Man created God in Queensland

I used sarcastic words concerning the Queensland politician and would-be photographer who has detected the wrath of God behind the planet's current financial fuck-up. But don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-Queensland. In fact, some of my best friends have been Queenslanders. Indeed, my father was born there, in Rockhampton, and his own father retired to a place on the Gold Coast, Burleigh Heads, that he thought of as the nearest approximation to Paradise on the surface of our planet. But I've often felt that Queensland thinking—and political thinking in particular—can be rather... well, different, as my mother used to say when she couldn't find an appropriate synonym for "weird".

I've just stumbled upon an enlightened Queenslander named Ronnie Williams: a musician, father of five, who doesn't like the idea that state schools in his native state are dispensing religious instruction in a surreptitious fashion. He blew up, in particular, when his daughter was asked to help make a replica of Noah's Ark at the local state school. Well, Ronnie Williams has set up an imaginative website named Renaissance of Reason. As a teenage adept of romantic pantheism, I was thrilled to discover that Williams invokes this same kind of thinking in the context of his movement called Infinite Deity (where the term "deity" appears to me as in bad taste).

[Click the image to visit the website.]

You know how wide-eyed smiling Evangelical groups have been stuffing God down our ears for ages with their syrupy musical stuff. Well, here's an amusing Ronnie Williams variation on this theme:




Some people might consider that Williams, too, is "different"... when he advocates, for example, "a simple Palaeolithic-inspired diet supplemented by a sensible vitamin and mineral regimen". Critics will say that we're in the same ballpark as James Bidgood, who suggested that we should seek explanations of the current financial mess in the Book of Revelations. I don't really know whether my compatriot is a serious intellectual disciple of great god-veering present-day thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. I would simply conclude that, like my father, Ronnie Williams appears to me as an inspired and intelligent Queenslander... of the quiet kind I appreciate.

Peace and love... and entertainment

In the Holy City of Jerusalem, there have often been nasty conflicts between various lovable and charitable Christian neighbors who happen to have inherited significant chunks of real estate at the Crusader-built church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Jesus is alleged to have been crucified and buried. The latest popular punch-out involved the major proprietors, Orthodox Greeks, and their Armenian fellow travelers. In the following video coverage of the event [turn up the audio volume], you can see Israeli policemen trying vainly to intercept the blows, which symbolize gloriously the power of the Lord.



It goes without saying that this free-for-all is taking place at the holiest of holy places in Christendom, and that the pious pugilists appear, through their robes, to be ecclesiastics of various kinds.

I can't tell you much I love this great stuff. What a pity it doesn't happen more often. I can imagine a sort of regular world series of all-out brawls between Christian groups of all denominations. Matches would be organized, not only in Jerusalem, but in all the planet's great cities where the religious fighting spirit lives on: Rome, Paris, Belfast, Salt Lake City, etc. Onward Christian soldiers! Later, the international organizing committee might explore the interesting idea of inviting teams from other faiths—such as Judaism and Islam—into the tournaments. The shows might be enhanced by bouts in feminine categories, maybe mud-pit wrestling matches between Western nuns and blue-shrouded Taliban females. To my mind, religion must become a synonym of fun. And why not fighting fun?

I love to invent names. This planetary sporting/entertainment affair could be called the World Crusader Tournament.

Religulous

Ever since his sketch on France, I've admired greatly the US stand-up comedian Bill Maher. It's reassuring that an American could be so frank and lucid.



I'm looking forward to his anti-religious movie, Religulous (like ridiculous), which will be coming out in the near future.

[Click the banner to see the trailer.]

Amazing American discoveries

Few observers would deny that the most fantastic American discovery of all time was the Book of Mormon.

[Click the photo to access the Wikipedia page on this amazing subject.]

Maybe the word "discovery" is not quite correct, because the golden plates upon which the original document was inscribed were actually handed over to Joseph Smith in 1827 by the angel Moroni. What I'm trying to say is: Can we seriously use the term "discovery" in the case of a holy gift from a heavenly creature? Long ago, there was a good old English word, derived from the Latin noun inventio (the act or faculty of discovery), that served perfectly well for great findings of this kind. For example, after Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, went to Jerusalem in the year 327 and unearthed the true cross of Jesus (along with the crown of thorns and some nails), her amazing exploit was referred to formally as the Invention of the Cross. Since then, this usage of the term "invention" has become obsolete. So, there would be a danger of being misunderstood if one were to speak of the invention of Moroni's document.

A few decades after the Moroni event, reports of another miraculous American discovery started to appear in the press... and they still do. I'm referring to sightings of an extraordinary creature known today as Bigfoot. [Click the photo to access the Wikipedia page on this amazing subject.] Superficially, Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, looks like a large hairy ape, but there are strong arguments for considering this humanoid creature as a cousin of Man: a kind of surviving Neanderthal.

Yesterday, at Palo Alto in California (site of the prestigious Stanford University), there was an extraordinary press conference about the latest Bigfoot sighting.

[Click the photo to access an article about this amazing press conference.]

It's all rather secretive, in the sense that the three men behind this press conference did not actually bring along any biological samples of the Bigfoot corpse they claim to have discovered... which remains stored in a refrigerator at an unidentified location.

Various aspects of this latest Bigfoot affair seem to fall into place once you visit the shopping section of the trio's website [click the lapel pin, which can be purchased for $6.50, or a dozen for forty bucks]. It would appear that the three discoverers are associated with this commercial affair. In any case, two of them turned up wearing Bigfoot caps... priced $24.99 on the website. It goes without saying that this website would become a tremendous money-making affair... if only a real specimen of the legendary beast were to be found.

Incidentally, reading between the lines of his excellent The Ancestor's Tale, I have the impression that Richard Dawkins doesn't believe in Bigfoot. That's hardly surprising. Dawkins doesn't even believe in God.

As for me, I think that we should believe in both of these great American discoveries: the angel Moroni and the ape man Bigfoot. Clearly, if God didn't intend us to believe in these creatures, then why did He put them on Earth and allow them to be discovered? That's the solid line of reasoning I used in my decision, long ago, to wear glasses... along with the fact that they help me to see things better. If God didn't intend us to wear glasses, then why did He provide us with a nose and a pair of ears?

Jesus festival in Sydney

I've already pointed out in my Antipodes blog article of 2 December 2007 entitled Reenactments [display] that historical reenactments tend to bore me. The most nauseating reenactments of all are those that attempt to recreate intense suffering and torture. Fortunately, I wasn't a spectator of the Catholic reenactment of Golgotha in the streets of Sydney last night, for this tasteless drama would have surely made me break out in an itchy red rash followed by fever and vomiting. Well, almost...

That ridiculous photo really makes me sick... like the images in the old movie Mondo Cane of Italians whipping their backs, during a religious procession, until they're bloody pulp. I'm nauseated primarily by the mindlessness of the creators of such a show in the streets of Sydney, who were no doubt reimbursed royally for their artistic efforts. Their production is senseless shit, with no links whatsoever to plausible history or facts. Their patron saint, no doubt, is Mel Gibson. They're playing for the gullible gallery, to suck them in. I'm saddened to realize that there are hordes of simple folk who need to gulp down such sick visual crap in order to be able to claim that their existence has a sense. They're deluded, of course, but they'll never be educated enough to know it. So, they jubilate innocently and eagerly in this reenactment of their poor lord and would-be savior attached to a structure that reminds me of a massive concrete pylon in the expressway at Circular Quay. Back in the pioneering days, Australia donated eucalyptus trees to Israel, to clean up the coastal swamps. It's utterly ludicrous to imagine for an instant that ancient Palestine, at the epoch of Jesus, might have possessed trees capable of providing timber for such a great cross as in Sydney 2008. But who worries about facts?

The thing that disturbs me most is that compatriots in my native land as a whole, rather than just a handful of silly pilgrims, might be appreciating all this superficial papal bullshit. I'm sure there'll be descriptions, in next Monday's Sydney Morning Herald, of hedonistic papal parties in luxurious residences on the foreshores of Sydney.

Dope-inspired miracles

Maybe it was unwise of me, in this morning's article entitled Guinea pig [display], to rave on jokingly about pills and miracles. You never know. French gendarmes might drop in here unexpectedly and carry me off handcuffed and kicking, in front of all my shocked blog readers. Even if I were to scream out in self-defense that my blogging performance is never enhanced by anything more powerful than a few glasses of wine, are people going to believe me? Maybe the Internet authorities should look into the idea of asking bloggers, at the end of particularly grueling and spectacular posts, to upload a urine sample. I'm sure that this must be technologically possible, maybe using webcams in the style of porn artists. As we've been saying for years, unless a draconian approach of this kind is adopted, the whole great blogging system might soon fall into disrepute.

Most people have heard of famous places such as Lourdes where medical miracles are brought about [if I understand correctly, which I don't] through the divine intercession of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, I'm not sure that many Catholics are aware of the existence of explicit patron saints of medicine and pharmacy.

Their names are Cosmas and Damian. They were third-century twin brothers, of Arabic descent, who generally operated together. Cosmas was the physician, while Damian was primarily an apothecary. The ancient archives fail to make it clear whether the Cosmas/Damian tandem intervened in the specialized domain of sporting medicine. To my mind, this is highly unlikely. Cosmas and Damian are celebrated in that they asked for no fees, and that doesn't sound like typical behavior in the world of sport.

One thing, in any case, is certain. In the Roman and Greek directories of patron saints, nobody stands guard over the domain of dope. This is all the more surprising in that one of the fundamental requirements of sainthood, the power to perform miracles, is an everyday phenomenon in the spheres of dope in sport. Just look at the way that Riccardo Ricco has been flying up the mountain slopes over the last week or so. If that's not a miracle, what is?

Now that the young Italian is out of work, probably for the rest of his sporting existence, his manager might look into the idea, with the help of the pope, of recycling this cyclist into a candidate for canonization, maybe while he's still alive... because the fast-track process is becoming faster and faster. The charming Cobra, already as famous as a rock star (like the pope himself), would become the future patron saint of dope, and he could spend his days, attired in a saintly jersey, pedaling around Rome, Italy and even Europe at large distributing free samples of the latest cocktail of the EPO hormone.

Guinea pig

An American couple from Massachusetts, traveling as tourists in the snowy wastes of Alaska, meet up with an Eskimo man and his wife, living in a primitive hut.

Eskimos: We've heard a lot about Massachusetts, because our eldest son has spent the last few years in the post-graduate anthropological research department at Harvard.

Tourists: Really? How marvelous! What exactly is he studying?

Eskimos: No, he's not studying anything. He's being studied.

Me, too, I'm being studied... by the prestigious French medical research organization called Inserm. A few years ago, after a strenuous incident that consisted of my dragging unaided my runaway ram out of the rushing waters of the River Bourne, I was the victim of a minor cerebral accident that manifested itself (and still does) by a slight numbness in the tip of my right thumb. I referred briefly to this affair in my article of 4 January 2007 entitled Best wishes for eternal health [display]. Well, ever since then, in the interests of medical research, I've been consuming a daily dose of two fat pills. They're wrapped in weekly packets, referred to as blisters, as shown here:

I have a huge supply of these packets in a cardboard box that I keep in my refrigerator, and I start a new packet each Monday. Throughout the week, I cannot possibly forget to take the pills, because they function as a kind of primitive calendar... which takes a bit of getting used to. For example, when I see that the two left columns are empty, that means that either it's Tuesday afternoon, or else it's Wednesday morning and I haven't yet consumed my daily dose. OK, it's not rocket science, but it's better than making notches in a stick. And I can always confirm my intuitive awareness of the current date by calling upon my faithful Macintosh. [Some readers are likely to wonder: Why don't you use your computer for this purpose right from the start? All I can reply to people who ask such questions is that they are obviously insensitive to the joy of the daily consumption of pills.]

Now, the hitch in my job as a guinea pig is that I don't really know what I'm consuming. Theoretically, the big yellowish pills could well contain omega-3, and the smaller reddish ones, a mixture of vitamins. But either of them might be placebos. So, I won't normally know the objective truth until the end of the experiment, scheduled to last for several years.

The most interesting aspect of this affair is that I meet up with a representative of the organization every summer, at a local hospital, for a kind of checkup. Whenever they phone me up, two or three times a year, the researcher (generally a female with an African accent) always seems to be surprised, first, that I'm apparently in excellent health and, second, that I haven't yet got fed up with taking their pills. Yesterday, I couldn't resist the temptation to invent reasons to explain to the lady on the phone why I've never missed out a single day of their pills:

"I'm not supposed to know whether there are active ingredients in my particular pills, or simply placebos. But I've been convinced for ages that you're giving me the real stuff, and that it's doing me good. For me, that knowledge is intuitive and mysterious, and I can't explain what's happening. It's as if I were to see a vision, say, of the Virgin Mary. But it's clear and certain in my mind. Sometimes, around midday, I feel slightly sick and drowsy. Then I realize that I haven't yet taken my daily dose. I only have to gulp down the two precious pills and, within twenty minutes, I'm back in perfect form. It's a true miracle."

During my forthcoming checkup, I imagine they might decide to scrutinize me carefully for advanced signs of dementia.

Meanwhile, in Sydney, Benedict XVI has just visited the memorial chapel of a local nun, named Mary MacKillop [1842-1909], who's on the fast track towards canonization. Click the photo to visit a web article about this humble individual, whose claim to fame is that she created a new order for nuns specializing in free Catholic education for country kids.

Apparently, she already has one cancer-oriented miracle in her posthumous curriculum vitae, but she needs a second one to acquire full-blown sainthood. I'm looking into the idea that maybe I could lend Mother Mary a hand through the above-mentioned pills revelation. It's an undeniable fact that the pills started to exert their miraculous effect upon me when I was out in Sydney in August 2006. I think I should start out by sending a friendly email on this question to the pope.

Colorful males

Often, civic authorities in the great harbor-side city of Sydney become agitated, flustered and indeed overwhelmed by the prospect of dealing with a handful of foreign visitors. This was the case for the APEC summit [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] last year, as suggested in my article of 29 August 2007 entitled Sydney skies [display].

Once again, this histrionic behavior has characterized the present papal festival. On such occasions, normal life in the metropolis is shut down temporarily, and the citizens have to bide their time until the visitors leave. I find this weird. Sydney's a big place, and there should be lots of room for everybody. The local population should normally be expected to carry on calmly with their usual activities, instead of being drawn, by their mindless leaders, into a state of temporary trauma.

By comparison, look at Paris. Over the last few days, the city was host to some 43 heads of state, including a certain unwelcome individual, the Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad, who could be considered as a huge potential target for assassination.

The City of Light was invaded by contingents of men and their machines for the great Bastille Day parade. But everything went over smoothly in a perfectly friendly atmosphere. And in the evening, beneath the Eiffel Tower, no less than 600,000 people attended a free concert, followed by a gigantic fireworks display.

By comparison, the events planned for Sydney this week will be trifling. There's only a single major foreigner in town, the pope, and everybody is supposed to love him. So, there's no point in disrupting the life of the nation to protect him... even though we cannot of course be certain that, in the midst of all those lovely young people who believe in magic, there might not be a fuckwit with a gun who would be thrilled to consider boring Benedict, for want of imagination, as a bull's-eye.

Compared with last night's excited concert crowd of 600,000 in the middle of Paris, there'll probably be no more than 500,000 calm Catholic attendees at next Thursday's mass... at Randwick, an empty racecourse located six kilometers from the famous harbor-side skyline of Sydney skyscrapers. So, what's all the fuss about?

I hasten to point out that the word "fuss" is no exaggeration. Believe it or not, back in 2006 (when I was last in Sydney), the NSW government actually voted an act of parliament dedicated to this forthcoming Catholic festival, which stipulated that it would be a crime to "annoy" future Catholic pilgrims. It's only today that we hear a lot about this absolutely insane legislation, at a propitious moment when happy hordes of anti-papal Sydney males are contemplating a naked parade through the streets with their pricks shrouded in fluorescent condoms, to protest against Vatican decisions that accentuate the ongoing Aids holocaust in Africa. Happily, a local court has just ruled retrospectively that the "annoy" clause in the Aussie law is bullshit.

Meanwhile, the Aussie papists have donned their brightest robes, and they're awaiting the emergence of the old white-robed German, who's currently biding his time in solitude, apparently playing the piano, in a rural estate on the outskirts of Sydney.

Another male—whom I admire immensely— is attired in a different color, and I'm delighted to learn that one out of three Australians is following this cycling glory, every evening, on local SBS TV.

Faces of great cyclists, who spend their daily existence in a state of physical agony, are often drawn and contracted, as if they haven't slept well. The facial features of Cadel Evans are stark, accentuated, like those of a Biblical shepherd or fisherman, with a mysterious sad smile. A French newspaper said that Cadel looked like an exhausted zombie. Was he really weeping, yesterday, when the yellow jersey was drawn over his injured shoulder? Were his grimaces expressions of intense inner joy? Tears of a wounded giant? In an instant of glory, we witnessed the frail human carcass of a champion who had been crucified momentarily, accidentally, upon the terrible slopes of the Pyrenées. Like a child, after the official ceremony, Cadel Evans hung on to the rag lion, mascot of the French bank that sponsored his yellow jersey. For a moment, the champion cyclist was all alone, with his warm felt animal and his cold solitary glory. But all the world was watching this fabulous hero. All Australia.

Over the next few days, the color of Australia will be neither red nor white, but yellow! Aussie action will be situated, not at Randwick Racecourse, but upon a mythical field of heroes in the south of France. Cycling enthusiasts in Australia will understand what I'm trying to say. Monsieur Evans, the entire nation is behind you, including those who are praying at Randwick. Go for it, Cadel!

Boring Benedict

Once upon time, the human phenomenon known as religion used to deal with gigantic fundamental interrogations such as the meaning of our existence, the creation and destiny of the Cosmos, the concepts of good and evil, the mysteries of life, love and death, and the power of prayer. Religion was at least a noble human preoccupation, even though it has ended up getting pushed out of the way, first by philosophy, and now by science. As in the case of all entities facing extinction, future fossils are starting to form... and Benedict XVI is a pure still-living specimen. Excluding dyed-in-the-wool Catholics, few intelligent observers give a damn about what the pope thinks about anything whatsoever in the modern world, for the simple reason that this old man in white robes has never really lived in the modern world, and his knowledge of reality is surely akin to that of a backward adolescent, reared in a cocoon from which he has never emerged. So, what can we expect him to talk about during his visit to Australia? Well, of all things, he's expected to ramble on about the sexual mischief committed by priests, as if airing the Church's dirty washing were henceforth a major task for this archaic practitioner of magic. Yawn... When will this boring stupidity end?

Religious insanity in God's own country

In the following video clip, we see a funky guy introducing, in boxing-match style, a white pastor named Michael Pfleger who then made fun of Hillary Clinton while preaching last Sunday in Barack Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ:



When I see such clownish antics, bordering on some kind of clinical emotional problem, words fail me. If I were a Christian, I would pray that the pastor might be forgiven by his brethren and maybe even enlightened by the Lord. If I were a US voter, I would also be inclined to do a bit of praying, no matter whether or not I believed in God. It goes without saying that I wouldn't dare to suggest that the silly preacher should be punished in hell. On the other hand, I do feel that everything in the world would go a little more intelligently if all the religious crackpots in America, including—above all—those in presidential spheres, would quietly go to hell... at least until after the election's over.

Virgins

This is surely the naughtiest image of Mary you could ever imagine. It's the sort of porn stuff that the police in my native Australia will surely be banning and burning during the Pope's July visit to Sydney for Youth Day. The Virgin is fondling a serpent with her left foot, and the rigid reptile seems to be enjoying every moment of the caresses.

Seriously, this image reflects a legend about the Greek goddess Eurynome [whom you can look up on Google: today's cornucopia of facts, if not necessarily of knowledge and wisdom].

It appears that the whole Catholic thing about the mother of Jesus being a virgin is based upon a translation error. The origin of the legend is a statement in Isaiah 7, 14. Here's how it reads in the antiquated King James Version:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

The Revised English Bible introduces an interesting surprise: the word "virgin" has disappeared!

[...] the Lord of his own accord will give you a sign; it is this: A young woman is with child, and she will give birth to a son and call him Immanuel.

The change from "virgin" to "young woman" reflects the true content of the original Hebrew, which speaks of almah ["young woman"], not bethulah ["virgin"]. The error of the King James Version was introduced way back before the birth of Jesus, when scholars translated the Hebrew almah into Greek as parthenos ["virgin"]. Much later, in Matthew 1, 22-23, the evangelist is inspired by this Greek translation error when he declares:

All this happened in order to fulfil what the Lord declared through the prophet: "A virgin will conceive and bear a son, and he shall be called Emmanuel..."

That's to say, Matthew was the ignoramus in elementary biology who set out to mystify everybody by claiming that the conception of Jesus had never been preceded by the sexual penetration of Mary and the introduction of male sperm. Many Catholics persist in considering that Mary's hymen membrane had remained perfectly intact although she was in a state of pregnancy. The least that can be said is that they have a lot of explaining to do! These days, high-tech interventions enable a woman's reproductive cell to be fertilized without an explicit sexual union with a male. Otherwise, failing technology, we remain in the fairy-tale domain of frogs that metamorphose into princesses.

Sadly to say, ever since the Isaiah translation bug and Matthew's failure to do his Hebrew homework, the trivial concept of virginity has become a Big Thing among Christians and Moslems. Amazingly, a French marriage has just been canceled, as if it had never been enacted, because a dissatisfied husband discovered with horror that his legal wife wasn't a virgin. Somehow or other, the court in Lille has contrived the delicate argument that the canceled marriage was a transaction founded upon the presence of "goods" [my word, not theirs] that did not conform to what was imagined by the male "acquirer" [again: my word, not theirs]. In other words, it was as if the guy imagined that he would be obtaining a fresh piece of meat, only to discover that it was tainted.

Most cases of canceled marriages in France are due to the fact that the consent of a partner had not in fact been obtained. The case of a ruptured hymen is something new... and shocking.

Scientists sitting on the religious fence

Many scientists continue to affirm that they believe in God. For example, there's a reunion of such folk every two years in the precincts of my native Anglican cathedral in Grafton, but they've made such a minor impact upon mainstream thinking that I've never received the slightest inkling of what they have to say... which, I feel, is probably so much the better. Let sleeping gods lie.

Richard Dawkins informs us, with a certain dose of his typical humor, that a giant US thing called the Templeton Foundation is using its vast financial resources to waylay scientific personalities by offering them incentives for claiming that there might indeed be a bit of godly stuff in their research conclusions persuading us that "He" (the fabulous Man in the Sky) has not yet said His Final Word. In other words, the Templeton Foundation is tempting prominent scientists to declare publicly that they've forsaken neither God nor, above all, the idea that He might in fact exist. All of this inoffensive stuff is most folkloric, like Druidic get-togethers at Stonehenge.

I try to avoid science books that attempt to shove Old-World magic down my throat. If I'm looking for a book on modern genetics, for example, I don't want to be waylaid into purchasing a document with religious overtones. Pollution zero! No religion!

God is an aircraft

My 700th post.

Two months ago, when I was getting my prostate ablated, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins provided me with ideal reading material. In the context of a hospitalized "survival machine" (an expression that made its first appearance in this book, which I've reread several times), there's nothing better than a dose of Dawkins to encourage you to survive.

Insofar as Dawkins considers that all gods—including one's favorite personal God, with a capital G—are a delusion, certain opponents would claim that the professor's atheistic philosophy might depress a sick person (or even a perfectly fit individual, for that matter) to the point of suicide. On the contrary, I've always found Dawkins elating. I look upon him as the finest scientific author I've ever encountered, and I'm convinced that there are no more noble philosophical questions than those—about evolution, genes and memes—tackled so brilliantly by this great thinker and writer.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins uses an unexpected title for his major argument against the existence of gods and God. He calls it the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit, and it's such a delightful argument, simple yet profound, that I wish to describe it here rapidly... as a way of celebrating my 700th Antipodes post. Apparently, the English astrophysicist Fred Hoyle [1915-2001] once used an aeronautical metaphor to emphasize the extreme unlikelihood that life could have originated by pure chance on our planet... that's to say, without a divine nudge. He likened this probability to that of a hurricane, blowing in a junkyard, which just happened to assemble a Boeing 747. I'm convinced that most people who cling to the notion that Creation necessitated divine intervention justify their beliefs by a variant of this Boeing metaphor. In a nutshell: "It's unthinkable that a phenomenon as rich as Creation could have just come about by chance." Dawkins agrees totally with that last statement. The answer is certainly not chance. The explanation is Darwinian evolution. Getting back to the Boeing metaphor, Dawkins points out simply that the chance arrival on the scene of an "intelligent designer", God, is vastly more improbable than the idea of manufacturing Boeings with the assistance of hurricanes in junkyards. So, in this sense, God can truly be referred to as the Ultimate Boeing 747!

Imagine the following scenario. Suppose that you go out to inspect the damage after a terrible hurricane. In a junkyard alongside your house, you're amazed to discover that the wind has blown together bits and pieces in the form of a makeshift aircraft... a little like a cargo cult artifact. Why not? Intrigued by this extraordinary chance event, you climb up onto the neatly-assembled pile of junk and you peer into the cockpit. There, at the controls of the would-be aircraft, you're utterly astounded to find a well-groomed white-haired middle-aged gentleman wearing a pilot's uniform. Noticing the expression of amazement on your face, he says in a mellow voice: "Don't be surprised, my friend. I'm God. I just happened to get Myself blown together and placed here by that bloody terrible hurricane."

Moments of truth

In general, I don't have much faith in the common sense of Americans. I'm convinced that the Old World remains a better source of everyday wisdom, particularly concerning the sense of our human existence. But countless Americans can't be wrong about moral questions.

As soon as he set foot in the USA, Pope Benedict XVI and his multinational Catholic business were splashed by mud called pedophilia. Once upon a time, blind Papists were branded as passive accomplices of the Shoah. Which is worse? Silly question. The real question is: Why does the modern world tolerate the persistence of the nasty brand of mindless magic named religion?

Today, there's a magnificent thing called science. Name it knowledge or wisdom, if you prefer. There's no longer any place on the planet for would-be magicians such as Bush or Benedict, to name just a few. I'm rarely pessimistic (because I'm generally enchanted and elated by scientific awareness), but I predict a short-term future in which mindless prelates will be downtrodden (in a metaphorical sense)... opening the way for their fellow human beings to rediscover reason.

Archaic case of alleged blindness

For a long time, Catholics have looked upon Jews as potential Christians who have the misfortune of not seeing the Light, for they have been blinded. To hammer home the point, the medieval Church often represented Judaism in sacred art as a blindfolded female, suggesting that she might be enlightened by removing the blindfold... which has always been a theme of Christian proselytism.

Today, few people get worked up about such an interpretation of religious beliefs. Pope Benedict XVI is one of the rare religious leaders who persists in considering that such a matter still lies in the domain of valid contemporary preoccupations. Accordingly, he has just released a revised version of the Latin wording of a prayer in the traditional Tridentine Mass. Before Vatican II, the prayer evoked explicitly the "blindness" of Jews, and exhorted God to "lift a veil from their hearts", enabling them to be converted to Christianity. The new wording from Benedict XVI is slightly more soft: "Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord Our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men."

Jews are unlikely to be reassured. I often have the impression that the Lord has bestowed a rare gift upon Benedict XVI: a subtle talent for stirring up constantly an optimal quantity of shit.

May we all get the justice we deserve

I'm impatient to see how my Anglican compatriots in Australia, not to mention their Catholic mates, are going to react to the suggestion of Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, that certain elements of the Islamic sharia system should be introduced into everyday British law, enabling Muslims to choose between having certain cases resolved either in normal courts or before Islamic authorities. Similarly, I would consider that Catholics should be free to bring their legal conflicts before a traditional papal tribunal of the kind that once dealt with Galileo.

As for atheists, I believe it would be fitting if judicial affairs concerning humble beings of my kind were to be submitted to a charming court on the other side of the looking-glass in which I would be seated between Alice and the White Rabbit, and defended by the Mad Hatter.

Talking about weird English notions of personal freedom [which we weren't, really], I watched an amazing TV documentary last night on the Mitford sisters. Wow, what a crazy family! Unity Mitford [1914-1948] was a devout groupie of Adolf Hitler up until she botched up an attempt to blow her brains out with a revolver that the Führer had given her. Diana Mitford [1910-2003] was the enchanted wife of the British Fascist leader Oswald Mosley [1896-1980]. Jessica Mitford [1917-1996], who had married a leftist nephew of Winston Churchill who fought in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, ended up as a member of the Communist Party in the USA. Individuals of that kind make me feel so terribly dull and undistinguished.

I realize that, from time to time, I get so carried away with my Francophile sentiments that I no longer think of myself as an ordinary Australian. On such occasions, to return abruptly to reality, and convince myself that I can't escape my cultural roots as a genuine 6th-generation small-town Australian, far removed from England and certain kinds of British behavior, there's no better personal antidote than to sit in on a few words from exotic folk such as the Mitford family, the archbishop of Canterbury, etc.

Pope unwelcome in academia

Normally, today, Benedict XV should have gone along to the Sapienza University of Rome as a guest of the rector. But he decided, two days ago, to stay at home, since a group of 67 teachers and researchers of the physics department had made it known that the pope was a persona non grata in their ivory tower of science. Why didn't the academics wish to welcome the head of the Catholic church? A spokesman explained: "Ever since the condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition in 1633, physicists are particularly touchy about the Catholic church meddling in scientific matters." For staff members of La Sapienza, Galileo's trial is looked upon as a relatively recent happening, since their prestigious university was founded (by a pope) in 1303.

Now, scientists have had ample opportunities to express their opposition to religion in general, and Christianity in particular. So, why today's sudden surge of aggressiveness, in the Italian capital, concerning the latest pope? It gets back to Galileo. Delving into the declarations of the theologian Joseph Ratzinger long before he became pope, the physicists of La Sapienza have unearthed an oration in which he attempts to justify the trial of Galileo by a fuzzy reference to some kind of "greater rationality" than that of science.

Let us hope that the decision of Benedict XV to refrain from visiting La Sapienza will set a precedent. Popes, cardinals and tutti quanti would do well, from now on, to remain on their time-honored terrain: that of the Church, with all its wishy-washy thinking and bloody history. Today, in the citadels of science, there is no longer any room for those who persist in believing in antiquated falsehoods and childish magic.

For sale: horses, carpets, souls...

Referring to current discussions in Bali on the conception of a post-Kyoto agreement on greenhouse emissions, Australia's new prime minister Kevin Rudd used a quaint Aussie metaphor: "It will be a negotiation, and negotiations involve horse-trading. People here know a bit about what horse-trading means."

Here in France, when negotiators get around to trading advantages and disadvantages in a laborious fashion, a common metaphor evokes Middle Eastern merchants selling carpets.

At the Vatican, the pope is selling neither Australian horses nor Persian carpets. As we all know, he deals in souls. And, in his soul-trading, the pope uses neither dollars nor euros. The papal currency bears an antiquated name: indulgences. The basic idea is that the sins of pious people can be pardoned, at least partly, by the pope. In the 16th century, you could even obtain an official papal receipt (hot off the newly-invented printing presses) stating the precise terms according to which a part of your debt due to sin has been canceled.


Pope Leo X [1475-1521] got around to selling indulgences to acquire finance to rebuild the basilica of St Peter. There was even a brilliant marketing slogan: "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs."





A strait-laced German monk named Martin Luther [1483-1546] was quite exasperated about this procedure, and the final outcome of his fury was the foundation of Protestantism... which seems to confirm that God moves in mysterious ways.



For the third time since he became pope, Benedict XV has just bestowed a so-called plenary (full) indulgence upon the faithful. This latest papal offer will benefit pilgrims visiting Lourdes during the next 12 months. Opening date = Dec 8, 2007. Closing date = Dec 8, 2008.

Always interested in the possibility of using the Internet to make money [which, sadly, has never been the case for me up until now], I seize this opportunity of announcing to pilgrims to Lourdes that, for the duration of this exceptional and highly attractive Vatican offer, I'm prepared to advertise and market their indulgences through my blog... or maybe, if the volume of trade were to become excessive, through a dedicated website [what a lovely adjective!] whose coordinates will be announced at a later date. My fees are amazingly low: a mere 15% of the sales value of the indulgence. And I promise to send each purchaser, for a small extra fee, a computer printout that illustrates—more eloquently than graphs or pie charts—the soundness of his/her investment: an ancient engraving revealing the horrors of eternal damnation in Hell.

Faith fun

I believe it would be good for god-fearing humanity [including Mormons, above all], good for half the US population and good for fun-loving aficionados of religious clowns everywhere if would-be presidential candidate Mitt Romney were to be accepted officially and wholeheartedly by the Republicans as their miracle man for 2008.

Now, I must be careful when I speak about Mormons, because the folk in Salt Lake City have provided me, free of charge, with fabulous online genealogical resources enabling me to indulge in one of my favorite and most meaningful pastimes: family history research. Coming from Americans, this assistance is yet another demonstration of pure US altruism, with no obvious strings attached, like D-Day in Normandy and the Marshall Plan... not to mention their generous attempts to remove Communists from Vietnam and Islamic terrorists from Iraq.

Already, Bush is less and less in the limelight. And life is going to be duller for everybody when his star finally fades and goes down over the political horizon. Mitt Romney would be capable of brightening up our long winter evenings, particularly if he were to be coaxed into telling us more about the purported 4th-century prophet named Mormon, the alleged angel named Moroni, and the weird visionary, all too real, named Joseph Smith [1805-1844], shot to death at the age of 38 by his fellow citizens, while in jail, in the purest American style.

There are all kinds of ways of gaining an awareness of the planetary phenomenon of America, and an insight into what might be termed American thinking. I guess the ideal way is to visit the USA or even decide to settle down there. Short of that extreme solution, you might view lots of US movies and TV series, watch CNN and Fox News, and dine constantly at McDonald's. If that kind of punishment sounds excessively harsh, here's a painless and entertaining approach to enlightenment: Take a look at Mormonism. Personally, I've tested this approach [albeit briefly and superficially, because I didn't want to take the risk of picking up any kind of mental virus], and I can assure you that it works. Like me, you'll be vaccinated against America forever.

Red can be wrong

Everybody recalls the simple reassuring words of the 23rd Psalm of David, which I prefer in the old-fashioned language of the King James version:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths
of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

We have here a striking case of the celebrated ovine metaphor, which was later enhanced by the evangelist John.

The fundamentally awkward nature of the assimilation of Christians to lambs struck me dramatically when I settled down here in Gamone with a small flock of sheep, and started to participate regularly in the slaughter of lambs. Since then, whenever I run up against the Biblical shepherd metaphor, I'm reminded immediately of bloody and smelly sheep operations at Gamone. I think, for example, of the day I used my self-defense revolver to send a rubber marble through the skull of a young animal, which was an alternative to seeing it stunned mortally by the usual technique of a hammer blow delivered by the butcher. I think of all the plastic bags full of dirty fleeces, hoofs and guts that I've dragged down the slopes to burn. I think too of stacking dozens of packs of prime lamb in my freezer, followed by memories of countless excellent dinners at Gamone. Needless to say, these recollections have altered considerably, for me, the poetic charm of the ancient texts.

The words of the 23rd Psalm have even given rise to a popular song, which I heard hundreds of times on the radio during my childhood. Since then, I've often wondered why most people—at least in the English-speaking world—retain the number 23 associated with this poetic text. This number 23 reappeared later in my life, in Paris. For many years, I lived in a flat at 23 rue Rambuteau.

The surname of this 65-year-old ecclesiastic, André Vingt-Trois, means 23 in French. Apparently the identity of one of his paternal ancestors was unknown, so the authorities referred to him by a number, like a soldier or a prisoner. And that number became a surname. As a youth, André studied at the Henri IV lycée: the same school where I taught English for three years, back at the time I met up with Christine. In 1968, when Daniel Cohn-Bendit and his comrades were mounting the barricades in the Latin Quarter, André Vingt-Trois was studying for the priesthood at the seminary down in Issy-les-Moulineaux: the south-western suburb of Paris where I would be working, a few years later, as a scientific consultant for the research division of French Telecom. After his ordination in 1969, Vingt-Trois remained in Paris for three decades, before a stint as archbishop of the city of Tours, on the banks of the Loire. Today he's back in Paris as the archbishop of Paris. And last weekend, the pope made him a cardinal: that's to say, one of the major princes of the Roman Catholic church.

Unfortunately, this man has decided to intervene in a domain in which he knows no more, a priori, than the local grocer... if only there were still grocers in the parish of Notre-Dame de Paris: the use of human stem cells for medical research. Parading as a specialist in the fuzzy field referred to as bioethics, "Monsignor 23" has dared to denigrate France's great annual fund-raising event, coming up shortly: the Téléthon.

Now, if there's one thing I hate, it's narrow-minded religious fanatics who step outside their intellectual prison called Beliefs and Faith with the aim of attacking Reason and Science. The cardinal's obstruction of future medical research might well have been a tragedy. In fact, it's likely to be seen rather as a tragicomedy, for the silly man doesn't seem to have done his homework.

Two days before Vingt-Trois was awarded his red hat, international media announced that Dr Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University had taken less than a month to coax a banal cell from a woman's cheek into behaving as if it were an authentic embryonic stem cell. That's to say, this "doctored" cell was henceforth capable of developing into any of the 200 or so basic types of human cell. Consequently, medical researchers will be able to exploit such cells with no risk of being accused—by Vingt-Trois and his kind—of destroying human embryos. Cells of this kind [seen in the blue photo, above, from Kyoto] can be described as reprogrammed. To indicate that they can be made to evolve into any type of human cell, they are designated as pluripotent.

At practically the same moment that the Japanese researcher announced this extraordinary and exciting news, an American biologist named James Thomson, at the University of Wisconsin, revealed that his team had obtained similar results.

In the revolutionary fervor of May 1968, it's a pity that "Danny the Red" didn't think of trying to get the seminary at Issy-les-Moulineaux transformed into a scientific research institute...