Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, the Board Game: An Analysis
I finally got my hands on the board game, Intelligent Design vs. Evolution! I bought it as a gag gift for my brother a few years ago but the ungrateful little prick never actually got around to doing anything with it.
Slightly more fun than an aneurysm
I’m positively giddy with anticipation! This game is going to be unbelievably fun. To start off, I noticed that the box included a DVD called The Science of Evolution. I love science! Let’s see what we’ve got!
Wait a goddamn minute. I thought we were talking about science. Why the bloody hell is Ray Comfort heckling four high schoolers about their knowledge of evolution, with the sole intention of calling out every time they stutter and say maybe, probably, I don’t know, or get the hell away from me? What does that have to do with science, other than to point out the fact that our nation’s science education, specifically in the area of biology, has turned to a stagnant wasteland in large part because of festering sores like Ray Comfort?
Strike one. There’s still hope. Ok, time to get to the science. And, no, wait, awwww, damn it! They’re going through that blasted Way of the Master bullshit again. You know the drill: Hone in on an unsuspecting lout waiting for the bus and barrage them with petty holier-than-thou insults: You’re a liar, a thief, a hamburglar, a goddamn blasphemer, and an adulterer, and Jesus frowns upon you and your shenanigans!
Another strike. But wait! I’ve found redemption. Kirk Cameron shows up with his coup de grâce! In some of his finest acting to date, Cameron goes head to head with an orangutan to illustrate how we can share similar facial characteristics with primates, proving that there must be a common designer! You need to see it for yourself? You’re welcome:
It got weird, didn't it.
They have a little more fun with this rented orangutan in the movie; trying to buy it airline tickets and trying, rather successfully I might add, to make it eat a salad. It ate three. Take that, science? The closest they get to science is a train wreck of quotes mined to misrepresent folks like Stephen J. Gould. It’s like they stumbled upon the talkorigins.org article about common quote mining tactics and thought it was a brilliant idea.
But I’m way off track here. I haven’t even played the freaking game yet.
The Freaking Game
It says right on the box, Brains Provided. Fantastic! I’ve already left mine at the door. I won’t be needing it any longer.
The game-play seems simple enough. There is a stack of brain cards and it appears that whoever makes it to The End of Time (yes, really) with the most brain cards wins.
You roll the die and move a squishy, rubbery brain game-piece over the cutest board I’ve ever seen, and as you land on each square, you either get insulted and chastised with statements like, “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord”, and “Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Well said, Banana-Man. If you’re lucky, you can land on a square marked with “God’s Grace (unmerited favor)” and you get to take one brain because that’s just how God rolls. Fall on a sinful space and God takes away your brains, you filthy deviant.
Along the way you’re graced with pictures of famous scientists and preachers. I love the placement of Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin immediately after the In The Beginning starting line, sandwiching a No-Brainer space. Get It?!? No-Brainer! Zing!
Somebody's grumpy
But that’s not half of it! In order to advance on the board and build up your supply of brain cards, you get to answer a bunch of questions, Brain Teasers, jam-packed with misinformation. I wonder what’s in store…
Playing Against My Relative
In the accompanying DVD, Comfort and Cameron really try to hammer home the our rented orangutan is just as human as us because science says we’re related idea. In the spirit of clinging to this straw-man argument, I’ll be playing this enlightening game with my dog; besides, my wife just shakes her head when I ask her to join me. Oh well. We have to split up into two teams. It’s me against Piper. Human intellect (brain substituted with that in the box) against canine ingenuity (she tried eating her game-brain).
You're really gonna make me go through with this?
Here we go. First brain teaser.
Sourced by the definitive reference for candle lovers
True or False? Ramapithecus, once widely regarded as the ancestor of humans, has now been recognized as merely an extinct type of orangutan.
ANSWER: True. [wickipedia.org]
Did they just reference Wikipedia as a source? Did they just misspell Wikigoddamnpedia? Is the intern typing out these cards? Can’t they get a proof-reader? Jesus Christ.
I laboriously took a few seconds to pull up the Wikipedia entry on Ramapithecus and even it sources an Encyclopedia Britannica article. Regardless, yes, Ramapithecus was once thought to have been a human ancestor but, through the miracle of science and further findings, was later categorized more appropriately under Sivapithecus, a predecessor to the orangutan. Score one for evolution.
Piper got that one right. A wagging tail means true. She goes again. Next card:
Is the Church filled with hypocrites? (A.) No. (B.) Yes. (C.) Only in certain denominations.
ANSWER: (A.) No. There are no hypocrites in “the Church”. The Church is made up of genuine believers. Hypocrites aren’t believers – they are pretenders who will be sorted out on Judgment Day.
I thought the whole point of this Intelligent Design movement was to distance themselves from at least appearing like they’re a bunch of Bible believing fundamentalists. They appear to be devolving. I think I’m going to keep a side tally going along with these questions. This falls under what is known as the No True Scotsman fallacy.
And yet my dog got it right. A quizzical expression means A. Next question.
Which well-known publication said, “In extraordinary ways, modern archeology is affirming the historical core of the Old and New Testaments, supporting key portions of crucial biblical stories.”? (A.) Time. (B.) Newsweek. (C.) Reader’s Digest.
ANSWER: (C.) Reader’s Digest. [June 2000]
And this matters, why? Is this just filler? They couldn’t find a better place to quote mine than Reader’s Digest of 2000? I’m getting this bad mental image of Ray Comfort sitting on the toilet and thumbing through the Reader’s Digest, grimacing with exertion, until he comes across this gold mine of a quote. I hope he didn’t jump up in elation.
It’s not that I doubt someone said it (it appears to have been said by the author of Is the Bible True? Jeffery L. Sheler), it’s that I just don’t see what could possibly be educational in touting the fact that some loony fundamentalist wrote some Bible-affirming bullshit in the least respectable publication of the three choices presented. This is a game of trivia but I can’t see any benefit to having this trivial piece of minutiae either memorized or worth remembering.
Piper coughed. That means she chose C. I’m never going to get to go. Next card.
QED.
True or False? The Bible calls a professing atheist a “fool.”
ANSWER: True. [Psalm 14:1]
The Bible is not above ad hominem attacks. Neither is namby-pamby Ray Comfort or monkey-face Kirk Cameron.
Next Card. I don’t know how long I can take this.
True or False? The Bible doesn’t speak of a literal place called Hell. It is merely symbolic of the grave.
ANSWER: False (see Luke 16:19-31). Your eternal salvation may depend on your understanding of this truth. If you answered incorrectly, give two brains to the opposing team.
I’ve long given up hope that I might learn something about Intelligent Design or Evolution, but I am constantly entertained by all the pop-shots it takes at non-fundy versions of Christianity. Here we have a jab to the face to anyone questioning the existence of hell (I’m looking at you, Rob Bell). There are also a number of cards attacking Anglicanism or kicking Catholicism squarely in the balls because a prior pope said evolution was just fine with him.
What makes this card even more priceless is the fact that, if you answered incorrectly, you’re punished and have to give up two of your precious brain cards.
What is the basic idea behind the Second Law of Thermodynamics? (A.) Everything is wearing out. (B.) All matter contains heat. (C.) All matter is becoming more complex.
ANSWER: (A.) Everything is wearing out.
True. This game has worn me out. When you bring up the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in a discussion about biological diversity, that’s an automatic disqualification.
I’m giving up. I quit. I’m forfeiting to my dog, who was already doing quite well. She kicked my ass. Look at all those brains!
Come on, really? Another ad hominem attack card?
Conclusion
If you’re the kind of person who likes bleeding out your ears, then this could be the game for you. I’m already feeling a little faint from the mind-numbing exertion of trying to stick with it.
The cards can generally be broken up into the following categories:
- Alleged Fakes – Contains a few genuine historical hoaxes but also a number of instances where scientists changed their mind to reclassify fossilized remains. There’s even a card attacking the reclassification of Pluto’s status as a planet. Science has a built-in mechanism to further hone in on the truth and weed out fakes. This is portrayed as a detriment.
- Fill in the Blank – Most of these are a variation on the following:
- Fill in the blank: _________ Sucks. (A) Evolution (B) Jesus (C) God
- Riddles – Random riddles that have nothing to do with anything, except for the fact that they reinforce the notion that advanced biological lifeforms are advanced. Go figure.
- Verses – References to verses, even asking how many times in Genesis 1 occurred the phrase, “And God said…”. Truly imperative information
- Who Said It – Nothing but evolutionist quote mines and religious arguments from authority.
- Just Plain Bullshit – This overlaps with most other categories
The largest overall theme of the game, besides the Just Plain Bullshit category, is that of the argument from authority. Reasoning is absent. We are told that things are true because The Bible or Some Guy said something or other; we’re often hit with quote mines from legitimate scientists where it attempts to attack evolutionary theory by intentionally taking things out of context. Punctuated Equilibrium quote mines abound. My take on this is that, since fundamentalists take the word of prophets verbatim, they think that by tearing down the, uh, “prophets” of biology, they strike a blow. Science does not work that way.
While many of the cards cite their sources, they don’t really seem to understand the notion that it helps to have a reliable, respected source, otherwise you just look like a buffoon. Some of the more entertaining sources include wickipedia, World Net Daily, The Answers Book by Ken Ham, Reader’s Digest, and The Evidence Bible, by Ray Comfort (coauthored by God). I love Wikipedia as much as the next guy, but if anything, it’s only a place to get a general idea about a topic and gives you a rabbit trail to follow to find more legitimate sources. And if you source something that you yourself wrote as evidence, that’s the same thing as masturbation. And it’s a sin.
The DVD was a laughable mess of logical fallacies and sales pitches for The Evidence Bible and Way of the Master toilet paper. I was ready to write down the number to the Rent-An-Orangutan place, but they didn’t bother sharing that with us. That’s a service I could use quite regularly.
To wrap it up, I’ll just give you one more card. It sums up this game quite nicely.
True or False? We can never be certain as to whether or not man and dinosaur ever co-existed.
ANSWER: False. The Bible tells us that God Created all the land animals on the sixth day of creation. As dinosaurs were land animals, they must have been made on this day, alongside Adam and Eve, who were also created on Day Six (Genesis 1:24-31). [The Answers Book, Ken Ham, 1990]
Anyone wanna play?
#occupykidspool
A local photographer, Rex Larsen, had one of his pictures selected for Life Magazine’s 2011 Pictures of the Year contest. I’m trying to think of something witty to say, but this picture has left me speechless. Its beauty is beyond the power of words.
Grand Rapids' Contribution to Life's 2011 Pictures of the Year
Cthulhu on my Kindle
My lovely wife bought me a Kindle as a gift and I’ve been playing with it the first few days. So far, I love this thing.
I’ve been spending a few days hoarding free books that I can find all over the internet. Amazon has a bunch of free books on their site but also recommends other repositories. Project Gutenberg is pretty damn slick. Plus, today I found a totally free collection of HP Lovecraft’s works over at CthulhuChick.com. Well done, Ruth. You rock!
Amazon also has this nifty way of getting books to your Kindle. By registering your device, you have a specific @kindle.com email address assigned (managed on amazon.com) and you can send books as attachments in an email and they’ll show up the next time your e-reader connects to the web. It accepts zip files as well as .mobi files and a few other formats. Plus, they keep a hold of the books you send over email so that if you accidentally delete something, like I already have, you can just pull it up under the Personal Documents section of the Kindle management page and resend it to your device.
I was a bit of a naysayer when these things first came out, but I can definitely see the benefit of having one. Now I just wish I could squeeze my huge-ass hardcover copy of the Autobiography of Mark Twain into digital format without buying it again, because that thing is freaking heavy.
The Reason for the Season
My very own Hudsonville was in the news the other day. This time, it was a battle over just how Christian the Christmas decorations should be. We haven’t got much secular representation in this community, so we’re left with some bitter Christians roaming around the neighborhood, warning people that having lights on their house is *gasp* a very Pagan thing to do.
http://www.wzzm13.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=1332434026001
I especially love how the people in the video are quick to point out that they’re very Christian, and that some other people just take things too far. True in its own right, I suppose. I just wish I had received one of those letters.
For Christ’s sake, even I, an adamant atheist, have a Jesii on my Christmas tree. He’s right there, knocked halfway down the tree, upside down, having been usurped by a 1990′s era Sugar Bear ornament that still plays Christmas tunes after 20 years. That’s a fucking miracle, folks.
Truly, the King of Kings
I’m Sold on Dapper
Don’t get me wrong, I love my LINQ. I just have mixed feelings about LINQ2SQL, or anything that promises to make my life easier by allowing me to write fewer SQL statements.
I’ve been burned a few times too many by seemingly innocuous LINQ2SQL queries that ended up ballooning into resource hogs once deployed to the real world. Often, it’s a sleeper; some query that’s been running just fine for years and then, BAM! You get jolted by a spiked CPU like a shovel to the face because an email campaign hit some remote part of the site that hadn’t been pored over. A little digging finds that LINQ2SQL has drunkenly taken over the kegger at your parents’ house, smashing lamps and vases and shoving your friends into the pool, wreaking all sorts of havoc and running your CPU off the charts.
It’s that friend you learn to limit. He may be great in certain situations, like running the basic CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) routines on all those cumbersome admin screens, but once you take him into the real world, once you expose him to all your other friends on your high traffic ecommerce site, once you give him a broader audience, you run the risk that he’ll show his true colors, and you may not like what they see.
Such has become my relationship with any ORM that promises to lift the burden of having to write straight SQL. It’s fine in the right circumstances and saves loads of time writing basic operations. But once you cook up a slightly more complex query and roll it into a public website with tens of thousands of hits an hour, it’s just not enough. Trusting the black box of ORM SQL generation often turns out to be a risky endeavor.
I’d rather be in direct control of what SQL gets executed when writing finely tuned database access. Thus, I’ve come to love what Dapper has to offer. Dapper, by the folks over at stackoverflow.com, is an extremely lightweight data access layer optimized for pulling raw data into your own POCOs (Plain Old C# Objects). It’s that perfect fit between the nauseatingly redundant world of SqlCommands and DataReaders, and the overzealous and overbearing friend you find in LINQ2SQL. No longer do I have to guess at what kind of query an ORM is going to generate. No longer do I have to worry that LINQ2SQL is going to fly off the handle and take up all my CPU trying to compile the same dastardly query over and over again. I can instead write the SQL myself and get it into my POCO of choice with less effort than it takes to bash my head on the keyboard.
For example, let’s say I’ve got this domain object:
{
public string Acronym { get; set; }
public string Sentence { get; set; }
}
All I have to do to yank the data from the database is this:
{
conn.Open();
string sql = @"
SELECT TOP 1 omg.Acronym, wtf.Sentence
FROM OnoMatopoeicGiddiness omg
JOIN WordsToFollow wtf ON wtf.OmgID = omg.ID
WHERE wtf.ID = @WtfID";
var omgwtf = conn.Query<OmgWtf>(sql, new { WtfID = 3 }).First();
Console.Write("{0}: {1}", omgwtf.Acronym, omgwtf.Sentence);
}
The result is, of course:
SQL: I Squeal for SQL!
No longer do I have to suffer the fate of black box SQL generation when all I really want is a clean, easy, and fast way to get my SQL or stored procedure results directly into my domain objects. I’m sold on Dapper for many of my high-performing pages. As we maintain our sites and find the occasional bloated LINQ2SQL resource hog, we’re swapping out the queries to straight SQL, stored procedures, and Dapper, and it has really sped things up.
Go ahead, give it a shot yourself. It’s available on the NuGet Gallery, and only imports a single C# file; no extra assemblies required. They’ve got plenty of examples at the project site. I’m wondering how I ever lived without it.
First day at Steamboat is a bust
We flew into Steamboat last night all geeked to hit the slopes today. We noticed it was really windy during the night and we kept waking up to the sound of the condo rattling and the sight of ratty white dudes with mangy afros flying through the air past our window. When I stepped out onto the deck I was immediately assailed by tiny glasslike shards of ice eagerly impaling themselves into the whites of my eyes.
Our condo is on a steep slope facing the ski hills so the wind here is enough to knock over a grown man, with the added insult of flash freezing him on the way down. The result, I expect, is that the poor soul would be smashed to frozen bits on the pavement without ever making it to the gondola. I wished to avoid this fate, so we donned our complete skiing attire before making the steep decline down a road with no shoulder in search of breakfast. The wind was terribly offensive.
We ate breakfast and a few concerned employees, seeing that we were dressed in full skiing regalia, apologetically explained that all lifts would remain closed the entire day, and that all employees of the mountain had been informed to stay inside. Our waiter explained that 120 mph gusts of wind were recorded further up the mountain. I couldn’t be sure whether this was an exaggeration or the truth.
A few years ago, I met an aged ski bum with a fondness for Billy Idol while skiing at Heavenly, overlooking Lake Tahoe. He explained that in his youth he had worked the chair lifts at Heavenly and was on staff the night when a few lifts remained operational despite high winds. The ghastly result was a lift whose seats were buffeted to the point where the cable bounced off the pullies, sending the passengers plummeting to the snow below. But that’s not all. You know how, when you hold a garden hose taut, you can yank it in such a way that sends a wave down the length of the hose? The same thing happened with the cable on the ski lift. The tension was so great that, after dumping its load of passengers from the lift, the cable rebounded and snapped back, sending a wave of energy down the length of the cable. As he explained it to me, a number of people were killed instantly. One teenage girl had both legs immediately severed above the knees, and lived. This guy explained how he had been involved in shoveling as much snow as possible to try and cover up all the blood staining the snow.
Suffice it to say, when Steamboat kept its lifts shut down today because of high winds, I was mildly annoyed until I remembered this story and made the conscious decision to appreciate my own two complete legs rather than one missed day of skiing.
Instead, we took the bus around and into town, where the wind was noticeably more mild and our ski clothes were much less necessary. Jen got embarrassed enough from locals apologizing for the unfit conditions that she removed her snow pants in the hope that they wouldn’t assume we were there for the skiing. We’ve got a condo in a great location, with a perfect view of those slopes that are just out of reach. I guess this afternoon will be one of hot chocolate, nachos, a good book, and some wine and steak. It’s not so bad.
