Saturday 31 July 1999
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Pic of the day: Me eating yoghurt late at night.
Lucky me, I woke up today again and was alive. I absolutely love that. The insect bite has faded from fresh meat to deep purple, with a weak white ring around. I guess it may be a tick bite, since there is another burrowing on my left foot now. It's not like I've been out dancing in the forest; they must have grown very bold if they have managed to jump onto me. As usual, Saturday morning brought vivid dreams. This night I was working at the staff office of the president in some very minor nation. One day the president came to work, but did not say a word. Instead he shot himself in the head. Now, that was a surprise. But more was to come. Because during the next few days (the dream happened in compressed time) the same president turned up again and again and killed himself in several dramatic ways. It was rather obvious that these were some kind of president clones. But who sent them? And where was the real president? We never found out. I spent the rest of the dream infiltrating the milieu of young criminals.
As you can see, people, if I could
sleep 8 hours a night, I might come up with ideas for a multitude of
books.
I'm slightly surprised that nobody have written to point out the logical fallacy of Pascal's Wager, which I paraphrased at the end of yesterday's entry. Of course, I assume that y'all are trying not to hurt my feelings, not that you don't bother. :) Pascal's Wager is his famous rebuttal of atheism on a purely practical grounds: If you believe in a God and an afterlife, you have nothing to lose if you are wrong. If you don't believe, you may be unpleasantly surprised if you are wrong. Therefore, one should believe. (As if any self-respecting deity would accept this kind of belief...) The fault is in the assumption that there must be either one God or none. Today we know that there are lots of religions, and many variants of the major religions. If you pick the wrong one, you are in theory just as badly off as the atheist, if not worse. And let me now show you how the reasoning of Pascal will lead to Satanism, much to his dismay I would guess. Following Pascal's logic, but choosing between two deities, or two versions of God. One is benevolent and forgiving. If you happen to believe in the wrong God by mistake, He will look to your heart and see that you meant well, and accept you anyway. The other is jealous and narrowminded. Either you believe in Him or you suffer for it, no excuses. As long as you had the choice, it's your problem that you choose wrong. Now, which one to worship? Following Pascal's Wager, it is safest to go for the jealous, narrowminded God. (And this seems indeed to be what has happened, historically.) Next, you have to choose between two jealous, narrowminded Gods. One will annihilate you forever if you fail to believe in Him. The other will roast you slowly but not allow you to die, and you will writhe in unspeakable agony for ever and ever and ever. Which one would you choose? Obviously, it's best to cast your lot with the most evil God you could possibly find. And this, in my somewhat biased observation, is pretty much what has happened. As if any of you are bothered at all. To the modern human, religion is a part of the past along with the horsedrawn carriage. Sure it can be romantic but it's not efficient. Drugs are efficient. If the modern human does not feel happy and content, a prescription drug is needed. Mind you, I'm not mocking the people who depend on medication for their life and sanity. I understand that quite well. But I refuse to believe that we have a natural right to be constantly happy and free of angst, without doing anything about our own soul. If we neglect our body, it will start to give us trouble; certainly this is so also with the soul. And painkillers are nothing more than painkillers. I better sign off. It's 3 in the night. Somewhere in the neighborhood loud music is playing. I'm thinking of my past, weeping silently and waiting for the dawn.
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