[Blog] Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I am an outspoken atheist and proud of it. I see religion as being a pernicious destroyer of free thought and human independence and initiative. When reduced to its core, religious faith is the opposite of rationality; it is centred upon belief in things that are not only impossible but which by their very nature are not provable and not demonstrable - to the rationalist, materialist mindset, that are not real.

The opposite of rationality is irrationality -  and another way of saying that is insanity.

As Richard Dawkins put it in the Independent on Sunday, Gerin Oil is the most dangerous drug in the world today.

Generally, though, what people believe in the privacy of their own heads is their business. In relaxed, enlightened, moderate Europe, people seldom shove their beliefs down one another's throats and only the lunatic fringe tend to let it really change how they live their lives. Many of my nearest and dearest friends believe some of the most utterly barking stuff, to my way of thinking. I don't object, particularly, and I don't tend to try to persuade them of the error of their ways - well, not unless it looks like offering an entertaining argument, anyway. I don't particularly respect such mindsets, though, and I am sometimes wont to "extract the urine" from their holders. Generally, my sort of folk are the kind of people who respond well to such joshing, who might mock me in return, for example. Believe what you want but don't expect me to treat your credo with reverence.

People often say that they don't mind religion, it's just organized religion they don't like. Well, I disagree. I think it's always a bad thing in the end, regardless of the solace that it may bring. I don't think that comforting lies are a good thing.

But I agree with those more moderate types on two points, that of the two factors make religion more dangerous still: organization and fundamentalism. Put these two varieties together and the result is very powerful and very evil.

In modern America, fundamentalist religious belief is more deeply entrenched than we readily understand in the Old World. If you read between the lines of American Atheist magazine's interview with Douglas Adams, some terrifying truths are revealed. Consider these questions:

Have you faced any obstacles in your professional life because of your Atheism (bigotry against Atheists), and how did you handle it? How often does this happen?

How often have fans, friends, or coworkers tried to “save” you from Atheism?

Worrying stuff.

But this is not all. For in recent years, the religious right are taking control of the US government. Read this article and fear for us all.

LJ posts are like buses

You wait for ages, then two come along at once.

Why was I reading The Independent on Sunday, you might well ask.

Well, because I was on a train back from Cornwall with the_major. Why had I been in Cornwall?

Surfing!

bootpunk convened a bunch of fourteen London goth types to go fooling around in the waves in Newquay and it was absolutely marvelous.

We took an overnight train down there on Thursday, leaving most of us severely sleep-deprived on arrival on Friday morning. I snatched 1½h of sleep and managed to miss everyone else heading off for beginners' lessons, so Clara & I went down to the local beach in our swimming cossies - topped off with a wetsuit, in her case - and mucked around in the shallows. It wasn't really cold at all - tamaranth will readily assert that I am a complete wuss when it comes to really cold seas - and I throroughly enjoyed myself.

Saturday, I was up at 8:30 for breakfast then off to Watergate Beach for some formal lessons. Yes, folks, this is the new, fit, healthy, outdoorsy Liam. Incredible but true.

After one day's training I was just about able to hang on to a board while lying flat on my face and actually catch some waves. I managed it about four or five times and it's astonishingly exhilarating. I kept falling off my board even lying prone, so I wasn't about to even try standing up, but some others managed to get to their feet, at least briefly. I'm sure I saw nils up there once before he disappeared base-over-apex in a cloud of spray, and that's not a sight I ever thought to witness.

In mid-afternoon I managed to nearly yank off the ring finger of my left hand by getting it entangled in the leash of my board, and by the evening it had swollen to the width of a sausage and was turning bluey-purple, so that was the end of my board riding for the weekend, especially as Clara had to be back by Sunday night for college on Monday. So we abandoned the crew and made our way home alone on Sunday afternoon. However, that was only injury I received, apart from general stiffness and soreness from unfamiliar exertions, which puts surfing a long way ahead of snowboarding on the pain front.

I wanna do that again!

Oh, yeah, and I pretty much thrashed all comers at table football in Vic's Bars.

Cheap weekend, too, although even so it's left my credit card nearly maxed out, so I might not be doing much for a week or two.

My thanks to CJ for getting it off the ground and to the soon-to-be-wed Sam for organizing it!

It's been a good late Summer, actually. Since Download, there was Infest up in Bradford, staying chez Mosh (blog feed but as I've reverted to a freebie A/C I can't syndicate it). That was a hoot, if not quite as much fun as last year - fewer friends of mine there and I was sober (up until Sunday night when three solid days in a industrial/goth nightclub with real ale at students' union prices got to me.) And there was Worldcon - big post coming soon on that, after the article's been published in Mostly Harmless.

And, of course, there's Clara, who has made the whole of life much brighter and shinier and sillier and a lot more fun.