Bananas prove existence of God
Cosmic Variance reports.
posted by Luca at 2:14 PM
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Marge, I agree with you - in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory. Homer Simpson
RSS
Recent Posts
- Labor Day
- The truth is in the gut
- Poor timing and longing
- On rejection
- The pornographic musical
- The \$325,000 washer-dryer
- Is that like NP-completeness?
- Welcome, Yonatan
- Are you prepared?
- The vision thing
Some Older Posts
- Random KSAT [1] [2] [3]
- The trouble with "nerd pride"
- ICM 2006 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5} [6]
- O(log n) approximation
- Average-case complexity
- Szemeredi's Theorem: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
- Gowers Uniformity
- We should see other people
- On rejection
- The vision thing
- The dreamy-eyed alumni
- The Tao of Berkeley
- The things I notice
- Home, queer home
- Where do you want to go?
- Don't come to the podium!
8 Comments:
5/02/2006 03:29:00 PM
but if you stop after the banana segment, you'll miss the funniest part, when kirk cameron (dreamy child star of growing pains) opines on the existence of God and the nature of NP vs. coNP.
5/02/2006 04:57:00 PM
Oops. I have a hard time to believe that those people are taking it seriously. It does not seem to be a subtle sarcasm either, so they must be paid to do it.
Or may be I am too naive...
5/02/2006 06:12:00 PM
actually, you're not naive enough.
I guess if you didn't grow up in the US in the 80's, then you don't quite know who Kirk Cameron is. His posters adorned the walls of pre-teen girls everywhere. In the late 80's, he went bat-shit crazy and became and evangelical christian (sorry for being redundant), denounced his costars as pornographers, and began making these bizarre christian movies about the world after "The Rapture."
so, on the contrary, he is quite serious, and seriously insane. what's more, if you don't realize that these kinds of films appeal to the _majority_ of evangelical christians (at least throughout the south--I say this from first-hand knowledge!), then you have not yet realized what a dismal state this country is in.
5/03/2006 01:10:00 AM
Ok, then he is insane (that was a case I did not mention). But then everybody else is just a "Good American".
5/04/2006 05:30:00 PM
It is time for the tcs folks to send their proposal to whoever has paid the money to God to build this universe!
5/06/2006 12:12:00 PM
following luca's post, some colleagues of mine argued that the fringe elements of any political/religious/scientific movement are ridiculous, and that one should not use these as a basis of judging the whole. while this is certainly true, people make the incorrect assumption that these guys are "fringe."
- evangelical christians form the largest denomination of christians in the united states (more than e.g. catholics or non-evangelical protestants). they are also the most politically active group.
- this video is centric evangelical teaching (at least they are not claiming, e.g. that AIDS and/or hurricanes were sent here by God to punish homosexuals). in fact, the national religious broadcaster's (NRB) association gave this video series the "people's choice award" in 2004 and 2005 and the "best program award" in 2005 and in 2006.
this isn't some home video circulating the internet. this is a reflection of the core evangelical beliefs, these are their award winning teachings.
5/07/2006 05:56:00 AM
And is that fortunate or unfortunate? one can argue that the less scientifically coherent/verifiable the argument, the more advanced its possible explanation(if any). Maybe the complexities hidden in the banana argument are simply too convoluted to unravel with our current tool set. That is since we need to use this stupid little thing called logical reasoning.
Perhaps posterity will discover that absolute knowledge is mappable onto a circular scale. Maybe knowing nothing (or in this case, stating the supremely ridiculous) is equal to THE truth.
5/08/2006 10:09:00 PM
"- evangelical christians form the largest denomination of christians in the united states (more than e.g. catholics or non-evangelical protestants). "
Ha ha ha ha. Evangelical is not a denomination at all. There are evangelical Catholics, evangelical Baptists, and even evangelical Presbyterians! Many who are evangelical do not belong to any particular denomination are considered non-denominational.
Apparently they are not making themselves know enough. You do not even know who they are!
But seriously, while many Christians believe that natural theology can prove the existence of a God, it is not clear what it means that God exists. Calvin said that everyone believes in a God, it’s just that some believe in man-made gods while others believe in the true God. In this since a person’s god is what they believe is the highest thing, or something like that.
No Christian believes that we can know all about God from nature; this would nullify the need for Christ. Christ reveals (and revealed) the true nature of God as redeemer to us, which we cannot know by nature alone (by most any Christian’s account). Now because everyone believes in a god, this revealed knowledge is really the most important part. While some evangelicals use bananas to try to convince monkeys, the gospel they preach is that of Christ.
Post a Comment
<< Home