Wednesday 17 November 2004

Pic of the day: I like a snowflake too. See, my most advanced hero in City of Heroes even has one as his logo.

Like a snowflake

The first snow of the season fell today. It wasn't all that unexpected, the days had grown colder even here on the south coast, and snow had fallen on the west coast days before. (The snow then melted during the subsequent storm, mixed with rain and caused mudslides in the enormous mountains there. Many roads were damaged, villages isolated, cars trapped and one man was taken by an avalanche. They found his car the next day, but I never heard they found the man.)

We are like snowflakes: Unique, precious, beautiful. In the afternoon, the rain washed them all away. All that has form, is subject to decay.

***

The shops have already some time ago put up Xmas decorations in their windows. (I like to use the word "Xmas" about the commercial, secular holiday and "Christmas" about the religious holy days that some Christians celebrate at the same time. Of course, the Bible does not mandate Christmas; it is a later adaptation, one of many.)

In the past, I have on occasion stopped and looked when they decorate the windows. The shop workers doing this are usually women, and they look good when they stretch and bend and all the movements that putting up such decorations entail. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not like I suddenly acquire a new piece of hardware watching them. They are women, but not my women, so it's not like I could do anything anyway. But they sure look good. Especially those who are just a little bit on the chubby side, in my opinion. That's the way God meant women to be, isn't it? But it is in much more doubt whether God made me to watch them for minutes on end. So I'm not overly sorry about having missed out on the show this year. Back when I was much younger, I looked at women and thought that one day I would have my own woman to cuddle and talk and laugh with. They may be a stress, but some of them are really nice too. (Especially when not dieting.) But that didn't happen. And after a while, it starts to matter less and less. Like all other things in the world.

All that has form, is subject to decay.

***

Then I played Christmas songs on my CD, and thought about theology. Theology is the science about gods and things belonging in the divine realm, like Heaven and angels and perhaps the souls of the deceased, if all goes well. (Demonology has got its own word, sadly, but is really a subdivision of theology.)

Now these things don't have form, at least that we can perceive. And so what happens? We don't even know for sure if they exist -- it seems unlikely that all the many different gods of this world would all be real -- or, if real, they surely don't have exactly the attributes we ascribe to them.

In practice, theology ends up as the studies of old scriptures and religious history. The speculations that come from this tends to not even be theories, because they have no predictive value. They cannot be verified or falsified by tests or observations. (And the very few that can, are usually falsified on first try. That's as good a reason as you may need to not do that ever again.)

Tentatively I conclude, then: God is not like a snowflake.