So this week I got a call on my day job at the post office substation I work at. The lady explained that she had sent a package to be delivered in North Carolina and it had been misdelivered to Philadelphia. She informed me that our office had mistakenly entered the wrong zip code into our computer.
After listening to her explain this, I replied that typing the wrong zip code into the computer would make no difference.
Our computer is an old DOS computer that basically just runs the USPS program off of a 3&1/2 floppy disk. It is connected to a scale, and basically the point the computer serves is to record amount totals and work in conjunction with the scale to provide prices for letters and packages. We do not print off labels or enter anything into the post office online database. Our computer is not connected to the internet. I'm explaining this so that you understand that there is no possibility that we could have made an error that would cause the result this lady described.
Now, I attempted to explain all this to her and she edited her story slightly by explaining that the delivery confirmation was entered with the incorrect zip code.
The delivery confirmation is a bar code sticker that goes onto the package and is supposed to be scanned in at different points along the way, but rarely is. The customer keeps a receipt with the corresponding number so that they can either call the toll free number or look it up on usps.com. When we add a delivery confirmation onto a package, we enter the number onto the computer. This does not enter it into the post office database, because our computer is not connected to the internet (see above). That information does not get saved by the computer to be sent to the post office on a hard copy receipt. Entering the number onto the computer simply adjusts the price total for the item.
I reiterated that again, this could not have caused the package to be delivered incorrectly. The post office looks at the label to see where to deliver it. What the label says is where it is delivered to.
She then explains that I was training someone else that day and it was actually the trainee who made the mistake since I was signing for something in the back.
I felt a little silly repeating the same thing another time: Nothing we enter into the computer affects where the package is delivered. The only way for the package to end up in the wrong city is if it is addressed to the wrong city. It doesn't matter who in our office handled the transaction. It doesn't matter whether we entered the wrong zip code. It doesn't matter if the delivery confirmation was entered incorrectly. The additional information is irrelevant if the basic cause and effect argument is faulty.
She still didn't get it and hung up. Oh well.
Thinking back on it later, it reminded me again one of the reasons I simply can't take evolution seriously: In the beginning, either there was nothing or something has always existed. If there was at some point nothing, then something must have been created out of nothing. I find that logic wanting. Atheists and agnostics can prattle on all they like about the certainty of evolution based on science - a weak argument on its own merits - at the end of the day, they're left with an unsupportable proposition.
Whatever other evidence you want to bring up (and evolution is far from free of chinks in its armor), that one fact is still sitting there like the stray cat that keeps showing up for free meals and you wish would go someplace else to freeload: How could something come from nothing, or how could something always exist.
To the Christian, it's an easy answer: God has always existed. God alone had the wisdom and power to create something else out of nothing. But as long as mankind refuses to acknowledge the possibility of a Creator and refuses to acknowledge the elephant in the room - that something could not come out of nothing, they will continue down the path to destruction.
The foundation truths affect everything. If you have a weak foundation, you are left with a house of cards that sooner or later will fall.
SDG
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5 comments:
I don't think evolutionists believe that something was created out of nothing. I've only taken basic biology and chemistry classes so far, and not one professor or student has bothered to argue that something was created from nothing. They'll argue the "fact" that "evidence" of evolution present in many species today...but they never go back to the beginning. When I do press them to tell me how information and energy that could not have been amassed by chance suddenly appeared...I get answers like, well, the universe is huge...it might have been aliens. Well, where did they aliens come from? They have always been. It's sad how people can deceive themselves so completely. As long as God is out of the equation, any theory, no matter how illogical, becomes acceptable.
That's precisely the problem. They avoid answering that question because it is just plain difficult.
But I have heard both views posited: That something has always existed (not God!) vs, some small cells/gases/other absurd theory somehow formed out of nothing over a loooooong period of time. Neither one works. Since they don't even have any fake evidence they can spin on that one, they typically keep quiet.
I don't want to detract from your analogy, as that was your point, but being a former postal worker (even formerly at that very window where you work!) I know how things can get screwed up and stuff sent to the strangest places. I do believe that someone can post the wrong info on a bar code label and that getting scanned into the system can cause something to end up in the wrong place until someone actually READS the address on the item and sends it to where it is supposed to go. Mail gets delayed like that all the time. I also related to the fact that people often cannot understand what you are trying to explain to them and they have it in their heads that it is one way and no matter how many times you explain it, they can't hear it. I used to work the phones at the P.O., so you can imagine how many calls came in with complaints. Most of them are directed to some supervisor, but if we can deal with them and answer it ourselves, we were supposed to. And often, I did know how to explain the answer, but that doesn't mean they were listening or understanding or even believing.
Ah, okay. I know for certain it can't happen from our office, but I'm pretty ignorant of the different setup that they have at the main PO.
Part of the problem was that she had talked to the main PO and they shifted the blame to us. Unfortunate, because she be ame convinced that they must be right.
I'm curious where exactly the mistake happened, though. That is quite bizarre.
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