Not a blog

This is not a blog, it's just a reply to Alison's kind Comment of 23.7.10.

Its true that one of my ambitions when I wrote the first blog was to cover every computer in the country in masticated cornflakes, as Alison implies. The sad fact is that it didn't happen. Hers is probably the only speckled Mac.

My first blog, dealing as it did with Rude Bits and No God, was very well received, and people continued to tune in for several days, presumably to see whether God would either reply or smite me. When neither event happened, they seemed to lose interest, even though I tempted them with Dead (or at least moribund) Sheep, Flatus and even Dead Sheep and Flatus in the House of Commons. Tells yer sumfink about the blogging public, don't it!

However the real reason I began my short blogging career was to bring my new book entitled 'Why Man Made Gods and Dogs' (ISBN no. 978-0-9565588-0-0) to the attention of a world-wide audience. This was because it has a two important ideas which I think people should know about.

The first is that modern science strongly suggests that there is very unlikely to be a God. Many people know that, but my book explains why, in simple terms, looking at the whole of science from cosmology to neurobiology and evolutionary psychology. The idea is not to denigrate religion, but since religion seems to be a major cause of conflict in the world, young people in particular need to be aware of the history of the innumerable religions and realize that they can't all be right, and probably none of them are.

The second idea (the new bit, which needs publicity) is that religion probably has a survival value for the genome, in the Darwinian evolutionary sense. When early Man became intelligent enough to ask difficult and unanswerable questions about life, death and the Universe, he had to postulate the existence of supernatural forces, a Spirit and an after-life. This naturally led to the concept of gods, worship, sacrifice, prayers and rituals. The formation of tribes and altruistic behaviour has survival value for a species, hence the need for religion becomes hard-wired into the human brain. There has to be something out there, doesn't there? Once spirituality becomes part of the genome, it doesn't easily give up.

OK, you've got the two main ideas now, so you don't need to read the book, though it does have quite a few jokey bits, it only costs £9 (in U.K., including postage) and you can order it from
perrottpress at hotmail.com. Oh, and the profits if any, will go to the National Eczema Society.

Alison, I quite enjoy trying to make you laugh, but my wife says there's grouting to be done, and you were the one who told me off for letting her tire herself with laying the paving slabs.

Bye for now.