I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
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That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
EA’s Spore: God in the machine?
September 8, 2008
It seems that reviewers of EA’s new “sim”-type game, Spore (by Will Wright, the man behind the various other “sim” games), can’t help but review the game without invoking intelligent design. GetReligion has noticed the phenomenon as well.
Personally, I’m not sure that intelligent design is the best phrase to use to describe the role the player fulfils in the game, certainly not according to the meaning we have come to associate with the phrase thanks to the efforts and errors of the likes of Michael Behe et. al.
Personally, I’m not inclined to think of the game as something wedded to ID, or that somehow gives that movement credence…but of course, I haven’t played the game just yet. I think I’ll have to add that to my list of priorities.
What’s interesting, though, is how quickly the notion of God creeps into the analysis of the game made by many different commentators. That’s unusual to see, given that the game was intended to be a “playable” form of evolution. Perhaps, just perhaps, the game does that and goes one further, communicating in some unconscious way that all this grand creation, at every point of its evolution, could not have transpired without being sustained and ordained by a creator God.
Which sounds rather like the conjecture at the core of Evolutionary Creationism, doesn’t it?
I will have to pick up Spore and give it a play-through. Perhaps Denyse O’Leary, when she has finished talking down to me, will consider doing the same.
