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I think it’s time for another Three Days Grace day….

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression: “That kind of thing only happens to other people.” Turns out that I am “other people” because all the stuff that happens to “other people” is the stuff that happens to me.

I’m only writing this post because Travis told me I should, BTW. Of course he said I should put it in a book. I would do so, but given the fact that so many ficticious autobiographies (think: Million Little Pieces or My Life for example) exist, I know that no one would believe it. Not that it ultimately matters, but still…

Anyway, by nature I am a very optimistic person. This is probably the only reason I haven’t killed myself, because of all the stuff that happens to “other people.” In fact I’ve heard Dawkins claim that the universe looks exactly like it would if there was no God and it was instead governed by pure chance. I disagree completely with that sentiment, of course; but I do have to admit that I would understand someone who instead said that the universe appeared to be governed by a God who hates us. (As I said, I would understand this notion, not agree to it.)

In any case, as I said I am by nature an optimist. I always look for the bright side of everything, because it’s much more fun being happy than being gloomy. I know this isn’t true for everyone. I won’t name names (but they’re running for president), but I know a few dour people who cannot find joy in anything except their own suffering.

So anyway, I was talking to Travis this morning. I got onto the subject of everything that has happened to me since 2001. More specifically, since September 11, 2001. Because 9/11/01 was when I had my pre-op for my surgery on the 12th. I got a 9 pound cyst removed from my adrenal gland.

Yeah, a 9 lb cyst. You know, the kind of thing that “other people” get.

Anyway, after surgery I went through two infections, so I was hospitalized three times. I was actually out from work from 9/12 through 11/5 of that year. My only saving grace was that our fiscal year ends 9/30 and the new one starts on 10/1, so my sick time “reset” then. That meant that although I was “in the hole” by November 5, I had enough sick time to cover it as long as I wasn’t sick at all the rest of the year.

After that I moved to a new house. Why did I move? Well, I was promised a lower rent rate. I moved to the other house knowing that another friend would be moving in after about three months, so for the first three months I had to pay the extra rent for both of us until he arrived.

But after he arrived, the landlord (who was–note the past tense–a friend of mine) decided to keep my rent at what it was. Since I didn’t have anything in writing…well, you get the picture. Instead of saving rent from my old house, I had to pay extra rent.

Then my friend moved out. I got a new roommate, and a second one after that. Turns out the third roommate started stealing from the second roommate so we had to evict him. Lotsa fun.

Anyway, then I moved to a different apartment which was, in a word, possessed. I can’t prove it, but I know it was demon possessed. After a few months (and I don’t correlate these two things), I ended up with sleep apnea without knowing it. If you’ve read my blog, you’ve read some of the tales of that already. Needless to say, two and a half years later, with just about 0 REM for that time, I was diagnosed with severe depression, etc.

Long story short, I eventually got through that and moved to a new house. There, my roommate turned out to be a pedophile who surfed for child porn on my computer. Thus, my computer is still in police custody right now (I’m not sure when the trial will start, but hopefully it should be any day now–it’s been almost 11 months).

And just for fun, let’s just fastforward to March. I got tickets to see an Avs game and invited a hockey gurl to the game! She said yes. But then, as you know if you read the blog, I got stood up. I did find out why, finally. She had a car accident. Thankfully, she survived, but she pretty much dropped off the planet after that, quitting her job, etc. I’m assuming that she probably moved back to L.A. where she was originally from, but of course I don’t know that for sure. I’m just like, Okay, well that wasn’t meant to be. But on the other hand, I can’t really say I’m surprised…you know, given past history and all.

Anyway, after that I ended up with my staph infection just a few days later. And then, while taking antibiotics, I got an ear infection. Again, I’ve blogged about most of that.

All I can say is that my life is most certainly “interesting.” But I’d rather be normal. I mean, how many people do you know who had a roommate at one house who was stealing (who, incidentally, turned out to be skipping parole at the time too, but we didn’t know that), who then moves to another house and has a roommate who’s a pedophile? How many people get stood up because the girl actually wanted to go with them but ended up in a car accident? How many had both of the above, as well as once having a 9 lb cyst and 2 and a half years of sleep deprivation in a demon-possessed apartment?

No one, of course. Because that’s what happens to “other people.”

I’m feeling a bit under the weather lately. Nothing overly specific (except for a few headaches, which I know is caused by global warming–you might refer to it as “spring”–and allergy season). It’s more of a Jimmy Carter “malaise.” Just a general “blah” feeling.

Somehow I know this is Bush’s fault.

In any case, time to go to bed early. ‘Tis a sad day indeed….

Well, yesterday some of the guys from work came over to my house and we played Guitar Hero for a bit. It was a lot of fun, and of course I like just about any excuse to play GH :-) Anyway, after everyone else left I kept playing since I own the game and can do so. I set up a profile and have been going through from easy to medium to hard to expert on all the songs, but not continuing until I have a 5 star rating on each song. This has been very interesting when you run into songs like Before I Forget by Slipknot on hard. That one took me forever to get a 5 star rating on, but I did finally manage it yesterday. Disturbed’s Stricken was much easier (got the 5 star on the first try!). And I had already gotten 3’s & 7’s by Queens of the Stone Age finished, so that just left Knights of Cydonia by Muse.

That song was totally kicking my rear. I had it as slow as possible and still couldn’t get the rhythm right on the practice section. Check it out on Youtube. I’m referring to the riff that starts at about 29 seconds. My only consolation is that I was playing it about as well as the guy who made the video, so I’m not the only person who sucks at it!!!

Anyway, long story short, I couldn’t get the rhythm even putting it on super-slow on the practice for that part, until I realized that the fast notes are triplet 16th notes. The song goes so fast that you can’t really see that on the grid, but once I figured it all out I was able to finish song. Only got 4 stars on it, though; and now my fingers are completely numb.

Therefore, I’ll have to hit the 5 star tomorrow. And eventually, I’ll get to look forward to this song on Expert….

I saw the headline: ‘Basic Instinct’ Director Makes Shocking Jesus Claim and I was like, “Hmm, I wonder what that was.” Turns out:

In his upcoming biography of Jesus, “Basic Instinct” director Paul Verhoeven will make the shocking claim that Christ probably was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee.

This can only be shocking to people who have no concept of history. This claim isn’t new. In fact, it’s been used to “explain” the virgin birth since roughly 35 AD….

In fact, the Roman soldier is supposedly named Pantera. Indeed, this is even in the Wikipedia article called Criticisms of Jesus:

For example, that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was raped by a Roman soldier named Panthera, Pantera, or Pandira. Mary became pregnant as a result, and she claimed that she was carrying the son of God in order to hide the rape.

The only thing shocking about this is that anyone thinks such a claim is shocking. But of course if we slap the word “shocking” onto it, it might make it seem relevant. It makes people fear. It doesn’t matter how little evidence there is to the whole Pantera theory. We’ll just say it’s shocking.

So I’ll make a shocking claim now. This story is the best one ever written!

I TOLD YOU SO!

The producers of Expelled made the Dawkin’s rap video :-) (Click the “I told you so” line above to see the ending of the clip.) :-D

I’m currently reading through The Code-Breakers by David Kahn. Firstly, I have to say that anyone named after the nemesis of Captain Kirk has got to write a kewl book. (Yes, I know Kahn was alive well before Star Trek happened, but that’s beside the point.)

In any case the book is very interesting. It reminds me a bit of Simon Singh’s, The Code Book (gee, I wonder why). Kahn’s book is about twelve billion times bigger though, and it weighs enough to create a crater if you drop it. Still, if you like reading up on the history of cryptology I’d recommend it. :-)

Time for me to jump back into it now!

With the relative success of Expelled, Intelligent Design is back in the news again. It is therefore perhaps a bit helpful to have a quick overview of some of the differences between Intelligent Design and Creationism.

First, I should note that we must define how we are using the term “Creationism” in this essay. Most atheists define the term as equivalent to Young Earth Creationism, but this is too narrow. On the other extreme, one could say that anyone who believes in any sort of creation would be a Creationist, but this is so broad that you could even fit Darwinists who believe in a naturalistic creation of the universe (via quantum mechanics at the Big Bang, or whatever) into the definition.

Instead of those two extremes, for the purposes of this essay I will define a Creationist as a Christian theist who believes that God created the world and all the various “kinds” of plants and animals in it at some point (YEC or OEC is irrelevant, and this definition allows for variations within kinds to stand). Note that this definition is very arbitrary. It excludes alternate religions, and would not include theistic evolutionists either (as the variations in kinds—which may include differences between such creatures as zebras and horses, wolves and dogs—are not significant enough to establish Darwinian descent of all species from a common ancestor). While some may disagree with this definition, it is useful to demonstrate the distinction between Intelligent Design advocates and Creationists in general, especially in American culture where Christian theism is the dominant alternative to Darwinism. In any case, the focus of this essay is more on Intelligent Design than it is on Creationism, so this definition of Creationism ought to be sufficient to establish the point clearly enough.

Virtually every atheist would like to link Intelligent Design with Creationism since the religious views of Creationists would legally exclude them from public schools. However, even some Creationists (as defined above) link themselves to Intelligent Design. Indeed, often it is only the ID advocates themselves who separate themselves from the Creationist view point. Speaking as a Creationist, this is dangerous for Creationism, and not just because it allows Darwinists to exclude ID without sufficient cause.

Consider this example. Suppose that the universe is 15 billion years old. Furthermore, suppose that Darwinism, as understood by Richard Dawkins, is entirely correct. Further suppose that there exists a star several hundred light years away from us that has a planet rather like Earth on it, where over the course of time, beings equivalent to humans evolved. Suppose this planet was formed ten billion years ago (when the universe was five billion years old), life evolved until these human-like creatures came into existence after another five billion years. By then, these human-like creatures had developed a flotilla and launched out into space to conduct a science experiment on another planet. They traveled for one billion years (nowhere near the speed of light) and found Earth, four billion years ago. Over the course of the next few billion years, this species of human-like creatures seeded life, introduced retroviruses to reprogram DNA, and shaped the flow of evolution until the year 1945 when, seeing an atomic bomb detonate to end World War II, the human-like species decided to get out of Dodge. As a result, by the time the space program ramped up, these guys were no longer watching the planet, having fled back toward their distant star system.

Now suppose that this just-so story is actually true. This would not fit Creationist accounts…but it would fit Intelligent Design accounts. In fact, one need only ask a simple question: if the above did occur, how would we set about to prove it?

This question is actually one that Darwinists never bother to consider, since they assume by default that such a thing could not have occurred. But the above just-so story represents no religious viewpoint, it is completely materialistic, and it assumes all Darwinistic theories. If it actually occurred, how would we be able to verify it? It’s a natural and materialistic occurrence, and if science has anything meaningful to say then it ought to be able to answer the question.

Firstly, we must note that since these intelligent human-like creatures left we cannot go up into space and see them now. They are gone, and for all intents and purposes no longer exist within our realm of observation.

Science does deal with this sort of thing all the time with sentient beings. You may observe a bear on a migration route one year and not on the next year and then again on the third year. That you did not see the bear the second year does not mean the bear did not exist that year. So when dealing with sentient beings, it is quite possible that they do not wish to be seen or happen to be somewhere other than where the observer is.

So how then would we try to determine whether they had been here or not? If we cannot currently observe them, then we look for artifacts. This is how we know that the Roman Empire existed, for instance: historical references and items recovered by archaeology. We excavate ruins and read old books to find evidence that they used to exist, etc.

But we’ve already said that these human-like creatures are scientists working to keep their experiment pristine. They would not want contamination to occur, because that would ruin everything for their experiment.

What is left to examine then? Can we conclude that it would be impossible to verify the existence of these creatures? No, for there is one other thing that we can look at.

These creatures were conducting their experiments on life itself. They were introducing retroviruses to change DNA to shape evolution, to grow a particular species. They seeded life on the planet in the first place. That means that what we look for is this: evidence that what is here cannot have arisen naturally, but instead can only be explained by the actions of an intelligent agent.

Because the intelligent agent was actually involved in the way life happened on Earth, things occurred on Earth that would not have occurred otherwise. If this story is true, then life cannot be the same as it would have been without these intelligent actors involved.

Now here is the key for the Darwinist to consider. If we are to say that science has no way of differentiating between the materialistic and naturalistic theory that I proposed above and Darwinism, how potent is science after all? That is, if science works, it ought to be able to differentiate between a world that is designed and a world that is not designed.

The ID proponent says that science can and does differentiate between what occurs naturally and what occurs due to intelligent agents. Oddly, for all its talk about the power of science, it is Darwinism that believes science to be impotent on this issue. But IDers have no problem saying that science is able to detect design, even when the designer is materialistic.

The designer need not be an omnipotent God. In fact, the designer need only be as intelligent as we currently are. After all, it is certainly within the realm of human intelligence to be able to create a space flotilla with its own self-contained farming system, to use atomic power to move us (at nowhere near the speed of light, mind you), to take enough people to keep the population going, and for us to use Darwinian theories to seed new life on another planet, introducing retroviruses when we wish to make alterations, etc. We could theoretically do these things and construct an intelligently designed world.

Suppose we did just that. That would not be Creationism. It would be Intelligent Design, but not Creationism. And that’s the major difference between ID and Creationism.

Creationism requires that the Intelligent Designer be God, specifically (as I’ve defined Creationism above) the God of the Bible. ID has no such requirement. The designer could just as easily be a human-like organism that evolved on a different planet six billion years ago who then traveled to our planet to seed life. Of course, IDers do not rule out the possibility that the designer is the Christian God; but He is not a requirement for Intelligent Design. Nor does ID have to identify the designer in order to be scientific: it is enough to show that some kind of design must have occurred (just as one can rule out natural causes for the death of the body in the hotel room without knowing who the murderer—the designer of the death—is).

This is why Creationists are libel to misstep with all the success of ID. If we allow ID to do all the heavy work without working out the issues ourselves, then we have not advanced Creationism at all. Even if ID utterly guts Darwinism, that would not prove the designer of our world is God. That ID is currently sympathetic with Creationists in no way implies that this relationship must always remain, and Creationists should be aware of this fact.

There is a difference between Intelligent Design and Creationism. To use the dead body illustration yet again: Darwinists claim that Bob Jones died naturally; Creationists claim that Bob Jones was murdered by Jim Smith; and Intelligent Design advocates merely point out that some unnamed person killed Bob Jones. While there is overlap between the ID and Creationist accounts, it is a mistake (both on the part of the Darwinist and on the Creationist) to assume they are the same.

Although I didn’t have a chance to blog about it yesterday…the Avs DID win the series by winning game 6 with the score of 2-1. So I predicted it correctly after all :-)

Of course, I only had a 1:8 shot of picking it correctly. I wish the Lottery had those kind of odds!

Well, the Avs won again tonight, and now lead the series 3-2 (which, amazingly enough, happens to be the final score in games 1, 2, 3, and 5 as well). Only the game I watched earlier this week was different (the 5-1 blowout).

In any case, before the playoff series began, I told one of my coworkers I thought the Avs would win in 6. It’s because I know that Minnesota isn’t a knock-over team. However, I didn’t really have any concrete reason to say that the Avs would win in 6 other than that it sounded like a reasonable number. Now, if the Avs win Saturday, they’ll have won the series in game 6 and I’ll be proven a profit…erm, prophet.

Even if they manage to lose Saturday, I still say the Avs will win the series, if for no other reason than this stat: the Wild have only lead for 4:31 out of a possible 324:23 in five games (the reason for the odd times are due to the OT in games 1-3). Of course, a lot of that time was spent tied (i.e., all the OT happened for a reason ya know). But still, when you only lead for 1.4% of time played over the course of five games…you’re going to lose the series. In fact, were it not for a couple of extremely odd bounces, the series would already be over, as Minnesota’s goals seem to come on some of the strangest flukes in hockey. And luck will only carry you so far, as we have seen the past two games.