Wednesday 11 April 2007

see alan sugar,
that bloke off the apprentice.
he’s sid james, he is!


Before I became the rational person that I am today I was, for a short time, a worshipper of Parasettamol, the Aztec God of Camouflage Vests. It seemed as good a religion as any to join since the probability of his existence would be exactly the same as any other deity. Added to that there was the added advantage that, with very few members, there was plenty of choice when it came to finding a seat at the semi-regular services.
Since then, thankfully, I’ve seen reason, most of the time. My stance, I suppose, is one of probabilistic agnosticism, since I will not believe something unless it has been proven to my personal satisfaction. It’s an Occam’s Razor approach. I do not know how to go about proving that the Earth goes round the Sun, but I am assured that it does, and, if I am very determined to know how we know it does, I’m sure I could find out.
Galileo, who would no doubt be a member of the Rational Party were he still with us, had worked out for himself, following the work of Copernicus, that the Earth went round the Sun, but as the Church at the time did not believe in a heliocentric universe, Galileo was tried for heresy by the Inquisition and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1633; a Christian act which cost Galileo his life, since, being old and infirm, he died in prison.
We haven’t actually come that far in terms of rational thought in the last four hundred years. In the Middle East the concept of Evolution is, if not unknown, treated as a joke, whereas in parts of America, where some schoolchildren are taught that the Earth is only six thousand years old, Evolution is thought of as Satan’s theory, designed to make people deny God.
This would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
As if to demonstrate to me the chaotic nature of existence, the District Line suffered signal failures as I was on my way home, and delayed my arrival at Marks and Spencers. I would love to be able to explain the significance of this in terms of quantum mechanics, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t make a lot of sense, much like Naomi Campbell’s novel or anything that Jodie Marsh says.