…and this is a 
As you've already heard, the Atheist Foundation of Australia was hit with a denial-of-service attack earlier this week (you can learn more about it in this interview of Jason Ball by Catherine Deveny).
I rather like their planned unofficial response.
This is a call to all non-believers and advocates for freedom of speech to join us in a global co-ordinated minute of prayer with the aim of inundating God (in this context, the Christian god, God, as distinct from the Greek god, Zeus, the Egyptian god, Ra etc etc) with so many useless prayers that it causes his divineness to go offline as as result of our own DDOS ('Divine' Denial of Service).
The prayer minute will be at exactly 8pm (Eastern Standard Time) & 9am (Greenwich Mean Time) on Sunday 8 November 2009.
Please join us in this important task, with any luck it will take God a while to get back online, ensuring us at least a few days of godless peace. It will also give the Westboro Baptist Church some much needed time to catch up on paperwork.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to join in, because whatever I have planned for that time, whatever it may be, will be far more interesting and productive than babbling to an invisible man. I'm pretty sure I won't be needed, though; I understand all modern prayers are first funneled through a 110 baud modem, then passed further upstairs by telegraph, then pony express riders gallop it over to the Pearly Gates, and then a rewritten version is passed on to a team of long-dead Sumerian scribes for transcription into cuneiform on wax plates, and then and only then is it in a format that a bronze age patriarchal deity can understand. I don't think it'll take much to swamp the celestial bandwidth (which actually explains a lot, if you think about it.)
Comments
Posted by: WashingMachine0
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October 25, 2009 9:45 PM
This has to work, you know, prayer always does!
Posted by: Janine, Vile Bitch, OM | October 25, 2009 9:47 PM
I will set up a surrogate prayer for that time.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 25, 2009 9:52 PM
Yawn, you can't show that. The evidence says otherwise. The delusions for the religious never end.Posted by: Janine, Ignorant Slut, OM | October 25, 2009 9:55 PM
Nerd, I am sure that WashingMachine0 was joking.
Posted by: Newfie
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October 25, 2009 9:56 PM
the irony will be lost on some, and some of those will get their britches twisted
Posted by: Die Anyway
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October 25, 2009 9:59 PM
I'm guessing that there's an "Eastern Standard Time" in Australia because 9:00am Greenwich mean time on November 8th, with be 4:00am U.S. Eastern Standard Time. I will have to miss out on this particular Godly Pharyngulation as I intend to be sound asleep at that "ungodly" hour.
Posted by: Ravenred | October 25, 2009 10:03 PM
Could we use a Godbot instead of doing it ourselves?
Posted by: The Science Pundit
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October 25, 2009 10:04 PM
I don't have rad computer skills, but I have a friend who can set up a proxy server and name it Cthulhu. This way you can still participate in the DDOS attack but feel good about it.
Posted by: Keith Harwood | October 25, 2009 10:05 PM
The Sumerian scribes write on clay tablets, not wax.
Posted by: WashingMachine0
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October 25, 2009 10:07 PM
Yes, I was joking THANK YOU Janine. Damn internet needs to get a sarcasm button already.
Posted by: Kobra
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October 25, 2009 10:09 PM
Hahaha. That is the perfect response.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 25, 2009 10:12 PM
Try emoticons. Sorry.Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
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October 25, 2009 10:15 PM
I'll make a point of sleeping on my back. I always snore when I'm on my back. That's the best I can offer.
Posted by: Larry
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October 25, 2009 10:16 PM
I bet god has got a bunch of them 40 Gpps (giga-prayers per second) Cisco divine enterprise-class routers and a bigass prayer server farm that can pretty much take any level of prayer traffic thrown at it.
Of course, the prayers all go to the bit bucket but still...
Posted by: Don Smith
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October 25, 2009 10:27 PM
How about we set up a bunch of those Tibetan prayer wheels on our blenders (I'm sure y'all have blenders - hard to make frozen margaritas without one.) That ought to flood the prayer lines.
Posted by: Almighty God Himself | October 25, 2009 10:32 PM
Wow, a whopping .000000000001% increase in pointless prayers to a god who doesn't listen anyway. That'll teach 'em!
Posted by: John McKay | October 25, 2009 10:38 PM
God does not listen to Atheist prayers, which, when you think about it, is only fair since Atheists don't pray. The only way this plan can work is if the Atheists hire renegade Christian prayer hackers--probably Unitarians--to pray for them.
Posted by: Somnolent Aphid | October 25, 2009 10:47 PM
Wow, a whopping .000000000001% increase in pointless prayers to a
godnonentity whodoesn'tcan't listen anyway.Posted by: oscarzoalaster | October 25, 2009 10:50 PM
You messed up the link to the protest announcement. Here is the actual link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=162437479558&ref=mf
Posted by: Dan Kerr | October 25, 2009 10:59 PM
Thanks so much for the plug PZ. Don’t let the (lack of) effectiveness of prayer stop you, i prefer to think of the response this way -: Wouldn’t the world be a better place if all retaliatory responses are conducted with imaginary weapons?
Let this be a good ethical lesson to the theists.
Hope you can all come join us, time difference permitting.
Dan, almighty Creator of said Facebook group.
Posted by: Steven Alleyn | October 25, 2009 11:03 PM
Ken MacLeod thought of this in his book Newton's Wake - there, Kurzweil like uploaded personalities on a virtual planet of 4 billion end up building thousands of prayer wheels in an attempt at a Denial of Service attack on God.
Made me chuckle.
Posted by: charfles | October 25, 2009 11:11 PM
I'm pretty sure Yahweh employs a load balancer. I believe it's a Cisco.
Posted by: Spastage | October 25, 2009 11:17 PM
$ ping yahweh
ping: unknown host yahweh
Damn....
Posted by: Almighty God Himself | October 25, 2009 11:23 PM
"Wouldn’t the world be a better place if all retaliatory responses are conducted with imaginary weapons?"
Only a hunch, but I'd predict that the side using imaginary weapons would be annihilated by the side using real ones. The survivors might consider themselves better off.
Posted by: Creature of the Universe
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October 25, 2009 11:32 PM
All the prayers sent from earth
weigh the morning down.
Fear seeps out from confessional booths
church bells ring old songs.
The devils in heaven.
Gods in hell.
Will anything change?
It’s hard to tell.
Posted by: Owlmirror | October 26, 2009 12:29 AM
If you check RFC 10401+616i, you'll discover that a prayer frame can easily be spoofed, and the atheistic nature of the prayer generator can be masked.
All that any praying individual need do is to truthfully assert that they believe that "someone" is listening to the prayer they are about to utter, and the "believer" flag gets set to "true".
As long as the atheist uttering the prayer and its preamble is not deaf, the prayer will go through the router without a hitch.
This does not mean that it will not ultimately wind up in /dev/null with all of the other prayers of (actual) believers, of course, but there are limits to the implementation.
Posted by: Janine The Ineffable, OM | October 26, 2009 12:32 AM
I do not think I like this mixing of theology and computer programing. It has the potential to contaminate our geeks and nerds.
Posted by: Kel, OM | October 26, 2009 12:58 AM
Fuck, I've landed in bizarro reality. Here the Christians do something material to disrupt the atheists, and the atheists resort to praying!
I knew I shouldn't have taken that expired medication...
Posted by: darvolution proponentsist
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October 26, 2009 2:10 AM
This is most excellent. I now have the opportunity to give my recently purchased PrayerMAX 5000™ a thorough rundown. There's still time for you to get your own !
Im in ur beleaf systemz, hackin your godz
Posted by: TrekkinBob | October 26, 2009 2:13 AM
I'm pissed you forgot to mention dogsleds...or perhaps this was intentional since they ARE a legimate mode of transportation. At least they were, until we stopped getting snow here in Alaska...
Posted by: Rorschach | October 26, 2009 2:33 AM
Duh, I dont know about that praying thing.
Jason did well in that ABC interview though.Although Deveny was being quite obtuse...atheist Mardi Gras, WTF !
Go opposition to religious instructions in public schools !!
Posted by: llewelly | October 26, 2009 2:57 AM
Why don't we use an army of Electric Monks to do the praying?
Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline.
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October 26, 2009 3:16 AM
TrekkinBob,
Sorry. The dogsleds are sorely needed in the newly overfrozen Hell.
Posted by: Kapitano | October 26, 2009 4:25 AM
God's website is showing a Tav-Dalet error.
Yes that's right - it's a Hebrew 404.
Posted by: Alex | October 26, 2009 5:38 AM
"swamp the celestial bandwidth (which actually explains a lot, if you think about it.)"
You should write up that idea and get it published in a theology journal :).
Posted by: Wobert | October 26, 2009 6:29 AM
I'll pray until I get a hard on (well fundies do) hopefully morning glory turns up, otherwise it could be a dull month.
Posted by: Russ Painter | October 26, 2009 6:38 AM
Official hat for the event adds 23% extra power to your prayers:
http://www.zazzle.com/hack_god_embroidered_hat-233225501556042218
Posted by: Eduardo Kalinowski | October 26, 2009 6:40 AM
Unfortunately, it's known that god ignores his voicemail messages. :-)
Posted by: davem
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October 26, 2009 6:50 AM
@Kapitano : You must have the wrong url there - with the correct url, I get a 403...
As to godbots, I do believe Yahweh runs cat prayers > /dev/null as a cron job every second.
Posted by: IanW | October 26, 2009 7:08 AM
It's nice to see the theists admitting openly that their god is useless. If he were not, why then would they need to do his dirty work for him instead of simply praying for the desired result?
It's also nice to see them finally and openly admitting that they truly despise purported Christian principles such as "turning the other cheek", "giving one's coat also", and "going the extra mile".
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 26, 2009 7:34 AM
See comments 28 and 40 for the take-home message.
Posted by: Jer | October 26, 2009 9:20 AM
I understand all modern prayers are first funneled through a 110 baud modem ...
No no no. See, Heaven has this large and complicated bureaucracy of lesser gods and deified humans that take care of the "grunt work" on God's behalf. (Believers call these two groups "angels" and "saints" because they like to pretend that they have a monotheistic religion). So that he can sit and contemplate his divine awesomeness. Or perhaps so he can sit and contemplate how the fuck he's supposed to be three people and one person at the same time. (The doctrine of the Trinity was the original DOS attack on God - it's got him so tied up in knots trying to figure out how the hell that's supposed to work that he hasn't been able to do much of anything since the 2nd century CE).
So all this will really do is get your "Guardian Angel" to look up from whatever book it's reading and say "WTF - I thought this guy was an atheist. What the hell does he want?" And then when it figures out it's a joke it'll grumble and go back to it's book.
Posted by: noel | October 26, 2009 1:19 PM
A sarcasm button. Yeah, that'll work.
--- (looks for button) ---
Dang.
Posted by: j h woodyatt | October 26, 2009 4:11 PM
I've written a little Perl script to do my praying for me. Now if someone can provide me with the fully qualified Internet domain name for God's prayer servers, I'm good to go.
Posted by: Knockgoats | October 26, 2009 6:26 PM
I'm surprised no-one has yet mentioned Arthur C. Clarke's story "The nine billion names of God" - in which automated prayer has unexpected results.
Posted by: Who Cares | October 26, 2009 8:18 PM
At #45: Maybe because it is not praying but enumerating all names of god.
Posted by: Alastair Tait | October 26, 2009 8:54 PM
Oh this is going to be laughed at by religious groups. But I think the subtleness o it all will be over their heads.
Posted by: Mez
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October 27, 2009 7:32 AM
First, much of Oz is in Daylight Saving (some bits don't do it), so is the Australian Eastern Standard Time mentioned with or without the shift forward? If non-shifted, I think it'd be 9 AM by the clock.
Second, #45 As I remember, the results weren't unexpected by the people commissioning the system, though the contractors doubted. One of the more famous closing lines in all science fiction