Sunday, September 21, 2008
Fishy soup
Having a small portion of left over baked cod and a small portion of left over boiled newish potatoes yesterday, the obvious thing to do with it was to add them to the lunchtime lentil soup. That is to say, add to the lentils after they have been simmering for a while but before adding the bacon and onion. The fish and bacon flavours melded well - with the soup having a surprisingly fishy flavour given that it was indeed a small portion.
The other culinery event of note were the runner beans from a neighbour's garden. Very bright green after cooking - rather like the frozen ones one suspects of being dyed - and completely string free. His only excuse was that they were planted rather late after the failure of something else and so these, despite the lateness of the season, were actually quite young. Very nice they were too.
In the margins of these important culinary matters, I have being pondering about the existance of a god. So, an apple exists. I can see it, touch it and throw it about. Now suppose I have believed in a god over a long period. He (we suppose a male god for the purpose of this discussion) will have some sort of an existance in my brain. Perhaps to the point of living in some identifiable bit of storage and using some identifiable processes. What the object people call, I think, a package. That package might come to have some sort of independant existance, rather in the way of a computer virus. A parasite certainly, but it would not be not silly to think of it as an entity other than me. In the same way as, for example, a tapeworm. Just a bit harder to see and I certainly couldn't throw it about. Suppose further that a bunch of other people believe in the same god. Then the god will exist in their brains too. Now we come to stretching things a bit. Providing that these god entities inside peoples' heads are similar enough, that they talk using the same language, it is conceivable that they could communicate with each other in some way. Perhaps the brain can function as some sort of low power radio, or perhaps the gods could use normal interactions between people to carry their covert messages, rather in the way that hackers can get target computers to send their messages for them. All this would no doubt be helped along by more or less elaborate collective worship. In some sense then, this collection of gods would actually be a collective. Be a single god. It might even have agency; that it would make sense to talk about it doing things.
And even if I was an unbeliever, as a close observer of religious affairs, I would have an unbeliever's version of this god in my brain. Perhaps with the same sort of powers of those of the believers, but a low power version. He wouldn't have the heady fuel of my belief to keep him going. So the god would be able to get under the skin of unbelievers as well as that of believers.
He might even be able to take over his hosts. To get them to do things for him. But he would not really be up to the standard of a proper god. He would not be all powerful. He would not be all knowing. He could not create the world and he would neither be nor able to give us immortality - although he might last as long as there were humans - a long time by our standards but a short time by geological time. Clearly going to have to work on him to get him up to scratch.
In the meantime I start to wonder about in what sense the famous theorem of Pythagorous exists. Clearly been touched by the sample of Speckled Hen that I took on Friday at TB. Not that I liked it all that much; a bit too strong perhaps. Not up to my regular Newcastle Brown at all. Odd really, as the Hen was much more like a proper bitter (which I do like) than the Newcastle. Tendencies towards one of those posh bottled bitters (flat and to be served at room temperature) which have started to appear.
The other culinery event of note were the runner beans from a neighbour's garden. Very bright green after cooking - rather like the frozen ones one suspects of being dyed - and completely string free. His only excuse was that they were planted rather late after the failure of something else and so these, despite the lateness of the season, were actually quite young. Very nice they were too.
In the margins of these important culinary matters, I have being pondering about the existance of a god. So, an apple exists. I can see it, touch it and throw it about. Now suppose I have believed in a god over a long period. He (we suppose a male god for the purpose of this discussion) will have some sort of an existance in my brain. Perhaps to the point of living in some identifiable bit of storage and using some identifiable processes. What the object people call, I think, a package. That package might come to have some sort of independant existance, rather in the way of a computer virus. A parasite certainly, but it would not be not silly to think of it as an entity other than me. In the same way as, for example, a tapeworm. Just a bit harder to see and I certainly couldn't throw it about. Suppose further that a bunch of other people believe in the same god. Then the god will exist in their brains too. Now we come to stretching things a bit. Providing that these god entities inside peoples' heads are similar enough, that they talk using the same language, it is conceivable that they could communicate with each other in some way. Perhaps the brain can function as some sort of low power radio, or perhaps the gods could use normal interactions between people to carry their covert messages, rather in the way that hackers can get target computers to send their messages for them. All this would no doubt be helped along by more or less elaborate collective worship. In some sense then, this collection of gods would actually be a collective. Be a single god. It might even have agency; that it would make sense to talk about it doing things.
And even if I was an unbeliever, as a close observer of religious affairs, I would have an unbeliever's version of this god in my brain. Perhaps with the same sort of powers of those of the believers, but a low power version. He wouldn't have the heady fuel of my belief to keep him going. So the god would be able to get under the skin of unbelievers as well as that of believers.
He might even be able to take over his hosts. To get them to do things for him. But he would not really be up to the standard of a proper god. He would not be all powerful. He would not be all knowing. He could not create the world and he would neither be nor able to give us immortality - although he might last as long as there were humans - a long time by our standards but a short time by geological time. Clearly going to have to work on him to get him up to scratch.
In the meantime I start to wonder about in what sense the famous theorem of Pythagorous exists. Clearly been touched by the sample of Speckled Hen that I took on Friday at TB. Not that I liked it all that much; a bit too strong perhaps. Not up to my regular Newcastle Brown at all. Odd really, as the Hen was much more like a proper bitter (which I do like) than the Newcastle. Tendencies towards one of those posh bottled bitters (flat and to be served at room temperature) which have started to appear.
# posted by Jim @ 2:15 AM 
