Robert J. Marks II

Christians are being subjected to the same “separate but equal” discrimination used to justify discrimination in the old Jim Crow south.

[S]ome modern [Christian] praise music sung in churches during Sunday worship service is referred to as 7-11 music: seven words repeated eleven times.

Any claim that “all religions are true” is like claiming any liquid from a cow, when chilled, goes well with a chocolate chip cookie.

Those who believe in the coming of Strong AI argue that non-algorithmic consciousness will be an emergent property as AI complexity ever increases. In other words, consciousness will just happen, as a sort of natural outgrowth of the code’s increasing complexity. Such unfounded optimism is akin to that of a naive young boy standing in front of a large pile of horse manure. He becomes excited and begins digging into the pile, flinging handfuls of manure over his shoulders. “With all this horse poop,” he says, “there must be a pony in here somewhere!” Strong AI proponents similarly claim, in essence, “With all this computational complexity, there must be some consciousness here somewhere!”

There is no foundational mathematical or physical reason the relationship between Pythagorean and tempered western music should exist. It just does. The rich flexibility of the tempered scale and the … bountiful archives of western music are a testimonial to this wonderful coincidence provided by nature.

The best immortality prospect for the materialist looks to be either deep freezing dead bodies until a cure is found, or computer replication of brains in silicon. One won’t work and the other can’t survive a power outage.