Argument from Design

Does anyone else think it's ridiculous that creationists are still using the argument from design? I believe the person who first invalidated that argument was... Charles Darwin!

I'm guessing the conversation must have gone something like this:

Creationist: Look at all this complex life around us. It was clearly designed by an intelligent designer. There is simply no other conceivable way!
Darwin: Actually, I've thought of one, because I am brilliant. I submit that complexity can emerge from the passive process of random mutation and natural selection, given sufficient time.
Creationist: Uh huh, I see... interesting.
Creationist: Soooooooooo, how do you explain the fact that the organisms we see around us are so complex that they could only have come about as the result of an intelligent designer's design?

How can anyone claim that the central argument of ID is a modern development in science!?

Reading off a Screen

I have to read some tedious stuff for Humanities class, both online and off, and I noticed something odd: it's a lot easier for me to read (boring) text from the web than from a physical book. I read so much online, that I'm used to the physical experience of sitting in that position. It's harder for me to stay comfortable and focused reading a book. Case in point: I stopped to write this blog post.

Also, I like scrolling the page up with the mouse more than turning pages. It's all part of my assimilation into the 21st century.

Pretty Famous

Right now I am the thirteenth most popular Liron on the internet. This blog comes up thirteenth when you search for the string on Google. Not bad, eh?

And I am pleased to say that I am the most popular Liron Shapira on the net. That guy from the "Department o Biology" put up a good fight, but I just wanted it more.

How to Invalidate a Christian's Prayers

Anyone with common sense knows that prayer doesn't actually work in any meaningful way. Here is a good experiment from Why Does God Hate Amputees by Marshall Brain:

Now I want you to try the [coin-flipping] experiment again, but this time I want you to pray to Jesus Christ instead of Ra. Pray sincerely to Jesus like this:

"Dear Jesus, I know that you exist and I know that you hear and answer prayers as you promise in the Bible. I am going to flip this ordinary coin 50 times, and I am asking you to cause it to land heads-side-up all 50 times. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen."

Now flip the coin. Once again, after the fifth or sixth flip, the coin will land tails.

Of course this example has a common justification, which is that we are testing the lord. So here is a mean trick you can use to screw over any Christian who thinks their normal prayers get answered, but not their "test prayers".

Invalidate a Christian's Prayer's
All you have to do is periodically ask them what they are praying for, and follow up by asking whether it works. You are doing this for the purpose of comparing their results with the normal statistics about these kinds of things. Now all their normal prayers are test prayers!

The whole "testing the lord" line reminds me of when you're playing a game of Horse and you miss a basket, so you call it a practice shot. But if you sink a nice shot, you sure as hell are not going to give up the credit for that sucker on a technicality. A Christian who defends prayer is just like a cheap Horse player, clinging tightly to anecdotes about effective prayers, while shrugging off any meaningful studies of the phenomenon.

If you are a good Christian who believes in prayer, I bet you'd still feel a little uncomfortable openly praying for God to strike you dead. But what's the biggie? It's obviously a test, so he won't do anything, right? I would certainly have no problem shouting any self-destructive prayer you like, because I have real confidence in my knowledge that they are useless.

The truth is that people who believe prayer works don't know the conditions under which it does. It's easy to make up rationalizations for individual incidents after they happen, but that's exactly what they are -- rationalizations. Do your Christian acquaintances a favor and invalidate their prayers with this handy technique so they stop wasting time on them.

Paper is Ridiculous

Today in Humanities class I wrote an in-class essay. I was thinking how ridiculous it is to compose essays on paper. The main problem with paper is:

It's hard to go back and edit.

No one naturally writes in one long, organized flow. I think usually the best way to write something is to quickly belt out a first draft, then revise it afterward. It's also useful to be able to make little changes along the way -- it puts you at ease, since you don't have to hesitate and make sure you are getting everything right the first time.

On a computer, revising is the easiest thing in the world. It is as easy as typing. Did you know that if you hold down the control key and then press backspace, delete, or an arrow key, it lets you operate on an entire word of text in one keystroke? Over the course of writing this blog post, I have watched myself take a false start and then instantly backtrack on almost every sentence. That's actually my strategy -- I put down my first idea of how to start the sentence, see how it looks, then go from there.

This computer's powerful editing interface has been around for decades. Why do professors think that paper is still useful as a medium for composing essays in class?

Postal Experiments

Postal Experiments
The idea of trying to mail a brick is utterly hilarious.

The Town Intellectual

This is an interesting blog post: Dumb towns getting dumber; smart towns getting smarter?

These costs [of moving] discouraged enough folks from moving that every town had its intellectuals. They dreamed of moving to Manhattan, but they never did. You'd find them at the library, in the local theater company, running a Great Books club, etc.

One question to ask is, why do the dumber people congregate into towns? I think it's because smarter people get more added value from being around other smart people, so they take the initiative to move, while the rest are left behind to form dumber towns.