Two bottles of wine later, God ceases to matter

Greetings, Algolians.

I'm not sure what got me started on the subject- who is when you're a little, ahem, "wankered"?
I'm pretty sure I convinced a table of twelve people on Saturday that God probably didn't exist (or at least wasn't worth worrying about, let alone worshipping).

Oh, this post will offend some folks. Never mind.

How does the logic go? Well - we all agreed that there were two extreme ways to look at the concept of a "God". Oh, and by the way, forgive my use of the masculine pronoun - I'm too lazy to write anything else.

1. The classic, sin forgiving, interfering creator who sits in the big office upstairs pronouncing judgements, including whether you go to heaven or hell. He also has the powers to interfere with or influence the world.
2. Some less interfering force responsible for the creation of the universe, and that's it.

I'll refer to these as God1 and God2 - note that God1, while having the power to interfere, is not implied to be interfering constantly - he merely can.

Now it would be very easy to find some middle ground here, but all the wrangling we went through to reach this point was a little boring, basically - the middle grounds say, God#, are a bit namby pamby. he's in a war with Satan for example, which implies Satan is equally as powerful, or he has too little time etc... I'm gonna avoid these since we didn't talk about them.


So lets look at God1. This is a being powerful enough to

• create an entire universe and then fake its age.
• design an endless supply of animals including millions of species of, say, insects.
• create emotions and beings that feel them
• Directly affect the future of the universe he created
• etc. etc.

In short, this is one powerful being! Now, if you look at the question of whether to worship this god there are a few things you can take into account.

1. Stillbirth - this is one of the things that really sealed my atheism. What sort of God is willing to kill kids before they're born? Did they have evil thoughts in the womb?
2. The question of "faith". Look, if you're responsible for my creation, don't go punishing me when I turn out atheist, the way I was designed. If I end up being wrong and heading down to the big smoke to burn with all the other sinners he's going to get a stern letter from the Algo!
3. Most normal religious folk will start talking about free will at this point as if its some amazing gift we're required to be thankful for. I don't buy it. If this god person wants me to go to hell, he can just send me there - I don't want him to trick me into any of this thinking I have some kind of choice!
4. Abortion - see stillbirth. Does he want all the abortions to himself? Most pregnancies are self aborting anyway really early on - is that God aborting them?
5. Sexual politics - lets not beat about the bush here. If God didn't want us to have sex with our own gender he would abort homosexual people, just like all the unborn babies he kills. Or if he only wants us to have sex in order to procreate, sex would be 100% successful at leading to pregnancy.

I could go on, I'm sure you could think up a few of your own. The last thing I'll say on God1 is that there are lots of bad things happening the world over all the time - every time one of these happen, Mr Omniscient makes a conscious decision to let it happen.

In summary - God1 is a bastard. He ain't getting no worship from me. You'll note (I hope) that I haven't even started on the scientific basis for his non-existence, or the "who created the creator" argument. I merely point out here that this deity needs a slap.



So, hello God2, increasingly popular in these "enlightened" times. A sort of apologists religious concession. "So", they they say, "We don't know what caused the big bang, and we can call this force God". Yeah, but we could also call it "spongebob". The great plan of a lot of these people is to equate the "God" hypothesis with a lot of the scientific explanations. This is to say that "Well, you can't prove any of your ideas either so this is just as good".

Others have argued that point far better than I could so I won't. All I'll say is, that if that's the God you believe in, why the hell worship him? Or have anything to do with him at all? He can't help you, he doesn't care about you, he certainly won't look after you when you die!

So, in summary, God2 is entirely irrelevant. He's mainly a vehicle for people who like to think of themselves as "agnostic". That is to say, atheists who are ashamed to admit it.

So there we go, two bottles of wine later and we reach a consensus that God isn't worth worshipping. Good stuff.

A
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RetroAlgo: Amazon Reviews

Algo's Public Reviews

	1-5 of 5

	Lc ~ Durutti Column
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A master at work.

7 January, 2004

LC is the first album on which the Durutti Column started to sound like the Durutti column, thanks to a quick change of guitar (to a stratocaster), producer and personnel. All the sounds on this album are actually wonderful. "Jacqueline", in particular is a true master guitarist at work, sounding like a love song without any words. Both "sketch for dawn" I and II are great, one an uptempo affair while the other is distinctly depressed, showing both sides of waking up, as far as I'm concerned, as sometimes I bound out of bed, and at others I just want to crawl back under the covers and go back to sleep. As everyone else has mentioned, "Never Known" is a particular highlight, as is the ode to recently deceased (back then) Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, entitled "The Missing Boy", in which the discovery of Reilly's Piano Skills as a counterpoint to his guitar playing is a true revelation. In short, this is a great album in all ways - a singularly recognisable and gorgeous sound put into well arranged pieces of music and the first sound of Durutti's voice - the speak-singing of Reilly himself. Always a bone of contention among those who hear these records (at least, those I know), I believe that it is extremely important that Vini Reilly expresses himself through his own voice, especially on records as personal as this one clearly is. It merely adds another layer to his individual sound. To sum up I would say that this is the best early durutti album there is - a great place to start!

	Return of the Durutti Column ~ Durutti Column
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Superb, but not his best

7 January, 2004

Quite simply, no one has ever been as consistently beautiful musically as Vini Reilly's Durutti column. I first came into contact with this amazing, instantly recognisable sound on the soundtrack to 24 hour party people (a great movie by the way) in the form of the fantastic "Otis". This is the first release, however, and sounds very different from the later stuff (mostly due to the fact he was playing a les paul rather than a stratocaster) thanks as well to Martin Hannett's way with sound - he starts the album off with the sound of electronic birdsong, and like some space age troubadour, the sound of vini's guitar appears like the first rays of sun - it's an amazing experience. On al the tracks, Hannett and Reilly play a game of good cop, bad cop - "requiem for a father" being the main culprit, as Hannett's terrifying footsteps dominate the lush sound of the guitarwork completely for most of the record. My main gripe with this record is that the production gets irritating,as in the background shakes on "katherine". "Conduct" is nice, "Jazz" is fun with some nice sounding drums, but overall this album is just not as consistent as "LC" or "Another Setting", with few truly memorable moments after the first few tracks. The extended version also contains what, if there can be such a thing, is a Martin Hannett solo record, first and second aspect of the same thing. Good for curiious completists, but not very musical and quite annoying. Actually, if you want my advice, this isn't the place to start listening to this wonderful artist: try "Sex and Death" first, as it's easier to get hold of, and features a whole bunch of better tracks. That said, this album is a very solid release from one of my favourite artists, but he got much, much better.

	XIII (Xbox)
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Good fun one player mode

1 January, 2004

This game is worth your money for a couple of reasons:

1. The story and voice acting is excellent. Although the plot at one stage runs very quickly (you find over half the conspiracy in about three minutes and put them out of action in less than that). Duchovny is particularly good - his particular brand of confusion is never less than gripping.
2. You never, ever get tired of the little cartoon scripts that appear in the top left corner.

However, otherwise this is just the basic first person shooter with a pretty paint job and decent plot and acting. It is well worth playing through once, but I doubt you'll play it again afterwards (xbox live mode is truly shocking!).

In conclusion then, it is a very solid shooter, worth playing but perhaps not worth the full price - you'll spot the plot twists early, and you'll be less than enthusiastic to have another go afterwards

4 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

Vale and Quality

28 December, 2003

This will be the shortest review ever

If you have any doubts - they are unfounded
Worried About Graphics - Don't be
Want to have fun?

Buy this now.
Don't even think about it.
JUst click on "add to basket"

Now! Dummy!

	Break Like the Wind ~ Spinal Tap
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What? No filler?

21 November, 2003

This band are undoubtedly the best band ever. No question, unless the question is asked very nicely and in hushed tones. There are just some classic moments on this cd and some incredibly enlightening lyrics, giving us a look into the mind of the writer and a startlingly vivid depiction of the subtle meaning of each song. Maybe they're TOO good. I mean, I've actually heard people laughing at these songs! Blasphemy! Iron Maiden learned everything from these boys, and don't they know it - no one ever laughs at their albums. Do they?
The songs on here cannot be judged by usual standards - most people would disagree with putting FOUR guest lead guitarists on one song (break like the wind) or writing a song showing the similarity between the spanish invasion of south america and an unhappy love affair (the sun never sweats).
Simply, if you don't buy this album, I'll come round and force you to listen to it forever.

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