The 327th Male

Apparently it is now a criminal offence to annoy a catholic person. Police and emergency service workers have been given special powers to stop behaviour that “causes annoyance or inconvenience” to people visiting the pope and participating in Sydney’s upcoming world youth day. What a load of bullshit.

What can be considered “annoying”? Pointing out the obvious contradictions in their beliefs? Calling out their actions for being inconsistent with their supposed moral values? Peaceful protest? Distributing free condoms? What happened to turning the other cheek?

I am ashamed of my country. If I was in Sydney I would not let this stop me from protesting, in fact I assume it will cause even more people to join in the march. Show them how wrong they are, but do it peacefully; don’t give them justification for these ridiculous powers.

Sydney-siders, do you best. I might just get myself a plane ticket and join you.

Recently a blogger over at skepchic set the site on fire with her post about why she supports intelligent design. A reasonably polite flame ware is currently raging and one of the themes brought up is whether intelligent design and theistic evolution are considered different things. What the hell does that mean? It all depends on the kind of game you think god is playing.

In the theistic evolution camp, god is playing dominoes. He/she/it/they set up an intricate pattern for how things would play out, then knocked the first domino over - lets call it the big bang. Everything from that point on plays out according to the plan, without intervention - planets form, life begins and eventually evolution cranks out a few bipedal monkeys.

In the intelligent design corner, god is playing curling.

Rather than just setting things up and watching them play out, god is frantically brooming, altering the course of events throughout history. God had to intervene to create humans; tweak things here, add a pinch of salt there, simmer for several thousand years.

So the question is, which god do you want to believe in? If I wasn’t an atheist I would prefer the domino god, something about it just implies perfection and omnipotence. This viewpoint also doesn’t contradict the evidence we see around us. People who believe in such a god, in such a creation story, can be positive supporters of evolution, science, critical thinking and skepticism.

I know google-fu. And what is the first thing one does with google-fu? One googles oneself.

A search on my name, “Daniel Kinsman” will turn up a few different hits. Apparently there is a rather talented young kart racer who shares my name. I’m hoping he grows up to be a formula one driver so I can cash in on his notoriety. Unfortunately there is also a religious nut who shares my name as well. Perhaps it is a sign from god that I should throw out logic and reason and embrace faith? Nah, wait till you hear what he has to say. If I believed in signs this would be a sign not to believe.

I first came across the guy in this quote from the mailbag on an IT website called The Register:

Jesus would not need an IPOD because being God who walked on earth He is the author of life and music.

Now even I have to admit that that would be cool. Who needs an iPod when you can instantly reproduce any song or performance at the drop of a hat? Screw turning water into wine, the ultimate party miracle would be summoning forth Hendrix, Elvis and Beethoven for an impromtu jam session.

I also use google’s blog searching tool. It has this really cool function where you can subscribe to a given search over RSS. For you non-geeks that means whenever anyone posts the words “Daniel Kinsman” anywhere on a blog, I know about it within days. Here’s the latest comments from Mr Daniel Kinsman on a priest’s blog post about some alleged paedophile:

I refuse to believe such an allegation about Father John Bertolucci. I saw the gift of the Holy Spirit at work in this man. He was given the gift of tongues as the apostles had. He had the gift of healing. He also had other charisms of the Holy Spirit. I think the accusations against him were false.

It was an attack of Satan as far as I am concerned

Watch out when Satan attacks! When good archangels go bad! No doubt if Mr Daniel Kinsman reads this website he will interpret it as an attack of Satan. What he really needs is an attack of sanity.

I’m giving up weet-bix. For many years I have been eating it for breakfast, safe in the knowledge that my dollars were going towards an Australian made, Australian owned product. You see, I’m one of those annoying shoppers who go through every different brand of cereal looking for the tiny labels declaring that my money will support local industry. What the labels don’t say, is that Sanitarium, the company that make weet-bix, is wholly owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In my time I have probably eaten thousands of ‘bix from hundreds of boxes. Horribly, all of the money I’ve spent on them has gone towards a theistic company - a church. And because it’s a church, they don’t even have to pay tax on their profits! What a scam! If I ever start up a business, I’ll be sure to apply for a tax exemption under the banner of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

So no more weet-bix for me. I’ve also decided to keep a list of theist owned or affiliated companies, so that I can avoid giving them money. Here’s what I have so far:

• Sanitarium Health Foods - the Seventh-day Adventist Church
• Dick Smith Foods - affiliated with Sanitarium
• Gloria Jean’s Coffee - Hillsong Church
• Auntie Anne’s (pretzels) - Christianity

If you can think of any to add to the list, post a comment below and I’ll update it. Be sure to include both the company name and the theistic organisation. Hopefully this way we can ensure the separation of church and my money.

Game theory is a concept in applied mathematics. Like any branch of mathematics, it throws around big sounding terms such as pay-off matrix and Nash equilibrium, but at its heart game theory is really very simple.

Game theory is about winning.

In any game where the rules are clearly defined, game theory can be used to try and find the best strategy. Take a classical game of chicken for example, where two drivers accelerate towards a head-on collision, the one who swerves being the chicken. A traditional pay-off matrix for chicken looks like this:

The matrix is fairly easy to understand; if both players swerve, the game is a tie. Neither player is the chicken and neither player dies. If both players stay the course, they both die - the worst possible outcome. If one player swerves, only their pride will be hurt, while the other gains the honour of winning.

So what is the best way of winning? If you don’t swerve you could die - so you’d better swerve. The other guy will be thinking that as well though, so if you don’t swerve they probably will. But wait - what if he is thinking the same thing! Then you will both die!

Analysing the game in this way, trying to work out the right decisions to achieve the best outcome - most people call this strategy. Mathematicians call it game theory.

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician who was also very religious. He used game theory’s sibling, decision theory, to try and tell the world that belief in God is the right decision. This is now known as Pascal’s Wager.

The wager states that belief in God is the correct decision because the pay-off is infinite, while the punishment is infinitely painful. The pay-off matrix as proposed by Pascal would look like this:

It would seem Pascal is right. Time to throw away all my years of scepticism - praise be to God the almighty! I see the light! But wait, something tells me the matrix isn’t quite complete. That’s the problem with game theory (and decision theory): it can appear very authoritative until you realise that you haven’t accounted for all the variables.

Take my initial example of chicken. The analysis of the game looks complete, it looks like I have thought of every possible scenario. But what happens if both players swerve in the same direction. There’s a chance that if they both chicken out, they could actually swerve into each other and be killed. Taking this into consideration, the pay-off matrix now looks like this:

In the initial matrix, there was a 25% probability of winning and a 25% probability of crashing. In the new matrix there is only a 22% probability of winning and a 33% probability of crashing. Clearly it could lead to disaster if you base your decisions on the original matrix.

Pascal’s wager is equally flawed. For starters it doesn’t take other religions into account. Let’s add Islam:

Or what about a God / Allah that doesn’t punish wrong choices in belief, and only judges based on how good you have been throughout your life?

And what if God / Allah exists, but actively punishes belief? What if God / Allah wants us to think for ourselves?

As you can see, decision theory isn’t very useful if you don’t know all the rules behind the game, and we know nothing of the rules behind the afterlife, or even whether it exists. This makes the wager an unconvincing argument.

Sorry Pascal, but I’m sticking with atheism.