Spreading Trees And The Pleasures Of Oblivion

"I tried to pretend it looked like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunnelling away from the light.
"But even that is avoiding the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. "We are alone. There is nothing else."
- Happy thoughts from Alan Moore and "Watchmen"

By Charley Brady

I'm going to leave aside our corrupt politicians for one week, even though there is so much to say about the last few days in which we see, once again, the maggot-ridden underbelly of this benighted country.

I'm going to leave the fact that Sean Fitzpatrick is unable to even be able to pay his debts in Spain where he is now persona non grata amongst his neighbours. His excuse was good though. As he finished his latest game of golf in the sun he announced: "I am a poor man with a large family."

Like his mate "Fingers" Fingleton we know that he will never do time.

Instead I'm going to ask if you read Alicia Colon of this parish and her wonderful piece last week headlined "The Battle Against Religion Heats Up".

If you didn't then I'm sure that you can go into the archives and get it.

Anyone reading my own ramblings will know that I admire this lady very much. She doesn't take prisoners and I like that; but it doesn't mean that I have to agree with her.

So let's go through Alicia's take on religion.

We'll start with the headline. I can't talk about America but I can talk about Ireland, where I live.

There is no war against religion here. What there is, apart from people like myself who have always been uncomfortable with being told what to do, is a relief that we now know that what we always suspected is true: that the priesthood lied to us and that they made Irish people feel guilty about having sexual thoughts while they were doing far, far worse and living lives that were complete lies.

Alicia sites atheism as being the doctrine of belief that there is no God. So far, so true. But she goes on to give this definition:

"Pope Benedict XVI: head of the Roman Catholic Church, which was founded by Jesus Christ who is regarded by Christians as the Son of God."

Here I have an immediate problem: the first statement is true but the second is surely surmised. Despite the fact that I personally believe that Jesus existed AS A MAN there is actually little evidence for this unlike, say, Pontius Pilate or Herod whom we know existed.

Now, to her main gripe and here I have some sympathy: We go into the murky world of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. I say murky because I admire Hitchens and have no such feeling for Dawkins who I believe to be a snob when it comes to attacking people who have faith. To tell you the truth, I would rather have a conversation with a genuine believer than with Dawkins any time of the day.

Funny, that. We're supposed to be on the same side, Dawkins and myself, but I just can't understand why it is so important for him to say that everybody who believes in God is stupid and that he is right.

He has even set up a sort of atheistic society. Hell, man, how is that different to sending out missionaries to preach the word of the Lord in diverse countries where they were probably happy out with what they believed in the first place?

I know that you don't consider yourself to be a snob. Dawkins, but that's what you are. You're certainly not the elitist that you perceive yourself to be.

I am neither: Although I believe in my heart that I will never meet my late father again and that when my mother falls off the twig I won't be meeting her in some deranged after-life, I am yet willing to concede that I might just be wrong.

There's an unpleasant need in Dawkins to convince the whole wide world that he is right and that the schmucks who believe in God are completely wrong.

I just don't get that and that's why I'm disappointed in Hitchens for falling in with this guy in calling for the arrest of Pope Bennie. That's not going to happen anyway so it's just showboating on both of their parts.

I guess that Alicia doesn't like Hitchens too much but his book on Mother Teresa ("The Missionary Position") who I believe to be one of the greatest frauds to have walked the planet was badly needed; and his book "God is not Great" is essential reading for those who want to truly understand what religion has done to this world.

And don't forget that the Vatican itself asked Christopher Hitchens to act as Devil's Advocate when they came to decide - reluctantly, it has to be said - on whether the little nun should be made a saint.

Mother Teresa was telling Irish women not to even consider voting for divorce in Ireland even if their pig-ignorant husbands were beating seven shades of colour out of them. IN THE SAME WEEK she advised that Princess Diana should be let run free from her supposedly awful husband because they weren't happy. Mother Teresa and money: it always came back to that.

In her article Alicia says: "When my son Matthew was just six-years-old he asked me what an atheist was because he had heard the word on the television. I told him that atheists do not believe there is a God. They believe that the world began with the Big Bang. He thought about this a bit then said: 'Well, what started the Big Bang'? I said, 'Exactly'."

Exactly what? Just because we can't explain something we have to turn to some Ultimate Deity? Are we all six-years-old?

If we thought like that we would have been burning as witches anyone who tried to talk about electricity in the Dark Ages. Oh yeah, sorry; we were. As a matter of fact didn't the Vatican recently apologise to Galileo - a bit late as usual - for what they put that poor sod through?

This is the argument of a six- year-old after all.

As a movie buff I've often been fascinated by the way in which cinema seems to be a reflection of what we have been living through. I sometimes think that it may be the greatest of art forms in that it soaks up whatever is floating around in the collective psyches.

Too pompous? Maybe. Or maybe not.

Take the mid-seventies when we had the likes of "The Exorcist" and its many rip-offs. Was it a coincidence that this wave of often unpleasant horror films came when Americans were not only seeing the fall of Nixon but the shabby end in humiliation of the Vietnam war?

Was it a coincidence that a few years later supposedly normal people needed the comfort zone of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Star Wars"?

I loved "Close Encounters" but even then I was struck by how people seemed to need the comfort of some deities who were smarter than us and wanted to take care of us. Oh please. If I was an alien visiting a world that was turning its own weapons on each other I would have been high- balling it back to Alpha Centauri in double quick time.

The same with "Star Wars". May the Force be with you? What the hell was that all about?

We were behaving like-yeah, you guessed it - six-year- olds who wanted to know what came before the Big Bang. We needed to know that there was something out there that would take care of us. Does this sound familiar?

And here we are three decades later welcoming another comfort zone called "Avatar". Again I enjoyed this film AS A FILM. I don't need to be like some of the nut jobs that are already seeing the idyllic planet of Pandora as a real place. Come on, get a bloody life!

I am glad that Alicia took the wind out of Dawkins's sails with her very funny comparison with L. Ron Hubbard. He needs that kind of boot up his atheistic backside now and again. Less impressed, though, with the Einstein thoughts on intelligent design.

Just because every single person on the planet thinks he was a genius doesn't mean that I have to. After all, this is a guy who admitted that he couldn't balance his household accounts. Neither can I; does that make me a genius?

In fact I'm deeply suspicious of anyone (me included) who is hopeless with money and yet comes out with a Theory of Relativity (not me). Hey, it's just a theory after all.

I don't mean to pick on Catholicism specifically but it is what I was born into. I find all religions to be absolutely insane, although I do keep a special part of my heart free for the sheer bloody insanity of Muslims.

Yet they are no crazier in their beliefs than what I grew up with.

Let's see if I have this right:

There was a Big Book written in the words of the Man Himself called the Old Testament. This book said that if you poor sods didn't do things like offering your son for sacrifice and having a good laugh at a poor devil like Job who the Boss Man was sending some really freaking horrible things to be visited upon him and commanding the rape of virgins and burning entire towns to ash because they were enjoying the pleasures of the flesh that he bestowed them with, then you were in BIG trouble.

Have I got this right so far?

And this was so popular with masochists everywhere that He then wrote a sequel in which He came back as His own Son who was a much nicer guy. Bit of a hippy in fact. Peace, love, all that bull.

And then He had His son, who was Himself, nailed up and dying a horrible death so that He (or Them, I'm getting lost) could save sinners like me who hadn't even sinned yet because we were never born.

There was also a third One floating around called the Holy Ghost who was depicted in Mediaeval paintings as putting young virgins in the Pudding Club by entering their ear. Are you with me so far?

And then we laugh at Scientologists, Madame Blavatsky and Lobsang Rampa for coming out with drivel that is marginally more sane.

Here's what I think, for all that it is worth: I openly admit that I don't have a clue what will happen when I die. I suspect that it will simply be oblivion. Who knows? I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. There may be a God and He'll send me back as a member of the current Government so it's a win-win situation. I'll spend Eternity trying unsuccessfully to refuse brown paper envelopes stuffed with money but happy out with all the swimming pools and house extensions that they can buy.

In the heel of the hunt the religion that I grew up in will survive despite the fact that it just can't help kicking itself in the nuts. How else do you explain a clown like Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone coming out with hogwash like telling a blatant lie that says there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia?

This is sheer wickedness. Does he even give a thought to how many decent but confused men and women in rural areas still find it difficult to come out to their friends and relatives? Bastards like Bertone have a hell of a lot to answer for.

After all, he's only the Holy See's second in command.

The hacks are being too hard on the Papacy? They're not being hard enough. If it weren't for we hacks the child rapists would still be running the show.

Hopefully, if you still feel like joining this pile of misery (who is, paradoxically enough, reasonably happy) then I'll see you next week. If Pope Bennie and the Jets haven't hit me with thunder from above, that is.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net