I had been quite pleased with myself yesterday for finally having got this month's Lyric Hammersmith gig's line-up sorted out, even though I was hundreds of miles away, but had a heart in mouth, sick in mouth moment this evening, where my heart was in my mouth and then I was sick on the heart, but my mouth was so full of heart and sick that the sick couldn't get out, but the heart couldn't get back down so I was just standing there with a sick covered heart in my mouth, when I got an email from someone called Nick Harris who had noticed that I had asked a comedian to do the gig on the 27th, but his ticket said the gig was the 20th. I looked back through my emails and realised that the date had indeed been changed many months ago but for some reason (and I don't want to blame the shittiness and unreliability of mobileme's syncing fucntion but my mouth is full of vomit and a blood pumping muscle that belongs in my chest, so I am going to) my diary still says the 27th and I have booked all the acts for the 27th. I contacted the acts that were booked for the wrong days (and luckily for some reason we suddenly have free internet in the room which made this a lot easier) and of course none of them can do the right day. And neither can I. I don't know what will happen with this, although I think it might be beyond me to book a whole new line up for a gig that is two weeks away in time to publicise it when I am in the Maldives, when everyone's February diaries will be full and when I have a sicky heart in my mouth. We hadn't sold too many tickets for the gig so I think there's a chance we might cancel and refund (or give tickets to a date that actually is going to happen), but as you can imagine this embarrassing situation entirely of my own making (with possible complicity from technology) somewhat dented my calm and relaxed mood. The only positive from it all is that I have realised now, rather than two days before the actual gig, so am indebted to Nick for ruining my holiday (that's just a joke, thanks Nick).
And I had been having a terrific day, for the first time this holiday spending a significant portion of it in a hammock. I carried on reading Dawkins, marvelling at the process of evolution, at scientists' diligent work to demonstrate its truth and at fundamentalists' steadfast blinkering in order to deny it. There is a chapter about how humans develop in the womb and by what process one cell can turn into a person and it's mind-blowing to think that we are able to understand and explain most of the process by which we ourselves are made. Not only that but that what started out millions upon millions of years ago as a single celled blob had evolved into a creature that is able to know its biology and history to this extent. As well of course a creature that is able to blindly ignore all the evidence, claim it doesn't exist and just say that God did all the work, ten thousand years ago. Dawkins documents an hilarious converation with an Amerian Christian fundamentalist (hilarious both because of her reaction to him, but also a little bit because of his own prickly pomposity coming up against someone whose mind works so differently than his) who asks for one piece of evidence for evolution, but that when Dawkins says that the museums are full of evidence and gives her four or five examples, she just ignores him and keeps repeating that there is no evidence and she would just love to see one bit of evidence. He keeps insisting that there is, but she doesn't want to listen because that would destroy her world view. Never mind the fact that she in return is not able to give one piece of evidence for the way that she believes the world came into being. I understand Dawkins' frustration and I share it and it would be a shame if all the amazing work that scientists have done were to get crushed by ignorance and religious fundamentalism, but according to him 40% of Americans believe in the literal truth of the Bible and don't believe in evolution, which is a staggering statistic. If the world's major superpower's education system is that bad then what hope does that give us? And if God is planting this evidence to test our faith (as if it wasn't tested enough by there being no concrete evidence for His existence) then he has done a job so thorough that you can only conclude that he wants us to be damned, or at least wants Heaven to be full of stupid, fucking idiots. Maybe that will make God feel even more superior then He is alreeady. Or maybe He just gets a kick out of people being dumb fucks and Him being able to tell them anything He likes and they'll believe it. But I've only been around for about 44 years and I have got pretty bored with thick people, so you'd think He would have got over this in the 10,000 years since he made us and the world and all the false evidence for evolution that wouldn't be discovered for over 9000 years. God loves a slow burning joke as much as he loves being surrounded by the souls of people without the most basic ability to consider that the religion that their parents told them to believe in might not be true.
I had fish on the bone tonight and as I peeled away the flesh to reveal the skeleton it was like I was back in reading the book and looking at the illustrations of various steps on the evolutionary journey. Somewhere back in the mists of time this fish and I shared a common ancestor. But alas for vegetarians appalled by this betrayal of our family roots, so did the carrots that I was also eating. Nature is so much more awe inspiring and impressive than any religious explanation of existence. If you have any doubts about evolutio (which I doubt if you are reading this, but you never know) then please read "The Greatest Show on Earth" with an open mind. If you really want to believe in God still there is no reason why you can't tack Him on to it all and say that He set it all in motion. But if He did then He left in so many random elements that you'd have to concede it was unlikely that man would have been the inevitable result and if He was really working up to us then He spent a lot of time governing over a world with nothing even vaguely human like in it. Evolution should provide us with the humility that religion claims to want us to have (whilst insisting that the world was created for us by a being that obsesses over our every thought and action). We are one (in some ways) impressive off-shoot of an awe inspiring process of adaptation and change, which viewed from this end without any real feel for the true magnitude of time, might feel significant. But if you get any idea of the full picture then you might get some understanding of our real place in the world and its history as well as start to concede that it's pretty unlikely that there's a big man in the sky who gets angry if you have a wank. And if he wanted to create you then He could probably come up with a much less elaborate way of achieving that.
And the fact that He did it this way surely makes him mentally ill at best.
