I'm going to take a break now from the ultra-heavy religious stuff for a moment now, and focus on something a little more... tangible. My current situation is that I'm stuck at my mother's house, 300 miles away from all that I consider 'home', looking after the dog and cat while she buggers around scuba diving. I'm not bitter, of course, I wouldn't have gone with her if she'd offered and, quite frankly, any situation where I get a week's access to a house full of food and beer is acceptable. It's just the sheer frustration of not knowing this town that I find so bad. Anyway, that's not the point of this blog post. The point is the quality of the reading matter that I have down here.
There were a couple of days' overlap of me being in Poole while my mum and her husband were still around. They make it a point of picking up a newspaper every day, which is admirable, but not when the newspaper in question is the Daily Mail.
Freeze here for a second. For the Americans and illiterate among you, (which is unlikely, I know, since you'd be reading this) the Daily Mail is a piece of turd disguised as a tabloid paper, which counts the day wasted if it doesn't mention asylum seekers, paedophiles or the Government at least three times on the front page in an inflammatory and ill-argued manner. At least half the paper is given up to celebrity gossip and overall sensationalism, and at least a quarter of the rest is sport. I have never seen anything which could pass for a decent article within its covers. Resume.
Generally, I try and avoid reading it, aside from the crossword and puzzle pages, which, because they're aimed at the working classes, could probably be performed by a lab rat. Coincidentally, this is about my mental level on the very rare occasion that I'm awake before 3pm. Funnily enough, Lexx, my partner in infamy and confirmed lefty swine, rather enjoys reading it, bursting into delighted laughter after every sentence because of its outrageousness. Apparently it's better than most other modern fiction.
Anyway, the only part of the paper I regularly peruse is the TV guide. In the Mail's case, it's hidden deep within the depths of a 'lifestyle' section, which usually contains celebrity interviews and fashion tips for the aspiring chavette. Needless to say, I handle its pages carefully, and usually while wearing very thick gloves.
Last week's cover of this section boasted an interview with Billy Connelly, who really deserves better than the Mail. However, this is not what caught my eye. To the left of the page, under the unassuming subtitle 'Hello Dolly', was a short length of text which, apart from telling you all you need to know about the Daily Mail and its normal readership, has caused me to wake up screaming at 5am every night since I first laid eyes on it. The sentence was as follows:
'Were Madonna and Barbie separated at birth?'
I'll let that sink in for a moment.
OK, I'm sorry to subject you to that, but misery loves company, right?
It took me a while to fully comprehend the enormity of that statement. This is a rough transcription of my thought processes immediately following the discovery of this literary nightmare: 'Madonna. That's the pop singer, right? OK, good, I pass that pop culture test. OK, now Barbie. That's... the doll. They're saying that Madonna Ciccone, one of the most popular recording artists of all time (I wonder why they don't call them singers anymore? [Stay focused, you.] Sorry, boss.) is actually related to a mass-produced children's toy, that was first invented about a year after Madonna's birth. Also, do these people know nothing about how toys are made? Unless they've been lying to us all along, and dolls are really mutant plasticy babies that were taken away from their abomination of a mother after spawning...' And so on. You really don't want to hear the rest of that.
But after reading that, I knew that was it. Society was beyond saving. Hell, any civilisation that could even comprehend such a nauseatingly dumbass subject as that doesn't DESERVE saving. But, many years from now, the survivors of the apocalypse to come will look back, and see that as the point of no return.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
There are more thing in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy
I know, I know, I’ve neglected you, audience. I’m sorry, but I’m just too much man to be tied down to a regular schedule! Here, let me make it up to you, I’m making a post now and everything. It was brought to my attention a few weeks ago that I hadn’t posted here since October. Having gotten the rest of university out of the way, I now feel perfectly poised to rectify that oversight by posting such an awesome blog that your heads’ll still be full of my words the next time I go on a 9-month break. I’m that good.
But, what to cover? As much as I love talking about music, and believe me, I could go on forever, it’s time to give that subject a rest (even though I’m sure that it’s had enough of a rest in the gap between this post and the previous one). Video games as art is another area I could cover, as it’s a topic close to whatever heart I have left, but again, that just doesn’t feel right. I could do a piece on politics, but let’s face it, I’d just make an ass of myself. My politics are based on abstract reasoning, which could mean that my conscience is fully developed, but also means that it isn’t conducive to intelligent debate on the subject. My political compass is somewhat akin to faith – I can feel what’s right in my bones, but I have a bugger of a time expressing my views (damnit, Jim, I’m a scientist, not a philosopher!), so discourse on my views is somewhat tricky for me.
But then it struck me. After reading my friend Mary’s most excellent blog, the idea of discussing faith occurred to me. Not just as a means of justifying my faith in itself, or seeing what your views are, but examining what good it actually does us as well.
So, to kick this party off, I have a horrible confession to make. Over the course of my degree, I went through a crisis of faith. Since the eve of my confirmation sometime in 1996, I’ve been a staunch atheist. I was lying there in bed, thinking about what was going to happen the next day, when suddenly I had an epiphany. Something along the lines of a religious experience, although areligious would probably be more accurate. I suddenly glimpsed the entire Universe for a moment, like I was in the Total Perspective Vortex (sorry for the reference), and I saw the entire vastness of all Creation – and it was empty. Completely and wholly vacant. There was no one watching over us, there was no mystical being, in this Universe or outside my perception, which was responsible for all of this. This image has stuck with me for the last twelve years and I can still see it in my mind now as clearly as when I first saw it. Instead of driving me mad, like the Vortex did in the books, seeing the Universe from the perspective of a cupcake drove me SANE. In fact, I think that’s the first time I can remember the sensation that’s so plagued me in recent years, like a wall in my mind, but I digress.
Anyway, I was secure in the knowledge that, having won my staring contest with the abyss, I knew the great secret of the Universe, and happily went through my empty little life feeling generally awesome about myself. At least, until I got to university. As you all probably know, I studied Biological Sciences for three years, if what I did can be called ‘studying’. It seems a funny subject to cause a crisis of faith, but then, didn’t Newton find reason to be a theist merely in a thumbprint? It wasn’t any great, eloquent argument for the existence of God that shook me, however, merely a problem of probability; for example, studying the intricate molecular detail of organisms in as much detail as I have, (if I were a PR man for the Catholic Church, I’d simply get them to put Topoisomerase II on a poster and watch the converts roll in) and getting even further into ‘pure science’– examining the delicate balance of charges and gravitational constants that keep us all together makes one appreciate the absolutely staggering odds required for all this to have come to pass.
However, my unfaith in God remains true. I haven’t even gone agnostic, but I learnt an important lesson: science can be just as much proof of the existence of God as any number of miracles- in fact, it could be argued that the everyday world is more of a miracle than an infinity of weeping statues or cured lepers (science can do that too, Jesus!). I’ve also gained a full appreciation of the phrase ‘stranger things can happen’, and if I develop a gambling problem later in life, I fully intend to sue the university of teaching me that no odds are too long.
So, there, that’s part one. Part two should be coming shortly, and I’ll be examining the ethics of religion, as well as my own imagined solution to the inherent contradictions between faiths. Hopefully no one will yell at me for writing this instead of working on my books.
Ta ta for now!
But, what to cover? As much as I love talking about music, and believe me, I could go on forever, it’s time to give that subject a rest (even though I’m sure that it’s had enough of a rest in the gap between this post and the previous one). Video games as art is another area I could cover, as it’s a topic close to whatever heart I have left, but again, that just doesn’t feel right. I could do a piece on politics, but let’s face it, I’d just make an ass of myself. My politics are based on abstract reasoning, which could mean that my conscience is fully developed, but also means that it isn’t conducive to intelligent debate on the subject. My political compass is somewhat akin to faith – I can feel what’s right in my bones, but I have a bugger of a time expressing my views (damnit, Jim, I’m a scientist, not a philosopher!), so discourse on my views is somewhat tricky for me.
But then it struck me. After reading my friend Mary’s most excellent blog, the idea of discussing faith occurred to me. Not just as a means of justifying my faith in itself, or seeing what your views are, but examining what good it actually does us as well.
So, to kick this party off, I have a horrible confession to make. Over the course of my degree, I went through a crisis of faith. Since the eve of my confirmation sometime in 1996, I’ve been a staunch atheist. I was lying there in bed, thinking about what was going to happen the next day, when suddenly I had an epiphany. Something along the lines of a religious experience, although areligious would probably be more accurate. I suddenly glimpsed the entire Universe for a moment, like I was in the Total Perspective Vortex (sorry for the reference), and I saw the entire vastness of all Creation – and it was empty. Completely and wholly vacant. There was no one watching over us, there was no mystical being, in this Universe or outside my perception, which was responsible for all of this. This image has stuck with me for the last twelve years and I can still see it in my mind now as clearly as when I first saw it. Instead of driving me mad, like the Vortex did in the books, seeing the Universe from the perspective of a cupcake drove me SANE. In fact, I think that’s the first time I can remember the sensation that’s so plagued me in recent years, like a wall in my mind, but I digress.
Anyway, I was secure in the knowledge that, having won my staring contest with the abyss, I knew the great secret of the Universe, and happily went through my empty little life feeling generally awesome about myself. At least, until I got to university. As you all probably know, I studied Biological Sciences for three years, if what I did can be called ‘studying’. It seems a funny subject to cause a crisis of faith, but then, didn’t Newton find reason to be a theist merely in a thumbprint? It wasn’t any great, eloquent argument for the existence of God that shook me, however, merely a problem of probability; for example, studying the intricate molecular detail of organisms in as much detail as I have, (if I were a PR man for the Catholic Church, I’d simply get them to put Topoisomerase II on a poster and watch the converts roll in) and getting even further into ‘pure science’– examining the delicate balance of charges and gravitational constants that keep us all together makes one appreciate the absolutely staggering odds required for all this to have come to pass.
However, my unfaith in God remains true. I haven’t even gone agnostic, but I learnt an important lesson: science can be just as much proof of the existence of God as any number of miracles- in fact, it could be argued that the everyday world is more of a miracle than an infinity of weeping statues or cured lepers (science can do that too, Jesus!). I’ve also gained a full appreciation of the phrase ‘stranger things can happen’, and if I develop a gambling problem later in life, I fully intend to sue the university of teaching me that no odds are too long.
So, there, that’s part one. Part two should be coming shortly, and I’ll be examining the ethics of religion, as well as my own imagined solution to the inherent contradictions between faiths. Hopefully no one will yell at me for writing this instead of working on my books.
Ta ta for now!
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