Sunday, October 30, 2005
evolution bits
I’m looking for computer simulations that demonstrate the principles behind evolution and to make it hard, the software should be suitable (being capable of being dumbed down) for elementary school level.
Here are some things I found:
matrem
Sort of like a very glorified Core Wars and not quite what I’m looking for. However, it may have a use.
avida
This seems like a very good candidate for “digital life” research, as opposed to biological kind.
altruist
“Computer simulation of biological evolution in structured populations” - there you have it 
This one is worth a look, because it seems a good approach to model and explore what amounts to the evolutionary origins of morality.
Still, I haven’t found quite what I’m looking for. You’d think there would be all kinds of educational software on evolution, but apparently most of what’s around is geared towards users that are already proficient.
Does anybody know about other software packages?
Saturday, October 22, 2005
resonates
Just something that resonates with me. It’s from a book that was loaned to me by someone I talk to about, as Karl Rahner would call it, ‘the amazing silence of God’.
Anyway, it’s from a collection of letters written by a Benedictine abbot to various people over the course of his life.
Click to read more...
Friday, October 21, 2005
Twenty Questions
DS twisted my arm. Not that I can take these quizzes too seriously.
1. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone?
I’d spend all evening trying to figure it out.
2. If a new medicine were developed that would cure arthritis but cause a fatal reaction in 1 percent of those who took it, would you want it to be released to the public?
Yes, provided this side effect is known to the potential recipients.
3. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the body or the mind of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
Trick question - depends on badly either one would go.
4. If at birth you could select the profession your child would eventually pursue, would you do so?
No.
5. If you knew there would be a nuclear war in one week, what would do? (you cant stop it)
Trying to figure out who caused it and make sure they couldn’t hide in a bunker.
6. Would you accept twenty years of extraordinary happiness and fulfillment if it meant you had to die at the end of the period?
It was good enough for Sheridan in Babylon 5.
7. If the person you were engaged to marry had an accident and became a paraplegic, would you go through with the marriage or back out of it?
Depends on that person’s attitude.
8. Someone very close to you is in pain, paralyzed, and will die in a month. They beg you to give them poison so they that they can die. Would you?
My lawyer tells me not to answer this question in public. However, I sure hope somebody would do it for me if I’m caught in such a bind.
9. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you want as your dinner guest? as a close friend? as a lover?
Dinner guest: Rainer, one of our best men.
Close friend: Beats me.
Lover: See that skillet GM wields?
10. What is the worst psychological torture you can imagine suffering? (it cannot involve any physical harm to you)?
I don’t want to go there, because even considering the question is psychological torture.
11. You and a person you love deeply are placed in separate rooms with a button next to each of you. You know that you will both be killed unless one of you presses the button before 60 minutes pass; furthermore, the first to press the button will save the other person, but will immediately be killed. What do you think you would do?
Depends on who I think is better suited to strap the asshats who do this into rooms with buttons themselves.
12. Would you be willing to go to a slaughterhouse and kill a cow?
Yes.
13. For $20,000 would you go for 3 months without washing, brushing your teeth, and using deodorant? Assume you could not explain your reasons to anyone, and there would be no long-term effect on your career. (you are not choosing one, you would have to go without all three).
No. $20K isn’t nearly enough monetary compensation.
14. Which of these restrictions could you best tolerate: leaving the country permanently or never leaving the state in which you now live?
Permanently leave the country - this is what I’m doing already.
15. If you could choose the sex and physical appearance of your soon-to-be-born child, would you do it?
No.
16. If your friends and acquaintances were willing to bluntly tell you what they really think of you, would you want them to?
As long as they tell me what I need to hear, I couldn’t care less about what they really think of me.
17. Would you be willing to decrease your life expectancy by 5 years if you could become extremely attractive?
No.
18. Would it disturb you much if, upon your death, your body were simply thrown into the woods and left to rot?
No.
19. Would you like to know the precise date of your death?
No.
20. Would you be willing to give up all television for the next 5 years if it would induce someone to provide for 1,000 starving children in Indonesia?
Sure, as long as the few shows I like are released on DVD.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Rough Living in the Wild West
There have been some really wonderful things result from my sojourn to S.W. Kansas. Probably the best has been the opportunity to spend time with the folks. Too often I have only made it down for a weekend over Christmas.
Part of the beauty is breaking bread with them. I love to cook, but this talent is hidden most of the time because I eat out a lot and don’t like cooking for one. (Cooking for two is much too intimate for my tastes on nearly all occasions) There simply is not the same joy in cooking for one. Cooking up a storm to share with others, that is fun. Especially when those sharing the meal can truly appreciate the cooking. The folks appreciate a good meal. I’m not knocking a good fried bologna sandwich, but it’s just difficult to match it with the right wine.
This evening I started with a spinach salad topped with mandarin oranges and candied walnuts and lightly drizzled with a vinaigrette. I grilled a pork tenderloin that marinated overnight and served it up with a peach/avocado salsa matched with a nice riesling. Dessert was an orange-cardamom creme brule that chilled overnight. It freaking rocked. A blue stater woulda done forgot that they was out on the prairie.
I had a blast preparing it last night. I had a blast putting it together tonight. I had the most fun sharing it with others.
The sky out here remains incredible. Now I just need the hot tub that was delivered, installed. I lack a place to lay down, other than on lawn chairs while I drink my vodka and admire the night sky.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
What a coincidence…
While unpacking some remaining boxes, I found the aluminum spoon that my father used during his stint with the Wehrmacht, swastika stamp and all. I was looking for it for years… The odd thing was, though, it was packed away in a cigar box along with white and blue candles. Go figure.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
new theme?
I’d really like a different theme for this site. There are a few that I’d love to use, but they have some show-stopper bugs that would take me ages to fix. I may install those that sort of work and give y’all the option to try them on for size.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Newman the Atheist
You may have opinions in religion, you may have theories, you may have
arguments, you may have probabilities; you may have anything but
demonstration, and therefore you cannot have science. In mechanics you advance
from sure premisses to sure conclusions; in optics you form your undeniable
facts into system, arrive at general principles, and then again infallibly
apply them: here you have Science. On the other hand, there is at present no
real science of the weather, because you cannot get hold of facts and truths
on which it depends; there is no science of the coming and going of epidemics;
no science of the breaking out and the cessation of wars; no science of
popular likings and dislikings, or of the fashions. It is not that these
subject-matters are themselves incapable of science, but that, under existing
circumstances, we are incapable of subjecting them to it. And so, in like
manner, without denying that in the matter of religion some things are true
and some things false, still we certainly are not in a position to determine
the one or the other. And, as it would be absurd to dogmatize about the
weather, and say that 1860 will be a wet season or a dry season, a time of
peace or war, so it is absurd for men in our present state to teach anything
positively about the next world, that there is a heaven, or a hell, or a last
judgment, or that the soul is immortal, or that there is a God. It is not that
you have not a right to your own opinion, as you have a right to place
implicit trust in your own banker, or in your own physician; but undeniably
such persuasions are not knowledge, they are not scientific, they cannot
become public property, they are consistent with your allowing your friend to
entertain the opposite opinion; and, if you are tempted to be violent in the
defence of your own view of the case in this matter of religion, then it is
well to lay seriously to heart whether sensitiveness on the subject of your
banker or your doctor, when he is handled sceptically by another, would not be
taken to argue a secret misgiving in your mind about him, in spite of your
confident profession, an absence of clear, unruffled certainty in his honesty
or in his skill.
Well, then, if Religion is just one of those subjects about which we can know
nothing, what can be so absurd as to spend time upon it? what so absurd as to
quarrel with others about it? Let us all keep to our own religious opinions
respectively, and be content; but so far from it, upon no subject whatever has
the intellect of man been fastened so intensely as upon Religion. And the
misery is, that, if once we allow it to engage our attention, we are in a
circle from which we never shall be able to extricate ourselves. Our mistake
reproduces and corroborates itself. A small insect, a wasp or a fly, is unable
to make his way through the pane of glass; and his very failure is the
occasion of greater violence in his struggle than before. He is as heroically
obstinate in his resolution to succeed as the assailant or defender of some
critical battlefield; he is unflagging and fierce in an effort which cannot
lead to anything beyond itself. When, then, in like manner, you have once
resolved that certain religious doctrines shall be indisputably true, and that
all men ought to perceive their truth, you have engaged in an undertaking
which, though continued on to eternity, will never reach its aim; and, since
you are convinced it ought to do so, the more you have failed hitherto, the
more violent and pertinacious will be your attempt in time to come. And
further still, since you are not the only man in the world who is in this
error, but one of ten thousand, all holding the general principle that
Religion is scientific, and yet all differing as to the truths and facts and
conclusions of this science, it follows that the misery of social disputation
and disunion is added to the misery of a hopeless investigation, and life is
not only wasted in fruitless speculation, but embittered by bigotted
sectarianism.
Such is the state in which the world has lain, ever since the introduction of
Christianity. Christianity has been the bane of true knowledge, for it has
turned the intellect away from what it can know, and occupied it in what it
cannot. Differences of opinion crop up and multiply themselves, in proportion
to the difficulty of deciding them; and the unfruitfulness of Theology has
been, in matter of fact, the very reason, not for seeking better food, but for
feeding on nothing else. Truth has been sought in the wrong direction, and the
attainable has been put aside for the visionary.
These passages are taken out of the mouth of an imaginary philosopher, invented
for the purpose by the great theologian John Henry Newman in his
A Form of Infidelity of the Day, written in or around 1854. I find it amusing that Newman
was capable of constructing a case for atheism 150 years ago which is
far better than most of the cases for atheism you hear today.
CARM, one more time
One final topic to comment on, from: Concerning atheist attacks on Theism
Some might think that atheists would be content with simply not believing in God and leave the theists to themselves. After all, if God doesn’t exist then what’s the big deal? Why not let the theists believe in God the way a child believes in the tooth fairy? To the atheist neither exists. So why bother?
This question gets asked a lot in forums and I’m never sure if whoevers asks is disingenuous or nave. To have a committed Christian apologist ask this question in a section dedicated to attacks on atheists strikes as almost funny.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, eh.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
CARM, wrapping up
Time to wrap up.
First, there is this article:
http://www.carm.org/atheism/atheistattacks.htm
There’s a lot of righteous indignation about ad hominem the author was exposed to from individual atheists. I agree that many things are put in an intentionally inflammatory way, but not all of it is an unreasonable complaint against a subset of Christians, say the Religious Right in the US. However, the author sees fit to conclude this article by an ad hominem attack against atheists in general:
Does atheism really teach freedom? No. It teaches bondage for its adherents and for those who disagree with it.
Does the author see the irony in this?
Then there’s this one:
The Christian Worldview, the Atheist Worldview, and Logic
I didn’t make it past the opening paragraph.
Can the atheistic worldview present a logical reason why its worldview can account for the abstract laws of logic? I think not. But, the Christian world view can. The Christian worldview states that God is the author of truth, logic, physical laws, etc. Atheism maintains that physical laws are properties of matter, and that truth and logic are relative conventions (agreed upon principles). Is this logically defensible?
If I understand this correctly, the author presents a (purportedly) logical argument against atheism to the effects that atheism has no basis to use logic. Fine, atheists have no basis to use logic, so logical arguments are useless against them.
These two articles are remarkable for their candid admissions only:
Entropy and Causality used as a proof for God’s existence
At this point I admit to making a leap of logic and assert that the supernatural, uncaused cause is the God of the Bible.
Theistic Evolution
Though this information is brief and far from complete, it should be obvious that theistic evolution and the Scriptures cannot be harmonized.
Finally, there’s this article about purpose:
Atheism, Evolution, and Purpose
To sum it up: Christians have a purpose because they were created for and with a purpose, while atheists can’t claim free will or a purpose to their existence. Well, since I’m “merely (a) bag of chemicals reacting to stimuli”, I’ll submit to the stimuli of my kids wanting entertainment. Not to put too fine a point to it, but my six-year old daughter has more interesting things to say in a day than I can find on CARM’s website.
And that concludes the scratching of an itch.
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