Charles Darwin continued

Well we're hopefully off to Malta next weekend for a week of what will hopefully be winter sun. I get the distinct feeling that a failure in the warmth / sun stakes will possibly end in eye pokage from Marie. We had snow again on Friday night, fortunately it was little more than a sprinkling that has all but disappeared already. Expedia have slipped up so we have a hotel reservation but as yet no plane tickets. 40 minutes on the phone today failed to resolve the problem. Don't you just love automated phone systems? So, in short no blog next week...

I guess my final couple of comments maybe betrayed my general attitude to religion. While Marx was wrong in many ways I'm prepared to accept the whole "religion being the opium of the masses" idea, whether that's a theist faith or a political ideology I think that anything that disables the human process of questioning is a deeply terrifying idea. That's not to say everyone with a faith is prone to a lack of analysis, there are those who spend their lives contemplating their place in the universe, in what is for many people God's creation. And we praise that lack of analysis, that lack of questioning - we call it strength of faith. The acceptance of God's word or at any rate God's word as interpreted more often than not by some beardy bloke is seen as a desirable quality, question orthodoxy - political orthodoxy, scientific orthodoxy, religious orthodoxy and you enter a world of pain (sometimes quite literally) The idea of being sure enough in a belief to behead someone, to blow someone up, to shoot someone that to me is a truly terrifying thing. This week an anti abortionist went on trial in Kansas - he shot a doctor in church, pressing a gun against his head and pulling the trigger. He pleaded for voluntary manslaughter as he believed that he was protecting the unborn by his action. Weird how so many anti-abortionists aren't the ones to have to go through the process, the painful and damaging process due to the fact that they own a dick isn't it? Anyhoo 151 years after Darwin's On the Origin of Species is published and it's being adapted, it's evolving (Ha!), it's being questioned, but it's as good as we've got. The guy definately deserves his blue plaque.