Sunday 13th December

Government Policy aside, there are many things we see around us which cannot be easily explained – hence (maybe) Religion.

The Sun comes up every morning (unless you live in England – hahaha) – where does it come from?  And the Moon at night, where was that hiding all day?  And when you learn at school that actually we are the ones moving and the Sun is stationary (or not actually but for the purposes of argument…) and the light we see beaming from the face of the moon is simply reflected light from the centre of our Solar System, our old friend the Sun, it is simply too difficult to comprehend.  Being facetious (que moi?) in Physics I asked our teacher old Mr. Monk if he could prove it.  His reply was that “actually no, he couldn’t – but everything else in the Universe worked if we accepted it as a fact.”  He also added that I may actually be the only pupil in the school capable of studying Physics at Uni, but I was also the only one he would refuse to teach.”  Faint praise indeed – and I failed all my “O” level sciences, one of my proudest achievements.

And Life itself?  The division of cells, the nature of DNA, the double helix – could all this simply be an accident of Chemistry which happened to occur on one single planet in a Universe populated by an almost infinite number of huge chunks of rock and gas flying about.  I find it impossible to believe that we are alone in the Cosmos; that life was an accident on one planet, or indeed that intelligent life, Art, Music, Literature are accidents of matter too.  Probably not in my lifetime, but one day certainly we will discover Life elsewhere.  In fact it is more than probable that Life itself is an as yet unrecognised ‘Force of the Universe’, where Chemicals can combine to form ‘Life Giving’ properties – they will.  But these things are hard to explain, and even harder for us to comprehend no matter how many Horizon programmes we watch – hence Religion. It is far easier surely to believe in an old man with a beard sitting surrounded by angels in some place called Heaven, while a fallen angel, old Satan himself, is attempting to lure us all to a much hotter destination – both places incidentally outside of the known Universe. Or is it just me who is dafter than a ‘hapenny frying pan’