AND WHOSE SIDE? A HARMLESS OBSERVATION

I am neither atheist nor Christian, although lean towards the atheists idea that there is no god. I am a deist and a freethinker.
But anyhow.
Has anyone else noticed how both sides, using quotes he allegedly made, claim Einstein for their own, and yet at the same time both sides insists that Hitler was batting for the other side?
I’ve said this before in a different way, and I’ll say it again;
It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter if Einstein was an atheist (actually, when he used ‘god’ he meant something like a poetic way of describing nature and the laws of physics and was quite determined to make sure people didn’t attribute belief in a personal Biblegod type deity to him).
It doesn’t matter if Hitler was a Christian (he was a Roman Catholic, believed in a god who sent him down as a saviour to rescue the German people, and that Jesus was the Jesus who turned over the tables of the money-changers and was not Jewish).
It doesn’t matter if every philanthropist who ever existed was a follower of Christianity, nor does it matter if atheists are all miserable, misanthropic characters wallowing in their own lack of self-purpose.
None of this makes god true.
If Biblegod exists, he would make himself known in an unequivocal way; like appearing at the latest get-together of the United Nations, or curing every illness and disease on the planet. He certainly would not trust fallen, fallible man to adequately note down what he was all about. He would make it clear he was real and serious by doing a few good deeds of the miraculous kind, like ending world hunger, instead of causing disasters through the wind and rain that, if he was a human, would, if you thought about it reasonably, not gain him hearts and minds. He would not hide, and while beyond human detection, cause bridges to collapse or burn images of himself on rock faces or cakes. If he loved us enough to not want us to go to hell, he would see to it that there was one single undoubted unmistakable pathway to salvation so’s humans could decide whether to reject or accept. He certainly would not scatter various different ways of interpreting his word so that a person’s salvation came down to whether or not a word could be translated as an ‘a’ or an ‘A’.
But he hasn’t. He remains hidden because, well, here’s a thought. . .
There is no god, at least not the one of the Scriptures. No matter who the theists claim for themselves, or for the enemy camp, it doesn’t make him any more real.

IMAGINATION V REASON

I don’t believe in god, nor an afterlife, which means I don’t believe in spooks.
And yet, although most of me (the reasoning part) knows it’s silly, when I’ve been reading ghost stories just before bedtime, I have to put the light on when I’m going upstairs to bed. . .

SO IT’S DONE

I’ve e-mailed another story off to a publisher. According to the site rules, it takes up to twelve weeks for an acknowledgement, so if they are going to publish, I should hear something by mid-October at the latest. If not, well, there are plenty more where that came from.
The oddest thing is, I know that when I feel physically rotten but not fed up due to feeling physically rotten, my writing dries up to a trickle. I can only write when I feel things are going wrong, nothing rhymes, to use a title of a story I’ve got waiting in reserve, just in case. When I feel fairly content, nary a word leaves my head and goes into my hands and onto my keyboard and through into my word processor pages. I suppose when I feel totally useless at being unable to do the productive spondulicks earning, some mental process kicks in and I type to try and make a living that way.

GOD : WHAT IF?

If there is a single, monolithic, all powerful creator god, and he created everything, and he is involved in what we do, and he is the only one and there is none like him, how come there are so many different faiths?
I mean, if Bible or Koran god exists, well surely he would see to it that everyone has inner knowledge of him, especially since if we don’t believe we are going to burn in hell for all eternity. And yet Islam has three main different denominations and Christianity has hundreds under the banner of Protestantism, from the Pentecostal belief that the Holy Spirit is a person, alive and active, and makes us behave in certain ways, to the Jehovah’s Witness, where the holy spirit is inanimate, like building material for us to work with. And then there are all the other different faiths, all claiming they have the truth, all claiming to worship god in one form or another.
Surely if you engage your reasoning facility, the fact that Zoroastrians, Jains and members Bahá’í faith exist, all claiming they have the truth, tells you there can’t be one all knowing, all powerful god.

SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : ‘CAT’S IN THE CRADLE’ BY HARRY CHAPIN

This weekend’s song to end the weekend on is ‘Cat’s In The Cradle’* by the marvellous singer Harry Chapin, sadly killed in a terrible car accident at the early age of 38. Written by Sandy Chapin, Harry’s wife, about the troubled relationship between her first husband and his father. I think the song is absolutely haunting and I’m glad, when I remember my own Dad, that our life together was nothing like the one in the song and we that always had time for one another.
Before I finish, I’ll scotch a rumour; a lot of people believe that Cat Stevens sang this song and to be honest when I first heard it, I thought it was Cat Stevens. But Cat Stevens never recorded this song for public or private consumption.
Listen for the chorus, and how the plea for shared time changes from ‘Dad’ to ‘Son’.
So, as always,
Enjoy and,
A good week, whether you’ve grown up like your Dad or not.

*Actually, I was torn between this Mr Chapin song and the other well known one of his, W.O.L.D. for this weekend’s song. Maybe I’ll use W.O.L.D. as a future song to end the weekend on.

FAVOURITE QUOTES ET AL. . .

I’ve not been updating this site as much as I’d like, for the simple reason I feel wretched most of the time and although the ideas are flowing because I feel generally off they are blocked just about where my head meets my neck and don’t get down to my hands so I can type them out.
Anyhow. . .
Here’s a couple of favourite quotes. (If I’ve already provided you with these, well, a good quote is always worth repeating).

From Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

And;

From Richard Dawkin’s ‘River Out Of Eden’

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

These make a lot more sense than the notion that life has a goal, in that there is an almighty creator and saviour watching over us and seeing that, in the end, so long as we believe in him, and tell others, all will be well.
Come on, of course it does.
Coming soon; My personal answer to the question ‘in a world where life has no meaning, where does the instinct for morals, to treat others decently, come from’?

AN IDEA OF HUMOUR

Now, THIS is funny. I discovered it on the Onion News website. I laughed til I heaved. It’s clever too. And has a happy ending. Have a read, you’ll see what I mean.

AND IT JUST COULD HAPPEN

How many grown up people believe in wishes coming true?
Forget the thread of cynicism that runs through all we do today. Just seriously think about it; Unless you’re a kid or believe in Disneyland, you don’t believe that wishing works. Everyone of a certain age or intelligence level knows that wishes are fairy tales, pretend. They don’t even try engaging them. And yet a lot of these people who dismiss wishes as kid’s stuff would, if they were faced with redundancy or news of a serious illness striking someone they care for, would pray.
So, what’s the difference between prayers and wishes?
Wait a minute. . .don’t grown ups NEVER wish? Just kids. Grown ups PRAY.
And yet there is the same chance of a prayer being answered to the benefit of the prayer as their is for a kid’s wishes.
Right; if you pray, and you get what you pray for, it’s god’s will. And if you don’t, well, it’s still god’s will, it’s just that you don’t get it.
Now, imagine a little kid wishing really hard on a star or whatever kids wish on these days. When they’ve done, they’ll end up with what they wish for, or not.
No matter if you wish or pray, you’ve still got the same chance of getting or not getting what you want. In fact, when a kid wishes, if she is an ordinary kid with no family problems, she will wish for something like a new bike or dolly or something, and because parents often know what a kid wants, she will get it. Because parents love and care for their kids and give them gifts.
So, what really is the difference?
Let’s tell it like it is; prayers are wishes for grown ups. And because there is no god-parent, a grown up will probably not end up for what they pray for. Because there really is no god-parent watching over us, and listening to our prayers and answering them. Because things happen. If you pray for something and it happens, it would have happened anyway, and if it doesn’t, well, it wouldn’t have happened.
So, what really is the difference between wishes and prayers?

SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : ‘MONEY’ FROM ‘CABARET’

This song’s song to end the weekend on is from ‘Cabaret’, ‘Money’ found on YouTube and the scene with Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey camping it up with German accents. (I especially like the bit when ‘hunger’ knocks on the door!)
Actually, ‘Cabaret’s’ over-the-top kitsch is a perfect example of the harmless, loveable decadency Weimar Republican Germany was famous for (for example, transsexual and S&M clubs were widespread) before Hitler took over and tamed and ultimately destroyed the club scene. In fact, in the film version of the musical ‘Cabaret’, the ever encroaching tide of Nazism is made more and more obvious as time goes by.
Anyway, as always,
Enjoy, and,
A good week, whether or not you happen to be rich.

OLYMPIC SITE CATS UPDATE : GREATEST NEWS

The cats I wrote about in a rather challenging previous posting, left to fend for themselves or die on the building site slated for an Olympic Park setting for the 2012 games, have all been rescued.
The site owners have seen reason; rescuers belonging to the Celia Hammond trust were at last allowed in to the site, and have got the final puss, a gentleman they named Blackjack, to safety.
Isn’t that just the best news?
I love it when animals are safe. Just love it.

HELL!

This link takes you to a short YouTube video that contains the sounds of hell.
That’s right. According to Art Bell, the radio announcer, some chaps were drilling in Siberia and their drill cut through to a place that was hollow underground so placed a microphone into the hole to check for sounds of the earth’s movements and they picked up and heard what sounded like a million human voices screaming. By the way, the announcer is good, very, very good, warning people what they are about to hear is horrific and to avoid being terrified they might switch off for a few seconds is the best to way keep them tuned. And if you hang on, and don’t switch off, you’ll hear the sounds that these Siberians heard. Obviously, it’s hell, and the sounds are the tortured souls screaming in torment because they didn’t believe in Jesus and tell of him so they are now suffering for eternity.
Right. . .
Back to reason and reality.
Actually, I’ve heard that sound before. When I was a kid I used to go to the local public swimming baths on a Saturday afternoon, more to please my sporty Dad than out of any desire to get involved in sports myself. And those sounds that are supposed to be the screams of the damned remind me exactly of the shouts and screams of people disporting themselves in the water, the sounds echoing off the tiles of the walls. Those people are saying words, shouting to one another, but because very few Western radio listeners understand Russian, it would sound like wordless cries.
I think someone went into a public swimming baths in what was then the Soviet Union and audio recorded the swimmers having watery fun, and so’s they wouldn’t be arrested for being a perv they hid the tape. Or maybe they did it as a prank. Anyhow, through mistranslation from Russian to English, or out of devilment,(let’s play a joke on those silly Yanks, make out it’s from a tape that was picked up from a drilling in Siberia. Let’s say it’s HELL on tape) the tape ended up spread across the nations and eventually in the US on a radio show of a certain persuasion, and was played dead straight as an example of hell. When in reality, it’s the sounds of people innocently enjoying themselves in a crowded swimming baths somewhere on the Russian continent.
What, you really think it’s hell?
I especially like the writing at the back of all this, about how a resuscitated patient from some trauma woke up screaming about hell, and the heat at the centre of the earth and the discovery of giant Riftia worms proves that it’s all true, the stuff about hell and the worms eating you up. Fundies are absolutely brilliant at skewing real science to make their beliefs seem more reasonable.

WELCOMING INFERIOR POSITIONS

Well, it looks as if the liberals of the Anglican church have won, if the vote to allow women bishops without male counterparts, is anything to go off. Apparently, a lot of male ministers will be leaving the Church of England, defecting to the Roman Catholic church, where women are kept in their place, because of this.
The Women and the Church organisation are celebrating over this what they call victory, but to be honest I can’t see where the victory is.
First of all, it says in the bible that women should keep silent in church. Which basically means, they shouldn’t be allowed to take the services or officiate at the Lord’s supper or anything like that. The traditionalists have that correct. In the Scriptures, gays and women are not as important in the eyes of god as straight males. Gays are rejected by god which is why they are gay. Women, they are bent, shaped the wrong way, and shouldn’t be trusted to take a Christian service. It’s sad but true. So, to allow them in positions of authority is wrong in the eyes of the creator god, who after all, made the rules on which the CofE are based on. (Him and Henry VIII).
So. . .why are women and gay men sticking with an organisation and worshipping a god who hates them, or at least considers them not as good as the straight males they share their pews with? In the name of reason, it should be women and gays who are flocking away from the church, not straight men. Why support and work inside an organisation which admittedly hates them so? Anyone would think they enjoyed being looked down on, as object of inferiority and disgust, wrongly formed, hateful to god.
What they need to do is read the bible and think; just keep still and think; don’t worry about the input from commentaries and apologetics. Just read the bible and consider and anyone with any reasoning ability will see (as I did) that the biblegod is no true deity. He is petty, capricious, cruel, sadistic, in fact human, all too human. Wiping out whole cities, using his troops to kill everyone, or leave the virgin females alive for the males to have their fun. Killing, burning, raping. Involving himself in human affairs. Picking one group of one species over the others. Would a true noble creator, who made everything seen and unseen (I wonder if the unseen are other, parallel worlds?) small and big, really act so, well, like a grumpy old git of a man who thinks kids should have more respect and women should be kept in their place, and poofs killed or at least driven away? In fact, like those in their tents a couple of steps outside the cave, who sat down and invented this god?
Once they have done this, they will see how silly, how wrong, they have been. They will shake their heads and laugh at their silliness. Then they will put it all behind them and move on. Free to think what they want, to make their own decisions. No longer slave to a philosophy that sees them not as good, inferior, having to fight every step of the way for a recognition that many will refuse them. And they will leave the church and make their own way. Where they will end up, I don’t know, (it’s been three years since I turned it all in and I’m still gratefully on a journey of philosophical exploration) but surely it’s better than trying to alter the minds of a set group who barely recognise them as fully human, try and change minds and hearts from the inside of an organisation built on a set of ancient writings who condemn them for who they are? And then actually rejoice at every step where their condition is improved, which they have fought for, when in reality there should be no problem, they really should be recognised as just as good as those around them, who don’t share their sex and sexuality, without having to fight every step, and still being hated and rejected by those who would rather walk away than share communion with them.
Unless of course, they enjoy being slave to a man-invented god who really thinks they should shut up, if they’re allowed to live, and hates them enough to make them a pariah.
Before I leave this subject alone, I’ve got to add my comments on the words of leading Primate of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury; he says how Jesus is feeling the pain of the Anglicans. No, he isn’t. Any more than King Arthur or Robin Hood are (my atheist Mum’s two favourite comparisons, i.e. Jesus is like King Arthur and Robin Hood, he’s a made-up tale). Or Krishna or Anubis of the Egyptians. Because you can’t feel anything if you’re just a character in a set of fictional stories from two thousand years back.

SONG TO END THE WEEKEND ON : 10CC ‘THE DEAN AND I’

This weekend’s song to end the weekend on is ‘The Dean and I’ played and sung by 10cc on this YouTube clip.
Although the band use words and a style that would have you thinking they are of the US, actually the four members (Kevin Godley, Lawerence ‘Lol’ Creme, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman) are all Mancunians and the band itself was formed back in the early seventies in Stockport, about forty minutes bus ride from where I come from.
So, as always,
Enjoy and,
A good week, whether or not the elevator in your heart goes AWOL.