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the somewhat random musings, rants, and observations which otherwise clutter my brain. I hate clutter.
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Innumeracy is a term meant to convey a person's inability to make sense of the numbers that run their lives. It's not the same as being bad at math, but rather the inability to comprehend the significance of numbers. As an example, people who are innumerate are likely to think they are due to win the lottery soon. Also, I find that people who dismiss evolution as a silly and unlikely way for complex life forms to arise, or can't fathom the big-bang as the origin of the universe are often innumerate.
I submit their poster child, Janet M. LaRue, who writes the following in her column. This is her slam-dunk argument, which apparently leaves science-mongers so agog that they often convert to Creationists. Frankly, I suspect it leaves them so slack-jawed in the horror of the ignorance expressed, they simply make a timely retreat to the bar for a shot and a beer.
Janet posits:
I’ve enjoyed several memorable encounters with atheists that encourage me to continue sharing the Gospel. I like to ask the “No God–Don’t Know God” crowd to respond to the following hypothetical.
Suppose you awaken alone in your house with its doors and windows locked to find your table set with a scrumptious breakfast awaiting you. Which explanation satisfies you? Your breakfast always existed in its present form, or your breakfast organized itself from lesser matter? Maybe the eggs, ham and cheese just evolved into an omelet, the muffin popped itself into the toaster then rolled around in the butter, the oranges squeezed each other, and there’s coffee but no Mr. Coffee.
The response is usually an ontological admission, as in, “Somebody came into my house while I was asleep and fixed breakfast,” or a simple “I don’t know.” I’m amazed at the atheists who find it easy to swallow the big bang but not the evolving breakfast.
The evolving breakfast? We'll ignore that evolution doesn't apply to inanimate matter, that's just a further illumination of her ignorance. I want to focus on the innumeracy of the argument. The universe is over 14 billion years old. The Earth, a comparatively young, 4 billion plus years old. That's a really really long time. Really. The creation of galaxies, stars, planets, and life forms occur over immensely large time scales. Happenstance is further progressed by the volumes of attempts involved. For every pair of amino acids that bind with the the requisite environment and energy to create life, trillions of them fail to do so. For every gas cloud that coalesces into a star, millions do not. These are stupidly large numbers. And billions of sites across billions of years result in quintillions of attempts.
For a little perspective, a billion seconds is over 31 years from now. There have only been a half-quintillion seconds since the universe began. If you bought a billion NYS lottery tickets every week, on average you'd have 20 winning tickets/week. When you employ even remote chance across so many opportunities, the seemingly unlikely becomes almost certain.
Now, even with these large numbers, the likelihood of a naturally occurring ham and cheese omelet is pretty remote. It would fly in the face of the second law of thermodynamics, but that's another discussion. Instead, let me recast Janet's essential argument using the Infinite Monkey Theorem.
It is very reasonable and likely that if a billion monkeys typed on a billion typewriters for a billion years, that one of them would accidentally hammer out one of Shakespeare's sonnets. (Note: I would not want to have to clean up after that experiment.) But if I left a monkey and a typewriter locked in my house overnight and found a sonnet on my desk in the morning, I might be inclined to suspect divine intervention. The difference between those two scenarios is in the mind-numbing magnitude of the numbers involved. It is also the difference between "the big bang and the evolving breakfast".
I feel for the innumerate, I really do. They are ripe to be taken advantage of, and many do. Just listen to any politician spin their statistics. It's much like illiteracy, just with numbers. And like illiteracy, it can be cured. The only odd part is, that I've yet to find an illiterate person who will argue with you over what a written passage says.
If you're not aware yet, the NY Times has finally dropped their silly "Select" program when they discovered that not too many people were willing to pay for the privilege of reading their paper online. The result is that Maureen Dowd is once again available to read. This is great as I love Maureen. Well, her writing... anything else would just be creepy. Whenever I've seen her in person she's like fingernails on a blackboard. She has the personality for print media. But I digress.
This week she wonders if Cheney will manage to lead/drive us into attacking Iran before the end of the Bush reign of terror. I share her concern. There's a lot of writing on the wall. Exaggerated claims about how Iran will precipitate World War III, citing them as the new greatest threat and sponsors of terror, etc. Not to mention that attacking Iran would certainly be the Republicans best political shot in 2008. The American public has repeatedly demonstrated they can be whooped into a patriotic frenzy when there's butt-kickin' to do. And we all know how soft the Democrats are on war and the military. Imagine how bad it would have been if WWII, Korea, or Viet Nam had happened on Democratic watches... ummm... wait a minute... But I digress.
But there's a part of me that thinks we can't possibly get fooled again. Can we? Bush's approval rating is dismal, in large part fueled by the Iraq debacle. The majority of Americans now believe we were misled into that war. Would they buy it again? I'm inclined to think they wouldn't. But I'm also scared their opinion wouldn't matter. Congress has proved disappointingly impotent, and Bush & Co. seem to be more and more determined to do what they believe is right and dare Congress to do something about it. It's very conceivable that an Iranian attack could be launched without any sort of national debate. Which begs the question, if that happened, would we as a people take action, or just blog about it? I suspect we would just suck up yet another quagmire of a war. The alternative would be to stage a revolution of sorts and take back our government. But doing so with a fresh war front opened would divide the country even further, possibly spawning our own civil war. But I doubt it would be a war of guns. We lack the commitment to action and, frankly, the stomach for that. Rather it would be a war of words and rhetoric. AM Radio vs. the Blogosphere. Oh wait, that war is already going on. But I digress.
I found this, but there was no attribution to an author. Still, it's pretty funny, in a sad sort of way. It's gotta make Dumbledore glad he's British.
Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.
Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.
Clearly a must have item in any home, the bed mounted shotgun rack advertises that it makes your gun available while still lying down! If it only also held a beer and the TV remote, this would be the perfect product. Note at the end of the commercial when they say that many customers are ordering one for both sides of the bed. They don't say so, but I suspect this means this product also cures snoring.
I opened my mailbox this evening and thumbing through the junk I came upon a glossy flyer that caught my eye. There was a close-up picture of two pair of entwined bare feet sticked out from the covers on the end of a bed. Across the top was just a web address: puresexneeded.com My initial thought was, "Oh no, what sort of mailing list have I managed to get onto?"
Flipping the flyer over I was more than a little surprised to find that this was an invitation to church. Specifically, it said:
Sex wasn't invented in a dark alley behind a porn shop. It was created by God to be enjoyed appropriately. You may be surprised to know that the Bible is open and frank about sexual matters. And this may even shock you: God wants you to have great sex!
Are you ready for a church that actually presents relevant everyday topics about life? What is more relevant than a talk about sex? At Lakeshore Community Church, we're going to talk about sex for five weeks in the series "Pure Sex". We'll ask questions and begin to unravel the myths and confusion on this vital topic. The messages will make an impact in your life. In addition to messages, you'll experience dramatic presentations, dynamic multimedia and upbeat music that rocks from our band. Leave the No-Doze at home.
To be honest, I'd never even thought about the idea of sex having been invented. But since I'm probably too late to get a patent on it, I suppose it really doesn't matter much. And I have to wonder if Cal Thomas knows that God wants me to have great sex. I suspect he wants Cal to have great sex too, or even any at all as it might loosen his shorts just a notch. But I digress.
I can't help but think that this church is just one goal short of the hat-trick. They've got Sex and Rock-n-Roll already. If they just got together with the Bong Hits for Jesus kid, they'd pack the place to the rafters every Sunday.
This observation is inspired by Cal Thomas' latest column, and yes, using the words "inspired" and "Cal Thomas" in the same sentence is difficult. Still, the man raises an interesting point, although not the point I think he intended. The article intends to bash President Bush for his words with regard to assuring the Muslim world that Americans are not anti-Muslim. But in the process, he is adamant that the Muslim God and the Christian God are separate and distinct. Specifically he says:
The president can be commended for sincerely reaching out to Muslims, but he should not be commended for watering down his beliefs and the doctrines of his professed faith in order to do so. That's universalism. There are "churches" that believe in universalism, his Methodist church does not. No Christian who believes the Bible believes in universalism. And no Muslim who believes the Koran does either.
President Bush is wrong, dangerously wrong, in proclaiming that all religions worship the same God.
Religious scholars all agree that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all have a common root. It always seemed to me that they all worshiped the same god, they just did so differently. There was wide disagreement on what it meant to be faithful, what rituals and practices were appropriate, and so forth. In the end, I thought most non-universalist people believed that their faith, their attributions, their theology would be judged as true, and everyone else would be judged by God to have been wrong. To put it another way, Muslims, Jews, and Christians all worship the same god, they just disagree on what is the proper way to do it and what he ultimately expects of them.
However, Thomas is asserting that they worship different gods. He is not asserting they worship false gods, but different ones. And that distinction is enormous. This brings religion into a whole different light. The implication is that all these gods exist separately and independently. The very small extension of this argument is that there is no reason to stop with the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian gods. Why should there only be three? The whole pantheon of Hindi gods must also exist, the sky world people of Native American religions, Thor, Zeus, Ra, Osiris, and all the gods of all the mythologies must then also exist. Right?
But wait!! Don't order yet. Given some of the deep divides among Islamic sects, would Sunnis have a different god than Kurds? What about the Orthodox Jewish god versus the Reformed Jewish god? For that matter, would Catholics have a different god than Protestants, and Mormons yet a third god? Are Baptists sufficiently removed from Episcopalians to have a separate god? There's no obvious point at which to stop this.
If Thomas' view of the supernatural world is correct, then we must envision a world with numerous gods all competing for worshipers. Clearly they cannot, or at least are not inclined to, destroy one another or they would have done so already. This would have lead us back to one true religion and everyone else worshiping false, or at least defeated, gods. So they must coexist in some fashion. Given that they coexist and compete peacefully, then all religions are true. The various gods may establish different rules and offer different rewards, but in the end, it's a lot like choosing a credit card. They all get the job done, we just quibble about the rates and the incentives.
I think most theists would find this a patently silly view of the universe. Most mainstream theologies don't provide for the existence of gods from unrelated theologies. Which means that most theologies assert (directly or indirectly) that other theologies are wrong and their gods are false ones.
So I believe what Thomas really meant was that the Muslim god is a false one, and that his Christian god is the one true god. But it would be politically indelicate to say that. Besides, that borders on the "infidel" label which we bristle at when Muslims hurl it at us.
Still, the false gods claim leaves open the question of where the line is drawn. If Muslims worship a false god, then surely Hindus, Druids, and ancient Greeks do. But what of Jews? That is a precursor religion to Christianity, one which Jesus himself practiced. So if Jews worship a false god then Jesus worshiped a false god. That seems an unlikely Christian position. And what about the varieties of Christian religions? Do Mormons worship a false god? Catholics? I suspect asserting that Catholics worship a false god would be outside the comfort zone of most Protestants. rather, their position would be that Catholics worship the same god, they just do it wrong. But ultimately that distinction is unhelpful.
If Catholics worship the right god but do it wrong, and Muslims worship the wrong god, isn't the outcome the same? Won't both be condemned in the afterlife? So where is the harm in Muslims worshiping the same god, but doing it badly? The assertion in both cases is that the group is profoundly theologically wrong. Does it really matter what they are wrong about? Aren't they being condemned in either case?
Does Thomas' distinction really amount to anything in the end? It would appear not. But he got a column out of it... and apparently so did I.
My younger son decided this fall to follow in his brother's footsteps and go out for Middle School Volleyball. And much like his brother and many other players at that age, he has trouble getting enough "oomphff" on the ball to consistently serve it over the net.
Now with my older son, I set him up in the driveway with a smaller, lighter ball and had him serve it at the garage door for an hour or so while coaching him on his form. This got his toss, rhythm, and body motion working to his advantage and really seemed to improve his serve. So I opted to try the same thing with his younger brother.
All seemed to be going well. He was getting his whole body into the serve and beginning to get some power into the ball. His control was a bit off, but I assured him we'd work on that later, after he was consistently getting the hang of hitting it hard. I left him for a moment to attend to something in the house while he continued the drill in the driveway. And a few minutes later, was surprised when he came to the door and said he had broken the vent on the house. I wasn't too sure what he meant, but when outside to see.
It turns out he had smashed a ball sized hole in the gable vent at the peak. When I asked where the ball was, he said, "Inside..." And sure enough, it was sitting in the attic space behind the former vent, being dutifully guarded by the bees still contemplating the intruder.
Now granted, the vent was old, and I determined it to be more brittle than I might have imagined it to be. However, this was a pretty light ball and the vent is a long way from where he was serving. Further, he had to hit it hard enough not to just break it, but to pass through it! So I guess the good news is that he was successful at getting power on the ball. Maybe I should feel good about that. But it's hard to be truly thrilled now that I have a sizable hole in the front of my house in need of repair.
I'm referencing three web sites here that you may wish to visit, or revisit if you haven't been there lately.
Let's start with the Do Not Call Registry. It's important to keep those telemarketers at bay. Note that if you did this when it first came online, you are about to expire. You need to re-register every five years. Yes, there is a bill before Congress to make registration permanent, but that's not likely to get through, and why take the chance.? Besides, you probably have a few cell phone numbers which you haven't put on there anyway. Don't forget that registering will send you an email for every number registered, and you won't be opted out until you click the confirmation link in every email you get.
When you're done with that, head on over to the Opt Out Prescreen site. Registering here will dramatically cut down on the number of offers for credit cards, insurance, and other financial instruments which clog up your mailbox and expose you to risk for identity theft. Note that this site also lets you opt-in for these offers, but what psychotic actually does that and how bored are they?? Also note that this opt-out also only lasts 5 years. Apparently you can mail them something which will make it permanent, but I haven't tried that.
Finally, if you haven't checked your credit report in the last year, you should do that. Yeah, yeah, I know. Television is filled with ads that offer free reports that aren't really so free, but this one actually is. It will show you your report from the 3 big agencies at no cost. The only catch is that you can only do this once per year. But it's better than nothing. Note that you don't get a score, just the report. But it will show you any negative history, what your status is with each creditor, and who has been requesting your credit report over the past few years. Be careful though. They will try to sell you things along the way, but you don't need any special talent or luck to navigate your way to the free stuff.
You should be able to accomplish all three tasks in 30 minutes, and you're probably going to waste that much time on the Internet anyway, so why not do something productive?
