I woke in a panic after a
rather traumatic dream about old women driving dangerously becuase
the most recent fruit of my loins had taken up playing the cello. I
wonder what provoked that nightmare.
Amazingly I'd woken only
one minute before the alarm was due to go off. I got up (letting a
sleeping dog lie) and over brekkie watched an episode of "Dad's
Army" (they don't like it up 'em).
As I drove to work I
listened to the morning's news. There was anger from all sides as
funding to supply anti-cancer
drugs has been cut. Most vociferous amongst the campaigners was
the drug manufacturers themselves. I can't help but think that it is
the drug companies own fault that have priced themselves out of the
market. I can remember going for an interview with "a major
pharmaceutical company". Their establishment was huge - it would
have taken an hour to walk round the perimeter of the place. I was
shown one very small lab in which a certain drug was made, and I was
told that it was that one lab which paid for absolutely everything
else.
A little less profit
might make their products a little more affordable.
There was also talk about
the
shootings in Paris. Basically some journalists have upset some
Islamic extremists who have then seen it as their God-inspired duty
to go on a killing spree.
I can't help but wonder
if as a society we are doing the right thing by taking religions
seriously. If religion was treated with the mild disdain afforded to
other forms of unsubstantiated crackpotism (such as astrology, palm
reading or homeopathy) by mainstream opinion, would it still be
giving society the problems that it currently does?
Once at work I voiced
this opinion and had an "interesting discussion" on
the matter. One of my colleagues said that as a Christian she was
offended by my opinion. I didn't offer any apology, but I asked her
which church she attended on a weekly basis. She replied she didn't
actually go to church regularly (or at all). When I pointed
out that it says in the Bible that you should regularly meet up with
others of your faith she admitted that she hadn't read all of the
Bible. I asked her about her stance on gay marriage. She was for it
(as am I) but when I pointed out that the Bible is very clear
on the fact that it considers homosexuality to be wrong, she admitted
that she hadn't read any of the Bible at all. I then asked her if she
believed that God had taken on human form and had died on the cross
for her personal sins. She didn't actually believe that. "Not as
such..."
She wasn't happy when I
summed up her position. She claimed to be Christian, but hadn't read
the sacred texts of her religion and didn't believe its basic tenet
of faith. In her defence snarled that she tried to be a "good
person". I asked her why. She had no real answer for that,
but seemed to think it was in some way connected with her version of
religion.
Isn't this true of so
many people. They adamantly claim to be of a certain religion but
what they believe, say and do has no bearing whatsoever on the actual
religion to which they purport to be an adherent.
Don't we all try to be
"good people"? Do we need a God to frighten us into
being so?
In an interesting
epilogue to this episode this same person stopped me at mid day and
said that whilst she believed that God created the universe she also
believed in the Big Bang theory as well. So I asked her how she
reconciled the idea of a Big Bang with the First Law of
Thermodynamics. She had no idea what I was talking about, but she
still believed in the Big Bang theory anyway.
If nothing else, it
proved that some people believe absolutely any old twaddle that they
hear.
If only people were to
think for themselves...
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