One of the reasons for starting this blog was to give myself the chance to toss around ideas I had about society and issues which involved society; in other words, more than just the pop culture aspect of the thing. What I want to do in this first of a series (I hope) of short essays is to look at the way I see aspects of society. This first piece is to set my stall, to lay the foundations of how my thinking proceeds and to build upwards from there.
For example, there are concepts like 'the dominant ideology' and 'socially constructed reality'. Now in one sense, reality can be defined by what you can measure, i.e. the real world. To a large extent, my own perception of reality is guided by this in that I tend to only accept that which can be measured, can be proven to exist. On this level then, it's perfectly clear why I am an atheist. Only a scientific approach begins to satisfy my understanding of the nature of the universe. There is no scientific evidence for the existence of God in any shape or form or in any sense of the meaning of existence, therefore God and all the religions which have devolved from this initial concept (and yes I do mean 'devolved' not 'evolved') have no place in my life whatsoever.
Obviously science can't explain everything but not because it lacks the capacity to explain everything but partly because we do not yet have the level of technology to gain knowledge of that which we want to know but also because, I believe, our brains are not capable of understanding everything the universe has to offer. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dream't of in your philosophy.", Shakespeare, Hamlet, scene 5. Shakespeare is so full of insights like this which is why his work has lasted. Anyway, the point being that just because we can't comprehend everything does not mean it is unexplainable -in scientific terms.
People who piss me off are people like Creationists who are, in my simple opinion, bone-headedly fucking stupid. They are idiots who try to explain evolution, sorry, Evolution in terms of this collection of religious and historical writings collected from fragments and scraps that have been translated (often with mistakes) over and over for around 4,000 years (yes, I mean both old and new testaments). It is total bollocks. Evolution is a process of trial and error. If God or any kind of transcendent intelligence has anything to do with evolution then she's fucking incompetent given that after hundreds of millions of years of trying she's yet to produce an intelligent, sane (i.e. not self-destructive), artistic, and compassionate creature which can live in harmony with its environment and without destroying other species. Assuming that's the, dubious, intention.
Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against belief. I understand the need for belief, the need to believe in something transcendent. It provides a comfort and reassurrance that there is more, more than the cold brutal reality of the world as we see it -assuming we do see the world as cold and brutal. Personally I think it's a place of endless wonder that encompasses those elements. Part of my own need to believe in the transcendent comes out in my novel The Lies That Bind and in the two pieces of online fiction. I too want to believe in something more, it's just that the evidence dictates I can't. But what I do object to about belief is when others attempt to force beliefs I find morally, or intellectually, or evidentially (Creationism) wrong on myself/society.
The irony about the dichotomy between religious belief and science is that they both spring from the same source and that science evolved from religion. What they share in common is that they both set out to understand the world, to find order and reason but they then developed in different directions as one became a means of social control and its prime function to perpetuate itself even if it meant destroying its own children.
So that, in part, is where I'm coming from. Where I hope to be going is to look at stuff like alternate medicine, global warming, human beings as a pack animal, the identity of the outsider, vegetarianism, and more fun stuff.
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