The omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, loving superintelligence drinking game
Sep 7th, 2008 | By Chris Ray | Category: FeaturedMost of my last few articles have been either essentially academic treatments of religion or politics, or they have been current events. But I, like most college students, do (somehow) eventually grow tired of engaging with the most complicated philosophical and metaphysical claims ever advanced by thinking primates, and so sometimes we have nothing better to do but sit back and creatively manipulate our subjective ontologies with a healthful dose of Hitch-juice. However, because I (as a good humanist) am acutely aware of and concerned by the tragedy and crude hilarity that often follows alcohol wherever it goes, I have devised a new drinking game that will (hopefully) leave you and your friends very, very sober.
So, next time it’s a Friday night, a slow Wednesday, a weekend, or any weekday whose name ends in ‘Y,’ break out the God drinking game and don’t worry about bringing your own flask. Here are the rules:
- Every time a preternatural superintelligence who was born in flesh of a virgin, murdered on a cross after brutal torture by the men he died loving, and miraculously risen from the dead as a sacrifice for your sins finds a better way of proving his endless love to the world than by appearing on a piece of burned toast, take a drink (only after close inspection to make sure Jesus isn’t watching from within the glass).
- Every time a principled violation of the laws of physics is vigorously proven to exhaust all competing and also all possible natural explanations, you might as well just drink yourself stupid because all rational descriptions of the universe relating effects with causes just got thrown out the window anyway.
- Every time a broad, controlled, double-blind medical experiment proves that people of certain religious persuasions are completely immune to all known chemical toxins, sit down with your Christian friends and all take shots from a gallon jug of gasoline. Last one living is the most faithful.
- Is God incapable of missing the cup, or does God simply choose not to miss the cup in every instance? Either way, drink it, because God can just transgress a shut-out on your ass whenever he thinks he could have.
- But isn’t the real question “should you crack a Natty because God loves the harsh, salty taste of Natty, or does God love the harsh, salty taste of Natty because you should crack it?”
- Every time any of your religious friends decides to bypass a lively public debate and go straight to a peer-reviewed scientific journal with his or her rigorous proof of the existence of God, ask them to lend you some of their Nobel Prize money to buy a keg. If you are an atheist, you will need the entire keg.
- The next time you encounter a Holocaust survivor, take several drinks of liquid courage before you tell him or her that the Holocaust was not an instance of true moral evil because it gave the Jews the chance to act bravely before being butchered by a ruthless dictatorship. Believe me, without either several drinks or tenure at Oxford, this will seem like a profoundly stupid thing to do.
- Tell your friend that, for any fine alcoholic beverage “P” that can actually obtain, God could always design a beverage “P+1″ that is sweeter and more refreshing, and a beverage “P+1+1″ and a beverage “P+1+1…+1,” therefore it is logically impossible for an omnipotent God to actually obtain a perfectly fine beverage (since any such beverage P could always be sweetened to a beverage P+1), therefore the property of omnipotence cannot ever be actualized (or even described) and is therefore absurd, and that therefore “an omnipotent being exists” is an absurd statement. If they resolve this problem, reward them with a beverage “P!” and watch their liver explode.
- If God wants the beer to stay fresh and is willing but unable to keep it cold, take a shot. If God wants to beer to stay fresh and is able but not willing to keep it cold, take a shot. If God both wants the beer to stay fresh and is also able to do so, then why the hell are you taking shots in the first place?
- Suppose you are walking through the New Hampshire Liquor Store and you happen upon a watch nestled between the rows upon rows of alcohol. If you conclude that the watch happened to fall into place by chance, you really need stop drinking. If you conclude that God, despite his omnipotent omnibenevolence, would design something so complex as a watch and then give it to the kind of person who would take off their watch in the New Hampshire Liquor Store and just leave it somewhere, you should probably take up drinking.
- If you are still able to believe, despite all the ruthlessly materialistic conclusions of neuroscience, that your conscious experience is more than a mere epiphenomenon of the physical components of your brain and is instead its own, separate entity with a distinct ontological reality, take fifteen more shots and then try to convince yourself that Cartesian dualism is viable.
- Remember, alcoholism “is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to drunken things, that is to say, things set apart and drawn all over with sharpies when they pass out at a party.” Do not ever, ever convert.
This article is not to be misconstrued as encouraging, promoting, or condoning process theology among minors.
Last 5 posts by Chris Ray
- Christian theocracy group accuses American Humanist Association of collaborating with “America’s enemies” - November 12th, 2008
- Suppose Colorado’s “life at conception” ballot initiative had succeeded… - November 10th, 2008
- More data is needed to confirm Bloom’s hypothesis about why American atheists are so mean - November 7th, 2008
- Lack of Miracles Puzzles Theologians - October 26th, 2008
- Can a moral theory succeed in modifying human behavior? - October 20th, 2008
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Nicely done. I find Edger to be a wonderfull addition to my daily reading. Now I can go get a drink.
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It is a shame that as many bright, educated young people spend their time trying to deny the birth, death and resurrection of Christ, even though it cannot be denied by history. The sad thing is, if you only knew Him and accepted Him into your heart, your doubts would fade and you would see a strength and joy in your life that you have never known.
However, as long as you follow the path your are upon, all you will be is unhappy, educated, overinflated and stupid. That’s what the world needs, some more educated idiots.
Keep it up kids, after all we’ll find out who is right sooner or later.
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Chris Ray Reply:
September 8th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
“However, as long as you follow the path your are upon, all you will be is unhappy, educated, overinflated and stupid. That’s what the world needs, some more educated idiots.”
Well, glad we could have an intelligent, adult conversation about it.
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Booze is happy stuff!
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Angry Atheist Drinking Game
Take a drink:
If you have ever tried to back up a philosophical/religious argument with a reference to sci-fi
Two, if you referenced Star Trek
Three, if it was the Matrix
Four, if it was Babylon 5
Plus one, one if you actually quoted a fictional character.
If you think believers who take (___________) literally are stupid, and believers who don’t take it literally are hypocrites, but still want to claim you value rational discourse over ad hominem.
If you claim not to have faith in science, but still strongly believe science will eventually fix/cure (_________).
If you think subscribing to moral relativism demands that one approve of (insert really bad thing here).
If you love Dawkins, but haven’t actually read any of his books.
Plus one for Hitchens, and another for Harris.
If you have ever referenced Leviticus in an argument.
Two if you can quote the passage.
Plus one if you have actually read any other part of the bible.
Plus two if you can quote a sexy part.
Plus three if you can reference the Qu’ran in Arabic
If you insist that its reasonable to require that the laws of our universe must apply to the alleged being who created same.
If you believe that epiphenomenalism isn’t a problematic form of dualism.
If you think being empirical means using science, and everything else is just philosophy.
Two more if think string theory is cool.
Plus one, if you can defend many worlds.
Plus one, if wikipedia is your source.
Plus two, if you can do the math that proves it.
If you think the only way to atheism is through an understanding of science.
Plus one if you think all scientists who aren’t atheists are blind, brainwashed or drunk.
If you didn’t know that IQ was designed to measure mental retardation, not how much better you are than others.
If you think philosophers are really fearful that the sun will not come up tomorrow.
Two, if you think Descartes was a solipsist.
Plus one, if you have read Atlas Shrugged.
Plus one, if you finished it.
Plus four, if you think its the best book ever written.
If you have ever kidnapped a cracker.
Plus one if you got death threats.
Plus two if you gave a lecture about it.
Plus five, if you were paid for that lecture.
If you take your atheism very very seriously
Feel free to add your own….
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Chris Ray Reply:
September 9th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
You know you are an “angry atheist” if you are any atheist being described by a Christian.
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Joe Reply:
September 10th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Sometimes true….but some times drinking is necessary, and anger useful.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. - Sun Tzu
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The problem with taking a shot if you believe in epiphenomenalism is that epiphenomenalism claims that consciousness is a causally-dead byproduct of natural processes. You just disproved your own theory by drinking. Take more shots until you forget you contradicted yourself.
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Joe Reply:
September 11th, 2008 at 8:45 am
True, causality is really the issue here, but if I was to defend epiphenom.., I would simply say while your conscious belief is epiphenomena, the decision to drink is not.
In effect your neuron is firing and the action that results is drinking, the epi part is where you consciously decide to drink, but this happens because the neuron fired.
Neuron fires, and two things happen as a result, I drink and I decide consciously to drink.
Where this gets really problematic though, is when you start talking about higher level functioning. Say I tell you that your father just died.
Neurons are firing, and you have a physical reaction, crying for instance, and also then a conscious reaction. But the conscious reaction is ridiculously complex. Think of how much CPU power is used to create virtual worlds in video games. Then imagine how an even more complex virtual world generator could have evolved in human beings…. simply as a side effect with no causal nature… and therefore no benefit to the organism.
The processing overhead is huge for the brain creating all you see, hear, taste… consciously, but epiphenom reduces consciousness is just noise. Unless consciousness has some function… some effect… it makes no sense for the body to keep it. Its way too much work and it would likely go the way of our appendix.
You don’t need a computer gui, just the 1s and 0s…. and an algorithm. Unless the gui has a use.
That’s just one objection to epiphenom, by the way, there are others. Truth is, we just don’t know what consciousness is…. yet.
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Chris Ray Reply:
September 12th, 2008 at 1:19 am
“Epiphenomalism” should be a drink unto itself. Like the “Warp Core Breach!”
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Joe Reply:
September 12th, 2008 at 4:37 am
I can drink to that.
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