Thor

Just a couple of storm pics that I thought were worth sharing. We don’t get enough big storms at night round here, so it was nice to be able to open the shutter wide last night, and take still photos instead of grabbing frames from video taken in daylight. Also below is a time-lapse cloudscape that I took from the same balcony yesterday. Isn’t the sky amazing?

What did God do before he made the universe?

Seriously. How did He spend his time? It’s got to be boring, being omnipotent and omniscient and all that stuff whilst having to sit there in the dark with nothing to do. Heaven must have been pretty lonely up until now. All that real-estate sitting empty until Judgment Day. Although, to be fair, God does have a son, and presumably therefore a significant other. I wonder why they only had one kid in all of eternity? The Rhythm Method, presumably.

It’s a serious question, though. I’ve decided I’m sick of defending evolution while creationists try to pick holes in it: I’m going to admit defeat, accept their apparently far more convincing alternative theory and become a creationist Christian. If you can’t beat them, join them.

So, where do I sign up? What should I believe first?

Uh-huh? So God made the entire universe? And He did the whole thing for the sake of the human race? Really? In seven days? Six thousand years ago? Wow!

My, that’s quite a lot to take in. If he did it six thousand years ago then the visible universe can’t be more than 12,000 light-years across. Given the number of galaxies we’re aware of and how many stars they contain, it wouldn’t all fit in and still leave  room for the galaxies to be separated. That’s a snag, isn’t it? No, OK, whatever you say. I’m being a bit “scientific”, aren’t I? Sorry. Faith, yes, I see.

So all those trillions of stars out there, the vast majority of which we can’t even see without a billion-dollar telescope; let’s say 99.999999999999999999999% of the universe;  God made all of that just to light up the night sky?

“Mysterious ways”, yes, I’m beginning to get the hang of this.

Gosh, I feel really important now. Ten million species of plants and animals, not to mention all those fungi and bacteria and stuff; all put on this earth for the benefit of me and my species? I only wish I knew what to do with them all, but gee, thanks!

I guess Noah said something like that when God commanded him to collect them all together. I hope he had a lot of warning. After all, at one species per hour that would take over a thousand years. Hey, and while I’m nit-picking, you mentioned the universe was created in seven days, right? And on the first Day God just made light. So I’m a bit baffled by how you measure a day when there’s no Sun to rise and set. Just wondering.

But still, I’m one of the Chosen Ones, huh? Awesome!

There must be a downside, surely? Hell, yes, I’ve heard of that. That’s the devil, right? No? It’s Jesus and His band of avenging angels. Really? 2 Thessalonians 1:7-8. Ok, I’ll remember that. Eternal torture for those who don’t follow the Gospel. Wow, that’s a bit mean, isn’t it? God sure bears a grudge.

But you’re saying that Hell is a real place, right? That’s an essential part of the theory – otherwise pretty much none of the Bible makes sense. Yes, of course, you’re right: don’t focus on the negatives. I get what you’re saying. Heaven, yes, I’ve heard of that, too. That’s also a real place – it’s where God lives, isn’t it? That sounds a lot more fun. Actually I confess I was considering going Muslim and claiming my 72 virgins, but then I decided it wasn’t really fair on the virgins. And anyway, what does a virgin suicide bomber get as her reward? More virgins?

No, I’ll stick to eternal bliss. It kinda sounds fun. At least, maybe. Being happy ALL the time could get a bit wearing after the first billion years or so, don’t you think? What do we actually DO in Heaven? Wander round smiling inanely at each other? Can I at least have a hobby?

God made Man in His own image, though, right? So He needs legs and a stomach and stuff too. I guess that means Heaven is a bit like Earth. Quite a lot like Earth, in fact. Rather like the Middle East, probably. Well that’s good – I’d hate it to be like Mars or something. I suppose if God made Man in His own image, that explains why He’s such a cantankerous old git. But really: why is He so moody and petulant? I don’t get that. It doesn’t fit with the idea of being perfect, does it? And why does He make mistakes?

Don’t ask so many questions. Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll do my research…

Aha! According to Conservapedia, “God exercises eternal and righteous judgment of the wicked in hell, because of an inherent problem in the human heart, namely Sin.” And yet in the previous paragraph He’s described as omnipotent and omniscient. So why don’t human hearts work properly if God’s so smart? It doesn’t say.

Oh I see, it’s not that we’re faulty by accident – He put those bugs in the system deliberately. Free will, huh? So that we have to choose for ourselves to worship Him? Clever.

But in that case why does He spend so much time in the Bible commanding us to worship Him, with threats of eternal damnation if we don’t? That’s kind of more like slavery, isn’t it? And why is He so seriously insecure in the first place? What’s the point in creating an entire universe and populating it with life-forms, just so that a handful of them can be coerced into singing your praises? Doesn’t that seem a bit narcissistic to you? Then again, I suppose it’s the kind of thing I’d do myself, if I were terminally bored from sitting in an empty nothingness for all eternity… Although now that I think about it, if I was omniscient and knew everything that was going to happen it would kind of spoil the surprise…

You know, this just isn’t working for me. I haven’t even got on to the Flood yet, let alone prayers and miracles and the logical conundrums they present. It all sounds a bit, well, medieval. Kind of like the sort of thing primitive peoples who didn’t know any better would think? Or is that just me? Throw me a bone. Surely SOME part of your theory makes sense? If not, why do you believe it? It can’t just be because you read it in some old book, can it? You wouldn’t be that stupid.

It’s about time we had some more dancers

Today there was Turkish dancing in Heritage Square (the Al-Rakasaat Dance Company), so I thought I’d share some of their color and joy with you all.

Is the human brain still in beta?

Or is it society that’s not yet fully debugged?

I’m supposed to be working hard at the moment, which is, of course, why I’m spending far too much time on Facebook. Anyway, yesterday and today a series of disparate Facebook threads seemed to come together as if to raise a single question, so I thought I’d ask for opinions.

1. There was this obscenely stupid video by Rick Barber, a Republican congressional candidate. The message of the video is that a) social welfare requires working people to pay taxes; b) being required to do something is tantamount to being enslaved; c) slavery is a bad thing; therefore d) social welfare is a bad thing and e) people (who look, in the video, remarkably like mindless zombies) should rise up like an army against it. Brilliant! The man is a syllogistic genius! My question is, what possible circumstances would conspire to make someone, who’s presumably at least capable of tying his own shoelaces unaided, think that this was a reasonable and defensible position on which to base a political campaign? Where was he and what was he doing at the moment when this pathetic, absurd and infantile idea actually started to seem like a good one? Did someone put him up to it or was the stupidity all his own? Did he fall foul of circumstances or was he pushed?

2. The British enquiry into the Iraq war has been told by a diplomat that he believes the government deliberately exaggerated claims about weapons of mass destruction. We kind of knew that already, after the famous “dossier” was released a few years ago. Understandably, some of my friends are thus calling for justice against Blair and Bush for deliberately starting a war. I’ve heard a number of explanations for why our leaders are supposed to have done this, generally focused around oil and international economics. In the abstract I can accept that the modern military/industrial complex might be what ’caused’ the war in Iraq, but I find it very hard to believe that two intelligent (well, let me rephrase that: one intelligent), educated, family men, and their entire governments, would sit down one day and say to themselves “Hey, if only we declared war on Iraq we might get what we want.” Do reasonable people REALLY decide to cause the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents, just to further their own sinister aims, or even the legitimate aims of the country they represent? Politicians do seem to tend towards having psycopathic or at least narcissistic personalities, but are they really that dysfunctional? I doubt it. I’m sure Blair and even Bush felt they had little choice, under the circumstances. They problem is, they lied about the circumstances, so we can’t imagine where they were and what they were doing when this pathetic, absurd and infantile idea actually started to seem like a good one.

3. The oh so inappropriately named English Defence League is apparently on the march, stirring up racial hatred. Racial strife in a multicultural country is a genuine issue, but to what extent, on both sides, is this the result of deliberate decisions? In a largely Muslim neighborhood, people will, quite naturally, tend to behave like Muslims. I don’t suppose they do it to offend – they’re just responding to their context. Meanwhile, during a late night pub crawl, stupid white youths will, quite naturally, tend to behave like jerks. Under those circumstances of mutually-reinforcing opinion, it’s easy enough to see how anti-Muslim (or indeed anti-anything) rhetoric can escalate into the conviction that violence and abuse are somehow “good” responses. Did they do this of their own accord or were they “encouraged”? If the latter, by whom and why? And what in turn caused these shadowy figures to hold their views?

4. Oh, and I might as well include a couple of nice ladies who just knocked on my door and tried to tell me that they’ve based their entire emotional and intellectual (not to mention moral and ethical) lives on the belief that their book – the Book of Mormon – is the fount of all wisdom, because it was transcribed in 1830 by Joseph Smith Jr. from golden plates given him by an angel, incorporating the 3,000-year history of a tribe of Native Americans who were, as if any of this sounds even remotely plausible, followers of Jesus Christ. To be honest it would be easier and far more reasonable to found a religion on the works of J.R.R. Tolkein. They were sweet girls who didn’t really seem to know much about the details that underlay this belief. All they knew was that it was true and they should believe it, whatever the actual facts might be. In fact they reminded me of the Electric Monk from my favorite book, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective agency. So in this instance I feel more comfortable drawing the conclusion that they believe what they believe, simply because they grew up in circumstances where, well, that’s what you believe, isn’t it? It’s not that they’re particularly dim, just victims of circumstance. And I don’t suppose they do much harm.

But my general question is this: how BAD are people, really? I honestly don’t know. My own faith in human nature has been shaken somewhat, these past few years. Not that I believe people are inherently bad, just that they don’t always act rationally. You knew that, of course, but I guess I didn’t really believe it. I’m so naive. But what actually happens to make a politician decide that looking after his fellow man is somehow a crime? What happens to make an educated, intelligent, socialist leader decide to ally with his political opposite and sentence thousands to death? What actual circumstances convince a bunch of louts that they’re crusading for a noble cause by throwing bricks at people in turbans? What, in turn, overcomes the masterminds that surely lie behind this (and behind Bush, etc.), such that they come to believe in their own cause? Or do they?

It’s easy to be glib, lean on the bar and simply say that politicians, etc. are greedy psychopaths, but surely the truth is that they either find themselves trapped in a position where they have no option, or they believe they’re trapped in a position where they have no option, because somehow things have conspired to distort their perspective? Is evil intent really a property of social systems, not individuals? Did Saddam genuinely believe he was good for his people, for instance? After all, he was holding an artificial and rebellious collection of tribes together in some sort of productive unity, albeit with an iron grip. Was it the construction of Iraq that created Saddam? Was it the military/industrial complex as an entity in its own right (as opposed to individual people within it) that forced Bush and Blair into a situation where war became inevitable? Bush and Blair were the hub of the situation: they alone had the power to start or stop the war, in theory, so they have to take much of the responsibility for it. But did they actually have the opportunity to prevent conflict? We just don’t know, because they lied about it so much that we can’t yet see the sequence of events which might have made them feel they were taking the right action. Perhaps they were just as hoodwinked by circumstances as the girls from the Church of Latter Day Saints, who I doubt would have believed a single word Joseph Smith said, if they’d ever been given a chance to look at the evidence without first being brainwashed by the environment in which they grew up.

Or are politicians really immoral, amoral or indeed mentally ill? Most people I’ve talked to are firmly of the opinion that politicians and businessmen are, in general, motivated purely and knowingly by greed. Certainly narcissism is a perfect qualification for anyone who wants to succeed in politics. Most people think Hitler was a psychopath, and the evidence is supportive. In fact most people seem to think most leaders are psychopaths, or at least greedy and narcissistic. And yet we still vote for them – is that because the only other candidates are just as bad?

Another thread I wanted to bring into this was a documentary I watched last night, about fetishes and sadomasochism. Apart from the two women, who had their own reasons, all the clients interviewed at this S&M brothel were bankers or CEOs. There were probably politicians, too, but they presumably had more sense than to go on camera stark naked, on all fours, wearing bondage gear. All of them had serious issues about control, stretching back into childhood. In general they seemed desperately to need severe doses of submissiveness in order somehow to balance the domination that they exert in their day jobs. They craved the chance to be slaves and paid good money to be humiliated. If their evening activities were any guide at all to their daytime ones then nothing they do should be regarded as rational or moderate, poor devils.

So is the truth a composite of my two hypotheses? Are people in power genuinely corrupt and self-serving, but only because the System itself conspires to make this happen? Have we got ourselves into a situation in which corruption is self-sustaining and successful? If so, perhaps we are doing the wrong thing by holding the individuals responsible. Perhaps that just distracts us from the real culprit and satisfies our innate need to embody something that’s really incorporate. People who are three feet tall tend to end up in the movie business more often than basketball. Similarly, some poor suckers are the victims of childhood abuse, domineering fathers or whatever, and end up as politicians and bankers, because that’s what their neuroses and psychoses best suit them for.  They happen to be deranged in just the right way to make them ruthless and hence successful businessmen, or self-centered, corruptible politicians. And then we vote them in, or buy their products, or lend them our money, because we, too, feel we have no choice. I guess that makes us just as culpable as them, or them just as innocent as us.

Let me finish with one last Facebook post. This one was a link to a robotics project that is clearly funded by, and heavily tailored towards, the Military. The research team is developing robot helicopters that can fly through windows and latch onto a target. It doesn’t take much imagination to see what military applications this might have, and those applications are potentially very destabilizing, because they provide the opportunity to blow people up at zero risk to the person who chooses to do it. Warfare evolved under fairer circumstances than these and we really don’t know what will happen when wars can be fought from an armchair. Now, quite a large proportion of robotics research is actually funded by the Military – without that funding the field of intelligent robotics probably wouldn’t exist. Do the researchers have qualms about the intended applications of their work or where their money comes from? I sincerely hope and assume so. Are they going to stop? I doubt it. They have good motives, and this is the only way they feel they can make progress with them. They justify it to themselves. I’ve been there – I know how easy it is to turn a blind eye to your own misgivings, or assume it’s someone else’s problem. I don’t do that kind of work, but then I don’t have a job either. That may well be the price people would have to pay. And so it goes: Innocent, well-meaning people do things that could have terrible consequences, because, well, because if they don’t do it someone else is going to, aren’t they, and that will be worse. The system conspires to make swords instead of plowshares, and yet everyone’s just doing their best under the circumstances.

It’s a problem.