Keep your penis off my intarnet!!!!

A sad day, dear friends, for that awesomely huge bastion of free entertainment hath been pierced by arrows of iniquity. Google, swaddled by your armored 'safe search' I thought myself free from evil as I browsed in your presence.

Alas...no more...


And yet I have to admit a slightly sick thrill, not at the content of the 8 second video, but at the mere presence of finding it myself. Naturally non-kosher content is bound to wind up where it is banned and only a matter of time before someone reports it but this time it was ME BABY!!!

Oh and speaking of highly innappropriate content (contextually anyways) my fervent efforts to grace the comments section of Dembski's blog has turned out, thus far, to be totally unfruitful. I'm not debating any more but it strikes me as amusing how differently each side of theism/atheism debate responds to criticism.

Oh well. Back to work on the new book. Once I get a good bit done I'll start posting here in serial.

But we can win!!!! We have to keep fighting so we can WIN!!!

As requested from my one and very possibly only reader Matt:

"After stumbling upon ~6 web pages in a row talking about how people that don't believe in evolution are stupid I got an idea for your blog. You can write about how it doesn't fucking matter because either way it isn't going help us shoot lightning bolts out of our asses any sooner. Such a silly point pisses people on any side off so much that to a neutral observer (Galapagos style) they all look like crazy fish people. Its pretty damn funny. That said, argue about something that matters, like nano-bots or cloning..."

Fair enough.

Before I begin I would like to document that I have coined the term 'Cycrobe' to describe a nano-scale cybernetic or silicon based micro robot or hybrid organism. Someone else may have thought they came up with this term before now but I have documents proving that I in fact first used this phrase in 2002 so BOOYAH!!!

That being said I wish to address the not yet stirred ethical stew pot regarding the cloning of humans and nano-bot augmentation.

I am sick to death of people freaking out about human clones! Probably the worst argument I have ever heard is 'man I don't wanna walk down the street one day and run into my clone!'

Here's the good news: If you're stupid enough to worry about that, you're never going to be cloned because planet earth is doing just dandy when it comes to paranoid assholes. That being said what's the problem. Human cloning has been going on for millenia.

Ever heard of identical twins? Two people with exactly the same DNA!!! Or triplets, the horror!

That's human cloning. Whether it happens by accident or by intention doesn't matter. It's not even a moral question, its all about information.

Stem cells, embryonic or not, are basically tiny protoplasmic hard drives chock full of humany goodness (assuming we're talking about human stem cells.) The problem, and I may have stated this before, is that people are looking for truth in their lives.

Most people, and I believe this to be true irrespective of their beliefs, would say that truth is an abolute and unwavering standard by which to gauge the universe and more specifically their role in it. I say to that 'what a bunch of crap.'

Truth is the Newtonian physics of philosophy. In common every day life it suits us just perfectly. High school physics wouldn't be the same without it. Newtonian physics are demonstrably true on a certain scale. However zoom out to look at the solar system and you find a different story. When astronomy was coming into its own there was an unusual variance with Mercury's orbit that could not be justified. It was a tiny variation, almost miniscule but it was still WRONG according to Newton's laws.

Einstein and quantum physics filled in the gaps but that doesn't mean we can retrofit newtonian physics to fill in the gaps. We need a new model if we're going to include things so far beyond ordinary terrestrial variables.

When you increase (or decrease) density, gravity, temperature, distance time or speed beyond conventional or earth bound limitations you see a weakening of Newtonian equations. You also lose the ability to conceptualize accurately how the universe appears. Think of the solar system.

Just hang the sun and drop in Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Pluto, I still say you're a planet but for the sake of argument fuck off for the time being. You're probably imagining something where you see the sun and all the planets together right?

Wrong!

The solar system is HUGE and this better explained HERE than I care to elaborate. If you don't click the link Here's the highlight. Imagine the sun is a bowling ball and earth is a peppercorn. At solar scale that peppercorn is what...3 feet, 5 feet away tops right? Try about 108 feet away.

Pluto is some half a mile out and all that is just a pittance, 5 mere light hours. The hypothetical
Oort cloud
May stretch out over 1000 times that or roughly one light year. If the earth were a peppercorn and pluto has an average distance from the sun of about half a mile than a light year would be comparable on that scale to 500 miles. Multiply that out by 4.2 (number of light years to proxima centauri) and we get 2,100 miles. That is when we shrink the entire earth to the size of a peppercorn.

To understate: That's quite a haul.

Dismaying as this data is I find it hopeful that should we ever feel up to the challenge if we can achieve speeds of a tenth a light year and outfit ships capable of hibernating people then space travel would not be fantasy. It would probably be a shit load cheaper to just download some brains and haul over some embryoes to a new system if we're going to colonize. We'll let the singularity sort that one out.

Does this relate at all to truth versus information? Perhaps it does and perhaps it does not. Truth is a human concept it's like 'good information with a guarantee that the information is good.' That is fine and well but what does it really mean?

I am operating under the assumption that this post will never be addressed by an omniscient being who can prove me wrong but here goes. Human understanding will always be imperfect. Our intuitive understanding of the world, our ability to be objective and the simple existence of human emotion virtually guarantee that almost any statement or 'truth' is bound to be skewed or incomplete.

Following Neal Stephenson's particle logic we can safely state that statements of more complexity will contain greater quantities of uncertainty. Consider: The sky is blue.

It's a pretty simple statement but is it true? The atmosphere itself is transparent so no the sky isn't blue. However the reason the sky appears to be blue is that our atmosphere scatters light in the shorter wavelengths within the visible spectrum. Therefore when you look up there's a damn good reason to think the sky is blue because that's what it appears to be. However your photoreceptors aren't perfect and we see blue better than violet.

Without delving wholeheartedly into post modernity I'll leave it there. So, is it truth that the sky is blue or not? My honest answer is that truth does not matter. Uncertainty is like gravity, it's everywhere in the universe. Furthermore what we consider 'truth' changes depending on our level of understanding. If we didn't detect electromagnetic radiation on a very narrow range of spectra then the question would be meaningless. However I shudder to think of the effect purely scientific nomenclature would have on art, literature and entertainment...(imagine a thought bubble.

Roses reflect light near 700nm
violets reflect light near 400nm...

Ghastly isn't it. So, I propose that we abandon the whole notion of truth and trade it in, as we did for newtonian physics with general relativity and quantum mechanics and instead we concern ourselves with pure information. Surely there are cons but consider the pros. Nay consider the sympathetic friend phenomenon.

Even if your best friend and you analyze to death the reasons why your girlfriend booted you that will not bring her back. Similarly whatever logical rube goldberg devices you can mentally construct to fit your world view it will not change the parts of the universe not influenced by human opinion. For the record that includes space, time and all inanimate matter dark or otherwise.

So there it is.

Anywho that's my post for the day. I apologize if it degenerated into incoherence sooner than usual but I've had a lot on my mind lately.

Epoch fail...

I know I know, the title's a direct ripoff from a recent xkcd but its been stuck in my head for so long I can't shed the mental picture.

Today's early Tuesday morning rant is brought to you by the letters YMC and A as in All-the-motherfucking-old-people-in-the-world-doing-motherfucking-water-aerobics.

They displease me.

Argyle Ninja is not amused. Niether is Floral Ninja.

Hell I might as well add them all.

One of the many reasons I hate they inevitably grey-haired and flabby gatherings is the fact that they all look the same. And guess what, even the instructor isn't shapely enough to justify the experience. We've been members of the Y now for more than half a year and there's a trio of ladies who look exactly the same now as they did the first time i saw them over the summer.

I'm dangerously close to throwing out some Larry Niven slang and adding TANJ to my already burgeoning vernacular of old college inside jokes, family guy references, south parkisms and wistful dialog from my long and dirty history with fiction writing. Ting a ling!

I'm struggling with an unusual moral dilemma as it pertains to the elderly people of the world and my own inexorable trip into the future. Fifty years seems such a short time on paper or when considering history but in that span of time I will have trebled in age and shriveled in height. But with the advances in modern medicine and genetics one wonders if we could perhaps be among the first to cheat death with a little help from our PPO plan?

If so could we forestall the inevitable decline of body as well as mind? If it were possible to freeze one's level of health at forty years or so then living past 100 would become a viable prospect and not just counterproductive for society.

That would change so much of everything. Perhaps most importantly if we had dramatically increased lifespans then we could make Frank Herbert proud and actually start long term planning. It would probably still be limited to some fraction of human life but any increase could prove useful...then again it could lead to stagnation of the human spirit. Oh well, we'd have plenty of time to get over it.

Letter from Hell...Response!

Readers!! If you haven't already check out this post about this video.

If you don't do it than none of the comedic value of this post will matter one darn bit!!

And now for your reading pleasure, a number of responses to the Letter from Hell courtesy of Zack the mystery xian!!

Reply 1: The Evangelical Response.

Dear Josh,

I just received your letter regarding a recent trip to hell. I hate to say I told you so but...dude, I told you so. Why are you so surprised I mean you drove home drunk you dumb shit! Is it my fault? If you weren't on the way to bone Kelly than none of this would have happened (not for a while anyways)

So I hope your life of sin was worth it, buddy. I would pray for your soul but we all know that's a lost cause. See you in eternity buddy.

-Zack

PS The power of Christ compels you, bitch!

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

Reply 2: The literal response:

Dear fuckhead,

My best friend just died in a car crash YESTERDAY and you sick ass fucks are already trying to guilt me into believe not only that his death and trip to hell were deserved but that this is somehow MY fault?

Have you assholes ever heard of books, tv, newspapers, THE INTERNET perhaps? Josh had access to all the information he needed it's not like I was holding out on him. Excuse me but I assumed that my high school friend was literate.

You guys are assholes and if I find you sneaking more of this shit mail into my mailbox I will come flying out of my house with a hatchet in one hand and a can of tabasco sauce in the other.

-Zack

********************************
Reply 3, The atheist response:

Dude, come on, your rotting corpse is less than two miles from school.
*******************************8

Reply 4, The Ok-I'll-pretend-for-a-second-that-this-is-real-and-if-I-were-a-christian-how-I-would-respond response:

Dear Josh,

At long last we discover which of us was destined for the light and which for darkness. Now, knowing which path you have chosen I am certain to choose the opposite. No doubt as the fires of hell consume your very soul whatever goodness once dwelt within you will turn to ash. This I lament but we are mere pawns you and I.

No doubt the dark one will soon tire of your ceaseless agony and the choice will once again be upon you. Be once damned and suffer until the end of time or be twice damned and rebel against the Order of the universe. I know you, Josh. I remember the time you broke that kid's wrist to score an extra goal in the closing seconds of the game. We were already up by 6 points and you put him down for months, just so we could win by 7.

It is clear from your postscript that you hope to join me. Well, my former friend, one day I shall indeed stand before you. However when our paths cross again we shall not meet again as friends, or men or even corporeal beings. No doubt you will see my shining armor glinting in the hellfire. My wings will bristle, yours will reflect the hellish blackness from whence they were stretched upon your frame.

And we shall do battle from the high plains of Gorgoroth to the very core of Hell itself. And just as the forces of darkness once broke upon the Crystal Arch we shall strike at your deepest fortress. Unlike the Charge of Iblis we shall not falter, we shall not fail.

When I see you again you will not see me in my current form. If anything you will see nothing but the point of my holy sword and the wry smile as you once again precede me into damnation.

Do not fear, dear friend. I will see you soon. I will see you very soon indeed.

**********************
Reply 5, The World of Warcraft Response:

Josh,

You newb. Just start back over at the graveyard. Your corpse got pwnt by that truck.

PS you got any fused wire?

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

Reply 6, My response (having intercepted the letter)

Josh,

Your death has deeply affected everyone at school, especially the team. We are all very sad that you are not with us anymore. However knowing that you are no longer alive brings about a selfish fear not for your safety but for my own mortality.

I know that one day I myself will make that journey from this world. Where there is to go, if anywhere, has plagued my mind for more hours than I care to think about. However the simple truth is that no one who is alive now has ever died and stayed dead for a time and then returned to tell about it. No one who has ever been alive at one point has ever made a true account of death and whatever consequences it may entail *besides the obvious.*

However. I am a rational person who happens to be a Christian. I believe that death is not the end. We can only hope that there is more to life than just life. My own fears and convictions can overwhelm reason at times. Sometimes the fear of hell is the only way other, less secure, Christians can make an impact.

I never thought that I would lose you as a friend because death is a rare occurrence in this time and in this nation. Kelly and Coach Adams came back to school and you didn't. I can't spend the rest of my life in a panic that my friends and family and anyone whose life brushes against mine. I have to hope that if there is a God that this God will realize that by living my life as a good and honest person that I have done well in this world.

Your attempts to guilt and shame me have only hardened my resolve. Life is too short to waste living in fear for that which might await us beyond this mortal coil.

I intend to live. If that brings me damnation then Josh, I will see you soon one day.

-Your friend, Zack.

Letter from Hell Transcript

I am no stranger to the grotesque and the absurd but rarely does one stumble across such a tragic undertaking as the "Letter from Hell" video. I came across it after it was posted here.

The original video, if you can even call it original, is posted at this godforesaken shit heap.

Now I could spend a good bit of my day destroying the validity and lack of conscience put forth but the makers of this dismal and poorly produced 'video.' It's really just a kludge of crappy powerpoint slides and some scrolling text hacked together with a 6 minute monologue about how hell is so dark scary and how it's all Zack's fault.

Before I say another thing here's the transcript *as promised, Dawkins.net people*

Letter from Hell transcript. The bulk of the text is red on a black background. Some of the dialog is not written, those parts are in parentheses.

*****************************************************
(Slide1 – Black background with red text)

What if you had a friend
Who died without
Knowing jesus as their
Personal savior

What if he or she went
To Hell?

Slide2 – What if one day

You received a
Letter in the
Mail from
Beyond?

Slide3 – A letter from Hell

Slide4 – A letter from your
Friend in the flames
Of eternal torment

(Star-wars-style scrolling text, also black background with red text)

The following is a dramatic

presentation.

It was written by a fictitious High

School Student named Josh, to a

Friend named Zack.

Although Zack had every

Opportunity to tell Josh about

Jesus…

…he didn’t.

They were best friends.

They played soccer together.

They went to classes together.

They partied together.

They shared their lives with each

Other.

Slide5 – But there is one
Thing Zack held
Back from Josh…

Slide6 - …His personal
Relationship with
Jesus Christ.

Slide7 – The rest of the story
Is simple and sad... [like so much of christianity]

Slide8 – A few too many
Beers…

Slide9 – A tragic drive home…
A crash…

Slide10 – a death
A funeral
…

Slide11 – A Letter (big text)

Slide12 – Here is that letter (in its entirety)

Slide13 – A letter from Hell.

(Slide14 – Blue background, white text)

Dear Zack,
I died today
It’s a lot different than I expected.
You see,
I always thought that dying would bring
Me to a world that is foggy and hazy.
But this place is crystal clear…
It’s even more real than my life on
Earth.

Slide14 (slightly bigger text here)
I can think.
I can talk.
I can feel.

Slide15 – Cops at accident, no text.

Right after the accident I could feel my spirit leaving my body. It was the weirdest thing, Zack. I thought I heard you screaming out to me, man. Must have been just imagining things. (white fade into next slide)

Slide16 – People walking towards bright end of square concrete tunnel, no text) At first I was just standing in line, getting registered I guess. They asked me for my name…and began to look in this thing they called the book of life (Fade into next slide)

Slide17 - wrought iron gates in foreground, overcast sky in background) I guess they couldn’t find it though (his name) because this huge angel standing next to me grabbed me by the arm and started dragging me away. I was terrified. I had no idea what was going on. I asked the angel where he was taking me, but he didn’t answer. So I asked him again… (fade into next slide)

Slide 18 – Blue background, white text.) (He told me)
Only those, whose names were
Written in the Book of Life, could
Enter into Heaven…

Slide19 – Red background, white text) …the rest would be condemned to Hell forever.

Slide20 – (picture of lighted clouds, no text) Man I was scared. The angel threw me into some kind of holding cell. Where I’ve been sitting and thinking for a long long time (since he died today it stands to reason this means less than 24 objective hours) Do you want to know what I’ve been thinking about?

Slide 21 –(black back ground, red text) I’ve been thinking about YOU.

Slide22 – (Zack,) You’re a Christian.
You told me so yourself.
(I mean we talked about it three different times today.)

Slide 23 – (Kelly brought it up and) You laughed it off.

Slide 24 – (Coach Adams brought it up and) You changed the subject.

Slide 25 – (I mean,) It came up… (right before the wreck. Well the question I can’t get out of my mind is this, Zack.)

Slide 26 – Why haven’t you ever
told me about how to
become a Christian?

Slide27 – I mean) You say you are my friend…

Slide 28 – If you were you would have told me about (this) Jesus. (and told me how to escape this terrible place that I’m headed for.

Slide 29 – Fade to white, black red excetera) (I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, the angels who have been chosen to cast me into hell are coming down the hallway. I can hear their footsteps)

Slide 30 – (Black background, red text again)

I have heard of this
Hell…
They call it the
Lake of Fire

Slide 31 – (I can’t stand it, Zack.) I am terrified. (No! The angels are at the door. Oh no, no! They’re coming in and they’re pointing at me. They’re grabbing me and carrying me out of the room.

[How does he write while being dragged off by huge angels, one wonders.]

Slide 32 – I already can smell the

Burning sulfur and brimstone.

(I can see the edge of the cliff where Hell burns)

Slide 33 – (this is it) I am without hope.

Slide 34 – (We’re coming closer, closer,) Closer.

Slide 35 – (My heart is bursting with) Fear.

Slide 36 – (They’re holding me over the) Flames.

Slide 37 – (I am damned,) forever.

Slide 38/40 – This is it. They are throwing me in.) Fire, Pain, HELL

Slide 41 – (Why Zack) …Why didn’t

You ever tell

Me about…

Slide 42 – (White background, Black text) …Jesus. (hurt breathing sounds.)

Slide 43 – (Signed) Your friend, (Josh) [demonic voice, presumably Satan, welcomes Josh in the background]

Slide 44 – P.S. Wish you were here. [demonic voice echoes this sentiment] (repeats a few more times)

Slide 45 – Black background, white text, music is drastically different) Don’t bother me.

Slide 46 – Smaller text) Don’t bother me
With souls to save
I have my on [sic] agenda
There’s school to do,
Sports to play,
Important stuff to attend to.

Slide 47 – Don’t bother me
With my friend at work,
He’s got his own religion
I don’t have time
To change his mind
He’ll make his own decision

Slide 48 – Don’t bother me

With that little girl,
The girl playing in the street
She’s much too young
To understand
That the Savior she could meet.

Slide 49 – Don’t bother me
With the sounds I hear
The sounds of people shrieking
Although I wonder who they are
Who are these victims
Screaming?

Slide 50 – Don’t bother me
With who they are
I really don’t want the blame

Slide 60 – Cause [sic] it’s my friend at work
And that little girl

Slide 61 – Who from Hell,
Scream out my name.

Slide 62 – (But) Don’t bother me.

***********************************************
Thus concludes the transcript. Read more about the responses from Zack in the next post.

Letter to Sam Harris

Sent: 2008 01 16

Mr Harris,

Recently I watched the video of your speech at the AAI 07 in DC posted by the RRS on youtube. Your message about not falling into the atheist label struck a deep chord because it is something I deal with on a personal basis every time I see my in-laws. Without soaking up too much time I mean that my fiance and I had a child out of wedlock and her extremely conservative christian family doesn't like or understand me. More's the pity.

However rejecting the term atheist for ourselves is a half measure. If we are truly going to make a dent in the pervasive ubiquity of religious belief I believe our words should reflect how we truly feel. As such I have stopped using the terms 'God' and 'Bible' and replace them in writing and conversation with 'christian deity' and 'christian holy text' (lowercase deliberately) to reflect a more objective appraisal of import.

This has been a recent change in my habits so the outcomes are undecided. I hope you'll consider this if you haven't already. Forgive me if that sounds terribly presumptuous.

Good day and good luck to you, sir.

-Seth

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

The motivation for this contact relates to my new semi-long term project to answer and analyze a creationist propaganda series on youtube. Part one has so far yielded 4 pages of notes, comments and problems as I have seen. To be more accurate the first 7 minutes yielded 4 pages of notes, features both Kent Hovind and Ken Ham as 'scientists' and blithely accepted the bible as 100% true and accurate.

That was in a previous video which I may indeed comment on at some point. Until then my satire will remain focused on the 8 part (as far as I know at this point) series regarding evolution vs creationism.

Oh and the gloves...the gloves are off.

Listen, FUCK CHARLES DARWIN...

He doesn't matter.
His inaccuracy in the role of mutation/natural selection doesn't matter.
Whether he recanted (he didn't) on his death bed doesn't matter.
Whether he ate babies and drank the blood of virgins does not matter.

The idea is what matters. Even if the man who first proposed it later thought they had unleashed terrible evil upon the world it does not matter. The idea is what matters.

I can't think of a single creationist argument that at some point doesn't cast aspersions upon Charles Darwin at some point or another. I'm just at a loss as to why people are still using such a ridiculous ploy!

It's like defending why people used to think the world is flat. I can't believe that out of all the sea-faring nations in the world no one ever bothered to just look at the horizon. YOU CAN SEE THE CURVE OF THE EARTH just look at the horizon.

People, look at the horizon!!

Also... Check this Out!!