the infinite (continued)

It was nice to see Billy Bliss behind the bar again. We got talking about Science and Religion but I think he started it - Actually no, it was a lady waiting to be served (this is in the Shunt Lounge) : "Science just the new religion" says he and her. "No," I go, moving onto "Science does HOW, Religion does WHY" - a little mantra of mine so watertight it really is a mystery to me why this matter is still up for debate - noting also that Science can never, for example, answer the most fundamental question "Why is there something instead of nothing?" because Science is only concerned with What Is. Religion on the other hand can at least contemplate - if not investigate - What's Not. I don't think it can give us The Right Answer either, because it's just people making stuff up and people are only wee and that's why I'm an atheist and that's why I make stuff up, but it's still a question worth making up answers to, and that will never be Science's job. (Freud was the only scientist who actually replaced religion, and he wasn't even a proper scientist. Ergo.) Billy Bliss also argued something about matter and energy and how nothing can ever be said to disappear, so I blew out a candle.

Which may be why I'm not called Billy Bliss.

Did I start it? It certainly tied in with my grumpy ideas about Richard Dawkins' defense of atheism - which smacks so much of a man completely out of his depth, like those Phillip Pullman deans that used to get wheeled on to attack The Life of Brian. And I'd been thinking about space again. Because just before you hit the bar there was a board on the ground in front of a screen, and on this board a cross, and next to the cross the familiar sign "One at a time". The board had been there a few nights now and I thought it was some sort of tiny dance floor, but that's because the projector hadn't been turned on. Now it was, and the screen showed a virtual - not landscape - sky-scape of, well, shapes, like in space. And it was 3D. So you had to put on some specs provided. And you stood on the cross, and if you flapped your arms, you went forward, and if you bent back, you looked up, and if you bent down, you looked down, and if you banked to the left or right you turned left or right.

And you probably looked stupid doing it, but it's everyone else who's missing out. And it's not your job to not look stupid.

Which is something I'll get back to when I return from work (painting myself white and applying false injuries at the London Dungeon, coincidentally bang next door to Shunt. On the train in yesterday I noticed a man with a huge bruise running from his eye to his ear and though "Ooh, might use that." Surely that's wrong...)