The Science of Discworld IV

evidence, we are also entitled to dismiss it without evidence.
    The
default
is to disbelieve. An atheist is not someone who believes that God doesn’t exist. It is someone who doesn’t believe that God
does
exist. If you think those are the same, ponder this statement by the comedian Penn Jillette: ‘Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.’
    fn1 One minute with Sanal Edamaruku,
New Scientist
(30 June 2012) 27. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanal_Edamaruku .
    fn2 http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/19/a-holiday-message-from-ricky-gervais-why-im-an-atheist

EPILOGUE
----
L-SPACE

    What Marjorie Daw was not was the kind of person who goes around saying to herself, ‘Oh, it must have been a dream.’ But by the fourth day she was beginning to question her own sanity with some force.
    Her first days home had been a whirlwind as she really got back to grips with her work: seeing to the new books, beefing up the science fiction section, arguing with the council treasurers for more funding – even with the Libraries Committee itself – and demanding that she should be the arbiter of all that came into the library and how it was displayed.
    And
that
meant putting the Bible onto the fantasy shelf.
    The committee looked into her eyes, and didn’t disagree.
    One evening, when Marjorie, who was as always the last to leave, was turning out the lights in the library, feeling rather angry because somebody had defaced a book by Richard Dawkins with a lot of squiggles and phrases like ‘God is not mocked!’ she thought she heard a noise and smelled a mildly pungent smell.
    She found, suddenly prominent on her desk, a large ripe banana …
    Overhead, a voice said: ‘Ook!’

INDEX
----
    The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
    Abbott, Edwin Abbott 212–13
    Acquinas, Thomas 311
    Adams, Fred 294–5
    Adams, John Quincy 111
    ‘adjacent possible’ 182, 195
    ADP 189
    Age of Reason 257
    Akkadians 98
    Akupara 56
    Aldrin, Buzz 96
    Almagest
(Ptolemy) 279
    Amarakosha
59
    Amarasinha 59
    Amazon rainforest 38
    amoeba 141
    Anaximander 100
    Anders, William 94–5
    Andromeda 30, 236, 280
    see also
cosmology
    animism 311, 313
    Anthropic Cosmological Principle
,
The
(Barrow, Tippler) 282
    Anthropic Principle 282–3, 285–6, 287–8
    see also
astrobiology; universe: humanity placed at centre of; xenoscience
    antimatter 128
    Apollo missions 15, 95, 193
    archaeology 46
    Aristarchus 99
    Aristotle 79–80
    Armstrong, Neil 96
    Asimov, Isaac 125
    Assyria 98
    Astounding Science Fiction
(Campbell) 261
    astrobiology 295–8
    astrology 309, 314
    At the Earth’s Core
(Burrows) 113
    Atlanteans 261
    see also
belief; religion Atlantis 112, 261
    Atlantis
space shuttle 126
    Atlas 48
    see also
gods/goddesses
    atom:
    carbon 17
    chemical properties of 17
    particles of 16–18
    splitting of 16
    atomic bomb 14–15
    ATP 189
    Babylon 98–9
    Bacon, Francis 80, 310
    Baldwin effect 196
    Baldwin, James Mark 196
    Barbieri, Marcello 143
    Barbour, Julien 225–6
    Barrow, John 282
    Batalha, Natalie 298
    Bateson, Gregory 262
    Bayes, Rev. Thomas 266–7, 268–9
    Beagle
6
    Bedford Level 105, 106, 107, 109
    Behe, Michael 191
    belief 216–23, 251–72, 313–15
    and absence of 270
    of babies 253–5
    and brain–environment interactions 255
    and complicity 255–6
    early human, in archaeology 46
    vs Enlightenment/Age of Reason 257
    as evolutionary survival mechanism 318
    in flat earth,
see
Earth: shape of
    and interaction (extelligence) 256
    and intuitive vs analytic thinking 263–5
    and Mayan calendar 262–3
    and memes 258–9
    and ‘moving mountains’ 307
    religious, bigger than atheism 322
    religious, decline in 256
    religious, epidemiology of 270
    religious, scientific studies of 318
    and science and religion, differences between 252
    in spirit world, flourishing of 104–5
    in UFOs,
see
UFOs
    see also
gods/goddesses; religion
    Bell, Alexander Graham 199
    Bell, Thomas 106
    Bell’s theorem 165, 166
    Benford, Gregory 26, 36–7, 55, 264, 270
    Berkeley Earth Project 156
    Bernard, Dr Raymond 111–12
    Berners-Lee, Tim 87
    Bertalanffy, Ludwig von 262
    Bessell, Friedrich 235
    Better Angels of our Nature
,
The
(Pinker) 81, 310
    Bhagavata Purana
56
    Big Bang 129
    before 62–3
    difficulties emerge with 242
    and finiteness of universe 221
    and Genesis 50
    inferred relic of