Columnists
Chance: A fine thing
Agnostics Anonymous
This month, aside from drenching each other in buckets of ice
water, social media users have distinguished themselves by
attributing a quotation to David Attenborough that includes phrases
such as 'Israelis are worse than any animal, even crocodiles...
they kidnap children and harvest their organs'.
Excited by the idea that such a respected man, the incarnation
of liberal, humane, educated Britain, would spout this
rivers-of-bloodlibel rhetoric, lovers and haters of Israel alike
rushed to repost this fabricated quotation.
Now this is of course yet another salutary reminder to exercise
some degree of caution when rushing to Like, Share and otherwise
Disseminate texts and images of unknown provenance. Caveat
postor.
But when its status as a fake was revealed, a second and more
interesting response emerged. A user on one messageboard asked
'Could it be that ZOG is using the ageing (88) and not long for
this world Attenborough to give the false impression that some
establishment wallahs have a conscience about the slaying of
innocent men, women and children by Israel?'.
What a lovely world to inhabit. A world in which Occam's Razor
is at least a Triple Blade; a world in which the answer is never
boredom, or mischief, or just because; a world in which someone is
there to design the pattern of the detritus that tumbles across
one's path.
No doubt this particular messageboard user has a charming
collection of tinfoil hats. However, he has something in common
with those Christians who see AIDS as God's punishment for
homosexuality, or those strictly Orthodox Jews who think the
Holocaust was God's way of curbing the secularisation of his chosen
people, or anyone who thinks their prayers might be heard. Namely
the belief that everything happens for a reason.
Atheism versus religion is often cast as rationality versus
faith. But in fact both Dawkins and his opponents share a sense of
the fundamental justice of being. The most advantageous variation
cannot but predominate, or bad things happen to good people for
SOME REASON, honest.
The true divide is not between God-botherers and God-bashers but
between those who think that there is an essential order to the
universe and those who sense its irreducible chaos and
nonmeaning.
Dawkins and those who hate him can both sleep easy in the
knowledge that something will bring balance to the force, be it
evolution, Yahweh, or 'Chemical chance, chemical chance. Fate and
destiny, fate and destiny!', as in the atheist orgasm memorably
enacted by Bill Hicks.
To paraphrase another dead hero, there is only one thing worse
than shadowy, faceless powers running the world, and that is
knowing that no one is running the world.