Losing my religion
2008-05-14 13:01
Chris Roper
When I was doing my usual Wednesday morning dash around the News24 newsroom, begging the journalists to give me ideas for my (late) column, one of them said to me, "Why not write about all the UFOs that people have seen over Britain. And about Einstein saying that it's childish to believe in God."
Well, I got totally over-excited. There's nothing I'd like more that to have little green men (and I'm not talking about Pakistanis, before anyone writes an irate e-mail) invade the UK, and it's even more exciting if someone has managed to communicate with Einstein, who is still dead if I'm not mistaken.
Alas, it turns out that the UFO sightings are more than likely the by-product of drinking beer and eating that vindaloo (literally, "water of the toilet") rubbish that drunk Englishmen seem to like stuffing their faces with.
The news report informs us that "One 'spotting' was easily dismissed. In 1982, customers of The Walnut Tree pub near Tunbridge Wells in southwest England reported seeing red and green flashing lights in the sky. But when quizzed where exactly they had spotted the strange lights they pointed in the direction of the busy London Gatwick airport."
So no aliens there.
And Einstein did not in fact communicate from beyond the grave, as they say in the classics, but in an old letter he wrote in 1954. In it, he said "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
Imagine
Still, it's worth looking at both those issues, given what's happening in the news recently. I say happening in the news, but of course it's actually happening in the world, and specifically Alexandra township.
Here, hordes of jolly South Africans are blikseming anybody who looks vaguely alien, and if they can't find enough of those, raping their countrywomen to keep their hand in until a suitable foreign devil comes along.
Imagine if aliens decided to land on earth. Obviously, they'd avoid America and Tom Cruise, since they'd have watched Hollywood movies on their scanners. Imagine they decided to pick a friendly South African neighbourhood. They wouldn't last five minutes, especially if they were little green men (Die, Nigerian soccer fan! Die!).
I must say, this is one of those days when I'm not proud to be a South African.
But back to God - despite Einstein's assertion that belief in God is childish, a lot of people still have faith. Of course, a lot of people have faith in UFOs too.
Confused
Happily, the Vatican has just released a statement saying that the Catholic hierarchy are now equal-opportunity nutjobs. "The Vatican's chief astronomer says there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of 'extraterrestrial brothers' perhaps more evolved than humans."
It's a sad day when a Catholic priest is willing to give a Bug-Eyed Monster a break, but our countrymen are killing fellow Africans.
It confuses me. I can't help wondering what Einstein would make of it. Perhaps he'd conclude that it might be childish to believe in God or UFOs, but it's much, much worse when you appear to have nothing to believe in at all.
Chris Roper is the Editor-in-Chief of 24.com.
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