I usually don’t post too much personal stuff on my blog, but I thought this was important enough that I should make an exception. It has been one month now since I came out to my family. So I thought it would be a good idea to write up my story.

Realizing one’s own sexual identity is not always easy for every person. For me, it took quite awhile. My first crush was on this girl in 2nd grade, and I was too shy to talk to her, or even ask what her name was. At the time, of course, I didn’t fully understand the emotions involved. I knew only that she was too pretty to talk to or about, and that because I’d never felt that way about anyone before, I reasoned that I should probably hide those feelings, for the crime of being unusual.

Sociologically, I was a late bloomer, and kept my sexual naivete for a long time. I remember high school as being rather awkward, and not fully understanding the sexual humor that other students bandied about readily. They probably had only a touch more understanding than I did, but were likely far more comfortable posturing than I was.

I remember that one of my acquaintances in gym class confessed that he was a homophobe. Even though I did not yet know that I was gay, I thought that this is a rather ridiculous stance. It’s not that he was violent, it’s that the idea of some member of the same gender being attracted to him, made him very uncomfortable. To me this is really at the core of the debate concerning homosexuality and homosexual behavior: We’ve grown comfortable with the stereotypical portrayal of homos in movies, but many still harbor some level of discomfort with the idea once it goes beyond the screen and enters the real world.

Unlike some, I didn’t always know that I was gay. For me it took quite awhile to realize that I was a bit different from most others. At the tail end of high school I began to look at pornography. Of course, I started out by looking at the girls. Eventually, though I was compelled to follow where my curiosity led me. So, within a short while, I was looking at pictures of men. I thought that this was somewhat deviant, but the images appealed to me, and (being a computer geek) I was very much used to the anonymous safety provided by the internet. I excused myself by reasoning that it must be just a phase. I thought eventually the interest would wane, and I’d naturally switch back to looking at girls again.

I was able to keep that pretense for about 4 years, while I attended UCLA. During this time I also had another crush on one of my roommates. For most, this would be pure torture, for me it was quite tolerable. I got to see the guy everyday, work together with him on homework, and observe his interactions with his girlfriend. The friendship and intellectual companionship that came with studying the same material was enough for me, I didn’t have to ask him for more, and he never learned of my affection.

After graduating I went to work for 3 years. I still wasn’t ready to admit that I was gay yet, but I started to become more open about my interests. I watched many films, movies that features gay characters, focusing either on the coming out drama, or on the relationship that two men can share with each other. I also watched documentaries about gay portrayal in movies, and the intolerance sometimes shown by society. (I’d like to thank BBC for their courage to explore such politically sensitive topics in a realistic and very evenhanded manner). I excused this behavior has having a homosexual curiosity. I still find the topic to be intellectually fascinating, and certainly worth more exploring. Despite all the films and characters that I observed, I still never came to a grasp of “what it means to be gay.”

It wasn’t until this past year, that I was finally ready to admit to myself that I was gay. It began with first learning that my advisor was gay (actually a surprise to me, since I have no gaydar and didn’t pick up on it until the bigoted Prop 8 was approved). Then during the past summer, I used internet dating to find and meet with some other openly gay folks in the area. Just knowing that these people could live in relative comfort, without too much ostracization, gave me the courage I needed to come out.

Once I had the personal courage, I began to confide in my friends. None of them have shown me any bigotry or even disapproval. I think that my generation is much more tolerant of these issues than previous generations. We’re more open about our personal lives in general (sometimes to the extreme). Yet we also seem to have recognized that this openness requires us to be more tolerant of each other. Nevertheless, I’m probably quite fortunate to have such understanding friends. I’ve not really noticed any ‘weirdness’, or lasting awkwardness beyond the surprise shown when I reveal the news.

Based on that experience, I was ready to tell my family and parents. So last month, when we celebrated Christmas, I made the announcement at dinner. This seems to have shocked all but my sister. I get the feeling that there’s a bit of disappointment, though I’m not sure that I fully understand that. I find homosexuality to be much more interesting because of it’s relative abnormality: being hetero is just so ordinary. Still, my family has told me that they all still love me, and though it’ll take some adjustment, I think they also know that it doesn’t really change anything. I’m the same person I always was, and I’m not going to suddenly go playing with pink unicorns and dance around like a fairy while the very ground underneath my feet becomes a rainbow.

Mostly what I’ve learned, is that the question “what does it mean to be gay?” is a nonsense question. There’s no need to act or behave differently and there isn’t anything more fundamental to understand beyond the fact that your attractions are different from the norm. But, as Kinsey showed, these attractions are on a sliding scale anyway. There’s no need to even think of yourself as being different, nor do you have to identify with the stereotypes and cultural connotations.

I would characterize the entire ordeal as being both personally liberating and relatively uneventful: exactly the way it should be!

Remember that desktop machine that I assembled way back when? My paranoia led me to arrange the disk layout as follows: 2 drives in a mirror that will hold the primary system, and 4 drives in a RAID 5 for storage. The mirror was arranged by partitioning each of the drives into three sections: one for root, one for swap, one for /home. The root and /home sections were each placed into their own mirror RAID. I’m now quite glad that I’m so very paranoid.

Last week, while I was working on re-writing that compiler, I decided to upgrade my system (I felt oppressed by my software). I usually advise all my friends: “Don’t upgrade your computer, it will break everything.” It would have been good to follow my own advise. After the upgrade, grub was all wonkers and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it easily and get back to the compiler work. So, I figured the quickest solution was to completely re-install the system.

Easiest path to getting a new system, that has close to the same functionality of the old system is quite simple when you don’t have to worry about making extra backup copies of your stuff! I broke the mirror RAID, and installed a new system on one of the drives! Then any settings that I don’t quite like, or configurations that need to be maintained (such as the one for this website, and for Xorg) I can copy over when I identify the problem. When everything is all hunky-dory, then I can also re-establish the RAID.

Best part about splitting the root from the /home, is that all my user preferences and settings don’t have to be touched during the entire process! As soon as all the packages I wanted were installed in the new system (via dpkg --(get|set)-selections) I could simply login and pick up where I left off.

The total time before I could get back to programming: 1/2 day. I love Linux!

So the quarter finally ended, and I can get back to having a social life over the holidays!

The compiler that I wrote was, in my personal opinion, a pathetic failure. Though we were able to generate some x86_64 code that actually ran (given a bootstrapping program), it would crash on certain valid inputs. We were also unable to handle arrays properly; our calling convention was a nightmare (I now heartily recommend going with proven standards, rather than trying to come up with one yourself); and our register allocator was basically non-existent (it just spilled everything, assigning all ssa values to their own slot, and never re-using slots). On the positive side, it was able to do factorial, and towers of hanoi, so we nailed recursion!

The TA’ing gig was wonderful. I had great fun teaching the kids concepts, tricks, ways of thinking. It was my first time, so I occasionally gave away answers in my eagerness to explain, but overall I think I did a reasonable job. Some of the kids regularly came to my office hours, and thanked me for helping them pass the class (which felt really wonderful, I made a difference!) I ended up loving the TA work so much that I even let it take time from some of my other obligations (research, and my own classwork).

Given my experience, there’s one big thing that I’d change in the current system: I’d make discussion sections mandatory, and limit their size to about 10. This would make discussion an actual discussion, rather than just another lecture. I think the discussion sections should encourage the design aspects of the homework/projects. That is, we all gather round the table, and whiteboard a design. One of the things that I noticed in grading the programming assignments was that our students are sometimes really creative in their solutions (and not always in a good way). I think that we probably do a poor job of teaching design, because there isn’t really a quantitative scale that can be used to measure how good a design is. So, they need to practice for an hour each week, offer each other design options, constructively criticize by identifying holes in each other’s attempts (with guidance from the TA), until a satisfactory solution is converged upon. I don’t think our current system quite has the resources to do this though.

I still don’t get too much of a break though: I’d like to re-do the compiler, this time with a better design; I need to catch up on some neglected research; and I want to play around with Google’s new language Go.

It’s become somewhat a habit of mine to purchase for myself some sorta technology each Xmas. I’m usually the one to make the purchase myself, because I’m pretty much the only one that knows what I want and need. One of the curses of being so introverted, is that nobody knows what gifts to give you. The situation is complicated by the the plethora of options available in the tech industry and its very rapid change, my family just isn’t inclined to keep up. They shouldn’t get all the blame though, as every time they ask what I want, I haven’t kept up with the industry enough either.

Last year I bought myself a nice quad-core desktop machine, that required its own assembly. I had to get a specific case, so that would hold 6 HD’s, 4 in a RAID5 and 2 in a RAID1. I remember spending probably about 2 weeks going through all the options and choices, doing price/performance comparisons, etc, etc. My desires are really too specific for anyone but myself to buy a good Xmas present. That machine, is still working today, serving up this website, and hosting a large collection of media. Since I purchased it I’ve wanted to run use the quad core for heavy-duty computing, but only wound up doing that once. I still have (long dated) plans to do stock market calculations though!

So, today and yesterday I spent several hours browsing the netbook offerings. I’m pretty sure that I want one of these things now. Last year, the market didn’t quite fit my needs. What I’d really like to have is

• a decent keyboard
• HD screen 1366×768 resolution, with LED backlight
• Long battery life
• Built-in GPS
• Wifi, 802.11a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth, even though I have no bluetooth devices
• magnetic power plug, but Apple seems to have the monopoly on these, and isn’t licensing
• Internet everywhere, without paying hideous $30+/mo. service charges
• a Solid State Drive, because 5400rpm makes virtual memory paging take too long
• a processor that can actually do work

It seems that enough of these requirements are fulfilled by the Acer Aspire as1410-8414. While HD video playback isn’t as good as a normal desktop, it’s really the screen size that I care about. I need that space for plenty amounts of text. I assume that if the provided HD is too slow for my tastes I can upgrade in 6months to a SSD, and more RAM. My current laptop, Toshiba Satellite U205-S5057, has a Core 2 Duo, and has held up quite nicely for 3 years now. It’s unfortunate drawbacks are some finickiness with suspend/sleep, and battery life. I think that the season is right for an upgrade. I’ll be downgrading to a Core 2 Solo, but the higher number of pixels, and longer battery life make it all worthwhile.

The last post about Ray being bananas was far too light on the details. So, I thought I’d say a bit more about the ordeal today, while I have some time.

Ray operates a ministry in Huntington beach, and can usually be found on a soapbox bantering with beachgoers on Saturdays. There are several videos of this on YouTube, that I won’t reproduce here for brevity. He made himself famous online with one episode of his “Way of the Master” series that he produces with his boy-toy and former actor, Kirk Cameron. That episode, Bananas: The Atheist’s Worst Nightmare, claimed that bananas were perfect for human consumption, obviously designed as such by a loving creator god. His arguments were rapidly debunked, both in video form, and through skeptic websites.

In the video, Ray reveals his obvious lack of scholarship. He completely neglected to research anything about bananas before simply making up creationist arguments. He overlooked the history of bananas and their human cultivation for 7,000, year. He missed the fact that the convenient ‘pull tab’ is used by stupid humans, while smart monkeys simply pinch the other end. He claimed that the shape of the banana was a perfect fit for finger joints, while it’s simply a result of having grown in a bunch (nature can pack efficiently). It is unfortunate that Ray has a successful ministry, as it reveals that humans are easily won over by superficial arguments and tend not to take the time to seriously critique the messages they hear. The success of his ministry almost directly demonstrates, how fallible and gullible we are.

More recently, as an obvious publicity stunt, Ray decided to distribute a republication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, in ‘honor’ of the 150th anniversary of its original release. Of course the book has long been in public domain, so, while a bit touchy, this is a perfectly legal maneuver on his part. He placed within the book a 50 page Special Introduction, available at his ministry. In his indoctrination, Ray again reveals sloppy scholarship. He plagarizes, and uses well worn creationist arguments, that have long been refuted. A summary nice refutation can be read at the Don’t Diss Darwin site, setup by the National Center for Science Education. He ends the Indoctrination with a plea that you should buy one of his other books, presumably also as thoroughly researched.

Since enough people within the science community had found out about the publication, there was time to address the misinformation that would be spread on so many college campuses. US News and World Report has a back and forth between Ray and the Eugenie Scott, who works as the executive directory of NCSE and who’s work finding ‘cdesign proponentsists’ helped considerably in the Dover Trial. Ray introduced why he wanted to publish the book, Exclusive: Ray Comfort Defends His Creationist Edition of ‘On the Origin of Species and Eugenie replied with How Creationist ‘Origin’ Distorts Darwin.

Ray had initially planned on releasing his creationist re-publication on the anniversary of Darwin’s original. Yet, since that landed on a weekend prior to Thanksgiving, he rescheduled to Thursday, Nov 19. This was convenient for my club, AAR@UCI because we have meeting on Wed night, and could easily discuss strategy and organization prior to his arrival. We were also hoping, that since UCI is so close to Huntington Beach, he might show up to our campus in person.

Then, on the morning of Wednesday, Nov 18, we spotted his people handing out books! He preempted the schedule! Fortunately, we had already received a collection of banana bookmarks from NCSE, and rapidly organized ourselves to hand them out. He must have felt that the atmosphere in Orange County is too strongly affected by the rationalists because he decided to show up at UCLA instead. He was immediately countered by the Bruin Skeptics though, as recorded by their posts:

• Nazis, Darwin, and Living a Good Life
• BASS Meeting VIII
• A Day Early: Banana Man and Kirk Cameron at UCLA
• Ray Comfort Soapbox Video

In summary, I found the whole event anti-climatic. Most of the world had not heard that this was going on. All they say was some people handing out Darwin books, claiming “This might help you with your studies”. The only people that even wanted to debate with them were members of our own group, who knew what was going on. It seems that the creationists must go to extreme lengths to find a way to shovel their shit into the minds of others. This includes deceit about schedules, slipping bogus content into otherwise good books, neglecting scholarship, misrepresentation of the material, and all other manner of logical fallacies. On strictly moral grounds, I have to give the entire creationist movement a big CHRISTIAN FAIL, for not following their own espoused moral code.

For a couple of months now I’ve know that Ray Comfort plans on distributing a republication of Darwin’s Origin of Species on many North American campuses. I took quite some time out to write a rebuttal to all of the fallacious arguments that he makes in his Introduction so that AAR could use it to hand out during the time that Comfort is distributing his republication. I eventually realized, after not getting very far, that I’d end up with a rebuttal longer than his original Introduction. In lieu of all the tireless work and effort that it would take to address everything in length I’ve decided instead to write a summary of the primary mistakes.

This post is primarily a status update of some stuff that’s been going on in my life. It’s main purpose is to alleviate the personal guilt that I feel for neglecting my post frequency.

Over the summer, I had the free time to make a few additions to my social life. I was able to attend more of the Atheist and Freethinking groups in the area, as well as make some special friends (more on this topic later; hopefully during the holidays). I was also able to finish (and submit) the XSS Survey paper, but have yet to get back the reviews.

I’m now a second year grad at UCI, and we’re in our 3rd week of Fall Qtr. Summer’s past, and I miss it sorely. The campus is now swarming with undergrads that get in my way, whenever I want to go somewhere. There are now line as the eateries; it’s horrible. My workload this quarter is, I fear, too much to bear, and will probably zombify me by the end of the quarter.

I’m TA’ing CompSci 141: Concepts and Techniques in Programming Languages; It’s a 120 student class this time. Though I’m new, the (awesome) lecturer is relatively seasoned, and things have been going fairly smoothly so far. Answering questions from students can be a bit repetitive; but I like communicating my knowledge so much that the repetition has cause the education part to lose its charm. Not only do I have to solve the assignments myself (without any helping hand), but I also have to be there, ready and able to guide them through the solution too. Methinks my students doth protest too much about the workload.

I’m also taking my advisors course: CompSci 241: Advanced Compiler Construction. It’s the most difficult grad course offered at UCI, both in terms of coursework and material covered. Of course, there’s no way out of this class, but I’ve fortunately got a partner in lab that’s doing a great job of writing the code; letting me help out with the design. Soon, it’ll get to the point where he expects me to pull my weight in code too. By the end of the course, we’ll have implemented an optimizing compiler for a small toy language. The other difficulty in this course, is that most of the material is so new, that there aren’t any reference books that contain the algorithms and techniques. It’s still bundled up in research papers. And what is available in books, is in a couple cases, an incorrect implementation.

I’ve also been elected Secretary of AAR@UCI. That’s the Atheist, Agnostic, Rationalist club on campus. There are actually about 50 registered religious groups (predominately christian) on campus, 25 of which are active. So our group is special in that we’re the only one explicitly on the other side of that fence. One of my more interesting duties, which I gladly participate in, is representing the club at the various atheist, freethinking, and skeptic groups in the Orange County area. It’s been quite fun hanging out with like-minded folks.

Of course, research must still get done. I was in a planning session nearly all day, concerning how we shall be adding security labels to Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey. So the design work is fortunately mapped out. but I still need to go through the tedium of implementation. In practice this usually throws you back to the drawing board before too long, but I’ll still have to see how far I can get with our current approach.

I, together with a group from AAR, went to Voyager’s Church today. I was reminded, in many ways, of why I don’t like Church.

The service opened with a song, All Because of Jesus by Casting Crowns (lyrics)
I was disturbed by the imagery in this song. It reminded me of why some accuse Christianity of being a Death Cult.

It’s all because the blood of Jesus Christ
That covers me and raised this dead man’s life

After that there was a little bit of talk about The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, followed by a prayer emphasizing the inherent equality and levelling that God’s forgiveness gives us.

Then we had more songs with disturbing Imagery.

• Once Again by Matt Redman, which talks about looking at the Cross and being emotionally broken by the sacrifice it represents. But, encourages celebration of this torturous death with the refrain:
  

  Thank You for the cross
  Thank You for the cross
  Thank You for the cross, my Friend

  Sorry, but I just can’t. I’m on Hitchen’s side with this one. Human sacrifice is both tragic and unnecessary, and I won’t be contracted (against my will) via such a horrific act of violence.

• The Wonderful Cross by Phillips, Craig & Dean. Again recalls the Imagery of the Cross, and fails to have uplifting lyrics.
  

  My richest gain I count but loss
  And pour contempt on all my pride
  …
  Oh, the wonderful cross
  Bids me come and die

  Sorry, but I won’t. I have to side with Ayn Rand on this one, Human effort and productivity are to celebrated in their own right, not wantonly sacrificed. We should be happy and rejoice in our labor, not condemn it. Also, the cross is not wonderful, it’s tragic and really speaks a lot about our baser instincts as revealed in an underdeveloped culture.

After the singing, there was a silent prayer, followed by more singing.

• Expanded version of The Wonderful Cross. With more sacrafical appeals:
  

  Love so amazing, so divine
  Demands my soul, my life, my all

  Again, I won’t be drawn into a contract involving blood sacrifice against my will. I’d rather have been there to help stop the crucifixion, That’s the moral thing to do.

• None But Jesus really just attributes moral support to an imaginary character.

  In the moment of my weakness
  You give me grace to do Your will
  …
  All my delight is in You Lord
  All of my hope, all of my strength
  All my delight is in You Lord Forevermore

  I resent the suggestion that I’d require a figure to worship in order to have these qualities. I much prefer the existentialist message that we are intrinsically capable of delight, strength, and positivism without needing to appeal to something outside ourselves. To suggest otherwise only implies that humans are undeserving worms.

• From The Inside Out was the most disturbing song of the whole service.
  

  My purpose remains
  The art of losing myself
  In bringing You praise
  …
  In my heart and my soul
  Lord I give You control
  Consume me from the inside out

  So, not only do we have imagery of North Korea, where everyone’s only duty is to praise and worship the lord, for all time! But, we also receive the delightful imagery of some wonderful parasite ‘consuming us from the inside out.’ These ideas really need to be put down.

• Came to My Rescue simply contains images of prostration.
  

  Falling on my knees in worship
  Giving all I am to seek Your face
  Lord all I am is is Yours
  …
  My whole life
  I place in Your hands
  God of mercy
  Humbled I bow down

This was followed by a prayer where we were all reminded that our whole lives should be devoted to worshiping and praising the lord. This is truly our purpose in life.

Finally, the pastor got to give us a sermon about the parable read earlier. He went through the development of the parable, nearly line by line. He began by reminding us that the grace shown by this landowner is like the Kingdom of God. Then he told us of the economic disparity that existed between the day laborer and the vineyard owner. Not only did the owner go into market himself to hire help, but he was also willing to discuss the wage dispute at the end of the day. (Apparently this is gracious behavior) The first group of laborers agrees to work for a denarius, while the second agrees to work for “whatever is right”. This automatically implies a scaled earnings contract. Several times he visits the market and hires help. This means that, by the end of the day, he’s hiring the dregs. But, like God, he’s willing to make multiple trips to save us all.

When he does pay their wages, he pays all hired hands ‘the wage’ (there’s only one). This justifiably upsets the workers that were hired first. And they are envious (not merely jealous), that the landowner has “made them equal to us”. He diffuses the situation by reminding them that they agreed to ‘whatever is right’ and ‘a denarius’ for the day’s labor, and also that it’s his money and he can dispense it however he pleases, that giving more to others does not take away from their earnings.

I think the landowner’s an idiot. He’s pays his help unjustly, yet this is called grace. He handles final payment poorly, he’s probably asking for dissent and resentment by paying first the people he hired latest, purposefully raising the expectations of those that were hired earliest. But this is to be a lesson to them, that the grace of God applies equally to all. Such grace does not follow the human intuitions of fairness. I’d rather have fairness, as the grace seems both arbitrary and capricious. He should have been forthright, that wages were based on having worked or not, rather than time and effort spent laboring.

The pastor also railed on and on about how satisfied the landowner must have been to be so generous. Like God, he must have just been wallowing in the gratification of having a beautiful and bountiful vineyard. So much so, that I gathered becomes both smug and economically irrational. But, again, it’s not about how long you spend worshiping, or how many good marks you gather by helping old ladies cross the street, it’s about surrendering yourself to his grace, that equalizes all.

This was followed by a prayer about how we should all be grateful that we have the opportunity, even at the eleventh hour, to serve in God’s fields, that we may be rewarded equally because the joy and (self)satisfaction God feels with his creation fills him with the desire to bestow grace upon us all.

Finally, a last song. You Never Let Go which emphasizes togetherness with the lord, even in troubled times.

So, I didn’t fully agree with the interpretation of the parable. I’d prefer fairness, and forthright agreement as to what is being offered, especially when the contract is different than the socially expected one. I was also disturbed by the imagery evoked in the songs. This is the first time that I’ve attended one of the more ‘vanilla concert’ church services since learning about the psychology of religious belief, and it was instructive.

I’m compelled now, more than ever, to admit that atheists might not be able to compete. We are simply, too independent, too free-thinking, too rational, to embrace such services every week. We aren’t ever going to have these soft, emotional songs about rationality and science. (well, the music was soft, the lyrics weren’t). Atheists simply don’t do the whole sycophant celebration thing. Because of this we have respect for each other, and can work together, but we just don’t have the same community, or accompanying sense of belonging and togetherness.

Maybe next time I’ll go to a service that has the wailing, raving, and speaking in tongues.

Yesterday, I attended a structured debate between William Lane Craig and The Hitch held at Biola University. As far as anyone can win a debate where the opponents talk mostly at cross-purposes, I’d have to give the trophy to Craig. Clearly, my belief system is biased towards Hitchens, yet I feel that he did an inadequate job as an atheist spokesman.

Firstly, the pamphlet that was handed out prior to the show, had a nice listing of Craig’s main arguments, while the space given to Hitchens was entirely blank (useful for notes, but couldn’t he come up with any written opposition? he didn’t even use the space to repeat his challenge?) Before commenting further on the speakers presentation, I’m going to review the arguments used by Craig.

• Cosmological Argument
  1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
  2. The Universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the Universe has a cause.

  The underlying problem here is that, this argument assumes the Law of Causality. Unfortunately, if (as Craig claimed during the debate) the Big Bang was the beginning of both space and time, exploding the universe ex nihilo then it no longer makes sense to talk about ‘before’ the Bang. You see, the very term ‘before’ implies a continuity of time, and it doesn’t make sense to talk about anything ‘before’ time. This is true too of causality, which depends on continuity of time, so we can no longer talk about events causing other events, when there is no universe of time and space in which these things occur. So, premise 1. is inadmissible, and we cannot then conclude that the universe had a cause.

• Teleological Argument
  1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either law, chance, or design.
  2. It is not due to law or chance.
  3. Therefore, it is due to design.

  Ignoring the possibility that he has set up a false or incomplete set of choices in premise 1., Craig appealed to the authority of physicists and their testimony that the probability that fundamental physical constants that parameterize our universe have values capable of supporting life such as we observe is vanishingly small. Because of this, the universe could not have been tuned by accident. Nor could it have been by law, because these are initial conditions and are not covered by scientific law. Therefore, our only option left is design.
  Craig also made some detours suggesting that if you were to ally with chance, then you would be forced into conceding the possibility of a multi-verse theory, which he dismissed as being really very silly. I actually agree with this. The multi-verse theories are neither well grounded, nor empirically observed, and smell as if they came from science fiction; but I really don’t have many other options (though there is the Anthropic Principal). I still don’t think an appeal to supernaturalism solves the problem. It’s weak as far as explanations are concerned, for now we must question “Why was the universe created, and what was it designed for?”, and I don’t see any means of empirically testing answers to such questions. I agree that science doesn’t provide very satisfactory answers to why the universe is capable of supporting life as we know it, but God did it. is a non-answer!

• Moral Argument
  1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
  2. Objective moral values do exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.

  Unfortunately I don’t quite remember what Craig termed ‘objective moral values’ but it wasn’t what I expected: moral values that can be objectively or empirically measured. Rather, it seemed that he used a definition that nearly presupposed a universal standard of morality which must have been inserted by a God into the fabric of our being. I really wish I could remember his exact words here, but I think he had buried his conclusion into the premises. I do remember that he dismissed objectively measurable moral values as not being truly moral. That is, he didn’t think that atheists had any real logical reason to discount, say cannibalism, other than the fact that it doesn’t allow the formation of large, stable societies (which isn’t itself a moral precept). On this point, he’s absolutely right. Atheists can’t claim an objective or universal set of moral scriptures, we are forced to admit that much of morality is relative, that we’re figuring it out as we go, that advances in technology force us to reconsider some of the relative balances, that fundamentally there are no moral standards, and we are forced, by nature as evolved social primates, to adopt those values that allow us to best get along with each other. But, this position draws doubt on premise 2.

• The Resurrection of Jesus
  1. There are three established facts concerning the fate of Jesus of Nazareth: (a) the discovery of his empty tomb, (b) his post-mortem appearances, and (c) the origin of his disciples’ belief in his resurrection.
  2. The hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” is the best explanation of these facts.
  3. The hypothesis “God raised Jesus from the dead” entails that the God revealed by Jesus of Nazareth exists.
  4. Therefore, the God revealed by Jesus of Nazareth exists.

  I actually this that this argument is completely beside the point. But it is useful from Craig’s side in making the leap from a God to a personal God of the Bible. Hitchens failed to take this on, except in a very wishy-washy fashion arguing that any God who is capable of intervening must be an immoral one. To presume that God had a design which includes the extinction of 99% of all species ever to have lived, the annihilation of galactic expanses in supernovae, black holes and other cosmic dangers, the revelation to a primitive, illiterate desert people without good recording devices, the inhumane and unwarranted suffering cause by natural disaster and disease, and then to claim “but he cares about you” is not at all humble. Rather, it’s presumptuous and immoral. He also added, that as far as prayer for personal intervention, at least as an Atheist, “I can’t be accused of wishful thinking”.

• The Immediate Experience of God
  1. Beliefs which are appropriately grounded may be rationally accepted as basic beliefs not grounded in argument.
  2. Belief that the biblical God exists is appropriately grounded.
  3. Therefore, belief that the biblical God exists may be rationally accepted as a basic belief not grounded in argument.

  This one is very easy, and I wish that Dan Barker could have been there to address it. Having an experience doesn’t prove the existence of God, it only proves that humans have such experiences.

Overall, Craig was extremely well spoken, and his points were well-delivered. When he presented the Atheistic viewpoints, he didn’t set-up a strawman. Hitchens, in contrast, appealed to emotion (which doesn’t always work on a Christian biased audience) and failed to address Craig on a logical, structured, point-by-point basis. He let a number of the easy quibbles fly, he let Craig leap from Deist to personal God, he never raised the point that our current morality is better than that of the Old Testament God, nor did he contend that it’s up to the supernaturalist to provide proof, he persisted in alluding that Christianity held a deeply depraved view of us as wretched sinners and strayed from the premise of the debate “Does God Exists”. I’ve seen Hitchens do much better in other venues, even when espousing the exact same arguments! He was an unfortunate disappointment.

I think Craig is setting a very good bar for logical debate. He stayed on topic, and was very straightforward. I wish that all Christians would follow his standard, so that my side might have the opportunity to win the ongoing debate with clear and sound reason. Many of Craigs arguments are available in his book “Does God Exist?” (unfortunately listing Antony Flew (who swapped from atheist to deist to christian as old age took its toll) as a co-author.)

Recently I’ve been away at a couple of conferences. I presented a (terrible) poster about information flow at ASPLOS/VEE in Washington D.C. a couple weeks back (Mar 9–13). Then I spent finals week back home creating a new (and much improved) poster, which was presented at CGO in Seattle, WA. Though, the CGO trip wasn’t as appropriate to the work, and didn’t result in any useful social networking (the primary point of conferences). The poster was of much better quality, not only because of the additional time spent creating it, but also because of the lessons learned from the first poster session.

Though I think that a whole week spent creating a poster is a bit much, the end result was probably worth it. Everyone in lab spent most of that week creating a poster for each of our separate projects. We were able to give each other feedback that led to improved revisions. I, personally benefited greatly from looking at the posters that other had made, and incorporating (copying) presentation features that I liked into my own work, features that I would have been hard pressed to create on my own (I am not a graphic artist). In the end, we have each created an explanatory device that can be used to advertise our work to visitors for the next year.

I noticed also that the review process works for presentations as well as posters. By practicing a few times in front of the group, I witnessed improvement in others. Though, it’s a hard blow to one’s ego to be critiqued at the end of, or during, a presentation; it’s worth it. The slides, the talk, the content, and the delivery all improve. I personally dislike going through the process, but the end results are fulfilling in their own way. I felt much better about my poster at CGO than I did at ASPLOS.

Also, the best researchers are able communicators. That takes practice to develop and critique to hone.