Allow Me To Be Perfectly Frank...

I do not understand the motivation behind most spiritual inquiry.

Countless theologians, philosophers, and lay thinkers have been and continue to be obsessed with what is often considered the ultimate question: "Why are we here?"
Alternate forms of the question include, "What is our purpose?", "Why are things the way they are?", and "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

I admit that I spend a great deal of time reading about and trying to understand the nature of religion and belief (which are not the same thing, and I would highly recommend The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse to anyone who wants to know what the hell I mean by that), but the nature of that question eludes me. In my mind, the ultimate question is not "Why are we here?", instead it's "What the hell kind of a question is that?"

What do people mean when they ask this question? From my perspective, it has no relevance or bearing on anything; it is inanity at it's highest. Yet many people will spend their lives looking for the "answer" to this meaningless question, and many will spend their lives touting that they have found it. However, the answers that people come up with are so many and varied that it becomes readily apparent that the original question is flawed.

Seriously, did no one but me get the joke about "The Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything" in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? They built the most advanced supercomputer ever to give them the answer to this question, and the supposed "true" answer was 42. Then they had to build another, bigger supercomputer to give them the actual question, so that the answer would make sense. Get it? It's funny because the people looking for the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything didn't know what the hell they were actually asking for! Just like in real life!

People often talk about "purpose" and "meaning." They talk about needing a purpose, or that life would be meaningless without God or whatever spiritual entity they are concerned with. I don't get it. If there ever was a "fall from grace," it was the loss of our ability to have the nerve to face life with some sense of personal dignity and authority over ourselves. Why do people need to have a purpose assigned to them, and how can one be so asinine as to think that a dream, an epiphany, or simply a moment of mania is a message from a Greater Power™ telling them what to do with their lives? That kind of thinking is for people who took The Alchemist seriously.

If you can't assign a purpose to yourself, or just LIVE and be happy doing whatever the fuck you feel like at any given time, then you are dragging your knuckles. Walk upright and be a human being, damn it all. Have enough self-respect and courage to face life and say "Whatever I do in life, I do under my own will and by my own authority."

Please. You people are so terribly confounding and annoying when you blather on about "purpose" and "meaning" and "Why," and then look down on people like me who, quite frankly, don't see why those things are of such concern to you. Maybe you'd start being more satisfied with yourself if you started asking different questions, rather than beating your head against the imaginary brick wall that is "Why are we here?"

The Lost & Found of Your Life

Behind the oaken door lay a hallway lined with small, intricate wooden cabinets. I checked the piece of paper in my hand: underneath my name was written the number of my cabinet, J-2312. I walked down the hall to the little door with a brass plaque that bore the same number. As I raised my hand to the handle of this little door that supposedly held everything I had ever lost in my life, I wondered foolishly to myself if I would find in there the ball cap I had lost when I was thirteen that I had liked so much. I opened the cabinet door.

Not quite what I had expected. The single largest item in there was a thick, plain, leatherbound book. I took hold of it, noting the lack of a title or any markings whatsoever. I was bemused; when had I lost such a thing? I could not remember, and I cracked open the fresh cover.

Inside were dated entries, scores and scores of them starting from the time I was about threee years old. Each entry was a lost thought, a moment of inspiration, or epiphany that I had forgotten. Pages upon pages of ideas I had meant to act on, both good and bad.

Stuck In A Thick Plot

"No. This is too stupid."

Richard tossed the door key onto the ground and stormed away, stopping at the sidewalk corner to stare up into the street light and sigh.

"Richard, come on. I know this shit is dumb, but if we don't do it something else will just come up. Every time we give up, we get sucked into something else. Let's try and see this one through." Erin picked up the key and put it in her pocket.

"No, Erin. I'm sick of this crap. I don't think it's ever supposed to stop. I think that this stupid... whatever the hell it is... will just keep going on forever, and then when we finally give up on it something new will start. At least these moronic little plots are interesting at first glance; why bother running them into the ground? It's like a cheesy fiction series that goes on for twenty novels that started out okay but got run into the ground by greed and a childish enthusiasm for hearing the same story repeated over and over again, only with minor variations so the reader can pretend they're getting something new."

There was a sick, unhappy little pause. Richard's description was all too apt. For almost a year now, their lives had followed a bizarre and only barely coherent path that no one could take seriously, not even they who were living it. A year of meaningless adventures and pointless escapades had worn them down into rather bitter and cynical characters who went into every new venture fully expecting it to be nowhere near as exciting, important, or serious as it first appeared. Worse still, they no longer knew who to trust in the world, besides each other. People came into their lives all of a sudden and disappeared just as fast, seeming only to exist for as long as they had anything to do with them. Recently, a certain Gerald Mannington had remained fairly consistent, and appeared to be experiencing the same weirdness they were. Still, they kept him at arm's length, half-expecting him to disappear and never pick up his phone again if they should choose to drop out of the chain of events they were currently engaged in.

Attention Religious Bullshitters: Shut Up and Learn Some Philosophy

Seems like the ads I've been getting on MySpace today are all religion-related. So I see one that says, "6 Reasons to Believe in God," and I think, alright, I'll click. This sort of thing isn't normally my cup of tea but I do enjoy reading a GOOD theological argument now and again. (Here's the link: http://everystudent.com/features/isthere.html )

I found these "6 Reasons" to be disappointing at best and infuriating at worst. Of course they were; this article and the website are geared towards students, whose capacity for critical thinking tends to be horribly feeble. Hell, nearly everyone's capacity for critical thinking is feeble because it's not most people's natural way of thinking (it's certainly not mine).

So let me see if I can stomach these 6 abominations long enough to tell you why each of them is pathetically stupid. I strongly recommend clicking that link and reading the "reasons" and the explanations they give.

"1. Does God exist? The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today."

Oh great. Just fucking great. Intelligent design right off the damn bat. Does it never occur to these people that the reason we can survive on this planet Earth is because it happens to be the one, out of quite probably billions, even trillions, of planets in the observable universe that can sustain the delicate chemical processes that make up life? Oh no, we're so arrogant that it just HAD to be an intelligent, probably humanlike, being that carefully made everything the way it is out of a special interest in us.

Even worse, they keep referring to the Earth and our Solar system as "perfect." Perfection is relative, dumbasses. It's a concept that wouldn't exist without people to think about it. This "perfect" planet is also home to natural disasters and diseases, and I'm sure if the influenza virus had a brain it would think that this planet was perfectly designed for it, too. Do you think of those things as "perfect?"

These guys state a bunch of science facts and say, "Come on, this just had to have all been made this way especially for us!"

It's a pretty big universe out there, guys. Weird shit like liquid water and organic life is bound to happen somewhere, and it just so happens to be here. Because if it wasn't here, it would be somewhere else, or maybe it wouldn't. What would we think then, huh?

"2. Does God exist? The human brain's complexity shows a higher intelligence behind it."

This is the exact same bullshit they tried to pull in reason 1, only this time making it even more obvious that they're appealing to our human vanity and arrogance. Again they state a bunch of facts and then they don't even provide an argument. They just end with the rhetorical question, "How does one explain the human brain?" This isn't an argument; it isn't anything but a weak and rather inane appeal to a very unimaginative mind. Our brains are as big as they are because it turned out that apes with nice, big, smart brains were better at surviving to child-rearing age than dopey apes with bigger muscles. Or maybe the Reptile Aliens from the planet Xolotixl III DESIGNED us so they would have an intelligent (but not TOO intelligent) population of potential slaves, which they will come to claim in the year 2012.

Seriously, these guys aren't even trying, and it's only the 2nd reason. Come on guys, this is getting boring.

"3. Does God exist? "Chance" or "natural causes" are insufficient explanations."

Okay, a little better. But it's still baloney. In this section they treat organic life and DNA like some kind of magic that could never occur 'by accident' (such a harsh term, surely it would be fairer to say it came about 'by a marvelous, incredible chance'?). It's not magic or supernatural at all, geniuses. It's astoundingly complex series of chemical reactions that developed over three point something billion years, and you're telling me that "God did it" because we haven't figured out exactly how it works in the 50 or so years since the structure of the DNA molecule was discovered? Bugger off.

This gets even funnier: "Also, natural causes are an inadequate explanation for the amount of precise information contained in human DNA."

Nice try, guys. I suppose you didn't know that up to 95% of the human genome is made up of junk DNA? It's true! This means that the vast majority of DNA in our cells actually don't code for anything; they're just ancestral remnants that get passed down because they're harmless. If you're calling our genetic structure divinely designed, then God sure left a lot of crap in the finished product.

"4. Does God exist? To state with certainty that there is no God, a person has to ignore the passion of an enormously vast number of people who are convinced that there is a God."

I'm trying very hard not to bust a gut laughing... oh man, this is rich...

AND IF BILLIONS OF PEOPLE TOLD YOU THAT MOST HUMAN HANDS HAVE SIX FINGERS, WOULD YOU BELIEVE THEM?!

This is the funniest shit I've seen in ages. They claim "This is not to say that if enough people believe something it is therefore true." Yet in the very next paragraph, they say, "Throughout history, billions of people in the world have attested to their firm, core convictions about God's existence -- arrived at from their subjective, personal relationship with God."

Okay, and this means what to me?

"Many are sure that a loving God exists and has shown himself to be faithful to them. If you are a skeptic, can you say with certainty: "I am absolutely right and they all are wrong about God"?"

Um, fuck you. If any skeptic anywhere says, "I am absolutely right and they are all wrong about [insert controversial topic here]," I will personally punch them in the face. With brass knuckles. Skepticism is about suggesting reasons why somebody might be wrong despite a good argument or popular belief, it is not, and will never be, about declaring oneself to be definitely, absolutely right. We have fundamentalism and whackjob conspiracy theorists for that.

This entire "reason" is based on a cheap appeal to herd mentality. 'Look at all these nice people here who believe; how could you be such a big meany?' Shut up and stop treating me like a sheep. We're supposed to raising ourselves up to a higher level, not degrading ourselves to the level of herd animals. At least I think that's what we're supposed to be doing.

"5. Does God exist? We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him."

Okay, this isn't funny anymore. This is reason 4 reduced to a personal, rather than global, level. They point to the fact that atheists spend more time thinking about God than most religious people, trying to find ways to disprove God's existence.

Yeah, so what? This doesn't prove a damned thing. For one thing, it isn't always true (not all atheists are the snobby, stuck-up kind that are convinced of their intellectual superiority), and it can also be at least partly attributed to the fact that atheists are a very small minority and anyone who declares themselves an atheist is very likely to be pestered by people telling them they're going to hell and that Jesus loves them. When you're surrounded by attacks on your world-view, the natural, human thing to do is to rationalize and validate that world-view to yourself. Saying that atheists sped time thinking about theology because God is trying to reach them is a crock of shit, and the fact that this guy can quote C.S. Lewis doesn't make it any less a crock of shit. Lewis was an eloquent and very good writer, but he was a second-rate philosopher, based on what I've read (that being "Mere Christianity," a very inspiring and persuasive book for the half-convinced, which I am not).

By giving accounts of various nonbelievers who changed their minds, they're basically telling the reader, "Eventually you'll have to give up and see it our way." Baloney.

"6. Does God exist? Unlike any other revelation of God, Jesus Christ is the clearest, most specific picture of God pursuing us."

Wait, what? What happened to proving the existence of God? Now you're ranging off into the territory of "Christianity is the true religion/word of God etc." Did you think I was satisfied by the previous 5 reasons that God exists and that you were free to start explaining why YOUR God is the Real One? Shut the fuck up and get back on track, dipshits, I'm not done yet!

Okay fine, I'll play your game. Hm... okay, let me get this straight: Jesus is the true prophet because he said so, Jesus was right because the Bible said so (more specifically, it said he performed miracles).

Yeah. That sounds about right. Whatever. I'm tired.

In closing, I am not an atheist. I am open and undecided on the subject of the existence of a Supreme Being, but I can't stand cheap shots and phony logic. I strongly recommend Thomas Aquinas to anyone who's interested in a good Christian philosopher, and "The Religious Case Against Belief" by James P. Carse because it's a great book.

Mandelthought

And we find the signal to be lost in the noise; we lose the recognition
of pattern because the pattern was too new, too different.

Struggling in the haze, trying to sculpt the fog of thoughts. Which are the old
and which are the new? Was it inspiration or mental masturbation? The
old thoughts are fractal, building upon themselves unto infinity and
yet becoming less and less significant with each iteration.

Was there ever a signal? Did we experience a new thought at all? Or was it
merely a hiccup in the endless downward, inward spiral of old ideas
breeding with each other? The noise of entropic decay drowns out our
efforts to listen... we have traveled so far down this path that to
pull back and see the whole once again becomes a titanic effort. From
where we stand now every path seems to lead somewhere we've been
before, and while we may amuse ourselves with new variations, we see
that it's all really the same.

The thinking has become ingrown,
the vines are tangled and no longer bear fruit; some of them have even
begun to wither. We fear that the rot will spread to the roots, if we
do not take care to prune the excess, the overgrown. But through the
tangle, who can see which to cut and which to keep?

The Rain Fell

The rain fell. It was a typical, cold autumn rain that would leave everything soaked for days because sun was too low in the sky at this time of year to dry it. In another month or two, the rain would freeze as it fell.

He looked out of one of the two small windows in his stone hut, windows for which the glass had been salvaged from a crumbling house... one of those cheap constructions that had been built before the incident. The window looked out on a valley of sorts, formed by the small, rocky hills that this particular commune had settled in. The rain filled the valley and formed a small stream, and this stream flowed over a small, sad memory.

From his window, he could see where some poor fool had tried to build a shelter in the valley. Apparently it had never occurred to him (her, perhaps?) that the grass in the little valley grew greener for a reason... In any case, all that remained were some stones from the shallow foundation and a small pile of rotting wood. No one knew who had built the little lean-to; they had likely moved on after their floor turned to mud with the first rain. He wondered what became of them. Survival was often harder than one believed, as many of those who had survived had learned he hard way.

He had known what it would be like. Perhaps "known" is the wrong word; after living homeless for a year, prior to the incident, he had a much better idea of what it would be like. He grinned, recalling how society had appeared from the bottom up. From down there anyone could see where the weak points were, if they paid close enough attention. He thought about how he had bemoaned the lack of creature comforts, and how trivial his problems back then seemed now. A vagrant's livelihood depended largely on the surplus that society could produce, and on his or her ability to scavenge for it. It was a miserable existence, to be sure, when something as simple as a tissue to blow one's nose on was a true luxury and when one was often at the mercy of thugs, but at least there wasn't too much competition.

After the incident, his experience in living off the excesses of the bloated society of which he had once been a part was very much to his advantage. Scavenging was second nature to him. He had almost been prepared for the collapse, and he chuckled to himself as he realized that being almost prepared was enough to make him a king in the eyes of those who had been caught completely by surprise. A king of the destitute and desperate, of course, but a king nonetheless.

"Don't hail the king," he whispered to himself, now bracing himself against the window in a fit of giggles, "he's just the court jester who got the crown by accident."

Kill Switches and Remote Control

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/kill_switches_a.html

Imagine if the government had the ability to remotely turn off or otherwise control anything electronic, from your car to your cell phone.

Well, the government and some big companies are imagining it right now, and THEY seem to think it's a good idea.

Why do I still have this thing?

Ah, yes.

The obligatory "Wow I almost never update this thing" post. I know you don't miss me, because anybody who has the slightest chance of reading this most likely sees my stuff elsewhere.

I rarely come up with any exciting news items or links, and I don't any have any audience to speak of, making distribution of links from other blogs pointless. Still, I think I'll keep this retarded little blog.

Oh, the coconut? The fern plant still lives, but the moss is nearly all dead. It seems I underestimated the power of the Hawaiian sun, even though I put it in a relatively shady spot. No doubt it's too full of bugs to bring inside. I'll probably have to give the thing up when I move :(

The Lunatic Fringe

Don't listen to people like me. I'm a crank, that's why. My mind is part of the lunatic fringe, and I'll tell you weird things until your ears fall off. People like me, we're dangerous. We've got nutty ideas and are always trying to rope you normal, healthy people into our bizarre schemes and world-views. Sometimes, it even sounds like we may be right about the strange things we say, but really, it's not worth all the babble.

Why am I telling you this? I don't know, I really don't. I'm a lunatic crank, a madman, and every day I think about the sort of things that you only think about in your deepest dreams, those odd, funky things that you can never quite remember when you wake up but sure seemed interesting at the time. And whatever forces occupy this lunatic fringe are telling me to tell you that you ought to stay away. The chaos of the crazy world produces nutcases of all kinds, and this particular nutcase is telling you to stay sane. Don't do anything too crazy, keep most of your ideas to yourself, don't read to many books, watch plenty of tv, and plug your ears and hum when people like me start talking.

Everything will be fine.

The Howling Madmen

For crying out loud, shut up and calm down. You people get the weirdest ideas about me. I'm here to offer my help.
What kind of help, you ask? Help beyond your wildest imaginings... literally. I represent (for lack of a better term) a collective of madmen and lunatics who favor your cause over that of your enemies. Perhaps you've heard of us, but most likely not. The majority of our enemies don't have a proper name for us; they just scream.
If you accept our help, I recommend that the sensitive among you avoid spending much time around us. Unless, of course, they want to join our ranks.

Untitled

He dug through the rocky soil on which he knelt, scraping away with hands that were callused despite the thick and worn canvas gloves that protected them. The wet dirt soaked the gloves, chilling his hands.

"See," he thought to himself, "never thought you'd love a simple pair of gloves, eh? Useless for keeping out the cold, but these hands would be bloodied up without 'em, no doubt." He grinned, and pushed away some more dirt to reveal the prize he sought: a humble potato, grown in the land he had claimed and planted by his own hands. The gloves, the dirt, the potato (and the several dozen like it in the field), and his own rough, cold hands... he loved all these things, and his grin grew wider at the thought of all the love there was in his life now. Since the incident twelve years ago, he'd learned to love the hard, gritty, dirty things that kept him alive. Other people were so morbid and unhappy about what had been lost those twelve years ago, but really, he thought, hadn't there been enough time to get over it? No matter; he loved those people who complained anyway, because they helped keep him alive as well, and he them. Still, he wished they could face up to reality a little better.

"After all," he said aloud to no one in particular, "you can't really be miserable when your life's as good as it could possibly be." That's how it was: since the incident, a life sustained by digging up potatoes and sleeping in a crude stone hut was about as good a life as one could get. And happiness was all about living the good life.

He had laughed those twelve years ago, when everything had collapsed and the United States of America was essentially bought by its creditors. He still laughed sometimes, to himself, but he knew it disturbed the others so he tried to only do it when no one else was around. However, just last week one of the others had seen him leaning against the wall of his hut--the first one he'd helped build--giggling uncontrollably.

"Damn you, stop laughing!" She barked at him with the tone of one who is sick of hearing a joke she doesn't get, "What is wrong with you? Do you like the state the world is in? Because if you do, you're sick!"

He stifled his laughter and wiped his eyes clear. "I know you don't think it's funny but try to understand... I saw it coming all along, and the look of shock on everyone's faces was precious. I'm sorry you can't appreciate it; it's kept me in tears of laughter for twelve years. The old world could never do that for me."

"You and Roger are two of the most twisted people I have ever met. I'll never understand any of you crackpots," and she walked off, shaking her head.

Roger was like him. He had seen it coming, he had laughed when it happened, and he still laughed. The traveling merchants talked about other people who were like that. In fact, many of the travelers themselves cracked a strange smile whenever the incident was mentioned. In the survivor communes to the south, they said, people like that were actually called Laughingmen. The world he lived in needed Laughingmen like himself and Roger. For years, they had been the only ones who could smile. Their mad laughter kept everyone alive, and he loved it.

WTF? Porpoise caviar?

Some poor bewildered soul asked me if there was such a thing as porpoise caviar today. I hesitated, then replied that such a thing was impossible on the following basis:

1. Caviar is fish eggs
2. Porpoises are not fish
2a. Porpoises do not lay eggs
3. Therefore, procuring caviar from a porpoise is doubly impossible.

It seems some nut was trying to convince this person that porpoise caviar exists. I do not know whether to applaud this act of misinformation, or to applaud it louder.

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Urgent Public Safety Warning Against Trap Of Heart!

Sources indicate that the Malaysian government either has a Discordian in their midst, or there is no Malay word for "parody." Possibly both. Either way, the Malaysian government has issued a statement to the public, warning about the false information available on Uncyclopedia (a parody version of Wikipedia, as if Wikipedia wasn't funny enough on it's own. But we shan't go there):

Translated article from a Malaysian news source

"Authorities expect the statement to urge the public not to feel free to download and disseminate relevant website content, in order to avoid falling into the trap of heart."

(Wikinews article for those who are laughing too hard at the inadequacy of the Google translation to get what I'm talking about, and a Malaysian tech blogger's thoughts on the subject)

Seriously, how can I even make fun of this? That a website which was created for the express purpose of being less accurate than Wikipedia has been accused of attacking an entire country's national unity is just too... perfect for me to want to touch. I leave this for you, Dear Readers who are blessed to see such miracles within our lifetimes, to admire in whatever way you see fit.

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Woah, freaking awesome!

I'm posting this using ScribeFire, a Firefox Add-on that allows me to publish posts without logging in to Blogger. Hooray for tools for lazy people!

My winter break is more than halfway finished, and I've done jackshit in terms of schoolwork. This is to be expected, and you probably could have guessed that, so congratulations on having a few seconds of your life wasted by me.

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