John Paul Mohammed III

In the beginning there were the gods and the humans marvelled at their majesty, trembled at their power and shat their pants when something unexpected happened. When we couldn’t explain something we blamed it on the god of this or the goddess of that. The early gods were simple primeval beings the sun, the earth, the moon and alike. Later on we gave them areas of responsibility, nice names and even made up little stories about their parents and how they seduced fit looking mortals. It was a loose relationship which seemed to suit everyone involved.

The root of all evil is of course money and the humans burgeoning desire for wealth and power was a real turning point for religion. When mere subsistence was the be all and end all, the ways of the gods seemed far removed from your every day goat herder or dung eater. The regional wandering vagabond zealot had very little to offer the man in the street. When the amount of gold in your cellar became important suddenly the god troopers had something for sale, the salvation of your mortal soul. This was a sweet operation; no stock issues nothing to go mouldy, nothing for anyone to nick and everyone needed it. For the right price a holy man could guarantee you entrance to heaven and the killer was no one could prove otherwise.

At about the same time people decided to start writing things down and this was really good news for your religious types. Once things were on papyrus people had something to reference and if it looked old enough and official enough then it became the truth. It even got mistaken for factual history from time to time and if you’re a Looney Alaskan governor/ soccer mum it still does.  When it got really old it took on a mystical property and it became the word of god. The god squad now had a winning combo. No one could do anything without god’s say so and only the priests could give you access, but it would cost you. Usually a shed full of cash, posh frocks, somewhere nice to live with a constant flow of hot totty to keep you warm on cold starlight nights.

As life became more complicated so did the religions. They took all their little stories and put them into great big books. These books then became the corner stone of the religions. Now you would have thought that this would help make things more stable. Everyone would know the rules and following them would be a piece of cake. No such luck, there was no way this kind of power could be given to the masses so the priests pulled out their trump card “interpretation.” Only the religious big knobs could understand and interpret the word of god. Only those that were divinely blessed or who knew someone who knew someone were bequeathed with this gift. The scam was stronger than ever.

At this point in the story I think we need to clarify a few things. Faith is a beautiful thing, for someone to have absolute confidence that someone or something is looking out for them, be it a god, a friend or public body with no facts or evidence to base a reasonable decision on is both amazing and humbling. Religion demands that of its followers, but it’s run by human beings that more often than not fail the faith test with monotonous regularity. Power corrupts and absolute power is like having 12 blind men try to cross the M25 in thick fog. Impending chaos with wanton death and destruction thrown in for good measure. Science, while not a religion per say has all the characteristics of one. Flashy books, mantras and dogma, very impressive people saying complicated things that you don’t understand and a personal aversion to sexiness. The two sections of society that seem to repel the opposite sex the most are definitely priests and geeks. Science is an anti-religion but that Dawkins bloke (Not the one in the chair) is frankly the biggest plum ever. He doesn’t believe in anything unless he can prove it in an experiment. Get a life and live a little mate.

Back to the story, for the next two thousand years the world’s religions held the whip hand, wars were fought and people died on the back of warring faiths and hateful despotic leaders. Wars in general are fought for two reasons, gold and religion, both are the power to control others, the power to live in a big house and have people do stuff for you so you can get fat and get sexually gratified by whom ever and what ever you want.

The control of your mortal soul was supremely important and the religious leaders would go to any lengths to keep that power. Religions split and splintered as different factions grabbed as much power as they could. More Christians have been killed by their fellow Christians over the centuries than anyone else. The Muslims are the same, they have different factions and in Iraq and Afghanistan they spend much more time blowing up each other rather than the infidel crusaders. Why is this then? Simple - it’s all complete bollocks.

Over the last century science has gone from strength to strength and now all bets are off when it comes to religious control. Okay science has invented ways to kill millions in a single press of the button, but we at least we don’t go to war because some bloke in Rome with the silly hat on had a bad dream and he says so.

Gods were in place to explain the unexplainable, the need for us to feel we were part of something bigger and better, to reinforce our need to be the centre of the universe and to give us something to look forward to when we die. Science has replaced or dispelled a lot of this and religion is becoming more and more marginalised.

Religion is just the god system that got out of hand crossed with the human desire to get rich and lazy as fast as possible. I admit that sometimes good people got entangled in this mess. They try to do selfless generous things but they are swamped by the mire of complete tripe and rubbish. Also contrary to what they tell you godless people are just as good as anyone else. They are two completely separate concepts and being holy doesn’t make you a nice person. Religion just complicates things. If you believe in a god and an afterlife then treat others as you would want to be treated, look after the weak, help others when you can.  Do that and I reckon you should be all right.

Hercules you're going to hell for that

December marches on and everyone is focused on the best holiday of the year, you know presents in excess, drinking to excess, food to excess followed by more cold meat and pickle than you can shake a stick at. With the odd hang over and family fight thrown in for good measure obviously. The original reason for this frivolity, back in the day, was to celebrate the winter solstice, a pagan ritual; basically a bit of a party to say thank god we survived till now and any chance we could make it to spring please? Then along came Christianity and before you can say turkey and cranberry sandwiches they’d nicked it, moved it a week and got 3 clever blokes with posh presents involved. They started banging on about mangers, angels and shepherds with not a single flake of snow in sight.

All this because of the one true god rather than some plank of wood that looks like a crow, but why do we have gods, what purpose do they play? It really is much more straight forward than we make it today and I’d like to share it with you. I call it my practical guide to mythology, theology and gobbledygook.

In the beginning we were mere monkeys who picked our bums and the bugs off the backs of anyone that would have sex with us. Life was simple then; contentment was derived from blissful ignorance born of massages, cheap nookie and an abundance of fruit.  Then one day evolution brought three ingredients together that would change things forever. Opposable thumbs, a big brain and a single word, WHY? (Not sure about the question mark, but you get the idea) From that day forward everything we did was driven by the need to know, the need to understand, explain and control. This is when the gods slipped quietly onto the scene and took control.

For your average caveman who could just about fashion crude flint tools knowledge was fleeting and without any kind of language or means of communication any inspirational leap in understanding or thought was lost when the hide clad genius was either eaten by a roving beast or when he drowned in the nearby lake. There were a lot of whys then and very few answers and to bridge that chasm of unknowing, people basically made it up, blaming everything on a strange magical higher power that controlled everything. The sun was a good start and it was worshipped and feared in equal measure.

For the next few millennia people all round the world started to learn some stuff, rudimentary cooking, looking after sheep and what berries not to eat, but they didn’t amount to that much. They continued to ask lots of whys. So we continued to make shit up and why not. Hey presto the gods took major control and religious dogma was just around the corner. We started to write bits and bobs down so we didn’t forget it, but if some bloke (women weren’t trusted) who looked vaguely clever, think Charlton Heston in a beard, said something that kind of sounded right people believed it to be so. If something else happened then it was blamed on the gods. Things often went badly and death and famine stalked the land like two large stalking things (yes, I know it's Blackadder but it’s a classic). So the gods were very busy. The unclean lived in fear and would do just about anything to stay in their local god’s good books and the more bizarre the better. Nothing like sacrificing a virgin or eating cow dung just in case.

Then in areas around the world pockets of clever people appeared, in China, India, Greece and Central America to name a few. On top of asking why people started to prove why. The people in charge didn’t like being questioned and they tried to stop people asking why. This simply didn’t work because some people would still ask why even if the devil was going to stick sharp objects in their butt for eternity. Sometimes this proof was embraced and sometimes it was seen as upsetting the gods, but it often turned out particularly nasty for someone in the piece, usually the so called non believer.

This was the sign of things to come and ever since science has battled religion for the hearts and minds of the masses. Reason versus faith, proof versus dogma. In the early days religion had the upper hand, but as the science improved so the need for faith has reduced. The gods had a big head start and it took a long time for common sense to catch up. The problem was the people running the religions usually ended up with all the money and so the power because people who were about to pop their clogs would do just about anything to get into heaven. Strangely enough no matter how many peasants you had slaughtered giving all your money to a church turned out to be the sure fire way. No surprise there, but what a great scam, no one came back to disprove you and the science lot couldn’t prove anything either. So faced with three options either, A) never ending agony with the devil roasting your wedding tackle over the fires of hell. B) Rotting in a box in the ground or C) eternal bliss with your every wanton desire serviced by half naked goddess' guess what people chose.

Gods were invented to help us explain the unexplainable, to slate the unquenchable thirst for knowledge and the give us something to look forward to when we die. Nothing more than that, but like all good ideas it got completely out of hand because humans by nature are greedy, selfish and self-absorbed. These are basic animal instincts that should have been overcome by our civilisation, but I fear we have a ways to go yet

Next Religion ……

Physics, Kola Bears and Beer Goggles

November is over and as with every December thoughts turn to Christmas, you know that religious holiday, the one that worships at the altar of the great god consumerism. It’s supposedly a time of joy and good will to all men, but if that’s the case then when is the time for us to be unholy arses and horrible to a bunch of women. The universe has to have balance, there has to be a counterweight to everything, it’s the way of the world. For every good a bad and a couple of uglies thrown in for good measure.

Everything we do is based on balance, good v evil, day v night, east v west. It’s the struggle that keeps us from flying off into oblivion. They say that opposites attract and nothing could be more true. Without Darth there would be no Luke, without ying there would be no yang, without the devil there is no god, without a hole there would be no polo and without zig zag would just be another line like all the rest. Balance is so important, especially for tight rope walkers and garden Jenga players and I see this equilibrium everywhere I look.

Newton’s first law of motion states that a body will travel in a straight line and at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. Which is all about balance, positive and negative, this is important for many circus acts especially those with high falls. The positive being if the tightrope walker stands still he won’t fall off unless something pushes him off, the negative being if he does fall off then gravity will ensure it hurts when he hits the ground.

Take Australia as a perfect example, the country has the best weather, it has great outdoor sports, the beaches are great, it has stunning natural beauty, the standard of living is good and people are warm and friendly. What could be better? But which country has six of the ten deadliest spiders? Some that even live in your toilet! You can’t go swimming in the lakes because the crocodiles eat you, you can’t go swimming in the sea because the sharks eat you. If you don’t get eaten by a great white then be careful as they have 2 types of jelly fish that kill you and not even pissing on yourself helps. If you decide that swimming is too dangerous and you just want to paddle in the shallow water you would think you would be safe, but no, they have a fish that looks like a stone and if you tread on it you’ll be dead in 2 hours. If the stone fish doesn’t kill you then the blue ring octopus will, it's small and quite pretty, but when it bites you all your muscles stop working and you’re toast. Get this - they have a killer shell fish that shoots you with poisoned darts.   The snakes kill you, 1 is aptly named the Death Adder, the spiders kill you, the scorpions kill you and if you annoy a kangaroo it can kill you with one kick. There is a good reason god stuck it at the bottom of world around the back. It’s where he put all his maddest creations he just gave them nice weather to make up for the awful company.

Look at Saudi Arabia, it's a large sand dune of a country that doesn’t have a single river to help sustain life. It’s unbelievably hot during the day and freezing cold in the night. In fact it’s so hot during the day that most of the animals live under ground and their snakes have devised some strange wiggling crawl thing because the sand is so hot. You can’t drink beer and if you touch a woman in public they get to give you a proper whipping for the pleasure.  Not very nice at all but to ensure balance is maintained they’ve got a stack load of oil that they sell to the rest of us to support their camel and Bentley addictions.

France is another point in question and I know I’ve mentioned it before but it needs to be said. It is a great country, warm weather for the beaches in the south, skiing in the north, good farming land in the middle, great food to eat, the best wines, cheeses, fine art, culture, history (not as good as England though, calm down) and beautiful places to visit and see. Unfortunately the people are horrible to you, unless you’re French as well. They are so beyond superior that I can’t even find a word in any language to describe them, they think that the European way is basically the French way, if not then they are out on strike. Just because they’ve got their own kissing they think they are better than the rest of us.

You see this balance in the smaller things in life as well, medicine being one. The plus side is that it makes you better, but to work it has to taste nasty. This holds true for food as well. Chocolate and alike taste nice but is bad for you, food that is bad for your waistline tastes lovely and makes you feel good but makes you look like a certain French tyre advertisement. This is why vegetables taste bad; if they tasted good then no one would have invented toffee popcorn. There has to be balance so anyone who thinks vegetables are nicer than chocolate is probably nasty to puppies all the time.

I know women are complicated creatures, but they still have to live within a balanced universe, their counter balance is of course men. Women usually have a wardrobe full of shoes, men just the ones they need. Women have an outfit for every occasion; men only have shirts and ties that match because they can buy them in a set. Women buy a house because they see the potential and how it can be changed and improved. Men buy a house because they like it. Women don’t want men to ask them what they want; they want men to surprise them and do the hoovering without being prompted. Men are just confused. Men ask for what they want, women are playing some strange opposites game that men don’t know the rules to. Beer makes women more attractive and makes men less attractive. Those are the rules and who am I to say otherwise.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction Newton said and that is just the way of things. So just remember for all this happiness in December there is a cold, wet, miserable day in April when your car will breakdown in the middle of nowhere. When the battery on your phone dies and you miss the series finale of your favourite TV show just remember you were happy before and this payback means the universe doesn’t explode in a massive fireball of death and destruction. 

Snow balls and Sangria

So as I start to pen this tome I'm a little short of things to say, basically I've been stuck inside for a few days because we've had an early winter bout of snow. The media was all a buzz with stories of freak this and abnormal that, strange sights and miracle like events, the earliest snow fall since, wait for it, 1993! I mean it's not exactly a long time is it. I haven't played an LP since 1993 and come to think of it the last time I let my hair grow long was about then as well. Perhaps there is not a lot going on in the world, one of those no news days when a cat stuck in a tree in Swindon gets on the local BBC news at 6. Perhaps not, frankly there's enough  bad news around to keep Natasha Kaplinsky at her desk for hours on end. Where do you start?

 Well south Asia is on the brink of war, the Koreans have got the hump with each other, again. You ate my dog, you ate my goat, my mass synchronised dancing is better than yours, I've got high speed broadband you haven't, ner nerdie ner ner, you shelled your town, I've invited the Yanks around with there big boats to shout "My dad is harder than your dad" over the fence. Slightly more important than the average snow fall in Essex in the 90's.

The fact that the Irish economy is about to implode and if it does then the whole Euro-zone adventure is going to come crashing down around our ears is a bit more concerning than welly high snow drifts in Dover. Now I know we are not in the Euro, but we need to get a few things into perspective. The Euro-zone is our biggest export market and if the rest of Europe doesn't have any money then who's going to buy our jet engineers, sports cars and spend £10 on plastic Beefeaters outside the tower of London. If the Celtic Tiger gets mange then Britain will be awash with  Boy bands, ditch diggers and cheap labourers. What are all the Eastern Europeans going to do, there'll be riots at Nettos across the country, you'll be able to get a plumber around on the day you phone them and the cross rail project will be completed 2 years ahead of target and at a cost of £18.47. Basically chaos.

I'm sure that most people would agree that the fact that the country owes around £1 trillion is a touch more vexing then black ice in Basildon. The numbers are so big as to make no sense what so ever. If you counted to 1 million and you counted 1 number every second it would take you 11.5 days to finish. To count to 1 trillion would take 32,000 years. The government has cut £80 billion from the budget and this is just to claw back what we overspent this year. We've maxed out our Barclaycard, got one of those MBNA ones as well and done that one too. We've had a knock on the door from the bailiffs and if we don't pay up now they're going to take our Wide screen TV, X Box, IPod and the BMW.

Apparently 24 FIFA officials pocketing $100M is less important than comedy snowmen in Scotland. A bunch of corrupt officials that hold the key to around £3 Billion of profit and just because Mr Blatter wants it to go to Russia then it will. The fact that if you win the bid you have to agree to not levy any tax what so ever on FIFA, FIFA's mates and their related football businesses. Plus you have to suspend any workers rights including the minimum wage. They are so bent they can see round corners, if you can get Jack Warner to agree to your bid then you get his two mates as well. I wonder how much they charge.

Now I know weather is a national obsession but come on we have snow every year and we arse it up every year, the roads will jam, the trains will run but no one will be able to get to the stations, the airports will be slightly put out, people will panic and buy loads of bread and milk but lets get it into context, we had a bit of snow in November big deal.

Also what happened to global warming? I thought I was set to enjoy Mediterranean type sunshine, eating dinner on the decking sipping Chianti, eating olives, having long afternoon naps and having my sons chase forgein skirt around the local nightclubs till 4am every night. Guess they'll need to rethink that won't they. Oh that's right they did, after things didn't warm up overnight and the evidence didn't add up, the so called experts decided that global warming didn't mean it would actually get warmer, but we would just get more extreme weather phenomenons. Not so bloody expert after all.

Just like the ever so intelligent astrophysicists who told us the universe started with a big bang (I've seen the proof and it's as flimsy as a hookers underwear) and that this happened 13.7 billion years ago. Now they are happy to tell us that nothing can travel faster than  the speed of light so how do they explain the fact that they found a star system over 20 billion light years away. Easy, they make up some new theory that things did expand faster at the beginning of time in some strange bullshit made up expanding hot air bollocks event due to stupidity and ego theory.

So in summary
The Koreans are having a tiff and that makes us all nervous because one has nuclear bombs,
Ireland has spent all its pocket money and has asked it's parents to buy it more chocolate,
Britain has maxed out its credit card and now can't buy a new sofa every month,
FIFA is a bunch of self righteous thieves and the world cup is going to Russia, Blatter said so,
People have no real idea about global warming they are basically guessing,
Space geeks aren't quite as clever as they thought they were and girls like muscle better,
And snow is fun but not quite as important as the other stuff.