Please don't tell me what I believe...

A lovely day reading...

Nothing else.  My Boo and me reading.  Ahhhh... heaven.

I’m well into Stephen Greenblatt’s “The Swerve”: A wonderful trip in to the Renaissance and further back to the Roman poet, Lucretius.  Great stuff.  I’d like to call myself a Renaissance Man; I do know a fair bit about subjects as diverse Red AND White Wine... oh, and also a lot about  Leslie Charteris’  “The Saint”, but I don’t think these interests qualify me as a polymath.  (and I’m not really good with numbers).

So... no Renaissance man for me.

And I do love my Roman poets!  Let me tell you... from Virgil to...

 to Juventus... 

and the ever popular AC Milan 

(first Roman poet to use Initials...  or initial Roman poet to use ‘first’)

Never mind.. I’m getting off track.

I do love the Renaissance.

I maybe know a little more than a little bit about Roman poets and poetry.

So, this book is right up my alley.

Except that Mr. Greenblatt insists on making this an exercise in freedom from religion.  Lucretius’ poem “On the Nature of Things” (the core of this book) is seen a brilliant repudiation of the religious idea that God is the centre of all things, that the Dues ex Machina construct of religion is patently false and that ridding ourselves of God represents man’s greatest leap yet to be taken.

Okay, I get it, you’re an Atheist. Or a Non-Theist... and the institution of the church was no friend to this poem or to those who would dare to imagine reality that did not conform to an ancient catechism or a Byzantine triptych.   But please , must everything be about proving that God does not exist or that believe in God is a sign of mental defect?  I appreciate that this is not the core of the book (incidentally, I’m loving this book), but it does seem to be a recurring theme.

If I may, allow me to explain:

When I went to Junior High I was introduced to the Bohr-Rutherford diagram of the Atom  (or Rutherford-Bohr, apparently... I guess that it will be McCartney and Lennon, next). Now, you may recall that it looked kind of like our solar system with the nucleus in the middle (like the sun) with electrons orbiting around it (like planets).  We counted electrons and we figured out what kind of Atom it was; we looked at comparable diagrams and discerned which Atoms were included in our experiment/observation/super-hero costume.    And this continued through High School.  And it worked.

For me (but then, I’m not really all that bright).

However, a little while later, I discovered (as did others) that atoms didn’t really look a target with a couple of near misses.  An atom was not actually two dimensional or given to easy drawing by a teenager.  In short, I discovered that Messrs. Rutherford and Bohr has mis-represented reality.

I did not, however, reject science. 

Or drop out of school.  

Or decide that all scientists were lying to us pitiful High School students in an effort to keep us ignorant and under control.

I did recognize that the B&R boys had simply found a way to communicate a greater truth... something that defied simple sketching.  They were talking about something that they did not fully comprehend, but needed a way to communicate, differentiate and stimulate.  I know that the diagrams that I drew in High School are not real, but they do indicate something very real to me; they allow me to talk to others about Hydrogen and Oxygen in a meaningful way...  they give me the tools and short hand to share, learn and grow.

Now, I’m not excusing those who would silence, imprison, ignore or put to death those who do not pledge allegiance to the great Diagram... nor do I do that for the institutional church.  But please don’t imagine that what I believe in can be simply contained by Sunday School pictures or narratives of ancient faithful peoples... and please don’t imagine that I’m an  idiot for keeping around the pictures that I drew as a kid...  I rather like the colours and as long as others are a little bit patient with me, they give me the tools and short hand to share, learn and grow.

That's all.

My rant is over.

And a walk is in order.

(and how about a little credit for avoiding the whole Renaissance = Rebirth = Born Again thing)