*grumble* not sure why that link doesn't work, and
not sure how to edit, so I guess I'll just paste the
essay here. It's longish, but so worth reading. It
was posted to
www.xanga.com"> by the user Lizard_SF

If humans were created, then, God *really* should
have asked for a deadline extension, as it's
obvious we're a rush job. I mean, take the brain.
Rather than designing a brain for humans from
scratch, God just followed the standard
programmer trick of 'code reuse' and cobbled it
together from bits and pieces He'd already used
in making other forms of life, then, desperate to
meet the design goals, he cranked out some
'consiousness' code and crammed it on top of a
seething mass of instincts, hormones, and
reactions which made sense when they were
used in other creatures but just don't work for
man...then, realizing he was running out of room,
decided not to include the operating system at the
factory, but, instead, required that it be laboriously
installed by other humans over the course of
years. (And, to make matters worse, there's no
certification program, so many humans have
defective OSes)

And we won't even discuss the lousy job He did
on our backs and feet ("Bipedal locomotion is a
pain...why is that still on the features list? Oh well,
this will work well enough for now...")...or on the
female reproduction system. ("Damn, no time to
re-engineer the vagina to fit that humongous brain
I just tacked on...still only big enough to easily
birth a baby gorilla. Ah, whatever. Deadlines are
deadlines! Make the women suffer a bit, it's good
for 'em. Might even help keep the population
down, though, with this sex drive I cooked up, I
doubt it! I'll tell them it's a punishment for original
sin or something, they'll believe anything...I made
damn sure to include an oversized credulity
lobe.")

And on the Seventh Day, God decided it was
good enough for now and He could patch it later,
so He shipped.

The universe is a rush job, the result of too few
development resources, too many conflicting
design documents, and an immoveable deadline.
God's manager probably got a bonus and a
promotion, and God has been doing maintenance
work full-time ever since. (I mean, what was the
Flood but a massive attempt to re-seed the
simulation? Any programmer or game designer
who studies the Bible sees in it the hand of an
overworked, underpaid, and very rushed
developer who is being hounded by management
on one side and the customers on the others, is
desperate to satisfy both and ends up satisfying
neither.) Furthermore, God included a heck of a
lot of 'job security code'[1] in the lowest-level
functions of the system. ("Heh...just let 'em TRY to
figure out this quantum stuff I cooked up. I won the
'obfuscated physics' contest six years running with
this...")

More seriously, I take great personal comfort in
my certainty that life, and the universe, is not the
result of any intelligent design or designers. The
idea that this all could be *deliberate*, that
someone *planned* this, is too terrifying to
contemplate. Otherwise, we would "be in the
hands of infinite power and infinite sadism".
(Niven)

(As a side note, some might claim I have no right
to criticize the universe since I've never made one
of my own.[2] There are two responses to that: 1, I
have made some of my own, albeit wholly
imaginary. 2, the fact I can't design a bridge or
perform neurosurgery does not mean I can't
identify shoddy work performed by those who can
do those things.)

[1]For those of you who aren't programmers, 'job
security code' is code that is so obscure,
convoluted, and baroque that no one but the
person who wrote it can maintain it or change it,
thus 'guaranteeing' him a job. Unfortunately, it's
rarely discovered until AFTER the person has left
the company on its own, thus providing new hires
with an exciting opportunity to peer into the mind
of a madman.

[2]Indeed, when Job filed a complaint about the
poor quality of God's work, especially in the
'justice' and 'fairness' depertments, this was the
excuse God used. Job bought it; I don't. (Though,
if I were dealing with someone who'd just killed
my entire family (except my wife) to win a bet, I'd
probably agree to anything he said, too...)


Kimberly Ingols * fruitbat@cookiemonster.com
"What is truth? I don't know and I'm sorry I
brought it up." -- Edward Abbey