Wednesday 16 December 2015

The Marvelous Magical Mystic McLatter

It seems to have been a while since I last inflicted any of my writing on you.  I’m sure you must have done something to deserve it, so here it is.

In this particular instance, you can blame Theodore Geisel, a name with which you may not be familiar, possibly until I tell you that his middle name was Seuss.  There are a few writers who always have the effect of making want to write, and Seuss, along with Wodehouse and Jerome, almost always has this effect on me.  In Seuss’s case, he makes me want to write rhyming poetry, so like I say, this is all his fault.

This is not actually the poem that I wrote as an immediate reaction to my recent Seussing (I’ve been re-watching the cartoons on Youtube), but one that came afterwards as a sort of aftershock.  The name of the eponymous Professor was inspired by Sylvester McMonkey McBean, one of the characters from Seuss’s The Sneetches.  The first poem I wrote is a little less fun but rather more meaningful, in that it actually has a message.  I will expose you to it in due course.  This poem has no message at all, and is mostly just me playing with rhymes.

And yes, before you say anything, I rhyme ‘synthesis’ with ‘telekinesis’, and no, I won’t apologise.  Nope. I’d do it again too!




The Marvelous Magical Mystic McLatter


Oh ladies and gentleman, folk of all classes,
Pay close attention to all that here passes!
Please be upstanding, shout out your applause,
For he who has shattered all natural laws,
The world renowned master of mind over matter
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

He’s travelled all over and learned from great sages,
A process not speedy, in fact it took ages!
To gather the wisdom of fakirs and seers,
Has taken ten days, seven months and nine years!
His shoes were worn through and his coat all a tatter,
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

Of all of his learning he’s made a synthesis,
Of sorcery, science and telekinesis,
Of magic and medicine, music and meter,
A well-rounded scholar you won’t find completer.
Of spiritualism he’s more than a smatter,
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

Well-trained in the practical helpful appliance,
Of physical, chemical, medical science,
Of fresh paradigms he’s the foremost fomenter,
A pure pioneer, an inventor’s inventor!
His searching researches set science a-chatter,
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

The technical journals are bursting with mentions
Of this great inventor’s inventive inventions.
Devising devices for digging out ditches,
And stitching up saddles without saddle stitches.
His rat-catching robot’s a prize-winning ratter!
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

He speaks with the dead, and with minds over miles,
His patented pills ease the painfullest piles.
His tinctures can tame the most harsh halitosis,
He’s expert in homeopathic hypnosis.
With angels and spirits he’ll have a good natter
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

To aid all mankind he has made it his mission,
To heal and to help is his stated position.
But even a travelling doctor at large
Has to eat meals and so there’s a charge.
Though merely expenses, his wallet grows fatter,
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

And when he has sold you whatever he’s selling,
Like chats with dead uncles, or cream for a swelling,
Or dazzled you daft with some mystic display,
He heads for the hills with the bulk of your pay.
His servants and helpers all split up and scatter,
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

He’ll sell you a syrup and call it elixir,
All served with a magical mystical mixer,
Or water as ought to be called in all trueness,
All artfully tinted with chemical blueness.
A charming dab hand at the snappiest patter,
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

His machines and devices are largely of balsa,
With helpers inside, and you can’t get much falser!
The robot for ratting’s a dog in a suit,
But this fraudulent fop could not give a hoot.
His web of deceit must now shiver and shatter.
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

His potions and lotions and miracle tonics,
Mere herpetological hydrocarbonics,
With verified virtues all notably lacking;
The charges against him are rapidly stacking.
As sharp as a tack and as mad as a hatter,
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!

But now the police force have had him arrested,
As multiple witnesses lately attested,
Engaged in the sale of a sugar solution,
And thus ends the case for the Crown Prosecution.
Good folk of the jury, here then is the matter:
Professor Sylvester O’Connell McLatter!



Copyright Thomas Jones 2015

Wednesday 9 December 2015

Unscientific Religion

It is my frequent pleasure and frustration to take part in the discussions on certain stories on the BBC website, and most recently on this one.  Whenever the Corporation open any story with a religious element up for comment, it very quickly fills up with largely ill-informed anti-theistic mockery, sweeping generalisations, factually untrue statements and arguments which seem to assume that all theists are either ISIS soldiers or Young Earth Creationists.

One of the main issues that I see though, and one that is the greatest obstacle to the understanding of religion by a great many atheists, is that they insist on viewing everything solely through the prism of science.  Now obviously science is one of the most powerful tools humanity possesses to learn about and make sense of the world in which we find ourselves and by using it our knowledge continues to grow and grow, and our capabilities as a species continue to grow and grow.  However, the idea that every single thing must therefore be explicable via the scientific method is not only potentially limiting, it is dangerous.

I’m not saying anything new here, or expounding any profound new theories.  This has all been said before, but it appears to be worth reiterating.

I say potentially limiting, because an insistence that everything must be essentially a scientific phenomenon of some sort, either understood or not, can lead to circular reasoning.  I have seen a wonderful refutation of miracles which runs, “We know that miracles are impossible because all apparent miracles are just scientific phenomena that we don’t understand, and we know that they are just scientific phenomena that we don’t understand because miracles are impossible.”  Effectively, “Miracles never happen because they’re impossible, and we know they’re impossible because they never happen”.  As soon as you allow the slightest doubt that they might be possible, the reasoning falls down.

Likewise the attempts to do a scientific study of prayer.  The flaws in this should instantly be obvious, unless you have no understanding of what prayer is or how it works.  As far back as 1867, George MacDonald was decrying ‘scientific’ attempts to study the efficacy of prayer as nonsensical in his Unspoken Sermons.  As to the so-called scientific challenge to prove the efficacy of prayer by the result of simultaneous petition, I am almost ashamed to allude to it.”  The majority of studies focus on praying for ill or injured people, and whether prayer has any effect on recovery rates.  That’s not prayer.  That’s trying to get a mail-order miracle.  Prayer is a conversation, a process, a relationship, and totally subjective and internal and personal and intimate, all things anathema to scientific enquiry.  It’s not something that can be slapped down onto a laboratory table and dissected.  Nonetheless, when amputated limbs fail to instantaneously grow back, anti-theists crow that prayer has been disproven. 

I do not believe that science and religion (a false dichotomy in any case) are intrinsically opposed.  It is true that certain ‘scientific’ claims as to the nature of the world and our own origins as a species have been shown to be incorrect by scientific enquiry, and when this happens we should acknowledge it and do so graciously, adjusting our beliefs accordingly.  However, that doesn’t mean that I subscribe to the ‘God of the Gaps’ theory that says that gradually the need for God will diminish until it disappears altogether beneath the burning light of Science (capitalised with worrying frequency).  The most important questions that religion attempts to answer are ones that science is unable to.  Not ‘currently unable to’ but by nature and definition completely unequipped to.  Not ‘what’ and ‘how’ but ‘who’ and ‘why’.

Here is a quote from the comments on the story linked to above:

"If something can have an effect on the world, it's physical. If it can't, then it doesn't exist."

I am assuming, and by the context and the contributor’s other comments I think that this is safe, that by ‘physical’ he means scientifically verifiable.  Scientific enquiry requires repeatable, observable, measurable results, and as soon as you start measuring a thing, what you’re really doing is counting it.  It might involve breaking one aspect of a thing down into arbitrary units like degrees or millimetres or centilitres or moles, but ultimately it’s about counting.  As soon as you start to say that only things that can be counted are important, and that if it can’t be counted, it must either be irrelevant or false, you are straying into very dangerous territory indeed, and territory that not even the most ardently scientistic anti-theist actually ever really strays into, although they would almost certainly deny it.

Claiming that prayer and miracles can’t be studied scientifically might appear to be a cop out, but claiming that if they can’t, they are false or unimportant is terrifying.  The most important things in life cannot be counted or measured; hope, love, grace, mercy, loyalty, kindness, courage, compassion.  Can you weigh love or take the temperature of courage?  How many moles of compassion can you fit into a beaker?  The ideal world of the adherents of scientism must be a cold, hard, mechanical, angular, inhuman but wonderfully efficient place to live.

And then there’s God Himself of course.  Above and beyond and behind and beneath and through and around the world, how should we go about measuring Him?  If He is the omniscient, omnipresence, omnipotent being that we believe Him to be, what should we break Him down into so that we can count him, and if we can’t, must we therefore discount even the concept of Him, let alone the Reality?

I put the C. S. Lewis quote at the top of this page there for a reason.  It may well be that the things we hold dear are unmeasurable and uncountable and unscientific, and are irrational and illogical and subjective, but as far as I am concerned they are far better and far more important than anything that can be weighed or measured or cut up in a laboratory.  If that makes me irrational and illogical, then so be it.