Deities & Dump Trucks

God threw a dump truck at me on Wednesday. Luckily, God apparently has lousy aim and the dump truck landed in the ditch beside me, leaving my little civic-hybrid and all people involved entirely uncrumpled.

Some might suggest that instead of attacking me, God saved me by sending the dump truck into the ditch instead of into my bumper. However, it doesn’t seem quite fair to always be giving God the benefit of the doubt by attributing the miracles to him while denying his involvement in misfortune. As a dirty atheist, I certainly haven’t been racking up “divine intervention” points. This was most likely an act of divine spite gone bad due to inadequate warm-up time in the bullpen.

On the bright side, I think I might have found a new angle for marketing my car. Perhaps I’ll have more luck selling the Honda Civic Hybrid with Divinely-Thrown Dump Truck Dodging Powers. Anyone want to buy a “magic” car?

The Watchmaker’s Apprentice part 2

Previously, we determined that you had been stranded on a beach, found a few watches, made a few religions on your own, and then found a tribe and religion that offered some comfort and assistance. The story was the backdrop for examining the Watchmaker argument: Given Design. Therefore Creator.

It might be interesting to take a native’s perspective as they investigate the outsider’s magical “watch.” You, now the native, see the magical moving watch of your new friend. You determine that this watch, being not alive, must have a creator like the creator of your boats and bows. Given Design. Therefore Creator.

You determine that to make such a small, yet powerful object, this creator must have amazing and magical powers. Given Design. Therefore Powerful Creator.

You ask your friend about the watch and he provides you with a book. He declares it to be the watchmakers manual and from it you can learn what you need to know. Given Writings. Therefore Divine Word.

You can not actually read the book, so your friend ‘helps’ you. He explains some of the desires of the watchmaker, such as daily winding and protection from the rain. He also explains the location of the watchmaker, a place called “China”, and that the watchmaker has the power to make this and many other items. You fiercely follow the ‘user instructions’, worried that you will miss out on gifts or suffer due to breaking the watchmakers rules. Given Paranoia. Therefore Dogma.

You tell some of your friends of the benefits and “other items” that the watchmaker can provide. You tell them of the inviolable “usage instructions” your friend has translated for you. That they may also get benefits of the watchmaker if they follow the “usage instructions.” Some of your native friends are impressed and come to see the watch. Given Promises. Therefore Followers.

After a short time, your native friends appreciate the knowledge that you are bringing. They are happy about the promise of new gifts and often come to you for advice and counsel about what the watchmaker would want. Given Followers. Therefore Clergy.

Your friend has noticed what you are doing and explains that you may have misunderstood. After some time, you think you understand. You are sorry about missing out and go to tell some of the natives that you misunderstood. The ‘user instructions’ and the watch are not really so great. They are angry and want some of what you promised. Although you try to explain, some of them refuse to believe you and hold onto the “old ways.” Given Hope. Therefore Delusion.

Some of your native friends never give up about the watchmaker. Your and your outside friend and many of the others wonder at how they could still be confused, but they seem happy and so you leave them alone. After a time, you and your outsider friend pass on, but the promises of the watchmaker do not. A future expedition finds the remote island. There are standard divine statues, but they seem to have watches carved into their arms. The natives perform a daily prayer ritual called “winding” and tell of a great messiah who will one day return to take them all to salvation in China. Given Time. Therefore Legend.

One of the members of the expedition explains that you can go to a place called heaven if you put water on your head and just believe really hard, but the natives weren’t nearly gullible enough to believe that.

[Although I wrote this from scratch, I was quickly shown a passage in Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. This passage talks about a phenomenon called “Cargo Cults” in which natives deify sailors and the possessions they bring on cargo ships. In case you thought this was implausible, well apparently it does happen.]

Update: Don’t Throw Away Your Holy Water Yet!

Below is Anton’s analysis of why Costas Efthimiou’s mathematical proof (a few posts down) of the impossibility of vampires is terribly flawed. It was just too amusing to waste away as a simple comment.

Fine, fine, let's play along.

What could be holding down vampiric reproduction? A lower percentage of victims becoming vampires, certainly--maybe most just die, or recover after looking pale and consumptive for a few days. But that would only decrease the natural reproductive rate, and the population would still increase exponentially...we need density-dependent effects.

Perhaps the per-vampire vampirization rate decreases as the number of vampires increases. For one thing, it makes it more likely that several vampires would happen to bite the same person each month (assuming the bites aren't individually fatal), thus only producing one new vampire instead of several. Also, any vampire-resistance alleles are going to be selected for in the local human population, so that over time more and more people are born with an uncontrollable love of garlic, cross-shaped stigmata, etc., making them unsuitable prey.

But an increased vampire mortality (er, re-mortality) rate is probably the biggest culprit. We all know that when you put two vampires in a room for long enough, they'll probably try to kill each other. This is observable in Anne Rice novels, American movies and comic books and Japanese ones, hence must be true. Beyond casualties of direct conflict, the necessary lightless areas for daytime snoozing (warehouses, catacombs and so forth) will become overcrowded, forcing the weaker vampires to cobble together back-alley sunshades from cardboard and newspapers, only to spontaneously combust when a gust of wind or plummeting pigeon corpse lets in a few sunbeams.

Finally, exceptional levels of bloodsuckery can't fail to alert the more observant humans, and in the end warrior priests, Belmont family members, renegade half-vampires, superpowered cheerleaders and so forth will converge on the area. They'll return vampire populations to their normal levels in an orgy of violence that just barely misses the NC-13 rating (because, although people's brains are pulled out of their eye sockets in slow motion, no one is shown in the shower.)

There! I disproved his silly claim the long and rigorous way. Needless to say, with a name like "Costas Efthimiou," he's obviously just trying to cover up the existence of his fellow stalkers of the night.

(nods) I knew I was right to buy the extra-large bottle of minced garlic.

Another reason to love math…

A researcher has come up with some simple math that sucks the life out of the vampire myth, proving that these highly popular creatures can't exist.

University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou's work debunks pseudoscientific ideas, such as vampires and zombies, in an attempt to enhance public literacy. Not only does the public believe in such topics, but the percentages are at dangerously high level, Efthimiou told LiveScience.

Legend has it that vampires feed on human blood and once bitten a person turns into a vampire and starts feasting on the blood of others.

Efthimiou's debunking logic: On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911. If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a month, there would have been two vampires by Feb. 1, 1600. A month later there would have been four, and so on. In just two-and-a-half years the original human population would all have become vampires with nobody left to feed on.

- Vampires a Mathematical Impossibility, Scientist Says

Note the awwwwwful pun in the first sentence of the article. I fully approve. ;)

We don’t need metaphysics to mess with our minds; math works efficiently enough.

Ghost Whisperer Crystal Ball

Go play with the crystal ball and see if you can find the trick before you read any further...














Are you sure you want to know? It’s going to spoil the illusion…












… and illusions are fun!














The Spoiler:

If you add together any two digit number and subtract the results from the original number, you will always get a multiple of nine that is 81 or less. Always. Notice that 81, 72, 63, 54, 45, 36, 27, 18, and 9 are always the same symbol.

Cool stuff, eh?

On the down side, the game isn’t fun anymore after you find the trick. Such is the way with a variety of illusions. Oh well. I’d still rather have math than illusions.

Serendipity

1. the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident
2. my new favorite word

I once had a significant other who attributed our meeting* to the benevolent hands of fate. He not only told this to me, but also to my grandparents, his mother, and several friends upon recounting the circumstances of our meeting. I occasionally get the urge to call him up to ask if he still believes our meeting was fate, or if he has downgraded it to something less mystical after two successive break-ups. The urge to raise my cynical eyebrows is just barely tempered by my desire to not be a complete bitch.

Actually, the circumstances of my current relationship would weave much better into the story of a meeting destined by fate. How many vegetarian-atheist-humanist-business-oriented-not-mushy-yet-still-affectionate-ambitious-but-not-entirely-serious people can there really be in central Ohio? We met! We’ve been dating for six months! The perfect story of two people destined to be together meeting and beginning a relationship! Sounds pretty, eh?

As you might have guessed, I don’t buy it. (Could you feel the eyebrows going up?) Let’s see... fate or a divine being (or whatever) is going to go to all that trouble to bring together two people who don’t believe in fate or a divine being (or whatever)... so they can further reinforce one another’s lack of belief? Really, this seems like a pretty lousy marketing strategy to me.

Fate is creepy, as far as I’m concerned. Some omnipotent power controlling my life? No thank you! I also cheerfully reject destiny, karma, divine will, and metaphysical predestination. This isn’t to say I believe I entirely control all aspects of my life. When things work out, as they often do, I certainly don’t think it’s because I orchestrated everything perfectly- I’ve had too many moments where everything has come crashing down despite my best intentions to believe this. However, I’ve found that a blend of human action, environmental factors, and random butterfly flapping (see below), can be used to explain whatever happens in my life. Fate, while it sounds prettier, just isn’t necessary.

The world can be entirely logical and yet still seem quite random. The chaos theory is a mathematical concept that explains how it is possible to get seemingly random results from normal equations. A multitude of small occurrences can significantly affect the outcome of seemingly unrelated events. The most commonly used example is of butterflies** flapping their wings causing hurricanes in other continents, but this is fairly misleading (it wasn’t JUST the butterflies) and somewhat misses the point (no, we shouldn’t exterminate butterflies to end hurricanes). The point is, in any one event, there are many difficult-to-sort factors affecting the outcome. So, while whatever nifty or awful event COULD theoretically be entirely explained by logical forces, it's quite likely we may not have the tools/time/energy to trace all of the many causes.*** This doesn’t make the event metaphysical; it just makes it complex.

The only remaining problem: I like pretty words. While I’ve crossed fate off my list, it would be lovely to have something more elegant than “chaos” in my repertoire. Enter serendipity, “the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident”. Serendipity gives me an artistic sounding yet non-metaphysical way of describing what others might call fate. I can pull serendipity out when others instead throw up their hands and call in fate or a divine being (or whatever) to explain their good fortune. In fact, identifying serendipitous events is a even a faculty, meaning each time I discover something new to be excited about, I can attribute it to skill– I do love having skills. The discovery of the word serendipity was serendipitous indeed.****


* On the Internet, no less. I think that there should be a rule specifically prohibiting the attribution of anything that happens online to fate. Computers are all 1s and 0s. Contrary to what some of my more computer-obsessed friends might believe, there is little room for the divine in 1s and 0s.

** ‘cause they’re pretty

*** I apologize to any scientists who feel that I have utterly bastardized the concept of chaos theory. This is certainly a possibility. If this IS the case, I’m still going to apply whatever theory I described to my argument. Should it not already exist, I officially name this new, exciting theory Aviaa’s Theory.

**** Meta-serendipity?