Secret Questions

Today I created a password for a website, and it asked me for a secret question in case I forget my password. So I typed in "What is the answer?" And then as the answer, I used a throwaway password because it was displayed on the screen in plaintext, and obviously not going to be encrypted. What an awkward and patronizing experience.

Identifying Yourself to Yourself

I just read a quick thought-provoking everything2.com post called creating a password to convince yourself you have traveled back in time. It got me thinking, if I were to travel back in time, how would I authenticate myself to myself as efficiently as possible? (It has to be quick, or else my present self will proceed to press a red button.)

I might start listing off passwords I use, but those could be hacked. I think a good approach would be to list the stuff I concern myself with and worry about. So I was imagining myself rapidly describing my innermost thoughts to myself, and I think I stumbled on a good exercise. Describing my innermost thoughts quickly and matter-of-factly in the second person gave me a bit of perspective.

All I've Got Against Moderate Religion

The religion that we see today comes in fundamentalist and moderate varieties. I consider the two to be wrong and meaningless, respectively, but that's a subject for another post.

As an atheist, what truly moves me to action is fundamentalism, which I believe is actively destroying society (e.g. preventing stem cell research because of idiotic absolutist classification of a clump of cells as a human in good standing). But the bone I have to pick with moderate religion is much smaller.

Moderate religion is usually pretty fine in practice, because our moral intuitions and enlightened time period generally override a rational interpretation of what's really written in the bible. However, I would still prefer that the moderates give it up already, and here are all the reasons I can think of why moderate religion is bad.

• The prevalence of moderate religion masks the true egregiousness of fundamentalist religion. For example, a moderate Christian doesn't think that Genesis is literally true, but when incredibly radical "Intelligent Design" comes along, which robs modern science of so much integrity that it might as well be asserting the full literal truth of the Genesis story, the average moderate is tempted to give it equal time in the classroom. Richard Dawkins expands on this in The God Delusion.

• Moderate religion seems like an inconsistent worldview that straddles the boundary between proven rationality and comforting superstition. Scientists traditionally use the humble line of having nothing to say about philosophy. But the truth is that science had a lot to say about the subject. For example, every philosophy about the meaning of life that was written before Darwin must be completely re-examined -- the knowledge of our natural origin changes everything.
  
  Likewise, modern biology tells us that our cells, organelles, DNA and proteins are made of the same passive atoms as any other matter in the universe. It seems that the modern, enlightened, scientific worldview is a completely materialistic one. There don't seem to be any gaps for supernatural intervention, even in what was once the most promising place -- our brains.
  
  In light of the changes that science has had on our worldview, moderate religion seems to be nothing but a historical relic. Imagine that a baby were born into a completely secular, modern society, schooled in modern science, but largely ignorant of religion. Can you imagine a priest who finds him at age 20 and tries to convince him that there is a God? Even such a fixture of moderate religion as solitary prayer would seem absurd and outlandish to this rational character. In the world today, I believe moderate religion is using its moderation as an excuse to avoid some major burdens of proof.
  
  
• My last argument is a very interesting one I read in a recent post by renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett, recovering from surgery after his heart almost exploded, entitled Thank Goodness! (highly recommended).

  I am not joking when I say that I have had to forgive my friends who said that they were praying for me. I have resisted the temptation to respond "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" I feel about this the same way I would feel if one of them said "I just paid a voodoo doctor to cast a spell for your health." What a gullible waste of money that could have been spent on more important projects! Don't expect me to be grateful, or even indifferent. I do appreciate the affection and generosity of spirit that motivated you, but wish you had found a more reasonable way of expressing it.
  

  Dennett's point is that while a little prayer by a religious moderate is not a big deal, it is as inappropriate to the situation as sacrificing an animal -- a completely unjustified waste of time. Furthermore, praying in the hope of actually being helpful can seem, to an intelligent sufferer, like a mockery of the things that truly are helpful and valuable (such as the practice of medicine with scientific rigor).

So as rational humans, are we really so helpless that we need to rely on the crutch of absurd, outdated superstition? Well, frankly, I think a lot of oldsters are past the point of no return with their moderately religious fantasies, and that's alright. But the rest of us can handle it. Declaring yourself as an atheist might be scary and unnatural at first, even to someone like myself, with hardly any history of religious indoctrination. But it's not all that hard, and I think it is going to become more and more commonplace. Indeed, I expect that moderate religion will one day be seen as quirky and quaint, like sexual abstinence is today.

AIM Profile Dump 2

Note: All of this content is plagiarized. If you want to find the sources, just search for the strings in quotes :)

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Some professors asked a monk to lecture to them on spiritual matters. The monk ascended a podium, struck it once with his stick, and descended. The academics were dumb-founded. The monk asked them, "Do you understand what I have told you?"

One professor said, "I do not understand."
The monk said, "Then I have concluded my lecture."

Another professor said, "We will not pay you for this lecture."

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Two sages were standing on a bridge over a stream.
One said to the other, "I wish I were a fish. They are so happy."
The other replied, "How do you know whether fish are happy or not? You're not a fish."
The first said, "But you're not me, so how do you know whether or not I know how fish feel?"
The other thought for a moment and replied, "Because I was a fish in my previous life."
The first scowled at him. He said, "then you wouldn't mind if I threw you off this bridge, would you?"

At that moment, the first sage attained enlightenment.
He told the other sage what had happened.
"Yeah, I attained enlightenment too," the other sage said. He was lying.

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There are two kinds of people in the world: those that can count.

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"The truth is, I removed all my evidence of creating this world so that the smarter guys wouldn't believe in me. And what were the consequences? My Heaven only welcomes smart people. Those people will believe in me when they meet me in person! That's what I gave them the brains for, see? The last thing I need is a bunch of loony fanatics wandering around up there, getting their nose hairs all over the furniture."
--God

"I know when you are sleeping, I know when you're awake. I know if you've been bad or good... crap, there I go, confusing myself with Santa Claus again! Seriously, though, I do know." --God

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Redundancy is the unnecessary use of either needless, tautological, pleonastic or superfluous text, by which one repeats, in duplication, the same, identical, aforesaid things over and over again, beyond what would be needed or required to explain, or make comprehensible, the intended or signified meaning of that which one wishes to convey. Customarily, it is usually common in redundancy to repeat, sometimes with different phrasing or words, the same idea or reasoning, thus restating one's thoughts, sometimes paraphrasing oneself and effectively saying the same thing twice, or double.

John J. Johnson Jr. II, the current and present president of the Society for Redundancy Society, has proposed that "Redundancy is an art, capable of being captured only by the minds of those with minds capable of capturing the art of redundancy."

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All-Time Favorite Russian Reversals
In Firefox, you keep tabs on your browser. In Soviet Russia, browser keeps tabs on you!
Also: In Soviet Russia, fox fires you!
In Soviet Russia, ride pimps you!
In Soviet Russia, time kills you!
In Soviet Russia, day seizes you!
In Soviet Russia, remote controls you!
In Soviet Russia, Waldo finds you!
In Soviet Russia, joke overuses you!

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If all the village idiots, in all the villages in the world, left their villages to form their own village, of village idiots, in that village, of village idiots, you would be the village idiot.

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How many members of a (given demographic group) does it take to change a lightbulb?
N+1 (where N is a positive whole number) -- one to hold the lightbulb, and N to behave in a fashion generally associated with a negative stereotype of that group.