I like this one: Theologian Chess.
In Theology Chess, the theologian has the entire chessboard to himself and only one piece: God. Whenever the opponent (who has no pieces) asks a question about God, the piece may be moved to a different square in any direction with no restriction on distance. This may be done infinitely until the questioner gets up and leaves.
It’s true — I’ve heard a lot more about student protests of commencement speakers this year. At the Twin Cities branch campus of my university, for instance, there was an eruption of student activism over inviting war criminal Condoleeza Rice to give the commencement address — although part of the protest may have been over the fact that she would have been paid $150,000 to spew a few platitudes for 20 minutes.
We may have been missing the point. Zach Weinersmith explains the situation.
He then goes on to explain the reason behind these costly displays. I give you a choice. You can go read the rest of the comic, which is the easy way out. Or you can go read this paper by Joseph Henrich (pdf), titled “The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion: credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution”, which will take rather more of your time, requires slogging through a little math and logic, but will enhance your credibility because of your investment in the subject.
The paper is also a little annoying because it will require looking at a university, or any other institution, through the same lens you would a religion. I made that sacrifice, though, so that you can see my opinion as justified and worthy by virtue of my effort.
Now I have to take my wife on a walk to the coffee shop…to help her “determine how much to commit to, or believe in, a particular representation”. I can tell that thinking this way is going to lead to a rather cynical transactional view of relationships.
I’m hearing it everywhere now, which is a little morbid.
I really detest that iconic ‘march of progress’ illustration seen all over the place to promote misconceptions about evolution, so it seems only fair that Intelligent Design creationism get their own version.
(found on an otherwise boring and stupid facebook rant by a creationist)
Sad news: H.R. Giger has died. It’s a good short review of the nature of his work, too. One word: unsettling.
