Horror stories. How can a Good God exist when there is so much Evil in the world? (Part 3)
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Is this a legitimate evaluation of The God of Israel and Chriatianity?
After having a short discussion with my fellow Blogger Richard Goode (in the ‘Comments’ of Part 2) I realized that I will not be able to wind up this topic in three parts.
I need to take the time now to clarify several important points about what I hope to achieve, and then move forward.
The primary purpose of these blog posts under the heading ‘How can a Good God exist when there is so much evil in the world’… is to present to you how I deal with this issue as a *Dispensationalist King James Bible believer*
In the process of doing so I hope to show you that it is possible to *trust the scriptures*, and this is a completely different approach to the problem than how many Christians choose to deal with it. Ie Their solution is simply to tear out portions of the scriptures that in their opinion are incompatible with the idea of a Good and loving God.
In my view this is not only an unnecessary retreat which represents a victory for atheism and unbelief, but is also that most gross Human folly….Idol making… Man fashioning God to suit his own ideas!
This is to turn the Universe upside down and makes a mockery of Religion.
By this means they validate the atheist assertion that Religion is merely subjective whimsical Human fabrication.
Though the Bible expressly condemns the addition and subtraction of text (eg Rev22vs18,19)
as a heinous crime… nonetheless this is exactly what many people do! They think that by deleting and retranslating portions of the scripture whereby God visits mankind with harsh judgments that they are ‘helping God’… by sanitizing the bible from what they assume *Must be* corrupt additions and poor translations… on the authority of their own conscience.
They think that by this way they ‘save God’ from appearing a monster… and make ‘the Christian religion’ more agreeable to the sensitivities of mankind.
Richard Goode Believes Hell in the Bible is a mistranslation for the grave.
Matthew Flannagan Believes Old testament references to God ordering the genocide of the Canaanites to be merely Hyperbole.
Yet does This ‘Bible Doubters solution’ really work?
The answer is No!
Christians Burned.
I say you can piddle about rewriting the Bible as much as you like yet this does absolutely Zero in mitigating the very real evils and injustices suffered by mankind! And it is the existence of evil in the world which is the real challenge to the proposition that God is Good.
Ie Even if I were to grant Richard his assertion that hell is a mistranslation, that cannot alter the fact That God (if he exists) allows Hundreds of people, including children to be burned alive in fires every year.
One of the reasons I believe the Bible is God’s word is because it correlates with grim reality!
ie it’s not written like a fairy story in which ‘everyone lives happily ever after’
Ie it is not written like Richard would like it to be!
This adds weight to it’s objective crediblity!
The Bible is as ‘Raw’ as reality. And the God of the Bible is not simply an invented character…’a jolly nice old bloke’…yet he’s no Monster either. Yet still He is someone you had better take seriously!
“I believe in Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” A Einstein.
A common accusation against a Good and loving God is that it appears that he does not care about the evils going on ‘down here’ie the faithless believe he does not intervene when he ‘ought’, but allows people like Hitler to commit genocide…and get away with it.
Yet God as described in The Bible cares a great deal about sin and evil in the world… and justice! The faithless fail to appreciate that God *Did* bring an end to Hitler’s tyranny (death ends the evil works of us all), and the Bible teaches that even after physical death (which our spirit survives) we must face The judgment of God Almighty.
Ironically… because God cares a great deal about the morality of our deeds, and passes severe judgements upon them… this is then taken to mean God is a tyrant!… thus He’s Despised by Man ether way… Both for not caring and for caring too much!)
When considering the horrific realities which plauge mankind (which cannot simply be ‘deleted’ from our conscience as Richard so easily deletes hell from the scriptures) My Bible believers position on these things is thus:
*‘Things happen on Earth (like the Australian bush fires) which are not Gods will’*… yet he allows ‘reality’ to take its course.
And I argue this same principle holds good in respect to Damnation… “God is not willing that any should perish… though he allows reality to take it’s ‘natural’ course.
This does not mean he sits on his hands and watches.
The entire Bible is a testimony to God’s intervention to save mankind from Damnation… without removing mankind’s freewill moral agency.
It is important to understand that the God of the Bible is not insulated from the Human condition. Though it is true that in the process of creating a moral reality, he allows Murderers to work their evil upon mankind, Yet still he allowed morality to ‘take it’s course’… even when it was his *own son* whom was being murdered!
Thus He has not put mankind through anything he was not prepared to endure himself.
(The truth is God has had to endure All sin and evil… It is all against him!)
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perrish, but have everlasting life” (John 3vs 16)
2000 years ago God stepped into history, and meekly made a voluntary offer to End Human tyranny and oppression, and set up a completely just government under ‘The Prince of Peace’ … yet he was rejected!
*Contemplate this for a moment*
God did not impose himself upon Mankind but gave him a choice.
All the misery of the past 2000 years could have been avoided, yet Mankind loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were Evil.
What more when God stepped in he took upon himself the punishment for all mans Sins, so that he might be able to forgive every single person whom wanted to be saved from damnation… without denying Justice, or negating our Freewill moral agency.
Though it is God’s will that everyone receives salvation, yet still he does not impose his will upon us or reality.
All this shows that God is not desirous to torture anyone in hell.
It also shows that God is not indifferent to the misery and evils we suffer.
It also shows God’s utter integrity and objectivity, and respect for us his creation… as freewill moral agents. Ie He respects us to the degree that he will allow us to damn ourselves rather that force us to love and respect him.
These biblical truths destroys Richards assumptions that If hell is real God *must be* a Heartless Monster.
And the Work of Christ changes everything.
The sin that Damns the soul is not pick pocketing, not looking at Porn, But the Rejection of Christs work on the Cross…and rebellion against God.
Those lost souls whom end up in outer darkness will be free to curse God for eternity. They will never have to look at his face. Yet they will be in such a circumstance where their evil and malicious hearts can cause no further harm or chaos. They will be miserable because they will know that they forsook the Loving God who made them, and that they put themselves there!
Having lived ungreatful lives never giving thanks to God for the many blessings they enjoyed, they shall spend eternity with nothing.
And this will all be just.
It is at this point where I posit the Question: Was it possible for God to create Freewill moral agents capable of having a loving relationship with him… without making sin and evil, possible?
I think the answer to this question must be No!
Thus I ask you. Would you prefer to be an automation rather than a freewill moral agent? Understand that as a Robot you could never have a loving relationship… or even claim responsibility/ credit for your own thoughts and actions.
Furthermore God being sovereign it is *his right* to decide whether or not to create Free will Beings capable of Love and morality.
Insodoing he had to weigh up the cost/ benefits involved.
On the plus side he would have loving children to enjoy and share reality.
On the negative side Evil could become a reality, and some of his children could be damned.
That God chose to go ahead with creating such beings is self evident.
We exist.
I will leave one final passing word in respect to The Great judgement of God for Sin.
It is this. I think Richard is greatly mistaken to think that God must bare all the responciblity for the Damnation of anyone and everyone.
Responciblity primarily lies with the Individuals themselves and their choices, and furthermore God has placed a measure of responciblity in respect to the Salvation of the Lost upon us Christians!
We are under the moral Obligation to preach the Gospel of the grace of God to the lost. We are to be witnesses for the truth… ‘living epistles’ shining the light of Christ in this world of darkness. Thus I say it is ‘rich indeed’ to blame God for the Damnation of the Lost when we ourselves know the truth, yet fail to warn our friends, neigbours, and family.
St Paul says in Corinthians 1vs 21 “it pleased God by the Foolishness of preaching to save them which believe…”
And again in Romans (10vs 13-14)
“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?”
Thus I say to those people like Richard that if they are really serious about it being unconscionable to think that people might end up being Damned for Eternity (And I agree the proposition is frightful!), they ought to be like St Paul… ie be so burdened as to preach the gospel without ceasing… day and night! The gospel ought to be number 1 on their scale of importance!
Only when this is so can they look in the mirror and absolve themselves, believing they have fulfilled their Moral duty… which knowledge of such gravity demands.
Tim Wikiriwhi
In part 4 I will raise the question of what ground (if any) is there to stand upon whereby Men may condemn the judgements of Christian God?
I will discuss another verse from Leviticus which Richard does not like and propose an argument which may shock him. Ie That God’s theocracy is *not Libertarian!* …none the less Libertarianism is right for us today.
I will present some scriptural arguments which teach us to have faith in Gods word… even when/ esp when there are tuff things to swallow.
And I will start to develop the Bible story about The origin of evil.
Update :
If God exists, why doesn't He stop rapists from raping?Why doesn't He stop suicide bombers from bombing?Shay He has all the power?Abi is He indifferent?Then, why worship Him?Are these your questions?Dr Zacharias, by the Holy Spirit, doth answer thee.Watch.PS:Seated beside Daddy Ravi is Professor John Lennox, a British Mathematician, Philosopher of Science, Christian Apologist and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.God's gat people, mehn.God's gat people.?
Posted by Uju Okorie on Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Caption contest
(The original image was highly offensive to Muslims. It featured actor Kevin Bacon in the bottom panel, with the caption, “Please don’t die.”)
[Cross-posted to SOLO.]
The Dog Delusion
Unfortunately, blogging doesn’t pay the bills. So, no serious blogging from me this week. Just humour.
I like to play fair. (See yesterday’s post on Christianity vs. atheism.) So, yes, I will be poking fun at my fellow Christians as well as at my atheist friends! (Please read my humour policy for full details.)
[Hat tip: James Jenkins]
How can a Good God exist when there is so much evil in the world? (part 2) The Thirst for Blood.
The Boodthirsty Deity of the Aztecs Huitzilopochtli
One alternative to the atheist amoral world view (see part 1) in which the moral question regarding suffering and death of children is written off as ignorance….. is that there really are objective standards of ‘ought-ness’ in the universe… and that having feelings of injustice are not silly delusions… not mere evolutionary expedients… but valid. Ie that such feelings are an awareness that some experiences and realities ‘ought not to be thus.’
If we accept this second view to be correct, immediately we must ask then how are we to know what is truly moral and what is not?
What is the standard by which we may rightly judge events, actions, and cultures as being Good or Evil… how do we escape mere subjectivity and cultural relativism?
And what about ‘Natural evils’ like floods and disease and distinct issues from Man made evils?
It is this second type of question which most people struggle with, and it raises the prospect that though indeed God may exist yet still he may not be Good at all!
Was the universe created by a malevolent being?
Is God a capricious tyrant?
I want to focus on this second line of questioning today. I will only touch on the Human factor in respect to evil in the world…‘why does God allow men to commit evil actions?’… by simply saying we are freewill moral agents and that as such we are free to live good lives or to be evil… and yet inspite of the apparant ‘licence’ we have to commit evil that I believe that one day we shall give an account… justice will prevail.
Does ‘Shit happen’ because God is not Good?
Aztec Human sacrifice to apease the Gods.
The Aztecs believed The Gods were in fact blood thirsty monsters!
They believed that if they did not satisfy their demand for Blood by plentiful human sacrifices that the Gods themselves would sleight their thirst by visiting them with Natural calamities… famine, Earthquakes, disease, etc.
This is their explanation for why ‘evil shit happens’… Satan is god!
That is a horrible thing to contemplate… and believe!
It actually vindicates monstrously barbaric behavior!
The Aztecs used to prey on their neighbors and feed them to the God’s.
There is a rationale here: either slay people to appease the Blood thirsty Gods… or suffer Plagues, pestilence, and disaster!
Some atheists will argue that this sort of barbarism is representative of religion in general. Ie Absurd superstitions which inspire Evil actions. And while I have already discussed the paucity of the atheist position, I confess that if I thought that Aztec-type rationale and practice definitively represents all religion… I would have never have forsaken Atheism! I could not worship such Monsters!
While I know that belief in a cold and indifferent universe cannot put moral restraints upon Human depravity, tyranny, and barbarism, I also know it does not expressly encourage it! Nor does it postulate a malevolent universe as does the Religion of Mexico.
Important Note: The Idea of Blood sacrifice is a common theme amoung the religions of mankind.
It is very possible this is evidence of an acient common origin from which many Deviations and dark perversions have occured as mankind has spread out around the Globe… drifting into darkness.
This Anthropolocical rationale fits in well with the Bible story.
Thus an original knowledge of Noahs animal sacrifice on Ararat… which pleased God… has been perverted into the abominable Human sacrifice of the Aztecs… and Their Blood thirsty Gods.
I will now argue that such a narrow description of Religion by Atheists as being a universal Evil… is one-eyed and naive. I hope that I can present an alternative description of God and alternative explanation for why Natural calamities fall upon the innocent, the Just, and the unjust alike.
Sinner or Saint? A Victim of the Eruption of Versuvius.
There was a lot of sin and vice at Pompeii, yet this was true of many other cities too.
Why was Pompeii destroyed? Man, woman, and child?
First, before I get into the main argument as I find in the Bible, I want to say that It is not at all easy to isolate and distinguish what may be deemed to be Natural calamities, from the actions and responsibilities of Man.
Many of the ‘Natural disasters’ which befall us, and have caused Men to blaspheme and shake their fists at heaven, are actually a consequence of human ignorance and error.
Eg. Was It God’s fault that Men Built Pompey at the foot of Versuvius?
Was it God’s fault That the CTV Building collapsed in Christchurch killing hundreds of people… or is the chief blame to be place upon human error and bad design?
Even with things like plagues, floods, and diseases, mankind must take some responsibility for his own foolishness, unsanitary conditions and practices.
How many children suffer and die of Famine simply because of the Lust for political power?
When we realize this, blaming God for a huge percentage of the suffering and death of children, and ‘good people’ is misdirected indignation… He is being unjustly accused.
In the light of such reasoning, is it possible that God is neither indifferent or malicious?
Now we are getting to the Nitty gritty!
What makes many people refuse to believe in a Good God is this final kind of rationale… The apparent indifference of God. In spite of all human folly, and wickedness… ultimately Does not the fact that God allows the good and innocent to suffer still make him responsible for it all?
Why does he not intervene?
To avoid stretching this question out to far I will present the Christian answer to the problem of evil in the world in part 3. I hope to do it with economy, and so I am sure there will no doubt be questions that remain… yet hopefully they will fall within the framework of what I present in the next post.
Christianity vs. atheism
How can a Good God exist when there is so much evil in the world? (part1) Atheist Nihilism.
Why, in this world of ours, do millions of Innocent children suffer and die?
This is a very important and perplexing question.
Without writing a book I would like to touch on a few points.
It is difficult to discuss this subject in a manor which will bring solace to those immediately in the Pangs of grief.
I have in the past made the great mistake of attempting to comfort people whom are grieving, or have been the victims of serious evils with long winded explanations.
That is foolish!
The best thing to do at such times is to simply share their grief with them, and let them know you care.
Only when they are ready to discuss the ‘Why does shit happen?’ question should we deliver our thoughts and beliefs.
I put forward the argument that we are faced with a set of Options from which we *must choose*.
I warn that because Evil is Evil, that even though we may pick the scenario which appears the best, the most rational, we cannot expect to be ‘filled with happiness’. I say we may be able to understand and even find serenity, yet still wish things were different… that evil did not exist.
So why does evil shit happen to good and innocent people and children?
The Atheist will tell you Religion is bullshit!
Ie that The existance of evil clearly proves that no Good God exists.
Many Atheists will say Children die simply because we live (objectively speaking) in an Amoral, Cold and indifferent universe (in which the ‘survival of the fittest’ is said to dictate who lives and who dies).
They say that in such a universe child mortality is not a moral question, but simply a cold hard fact of reality. (Richard Dawkins will tell you ‘Why Questions’ are silly questions!)
They argue that the idea of justice is a silly human/ subjective notion and as such is culturally relative… no one view triumphs as objectively true.
They argue that though we may sympathize with those who grieve the loss of a child as a legitimate cause for sorrow, yet still they maintain that any feelings we may entertain that such deaths constitute an objective moral outrage… are merely childish delusions.
There is no ‘ought’ or ‘ought not’ in a purely materialist reality.
They say everything that happens… from the formation of the Planets and stars, to the tears which flow from a mothers eye are all inescapably determined by the Laws of physics… and only a fool can believe things ought to be different than they are.
I am no doctor, yet the unspoken psychology which underpins the Atheist ‘faith’ interests me.
I think in many cases, the Cold ‘realism’ atheists claim to possess is actually self delusion.
I say many who put forward the above argument are lying, and cant actually live by their own tenets.
Why would I say such a thing?
I say because very often Atheism is accompanied by a deep hatred of Theism.
Why, I ask, do Atheists on one hand claim Philosophical indifference, while on the other they clearly harbor a passionate hatred against the idea of God?
If you think about it,… according to their own world view… they have no right to such passions. They ought to have serenely surrendered to indifferent, cold unalterable reality!
They have no basis for petty indignation!
Thus it is my contention that their vehemence betrays the fact that they harbor a sense of injustice at the way our world operates, esp when it comes to the suffering and death of children… and this rears itself in hatred towards God, and those whom claim to believe ‘God is Good’.
When Christians like me express faith in a Good God, rabid atheists often betray their acute awareness of objective morality and sense of injustice when they Hatefully retort “How Can you believe in a Good God when there is so much horror and Evil in the world!!! (Its more of an exclamation than a question)
They have let the cat out of the bag!
I say their innate knowledge of good and evil and sense of injustice.. is One of their pet unspoken psychological reasons for choosing Atheism.
Few will admit this… not even to themselves.
They will attempt a justification for their hatred of religion by such arguments as “Religion is the cause of War, and barbaric superstitions… They may quote Voltaire…“Believing Absurdities leads to the commission of atrocities”… yet insodoing they… by their own reasoning are merely expressing their own subjective morality! Ie by denying Objective morality they have no legitimate moral ground to condemn *any Barbaric practices* as they have rendered all morality to mere opinion… and thus by their reckoning their opinions in realty hold no more weight than the Satanist whom thinks raping and sacrificing children is ok.
By atheist logic reality is indifferent to questions of morality.
Thus I argue while it is not impossible for an atheist to be a good, caring, and humane person, it is impossible for a ‘good person’ to live consistently with atheism… they will find themselves appealing to an Objective morality everyday. Thus Atheists like Dawkins are deluding themselves.
If the Atheists are correct. The question is answered, and there is little more to say. Life is brutish and short. You don’t like it? Tuff! *Harden up!* Better to be a hammer than a nail!
‘Honest atheist’ Nobel prize winner Bertrand Russell quote:
“Even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temper of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
The alternative to the atheist amoral world view in which the moral question regarding suffering and death of children is written off as ignorance is that there really are objective standards of ‘ought-ness’ in the universe… and that having feelings of injustice are not silly delusions… not mere evolutionary expedients… but valid. Ie that such feelings are an awareness that some experiences and realities ‘ought not to be thus.’
If we accept this second view to be correct, immediately we must ask then how are we to know what is truly moral and what is not?
What is the standard by which we may rightly judge events, actions, and cultures as being Good or Evil… how do we escape mere subjectivity and cultural relativism?
Ought we to be governed by our sentiments?
And what about ‘Natural evils’ like floods and disease and distinct issues from Man made evils?
I will give you my veiws on this in (part 2,3)
Dishonest Atheists Ayn Rand and Richard Dawkins whom pretend Atheism is not Objectively Amoral and nihilistic. These AntiChrists decieve Millions of souls!
“Blind Leaders of the Blind and both shall fall into the ditch”.
Tim Wikiriwhi 23-6-12
Read more…. >>>>> Part 2… <<<<< Plus Links to more posts (below) .... Car Crash
The hope which is In Christ. Terrible grief shall be turned into great joy!
Alan Turing
Alan Turing (June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954)
War hero, mathematician, the father of computer science and State rape victim.
If you’ve done a Google search today, you probably noticed that it’s Alan Turing’s 100th birthday. Who was Alan Turing and why am I paying tribute to him?
Why I like Turing … from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Alan Turing (1912–1954) never described himself as a philosopher, but his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” is one of the most frequently cited in modern philosophical literature. It gave a fresh approach to the traditional mind-body problem, by relating it to the mathematical concept of computability he himself had introduced in his 1936–7 paper “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” His work can be regarded as the foundation of computer science and of the artificial intelligence program.
Here’s British Prime Minister (in 2009) Gordon Brown to tell you a few other things you need to know about Turing. (Thanks to Ian Watson for the transcript of Brown’s apology.)
This has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude that characterise the British experience. Earlier this year, I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against fascism and declared the outbreak of the Second World War.
So I am both pleased and proud that thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship: that of code-breaker Alan Turing.
Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of the Second World War could have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely.
In 1952, he was convicted of “gross indecency” – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.
Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time, and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I am and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and so many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly. Over the years, millions more lived in fear of conviction. I am proud that those days are gone and that in the past 12 years this Government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality, and long overdue.
But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for this contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out European civilisation for hundreds of years.
It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work, I am very proud to say: we’re sorry. You deserved so much better.
Turing was found dead on 7 June 1954, two weeks before his 42nd birthday, after biting into a cyanide-laced apple. Wikipedia notes that
The logo of Apple Computer is often erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide. Both the designer of the logo and the company deny that there is any homage to Turing in the design of the logo. In Series I, Episode 13 of the British television quiz show QI presenter Stephen Fry recounted a conversation had with Steve Jobs, saying that Jobs’ response was, “It isn’t true, but God, we wish it were.”
Turing’s work is the foundation of computer science and of research into artificial intelligence. Turing is responsible for the Turing Test (the CAPTCHA‘s big brother), the Turing Machine and (jointly with Alonzo Church) the Church-Turing thesis.
Here’s a Turing Machine built of Lego. (Are you Lego or Logos?)
This simple machine can, given a long enough ticker tape, do anything your mind can do—and much more. It’s humbling for some to realise that the human mind is the biological equivalent of a read-write head, a binary internal state, a look-up table and a ticker tape. But that’s all anyone ever is—biological ticker tape. (In fact, we’re all world lines.)
One Free Man.
Don’t crush state assets!
From go …
… to woe.
19-year-old Daniel Briant’s car, a Nissan Laurel, was crushed yesterday. It became the first car to be crushed under National’s “boy racer” legislation—the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill, 2008.
Why crush? According to Judith “Crusher” Collins (via NZPA)
Cars could be confiscated under current law and courts could order them to be sold, she said, but they were bought by other boy racers and the problem was recycled.
Clive Matthew-Wilson, editor of the car review website dogandlemon.com, says the law is a waste of time.
“Yesterday, the owner of the first crushed car was just another boy racer with an attitude problem. Today he will be a hero to his fellow boy racers.”
“The idea that this car seizure will stop other youths offending is basically wishful thinking.
I love how he flat-out contradicts himself in the next two paragraphs (although what he’s trying to say is basically right, I think).
“Young females are attracted to young males who take risks. That’s one reason young males are so reckless. A young male would rather lose his car and be attractive to young females than obey the law and sleep alone.”
“The part of the male brain that links cause and effect doesn’t fully develop until the early 20s. That’s why young males often do silly things without thinking of the consequences.”
Stuff.co.nz has a photo of the boy-racer hero Briant, informs us that
A Facebook memorial site has been created for the souped-up car.
and helpfully links to Briant’s Facebook page, where we learn that Daniel’s interests include
Doing your mate’s ex to see what the problem was
Not dumping your girlfriend cause she’s a fucking hectic root
Being a cheeky cunt to everyone you know. Because, wtf else is there to do?
I wish I was on E as often as my gas tank
Never underestimate a guy’s ability to not give a shit
Going out for a Quiet One and Coming Home with a Court Date
While Daniel mourns the loss of his Nissan Laurel, we can mourn the misspent youth of today. Or mourn the misspent youth of yesteryear. (I don’t ever recall having that much fun! Well, not at that age, anyway. Oops, I think I’ve said enough. Time for a closing parenthesis.)
This is not a pretty picture. (It’s Minister of Police Anne Tolley, standing atop the crushed Laurel.)
The NZ Herald tells us
A grinning Police Minister Anne Tolley pressed the button to crush the Nissan Laurel at a Lower Hutt scrap metal yard.
Ms Tolley said it sent a “graphic” deterrent to illegal street racers.
But Stuff.co.nz reports
Tolley said less than three hours after receiving his third strike from the court Briant was back behind the wheel performing a burnout.
He lost control and crashed into a fence. It is understood he and a passenger fled the vehicle on foot.
There’s every sign that Briant is undeterred. (And, you know, I could have done with a souped up Nissan Laurel to replace my ground down Nissan Maxima.)
I’m against the whole idea of the government using cases like this to make “an example” and destroy property as “a deterrent to others”. It’s an unjust, utilitarian way of going about things. As philosopher Immanuel Kant rightly remarked
Juridical punishment can never be administered merely as a means for promoting another good either with regard to the criminal himself or to civil society, but must in all cases be imposed only because the individual on whom it is inflicted has committed a crime. For one man ought never to be dealt with merely as a means subservient to the purpose of another…