Tuesday, October 24, 2006

She Blinded Me With Slience

The following entry is based almost entirely on theory, conjecture, and the unknown and should be regarded as such.

Imagine as far back as you can. To the very beginning. Impossible. Because it's not only as abstract as abstract can be, it involves thinking of nothingness or infinity, both of which are impossible for us to wrap our feeble brains around. Right about now there are some subscribers to the most popular religion in the world: Slience that are getting their hackles up. They're hackling right up. Put your hackles away and listen to reason. But first let me explain Slience.

The word "Slience" sort of looks like science but it isn't. And it has a "lie" right in the heart of it. Our world is rife with Slience. It's overrun with it to the point that any Regan Burns can spout any scientific babble to any unsuspecting subject and get them to believe. We are becoming oblivious to Slience. Maybe through mutation we have developed a gene that allows us to believe in stuff we know absolutely nothing about and never will. Or maybe it is just faith. Either way, whether we do it scientifically or religiously, we do it. This isn't much of an explanation yet but I've sort of started in medias res, put the cart before the horse, started somewhere past the beginning. So let's get back to the "beginning" shall we?

One of the great mysteries of life is the beginning. But not to me. A greater mystery is how so many arguments and debates and wars could have come from it. It's so blatantly simple to me that we are never going to know. Give up for the love of (I don't want to take sides here) Pete! It's a ludicrous argument between creationism and evolution or Darwinism or the Big Bang or whatever the alternative is called because, BOTH arguments are based on faith. That is both arguments can be rendered spurious; can be effectively disproved in EXACTLY the same way. If God created the universe, where did God come from? We'll never get that. Either God always existed, which we cannot ever understand, or He/She was created from nothing, which we cannot understand. But if you prefer the idea of a universe that came from a swirling of matter into an intense point from which a huge creative explosion resulted, the identical question must be asked: where did that matter come from? It either existed forever or it was created from nothing. Both conceptions of the beginning are false because neither is really the beginning. Both start in the middle. In medias res.

Ever try to think of nothing? It's impossible to even think of nothing. Buddhist monks will tell you they can but they're Sliers. Lots of people believe them though. I've heard it said that if you ever train your mind to actually think of nothing, the second you achieve that feat, you die. But that's pretty hard to prove.

Now try to think of infinity. That's impossible too. "You're stupid to the millionth power." "Well YOU'RE stupid to the gozillionth power!" "You're stupid to the googleth power!" "YOU'RE stupid to the infinity power!" "Well YOU'RE stupid to the infinity and one th power!" "Well YOU'RE stupid to the infinity and millionth power!" Hmmmm. Maybe it's NOT impossible.

Imagine the final number arrived at in the above debate. That number is Q. It's a number so huge that it can't be written. Now imagine a huge junkyard with a piece of everything known to man inside it. A big tornado hits this junkyard and stuff flies around and when the tornado moves on or dissipates, a perfectly built 747 jet is left behind. The odds of this happening are probably 10 to the Qth power. As near as makes absolutely no difference to ME, it's impossible. Even one nut screwing onto one bolt in a storm seems highly unlikely to me. But I would guess that the odds of the Big Bang happening randomly, without any intelligent creation, are probably 10 to the Qth power LESS likely than the junkyard 747. Which makes it even easier for me to call it impossible. But so many people believe it to be possible! This is not very scientific thinking if you ask me. It looks more like religious thinking. How can anyone believe this without a little bit of faith? Come on scientists, you all know I'm right! You are BELIEVERS! Even though it's the scariest thing in the world to a true scientist, they have FAITH! Therefore the basis of all science, the beginning, is rooted in faith.

The same can be said for creationists. Nobody can be sure God created the world. It's something we believe through faith. I admit, I am a creationist. My God is the Prime Mover. Either He/She is infinite or came from nothing. I am comfortable knowing that I will never understand my God. But I still believe. For an evolutionist, I suppose you have faith in everlasting, or immaculately created dust or dirt or whatever that matter was at the beginning. And HEY, it is said by creationists that everything was created by God from dirt, including man, and everything will return to dirt. How different are the arguments when it really comes down to it? They're pretty much the same. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We're all just Dust In The Wind. Be Excellent to Each Other.

Now about this Slience. It's the same as what I've just explained. People call it Science but they really don't know, they just believe. It's everywhere. Watch any talk show. "He killed his family because he was raped as a child and was psychologically incapable of feeling love." That sentence has more faith in it than the Lord's Prayer. But it will be treated in court as science. The defendant will be sent to a hospital, not a jail, on the basis of this Slience.

The TV show 20/20 are champions of Slience. I saw one show where they were talking about how racist young kids are. They went into a kindergarten or grade school classroom and showed the kids two pictures. One of a man with a white turban and white clothes, a beard, not particularly good looking, not smiling, talking on a cell phone. Another of an Asian guy out of the pages of GQ with an Armani suit, fashionable hair, smiling kindly, good looking, together, perfect teeth, and talking on a cell phone. Then they asked the kids questions about the pictures. "What do you think of this guy?" (the turban wearing fella) The kids thought he wasn't nice. One kid said he thought he looked weird. But they all thought the Asian guy was nice. They asked what they might be talking about and some other questions and the answers were overwhelmingly in favour of the Asian picture. So 20/20 concluded that kids are racist. They went on talking about childhood racism matter-of-factly as if they had just proved it beyond a doubt. I was watching with a friend and I said something like, "What the fuck? Disney has more to do with their answers than racism. Way to project our evils onto the innocent 20/20!" My co-watcher, who had just swallowed the Slience whole, said, "Oh yeah. You're right." And she started to think. Question. Something we are too uninclined to do about things we are told are "scientific" nowadays.

THIS is Slience, my friends and since a majority of it is based in abstract belief and faith, it IS a religion. And it's sweeping the nation. Watch for it. It's coming to a TV, radio, classroom, or soapbox near you.

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