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How going to church and seeing the Eye of God made me an atheist
Last year I started to go to a local Roman Catholic Church. I’ve never been a religious person but I’ve always thought that I believed in some kind of God or higher power. My experience of the people at church was that they were lovely; really welcoming, caring and surprisingly inclusive. The ritual seemed a bit strange at times but essentially harmless and even a bit soothing. Everyone was evidently earnest and there was always a welcoming atmosphere. BUT… This is where it all went wrong. It got me thinking about God and religion. I don’t think that was the intention in fact I know that thinking is the last thing the church wants us to do. This is because, if we think for too long about God, if we think about the reasons people believe in a higher power, if we think about why religion exists then we are very likely to come to the conclusion that there is no God, that the only power shaping existence is that of nature, and that religion is often a divisive and corrosive force in society.
It was sitting there in church amongst all those really nice people that I finally realised that I am truly an atheist and that the whole God thing really is a delusion. My sudden realisation unnerved me a bit so I looked up some of the work of other well-known atheists, half hoping that I would be put off and be able to go back to my vague belief in the big bloke with the beard (Who said Brian Blessed?!). However, I found that the words of people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens rang very true in my ears. Oh God! I really am an atheist.
The photo at the top of the page is a real shot of what they call the Eye of God. It’s so beautiful that some might say that it could only have been created by some all-powerful force for good. The object is actually a shell of gas and dust that has been blown off by a faint central star. Our own solar system will meet a similar fate five billion years in the future. It lies around 700 light-years away in the constellation of Aquarius, and can be dimly seen by ordinary domestic telescopes by amateur astronomers who call it the Helix nebula. It is beautiful and amazing and fascinating enough all on its own. We don’t need to invent an inventer to make it more so.
This is a massive discussion and can’t be covered in this tiny bit of writing. I’m still discovering exactly what I think about it all but one thing I’m pretty sure on now is that ‘faith’ is not the wonderful thing that we blindly accept it to be. It’s actually the act of believing something for no reason whatsoever. Why the hell would anyone ever want to do that?! Really… ask yourself… why?! I could cope better with faith if we called it by a different name e.g. ‘hypothesis’. I can believe things because I have a hunch that’s the way things work but I still go on looking for evidence. That’s what science does and maybe one day science will find evidence that there is a God after all. Until that day, I’m sticking with Dawkins and Hitchens.
FEEL FREE TO TELL ME WHY I’M WRONG ABOUT THIS.
CHECK OUT MY NEW BLOGSITE ALL ABOUT FILMS; ‘FILM VAN’. FULL REVIEW OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS JUST POSTED THERE.
At times the film stuff threatens to take over this blog so I’ve decided to start a separate blog site just for that. From now on I’ll put any movie-related entries including review at ‘Film Van’. There’s not much there yet (just a review of the latest Sherlock Holmes film) but in the next few weeks I hope to post entries about all the new films I see, plus all the films, new and old, I’ve EVER seen. If you have any particular favourites you’d like to see done first, please let me know; otherwise I’ll just do them randomly in order of most recent or of any films I’ve especially loved (or loathed) over the years. So I’d love it if you’d click on the link below and see what you think (please subscribe/follow too so I know if there’s any interest at there). It’s VERY early days yet but watch out for lots of new film stuff er… COMING SOON as they say.
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 40,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 15 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
VOTING HAS JUST OPENED ON THE LOGO I DID. PLEASE CLICK THE LINK AND THEN VOTE FOR ME!!!
Please vote for the logo (above) that I designed (if you like it!). It’s for P.O.D. (a band called Payable On Death). If you follow the link I’m about to post you can click to vote for me (you know it makes sense!). Voting opened today Jan 4 2011. OK, so the link is…
http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/preview/aa80a42d7f61a1092c75af0e4d6237a0/391
OD on SH
I’m going to see the new Sherlock Holmes film on Thursday so, as I hadn’t seen the first one, I bought it from Blockbuster for £3. It’s going to be a bit of a Sherlock Holmes OD week this week because I also watched the first episode of the new run of Sherlock on BBC1 on Sunday. I need all this film and TV viewing at the moment because here in England the year has entered its grim, cold, post-Christmas phase so it’s much better not to be outside.
The Guy Ritchie film (2009) was pretty good; very few dull parts, reasonable script and good performances from all of the cast especially Robert Downey Junior who became Holmes in the same way as he became Chaplin all those years ago. I liked the fact that the city of London, in a way, became another character of the film; this is an advantage that the movie has over the BBC version which could almost be set in any European city. Of course, the film evidently has a much bigger budget than the TV series so they can afford to put it all on show. Which they certainly do; the whole Victorian London thing looks breathtaking especially the under-construction Tower Bridge where the finale takes place.
Overall, it’s a good, entertaining film which ticks most of the relevant boxes. My minor niggles would include the violence; I’m not against showing violence but I hated the stylised, slo-mo, ninja-esque, trendy way it was done (why does Guy Ritchie have to spoil films by always putting this in?!). I also prefer my heroes to use violence reluctantly rather than rush into it like a couple of Transformers on a bad hair day.
As I said, the TV episode I also saw this week clearly didn’t have so much dosh to splash out on visuals. It made up for this, though, in inventiveness, cleverness, wittiness, suspense, characterisation and probably a few more fronts too. A lot of this was down to Stephen Moffat‘s script (does he ever do average ones?) but not all; the direction was great even without the CGI and all the cast was superb. I can’t choose between Robert Downey and Benedict Cumberbatch for who does the best Holmes; they both do it so differently but it works well both ways. If I was really really really forced I would probably say Downey because he has a tiny bit more heart but Cumberbatch gets the better words to say.
I’m only halfway through this Holmes Fest; am seeing the new film tomorrow and then there’s episode 2 on TV on Sunday. Maybe I’ll get myself a magnifying glass. I’ve been advised to do that before. That was in very different circumstances and it was even colder than today.
Please vote for my logo (in a week’s time)
Please vote for the logo (above) that I designed (if you like it!). It’s for P.O.D. (a band called Payable On Death). If you follow the link I’m about to post you can click to vote for me (you know it makes sense!). One other thing though, you won’t be able to vote until after January 4th 2012 but I thought I’d give you advance warning so you can iron your voting trousers.Many thanks if you decide to support my work. OK, so the link is…
http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/preview/aa80a42d7f61a1092c75af0e4d6237a0/391
Orange Polo in Devastating Bird Attack Horror!
Maybe I’m going for the ratings-grabbing, sensationalised headline there… I’m almost at 50,000 hits so maybe I just want to hurry up and get there before the end of 2011. Maybe the real story was that we went out in the orange Polo for a post Christmas walk along the North Wales coast and there was a few seagulls.
Ice Pics
Here in the North West of England we got the first snow of the season today so I took a few pics. It’s night now and the snow has stopped but I can hear cars crunching on the road outside the front window so I reckon it must have frozen. I love snow but I don’t like the cold. I was meant to be living and working in the Bahamas but there was a terrible mix-up!
WHAT’S IT LIKE WHERE YOU ARE?
Jon Kenna
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