What is the true weight of a stone?
by Andre on Sep.28, 2010, under holodoxy, news
Just this: A story from the Onion about the religious punishment of stoning in Iran. Told from the point of view of a man throwing the stones, the back-handed ha-ha-only-serious cynicism of a standard Onion story gives way to something eerily touching. It’s the apotheosis of gritty satire—reminding us of how every one of us dies a little when barbarism and tyranny pretend to be religion.
Aye, by Ja, now ya be jammin’ wit da Force, mon…
by Andre on Jun.27, 2010, under news
This:
That is all.
A quick chat with Gandhi
by Andre on Jun.24, 2010, under holodoxy, news
So, the follow up atheism post will have to wait for now. In the meantime there’s this…
A user on io9 posted a link to something called Lifenaut, which plays with the transhumanist notion of an uploaded or copied consciousness. The idea is that you store a genetic sample in their cryo facility, and program your virtual avatar with your personality and experiences, and as the technology develops, they’ll be able to make a copy of you long after you die. They say it’s like immortality—although I think that’s pretty silly, because a copy of a person is not the original person. Still, the idea of near-perfect simulations of people is intriguing, if somewhat unsettling.
They have created a few historical figures that you can chat with; like primitive AI “constructs” straight out of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy. They’re far from perfect: Lifenaut’s Abraham Lincoln just talks like an encyclopedia; replying to anything you say to it/him by reciting irrelevant facts about himself. But Gandhi is a lot more interesting:
The conversation I just had with him is really quite hilarious; and even a little spooky. Spooky, because I recently watched the first episode of “Through the Wormhole,” with Morgan Freeman, in which they talk about cosmology, including the theory that the universe we know is really a clever digital simulation—a matrix of sorts. So, imagine the gymnastics my mind did when AI Gandhi insisted he was the real human, and I was the program… and that’s only the beginning of the weirdness.
Here’s the transcript: (continue reading…)
Atheism Revisited: Part 1
by Andre on May.12, 2010, under holodoxy
A couple of days ago I got my weekly YouTube update, which included a ForaTV link to “Dawkins: Did Religion Have an Evolutionary Value?”
You’ll note here that the use of the past-tense strongly implies that religion no longer has any value in evolutionary and social terms, and if you watch the talk you’ll see Dawkins imply that religion itself never actually did—that religion is just an unhealthy byproduct of healthy evolutionary imperatives. All of which is pure assumption / opinion on Dawkins’ part and nothing more.
But it got me to thinking I should write some more measured pieces about Atheism, considering my last one (the first post on metapunk written in anger, probably not the last, but hopefully one of only a few).
At the same time, Dawkins’ video led me to two far more intelligent discussions on the place of religion in the modern world. (continue reading…)
Frakking Atheists, man…
by Andre on Apr.03, 2010, under holodoxy
…Frakking fundamentalists, too!
Okay, so I know, I know. Arguing on the Internet is pretty much always a waste of time. Every time I do it, I feel like I just crawled through a sewer pipe, looking for the elusive source of the world’s bullshit. But sometimes you just sorta get sucked in, y’know?
Before I go on, I should point out that atheists are not the problem. If someone chooses to believe in God, Gods, the flying spaghetti monster, the bloody timecube, or nothing at all… well, hey, that’s cool. I respect that decision—follow your experience where it takes you, I say. Be empirical. But those Richard Dawkins wannabe, down-with-spirituality-in-every-form, capital “A,” Atheists—well, I’ve got no time for them, because every one I’ve met is an arrogant asshole.
(continue reading…)
