The Root of All Evil

Was watching an interesting Channel 4 (UK) documentary entitled "The Root of All Evil," about how science has advanced to the point that religion is no longer necessary, and that anybody who still believes that crap is stupid and dangerous on the current world stage.

Interesting for sure, but Professor Richard Dawkins is, I must say, a bit of an arrogant toss! He complains that religious people are ignorant of the wonders of science, but at the same time he shows total ignorance of what religion actually is to most people - a moral framework within which people are accountable even for private actions, a way of life, a community structure, all things I'd say are overall beneficial for society at least to the extent that the existence or non-existence of a higher being not be factored into any scientific research. And the two can most certainly co-exist within their own spheres - science is really good at the "hows" and the "whens" but absolutely sucks at the "whys." Religion has the "whys" pretty much nailed. "For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son to do some stuff or other" - that'll do for why we exist, why we bother getting up in the morning, and why we shouldn't covet our respective neighbour's Oxen. Now lets let science figure out exactly how it all happened.

Saying that because of certain Christian beliefs (that are not necessarily central to the faith system). science and religion cannot co-exist is to take one extreme aspect of one particular religion and have that representative of all religion forever and ever amen. You could do the same with science. I've met scientists that laugh and walk out the room the moment you propose something that goes against their scientific beliefs, long before you even have a chance to show them your evidence. By this same logic, surely science is as flawed as religion, but to make such a claim would be deemed extremely biased. Touché!

To take it further, he goes on about how stupid people in general are that we don't all just accept evolution as fact. What he fails to realise is that these so called mountains of evidence and over a century of research are just not within the grasp of regular people. I haven't seen it, and what I've read about evolution is way beyond my comprehension. So all I can do really is to take some scientist's word for it, fully aware that in another 20 years they'll be saying something different.

And why should I believe what some scientist tells me? Because he's a scientist? Maybe there is evidence and research to back up his claim that I could research myself if I wished to, but what do you think my reluctance to bother says about how important the topic is to me? And if it's of so little importance to me personally, then what does it matter what I believe - it's whatever gets me to sleep at night.

I'm not religious, but I do recognise that at some level religion serves a useful social and personal purpose. This is why scientists are never much fun to be around. I make a point of never inviting religious fruits, sumo wrestlers or scientists to my house for exactly that reason (though lawyers are fine, providing they keep their lawyering to themselves and don't force it down my throat). At the end of the day though, it really boils down to whether you belive that the entire history of the universe to the point we currently stand at came about by chance, or whether some kind of superior intelligence had a hand in things to a greater or lesser extent at some point throughout the precedings. Science will never prove either of these, and each is as utterly preposterous as the other. So you're mad to even bother thinking about it.

As an aside, here's one to try if you're bored. Get a copy of the Bible, and read it from the viewpoint that God is the bad guy, and Satan is the good guy. Makes for much more interesting reading, and probably makes more sense too. God comes off as this vicious tyrant who rules with an iron glove, while Satan comes off as the tragic hero who sees what's going on but is powerless to stop it as the people just don't want to listen to him. "You don't have to take this! Think for yourselves!" he shouts, but alas to no avail.

Update: Just finished watching the rest of the documentary, and would note another rather dangerous assumption. Dawson states that young kids cannot scientifically analyse information, so they just absorb it at face value, and thus it's dangerous to teach religious values as it will scar them for life. Surely the same would be true of science though? Teach kids that we evolved from apes (not "it's currently believed that..." - this is too advanced for kids to catch), then in another 20-30 years you'll have a whole generation of non-scientists that believe that as fact, despite never investigating it themselves. Say, then, a scientist discovers and can demonstrate that this did not in fact happen, it's going to fall on deaf ears. The only ones who will update their theories will be the scientists, and everyone else will continue to believe what they've always believed. Then you're back to square one.

And with all the talk about the dangers of world religions, it got me thinking. Look at the following list of people. Note anything they all have in common?

Adolph Hitler
Hideki Tojo
Albert Einstein (the guy that invented the atom bomb - you may have heard of him)
Saddam Hussein
Joseph Stalin
Zedong Mao
Jong-Il Kim
Karl Marx
Pol Pot
Adolph Eichmann
Genghis Khan

S'right, none of them are noted for their religious beliefs, and in fact some of them notably anti-religion, yet they make extremists look like amateurs.

50 Grand for Empty Gallery

Art Exhibition shows Bare Gallery

Stumbled upon this earlier. In short, an artist, one Simon Pope, has been given a grant of 50,000 quid to display an empty gallery. The aim he says is to encourage people to walk around the empty rooms and discuss memories of other galleries.

Naturally I feel this is a very worthwhile endeavour, as this will surely be the greatest display of artistic works ever known to man. However, I have (more out of humbleness and integrity than anything else) decided to decline this kind offer and will not be allowing any of my own works to be on display. Mr Pope being an artist will be fully aware of the ramifications and legal aspects concerning intellectual property, and I feel confident that he will take all appropriate steps to proactively instruct patrons not to reminisce about anything of mine they may have ever seen. I will let you know his reply.

Wedding over, and no sign of things settling down

Congratulations me! My wedding went off without a relative hitch on 23rd September (nearly 4 weeks ago, I know), and I've finally gotten round to putting up some photos.

Actually there should be a ton of better ones that H's uncle took with a real camera, but we haven't seen those pictures yet. More specifically we got to be in the same room as the photos when they were being shown around but were so busy simultaneously interpreting multiple conversations for the entire evening that we never got a chance to give them more than a very brief passing glance. Or to eat.

That was how it was for much of the time around the wedding, as my parents, brother, and his wife had come to stay for a couple of weeks. Not that we weren't glad to have them over, but the excrutiatingly hectic wedding day was probably the only time we got to breathe.

So yeah, the wedding. The main part took place in an ancient temple called Igusa-Hachiman which is near to Kichijoji - it felt right that we should do a Shinto wedding given our surname. That went well, especially given that none of us had the faintest clue what was going on. All a lot of waving dusters over our heads, playing the flute really loudly, spinning branches round and drinking sake. Despite being a very picturesque shrine in an even more picturesque setting, most of the photos seem to be taken against the most uninteresting background there. Not intentional really - a mate and his wife had turned up late, so we went to speak to them straight after the ceremony and while we were standing there everybody just started taking pictures, so there wasn't a lot we could do really.

The Hakama I wore incidentally was about 85 years old and belonged to H's great grandfather. It felt very heavy from the peering eyes of her ancestors. H's costume was a rental and was just heavy period, such that it made it extremely difficult to walk. Or stand. The wig made it very top heavy too.

Speeding onto the reception, we were both now changed into costumes we found much more suitably comfortable. Superb Italian food, and a rather amusing speech in English from the dad in law remain fixed in my mind despite the rest being a blur.

The post-reception party at an English themed pub followed, with an interesting take on the bouquet toss (each single girl must give a short speech to convince us why she should receive the bouquet, and some were quite imaginative) and free Guinness for a couple of hours. Finally a few hours of all you can drink karaoke finished the night off on the right tone, and in some cases, tone deaf.

As anybody that's been wondering why I rarely get to update this blog will be aware, it's been a busy year what with buying a house and organising the wedding. The plan was that once the wedding was over, family has gone home etc. things would settle down and we could start getting on with all those little things that we never had a chance to do. Fat chance. My office decided to move which meant a public holiday weekend spent shifting stuff, and all this at the busiest time of year projectwise so I haven't been getting home til late each night. Add to that that H hasn't been well, so I've had that to worry about too (though not so bad that she hasn't been able to make my lunch every morning!!!!). So in the last 4 weeks I've successfully got absolutely nothing done.

To make sure I don't forget though, here's what's in the pipeline.

• Wedding video - we got a load of really good footage from H's brother in law, but it's not really presentable in its current form. I want to edit that down to about 10 minutes if I can, and subtitle some of it in English. Even if I do a quick job (which is exactly what I plan to), this is going to take several hours, several hours of which I don't have.


• A bunch of other stuff, small things, that should have been done ages ago. Still haven't finished notifying all the banks and things about the address change from two months ago...

Maybe soon eh!

Death Orbs or worse?

So here was me casually trying out some night shots after the festival at the local temple had calmed down a bit, and much to my surprise I found these rather odd movey glowey things in the sky. My first assumption was that it was related to the nearby airport, but 1) it's in the opposite direction, and 2) it clearly isn't an aircraft. The camera was set to 15 second exposure so the odds of there being 3 shooting stars in such close proximity during that time but in no other pictures is infinitesimally small. Therefore the only plausible answer is that they must be death orbs, spirits of the dead, who didn't want to miss out on the action. Apparently death orbs are very small so I can only assume they were in fact very close to the camera, perhaps attempting to steal my unsuspecting soul. The place is surrounded by thousands of graves, so this would make sense. Looks like I got off lightly there then.

Seriously though, if anybody has any clues what this is I'd love to know. Original (albeit digital) is available for inspection.