The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

In the beginning was the Word. But the Word had to be interpreted


Last night on ABC TV there was a wicked twist to the usual Question and Answers program. Ever since gawking at the Lying Rodent’s Rotweiller Eric Abetz on the previous week’s episode where they mentioned who would be guests this week, had been waiting with anticipation to see the blood on the floor. Was expecting some sort of gladiatorial Godless Games



Instead of sending two representatives each from 12 assorted faiths, there were just two. The one representing the Godless Infidels was Richard Dawkins and the God Botherers had to make do with Cardinal George Pell - the highest ranking Catholic in Australia
Was a bit miffed that there were only the two of them. There were no Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or Jews and certainly no Scientologists.

The questions were so predictable - “Is it possible to live a good life without faith?”,”What happens after you die?”, evolution vs creation and so on.

The first thing that peeved the serpent were the ridiculous number of assumptions. No one at any stage was asked to describe what sort of God they believe or do not believe in. The Christian God - specifically the old man with a white beard in the clouds seemed to be the one under discussion
Cardinal Pell did make the valid point that while science concerns itself with the ‘how’ questions, religion is more concerned with why? But then he started a whole pile of silly stuff about being descended from Neanderthals and talking about life and souls. Since the Catholic church believes that only humans have souls (and female possession of such an attribute is only a recent concession) this equation of life and soul was most intriguing indeed.

He did not seem to believe in a literal Adam and Eve which meant he could not answer Dawkins question about the source of original sin.
Then there was the Big Bang and the origin of the universe and getting something for nothing. Each tried to outdo the other in name dropping assorted Nobel prize winning physicists. Pell went for the Platonic concept of God as a pure form outside of time and space to which Dawkins retorted that this was a God of the Gaps and a big cop out.

It did not take long before Godwin’s law got invoked. Cardinal Pell was trying to say that his God was a God of the outcast, the downtrodden and the outsider and ended up talking about backward Jews and shepherds. He really dug himself into a big hole and it was painful watching him trying to get out by then going on about the amazing achievements of God’s chosen people in the last century and of course he had to bring in Hitler at least three times in the argument. For an argument was what it was and most certainly not a reasonable discussion

When asked about the existence of Hell he talked about a conversation with some ten year old kid who did not believe in hell. But what about Hitler? Is it right that he should have caused so much suffering and get away with it? The kid of course did not think this was fair and was persuaded by such impeccable logic to which Dawkins retorted that he is more concerned with what is real rather than wishful thinking. Also just had to love his answer to the question of what happens after you die. He replied “Well that depends on whether you get buried or cremated or leave your body to science”

Cardinal Pell believed in some sort of bodily resurrection but got a bit bogged down in the details about what age and condition the heavenly bodies would be in. He just could never see the next train wreck around the corner and jump off before it was too late. Dawkins left him for dead on that front.

The Cardinal also played the atheist card claiming that both Hitler and Stalin were atheists to which Dawkins replied that Stalin was, Hitler wasn’t but atheism was irrelevant to the motives for their behaviour
At one stage the Cardinal came up with a line about ‘preparing some young boys’ and after a long pause finally added ‘for first communion’
The snickers in the audience were most audible indeed and was half expecting the twitter feed to explode

By the time he got to talking about gay marriage and the flaws in the ‘oriental carpet of God’s creation’ and digging himself in deeper at each attempt to untangle this twisted thread of thought, it became obvious that this guy should not be ever allowed out of the house without a speech writer or at least an autocue

The business of marriage being a sacrament between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation and the raising of children might be plausible if it were not possible for women obviously past their childbearing years to get married in the Catholic Church. So whatever the real reason - most likely tradition - logic and consistency does not come into it
The pair of them were both seriously smug and self righteousness although Richard Dawkins won hands down on the logic side of things - especially playing the Ace of Transubstantiation (the official Catholic teaching that the bread and wine at Mass when consecrated literally becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ)

Cardinal Pell probably knew that he had been outsmarted on this one. He had to claim it as the literal truth or else be in breach of one of the central tenets of his faith.
Izzie was so wishing that they had brought along Peter Singer and Ajan Brahm (a local Buddhist monk and physicist) Peter Singer for his impeccable rationality and logic and Ajan Brahm to represent a Godless ‘religion’ that nevertheless has many features in common with some of the Christian sects

Singer says a whole pile of things that people find shocking but he cuts through the woolliness of so much of what passes as thinking and follows ideas to their logical conclusion. Needless to say too much reason and no emotion is a trademark of the psychopath. But all heart and no head is also a path to craziness and chaos. (The slogan “My body - my choice” concerning abortion comes to mind. Followed to its logical conclusion this would justify abortion in the seventh and eighth month of pregnancy as well as the first two. Even the most passionate supporters for abortion would be very unlikely to support this position.)

Dawkins was trying to make the point that natural selection is not necessarily the best way to run human society and that we can choose not to favour the strong and let the weak go to the wall but one still has to recognize that is the default setting unless we make rules to do otherwise - rules that do not need an external God for enforcement

Some one did have to ask the big one “If God is good and all powerful then why does He allow suffering?” The fact that the Biblical God appeared to intervene in the past but not now was a bit of problem. Dawkins sort of said that suffering is just part of life and it is everywhere in nature. Cardinal Pell talked about Jesus dying for our sins. That is where having some one like Rabbi Harold Kushner on the show would have been interesting. (Of “When bad things happen to good people” fame)

While the whole show was sort of entertaining and amusing, there was far more heat than light and just a bunch of people with irreconcilable views scoring points from each other. It was like a pair of medieval scholars arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
There seemed to be no middle ground for those who believe there is more to life than the material and physical world but who will not commit to either fundamentalist Dawkinetics or the camp of those who faithfully following their God’s orders to make life a misery for the infidels.

Why do so many people have to feel threatened by the fact that not everyone is like them and to see this difference as a threat to their very identity and existence?

Today the serpent awoke to the grating whining "I'm the toughest princess ever" tones of our very own Queen of Swords - Julia Gillard
She was pretending not to celebrate one year as prime minister of Oz.
Last year she was still snarky and quick witted and took great relish in gloating at certain prime ministerial wannabees on the other side of the House - The Mad Monk and Bitchy Bishop in particular

She then inflicted the public with her "Moving Forward" speech where a certain phrase must have been used about 20 times. Unfortunately this turned out to be the Empress Julia we got more and more of as the year went on. The former quick and cool Julia got replaced by a wind up doll or some sort of infernal boring droning zombie
This morning she excelled herself with boring wooden soulless delivery. It was excruciating to listen to the smug stupidity. It was obviously scripted by the focus groups and she did not deviate once from the program Tough Times ahead no matter how often the interview tried to distract her with reminders of the Night of the long knives
Reading it is bad enough. Listening is unbearable

Will save the serpent verdict of the govt performance for a later date. But being interested in all things green, insulation, solar panels and assorted global conspiracy theories - had a particular interest in many of the unintended but easily forseeable consequences of many of their environmental policies. They'd change rules as quickly as they made them and with minimum notice and with no regard whatsoever for people who need to be able to plot and plan in industries very affected by their decision making. Not everyone out there considers long term to be a period of around 3 months

Guess it was more than six months ago when Julia and co tried to do deals with East Timor as a quick political fix for the Asylum seekers issue. Just announced this policy out of thin air and never even bothered asking the opinions of the East Timorese government before going public with these bright ideas of sending asylum seekers landing in Australia off to detention centres in East Timor
This seemed like a mixture of plain incompetence and bullying as well as using a sledge hammer to crack a walnut. The 'invasion of illegal aliens' - also known as boat people is an Australian variant of "Law and Order" issues that are always favorites among rabble rousers and populists.
Due to the difficulty of getting here (although getting to the shores of Christmas Island also counts as landing in Oz in spite of the island being nearly an outer suburb of Jakarta) the numbers of asylum seekers arriving in Australia is tiny compared to places like Sudan, Pakistan, South Africa, Malaysia and countless other countries who can much less afford to look after them. But that perspective does not sell papers or win votes

The East Timorese along with the New Zealanders have far more dignity and decency than their Australian neighbours. They refused to be bought or bullied. They, like their Kiwi counterparts realize that there are some values higher than the almighty dollar. The differing positions on live animal exports has proved that beyond all possible doubt

The ABC also had another juicy title for a certain anniversary
"Do we still need to talk about Kevin?" which reminds Izzie that she needs to get the original from the library again and pick up from last time.

But talking of Julia and Kevin and assorted politicians brings to mind a most wonderful and amusing interview with one Jon Ronson who sounds like a British version of Woody Allen. His latest book is called "The Psychopath Test" and he did the test on himself as well as going on the road in search of Mr Chainsaw himself - the infamous Al Dunlop.
Had fits of hysterical laughter when he describes Dunlop as trying to turn the traits of Hannibal Lector into "Who Moved My Cheese"
Could see what he was trying to say but that mouldy miserable lump of cheese is one of the most disgusting and pathetic things ever put in print. It makes "The Secret" and "The Celestine Prophecy" look like highbrow literature.
Was relieved that Barbara Ehrenreich spilled the beans on the secret of the stratospheric rise of this very stinking specimen of cheese to international fame.
It had been on the top of certain book sales lists for ages which led Izzie to wonder just how many morons there must be out there in America.
It turned out it was not a bunch of dumb Americans who had adopted this nonsense as the gospel thereby putting it on the best seller list but a bunch of corporations who bought it by the container load so they could slip in free copies with all the pink slips they were handing out around the same time.

One of the stories in the psychopath interview was about a man who acted crazy to get a reduced prison sentence but 8 years after he would have been released from mainstream prison for his crime he is still in some prison mental hospital with no hope of release at all. He claims that once you have convinced people that you are insane, you can act as normal as you like after that and you will never be able to convince them that you are sane.

But the juicy goodness does not end there. There was also a story about a place with a dubious past that has now become a tourist attraction
Fremantle Prison

That reminds the serpent - must really get around to doing the twilight tour one Friday

Izzie usually loves to hate adverts. But sometimes you've got to make exceptions.
This one is seriously wicked and most certainly not work safe





PS Silly buggers forgot to mention the best selling point of all. NO KIDS!