Requiescat in Pace – Tosh*

   I note that the British Humanist Association is promoting a booklet entitled “Funerals Without God”.  It is designed to facilitate ceremonies for loved ones which allow us to commemorate them and share the memories they have left behind without any religious committal to an ‘after-life’.  These are required because the BHA sees dying human beings as simply complicated machines that have come to the end of their useful life, just like bison, birds, bees, bicycles and battleships.  On that basis, I wish to make the following announcement:

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   Tony Broad is sad to announce the death of “Tosh” (his Toshiba Satellite Pro TE2000), after a long illness.  Tosh was for many years a dedicated and dependable member of the family.  Some years ago, he had some bouts of ill health, but pulled through thanks to the efforts of Toshiba Platinum Care.  I hope we were not expecting too much of him, but he experienced a slipped disc-drive.  He subsequently underwent major surgery, receiving some transplant organs, and recovered to perform well up to his previous levels.  As happens to all of us, his energy levels started to wane, and for a year or two he has been on permanent mains supply life-support.  Lately, Tosh's memory went completely, so we decided to pull the plug.

   The funeral will be held at Tira Ora Estate on Tuesday 28 September 2010.  Our Apple iMac will read the eulogy (she has the best speakers).  Cremation will follow.  The ashes will go in the compost heap so that we can continue to enjoy Tosh’s contribution over the forthcoming years.

   No flowers please.  Instead please send donations to Brendon Price Computers, Blenheim – I need a new laptop.

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  Seriously though, it is sad that so many more-or-less brilliant minds in the BHA are unable to appreciate the unique nature of the human being.  We are not just machines following the instructions of our genetic software programmes, we are not even just highly-developed animals; we are unique creatures endowed with a unique – and immortal – soul by our Creator God.

   Our death will be a passage through the door to eternity.  Do you know where you are going after that?

* For the uninitiated, “tosh” is British slang for foolish nonsense: very applicable to most of what comes out of the BHA.

You are what you eat… especially when it comes to doughnuts

Torus

   A doughnut is the classic culinary example of the three-dimensional geometric closed surface known as a torus.  Topologically* speaking, a doughnut is the same as any other object with one penetration, like a bagel, an inner tube, a hula hoop, a pipe (of any length, regardless of how many knots it might be tied into), a life-saver (confectionery or otherwise), a handbag with one handle, a car-key, an ankh, a 50-yen coin, a monstrance, or a mug.

   From the last observation comes the mathematical joke that a topologist cannot tell the difference between the coffee cup he is drinking from and the doughnut he is eating - or indeed the cigarette he is smoking (if you simplify the cigarette to a tube through which the smoke is drawn).

   Now, if you ignore the minor interpenetrations of the nose, the human body basically has one hole, the one starting at the mouth and coming out at the … ahem … other end.  So, yes, we are doughnuts!

   What this also means is that our food never actually goes inside us; it just passes over our surface, while bits of it get absorbed through that surface.  Furthermore, the trillions of bacteria that live in our gut are not really inside us, but on our surface, just like the bacteria on our skin.  We have about 10 million bacteria per square centimetre on our faces (remember that next time you kiss someone).  Overall, we have about 50 times as many cells living on us as we have making up our bodies themselves (which is about 50 trillion to start with).  It is when bacteria cross the boundary and get truly inside us that we get sick, which is why the essential treatment of wounds is to cover them up.

   As far as material food goes, what we eat becomes incorporated into our substance, so our food becomes us.  It is the opposite way around when it comes to spiritual food.  Saint Thomas Aquinas says it much more eloquently than I ever could:

The Blessed Sacrament at Tira Ora

   “Material food first changes into the one who eats it, and then, as a consequence, restores to him lost strength and increases his vitality.  Spiritual food, on the other hand, changes the person who eats it into itself.  Thus the effect proper to this Sacrament [the Holy Eucharist] is the con­ver­sion of a man into Christ, so that he may no longer live, but Christ lives in him; conse­quent­ly, it has the double effect of restoring the spiritual strength he had lost by his sins and defects, and of increasing the strength of his virtues.”  St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Book IV of the Sentences, d.12, q.2, a.11.

   One last note, “torus” is a Latin word, one meaning of which is “cushion”, which should make sense to those suffering from haemorrhoids.

* Topology is the area of mathematics concerned with spatial properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, for example, deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing.  If one surface can be deformed, in this way, into another, then the two are said to be homeomorphic.  In loose terms, we say they are topologically “the same”.

If abortion is not wrong...

“If abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”  Although this “quote” is often attributed to Mother Teresa, she never said it.  However, she DID repeat often the following:  “…The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself… the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

This reminds me of another famous misquote, "If God does not exist, everything is permitted."  Although usually attributed directly to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but sometimes to a character, Ivan Karamazov, in Dostoyevsky’s 1880 novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, neither of them actually uttered it.

Nevertheless, both “quotes” relate to the difficulties we have today when we, on the one hand, try to encourage “good” behaviour in children, young people and adults and, on the other hand, deny the existence of God and thereby any absolute standards as a foundation for that behaviour.

Those we try to admonish or correct will simply answer, “Why?” (or “Why not?”)  While responding “Because I say so” in a loud voice can work with young children for a little while, it gets a bit ridiculous and indefensible when dealing with adults.  But that is essentially all society can do in the context of today’s moral relativism:  whoever shouts loudest, gains a majority and makes the rules, earns the right to arrest and lock-up those with different views, much as parents do with the “time-out” room.

Too much political and personal decision-making today seems to be about who can garner enough support to get their own way, rather than any appeal to what is objectively right and wrong.