This short, short story was motivated by the current backlash against Dawkins, Harris, and the other so-called "new atheists" who are repeatedly accused of being fundamentalists, i.e. no better than the religious people they are criticizing. The accusation in unfounded. It appears that many can't tell the difference between confidence and faith. The difference, of course, is that scientists may be very confident in there assumptions due to overwhelming corroborative evidence, but they will theoretically change their mind given new inarguable contradictory evidence. To demonstrate that you have no faith in your beliefs you have to articulate what sort of evidence would cause you to "switch sides". I've given it some thought and the following story about two old college buddies illustrates a scenario that would lead me to re-evaluate everything I think I know.
by David Lucifer
[JField] Hey Grant, you busy? [phobos88] Duude, long time. Are you back in the states? [JField] No, still in Turkey. I'm an internet cafe in Diyarbakir [phobos88] No kidding? What time is it there? [JField] Just after 3am [phobos88] Huh, this must be important. [JField] Could be. I need you help with something. [phobos88] Sure man. I owe you one anyway. [JField] Excellent. The team here unearthed some tablets a couple weeks ago dating back to the Uruk IV period over 5000 years ago. [phobos88] Holy [JField] Heh, yeah. They're sacred texts recording the proclamations of this guy named Argandea, supposedly an avatar of the god Enki, "Lord of the Earth". [phobos88] interesting... [JField] Let me quote the passage I just translated tonight... The people gathered and Argandea said unto them: I made the world and I am the world. My name can be found by dividing my horizon by my breadth. I have a beginning but no end. My beginning is day, day, night, night, day, night, night, day, night, night. You will know me and my truth if you search my name for ten thousand generations, each one ten thousand days. [phobos88] You're joking. [JField] I am not making this up. Really. [phobos88] Whatever dude. [JField] Humor me. For old times sake, k? [phobos88] k [JField] So what does that look like to you? [phobos88] Looks like Enki is telling his people how to calculate pi. Horizon (circumference) divided by breadth (diameter). [JField] That's what I thought. And the "day, day, night, night, etc"? [phobos88] pi in binary code I'd guess. Just a sec.... [JField] k [phobos88] Yep, confirmed. The first few digits of pi in binary are 11.00100100 [JField] Ha! and knew you could help. So how would you interpret the rest? [phobos88] Well.. since he was using 'day' as a digit I'd say he is suggesting we take a look at Pi starting at the 100 millionth binary digit. [JField] Can we do that? [phobos88] I think so. Normally it would take forever generating that many decimal digits but I remember reading that someone found an algorithm for generating digits of pi in hex starting at any arbitrary location. [JField] So we can do that? [phobos88] Um, yeah. Let me get back to you. [JField] Thanks [phobos88] You're not punking me, right? [JField] I promise. [phobos88] Alrighty. I'll get back to you tomorrow. ...18 hours later... [phobos88] You there? [JField] Hey, any luck? [phobos88] Anyone looking over your shoulder? [JField] No, I'm the only one here. Why? [phobos88] Check this out: YOUWILLKNOWMEANDMYTRUTHIFYOUSEARCHMYNAME [JField] Yes? [phobos88] Those are the binary digits of pi starting at 10 million interpreted as ASCII characters. [JField] shut up! [phobos88] Whoever your bud Argandea was channeling 5000 years ago had the ability to encode an english message into the digits of pi at the predicted location. WTF is going on?!! [JField] OMG!! [phobos88] OMG indeed
In the attribution please credit David Lucifer and include this link