Random thoughts

When I was young I used to keep a diary. Or a journal, whatever. I used to write in it most nights, usually about twice a week. I think I kept it up for a while, with some sort of wistful idea that spacemen, or future generations of humans, would some day find it and use it for scientific purposes, and in doing so make my life slightly more useful.

And in the manner of most people who write journals when they're younger I took a look at them over the holiday last winter and collapsed into a fit of laughter and the rather embarrassing hope that aliens or future generations wouldn't find it, or if they did would decently burnt it very quickly. I read through, fascinated at the fact that I'd spent so many evenings carefully and methodically writing down the exact same thoughts night after night.

Each day went something like this:

• Went to school today
• Came back and did some work
• I'm not working hard enough!
• I need good results!
• I don't really know if anyone likes me
• An amazing new book/film/lord-of-the-rings-associated-product just came out!
• I have so many story ideas in my head and no time to write them all...
  

Most of it was the fairly standard teenage mindset preoccupied with death, sex and the occasional foray into religion. At one point I even made up my own religion because I wanted to Believe in something but didn't like any of the mainstream ones. And inordinate amount of time was spent worrying about biology IGCSE's and (yes I did keep it up that long) A-levels.

All fairly standard, all fairly normal. Only one thing, in fact, was scary.

These are still the same sort of thoughts I'm thinking now.

Although with slightly less emphasis on Lord of the Rings.

It's scary and it's spooky just how little my internal monologue seems to have changed. There's less of the death and sex, true, and slightly more of the I'm-not-working-hard-enough but overall my deep internal monologue seems to have survived the experience of growing-up relatively unscathed. Deep down, I am the same sad nerdy little person I always was :(

On the plus side though I am working with tiny little plates! Petri-dishes five centimeters across. They look very small especially next to the giant petri-dishes which are 14 centimeters diameter and therefore awesome.

Patron Saints

So during a particularly long session, with fairly crucial results, I did a bit of a google to see if there was anyone that the Catholic church, in its infinate wisdom, had put aside to recieve the various prayers and obscinities coming from those persuing the noble discipline of science. It turns out (interestingly enough) that there is:


The rather imposing man pictured above is Saint Albert the Great (1206-1280). The official Patron Saint of science. Also known as (according to saints.SPQN.com) Albertus Magnus, Doctor Expertus and Doctor Universalis. My hazy grasp of Latin seems to suggest the last one may be a tad over the top for philosophy teacher who liked browsing science books but there you go. To my amazement, there is also a little prayer to say to him:

Dear Scientist and Doctor of the Church, natural science always led you to the higher science of God. Though you had an encyclopedic knowledge, it never made you proud, for you regarded it as a gift of God. Inspire scientists to use their gifts well in studying the wonders of creation, thus bettering the lot of the human race and rendering greater glory to God. Amen

For someone known as the 'Doctor Universalis' I'm not entirely sure if the 'never made you proud' bit scans wonderfully well. Also the prayer is not as specific as could be hoped. Albert the Great make this bloody gel work feels slightly more appropriate. And while my phages may hopefully one day end up bettering the human race (heh) I'm not entirely sure how they bring glory to god (would phages be able to pray, if taught? Could they destroy bacteria in a particularly holy way?). I am quite surprised though, that he turned up, I wasn't expecting there to be anyone specific for science, if anything I was expecting this guy:

Thomas Aquinus, patron saint of students and academics. A quick bit of googling also confirms that he is the patron saint against storms, against lightning, of apologists, of chastity and (for reasons best known to himself) of pencil-makers. He has a lot more alternative names as well: Angelic Doctor, Doctor Angelicus (the same thing but in Latin, surely?), Doctor Communis, Great Synthesizer (there should be something funny to say about this one, can't think of it though), The Universal Teacher and, rather bizarrely, The Dumb Ox.

I love the catholic Saints. They are like the old polytheistic gods (except a lot less interesting) and there seems to be one for almost anything you care to think of.

Vaguely Spiritual

I was walking to the lab this morning, when I was stopped by a vaguely hippy-like woman handing out pamphlets. I always feel a bit sorry for people handing out pamphlets as they mostly get ignored, so I took one and decided to take a look at it. It was a religious one 'Does God care about suffering and if so why does it exist' or something like that.

My religious views can best be currently discribed as 'Single and Searching' so I decided to have a look through it. Before I go on to disect the thing though, I will make a quick disclaimer that unless your religious beliefs involve deliberately hurting people then I will respect them. I have no issue of any peoples of any religion, especially not christianity which I rather like because the Christian God actually had a go at being human for a while, which seems to me a sensible and charitable thing to do.

Religion is a touchy subject, but here I go anyway:

The Pamphlet

The first issue adressed was, unsurprisingly, does God exist. Unfortunately rather than going for the reasons I would have chosen (gap between the Mind and the body, the brain in a vat hypothesis, no fixed truth etc) they went for the Arguement from Design. Namely, everything is amazing, the world is so perfect therefore it must be designed. They even used Paley's wristwatch arguement, they went as far as to use the damn eye as well. This made me angry (actually it made me dissolve into giggles, but I should have been angry). Firstly because the whole eye arguement was debunked way back by Darwin, and secondly because if the eye is (as they claim) "Designed so that no camera could have done better" why are so many people wearing glasses? Was there a shortage of perfect eyes? Do only some people get them?

It had a nice phrase about the bible as well "No book has such credentials for historical accuracy". I'm still thinking about that and it baffles me no matter how I look at it.

My favourite bit though was the paragraph about the human 'unique blood system'. I can only presume they mean 'unique' in it's traditional sense of 'possessed by all vertebrates.' The quick science-babble about the blood system was, though, correct. Simplified but correct, which I don't mind at all. They just seemed to draw the oddest conclusions about it.

After all the waffle about the design of the earth, I was expecting it to go downhill from there. Surprisingly, it actually went uphill, dragging itself out of the shady science and giving a reasonable bit about free will. No doubt it would have annoyed the philosophers as much as the bad science annoyed me, but as a lay-person I didn't spot too many blinding errors.

Interestingly the picture of Adam and Eve in Eden had her handing over what was obviously and distinctly a pear. Not an apple. I've heard boths figs and bananas postulated as the actual fruit (my vote is with figs, personally) but never pears before.

After the free will part though, it seemed to take a bit of a fall again. Apparently, we are in the Last Days before the fall. This is because of the Wars, earthquakes and diseases that have been recently appearing in great quantities. It doesn't seem to have occured to the author that Wars, Earthquakes and diseases have always been happening in great quantities pretty much forever in human history. Seriously though, in English history (which I know most about) it's very hard to find a period of more than about 30 years without a war, disease, or natural disaster happening somewhere. Think of the plague, which wiped out almost 1/3 of the population.

It then sort of leaves the rails a bit and heads into lala land. Alright, probably not entirely fair, but I was a bit fed up with it at this point (the wristwatch arguement was still annoying me). The last section was talking happily about after judgement day, for a quick summary read through the last section of 'The Last Battle' by C.S Lewis, because what they were saying was pretty much word for word from the bit where Narnia is destroyed. All the good people will go through into this amazing 'new world', the sick will be better, the dead will come back to life, and presumably the space will be infinate because there are going to be an awful lot of people floating around. Oddly enough it never mentions what happens to be bad people, presumably we get to stay on whats left of the earth which, given the population will have gone down considerably, probably won't be too bad an option. We'll still get sick and die though.

They also mentioned who would be chosen as 'good' although they were remarkably cagey about it. I thought I was in the clear at first because all it was talking about was 'brotherly love' stuff and I'm quite a nice person. However at the end it sneaked in a clause about being and living 'under gods rule.'

Which, as I eat shellfish, means I'm stuffed. :(