chinese wikipedia

there is now a wikipedia-like site in chinese, censored by the chinese communist government. check it out in english. that is the version translated by google. or try this english version, translated by altavista babel fish. they are not the same, although both are based on systran translation software. what i like is the low quality of the translations, it reminds me of “all your base are belong to us” from the sega genesis game zero wing. don’t try adding any new entries, however, because it is not going to translate things back from english into simplified chinese. well actually, you could use google translation to translate back into simplified chinese before you post. but please don’t post any racist jokes about chinese people, especially not ones that you translate back into simplified chinese. that would be a very bad idea.

iran’s president is a genius

well i have read the letter iran’s president ahmadinejad wrote to george w. bush, and it is pure brilliance. there are a few parts i disagree with (mainly the parts about religion and how it is better than liberal democracy) but most of it is just pure common sense, and the truth. wow. i never imagined i would be agreeing with anything mahmoud ahmadinejad said or wrote, but here is an 18-page document full of reasoned arguments, with some religious dogma thrown in a few places for added emphasis. i mean, he is just about as logical and reasonable as an islamic fundamentalist could possibly be without contradicting their beliefs; he totally stretches that to the limit. another example of such brilliance from an islamic fundamentalist that i recently came across was the black book, by sudan’s justice and equality movement (j.e.m.). the black book is all about, that’s right, justice and equality, since it is by the justice and equality movement, after all. they are the larger of the 2 sudanese rebel groups in darfur that rejected the peace deal between the government and the sudanese liberation army (s.l.a.). this is because the s.l.a. and the j.e.m. have different ideologies, of course. now it is very nice that sudan’s evil dictators have signed a peace treaty with the democracy-oriented sudanese liberation army, but the islamic fundamentalist justice and equality movement is still fighting, and they outline why on the website i just linked to. basically, it is because they have a list of demands that have not been met. but anyway, if you view these links realistically and digest the contents, it becomes quite clear the nature of muslims. they are not really this great evil threat that will destroy the world, that mutual assured destruction cannot work against. they are really just like everyone else, and we have been provoking them by invading their countries and supporting their enemy israel and the oppressive governments of countries like saudi arabia, egypt, pakistan, etc. so, the poor and uneducated people turn to religion, which is what poor, uneducated people all across the world do, even right here in the united states. do we really have any reason to fear the islamic fundamentalists? they are mere pawns in a game bigger than they could possibly imagine, being provoked into attacking other people so that everyone else can unite around them as a threat. yes, al qaeda did manage to attack us on 9/11, but there are still many unanswered questions about how this “new pearl harbor”, in the project for a new american century terminology, came to be. what is clear is who benefited from it: president bush and the republicans, as well as the nation of israel. the big losers: democracts, the taliban, and saddam hussein. now, out of those 3 who were hurt by 9/11, i would say only the taliban would be dumb enough to support 9/11 even though it hurt them. as for the republicans and israel, who both benefited... the republicans and israel are both very large groups. if the republicans were involved, it was a very small number of neo-cons who were involved, and nobody else knew about it. if israel was involved, a small number of people from mossad, their intelligence agency, were probably involved, and nobody else knew. there are many conspiracy theories, and i for one do not agree that the world trade center collapse was a controlled demolition, or that the terrorist pilots didn’t know how to fly the planes. my thoughts are a bit more down-to-earth. i think, of course al qaeda did it. but, i think, there were probably those who knew about it who did nothing to stop it, because they saw it as a golden opportunity to benefit themselves. remember the people short-selling airline stocks right before the airplanes were hijacked? this is a much more plausible storyline than denying that al qaeda was behind 9/11. it is just that in analyzing any situation, the most logical course of action is to analyze who benefits and who is hurt, and think about how predictable that might have been beforehand, and how capable those concerned might have been in discerning this in advance. if it is clear that the republicans and israel benefited from 9/11, and that both of them had enough intelligence to understand that a big terrorist attack by islamic fundamentalists on the united states would have that effect, the only question is, would they do it, or rather, did they do it? and that is a question that, quite honestly, i cannot answer. but i do know that the democrats certainly had nothing to do with it, and neither did saddam hussein; in either of those 2 cases it would be entirely illogical for the democrats or saddam to act in direct opposition to their own interests. when the reichstag fire happened in germany, adolf hitler blamed it on the jews, and used it to unite germany behind his dictatorship. how is 9/11 really any different, except for us blaming it on the muslims, and them (apparently) actually being guilty? now, i don’t really think it is logical for anyone to hate any large group of people, whether it be muslims, americans, republicans, democrats, israelis, palestinians, christians, jews, atheists, or iranians. we are all people, and people are all pretty much the same. i think the media in the u.s. tries to brainwash us here in the united states into a xenophobic hatred of muslims, and in the past this has sometimes worked on me, i must admit. i certainly don’t agree with the muslim religion, nor do i think it is moral or just or correct in any way, but that is also the way i feel about all other religions too. christianity has a long history of crusades and inquisitions and wars fought over religion, and the jews carried out genocide long ago, which they proudly chronicle in the book of genesis. hindus and buddhists have also carried out similar atrocities and crimes against humanity. every major religion has plenty of blood on its hands, thereby nullifying any claims on being moral, just, or true. but it is not fair to single out the muslims, as being worse than the other religions, and only mention their atrocities and nobody else’s. they would probably be killing us whatever their religion is, after all we have done to them. the people of the world are uneducated and do not have very logical minds, and we cannot expect them all to understand the truth and put aside the beliefs that they have been raised in and the cultures that surround them. i am no moral relatavist or anything; i know western liberal secular values are inherently superior to all other value systems, but small minds cannot understand such grand ideas, especially when people have been brainwashed. but what the letter from iran’s president and the black book both show is, although islam has obstructed part of the truth from being found by muslims, they are still able to see much of the truth, despite their irrational belief system. this should really come as no surprise to us, however, because we have seen time and time again how christians and jews are perfectly able to do the same thing; we just thought muslims lacked this capability, but now we have been proven wrong. a religious person can be perfectly capable of applying logic and reason to any topic except for religion, and this can hold true for any religion, no matter how illogical its beliefs are. this is because the religious person’s mind divides itself into 2 “separate but equal” parts: the logical mind, which thinks about most topics, and the spiritual mind, which is the only part that is allowed to think about religion. the spiritual mind is thought of as somehow being above or below or transcending logic, and rendering logic meaningless or inoperable. while a dogma is hard to accept if you do not already accept it, it is virtually impossible to get rid of if you base the rest of your belief system upon it. every belief system is like a tower: you have to build a foundation, underground, before you can move on to greater things. the foundation can be considered your assumptions or dogma, the things you just assume are true and never question. from that basis, you can establish other facts that are provable from what you know already. and with logic and observation you can build a very high tower of intellectual achievement. but if the foundation is flawed, the whole tower can come falling down, like the leaning tower of pisa falling over. that is why you need to get down off the top sometimes to revisit your foundation, and test it for structural integrity, something which does not really come naturally to most people. and because most people avoid this out of fear that they might accidentally knock the whole tower over, they stick with their flawed foundations, in their shaky towers. now, any system of belief that is truly viral in nature must include in its beliefs the fact that it is good and the fact that anyone who opposes it is evil. take time cube for instance; it makes both those claims in a very straightforward manner. therefore, it is a viral system of belief, also known as a religion. any system of belief that makes unverifiable or ridiculous claims must have beliefs of this nature so that the system has self-preservation. most major religions also have teachings on sexuality that have an end result of making their followers have lots of children that they raise in that religion; this is another form of self-preservation for the viral belief system. babies are born inherently free from any belief system, and from the moment they are born, they are subject to constant brainwashing from all sorts of belief systems. and any viral belief system subordinates its human followers to the belief system itself, making them think of the belief system as a great cause, usually a cause that is even worth dying for. in this way, people are enslaved to belief systems they are taught, and they lose their independence and free will. but no belief system is perfect, or can fully prevent its followers from rational thought; some rational thought will always creep in, about topics which the belief system does not address. and so, the human mind can never be fully enslaved; each of us still has the tools to make ourselves free from mental bondage. this is what the president of iran has demonstrated to us all; he has shown that even someone as deluded as him can engage in rational discourse under the right circumstances. he has managed to use logic to transcend his crazy belief system, with the objective of writing something to be persuasive for an audience of people who do not share his belief system. and for this, he is a genius, because his persuasive essay packs quite a rhetorical punch. you cannot expect every genius to have a belief system which is correct; this type of expectation is naive and illogical. many geniuses use logic to justify belief systems which are patently absurd, and they then proceed to invent even more absurd ideas, and then believe in them wholeheartedly. the logical mind is capable of arguing from premises which it disagrees with, and understanding multiple points of view, although it is usually so biased that it can only produce “straw man” arguments when it attempts to argue from the other side. but a logical mind usually ignores the fact that the conclusions of any logical argument are only as valid as the weakest link among the assumptions made beforehand; this is the arrogance of many practitioners of logic, who do not realize it is a tool for recycling information you already know and not a source of new information. every logical theorem is ipso facto a tautology and therefore trivial and devoid of meaning. this is why the iranian president’s emphasis on religion as the basis for morality and decision-making is important. if people are brainwashed into accepting a standardized viral belief system, this can make their actions more or less predictable, and it is logical that under the right circumstances, this could lead to peace among nations. he is opposed to individualism and thinking for oneself, because he views this as dangerous. someone who does not subscribe to any of these belief systems would be totally unpredictable, and if they were a world leader, who knows what would happen? nobody does. so his argument in favor of brainwashing has some merit; it is pure genius. so let the brainwashing victims rule the world together, while independent thinkers avoid seeking political power, and then there will be peace and stability. i wonder if any independent thinkers can come up with a counter-argument; i certainly cannot think of any at this time, so i think mahmoud ahmadinejad has won this argument by default. now there are some in the media who have criticized this letter by him, but that only shows that these critics have small minds, too small to allow any conflicting ideas to have any space inside. they think that he should address issues about iran’s uranium enrichment or other such rubbish in his letter, totally misunderstanding the purpose of the letter with their flawed assumptions. the purpose was to establish a frame of reference for his point of view to be used in further arguments and discussions. the purpose was to lay the foundation for such discussions to take place later, without getting bogged down in specifics about what happens later, because that would be too limiting. and this foundation would be used to build a tower of mutual understanding, for both americans and iranians, rather than just the tower of one particular ideology. a much more noble goal than ahmadinejad’s previous saber rattling and threatening statements about war. hopefully he was never serious about war, and was just trying to position himself to have more bargaining power to establish peace. let us hope that is the case, and let us hope this letter is serious and genuine, as it seems to be. otherwise, if this peaceful talk is just bluffing (which would make no sense), i am afraid that if it is war that he wants, then it is war he shall get. the doctrine of pre-emptive war is still in effect, whereas the united nations charter has been abandoned long ago.

hayden is miered, borked

general michael hayden has just been nominated by our lame duck, severely retarded “prez-o-dent” george dubya bush to be cia director. whoopie! that is after top republicans in the house and senate said there is no way in hell they would ever confirm general hayden to that job... which is a pretty fuckin’ strong signal if you ask me. but the bush baby is brain dead and hard of hearing, so he didn’t seem to hear the message from congress, which was a resounding “don’t nominate that dude, if ya know what’s good for ye”. and of course all the dem-o-krattz were sayin’ the same thing. so, bush is proving once again, he doesn’t give a damn about anyone’s opinions except his own, and he is willing to do whatever it takes to prove he is a complete dipshit, even if it means doing things soooooooo stupid, no man has ever done them before. what does it say that bush cannot even co-ordinate his message with the members of his own party in congress, after having them do whatever he says and jumping off cliffs together as friends for 6 years? i mean, if your friend asked you to jump off a cliff with him/her, would you do it? for congressional republicans, the answer has always been a resounding “hells yeah!” until recently. and karl rove has given up on independent voters, instead focusing on the few party-line loyal republican brainwashing victims left, thinking that he can maximize their turnout if he gets bush to pander to the right wing as much as possible. so, bush tried pushing his amnesty program for illegal aliens... whoops! not the right way to pander to right-wingers who hate mexicans! you see, bush is the type of guy who always does what he thinks is right, even when everyone with half a brain keeps telling him he is dead wrong. he is also the type of guy who is dead wrong about pretty much everything, but too stubborn to admit it or change his views on anything. and what about these so-called “limited government” types in the conservative movement? what has he done for them? oh nothing... just a new medicare prescription drug benefit that is a cover for gigantic corporate welfare to profitable companies, and presiding over huge increases in the budget deficit and national debt, while using the patriot act and other new laws to limit our freedoms while illegally spying on us. yeah... bush is a big supporter of “limited government”... suuuuuuure. the only time he ever supported limited government was when hurricane katrina hit, and he wanted to limit the power of the government to do anything to respond. that’s why the government’s new plan to fight avian flu is: “we do nothing for you! you have to do it yourself! don’t say we didn’t warn you!” at least bush and the republicans agree about taxation: they think the government should always take in much less taxes than the amount of money it spends, so whenever spending goes up, it is time for another huge tax cut. ran out of money? whoops, we can’t count! let’s just print more money... yeah that’ll fix it. it’s too bad our president only has a pre-kindergarten-level understanding of mathematics or logic. 32% approval rating? y’all forgot the decimal point. shouldn’t it be 3.2% approval rating instead? that’d be a helluva lot more appropriate. so, porter goss, the last cia head, turned out to be a partisan hack who mismanaged the agency and left it demoralized, while all its best agents quit their jobs at the cia and went to work elsewhere. meanwhile, he was involved in a big corruption scandal involving randy “duke” cunningham, defense contractors, and prostitutes... and not legal ones, by the way. they weren’t in nevada. and he didn’t get along with his boss, john negroponte. who is negroponte? oh, nobody, he just helped carry out genocide in nicaragua in the 80’s... he’s nobody... it’s not like president bush used him as a u.n. ambassador and ambassador to iraq despite the blood on his hands and his lack of a conscience. but he is the director of national intelligence, which is kind of a contradiction in terms. i mean how could someone in the government possibly have any intelligence? it’s ridiculous... and negroponte’s 2nd in command, general michael hayden, is now being sent to run the cia, while still being under rumsfeld’s command since he is still in the military. and you know what that means? it would be a violation of the uniform code of military justice for general hayden to ever criticize anyone above him in the chain of command, like don rumsfeld or george w. bush. they could actually put general hayden in jail if he did that. but don’t worry. he won’t. he’s too stupid to understant arcane concepts like “right and wrong” or “true and false”, so he would never even think anything bad of his superiors in the first place. he already showed that with his speeches about the illegal wiretapping scandal. which is why nobody in congress likes him, and the senate won’t confirm him, marking yet another failure for the bush administration. but hey, at least they succeeded in getting re-elected, right?

stephen colbert is da man

stephen colbert kicked so much ass at the white house correspondents’ dinner this year. too bad the audience was a bunch of bushlickers. the white house press corps is like a potemkin village, just a bunch of yes-men, pansies, hypocrites, jibber jabbers, malevolent misfits, kooky kutters, and happy poopie heads. stephen colbert told it like it was, is, and always shall be. he was like the court jesters of the olden days, the only people who could criticize the king, because everything they said was a joke. so what if king george didn’t like stephen colbert’s pundittery? his royal majesty can shove it! this is a people’s republic, by golly, not a plutonium plutocracy! they don’t call the house of representatives the people’s house for nothing! hearken back to the proletarian revolution of 1776, when our forefathers wrote our communistitution, and then, for the purposes of liminated government, they wrote the bill of right-wing talking points. senatus populusque americanus! res publica! when democritus invented democracy in ancient greece, he did not envision this type of korporate kleptocracy, rule by the wicked, for the wicked, and of the wicked. stephen colbert was just trying to have some fun at the expense of the extremophiliac elite. but his komedic kurse was that the crowde was rowdie and naught pleassed withe his utterancies, whiche theye did fathom were beyonde the scope of acceptabullshit. the uptight weenies that composted the audience at the event were all dressed in their finest regalia, befitting only the neatest elitist intergalactic royalty from all akross de kosmos. tuxedoes, ball-gownes, toppe-hattes, and whyte glovies adorned the spectacular spectators situated in the situation roome. these konspiracie kronies disliked the raw spectre of realitie-based reasoning korrupting their pristine prismatic mini-minds. jokes are not funny when you the butte of ze jokes, si? when he points out none of these polyticians or preporteurs arre doing thier jobbes propeurlee, thees ees naut goot kneuws. zey are velly velly madde at being dis-creditited. vy laf ven ju ken krie? saumsink tou seenk a-boot...

atheism under attack

well, atheism is under attack. that’s right, someone in the “mainstream media” badmouthed my belief system. rabbi gellman says atheists are angry, and think people are atheists because of traumatic events in their childhood. i’m not angry at him, of course; although he is spouting nonsense, it is just because he is a victim of religious brainwashing. he has no idea that the things he is saying are total crap. and he is trying to be nice and understanding towards atheists, which is good. and he says all sorts of ridiculous generalizations about atheists, which are really a large group of people. i know i have done the same thing about large groups of people too (like, i do that all the time), so that is excusable. but the most ridiculous part is, he thinks we are “threatened by the idea of god”. uhm. no. there is nothing about the idea of god that is in the least bit threatening. amusing, yes. ridiculous, yes. self-contradictory, very much so. but threatening? nope. and apparently ann coulter is coming out with a new book all about attacking atheists and liberals. whoop dee friggen doo. guess what bitch? atheism and liberalism are both correct, and YOU are WRONG! it would take forever to explain why liberalism is correct and conservatism is dead wrong, since there are so many different issues, but monotheism vs. atheism is easy. you see, there is something called “logic” that we can use to resolve issues like this.

proof 1) ooookay. so, basically, the issue that monotheists and atheists disagree on is “does god exist?” simple enough. but you have to define the word god first. so, let’s have a go at it, shall we? to avoid any sort of bias, i took the definition straight from dictionary.com. “a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions.” now, the 2 key words are omnipotent and omniscient. omnipotent means all-powerful and omniscient means all-knowing. if god is all-powerful, this means he is capable of doing anything that the human mind, or any other mind, could possibly conceive of him doing. and if he is all-knowing, this means he knows all information that could ever possibly exist. now, what about the passage of time? if god knows all information, he knows what will happen in the future, ahead of time. this is obvious. however, if he is all-powerful, this includes the power to do things differently than the way he predicted they would turn out. this is also obvious. now obviously, if he decides to do things differently than the way he predicted, this makes his predictions turn out to be wrong. oops! this is a contradiction, because god knows all and is perfect and infallible. the properties ascribed to god in his definition are inherently self-contradictory. no thoughtful, intelligent person can deny this. this proof is absolute and flawless, and proves without a doubt that god does not exist, if he is defined in such a way.

proof 2) but there are ways to weasel out of that. simply define god differently. or define omniscient or omnipotent differently. they say “god exists outside of time”, which is basically meaningless gibberish that shows how clueless they are, but that type of nonsense is enough to sustain some people’s faith. or someone could simply say that god would never do things any differently than the way he decided in advance, which means that god is essentially powerless for every moment of his existence except the first, because after that time he is forced to act exactly how he predicted in the previous moments. that would suck. so let us pretend for the sake of this second proof that the first proof is invalid or god does not fulfill that dictionary definition 100% and somehow finds a way to exist. now god is said to be the creator of the universe, and of everything that exists other than himself (and of course he is male). he is also said to be infinitely good, righteous, or merciful. yet there is evil and suffering in this world, not just a little, but a whole lot. in this world that god created. he created this world, knowing in advance about all the evil and suffering. he is the ultimate root cause of all evil and suffering. and if somebody is evil and goes to hell, this is god’s fault, because god knew even before this person was born exactly what would happen. in fact, satan was once an angel, and god created satan, too, with full knowledge of what would happen. all that exists, other than god, is a part of god’s creation. so, god is directly responsible for all evil and all suffering, and it happened because he wanted it to happen. he could have done things completely differently if he wanted to, and made things a perfect utopian paradise. but did he? no. and not only is he punishing us by making us live out our crappy little lives on this dying planet, but he will also punish those who happen to have the wrong beliefs, by sending them to hell for all eternity. even though god himself created each and every one of us and designed us so we would end up having those beliefs. so god is designing some (or many) of us to be hellbound heathens. or if you think people go to heaven or hell based not on their beliefs but on whether they are good or evil, the argument still holds true... he still designs each person to either be good and go to heaven, or be evil and go to hell. but evil or heathenous people are not responsible for their beliefs or actions. god is! he made them that way, knowing in advance everything that would happen. so it is immoral to punish them for god’s sins. that would be like punishing every soldier in the nazi army but letting adolf hitler get off scott-free. if we are the puppets and he is the puppeteer, shouldn’t he be held responsible for our actions? some people contend that free will and determinism are compatible, but that is patently ridiculous. there is no way people could possibly have free will in a deterministic system. it is plain as day, as obvious as gravity. so, since the determinism caused by god’s existence reduces us to his pawns with no free will who he willy-nilly decided what to do with in an immoral fashion, god cannot exist, because this defies the simple maxim “god is good”. the only way around this is if god is evil, in which case, there is absolutely no reason anyone should bother worshipping him. thus concludes my second proof.

proof 3) okay, let us start out with the premise that the last 2 proofs are wrong, so we can pretend god’s existence is not self-contradictory. this proof regards the trinity, not the existence of god. here is the doctrine of the trinity, from dictionary.com: “1. that god is one, and that there is but one god 2. that the father is a distinct divine person (hypostasis, subsistentia, persona, suppositum intellectuale), distinct from the son and the holy spirit. 3. that jesus christ was truly god, and yet was a person distinct from the father and the holy spirit. 4. that the holy spirit is also a distinct divine person.” this doctrine is complete and utter nonsense. translated into mathematics, it says 1 = 3. rubbish! either there is one god, or there is no god, or there is more than one god. the trinity says there is a father, a son, and a holy ghost. fine! so then there are 3 gods! but then the doctrine says they are all the same, even though it also says they are all distinct and separate! which is it?!? are they the same entity, or are they separate, distinct entities? the doctrine of the trinity tries to have it both ways, which is a logical contradiction. almost all christian denominations believe in this ridiculous doctrine of the trinity, despite the fact that it is so blatantly self-contradictory that any idiot can see how it is nonsense if it is explained to them properly. another thing that is really weird about the trinity is, if it is the holy ghost who impregnated the virgin mary with jesus, then how can the “father” claim to be the “father”? the holy ghost is the REAL father. the entity which is called the “father” is really not a father at all, because he is not the one who impregnated the virgin mary, so how COULD he be the father? and another problem... what about back BEFORE the virgin mary got impregnated with jesus? weren’t there only 2 elements of the trinity then, because jesus did not exist yet? and why on earth must there be a separate holy ghost and father anyway?!? it makes no sense! if christianity is supposed to be a form of monotheism, christians should really only believe in one god! yet they worship three! clearly this is an example of worshipping false idols, because the old testament says that there is but one god, and if you worship any other god you are worshipping a false idol. so, christianity, with its polytheistic trinity doctrine, is really not monotheistic at all.

proof 4) this is another proof that god does not exist, and this one requires that quantum physics is true (which has been experimentally proven on countless occasions). one of the principle parts of quantum theory is the heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that you cannot know exactly what the location or momentum of any particle is, and the more accurately you know one of those attributes, the less accurately you know the other. since that time, quantum theory has developed to the point where they have realized that all quantum attributes occur in pairs of opposite attributes, where the better you know the value of one attribute, the less you know the other. we can consider this as being a “range of freedom” for each particle. particles do not like being measured, and whenever a particle has one of its attributes measured, it rebels against this, by changing its properties such that the conjugate attribute is muddled up a bit (there is more muddling up if the measurement has more precision, and vice versa). now some people, when they hear about this, think “aha! so measurement is fundamentally flawed, and we can never truly find out what attributes a particle possesses! but of course it possesses inherent attributes that actually have real values prior to being measured!” but no. no no no no no. that is not how quantum physics works at all. it has been experimentally proven that particles can become waves and have indeterminate values for their attributes, which only take on fixed values when measured. this is known as “wavefunction collapse”. a famous thought experiment based on this is called “schrödinger’s cat”. anyway, those quantum physicists have basically proved that the real world does not exist, unless you make really bizarre assumptions that totally contradict what 99% of people assume is true about reality. the only way out, the only way that an omniscient god could exist, is if the correct theory is a nonlocal hidden variable theory, according to bell’s theorem. and, while nonlocal hidden variable theories haven’t really been disproven, most people in quantum physics don’t believe in them. anyway, god’s existence is only compatible with quantum physics if the interpretation of quantum physics that is chosen is a nonlocal hidden variable theory. and there is a very famous nonlocal hidden variable theory that a physicist named david bohm came up with, and it is the most popular nonlocal hidden variable theory. oh but here is the good part: it really does contradict god’s existance, i think. yeah, that’s right, i just changed my mind about that in the last sentence. you see, according to einstein’s theory of relativity, information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. in any “nonlocal” theory, there is stuff that goes faster than the speed of light, but it is not “information”, nor is it “matter” or “energy”. it is “causality”... the origin of so-called “randomness”. in a nonlocal hidden-variable theory, cause and effect is something that can travel instantly from anywhere in the universe to anyplace else in the universe, and all events are deeply interconnected by a hidden web of causality so complicated that all we can ever perceive of it is “randomness”. but this cause and effect is secret, and it is not information. it is transmitted in such a fucked up way that it is impossible for any sentient being to figure it out, even impossible for god. because if god broke that rule, it would disprove the theory of relativity, and it would destroy the very structure of the space-time continuum, which is based around the speed of light being the maximum speed for everything in the universe. the universe is a closed system, by definition, yet god, as its creator, sits outside the universe, unable to interfere at all. if he interfered, it would violate all the laws of physics. and whether your quantum interpretation is a nonlocal hidden-variable theory like david bohm’s, the everett many-worlds interpretation, the copenhagen interpretation, or any other, they all contradict god’s existence. which is why the vast majority of quantum physicists are atheists. just consider 2 photons that are connected by “quantum entanglement” of their polarization, and they have opposite polarization. measure the polarization of one, and the polarization of the other must be the opposite. but, god doesn’t know the polarization of either, because if he did, this would disrupt the experimental results. experimentally physicists have found that they can measure things that have never been measured or observed before, not by anyone, even god. such as the polarization of a photon in that experiment. another experiment, called the double slit experiment, proves that there is no god that actively observes everything in this universe, because if god did do that, it would yield different results than what they got. anyway, this has been too much of a diversion into physics, away from theology.

so my main point: the idea of god does not scare me in the slightest. i have thought a lot more about the idea of god than most people, and while i find it very interesting and thought-provoking, it is still clear to me that god simply cannot possibly exist. so i wish people would stop going around claiming that god said this or that, and that they can do whatever the hell they want because god told them to and they are acting on god’s behalf. god is used to justify all sorts of crazy things, like the 9/11 attacks. god is used as a crutch by intellectually lazy people who don’t want to have to think about anything. but if people 2,000 years ago knew so damn much, how come they did not have electricity or any of the modern conveniences? why should we read the so-called “holy scriptures” written by prehistoric neanderthal types who didn’t know anything? people who thought the earth was flat, and all sorts of other rubbish that modern science has disproved. why do people still cling to creationism, when evolution has all the answers? it’s just weird... i think most people are stupid. to quote j.r. “bob” dobbs, “you know how dumb the average person is? well, by definition, half of 'em are even dumber than THAT.” now, to be fair, in its january 1, 2000 issue, a time magazine internet-based poll named j.r. “bob” dobbs the #1 "phoney or fraud" of the 20th century, so you have to take everything he says with a grain of salt. but, i think i will keep him as my short duration personal savior (or shordurpersav in the original tibetan) for the time being, because his exploits are so legendary.