Religulous, a documentary film featuring political commentator Bill Maher, will open on Friday October 3. This new film from Lionsgate, directed by Larry Charles (Borat), explores the nature of religious absurdity the world over – hence the play on words in the title.
In the nature of Borat, this movie features real people in real situations. Bill Maher, host of Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO, leads the journey to find representatives from various religious groups and interview them about their beliefs. Based on Maher’s views on religion, the film is not likely to be kind towards the subject matter. Expect to be outraged or amused, depending on your stance.
Since the release of Spore, there have been articles and discussions on whether or not it presents a pro-evolution or pro-creationism (often termed “Intelligent Design” to sound more rational and scientific) viewpoint. Many science elements exist behind the scenes (and much left out to improve gameplay), but for the most part, you, the player, are the god of your creation and you form your species as you see fit.
It’s interesting, then, to observe that proponents on both sides of the evolution issue see Spore as an example that “proves” the correctness of their points of view. Many scientists are pleased that it can get people thinking about the ideas behind the evolutionary process: the appearance of new features, increased complexity over time, the role of reproduction, etc. The linear process displayed in the game – the emergence of intelligence and social skills – is not a necessary step in evolution, but perhaps a necessary crutch in a goal-oriented game to simulate the growth of a mighty galactic power based on the progress of a simple cell organism over millions of game-years. In no way do any of the scientists mentioned in the articles endorse the Spore method of evolution as reality, but they do feel the experience of seeing your creature change from generation to generation is useful on a basic level.
Those on the other side, creationists (aka Intelligent Design proponents), see it differently. In this article, the writer(s) believe that Spore effectively dismisses any issues with I.D. theory. Simply put, because you can design creatures in Spore, a game that has no mechanism for natural selection-based evolution, they can extrapolate that our own world is a product of design. This is circular logic on the article’s points 1 and 2, since there is no requirement to comply with “common ancestor” functionality and as long as you have a mouth with which to eat, you are not going to encounter any negative consequences and your species never goes extinct. Point 3 is more of a philosophical objection to Intelligent Design and although the premise is tempting, not one that can be easily explored. The article also fails to demonstrate how points 4 & 5 even apply to Spore and are just thrown in to dismiss the ideas offhandedly.
Interestingly enough, if Spore were a measure of our own reality, then we live not in a unified creationist universe, but in a chaotic cosmic pantheon of “good” and “evil” gods battling for galactic dominance. Oddly, the article makes no mention of this obvious, inevitable conclusion. It is humbling to know our true place in the universe.
The fact is, Spore doesn’t prove or disprove the concept of natural evolution. It does have evolution – change over time – but as an artificial “hand of god” needed to engage players. That Spore performs this process via Intelligent Design doesn’t refute natural selection, it just builds a better game. In the same way that the gameworld of The Sims doesn’t reflect our real society and the complexity of our relationships with others, Spore does not represent the only possibility of how lifeforms evolve.
In essence, the game Spore is about having fun. It’s about perceiving science as fun, not stodgy, cold and boring. It weaves the elements together well enough that there are no clear answers here about the nature of evolution vs. creationism. The fact that Will Wright managed to “fool” both sides of the camp is precisely why Spore is a great game, not a science project or treatise on life. In his own words, “A game like this can actually generate interesting, meaningful conversations between people. I think that’s the best thing it can do.”
For the rest of the school year we plan to have meetings of the Secular Free Thought Society of ASU every Friday at 6 PM in the MU. So far the meetings are casual and mostly dealing with the initial setup of the club.
As the meetings become more organized and focused, we will start posting more specific agendas and topics for each meeting.
We are also expanding the Mill Avenue Resistance to include many if not all Friday nights after club meetings, so if you can’t make it to the official meetings, you’ll probably still find us on Mill later in the night.
Meeting rooms for the regularly scheduled club meetings will be posted online, but if you forget just look at the TVs inside the MU and they should show which rooms are assigned to which people. Here are our rooms for the rest of September:
9/19/08- Room 238 MU
9/26/08-Room 206 MU
We hope to see as many of you as possible, but if you can’t make it just keep an eye out for our other events which will also be posted here.
If you happen to run a mortuary in the Phoenix area, and you see a group of people who look a little too happy to be there, you might want to find out what they want before you let them in.
Earlier this year, people from “Extreme Prophetic Ministries” had the brilliant idea of starting a “mortuary outreach program”. This is not to go offer comfort to grieving families or anything else half sane, their intention is to actually raise the dead.
Basically what this consists of is going to random mortuaries and asking to come in and pray over the dead bodies in an attempt to resurrect them. Unsurprisingly, even when they have been let in to pray, they have had no success.
As crazy as this sounds, and as much as non-Christians and even most other Christians laugh at them, are they crazy or are they just following what they believe to be Christianity?
While the verses they use to support their ideas are sometimes based on questionable interpretations (such as using Matthew 10:8 to say they are commanded to raise the dead), the same is true of many other common Christian doctrines. Since the Bible requires so much interpretation by anyone who reads it, who are we to say that their interpretation is wrong?
Here are a couple of other verses they didn’t use to support their idea, but that more clearly seems to support it:
I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
- John 14:12 (NIV)
And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.
- Mark 16:17-18 (NIV)
So, if the Bible is accurate, Christians actually should be able to perform miracles such as raising the dead, walking on water, etc. Although I don’t think that even the Bible’s authors believed in werewolf spirits…
That said, I don’t believe that these people are actually receiving prophecies or performing miracles. Both my personal experiences with them and the unbelievable claims I’ve heard them make have convinced me that they are nothing but second rate charlatans.
They even claim now to have even raised the dead (although it does not appear to be part of their “mortuary outreach program”), and they say they have verifiable evidence of this. So far, we have been unable to find any of it, even on their own web site. If anyone has real evidence of any of these “miracles”, please send it to us and we’ll be happy to post it, but I’m not holding my breath.
As long as they stick to fleecing their own flock, the rest of us should probably not be more concerned about them than any other strange religious sect, but they do have an element much more in keeping with what most religious people view as cults than with more mainstream religion. This element is the idea that they and their followers have some kind of special, and as yet unrevealed, mission from God. That is a disturbing thought.
Attempting to raise the dead, walk on water or cast out werewolf spirits (all of which they claim to have done now) is relatively harmless, but the fact that they are not laughed out of their own churches shows the stunning credulity of their followers. Given that mindset and the idea that at least some of them receive prophecies from God, there is no limit to the damage that could be done to themselves and others if these “prophets” give the word.
Spore has been followed throughout its development by many people interested in science, evolution, natural selection and other topics. It did provide some hope for these people that it might turn out to be a realistic game accurately portraying evolution, but now that it’s been released, is the science of Spore accurate?
The more important question really is “Did the game’s creators intend the game to be scientifically accurate?”, and the answer to that seems to be no.
As stated in commercials for the game, it is not attempting to portray realistic evolution, but more of a guided evolution they call “Creatolutionism”. There is nothing wrong with this, although it may be a disappointment to some players, but it can become a problem if the point is not clearly made that this is not a realistic portrayal of the way evolution actually happens.
Creationists often make fun of scientists, claiming that they believe in things like animals just suddenly sprouting legs and lungs and walking onto land. This is the antithesis of evolution, not a fair description of it. Unfortunately in Spore, this does appear to be what happens. Once you have completed the “Cell Stage”, you simply sprout the necessary appendages and organs, drop the unnecessary ones and walk out of the water fully formed.
The reality is, no complex life form naturally undergoes such radical changes in one generation. Such dramatic and instantaneous changes are clearly the product of engineering, in this case by the player and the game’s designers.
If we believed that evolution happened in this manner we probably would have to turn to some kind of god or designer, so when creationists manage to spread the idea that the theory of evolution does claim such giant leaps in a single generation, they actually start looking like the reasonable ones to some people.
It is also possible in most places to manually produce generation after generation of slightly modified creatures, as would happen if they were actually evolving, but most players will be happy to skip to the end result they want rather than attempting to make it appear as if their creatures are evolving naturally.
There is nothing wrong with this, and it probably makes a more fun gaming experience for most users. We just have to make it clear to everyone who doesn’t correctly understand evolution that the redesigning of creatures in Spore is not even close to the same as evolution in the real world.
Our friends over at the Nontheist Nexus have put out their ninth Nexus Zine, which is the first to contain contributions from our members.
We love what they’re doing and we hope to be regular contributors to the zine in the future. Please check them out, and if you have good material for the next issue, submit it!
Earlier today the first successful tests of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were conducted by CERN scientists.
The LHC is a 27 kilometer (16.8 mile) long particle accelerator — the largest in the world — which has been in development for decades. It was built to get as close as we can to studying the particle interactions that we believe took place at the birth of the universe.
Possibly the most important of the particles scientists intend to study is the long-theorized Higgs boson (popularized as the “God particle”). It is the only Standard Model particle which has not yet been observed, and it is believed to be the particle that imparted mass to the other elementary particles in the first instants after the “big bang”.
What does this mean to us non-particle-physicists? Basically, if the upcoming tests show that the Higgs boson is a real particle, we will have the best and most complete evidence we’ve ever had for the “big bang”. If it is not found, we will know that there is a fundamental problem with our current understanding of particle physics.
The first high-energy collisions are planned for late October, so expect to hear more and bigger news then!
These billboards, a record for a single city with 5 signs going up at once, use an image of a stained glass window bearing the words “Imagine No Religion” in large gothic-style letters.
Before the FFRF could even get their own press release out, local media picked up the story. A week before the billboards were to go up, there was already local coverage on television stations, in news papers, and on the internet starting with an Arizona Republic article posted on azcentral.com, which already has 1135 comments as of this writing.
Some of the comments have been very supportive, such as these:
finally…a bill board that actually makes sense!!
- runaway
It’s about time
- neutrino666
Others have been…less supportive, and practically a caricature of The Intolerant Religious Nut:
The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to freedom OF religion not freedom FROM religion. This country was founded on Judeo- Christian values and morals and if you don’t like it then maybe America isn’t the country for you. Perhaps China or Cuba is more appealing to you. I’ll buy your ticket.
- RealAmerican
Unfortunately the majority of the comments seem to be from Christians who are offended by people “shoving their beliefs down people’s throats” in the form of of a 3 word invitation to “imagine no religion”. If that is shoving atheism down someone’s throat, I think the comparable analogy for what religious promoters have done would be too gruesome to write here!
Someone at the billboard company or someone else with influence there also appears to have share some of these anti-atheist sentiments, because after the contract was already signed the company came back and decided to move three of the billboards saying they could not be within 1,000 feet of any church or school, citing “a government rule that tobacco and liquor ads may not be within 1,000 feet of a church or school” which implies that, in their eyes, the thought of no religion is as bad for society as tobacco and liquor.
This makes me wonder, is Phoenix ready for this? I hope it is. Some of the comments on the Arizona Republic article show us how much work we have to do though.
For example, a comment by GetRealAlready, which went on about all the good that religious organizations do and then ended with “The athiests and agnostics certainly don’t give a crap about victims of natural disasters or homeless or drug addicts”, really shows what a dim view of atheists is held by many religious people.
Getting people to talk about the issue and realize how many atheists they already know and like can help to start changing people’s minds, but we have to be brave enough to talk about it. We have to come out and tell people we don’t believe.
The billboards should be up today, so keep an eye out for them, and tell other people about them too! The whole point of these billboards is to grab some attention and get people talking. The billboards alone won’t change many minds, but if you talk to people about it, you just might.
This should be an exciting month for the Resistance! We will have new people coming in, familiar faces coming back from a summer out of town, and we will begin implementing some of our new ideas that haven’t been publicly announced yet. It should be fun though, so show up if you can, or keep an eye on the site and we’ll post more about how it’s going!
If you’re concerned by the recent post about the preachers threatening to get restraining orders against us, don’t worry about it. They have no legal grounds to get a restraining order against us, and we’ve been doing this every week for nearly a year now. They have less than nothing against you!
All it shows is that we’re having an effect. They know that we’re getting more support than they are pretty consistently now, we can out-argue them any day on most subjects, and basically their inane ranting is getting them nowhere these days.
Unfortunately, they are splitting up more often now, and we can always use more people to cover the splinter groups, or even just to support the main Resistance group. Besides, the more people we have, the more fun it is!
Don’t forget that the first meeting of the re-formed Secular Free Thought Society of ASU is also coming up this Thursday (September 4th, 2008)! I hope we see a lot of people there. With your help, this can be a great school year for us!
This semester at ASU we will be restarting the Secular Free Thought Society. This is a group for people who are tired of being told how and what to think by the mass media and religious organizations that have infiltrated every level of American life.
If you have an open mind and want to meet others with similar viewpoints then we invite you to join us.
We will be planning various events throughout the year that include:
Countering the spread of narrow-minded religious thought
Various outings with other Secular/Atheist groups in the valley
The Mill Avenue Resistance
Fun Halloween and Winter Parties
Plus many more various events
To get more information on the group and how to connect with us, e-mail Brian.Key@asu.edu.
We hope to see you there and remember:
NEVER STOP THINKING!!!
Ok, so the first meeting has been tenativly set! W00T. It Will be Thursday, September 4th at 5:30PM. It will be in the MU Somewhere, so far, we will meet at Sparkey’s Den (The Arcade in the basement). I will have a room reserved before then, and that will be posted on this site, as well as the myspace and livejournal. Hope to see all the old faces again and plenty of new ones
Details on what will go on during the first meeting will come shortly!
