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Musing on Sydney's news

15 October 2005

Religion for Dummies

Pardon another long hiatus, so much time, so little to do and all that. If I was to think of a consistently recurring theme in 2005 so far, I would say it was God.

We have Acts of God happening all over the place. The devastation of Aceh's tsunami, the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Kashmir and Sydney's Anglican Diocese threatening to quit the Church of England because they don't hate gays - all events of such magnitude that we mere mortals can only look on in awe and horror.

Then throw in attacks by Islamo-Fascists (or glorious martyrs), the effects of global warming (or seasonal fluctuations), the damning revelations of the Latham Diaries (or was that just a hissy fit from a sore loser?), the rise and rise of John Howard (aka lying rodent), rising petrol prices, the appointment of a new pope hand-picked from the old pope's conservative faction, and the continued non-assassination of George Dubya Bush.

These are unpredictable, cataclysmic times, people. You can't help wondering why, if God is supposed to be so good, why Acts of God are always such terrible disasters.

Many people believe that this is the beginning of the apocalypse predicted in the book of Revelations - or was it Nostradamus? Whatever, it seems some primitive ning-nong made some predictions thousands of years ago that everything would go pear-shaped one day. This should not surprise anyone since primitive ning-nongs can be expected to say primitive ning-nong things. After all, one day we're going to fall into the Sun, so the impending destruction of the Earth is hardly earth-shattering news (well, it is but ...).

With our media's obsession with Muslims, the rise of fundamentalist Christianity, the gradual erosion of the separation of the Church and the State, not to mention all these Acts of God, 2005 could well be thought of as the Year of the Warring Deities.

Given all of this God bizzo, I'm surprised that more people aren't asking who or what this God fellow (always a fellow, apparently) is. Let's look at what we know.

For a start no-one, apart from various schizophrenics, has ever seen God. So it seems fair to say that God is either invisible, or only visible to beings with different sensory organs, or who exist in a different dimension. What we're talking about is an Invisible Force, a force so huge that it can create something as vast as the cosmos. Bigger than McDonald's even.

So every day billions of people ask this Invisible Force to do one of two things: 1. To make their lives better, such as winning that job, partner or lottery 2. To tell them the right thing to do, presumably because they don't trust their instincts. The first option strikes me as somewhat illogical. My gut feeling is that Ginormous Invisible Forces are not going to take a personal interest in your puny life, which is over in the blink of an eye in Ginormous-Invisible-Force-time. Besides, wouldn't a Ginormous Invisible Force (let's call it a GIF - not to be confused with Graphic Interchange Format) decide for itself whether it would favour one puny insect over another? When we were little we used to try hard to be good so a big man with a big white beard and a red suit would give us what we want. As grownups, we try to be good so a big man with a big white beard (sans the red suit) gives us what we want. And to think we have the nerve to call ourselves grownups! The second approach is more interesting, because those who perform prayers of this ilk are arguably more sincere than the "Please God, let [John/Jenny / Dubya / Rover] [love/screw / marry / not sue] me" crowd. The Buddhists have been fans of this approach for yonks, believing that if they meditate (quiet the mind) they become receptive to the invisible forces - a vessel (or receptacle?) if you like. Maybe there's something to this? Putting aside the intellectual laziness and manipulation of the "intelligent design" brigade, it is clear that we don't know some things. Well, many things. For a start, we have no idea what consciousness actually is. This may explain why it is so hard to find people who are completely conscious (a nice commentary on this can be found in Shaun of the Dead). I suspect that if we can winkle consciousness out of its mysterious shell, we will go a long way towards explaining the GIF.

We know what energy is and we know how to produce it, harness it, change it and waste it. But consciousness is not energy, or at the very least a different sort of energy. It's quite possibly made up of particles of some description. Very, very small particles. It wasn't so long ago that we didn't know about atoms, quarks and strings, so it's reasonable to imagine that at some stage we will be able to see sub-sub-atomic particles.

One thing you can be sure of is that, if consciousness particles exist, then they will behave even more strangely than our current crop of mini-matter. They say that sub-atomic particles change when they is observed (as does anyone if their situation is compromising enough) and they can be in two places at once (like most career mothers).

If there are such things as consciousness particles (let's call them CPs), it would make sense that they permeate everything - both living things and political things.

It would then be logical that CPs would appear in varying concentrations. You'd expect animals (yes, that means us too) would have the highest concentration of CPs, while rocks and Dubya and stuff would have relatively low concentrations.

A vacuum would probably have a lot less concentrated CP still, maybe because it can't fit in amongst all the dust, veggie scraps, old paper clips and stuff (clean out your Hoover bags, people!).

If my dodgy hypothesis about consciousness aka CPs aka GIF is correct, then that could explain a lot, such as why I'm writing this instead of doing my tax return.

Given that energy cannot be created or destroyed, then it logically follows that CPs aren't too easy to demolish either and are therefore everywhere, underpinning all of the physical stuff in the universe. If that's the case then the creation of the universe makes sense, where consciousness physically manifested itself. After all, consciousness tends to do that all of the time. Have you ever looked at some bitter old turd or crone, whose face is covered in the sort of lines which reflect his or her sour mental state? Have you ever seen anyone literally glowing with happiness and good health (and not felt like hitting them)? Art and buildings and bridges and porno are all examples of consciousness physically coming into being. (Even this little blurb!) Our consciousness manifests itself all the time. We make stuff. We invent. We re-invent. We destroy. Now is there any reason to imagine that our GIF behaves any differently - let alone imagine that what we do is not simply part of what the GIF is doing? We don't need to pray to do the GIFs bidding. We have no choice because we're part of it. "Ah," I hear you reply, "but what if I suddenly choose to sit on the floor instead of this chair? You can't tell me that the GIF made me do that". You then smugly plonk yourself onto the floor, putting lint all over your pants, and yet I'd bet you anything (since it's unproveable) that your "choice" played exactly into the GIF's hands. Or perhaps not, since our GIF was perhaps a tad too caught up with imploding galaxies to keep you sitting in that chair like a good automaton. If you worked for Microsoft, Bill Gates won't make you send an email to a contractor at 2pm today, but he could close your regional branch and put you out of a job.

In the meantime, crazy people keep playing with bombs because their GIF supposedly told them to do it. They won't allow women to formally worship the GIF because the GIF allegedly says that people with penises do it better. This is especially interesting since the GIF is supposed to be a man, and presumably has a penis of his own...yet he says that people with penises can't go around marrying each other! (GIF forbid! Imagine the fights over the colour of the curtains?).

More importantly, the GIF sends whopping big walls of water or continental shifts to various infidels / sinners / heathens / bastards to teach them a jolly good lesson. Religion can be really convenient like that.

Ok, I know these are low shots. Sincere fans of the GIF are probably not too interested in organised religion, knowing that it's really only about politics and power games, which no doubt started the first time some cleverdick said, "If you don't do what I ... er, I mean ... GIF says then GIF will destroy you".

Mind you, religion isn't all about wars and misogyny. A lot of people have put their ruined lives back together by putting their faith in GIF's hands. This is a particularly nifty way of bypassing one's hopelessly poor self esteem and tapping into your personal strengths.

In this way you can attribute all the good things you do to GIF instead of admitting that you have some positive qualities and did something right. Lonely people can find comfort in hanging out with other GIF-botherers, since many of them are trustworthy, or at least try not to be lying, superficial dirtbags. Well, they try not to look as though they are, anyway. Whatever, GIF-worship is mighty handy for social networking, even if you're networking with a bunch of low self-esteem, socially awkward and superstitious GIF-botherers.

So never mind Revelations and Nostrodamus and those other two-bit prophets, I have my own prediction to make. One day we will look back on our strange beliefs in GIF and say, "Oh, we were such superstitious little poppets back then", basically the same thing we westerners now say about primitive people who used to sacrifice virgins in their worship of multiple GIFs.

I then predict that some smartarse blogger in the future will call people like me a primitive ning-nong for even talking about GIFs ...

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