Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
As the great man's guest must produce his good stories or songs at the evening banquet, as the platform orator exhibits his telling facts at mid-day, so the journalist lies under the stern obligation of extemporizing his lucid views, leading ideas, and nutshell truths for the breakfast table.Cardinal J. H. Newman, Preface to The Idea of a University, 1852
About this blog
My main blog, the one I post on most, is my 'work' blog, Intropy. But sometimes there's things I want to say which aren't appropriate for there, so they go here.
(I also started my blogging life with a record of following the MK Dons, so you'll see lots of old posts about that on here. I still follow the Dons, but rarely Blog about it now.)
Here's what I said (later edited - you can always follow the link above if you want to check what I wrote at the time - and then see also the following post):
Hawking:
Wenham:
Well you two are different from me then. I'm bl**dy terrified of extinction. You people who don't have this fear, should read, for example, Julian Barnes "Nothing to be frightened of", Larkin's "Aubade" or Betjeman's 'Before the Anaesthetic". If you people really don't have this fear you don't know how lucky you are. (And actually I think it displays a lack of imagination.)
I can only assume that the likes of Hawking and Dawkins who love to mock 'afraid of the dark*' really don't understand this fear. If they did, and they continued to disabuse people of their only escape from the terror, they are no better than the 'hell fire' preachers who at least offered an escape.
*The dark? The dark? Is that really what you think I'm afraid of? I love the dark, but extinction is NOT the dark and if you think there is any parallel then it just proves that you don't understand the problem.