Stupid things

Stupid thing number one
I heard a Christian on the radio this morning who claimed that marriage was a gift from god. It was in response to a piece about how the Anglican church has a problem with being gay. I thought this was already solved with equality and non-discriminatory legislation but obviously religion is of higher importance than parliament.

The thing is that ‘marriage’ was not a gift from god. If anything, it was probably a gift from the ancient Chinese. The formalised marriage ceremony (including the reception afterwards) can be dated back to between 400 and 200 BCE and, of course, the Romans and the Greeks before them, also had marriage. It was very much monogamous in the ancient world and, in Rome after the first century BCE, the woman didn’t lose any rights following marriage.

Of course the Jews had some sort of ceremony as indicated in the Torah but the Old Testament is a bit hazy in detail. For instance the ancient writers of the book just skipped over the ceremony and went straight to the man taking the wife to his tent. Now I’m not saying that the writers were salacious at all but they did give us the story of Lot and his daughters…so I’ll just leave that there.

It’s not hard to assume that the marriage contract came from very old societies, whereby two tribes formalised a link between two individuals. This would cement relations and avoid bloodshed while strengthening resources between the two groups. Then religion came along and, of course, it needs to maintain a stranglehold around every aspect of human life.

Besides, how could you possibly get a gift from an imaginary being? My pixies never leave me gifts.

Stupid thing number two
Apparently, an Australian politician claimed that the best way to sort out climate change is to burn more coal. That’s just so stupid on so many levels. Burn more fossil fuels! Keep the levels of CO2 as high as possible! That’ll work! (Maybe coal is a gift from god and therefore it’s our duty to use it all.)

In the same report, a CSIRO report stated that the world average temperature has risen by 1.5 degrees since the Industrial Revolution. Now, I realise a lot of people would think this was nothing and not to be concerned about however, research and modelling indicate (very strongly) that a rise of 6 degrees would probably spell the end of humanity as we know it.

The temperature rise, you see, is exponential. That means the rise is quicker as time goes by.

I used to be proud of growing up in Australia. I thought it was a progressive, fresh thinking, civilised country with an eye to the future. It seems I was very wrong.

It makes it difficult to know where to live. The New Racism in the UK, the Crazy Bastards in the US and now the Stupidity of Oz, all make it difficult to know where to go.

I think we need to buy an island and make our own country with renewable energy and no religion. I’d call it heaven because I can appropriate just as much as any religion can.