Life, Universe and Everything

Last Friday I finally, after looking forward to it all summer, saw ‘Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy’. I have been an Adams fan since my sister introduced me to Hitchhiker two-three (maybe more, I don’t remember) years ago. And yesterday I started reading “The Salmon of Doubt”. For those of you that don’t know it, Douglas Adams died in 2001, far too young. ‘The Salmon of Doubt’ is a collection of some of his work; interviews, articles and letters (currently I am only on page 127, so there might still be other stuff). It is divided into three parts, Life, Universe and Everything, and includes parts about the Beatles, Macs, animals and growing up. The parts I found most hilarious are the parts about Macs, because I can relate to what he writes. It is also the part that moves me the most; Douglas was a Mac person, big time. And in the foreword Stephen Fry writes “The Emperor of Computer Cool has unveiled the new I-Mac and I haven’t been able to call up or e-mail Douglas to talk about it…and Douglas wont get to see it. He won’t have played with an iPod or messed around in iPhoto. To anyone who knew Douglas, and I am including his millions of readers here, the misery and frustration of this will be appallingly evident” (written in 2002 by the way). As Fry points out, it feels wrong. He was the ‘Poet of New Stuff’.
What Adams write about Atheism vs. anything else was a quite a read. I have grown up a non-believer. But I am not sure if I am an atheist or agnostic. I believe in imagination. In medicine what I am talking about is called the placebo effect, simply believing that something will help often does. Also as a small kid I used to have a lot of imaginary friends (elves and such, I had the forrest as my playground, after all) and they felt real for me (a couple of them is to thank for me surviving ‘ungdomsskolen’ (junior high)). I also have friends who are quite fanatic religious. So I have ended up believing that if something is real, then it is real for you. If you believe that God exist, then he does, because he exists in your head. But I have chosen not to believe IN any god. I have chosen the laws of physics and Darwin. What does that make me? Agnostic or Atheist? Or merely a Hypocrite?
News update: I am now on page 172, over in the part about Everything. I am liking the book more and more. Just as I liked the Hitckhiker seriers more and more the deeper into them I got. And now I can feel a writers block creeping up on me, so I better end it here before I’ll write something I’ll regret…