Go and find someone more interesting and don’t blame me for stuff I’ve not done….thank you & goodnight

Complaints Dept.

Having received a number of complaints from die-hard 80s Lefties about having linked to a Benny Hill sketch I shall endeavour to provide a little balance.

Paranormal Activity

The Ultimate in Entertainment is a mere mouse-click away

Do You Know of The Genius that is Roky Erickson?

I think I must have first heard Roky’s stuff back in the 80s when he was bringing out horror-influenced songs. I got turned onto his music via one song in particular, “Burn the Flames”, from the zombie film “The Return of the Living Dead”. Thereafter I bought a vinyl LP copy of “I think of Demons”. Well, I lost all my vinyl back in 1999. And I hadn’t heard any Roky since then. But in the past month, what with all the upheaval in my life, he seems to have come back onto my radar. So, here’s something of an introduction by way of Youtube for those who are interested:

I Now Summon Together the Secret Forces of Righteousness

I Just Know All Atheists Will Love This

You don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it

These past few weeks I’ve spent most of my time at the British Library—in the role of a refugee from myself, and when not working on my really bizarre pulp novel (which seems to be a cross between Guy N. Smith & P.G. Wodehouse) NAZI ZOMBIES OF ANTARCTICA, I’ve been re-reading my Chesterton and discovering my Belloc. The latter author is the real bruiser of the two, especially when it comes to the Catholic Literary Revival of the first half of the 20th Century.

Chesterton managed to offend no-one, whereas Belloc drew a multitude of enemies. This is strange, since they were saying much the same thing. Anyway, that’s not my focus this time around. When I got back home earlier today I found the following file in some cobwebbed corner of my laptop. I can’t quite recall why it’s there, but it must have been written in opposition to some or other atheist points raised on a messageboard and, since I mention Belloc, here it is (unedited):

It is not possible for a man to achieve absolute neutrality where questions of philosophy and belief are concerned. That is, no man is a true indifferentist in these vital questions. Hilaire Belloc claimed that man must worship something because it is in his nature. Since atheism is an absence of belief, the objection has been raised that atheism claims no more than what can be verified (at least according to the scientific method). Anything outside of the scientific method is not to be considered, since it cannot be verified. So, then, the scientific method is the sole valid arbiter of what constitutes “reality” and ultimate truth. Where it cannot determine matters exactly, that is, where matters fall outside of its realm, since they cannot be verified scientifically, it claims instead authority by virtue of overwhelming probability. The typical modern-day sceptic can be defined as someone who questions everything, except what science tells him it is meaningless to question. If science, indeed, alone has a grasp on what constitutes reality (until, of course, such time as it self-revises its doctrines), let us see where an examination leads us.

Science is at its weakest when it makes any claim about origins. Science, as yet, cannot present any verifiable account as to the origin of basic life-forms, namely cells. All it can do is present a wide variety of speculations, none of which are generally accepted as the answer. Moreover, the creation of cells in a laboratory is as distant a prospect as it has always been. Likewise, science has no answer to the question of the origin of matter at the exact instant of the Big Bang when time and space came into existence. Indeed, until 1964, the theory was not generally accepted, it being held as scientific orthodoxy that the universe had always existed. When it comes to explaining the existence of the universe, rather than providing an explanation, it instead postulates other theories, that is, the existence of “the multiverse”, a concept no less speculative and unproven in scientific terms and thus unverifiable, than the idea of a prime mover, or God, contingent unto itself. Ask about the origin of the laws of physics and no answer at all is forthcoming, except that of “Wait! Science will eventually explain it all”.

Science cannot answer the “why” of anything. Its adherents do not simply rule “why is this so?” out of the case as being unanswerable, they deny the validity of the question “why is this so?” altogether. It is not logically possible to do this without a philosophical position underpinning the denial. And that underpinning is logical positivism. This is a not scientifically testable position. Everything just “is” cannot be considered as more than an article of faith, which leads to the idea that all metaphysics is a waste of time because science, the supposed sole arbiter of what constitutes reality, cannot provide an answer. One need only look at the debates between Einstein and Bohr over quantum mechanics as evidence for this. Even today, there is no scientific consensus on the Copenhagen Interpretation.

Let’s now turn to a fuller consideration of evolution. It’s clear that evolution, or more specifically, the process of natural selection, provides the best available model of the development of cells into much more complex biological systems. Since Darwin’s time his thought has been revised and added to, according to new observable evidence. Darwin’s ideas are falsifiable, but creationism, or intelligent design is not. However, there is no intrinsic conflict between natural selection and theism. Evolution is taught in Catholic primary and secondary schools. Atheists, of course, contend there is a conflict, but theirs is an objection based not on reason but on ideology. The Catholic Church, amongst other non-fundamentalist churches, teaches that the Biblical accounts of creation in Genesis are allegorical and not literal. They are the product of their time. In fact, recently the Catholic Church held a conference on evolution, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of the Species at the Vatican (in which, incidentally, Intelligent Design proponents were not invited).

I do not respect militant atheist scientists (that is, advocates of “Scientism”) because I do not trust such people to be inclusive, but to increasingly regard their fellow theist scientists (who are perfectly able to “do” science with all the expertise of an atheist scientist) with prejudice. These people actually desire to exclude religion from the community, including the scientific community.

Scientism is primarily an amoral exercise. Its advocates are attempting to define its own amorality (or “value free” position, as they might term it) as more important than the tradition of ethics derived from spirituality, which they deny has any validity in human affairs. There are now a series of atheist propagandists out there whose goal is to destroy faith altogether. Richard Dawkins, of course, is just the best known of them. For him and his camp followers, faith is a form of thought control. But faith is not thought control. It is a gift available to all and is freely given. Whether or not one accepts the gift is a matter of individual choice, not of brainwashing.

Scientism’s defenders are very quick to point out various medical treatments in its defence, saying medicine and science are coterminous. In denying that science is the sole arbiter of reality one doesn’t have to throw out medicine at all. However, one might think about the connection between scientists and weapons research. Biological, chemical and nuclear weapons do not appear out of nowhere. Their creation is a consequence of scientific endeavour. On the one hand, then, defenders of scientism are swift to point out its benefits to mankind and lay claim to its containing a positive ethical dimension. On the other hand, when it comes to weaponry, they say science is simply a tool and the use to which it is put has no bearing on the matter. 90% of scientists are atheists, says Richard Dawkins, and I have no reason to doubt this figure.

It’s not even the case that the medical field are exempt from criticism. After 1933, Nazi doctors exhibited tremendous enthusiasm for enforced euthanasia and sterilization of those they deemed had “lives not worth living”. Nazi ideology was not enforced upon a “neutral” medical community: rather it was embraced and carried out with rigour. Likewise, in the United States, home of the first government eugenic policy, sterilization of the mentally deficient continued until early 1960, all with the enthusiastic cooperation of the medical community. Oregon State even practised enforced castration upon the mentally deficient in an attempt to check their numbers. Indeed the last enforced sterilisation by the Oregon Board of Eugenics took place as late as 1981. Now, of course, it’s the only US state to endorse “assisted suicide”. Given its past record, perhaps its citizens should think again about that one.

Nowadays, millions of the unborn are killed every year in the Western world, regarded and treated with no respect for the dignity of their lives, but simply as another piece of useless flesh, worthless as an appendix, to be removed and destroyed.

If one were to factor abortion into life expectancy, from conception (which is when human life begins) rather than from birth, we see that science has dramatically reduced human life span in the last few decades. In the U.S., for example, average life-expectancy now would be equivalent to that in Kenya or Mongolia, that is, it is currently at a third-world level: something around 56 years of age. The medical profession is directly responsible for this fall.

Life either has a meaning or it doesn’t. I believe it has a meaning that is rooted in mystery. A mystery that science cannot unravel, and the name of that mystery is God.

To come back to Belloc: he once asked does religion come from God or from man? This is the central question of existence. And all conclusions about existence stem from the position one takes on this question.

Mark S.

Anna Kavan: We salute you

The work of writer and artist Anna Kavan (1901-1968) continues to fascinate those who prefer literature to hail from strange borderlands of the imagination rather than being trapped in the confines of social realism. Ever since I discovered her superlative novel ICE (1967) a couple of years ago, I have considered myself a Kavan devotee.

Marxist interpretations of Kavan again and again stylise her as a glamorous victim of heterosexual oppression and the result is like a cross between Judy Garland and Sylvia Plath. This leftist ideology is narrow minded, whereas a broader spectra, one that incorporates Kavan’s misogyny towards almost all other women whom she saw as rivals, is scarcely touched upon. The ideologues, in very short order, also gloss over the fact that Kavan supported herself financially in later life by starting her own successful firm of property developers (perhaps this aspect of her life just wasn’t sufficiently anti-establishment). Her death by heart failure is not glamorous enough for them and so they must insist upon death by suicide. But Kavan seems to me, as for her friend Rhys Davies, not a mere victim, but a heroic figure, a gloriously defiant artist who used pain as it used her, turning the needle into a pen.

Kavan herself wanted to ensure, by the destruction of her own personal papers, by misinforming her friends, and by personal reinvention, that her future biographers would have as little evidence as possible with which to work. One of the central tenets of her life as a writer was to let her work speak for itself. Her withdrawal from the social dynamic of the literary scene was a statement of intent in this regard. It is a path few authors have had the courage to emulate.

Biographical additions are little more than the type of projective objectification that Kavan herself found terrifying; the beginning of a Kavan mythology, whereby her life is shaped according to the pop psychology of the critics. It is a fate that she sought to avoid at all costs, and Kavan’s final tragedy is that her worst fear came to pass.

I love this, & I hope you do too