The Existential Thread

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says:

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely 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, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and 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.

When i first read that book, i was unfamiliar with the term zebra crossing… yeah. still funny, but i was like, why would a zebra run him over?

I think the zebra crossing bit is an absurdist joke that’s not meant to be scrutinized too closely, like much of the little one-liners in the radio shows/books/TV show/movie/towel.

NeverarGreat said:

Does this man’s paradoxical thought lead him to believe that all roadways are simultaneously both black and white, and therefore step off the sidewalk any old where and get run over? Surely not, since the zebra crossing is definitively stated as the location of the man’s demise.

What I’m trying to say here is that the joke doesn’t quite work.

i think it is more that he actually proved black was white (just as he proved God didn’t exist, and therefore God did not exist), his ‘proof’ actually made it so. this is a paradox, and when he encountered this paradox (at a zebra crossing), the paradox destroyed him.

You may find yourself…