Atheists might be a pain if you talk to them but at least all they do is sit there not believing in things. They might go on TV and shout a bit if they’ve just written a book, but really you can safely ignore them and carry on with your beliefs. They won’t actually do anything to you other than try to trick you into thinking things through.

Scientists are a different matter. Don’t forget they saw how boring science was at school and still wanted to do it however weird that sounds to the rest of us!!!! So we already know they are dangerous and unpredictable. And they always go on about their precious scientific method as if we’re all supposed to be impressed. As far as I can see they just spend the whole time trying to disprove each others’ theories. I mean how negative is that? Couldn’t they just all get together and agree on things without being so critical all the time? Have they never heard the word ‘cooperate’?

I mean I’m not being funny but there’s such a thing as politeness!!!

To show you what I mean, I have thought of an imaginary conversation between two scientists:

Einstein:     E=MC²
Scientist:    No it doesn’t.
Einstein:     Yes it does.
Scientist:    No it doesn’t.
Einstein:     Yes it does.
Scientist:    No it doesn’t.
Einstein:     Yes it does.
Scientist:    No it d….
                 Oh hang on, yes it does.
Einstein:     Told you.

See? Pointless waste of time. Here’s what it would be like if scientists weren’t such cynics:

Einstein:     E=MC²
Scientist:    Does it? Wow!
Einstein:     Yup.
Scientist:    Well, there’s a bit of time to kill. Shall I read you your horoscope?

My cynical friend says we couldn’t do without scientists because they do useful things like build bridges, and we can wander around the place being spiritual all we like but we still need to be able to get across rivers. But I think things like that are just common sense.

How to Build a Bridge
All you do to build a bridge is go to a river, get a lot of stones and pile them up in a bridge shape (yes I know there are other kinds of bridges but stay with me ok? No offence). You’d have to put arches under it of course, so the water can get through. If you forget to put the arches in, then it’s a dam not a bridge. And if you make it on dry land, then it’s a big wall. Or a viaduct if you did remember the arches.

So there you are. I know absolutely nothing about science, but I’ve told you how to make four things already using simple common sense. And nobody’s going to tell me it’s any different with space rockets. I mean how hard can it be to make a simple rocket – as long as you believe in what you’re doing?

I mean I don’t really think we need scientists any more. All they do is cause trouble and tell us things we don’t want to hear, whereas spirituality is brilliant because it tells each of us exactly what we do want to hear. What’s to decide???

I mean if we need to find out anything scientific, there’s always the internet.

My next post is going to be about global warming, and after you’ve read that there’s now way you’re going to think that scientists aren’t even worse than atheists!

So I went to pay but it had all changed. The usual tills had all gone and there were just these rows of things like a cross between a petrol pump and a cash machine, with flashing lights on top like the ones you get on those golf buggy things you see whizzing about at airports. Not a check-out girl in sight, just a few old ladies with their tins of cat food and Spam and rice pudding, each peering at a machine and stabbing uncertainly at the little keypad with her bony fingers, wondering what to do next.

There was a notice on the wall which said something like:

‘It is with the greatest of regret that we have unfortunately decided to sack all our cashiers in order to facilitate an enhanced retail experience for our customers instore. If you require assistance using our new self-service tills, please do not hesitate to consult one of our cashiers.’

And all the machines were talking as if they were alive. They only had a few things to say but they kept on saying them, just like actual people. They all sounded exactly alike too – the same sort of voice as the one on my ‘Truth – You Decide’ CD – like a bored but kindly woman being firm with a 5-year-old while pretending not to be bored.

I don’t usually like machinery of any kind but I must say I found the woman’s voice sort of hypnotic and I felt drawn towards the nearest till that wasn’t already speaking to someone. It was very like being at a drinks party with a lot of quite boring people you don’t know – but with shopping.

My till was flashing its green light encouragingly and things started off fairly well, except that it wanted to know if I was using my own bag. I mean as an ice-breaker that was a bit rude, I thought, and I said of course it was my own bag. Now you’re probably going to think I’m stupid, but it was only when it ignored me and asked me the same thing again that I realised it didn’t listen. It just said things and wouldn’t stop until you did what it wanted. This was obviously what was foxing the old ladies trying to swipe their Spam, because they were used to using the same technique. And if you didn’t do what it wanted after it had asked you about 3 times, it said ‘Please wait for assistance’ in quite a patronising way (I thought), and changed its green light to red. Very embarrassing, because everyone could see your light was red and you just had to stand there like an idiot, with all the people whose lights were green secretly sneering at you.

Well I sort of got the hang of it after a while, and I stopped taking offence at the woman in the till’s tone of voice after I decided that she was only trying to be kind even if she sounded strict. Also my light hadn’t even gone red once and I thought I was going to get away with it, so I suppose I became over-confident and slapdash as I swiped the last of the celery. Anyway my till suddenly went beep, the light went red and the woman out of the blue said ‘Unexpected item in the bagging area’.

I didn’t know what she meant but it sounded serious so I tried pressing all the buttons, but she just said the same thing again and her mood seemed darker somehow. And people were looking. They should have a button on there that says ‘What are you talking about? What’s a bagging area and what for pity’s sake were your expectations and how did you arrive at them?’ but of course there isn’t one. In fact you’re pretty much limited to ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, the ‘No’ button being much smaller and obviously frowned upon.

Luckily this man with loads of spots on his face turned up just then. He had a badge which said ‘Malcolm – Instore Financial Reconciliation Facilitator (Shift 3)’ on it. He fished out a stray bit of celery from behind where my bag was, then sniggered and waved his badge near the machine, which immediately cheered up, turned its light green again and asked me in a rather suggestive voice to insert my card. You could tell Malcolm liked the power.

On the way home I started having deep thoughts. I think my mind had been stimulated by some of the points the self-service till had made during our one-sided conversation, and I found myself sympathising with the machine a bit more now that it was all over. I mean – none of us wants an unexpected item in our bagging area, do we?

Then I started thinking that the woman was like God in a way, and all the tills were like priests or vicars? Like there’s only one voice in all the tills and it’s her voice. And the tills keep on saying the same things over and over again but at different times because each till is an individual repeating her message to different people. And there’s no point in the tills listening to anything the people say back to them because nothing they can say can change the message. The people can only get what they need by doing what the till wants and then the till tells them something else to do, otherwise it just repeats what it said before. But every now and then an atheist comes along disguised as a proper customer and gives the till an unexpected item in its bagging area. When that happens the confused till has to stop and wait for Malcolm the bishop to come along and put everyone back on the right path…

I forgot to say, there was a special offer on vodka too.

Also, no offence but I’m not sure cynics should be allowed to have Christmas.

And finally, the revelation that global warming was all made up by some scientists in East Anglia has shaken my belief system to its foundations? I will be considering the subject in more depth in the new year. Still, I’m glad the polar bears are safe now.

I might go to the doctor if it’s not better soon. I don’t trust conventional medicine, obviously, but I could still ask for a placebo. I prefer placebos. I find they work every time for me.

Of course they’re not for everyone. Placebos have been shown to be completely ineffective on cynics, for instance. The secret is you have to believe they are going to work, and then they do.

Or I might try a homeopathic remedy. You have to believe in those too, but they cost loads more than placebos so once you’ve paid for them you believe in them even more, meaning you get better quicker. Which obviously justifies the extra money.

I have had an idea. I’m going to find out if there’s such a thing as a homeopathic placebo. That would most likely be more affordable than the actual remedy do you think? With any luck I’ll be up and about in a week or so.

I think I’m going to cut out bacon in future, just to be safe. Yes I know what you’re thinking. Supposedly you can’t catch swine flu from bacon. But my question to you is, do you seriously think the ‘scientists’ have tested every single piece of bacon in the world? Of course they haven’t – so really they’re just guessing. What if you were eating some bacon and it had come from a pig that actually had swine flu? Although I suppose a pig would just think of it as normal flu, if at all.

I think the government should ban bacon. Even if just one life was saved surely it would be justified.

And ham.

Remember my friend who explained to me about the dangers of thought? Well another time I was with her and I had a really bad headache, so she took this lump of stone out of her bag and told me to hold it against my head. She said it was a crystal called green aventurine and it had healing properties because of its vibrations. She said all crystals have different vibrations and powers so you can use them to basically sort out all your problems.

Anyway, she made me give it back after a bit because she had to go, but she was right because a few hours later my headache was completely gone!!!

Now I don’t care how cynical you are, you can hardly deny proof like that! And that’s not all. This is like almost spooky, but it turns out her brother has a jewellery shop and she could get me like a discount? It just shows how crystals can make the world kind of fall into place.

‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’ – Bertrand Russell

I’m sorry, apparently that was Jane Russell in a song. I’m going to call Microsoft and ask them how to delete stuff you’ve already written.

Conspiracy theories

Now I have come to realise that not everything you read on the internet is true (see above about belief) but I believe that most of it is, otherwise why would people write it? I hardly think people are just going to make things up!

It’s so good that we have the internet now because before people just didn’t realise half of the things that are really going on in the world.

I mean the media and the government are just the same lot really and they just print what they want us to believe in the papers – even the local paper. It’s lucky that some of us aren’t completely gullible. When I think of all those millions of people way back watching Neil Armstrong pretending to walk on the moon on their TV’s it makes me so angry. Yeah right. Like they actually flew to the moon!!?? I don’t think so.

A Strange Event

I have to tell you about this weird thing that happened. I was at this dinner party thing last night and I was telling them all about this blog and stuff. They all seemed really interested in what I was doing. In fact, some of them actually closed their eyes in concentration after a while. Well there was this woman there who was from Bosnia. I think she’d had to leave there a few years ago. She just kept staring at me when I was talking but she didn’t say anything. Then she just came straight out and said ‘Kristen. Would you die for your beliefs?’ Seriously.

Well I didn’t know what to say. I mean what would you say? She obviously doesn’t understand about beliefs. It could be cultural.

I have found out that the man who invented the first razor was called Ockham, and he thought that simple things were better than complicated ones. So that must be why the first razors only had one blade. Then they probably had to wait until Ockham had died before they started putting more and more blades on them and that’s why it took so long. So it might not have been marketing after all.

So what is a belief? Well obviously you have a belief in something when you think it’s true. No that’s not right – it’s when you feel it’s true. So what does true mean? Well if something’s true then it corresponds to reality. But the thing is, I believe that you create your own reality – which means that whatever you believe is true. It’s so arrogant to think there’s like only one reality?

My other friend (the cynical one) says you can create your own reality as much as you like, but if you walk across a busy motorway you’re still going to get squashed. She’s so negative.

I believe there’s an energy that watches over us. So if I did walk across a busy motorway I wouldn’t in fact be squashed. Obviously I’m not going to try it because if I needed to test if it was true, that would mean I didn’t really believe in the energy. And obviously it’s not going to work if you don’t really believe in it.

There are loads of things like that. I will get on to them later.

P.S. I have just been on the net and it says on there that a belief is a ‘propositional attitude’. No it’s not, it’s when you feel something is true. I said that before.

I used to think the internet was true, but now I don’t know what to believe.

Atheists

Well what can you say about atheists except just to feel sorry for them in a way. Whenever I meet an atheist I always ask them if there’s a God and they’re always like ‘no’. What they don’t realise is that they’ve already fallen into my intellectual trap. Dealing with atheists is one time when you do actually have to use intellectual argument because that’s all they understand, not having feelings.

So then I say ‘don’t you think you’re being a bit negative?’ That usually confuses them and they start saying stuff like ‘But it’s not negative to say there isn’t something when there isn’t’ .

Er – I’m sorry? You only have to look at all the negative words they’ve used already. ‘No’, ‘not’ (three times if you count the isn’ts), ‘but’ and ‘negative’. If that’s not being negative I don’t know what is!

So then I really finish them off. I go ‘so if you don’t think there’s a God then prove it!’

And guess what? They can’t. QED. So much for atheists for now, but I’ll come back to them because they are a growing problem.

Wars of Religion

Well this is a bit of a heavy one. I didn’t really mean to get on to it yet but I’m doing some research and will let you know soon. For now I would just point out that you have to respect each side’s point of view.

In fact I’m very doubtful about science in general. I hated it at school, and that has to be telling us something.

But apart from scientific ‘facts’ as they call them, I think it’s best to believe pretty much everything else unless I absolutely know it’s not right. Everything is there for a reason after all.

I’m not saying it’s easy. Sometimes it gets confusing . God for example. Like, I do believe in God but I kind of believe in all of them? Even the ones who think each other don’t exist. Which is a puzzle.

But I had this friend once and she pointed out to me that when you get confused about beliefs like that it’s because of your intellect poking its nose in where it’s not wanted, and you have to just ignore it. She explained that beliefs are feelings not thoughts, so thinking about them isn’t much use really. Also with thinking you have things like logic getting involved, which is part of science – need I say more? No wonder it’s confusing.

Also she said that thinking is for cynics. It’s all they can do because cynics don’t have feelings, which is why they never believe in anything.

I should say at this point that I don’t confine myself to believing big things. Anyone who thinks that the only things that matter are big things is just stupid. And patronising. There are absolutely loads of small things to believe in, and I like to think I believe in most of them. They don’t give you so much of a rush maybe, but you still get the warm feeling a bit.

Kristen’s Case Studies #1 – Believing in Small Things

Here’s an example. Razors. The kind that men shave with. A long time ago the first ever razors were probably like just a razorblade on a stick, and it was like that for ages. Then after like a hundred years they realised that if you put another blade on the stick right next to the first one you got a closer shave. That makes sense to me. Because if the first blade misses a bit of hair the second blade would just zap it instead. Also it’s a well-known fact that the human race has become less hairy down the ages. So that idea really caught on and pretty soon all men had two blades on their razors except for people in like the Amazon rainforest who probably hadn’t heard about it.

Then the next thing that happened was years and years later somebody thought of putting three blades on instead of just two so you got an even closer shave. They were more expensive obviously but that’s because you got three blades. And I believe that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Now you can probably guess what happened next. That’s right. Four blades. And to cut a long story short (!) they’ve finally realised that five blades works even better.

So I think they were already on three blades when I first found out about this story, but as soon as I did, I started to believe that the more blades you have on a razor, the better it works, and I actually predicted back then that one day there would be five. And now there are!

Which shows the power of belief, because it took the ‘scientists’ years and years to get to five blades. I’m going to write to the razor people with my idea, which is to try with six blades. I hope nobody has suggested it yet.

Now my other friend, who is a total cynic, says the whole thing is just marketing. She actually thinks they thought of all the numbers of blades years and years ago but instead of being honest and just putting five blades on straight away, they deliberately kept it secret and just increased the number of blades slowly, so everyone would have to buy the twos and threes first and spend more money!

Her life must be so sad. I actually have more faith in people than that (even scientists – it’s not their fault they’re such geeks). I mean I normally believe in conspiracy theories but you only have to look at the evidence. And anyway so what if it was marketing? I believe in marketing. How else are we supposed to find out about anything?