Is The End Nigh?

It’s great not to be religious. You don’t half save yourself a lot of worry. Take Jehovah’s Witnesses for example. They used to regularly predict that the world would end next week next month or next year. To be fair to them they now seem to have given up and content themselves with going round houses boring people to death with their absurd drivel about lions and lambs spreading the word of God.

In the nineteenth century an American baptist minister, William Miller, predicted that Christ would return to earth on various times in 1843 and 1844 and at that point it would be games a bogey for planet earth. When these events didn’t materialise it was known as ‘the great disappointment’. We have a very similar thing going on at Dumbarton FC every year.
Of course remember all the prophets of doom at millennium time when the world was supposed to end on the first of January (about tea time).

Whether you refer to it as eschatology (religious theory of the end of the world), millenarianism, end time belief, apocalypticism, or disaster scenario, it is one of humanity’s most powerful ideas, and it goes way back.

“It is a very ancient pattern in human thought. It is rooted in ancient, even pre-biblical Middle Eastern myths of ultimate chaos and ultimate struggle between the forces of order and chaos,” says cultural historian Paul S Boyer, author of When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture.

“It is deeply appealing at a psychological level because the idea of meaninglessness is deeply threatening. Human societies have always tried to create some kind of framework of meaning to give history and our own personal lives some kind of significance.”

And although end of the world thinking crops up in many religions, those in the West are probably most aware of Christian eschatology. In the early days of the church it was taken as a given by many believers that the Second Coming and the end of the world were imminent.

So why mention this at this time? Well there is a scientific experiment taking place in Switzerland on Wednesday which some people reckon will be time’s up for all of us. There’s this thing called a particle accelerator which apparently is going to create a black hole and suck us all in. Apparently some religious nutjobs and fruitcakes leaders are getting in on this act too saying that its God’s punishment for……….well take yer pick.

Look it’s like this. The world will end some time just as sure as night follows day 8) . And when it does it’ll be because of nuclear war, some natural disaster, a disease, environmental stuff or global chronic obesity/chronic famine. If you think that there is some superior being up there ready to smite us all for our ungodliness, sins or failing to donate for the church roof – get help.

See you on Thursday. (I think!)

Souces used, BBC

George Burley – An Apology

Everyone has been seizing on George Burley’s comments after Scotland’s defeat against Macedonia in a World Cup qualifier on Saturday. I feel this is a little unfair and the BLFP can exclusively reveal that whilst most people thought they heard George say the team were ‘outstanding’ in the second half, what he in fact said was that they were ‘out, standing’.

I hope this clears things up.

Song For Sarah

Sarah Palin I’m talking about. Did you know that Europe is closer to New York than New York is to Alaska?

This is a hoot.

Helensburgh Heroes

I put together this montage after my exchange of emails and messages with Phil Worms who is promoting the concept (of those with a connection with the town). Amongst those featured are John Logie Baird (inventor of television) Henry Bell (steamship pioneer) and firgures as diverse as Cecil Day Lewis and Lex McLean, WH Auden and Walter Smith. Also featured are people like Mike McIntyre, Hazel Irvine and Colin Dalgleish all of whom I know
as well as my accountant’s son, Gordon Reid the courageous tennis Olympian.

A Fish Rots From The Head Down

I had an email yesterday from someone quite concerned at my mental and political health. He reckoned I was becoming obsessed with the EU and that I should simply give up blogging and just read the Daily Mail and watch old episodes of Kilroy. This is the general misunderstanding which floats about. To be anti EU is somehow to be jingoistic or xenophobic (not true I think the initial idea of the Common Market makes perfect sense and what well balanced citizen wouldn’t want close co-operation with their neighbours?). To be anti EU is to align oneself with the right wing of the Conservative Party or even worse with some of the loons in UKIP. Perhaps anyone thinking in this way should read Tony Benn’s thoughts on the matter. The other accusation is that anyone who expresses any disquiet about the EU is somehow obsessed with straight bananas and exaggerated political correctness stories. I would direct those folks to This Link from the Guardian. It shows a video of a British fishing vessel, quite legally and properly according to EU fisheries policy, dumping 80% (five tonnes!) of its catch at sea before returning to port.
This act is a microchosm of the EU and all it stands for. Anti democratic, anti common sense, anti citizen, pro waste, pro bureaucracy and pro totalitarian.

Thanks to Colin for the Guardian link.