing the person immediately to understand anything in any language.

In the Babel Fish entry in the guide, reference is made to how Oolon Colluphid used the existence of the Babel Fish to argue for the non-existence of God[1]

  • "I refuse to prove that I exist", says God, "for that would deny faith, and without faith I am nothing".
  • "Ah", says man, "but the Babel fish is a dead giveaway. It proves you exist, and therefore you don't"
  • "Whoops, I hadn't thought of that", says God, and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

Origin of the term Babel

"Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."--GE 11:4

Babel in Adam's Babel Fish has origins with the myth of the Tower of Babel in Genesis.

GE 11:3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

GE 11:5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

GE 11:8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel--because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

references

  1. It is rumoured by some that Adams got the argument from an obscure Islamic treatise, as both the name and substance of the argument appear to be variants of Khalufid's Fork, although many have doubted that this is true.
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