Creationism

Creationism (or Intelligent Design/ID as it's bible-brandishing fans label it) is crock load of the smelliest turds you've ever laid mixed with burnt hair and vomit. As a scientific theory it has about much use as a dwarf in a basketball game. It seems that recently enough of the lunatic, sabre-rattling, dunderheaded, piss flaps who espouse this bagfull of bollocks have got together for the government of this country to consider teaching it as an alternative to evolution in schools. This isn't Alabama, it's the fucking UK. Teaching our children creationism is akin to teaching them that storks are an alternative to reproduction. It's lunacy of the highest order.

From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. - Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was a clever fucker. He looked at the world and postulated that there was order in the madness, that all animals shared common ancestors and that laws of nature governed how the creatures we know now came to be. He said that through a series of random mutations creatures gradually changed, and if any of these mutations were useful to the creature to survive in their environment, that creature had an advantage and was more likely to survive than other creatures of it's species, and would eventually become the norm over a period of thousands and millions of years. He wrote all this down in a book, The Origin of Species, and since then his theory has been debated, changed, tested and corroborated hundreds of times in scientific study with empirical evidence. He also looked like a bloke that knows what he's talking about.

Creationists are simple-minded, bewildered fuckwits with no concept of science. They looked at the bible and, without questioning a book that is only called the word of God because some bloke said so, was written years after the death of the main character, is based on sources more spurious than wikipedia, and actively condones the stoning to death of adulterers, accepted all it contains. They say the world is 6,000 years old, was made in 6 days by God, and that the reason we wear clothes is because of a talking snake. Creationists laugh in the face of reason, science and evidence and run away with their fingers in their ears humming loudly. They also have a habit of looking like this:

Fuck science, whatever those bigoted, pig-ignorant, hate mongering cuntbags believe in I'm against.

Seriously, you're more likely to have a rational conversation with a man called 'Stench' with tattoos of severed cocks on his face than your average creationist.

Creationists will rattle on for all eternity about how evolution is only a theory, that's their main line of attack, that it's a competing theory, and as such both sides of the argument should be presented to kids. Trouble is, they have absolutely fuck all idea what 'theory' means in a scientific context. Theory does not mean 'guess'. That the sun goes round the earth is a theory, and one that the bible also disagrees with. You won't hear that from creationists though, but if the bible is a literal document, how can you pick and choose?

Creationists try to point to supposed 'holes' in evolutionary theory, holes that have often long been filled by science and the discovery of more and more 'missing links'. In science, unlike in fundamentalist religion, if there is one problem with something you don't throw the whole thing away. A lack of evidence, in any case, would not be evidence for an opposing theory. They also neglect to mention that whilst there are some as-yet missing links for evolution, creationism is based on something that someone made up, a fucking fairy tale. With a talking snake. And a man who lived in a whale. Oh, and apparently some fella rounded up two of every animal on earth (even the really little ones) and put them on a boat to stop God drowning them. My main problem with that is how he managed to keep all the animals alive long enough for him to get them back to the boat on foot, it doesn't add up somehow. Creationists have used the Grand Canyon as evidence of the Great Flood, claiming that 5,000 feet of granite, slate and other really hard stuff was carved in a matter of days after a natural dam burst after a huge flood. Creationists are worse geologists than they are biologists.

The fans of creationism have a nasty habit of manipulation of the truth, lies of omission, taking quotations out of context and bare-faced lying. They claim Darwin didn't believe in his own theories. That's clearly complete shit. They claim Newton's second law supports creation, but omit the first line that destroys that idea. They use the words 'science' and 'supernatural' in the same sentence.

Creationism can be boiled down to this sentence: "I don't understand". Creationists are baffled as to how a world this complex, beautiful and full of cunts can have happened by chance, someone, they claim, must have made it. This is to miss the point of evolutionary theory by a distance greater than Paula Radcliffe can run before shitting herself. Natural selection is the polar opposite of chance, it is governed by very strict laws of nature. Once again, the creationist argument falls short.

One of the tricksiest, sneakiest, slipperiest things creationism fans do is do deny it's links to religion. Some never use the words 'God' and 'creationism' and instead use the words 'Intelligent Design' in order to make their dullard crackpottery sound more scientific. Don't let them fool you. It's good ol' Jesus and Co. they're supporting, and it's all about religion. No-one without faith can even begin to contemplate such a shit-eating mad theory.

The crux of their argument is that evolution and creation are competing sides in a scientific debate, and as such, should both be taught in science lessons. This is exactly the same as saying there is a historical debate as to whether the holocaust happened, and as such, both sides of the argument should be taught in history lessons. In both cases there is no such debate, and one side of the argument is made up of lunatics spouting idiocy based on nothing more than what they think.

If you choose to believe in God and creation, fine, more power to you, but you can't teach children those beliefs based on blind faith in schools. Science is falsifiable and can be tested. Faith can't, and as such is not science. Creation in schools must be confined to R.E. lessons. I don't want the next generation of British kids thinking you can just make up science.

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on “The Survival of the Fittest.” These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution. - Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens]

Narcissism

Welcome to the first Rob Mulholland's Blog Roll, the first in a semi-regular series of ill-informed, ill-advised ramblings from the brain of an insignificant blot on the landscape of life. Each time I guilt my idle fingers into tapping the pertinent keys I will be examining a different concept, person, idea, artwork or irritant that has had an impact on my life, or the lives of others. Considering I have been vain enough to assume anyone in this already shit-filled world would be idiotic enough to waste precious seconds of the tiny slither of life they possess between vast swathes of death to sit and actually read this drivel, rather than doing more constructive and enjoyable things like attaching batteries to their genitals, today's subject will be narcissism. As you will see, the subject of the article will be way lain immediately, and the ranting will commence.

Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflectionbecause it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading. - W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden

If you aren't quite self-consciously middle class enough to have picked up the Guardian's recent series of pamphlets on Greek mythology you may not be aware of the story of Narcissus, the etymological root of narcissism. He was a man who fell in love with his own reflection after seeing it in a pool of water. He knelt by the pool gazing at his own reflection so long he died of thirst. He couldn't drink from the pool, for if he was to do so, he would shatter his reflection into a thousand pieces. Here's what I imagine the smug bastard looked like:

The narcissist enjoys being looked at and not looking back. - Mason Cooley

In the modern day the narcissist is king of his own domain. The whole world is made to tell him how fucking brilliant he is because he once put his cock in his mate's pint. Legend.

The Internet is the narcissist's best friend, it gives them a pat on their back and says "Well done champ" to each and every one of them each and every day. Narcissists can upload their new pics of them being totally 'crazy' on a 'mad' night out within minutes of them stepping through the door and have their slack-jawed, spanner-faced friends gawp at them and leave insightful comments about how, omfg, that night was totally random LOLZ. Being crazy on a mad night out would entail writing an essay about Toy Story 2 on the wall of the British Library in shit, while David Ike flew past on a hippogriff made of Lego bricks, not a hundred pictures of you and your chubby faced fuckwit friends holding a drink in a plastic cup and looking slightly pissed. That's you being 'dull' on a 'dull' night out. And whilst I'm at it, unless you determined you were going to talk to that particular bloke by lining up six blokes and then rolling a dice, it was not 'random'. It was peculiar. You semi-literate, greasy-faced shits.

Narcissists can put a video on youtube of them lip-syncing to a cheesy old shitbag like Rick fucking Astley and hope someone out there gives enough of a fuck to scrawl underneath "lol, what a legend!!!!!!". Using too many exclamation marks is the first sign of absolute, irreconcilable stupidity.

Or they can write a crappy little blog about how shit everything is and hope that people think they're somehow above the rest of the prattling masses.

The Internet has become the proverbial house-share toilet, blocked with the remnants of last night's curry and taco sessions, overflowing with the slurry of human thought, the salacious service of base desires and 14 year old self-harmers arguing with 40 year old accountants about which episode of Thundercats was best.

Reality TV allows slow-witted people who whole-heartedly believe they have a talent in singing or juggling dogs to put themselves up to the scrutiny and mockery of people so self-obsessed they wouldn't bat an eyelid if Jesus Christ walked in the room to show them his magic routine.

Adverts scream at us that we're worth it, and we lap it up, all any of us want is to be reassured that we aren't just another arse-barnacle clinging on to a rock spinning round a fart God once lit as a joke.

We're all narcissists to some degree (I know I am, I'm fucking brilliant), we have to be in order to keep our insignificant minds from imploding with doubt, but there are clear levels, and far too many people have achieved the highest level of narcissism, the level I call 'Cunt'.

But what damage does it do really? Does it matter if someone loves themselves so much that they're physically incapable of holding a conversation on any topic other than themselves?

It matters if they manage to somehow gain some real power and authority (see any political figure ever), but mostly the answer is no, not really. It doesn't impact on me at all. But narcissists are happy, they will always have themselves to love, and they will never betray them, and other people being happy for such a pig-fucking stupid reason is fucking annoying, and that's what matters to me.

To bastardise a Martin Luther King quote, "A man who has not found someone they would die for is not fit to live".

I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on the matter, I know I did.

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. - Gore Vidal