There Probably Is No God... Just Be Good For Goodness Sake

This was my favourite news story of the year.



The reaction was priceless



There is NO OUTCRY IN BRITAIN! lol... We seriously didn't care! We really really didn't care! You can't believe how much we didn't care....

The fact is WE in Great Britain.. have absolutely no interest in what religious people do...

According to the census statistics in 2001, 71% of brits are protestant... but think about this. In the 1600's our King Henry VIII broke free from the catholic church so he could get a divorce from dodgy looking Catherine of Aragon, and have his wicked way with the tasty sex-kitten Anne Boleyn. We called the newly reformed protestant church... The Chuch Of England... get it... THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

If we called it "Martin Luther's German Christian Church of Protestants", NO ONE IN BRITAIN would ever mark it down on their census forms. The british people have not cared about religion for a very long time. Bear in mind that the same census in 2001 reported an excellent 0.7% of people claiming to be Jedi Knights, making it the fourth biggest religion in the UK!

http://www.vexen.co.uk/UK/religion.html

There is a religion in the UK, people go every week, people believe in it completely, people love it like they love their own family. It's not christian, it's not Muslim, it's not even Buddhism....

Football is the religion of Britain, it has been since the 1900's. And it is followed far more than any make-believe deity, its attended each week with crowds bigger than any church or mosque could dream of on our isle.



If you walked down a street with a quotation of the bible on your t-shirt, chances are you would be stopped and/or laughed at. We don't thrust our silly ideas at other people, and we don't presume others need to be saved, we don't enjoy being told what to do, especially by people who seem to have no regard for their own rules. Walking down the high street with a football shirt is as normal as baseball hats in the US.

I don't even like football that much, but at least its real.

BIG BIG BIG WELL DONE for the right-wing Fox News to come out with even more rubbish about britain. They are really having a bumper year after their attacks on the british health System. Seriously people... drive 100 miles to see a doctor, have operations without X-Rays, kill people off because they're too old!  Fox News really has made a big effort this year!

Now they manage to take the mickey out of the one group of people saying just be good regardless of what you believe in. We dont see American Humanists bombing buildings, or terrorising abortionist doctors. They just want people to be good to each other.



Wow! I bet Jesus would approve... I seem to remember reading Jesus wasn't a big fan of churches either.

God, Assessyphus and Determinism

I dont know how you feel but sometimes I cant help feeling that my life is just an uphill climb. Everytime something goes right, there is something or someone else that brings you down. Im starting to feel like Assessyphus in the greek fable, who tried to push his rock to the top of the hill.

As you may know, I am in love. She is a wonderful lady, funny, charming, intellegent. We live 4800 miles apart but I've never felt so close to another spirit. Our romance started in our heads at first, and we became close friends. We spent hours talking to each other every day both on the phone and online, laughing and crying, arguing and playing.  Soon we found our relationship blossoming into a special cerebral love. A close important understanding as to what we wanted, what our dreams were, what we believed in. We worked through our relationship with the distance acting like our own chaperone.

We finally met around Easter. All our lingering doubts and concerns as to whether what we were thinking was actually real vanished in the first moments of our meeting. As I walked towards her the lady on customs told me "shes been waiting over there for a while, and shes very nervous!", I barely heard her. I knew as my heart exploded with love that this was the woman I would marry. Over the next few weeks I met her family, all of which seemed to like me well enough and all of which knew by the way we were together that this was the real thing. Its odd how it seems so obvious to them having seen us together, and how difficult it is for people over here who havent.

By the end of the trip we were both planning our big day, but since that day I find myself constantly facing brick walls. Most appear to be just plain bad luck, but you cant help but wonder if god himself isnt trying to say something.

Firstly, since I returned back home from the states, I have had car trouble. Not little bits of car trouble, but great mountains of car trouble. I have had to fork out over £1000 on it since Easter. Now this is on a car, that if I were to sell right now, would only go for about £1000. If it wasnt a taxi, and if I wasnt planning to leave the country next year, i might just think to hell with it, and get another job.

In fact, that is exactly what I would have done this time last year, when the car I bought for £4k the year previously decided to cough and splutter on me. I took it to my Vauxhall Dealership who told me it was a problem that would cost me £800. Ok, i thought, thats expensive, but its just about worth it. I got a cab and paid my hard earned cash over to their desk. The VERY next day the same mechanic told me they had spotted another problem and this one would cost another £1000. If I had known the repairs would cost £1800, i wouldnt have bothered. So now im stuck... pay £1000 and get my repaired car, or lose my £800, AND my car.

So now to have yet ANOTHER massive expense is pushing me towards despair.

Then there is me... I gave up smoking in October because my girl is asthmatic. I loved smoking, and not a day goes by without me wanting a cigarette, but despite this I knew I could save money, and I wouldnt kill my girl when I finally get to be with her. I started to take regular exercise in June. I swam two sometimes three times a week, and I took up Badminton. Now I have snapped my achilles tendon, and I cannot work for two months minimum.

It was only the second time I went.

You may say that I tried to do too much too early, you may say that if she really loved you she wouldnt make you do these things. She didnt make me. I made me... I made a decision.  I have always been overweight, and happy with it too. I have never found a skinny body very attractive, and so never really aspired to be like that. I was also not very talented in sports and so rarely strived to get fit. I have always been happy enough.

The one time I decided that I would lose weight was when I lived with my best friend Steven. I had broken up with my first important love and was very depressed. We lived on the edge of town, and I found that I could run at night when no-one saw me, or heard me more importantly. I decided I would go a certain distance, and if I got tired I would walk a little, but the distance would be covered... twice a week. It took me aound 45 mins at first, but I got it down to 30. I found myself changing diet automatically. I just didnt want the sandwich or the chips, instead I had more energy overall. I went out more and was much more confident and friendly. I enjoyed it, but things change. Work got busier, we moved out of the flat, and I found a new girlfriend. Times change, and I had lost all inclination.

I never felt so inclined to improve my health until now. And just like the smoking, I just did it. When I make a decision to change for the rest of your life, you want it to start straight away, so I started swimming. I knew the weight loss would come eventually, but week after week of not getting anywhere made me want to step things up a gear. So I started playing badminton, a sport I love. The first session nearly killed me, I was stiff from head to toe for 5 days! I was walking around like Frankenstein, but I loved it... I knew it had made a real difference and I also knew that I wouldnot give in, never give in. The second session, my tendon goes.

It felt like something snapped. It popped like bubble wrap, and I was on the floor. I expected more pain, in fact at first I had in my head one of those pictures you see of footballers with broken legs, but after the initial shock... i nearly fainted thinking I had ruined any chance of being with my girl... I was able to get up and hobble to my car. It was after a week that I finally decided I ought to see a doc. Since then its been plaster for two weeks, and now this stupid boot for what may be another 8 weeks.

In the states, my girl has had trouble herself. I wont tell you about it on here as its not my place to mention it, but I can guarantee you, you would consider it very unlucky also. Thank god her health isnt suffering (i am knocking on wood as I say that)

We had planned to marry in May next year. All things had to do was to stay the same.

Now we discuss things with such sadness, as we havent got a clue how to plan anything when you simply dont know where the next disaster is going to come from. She tells me all the time that I should just pack up my stuff and go, but I just cant. And just when you need the person who you love by your side, both of us find ourselves alone.

I dont know what to do for the best. For someone who has always had a plan, Im lost and for the first time scared that we may never get to be with eachother.

As I think about it. About how easy it would be to give up. How everything and everyone is telling me not to be hasty, to reconsider, to take my time. I think about God, and I think about determinism. We often get the two mixed up. If you believe in God, a christian god, then you believe we all have choices. The choice to do good, the choice to follow Jesus, the choice to believe, by the same reasoning we have the choice to turn our backs on God. God gave us his son so the christians say, to show us the way. So we know there is no extra help coming from him.

I am always reminded of the bible story about the prodigal son. In the story a farmer has two sons, the younger of which demands to have his inheritance early. The farmer reluctantly gives it and the son travels into the city where he wastes his money on "riotous living"... my fathers favourite phrase... eventually he returns home to his dad who greets him with open arms.

The story is specifically a parable about returning to the faith, but its also about choices. In it the son has clearly chosen to live his own life and make his own decisions, a theme often reitterated in the bible. He eventually returns home, having chosen that life working for his father as a slave is preferable to living on the streets. As I look around in my life though, I wonder where my choices are, when so much goes wrong, and so many things get in your way to stop you from making the one choice you have decided upon.

I have heard it said so many times that God works in mysterious ways. Its why he takes innocent children in volcanos and earthquakes they say. It why he allows so many to die in Africa through drought and disease, and maybe its why he is stopping me from being with my true love.

Alternatively, we sometimes call this fate, determinism or destiny. It basically says that what will be will be, after all... if this is so hard then surely it cant be right. That just like the water that finds the path of least resistance to maintain the optimum efficiency of energy usage, so we should find the path thats easiest for us. When I fell in love with this wonderful woman I found it to be the easiest thing I had ever done. Doesnt that count for anything? isnt that my fate?

I feel desperate and defeated right now. I feel lost and alone and confused. And the only thing I know is that I am happiest when I am with her. I cannot believe that God conspires against me like an evil jealous zealot. If that is who God is then I dont want to know him, and likewise I cant believe we are destined to be apart like some shakespearian tragedy. We must find a way, have to find a way.

Because tomorrow, I will get up, and I will go downstairs and I will face my day knowing that the only chance, the only reason for me to be there at all is because of her.

And no God, and no Fate is going to stop me. You wanna see determinism. Its right here, facing you down and telling you "I will never give up"

In God We Trust

As the american election goes into overdrive, and I got to tell you its been the most entertaining yet. Now I'm not going to tell you who I want to win, not that it matters what I... living in the 'free world' thinks when it comes to voting for the leader of the 'free world' but...

Its kind of funny that one of the founding principles of the american revolution was no taxation without representation, and yet here we are with another american president soon to be voted on, and the rest of the world not allowed to vote, and yet having to put countelss billions into their own money markets, nationalising banks etc just cos of the monumentous cock ups of the american government and its corporatist ideals.

Not that im bitter.

But to be honest, its not the election i wanted to talk about but the dollar note, well specifically the dollar coin... The dollar coin, just recently launched is interesting in that it apparently is the first coint o have writing on the sides of the coin. Well done. Apparently it says the immortal words 'In God We Trust', Not so well done.

I have to ask a few basic and simple questions about this, and please dont get all holier than though, and all weeeelll you aint american so you are a Heathen!

But why the hell does the one dollar coin need to have 'In God We Trust', firstly which God? At least half of the population of the US doesnt believe in an all powerful god, and the half that do have trouble agreeing in which one. And if we are talking about the christian god, the bible and all, I seem to remember he wasnt that fond of money, it is easier for a cael to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to yadda yaddda.... or false icons... okay I cant remember the reference here, but im pretty sure he wasnt keen on them, something about a golden calf springs to mind, yet there you go writing those words on your currency. Am I the only person to find this attitude a little weird.

Talking about religion for a second, there are two things that occur to me recently... firstly a quote

"The person of the prophet, is revered so profoundly with a love and affection that cannot be explained in words. It goes beyond your parents, your loved ones, your children. That is part of the faith."

This kind of rhetoric, this kind of blind devotion has been said by many a believer. Im a cabbie and enjoy a decent conversation with random people, but when people tell me they love a prophet from over 2000 years ago, rather than their own family, I start to wonder whats going on. Especially when they go on to tell me that the world is only 12k old...

Now about that, There are muslims and some far right christians alike that deny the holocaust ever happened. The argue that the evidence is not conclusive. Here are some examples of their beliefs;

The Gas Chambers, were just air raid shelters, with no holes in the roof, not in the structure or in the blueprints. Therefore if they werent gas chambers, then there was no holocaust.

The Cremation Ovens would not have had the time, or the fuel to burn so many bodies in the period of time allocated.

Anne Franks diary was written in ball point pen, and was written in a hand much more mature than her hand, so therefore was a fake.

Kristalnacht never happened to the extent claimed, both Hess and Hitler were livid at the violence, and never wanted what was a simple administrative procedure to end up as it did. Not only that, but the night was exascerbated by Jewish resistance with the sole intention of ensuring violence by the german soldiers .

Now I have to tell you, If you look up any of these issues online or through newspapers, you will see a very very different account. If you talk to victims still around you will hear a very different story, if you talk to the scientists you will find scientific evidence that it happened, and yet these people still believe its not happened.

Scientific proof and eye witnesses. That is the extent of proof available to us, Eye witnesses as you know become less and less reliable as time goes on, and yet for religion we are supposed to believe eye witnesses from over 2000 years ago, and scientific proof...

The thing about scientific proof is that, if you just look at things from one angle, say fingerprints on a knife, you may come to the wrong conclusion, which is why courts require alot more than one piece of scientific evidence. They need combined scientific proof to give a best guess. A best guess, not certain knowledge... best guess. Thats the other thing about science, it doesnt have the arrogance of religion, it knows it could be wrong, it accepts that future knowledge and understanding could be different, as opposed to religions blind 'faith', belief without proof perhaps.

So when scientists say the earth is billions of years old, they dont say it because of one test done on one rock, they say it as a theory which they post in a journal, then other sceintists spend their time trying to prove or disprove it, by alternative tests or by a larger population test or by alternative methods ec. This way science has gradually been able to come to some conclusions which they call laws.

These laws are the basis of science and are proved everyday through testing. These laws are the building blocks of science, and help us to understand everything around us. So when someone tells me the earth is only 6000 years old, it is only right that the burden of Proof is on the theory, not lack of proof of others. And also when someone tells me adam and eve are the first two people on the planet, I laugh with the same incredulity as a Jew at the guy who says the Holocaust never happened.

Okay, im off subject here, but there you go.