Losing marbles...

The Higgs Boson, the so-called God particle. For the hard of thinking this is not a small spherical object whose discovery proves the existence of god; it’s not some supernatural, cosmic marble that somehow makes religion real. There is no god. Why am I so sure? Because despite the canonical fabrications of the Catholic church and the insistence by babbling maniacs who have spent solitary time tramping inhospitable deserts that they and they alone have been privy to the mind of the almighty, the total evidence for the omnipotent creator is a big fat zero. Nothing, zilch, nada… sweet fuck-all.

God is created in the minds of men, but all their fevered yearning for the heavenly father to be real has signally failed to cause him to materialise in any tangible form. He/she/it is a figment. Either fantastic or mundane neither the randomly interchangeable heads - crocodile, bird, elephant, serpent – nor the ‘image of man’ visualisations hold any water; he just ain’t there. But, as Voltaire said, if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him, because humans are very, very stupid and can’t handle the notion of a life with, quite literally, no meaning.

Odd though that those same human animals can quite easily dismiss the life of other animals as eminently disposable; pests, vermin, competitors for living space or food. Life is sacrosanct… but oh so tasty; hypocrisy much? But the craving for reason also ushers in an inevitable gold rush; feeding on the gullibility that accompanies the need is a millennia-long history of shamans and charlatans, inventing doctrine on the hoof, much as a politician creates policy to order in pursuit of a living. And what a living!

Making sense of the incoherent is work that can only be carried out by people with no other talent but one for invention. So-called ‘scholars’ of religions are nothing more than story-tellers unable to resolve the plot; weavers of the divine soap opera where every new episode brings drama but nobody ever learns a thing and nobody ever grows out of their two-dimensional character. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How many virgins await the martyr? How much more fantastic do the story lines have to get before we all reach Nirvana, by which I mean enlightenment?

And by enlightenment I mean apostasy; total rejection of the idiot doctrines of the voodoo, the mumbo-jumbo and all the claptrap spouted by all the religions throughout the written ages and beyond. Yesterday David Cameron gave his much-hyped ‘get tough’ speech about ‘islamist radicalisation’ but he couldn’t bring himself to say what needed to be said. The root cause of all religious radicalisation is religion itself; a primitive urge among the less advanced of our number who are incapable of seeing simple reality. I have no need to demonstrate that your god does not exist; every day on planet earth produces yet another several-billion pieces of evidence that he doesn’t and not a single one that he does; in scientific terms that’s close to conclusive; it's mankind's longest experiment.

Buddy Bin Laden: "We keel you!"

Oh but, Shiny Dave doesn’t want to ‘alienate the muslim community’? (That’s code for 'scare away potential voters’ by the way.) In that case why single out one religion for approbation? Why not outlaw the lot of them then? Oh, of course Dave, you have to pretend that you believe in ‘our’ god, don’t you. It’s okay though, as far as I can discern it is still only a few million adherents of one particular faith who are regularly murdering people and declaring painful death to the west and last time I checked it wasn't the Anglicans.

ROFL…

So, Rolf Harris is put away and up rise the strident, angry voices demanding a harsher penalty. Stripped of all honours, likely to be the target of nonce-fuckers inside, reputation gone forever, no friends anywhere, 84 years old and very likely to die inside, but if he ever does get out he will die a miserable recluse. I’d say that’s a pretty tough and short future and an ignoble end to a lifetime of near-universal adoration. But if you think that’s not enough, what might it be saying about you? (I don’t have an opinion on that – I don’t know you – but you may wish to reflect.) Or did you want Rolf to pay the penalty that Savile neatly sidestepped?

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not excusing him in any way at all; it’s you lot I’m concerned about. Because at times like this people begin to believe stuff such as the existence on earth of pure evil and the pundits rail against ‘dark forces’ and variously malevolent ‘Satanic’ agents at work to somehow pervert the otherwise pure motives of angelic humans. We use words like inhuman and beast and deviant in order to assure ourselves that we could never be capable of such heinous acts. There but for the grace of another imaginary deity…

But, you say, think of the victims! They have been given a life sentence from which they can never recover. While meaning in no way to diminish the hurt that some people have undoubtedly endured, others have recovered from truly horrific events; torture, witnessing genocide, being bombed, shot at, gang-raped, beaten or trafficked for sex-slavery; not everybody who goes to war suffers PTSD. Again, I’m not saying suffering isn’t very real and debilitating, but the pendulum swings…

Just as labelling a child dyslexic without real evidence, because it suits the equality agenda, surely allowing without query a victim mentality to flourish, can’t be always healthy. Again, before you start, I am not saying what some of you have already convinced yourselves I’m saying. I’m not a monster; I just can’t blame my present on my past. That isn’t to say I don’t have regrets, or wonder how things might have turned out differently had I been, say, a Rockefeller, but where we are is where we are. We can’t change the past but we absolutely can try to change our future.

Rolf is being punished, he really is. For a small number of people that in itself is a small balm, but why do the unaffected spectators get such a buzz from the misery of others? It’s not your fight; your fight is against your own limitations. You can choose to get swept up in the mob of pitchfork-toting peasants at the gates or you can choose to get on and make yourselves better people. It’s a bit like religion; if you need to cling onto a faith, if you need to believe a higher power controls your destiny, if that’s what you rely on for your moral guidance, maybe it’s because there isn’t enough of ‘you’ to save your own soul?

The Ascent of None

On Sunday morning Nicky Campbell (isn’t he a bit old to still be called Nicky?) hosted the BBC talk show The Big Questions, this week’s question being “Is it time for all religions to accept evolution as fact?” I love this show because it manages to gather together in one place a plethora of beliefs as wide and outlandish as you’ll find in any multicultural inner city school… except these are adults!

Shakespeare’s seven ages of man kicks off with the mewling and puking infant, followed by the whining schoolboy and then the sighing lover, but he misses out the bit where you open your eyes and make your own mind up. Except, does he? Because too many people drag into adulthood unquestioned beliefs that rely entirely on blind faith. 

The assembled audience and participants were drawn from the whole range of religious beliefs in the UK, by which of course I mean mostly Islam – it is the BBC after all – and every single one of them was utterly unprepared to accept what any of the few scientists had to say about the hot topic of evolution, even those scientists who also professed a religious leaning. 

Science doesn't have all the answers – in particular it can’t answer “Why?” but religion has exactly no answers. Not a single one. I have no particular axe to grind, but religion has all the provable credibility of astrology, phrenology, homeopathy and ‘crystals’. It may provide comfort in times of despair and it may provide a soothing hub for the cohesion of many communities, but where science requires evidence, religious belief requires only blind, unquestioning faith. 

In that respect, religion and left wing politics have much in common. Brooking no argument, the articles of that faith say that left is God and right is Satan. That being caring and happy and clappy for rainbow-coloured ‘fairness’ will heal the sick and feed the poor; that, somehow, there will always be enough money to pay for all that compassion, so lacking in the legions of hell – or The Tory Party as they call it. 

And yet, despite many otherwise intelligent people being drawn to it, the policies of the left rely entirely on sufficient numbers on the right remaining to earn the money and be repeatedly plundered in the name of fairness. The doctrine says that the harder you labour the more Labour must take from you; that the less likely you are to need ‘social’ services the more you should pay to provide them. Socialism can only really work where everybody believes and if everybody believes what use will we have for evolution?

As always, I try and find a suitable picture to illustrate my theme. I can only ascribe the happy coincidence of the appearance of this tweet by Ricky Gervais on my timeline this morning to divine providence!

The European Union debate is another which revolves around constantly reciting the dogma that to leave would be a disaster but, just as with all faiths, no objective rationale is ever raised, no bottom line audited. The truth is, nobody knows. Another truth is that staying in means we will forever be enslaved to the high altar of a socialist federal dream, with no opportunity to explore our ages of man beyond the dreamy, blinded lover.

Maybe science will one day find its God Particle; the thing that, once and for all, proves the existence of a higher being. Until then I'll continue to question, continue to disbelieve and wear my scepticism on my sleeve.

(And if you're still not convinced of the Messianic monstrosity that is the EU, take a long look at this document on the 1975 Referendum Stitch-up , which pretty much sums up how I've always perceived it to be.)

Lettuce Pray

It's Sunday. It's traditionally a day of rest, of worship, of quiet repose and, for many years now... shopping. As usual when Sunday trading comes up for discussion nobody quite knows what to think of it. Is it good that we get an extended day's trading, which allows some to earn more and helps keep money in circulation? Or is it bad - boo, nasty Tories - a cynical exploitation of a downtrodden workforce?

When Mo Farah won the 5,000 metres Olympic gold medal  last night there were jubilant cheers from the left, pinning his success on the triumph of multiculturalism that had created this opportunity. Because, of course, there were never any black athletes in Britain's Olympic squad before. Oh, wait... Meantime those on the right accused the left of a cynical exploitation of a failed doctrine. Cognitive dissonance being ever the main tool in a politico's armoury.

In the case of Tia Whatshername from New Whatsitsplace, depending on your stance it is either a tragedy of Herculean scale befalling and affecting all mankind and highlighting the incompetence of police and social workers alike. Or it's a non-story about the inevitable consequences of inbreeding amongst a benefit-dependent underclass of chav scum, from whom we can expect no better.

See? It's all a matter of perspective and there's the problem. Most humans do not possess the critical faculties to make meaningful judgements or formulate ideas of their own. The Thatcher-hating communities will never allow that she did any good whatsoever while those who are self-sufficient through their own endeavours see nothing but evil in the thuggish, scowling mien of the likes of Mark Serwotka and Bob Crow.

What we need is something we can all agree on and that something need not be grounded in fact. Avoid the facts at all costs, I say, because facts can be tested and verified. No, what we need is blind faith, so I'm going to gets me some religion. When I say 'me' I mean 'you' and when I say 'gets' I mean you're going to get what you're given - that, after all, is how all religions work.

I haven't got time for all that write-a-book-based-on-what-may-or-may-not-have-happened-loosely-based-on-events-of-the-time-and-pretend-it-came-from-god-nonsense. But that's old hat anyway, surely nobody actually believes the bible or the koran anyway? (Note the deliberately dismissive  and disrespectful use of lower case there) They do? Well, this is going to be easier than I thought then... using the divine power of the internet I shall conjure up a miracle, get it going viral and subjugate a generation to my will; a vision should do for a start and to that end I searched for inspiration in nature:

Here goes... Verily I say unto thee my children, I saw  the face of our saviour in my cabbage patch. And the face was good. There, that should do the trick.

Yes! It does look like Boris Johnson, doesn't it? But, of course, he's omnipresent after all and he did perform a miracle by walking in the air just a week ago. Just as a true Messiah he came among his people and abased himself. Rejoice and listen to my sermon:

Consider the lettuce...

The Sultan of Swing

As the week ends forget pastygate. And you might want to consider stockpiling petrol for an entirely different reason, for a new threat to the nation’s sanity has emerged. ‘Gorgeous’ George Galloway is the new Ayatollah of Bradfordistan, once a proud, northern mill town, now a burgeoning suburb of Karachi.

Galloway said, 'By the grace of God we have won the most sensational victory in British political history'. The madness of King George knows no bounds and no doubt fatwahs and favours will soon be issuing forth as he sits in Gadaffi-like splendour, eating dates in his big tent in Bradford’s Green Square. He may even invite his arch enemy Tony Blair for a photo opportunity. For George has cast off his sins and adopted the one true faith, the faith turned to by many another beleaguered pugilist. George has adopted the faith of ‘hismam’, righteous self-worship in the name of publicity.

The former Marxist, communist, head-the-ball and out-and-out swivel-eyed lunatic has benefited – according to the losing Labour faction – from a drop in support for the conservatives. It’s not their week, I know, but even I can’t imagine a former Conservative supporter switching sides to an unconvincing, cat-imitating, Big Brother reject. No, there has to be another reason for the high apparent reversal of voter apathy.

Maybe George’s kitty-cat tongue has had a workout licking all those stamps for the not-at-all-suspiciously large postal ballot? And who was that agile, yet stocky, burka-clad figure seen dashing from booth to booth in a last minute voting frenzy; one photographic ID, yet thousands of identities? (It’s a local custom) 

We may never know, but one thing is for certain. Bradford is no longer a British city that has simply lost its identity. It will forever be known as a city that has lost its mind and gone stark, staring mad. Respect? George Galloway? My arse!

But the government must look to their laurels. The entirely avoidable disasters of the last week are nothing compared to this travesty. One thing's for sure - if this can happen, anything can happen. Remember, every household in the land now has a can of petrol standing by. Man the barricades, the infidel is at the gates.

PS: For every ethnic, religious or historical inaccuracy in this article I offer no apology whatsoever. It's my blog and I can write what I like for comic effect. 

PPS: So there.