The Philosophy Of Squish

When squish, one may suspect that in fact squash. This discrepancy, or, more accurately, squitch, is the source of much fascination amongst squishologists and squashosophers alike.

In 1462, Yohalog Squesh first suggested the idea of smush. His ideas, though not as internally consistent as the squinge of today, kick-started a flurry of thinking about squudges and squapplers. Once squonge had become relatively well-known, it branched into two distinct formal disciplines known as squagg and snordge.

Squaggology involves an eclectic mix of sproop and quagmiric nonispites. In contrast, snordgeology causes much confusion about its spelling and also how best to catch ducks using nothing more conspicuous than a can of indigo paint and a rocking-horse.

After several decades of fruitless research, the solution to the Sgaricgaric Formulon was discovered and this led to the induction of a gorse bush into the Grand Theory Of Boopibubzo. Nonetheless, some of the less fustopilious mumpophrosers vehemently denied that anything vegetable should be squoitch.

Causality almost ground to a screeching halt and encountered unfortunate updrafts in its attempts to escape from the whoosh-riddled land of New Zealand. Things could have ended there, were it not for Yarvesti Municipone. In the end, thanks to her help, phragglominician sparamonoid glarterfetchian cucumbers won and the latter of the two disciplines became philosophy as we know it today.

So now you know.

Fungussy Philosophy

I'd better get started on this personal philosophy thingy! I'll start off by boring you all stiff about the Fungus Simulator. It's a computer program I've been working on, on-and-off, for... A few years actually. Blimey.

It's based on a well-known idea, which involves a grid of virtual "cells" that can be either "alive" or "dead". The cells live or die depending on a very simple set of known rules. Thus, they produce mesmerising patterns of complex-looking activity, which some say resembles life itself. I initially thought it resembled fungus, hence my program's ridiculous name.

Very recently, I found that the original idea is called "Conway's Game of Life"—not to be confused with the board game—and realised that, in my ignorance, I have made my Fungus Simulator notably different from Conway's game.

My simulator applies one set of rules that determines whether a cell lives, but Conway's game uses two; one for whether a cell comes alive and another for whether a cell dies. This crucial distinction means that my program is currently unable to emulate Conway's, although I think I could build "Conway completeness" into a future version.

This is not to say that my simulator is entirely inferior to Conway's game. On the contrary, my simulator allows the user to customise the rules, whereas Conway's rules (expressed in my own words) are fixed as follows:

• Any dead cell that has exactly three living neighbours comes to life.
• Any living cell that does not have exactly two or three living neighbours dies.
• All other cells remain unchanged. (I consider this rule to be implied, therefore I don't call it "Rule Three".)

The reason why I am writing about programming here is because, through my own personal experience, I have seen how a few simple rules can result in amazing and complex structures. No doubt some of you have spotted that Conway's Game of Life is a metaphor for the theory of Evolution, which is a big issue in debates about theological Creation.

Breaking Thoughtful Silence

Hello again fellow readers, writers and thinkers! I'd better post something so that you don't call our blog dead. I don't think it's quite fair to call it dead because...

1. It's still online (despite having briefly been flagged as a spam blog!) and...
2. I've just posted on it!

So why is this blog nigh dead? And how did it get the way it is now?

Put simply, this blog was founded as a place to argue about religion during a time when I personally (at least) was feeling very argumentative. Since then, it appears that we've all calmed down a bit and become more tolerant of each other... Or perhaps just lazy.

The more I search the web for religious arguments, the more I find. It feels as if everything we could say on the subject of religion has already been said somewhere before, and thus we wonder why we should bother with this puny blog.

We just aren't discussing religion any more. In fact, this group has got out of touch.

Fortunately, I think I can see a solution. It relies on a small but crucial detail that I spotted recently: This blog is not called The Argue About Religion Blog, nor is it called The Theological Guillotine—or anything that specific. Instead, it has an equally strange (and terrible) name and description (courtesy of yours truly) which are much more general in their meaning...

One Agnostic, Two (Many) Christians: These Three Titular Types Try To Think Things Through Together...

It could, when you think about it, be the title of almost anything... As long as that thing involves some Christians and an agnostic who think! But so what? Well, it means that we don't have to argue about religion all the time!

We could philosophise about world events, other blogs and so on. We could comment on how our beliefs impact on our world and vice versa. In other words: We could do what people normally do with blogs... Except that this time the opinions are ours.

So let's get started, shall we?