Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Oh good they proved it...nyaaaaaat!

200 Posts and this one's a winner!

Thanks once again to PZ Myers for bringing me to inanity via the straight and narrow.

Check this stupid gang bang of nonsense out at: http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/thinkaboutit.php

You start on the 'think about it' screen where you are presented with 4 choices, shown here.


So we have a diagram of 4 possible choices. We'll start bottom right and choose 'I don't care'

Result:
Wow that was easy, they just gave up. Though to be fair the main page of the 'proof' section claims that it does not provide persuasion just logic. I thought this was going to be a challenge but...lets try some other options.

Both 'I don't know' and 'trust does not exist' lead to the same stupid question, posted here.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict this sort of minimalist strong arming is going to dominate the whole proof section. After all if you don't know whether or not absolute truth exists you are forced either admit that it does or go back to the main screen. No argument, no discussion, binary answers to really bad questions.

Now the final of the 4 choices is top left, sitting in for good information we are forced to admit that 'absolute truth exists.' I should amend that its a ridiculous choice but I always liked to diagram the choose your own adventure books to see where your path would inevitably lead.

Allow me to elaborate one step further as, at this point, I have not looked at any of the questions afterwards but I can predict that this whole thing is some variant of what my childhood self dubbed 'a loopy funnel.' We all know where the proof supposedly goes, the only question is how the choices we make or answers we provide will get us there.

In the two or three CYOA games that I plotted out there were certain situations you could run into from multiple paths. One such, that always stuck with me, was walking past a bubbling mud hole where you could jump in, rub some on wounds, throw in a coin or keep walking. And this same stupid mudhole was after a cave, inside the enchanted forest and along the path to the ocean.

Let's see how things progress from here, shall we. If you go with 'Absolute Truth' you come to this screen and get to begin the journey to 'prove' god exists. Heigh-ho, I can't wait.


Let's see how Step 1 enriches our lives, shall we?

******************

I was going to do this point by point but that turned into WAY to many screenshots so I will just diagram it out for you in simple terms and throw a few caps in along the way.

Here's the basic gist of the 'proof' you'll have to click on the image to make any sense of it because it goes across 3 screens.

I know it looks tiny but that image is 3000 pixels long.

The basic format is actually far simpler than I envisioned. Lamentably I was ABSOLUTELY correct in my presupposition that its just a bunch of forced choices. No loops, no redundancies and absolutely no elegance to the whole thing.

Wait, that sounds about right for religious thinking.

Anyway things are pretty tame up until the last part, after step 7 you get a teaser for the penultimate and final proof.

And finally we arrive at...ah fuck it here's the ultra disappointing reveal...

Goats and gonads what a mother lovin' waste of time. That's not a proof its not even a sound idea let alone earth shattering or mind-bending.

I'll get to why it's stupid in a second (besides the obvious) but you have to love the irony of this whole test saying that the immutability of physical law proves the existence of a supernatural deity unbeholden to any such laws.


Actually, I think I am just going to make a video with Camtasia and rip this thing to shreds.

2 comments:

Sye TenB said...

"Actually, I think I am just going to make a video with Camtasia and rip this thing to shreds."

Can't wait! Hope it's better than this post though :-)

Keippernicus said...

Aww, that was mean dude, I do things quick and dirty around here.

And the video is rendering as I write this so stay tuned my good man.