Lee Strobel is an idiot

So, I mentioned awhile back that I’m reading “The Case for a Creator” by Lee Strobel, who also wrote such books as “The Case for Faith” and “The Case for Christ,” two very popular books on the college scene in such “black and white” groups as CCF and Campus Crusade…

Anyway, so I saw this book at Barnes and Noble and couldn’t help but buy it since it was that trendy author writing about two things I’m interested in: God and science. Thus far (and, granted, I’m only 80 pgs into it…), the book is worthless. Strobel uses “evidence” out of non-evidence. For example:

“The problem with irreducibly complex systems is that they perform no function until all the parts are present and working together in close coordination with one another. So natural selection cannot help you build such systems; it can only preserve them once they’ve been built. And it’s virtually impossible for evolution to take such a huge leap by mere chance to create the whole system at once.” — pg 79

Why not?! The chances of being struck by lightening once, surviving, and then getting struck again in the exact same location as before isn’t likely, but it’s still possible. How do you know it isn’t possible? And now to the whole “evidence by non-evidence” point:

“This is not an argument from ignorance…we’re not inferring design just because the naturalistic evolutionary theories all fail to explain information. We infer design because all those theories fail and we know of another causal entity that is capable of producing information – namely, intelligence. Personally, I find this to be a very strong argument indeed.” — pg 78

Oh really! All those theories fail? Do you know how science works, Mr. Strobel? You know there is no such thing as “proof” in science? That’s because any evidence can come along and change the way we we all see the world. You assume that since we don’t understand a few facets of the world around us, we must assume that “intelligence” as we know it must be involved. We thought the world was flat until we found evidence to support that it’s round. We thought the universe revolved around Earth until we found that Earth revolves around a star…that is one of infinite stars in the rest of the universe. The “intelligence” you’re talking about is human intelligence. God is all-knowing, thereby presenting an entirely different type of intelligence from what we have experienced. Frankly, Mr. Strobel, you don’t know anything about science if this is the “evidence” you’re presenting. You shouldn’t be writing books about things you apparently know nothing about.

The point of all this is: humans understand absolutely nothing about the “known” universe. We don’t know how God works. We don’t know how it was all done. To quote the common phrase, “we don’t know jack.” How can we assume to know how it all works? Isn’t it possible that there are other universes parallel to our own that have completely different physics to our own? How about another planet out there that has beings built out of neon rather than carbon? Or perhaps even that on some planet on some distant galaxy, a milk cow won an election against someone looking strangely like George W. Bush. Frankly, we don’t know. I can’t prove that these things aren’t happening because, well, because it can’t be proven.

Much like Strobel can’t prove anything he’s putting forth in his book. Know why? Well, because “evidence by non-evidence” isn’t evidence at all. It’s ignorance.

Current TV

Many of you heard about Al Gore, et al. purchasing a TV news network last year and developing a news channel developed at younger audiences, known as Current TV. Yahoo! News says that the channel is targeted at “Internet-savvy viewers 18 to 34 years old” and features “professionally produced segments and viewer-produced videos running from a few seconds to 15 minutes in length,” known as “pods.”

I’m very happy that there’s a new channel out there (although, we don’t get it in St. Louis, sadly…) providing news to a youth-targeted audience. Many people my age get their news from the Daily Show more than they do from any other source…this is great, ’cause it’s an awesome show, yet it still leaves much to be desired. Also, and perhaps more important, this station will have a more liberal bias than all of the other 24-hour news networks.

…let the games begin. 😉

Politics = Dumb

So yeah, as Mike has similar posting on his blog today, but there are some real shenanigans going on over “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” recently… Essentially, there are a bunch of folks (mainly Republicans and old people…but not entirely…) getting pissed off about “GTA” and its violent content, not to mention the sexually explicit material that’s also included. Mike cites an article at ABC News mentioning how a grandmother is suing Rockstar Games (the publisher) because she bought “GTA” for her 14-year-old grandson without knowing about the violent/sexual material portrayed within. In a second article, which I posted in my “Articles” section, Steven Johnson has an editorial about how dumb Hillary Clinton’s attack on video game manufacturers is equally as stupid…this one was published by the LA Times. In that one, he discusses how activities like football are arguably more dangerous and violent than video games, which can instead be therapeutic for youngsters.

First of all, Johnson is entirely correct: video games today are helping develop cognitive skills, strategy and hand-eye coordination much more than the games of old (i.e. Monopoly, Cutes and Ladders, etc.). A parent today can play a board game against their child relatively easily, but if you drop them into “Halo 2,” they’ll get schooled quickly. Secondly, these games all have ratings on their packaging. A kid can’t just go into a store and buy the games rated “Mature;” a parent/adult has to do it. “Oh, I didn’t know it would have that terrible material in it,” the parents say… Well, maybe they could have read the packaging, researched the game on the internet, asked other parents, etc. before purchasing the game for their child and then complaining about it. Thirdly, these parents that are complaining are the ones who are already relying on video games and TV to babysit their kids. Maybe if they’d actually spend some time with them…you know…go to a park and throw a baseball or something…they wouldn’t spend all their time playing video games…or perhaps they could play some of these games with the kids so they know you’re taking an interest in their lives, rather than just assuming that the TV is cheaper than paying someone else to watch your kids while you avoid taking responsibility for their lives and how they’re raised… Why not stop blaming the media/TV/video games for your screwed up kids and try making a difference yourself in their lives, eh?

Just a thought…

New Section, etc.

So yeah, today was pretty good… I went by the Employee Health center and they said I officially don’t have tuberculosis…woo hoo… For some odd reason, SLU makes all its employees take a TB test every year…I guess if I don’t have to pay for it, I don’t really care… Anyway, after that I went to work and saw a Master’s thesis defense, which was relatively interesting…I guess it’s good to see what research counts as Master’s degree material…didn’t seem too hard…hehehe… 😛 After that, Dr. Ariel ended up leaving early, which meant I got to leave early too… I went by EB Games and got a used copy of “X-Men: Legends” for Gamecube, which I’m quite pleased with so far. Should keep me entertained for the rest of the summer, certainly…

Other than that, I have started a new section of the website titled “Articles” (link’s up at the top, yo…). I’m intending this as a place to post things like…well…like the editorial I posted there by Paul Krugman, who writes for the New York Times, among other periodicals/books. This editorial is essentially about why politics shouldn’t dictate what is taught in our schools…and I agree with it wholeheartedly…which is why I posted it… 😛

Anyway, check that page from time to time…I’ll post other stuff there, too…eventually…

w00t to Galileo…

“Science tells you how the heavens go, and the Bible tells you how to go to heaven.”
— Galileo

…therefore…stop trying to have each one explain the other… 😛

Happy 4th

So yeah, went to the Fair Saint Louis festivities last night…saw Switchfoot live…saw lots and lots of people… The music was excellent and the fireworks were awesome…

…however, there was a little bit of irony… The guy sitting in front of us under the arch and in front of the main stage had a Confederate flag as his cell phone plate. Now, this could be excused, but then he was also wearing a Confederate states seal on his back. Now, I don’t tend to care too much about people wearing clothes that make a statement about…well…something…but seriously… This guy was wearing a shirt with a Confederate seal…at a United States Independence Day celebration…and to top it off, he was videotaping the fireworks… What idiot watchings fireworks on their TV?!

…I guess hypocrisy just annoys me on occasion…what can I say… 😛

The **AA can suck it…

So yesterday, I worked on a laptop here at the HelpDesk (everything was in Japanese…so it was a little interesting navigating Japanese Windoze XP…) and noticed that the girl had WinMX installed, which is a P2P program… Now, I heard about WinMX, like, Freshman year…back in the days before Napster was shut down (old-skool Napster, not this new “legal” crap), so I didn’t expect anyone to still use it… Then, the same day, I see this article.

The gist of the article is that the NPD Group recently released statistics saying that Apple’s iTunes music service is used as much as popular P2P services. It is actually ranked second (surveying the number of users on the service) in programs used to download music …behind WinMX… Kazaa, Limewire, etc. are all apparently used less than iTunes to download music…and eDonkey is not even on the list (even though you can log into it right now and find 4 million users…as opposed to the 2 million users on WinMX…). The real kicker here is that the RIAA and the MPAA both use the NPD Group for their statistics…

So yeah, essentially, the **AA pisses me off tremendously… I actually did a speech on this subject for (you guessed it…) speech class a few years back, so that research pissed me off even more… As the article points out, the NPD Group uses old school statistics to survey data and extrapolate for the general population…but you’d think they could, oh, I don’t know, actually log into the services and see how many people are using each service at a given time? It seems these fools do everything they can to distort the facts (namely that they aren’t losing money at all due to file-sharing and that they are, in fact, perhaps even gaining revenues…) just to keep ahold of a system that has been in place far longer than it should have been… I’m thinking that the era of CDs in stores should be over and everything should be electronic as soon as possible, ’cause these lawsuits, etc. against people like Gertrude Walton is silly…

Another Bushism…

“That information came from people who hate America,
people who have been trained to dissassemble – that
means not to tell the truth.”

George W. Bush; regarding Amnesty International
“accusasions” that the war in Iraq
isn’t going so well, as recorded by
the Daily Show (6/2/05)

For the record, it’s “dissemble,” not “dissassemble”
…secondly, Mr. Bush, you’re a flaming idiot…