Babel Fish and Creation of the Universe
There is a chapter in the novel, along with a scene in the movie, which goes about “proving” God does not exist. The Babel Fish in an interesting concept, a little creature that when placed in the ear of someone translates in order to understand what other people are saying. The theory in the movie goes along the lines that God refuses to prove he exist, because proof denies faith and without faith there is no God. However, human’s come along and say that since the babel fish cannot be natural there have to be a God, and since there is proof of God then ultimately there is no God. And with that “promptly disappears in a puff of logic”.
Being so bold as to make God vanish is an interesting statement to make in such popular culture. Even with Douglas Adams’ own lack of personal beliefs, he uses the ideas of religion in his work. He isn’t critical or cynical towards the views of religious people, he however does use the concepts and plays around with them. The Babel Fish is one major idea in his work that explains this. He does not “disprove” God, it says that he exist and the Babel Fish proves it, he is only saying that faith and proof do not need to be considered two separate ideals. Many people in the scientific community say that because of certain facts that God cannot exist, while the religious community relies on the faith. Adams’ while an atheist, does not allow one idea to overrule. He says that God needs faith and while faith does not need proof, there can be proof of a God.
The Guide explains it as “The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.”
