A recent report, which was kept quiet by Western media outlets, has emerged regarding the destruction of an entire village on the Egyptian side of the Egypt-Israel border. Details are sketchy at best, and this investigator's resources are quite limited, but the village in question seems to have been in the vicinity of the Egyptian city of Kuntila.
The perpetrators of the incident are likewise difficult to identify, for they left behind no witnesses, and the Egyptian media censors are being extremely tight-lipped about the situation. As near as can be told, the entire village, including all its inhabitants -- young and old, male and female -- was decimated in a bloody fracas, scarcely leaving buildings standing. The one Egyptian official who was willing to give an interview (yet who required that he remain completely anonymous) described the scene by saying, "[It was] brutal and savage; even pets and livestock were shot and killed in this slaughter." He went on to speculate on the identity of the responsible party, and on the application of justice.
Of those others who would talk about the catastrophe, there was much fear and angst present in their moods. One female resident of Kuntila said, "We don't know who did this, and we don't know if they'll do it again. We hope that they don't come for our city next." Most of those questioned felt that the event was based on religious values, and that the perpetrators were "misguided savages," in one man's view (although the translator apologized, noting that there is no English translation for the word given as "savages" which quite portrays the profane nature of this curse). That same man, a Kuntila shopkeeper, said that "Allah will find these [pig-fornicators], and visit his vengeance upon them. Killing armed men is one thing, but killing women and children is perverse. If they think they are doing Allah's bidding, they are blind fools."
Until more details emerge, assuming they do, little is expected to be learned from this event, but if the group responsible for this bloody attack seeks to attempt the same on a different township, expect the locals to be armed and prepared, and although we'd never wish for such an event to repeat itself, if it does, we should at the least find more information available, including, perhaps, an official statement from Egyptian officials.
The War on Terror, it seems, is not only far from over, but it seems to be increasing in its ferocity. This genocidal event, even if an isolated incident, can be little more than a harbinger of worse events still -- especially if the agents of terror are convinced that their god had ordered the bloodshed. If they are willing to believe their god wants an entire village wiped out, what greater evils could they seek to perpetrate in their god's name?
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Fine Tuning: An Argument from Masturbation
A simple glance at the universe will convince an honest observer that yes, the universe is fine-tuned, specifically for the existence of life -- especially human life. For those fools who would deny this exceedingly obvious fact, reason is offered in the form of the "Fine-Tuning Argument."
Please, don't confuse this argument with the Chinese song played at the beginning of any orchestral performance, known as "Tu-Ning." This argument is very different, and is not a song.
The "Fine-Tuning Argument" generally illustrates, through various specious claims regarding the assumed probabilities that various natural constants might have the values we today measure, versus some other arbitrary set of values which we might otherwise see. Additionally, the argument draws from probability itself, typically assigning a vanishingly small number to the likelihood that the universe might unfold in its currently observed form. The argument is compelling only to those who are unfamiliar with mathematics (e.g., those who believe that if
a = b + c, that 1/a = 1/b + 1/c), and, as one may be able to deduce from the opening statements in this post, the argument is superfluous: the universe is obviously fine-tuned. Who needs an argument when we have intuition and obviousness...?
All that being said, it is nonetheless useful to promote a version of the Fine-Tuning Argument, which, for posterity's sake, I shall hereby abbreviate as the Fine-Tuning Argument for the existence of God: the FAG.
The best version of FAG is the argument which recognizes the incredible unlikelihood that any of us might have come to existence, considering the fact that we each -- well, the vast majority of us -- arose from a single sperm. A sperm which, had our fathers been a little more aggressive, or a little less sensitive, may have ended up in a sock, or a tissue, or otherwise spilled on the dusty ground.
In this form, the FAG notes that in any given ejaculation, as few as 200 million sperm are ejected from the penis during a typical ejaculation, and thus, the odds that the individual sperm which defines each of us are vanishingly small, especially when we consider the masturbatory practices of our fathers, or even the ejaculatory frequency he exhibited -- with or without assistance from our mothers. The odds get smaller still when we recognize that the particular configuration of genetic material contained in any given sperm necessary to produce the genetic configuration we see in ourselves is yet again far, far more unlikely. The 1:200 million probability quickly gives way to something like 1:god-must-have-done-it. It's the only way that Dad's propensity to dolphin-flog could've been mitigated!
Clearly, then, if our fathers had jizzed one more time before that final, self-defining spurt, or if "the other man" had gushed more forcefully before our actual father, the sperm which defines us could've ended up as a snack for Mommy. If one is unconvinced by the intuitively obvious evidence surrounding us daily, the FAG (Masturbation) should prove enough to change one's mind. The next time, then, you find yourself enjoying a little quality time alone, think of how your self-gratification is providing further irrefutable evidence of the Fine-Tuning of the universe.
Coming up in a possible future: a discussion on Deductive Ontology Used to Commit Hubris Explicitly -- DOUCHE -- which is sometimes appended as the Bullshit Argument for the existence of God -- DOUCHEBAG. If this possible future obtains, expect the world's largest DOUCHEBAG, Sye TenBruggencate, to be prominently featured, with special attention payed to his inability to read, and his utter failure in his "debate" with Darrin.
Please, don't confuse this argument with the Chinese song played at the beginning of any orchestral performance, known as "Tu-Ning." This argument is very different, and is not a song.
The "Fine-Tuning Argument" generally illustrates, through various specious claims regarding the assumed probabilities that various natural constants might have the values we today measure, versus some other arbitrary set of values which we might otherwise see. Additionally, the argument draws from probability itself, typically assigning a vanishingly small number to the likelihood that the universe might unfold in its currently observed form. The argument is compelling only to those who are unfamiliar with mathematics (e.g., those who believe that if
a = b + c, that 1/a = 1/b + 1/c), and, as one may be able to deduce from the opening statements in this post, the argument is superfluous: the universe is obviously fine-tuned. Who needs an argument when we have intuition and obviousness...?
All that being said, it is nonetheless useful to promote a version of the Fine-Tuning Argument, which, for posterity's sake, I shall hereby abbreviate as the Fine-Tuning Argument for the existence of God: the FAG.
The best version of FAG is the argument which recognizes the incredible unlikelihood that any of us might have come to existence, considering the fact that we each -- well, the vast majority of us -- arose from a single sperm. A sperm which, had our fathers been a little more aggressive, or a little less sensitive, may have ended up in a sock, or a tissue, or otherwise spilled on the dusty ground.
In this form, the FAG notes that in any given ejaculation, as few as 200 million sperm are ejected from the penis during a typical ejaculation, and thus, the odds that the individual sperm which defines each of us are vanishingly small, especially when we consider the masturbatory practices of our fathers, or even the ejaculatory frequency he exhibited -- with or without assistance from our mothers. The odds get smaller still when we recognize that the particular configuration of genetic material contained in any given sperm necessary to produce the genetic configuration we see in ourselves is yet again far, far more unlikely. The 1:200 million probability quickly gives way to something like 1:god-must-have-done-it. It's the only way that Dad's propensity to dolphin-flog could've been mitigated!
Clearly, then, if our fathers had jizzed one more time before that final, self-defining spurt, or if "the other man" had gushed more forcefully before our actual father, the sperm which defines us could've ended up as a snack for Mommy. If one is unconvinced by the intuitively obvious evidence surrounding us daily, the FAG (Masturbation) should prove enough to change one's mind. The next time, then, you find yourself enjoying a little quality time alone, think of how your self-gratification is providing further irrefutable evidence of the Fine-Tuning of the universe.
Coming up in a possible future: a discussion on Deductive Ontology Used to Commit Hubris Explicitly -- DOUCHE -- which is sometimes appended as the Bullshit Argument for the existence of God -- DOUCHEBAG. If this possible future obtains, expect the world's largest DOUCHEBAG, Sye TenBruggencate, to be prominently featured, with special attention payed to his inability to read, and his utter failure in his "debate" with Darrin.
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