Cybernetic futility

gosh darn, got suckered... i should've seen it coming.

but it has a sad ending.

oof, saw THAT end coming.

oh! haha... there WAS an ending. i gave up on it too soon!

Ha! Ha! It delivers the expected pay-off... :)

I thought it was pretty funny as a stand-alone. But the whole thing is hillarious.

I thought For the Kids was a girl...

I couldn't see that because my computer got caught in an infinite loop and crashed.

But PZ, the fact that a robot was used to debate Christians just proves that atheists ask circular questions.

I think the traffic from Pharyngula is going to bring Bag of Toast's site down today. It takes forever to load, though worth the wait. Oops. Did I say "forever"? I meant "a long time." Like the comic itself.

I put up a circular tale, too, this week. It's courtesy of our school bureaucracy. [Link]

Funny, but truthfully some Christians I speak to answer the "How do you god is real?" question with a "Because I have faith". Which really means, "Because I can and will without question"

Woof, don't I know it. I recently got into it with some Christians at the conservative blog anti-strib, and it's nothing short of exhausting.

That human is the Captain Kirk of fundimental christians. He is able to defeat the robot throughuse of logic.

I felt sorry for the robot.

You might find this amusing.

I am sure that "creas" already have that kind of machinery. Have been propably years already.

So: They are cleverer than us? (Perhaps, but we are too "close minded" to admit that...)

- But, how do you know that cells can't evolve?
- I know it is so because cellular machinery is irreducibly complex.
- But, how do you know that cellular machinery is "irreducibly complex"?
- I know it is so because cells can't evolve.
- But, how do you know ...

And now we know why they call the argument "irreducible".

It's funny because it's so true. A creationist actually wrote the following to me during a long email argument:

I am glad that my argument is circular as you state. Have you seen the
carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle, the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the carbon dioxide cycle? All circular in any biology book.

Stunned by this spectacular display of illogic, I decided it was pointless to respond.

A nice caricature of the creationist arguments. Of course I have not met with such simpleminded circularity, which is perhaps why so many (otherwise intelligent people) adhere to such ridiculous claims.

It seems most literalist argue that the bible is true because it's prophecies have been fulfilled, scientifically accurate, historically accurate, and (this is new to me) has "unique structure".

Of course, aside from those assertions being quite bogus, such arguments are non-sequiturs. Just because my 90% of my newspaper is accurate, one cannot apply induction to assert the rest must be true as well. Of course logical fallacies are only fallacies when theists use them (see #255).

I laughed so hard! I have actually heard that argument b4. The tautology almost made my rationality gland explode.

Why do I imagine the two kids as Lyra_Belacqua and Will Parry?

This is insufficiently-geeky: the robot and the fundie go through 232 complete loops before the final resolution. Had the author been a geek, it would have been 255 iterations.

Well, okay. I should take that back: the final problem is caused by a stack overflow, not an integer overflow or untested boundary condition.

I am sure that "creas" already have that kind of machinery. Have been propably years already.

So: They are cleverer than us? (Perhaps, but we are too "close minded" to admit that...)

- But, how do you know that cells can't evolve?
- I know it is so because cellular machinery is irreducibly complex.
- But, how do you know that cellular machinery is "irreducibly complex"?
- I know it is so because cells can't evolve.
- But, how do you know ...

And now we know why they call the argument "irreducible".