footpad, posts by tag: religion - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

Last leg	[May. 21st, 2011\|06:27 am]Footpad
[Tags\|cynicism, recovery, religion] [Current Mood	gentle]It's all about perspective. (Disclaimer: at least if you include the possibility that one's perspective just might be from the centre of a midden from which you are about to be summarily evicted on the tusks of a rabid boar.)In this case, my perspective is left over from the moment when the fat Zugbegleiterin told me that I'd make a connection in Frankfurt that would get me through to Cologne, and thence to home and hearth and dog. It was a connection that would take me through the arse end of nowhere, at an hour of the morning that by rights should not even exist, but nonetheless it was a way home and it meant I wouldn't be stranded in Dickdarmdorf without a paddle.It's a grey dawn over Cologne and I'm on the last leg, the little commuter train that gets me to within ten minutes' walk of home. The entire landscape is sketched in a thousand pastel hues of green fading to grey; so many different kinds of green. Through a minute fracture in the clouds, I can see one tiny curve of cloud illuminated by sunlight, and below it somebody is flying a gas balloon.Which reminds me! Don't forget, folks, today's the rapture! When you see the golden hoover nozzle descending from heaven to suck you right on up, be sure to hang on real tight to something solid, because you sure as hell don't want to spend eternity with the crowd who're going _there._Anyway, I have a dog to cuddle. Be seeing you.
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[May. 21st, 2011|06:27 am]Footpad

[Tags**|cynicism, recovery, religion] [Current Mood**

gentle]It's all about perspective. (Disclaimer: at least if you include the possibility that one's perspective just might be from the centre of a midden from which you are about to be summarily evicted on the tusks of a rabid boar.)In this case, my perspective is left over from the moment when the fat Zugbegleiterin told me that I'd make a connection in Frankfurt that would get me through to Cologne, and thence to home and hearth and dog. It was a connection that would take me through the arse end of nowhere, at an hour of the morning that by rights should not even exist, but nonetheless it was a way home and it meant I wouldn't be stranded in Dickdarmdorf without a paddle.It's a grey dawn over Cologne and I'm on the last leg, the little commuter train that gets me to within ten minutes' walk of home. The entire landscape is sketched in a thousand pastel hues of green fading to grey; so many different kinds of green. Through a minute fracture in the clouds, I can see one tiny curve of cloud illuminated by sunlight, and below it somebody is flying a gas balloon.Which reminds me! Don't forget, folks, today's the rapture! When you see the golden hoover nozzle descending from heaven to suck you right on up, be sure to hang on real tight to something solid, because you sure as hell don't want to spend eternity with the crowd who're going _there._Anyway, I have a dog to cuddle. Be seeing you.

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Coffee and dogs	[Dec. 8th, 2007\|04:49 am]Footpad
[Tags\|coffee, god, in-laws, mischa, religion, supper] [Current Mood	fried]I am in the throes of the caffeine positive-feedback cycle. I had one cup (just one) two mornings ago, and of course that kept me up until 4 am the next morning, and since then I've been like all you people who think your coffee gets you through the day, when in fact it gets you through the withdrawal from your last coffee.Mischa is rapidly getting fitter. He loves this wild blustery weather as much as I do; he bounds and splashes through it with his tail up and his tongue hanging out, and when we get back we're both liberally splashed with mud. This evening we went out for so long (about twelve kilometres) that by the time we got back, akeela was tapping his foot impatiently because we were already fifteen minutes overdue for supper with his family. I tried not to look as guilty as I felt. But the supper was wonderful, and we gave his father a Klein Bottle as a pseudo-Christmas present.I just took Mischa out for a late-night walk that's practically a caffeinated-early-morning walk, and noticed a new sign on the church up the road. These signs have been annoying me lately because they facilely propose God as the answer to questions for which I think I have much better answers. With God... understand one another. Or with the extraordinary evolved capacity of human social intuition. With God... make sense of the world. This one particularly annoys me. Try science, bitches. With God... help one another. Why does this need God, grrr? But sometime in the past few days they've put up one I can agree with:With God... celebrate Christmas._Finally._I think I can sleep now
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Coffee and dogs

[Dec. 8th, 2007|04:49 am]Footpad

[Tags**|coffee, god, in-laws, mischa, religion, supper] [Current Mood**

fried]I am in the throes of the caffeine positive-feedback cycle. I had one cup (just one) two mornings ago, and of course that kept me up until 4 am the next morning, and since then I've been like all you people who think your coffee gets you through the day, when in fact it gets you through the withdrawal from your last coffee.Mischa is rapidly getting fitter. He loves this wild blustery weather as much as I do; he bounds and splashes through it with his tail up and his tongue hanging out, and when we get back we're both liberally splashed with mud. This evening we went out for so long (about twelve kilometres) that by the time we got back,

akeela was tapping his foot impatiently because we were already fifteen minutes overdue for supper with his family. I tried not to look as guilty as I felt. But the supper was wonderful, and we gave his father a Klein Bottle as a pseudo-Christmas present.I just took Mischa out for a late-night walk that's practically a caffeinated-early-morning walk, and noticed a new sign on the church up the road. These signs have been annoying me lately because they facilely propose God as the answer to questions for which I think I have much better answers. With God... understand one another. Or with the extraordinary evolved capacity of human social intuition. With God... make sense of the world. This one particularly annoys me. Try science, bitches. With God... help one another. Why does this need God, grrr? But sometime in the past few days they've put up one I can agree with:With God... celebrate Christmas._Finally._I think I can sleep now

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Situation Normal, All Fucked Up	[Nov. 25th, 2007\|01:24 pm]Footpad
[Tags\|blair, news, observe, politics, religion] [Current Mood	resigned]Tony Blair is religious "nutter." (To scurrilously quote his spokesman out of context.)So he goes to church every Sunday. Fair enough. But I do have to wonder how much his religion affected his policy decisions, not to mention his relationship with Dubya, and it makes me quite uncomfortable that he deliberately concealed his faith _on the specific grounds that the electorate would reject him for it._Some matters are genuinely private, even for statesmen. I wouldn't be at all bothered (or hot) if Tony B. turned out to be gay and had had a vigorous relationship with a strapping young grocer's boy who regularly delivered the vegetables to Number Ten's back door. The observance of religion is also a private matter. I am not especially perturbed that we had a Prime Minister who, unbeknownst to most of the country, read his Bible last thing at night for ten years. Personally I masturbate, but each to his own.It's well documented that religion has little effect on fundamental moral convictions. If you present people with a critical situation—a medical dilemma, say, or an impending disaster where they can only save certain lives at the expense of others, then you get remarkably similar answers from people of all cultures, regions and religious persuasions. True, some religions develop peculiar fixations like not mixing linen with wool or systematically obliterating all infidels, but humanity's chequered history shows that religion is by no means essential for atrocities. I suspect that it's usually just the excuse.So I think it's up to Mr Blair what he does with his Bible, and I doubt that his religion itself led him astray. Even so, I wish the people had known about his religious convictions before electing him. I suspect it would have changed a lot of minds. Faith, by definition, suggests a willingness to hold on to principles and beliefs when there's no evidence for them, or even when there's contrary evidence. That makes faith an incredibly bad quality in a leader, and the British electorate knows it, and Blair knew they know it, and he kept his mouth shut in order to get elected anyway.Sigh.In other news, the British public appears to be swinging towards the Conservatives on issues which have little or nothing to do with political competence, and which would have been equally probable or mis-handled under any party.
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Situation Normal, All Fucked Up

[Nov. 25th, 2007|01:24 pm]Footpad

[Tags**|blair, news, observe, politics, religion] [Current Mood**

resigned]Tony Blair is religious "nutter." (To scurrilously quote his spokesman out of context.)So he goes to church every Sunday. Fair enough. But I do have to wonder how much his religion affected his policy decisions, not to mention his relationship with Dubya, and it makes me quite uncomfortable that he deliberately concealed his faith _on the specific grounds that the electorate would reject him for it._Some matters are genuinely private, even for statesmen. I wouldn't be at all bothered (or hot) if Tony B. turned out to be gay and had had a vigorous relationship with a strapping young grocer's boy who regularly delivered the vegetables to Number Ten's back door. The observance of religion is also a private matter. I am not especially perturbed that we had a Prime Minister who, unbeknownst to most of the country, read his Bible last thing at night for ten years. Personally I masturbate, but each to his own.It's well documented that religion has little effect on fundamental moral convictions. If you present people with a critical situation—a medical dilemma, say, or an impending disaster where they can only save certain lives at the expense of others, then you get remarkably similar answers from people of all cultures, regions and religious persuasions. True, some religions develop peculiar fixations like not mixing linen with wool or systematically obliterating all infidels, but humanity's chequered history shows that religion is by no means essential for atrocities. I suspect that it's usually just the excuse.So I think it's up to Mr Blair what he does with his Bible, and I doubt that his religion itself led him astray. Even so, I wish the people had known about his religious convictions before electing him. I suspect it would have changed a lot of minds. Faith, by definition, suggests a willingness to hold on to principles and beliefs when there's no evidence for them, or even when there's contrary evidence. That makes faith an incredibly bad quality in a leader, and the British electorate knows it, and Blair knew they know it, and he kept his mouth shut in order to get elected anyway.Sigh.In other news, the British public appears to be swinging towards the Conservatives on issues which have little or nothing to do with political competence, and which would have been equally probable or mis-handled under any party.

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