skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Now let's get one thing straight from the very beginning! I quite like football, especially local football, but I don't live and die by the League Table. If my team does well, so be it. If it does badly, well, it's not the end of the world.
And that's a good thing, because at the moment Bangor FC have had an appalling run of luck. I say luck, but for a football team to have a run of bad luck they need to have an initial talent base from which their 'bad luck' seems so unfair.
Bangor started the Season quite well, actually topping the League Table for a week. But all that changed when other teams started playing games of football. Poor Bangor's last 4 matches have been lost, scoring only one goal, and letting a staggering fourteen in! Fourteen!!It's been a massacre. Bereft of mercy the last 2 Home games were both 0-5. And they have the cheek to charge £11 to get in - it's £9 if you want to stand, but at my age...........
I've never understood people (men usually) who's mood rises and falls depending on the results from the Premiership, 1st Division, or wherever. Yes it's good to have a hobby and it's good to show loyalty to a team, but please people! A bit of perspective!
What Bangor FC teaches me is never to give up hope. Yes, they can be rather poor. Yes, they can disappoint on a regular basis. Yes, the 'Club Shop' is never open so I can buy a scarf. Yes, it's mainly supported by older men. Yes, the burger van has a poor vegetarian selection. But more importantly, yes, there's nothing quite like a live match, and the sense of camaraderie is lovely (more like 'misery loves company' most Saturdays).
While things are bad now, there's every chance that things will improve, and even a chance, fairly remote I realise, that some massive win will unexpectedly be pulled off. I text a friend every game I'm at to keep him up to date as he lives in Manchester, and strangely the National Sports Headlines don't include the JJB Sports Northern Irish Premiership results. BBC! Why, oh why, oh why, oh why! What he said to me was this, "It is only by coming thru the pain and misery of being a bangor fan that we can truly appreciate the joy of the occasional victory!"
Wise words my friend, wise words.
Like Paul on the Road to Domestos I had an epiphanal moment. Not quite 'on the road' but more like parked in the drive.
I was thinking about fossils and how Creationists say that all fossils are as a direct result of the global flood of Noah. All very sweet. Ah, bless!
Then it struck me. If fossils were formed via the Flood (ah, bless!) then why are there only dinosaurs and other prehistoric fossils? If the flood wiped out all life and it occurred only 4-6,000 years ago, then why aren't there fossils of cows, lions, sheep, donkeys, horses and other modern animals in with the dinosaurs in the same strata?!? And why not humans too?!?
I know Creationists (ah, bless!) talk about animals floating and sinking at different stages, hence the dinosaurs appear lower (and therefore older) but as Ken Ham has said (ah, bless!) the bulk of the dinosaurs were actually quite small - that's why Noah could get them on the Ark (ah, bless!). If that is the case, then why aren't there small dinosaurs fossils alongside the fossils of similarly sized modern animals? Surely they would've sank at the same rate/time?
Oddly enough, there aren't any! Indeed, I'm not aware of any modern animal fossils being found.
Don't you just love Creationists?! Ah, bless!
Today I spent the most pleasant couple of hours in my own company. Normally I'm fairly good about being alone, but usually crave some sort of human contact after a while but today was different. After watching Bangor getting a 3-1 thrashing by Coleraine I needed a 'nice' experience.
I drove along to Downhill beach and walked along it for around half an hour. It was a calm day, not sunny but not cold either. Lots of people were about and a few families were having BBQs on the sand. People were fishing or playing games. It was a lovely atmosphere. From Downhill you can see Mussenden Temple, and it was there where I next walked.
The air was crisp and the smell of the sea was pleasant in my nostrils. The setting sun lit up the clouds with a beautiful reddy glow, and it was silent. Absolutely silent. It was almsot a 'spiritual' experience. It reminded me that the North Coast, and especially the Downhill area, is my little Heaven on earth. If God were ever to take holidays, I'm sure S/He would rent a little cottage there. I don't think I could ever tire from a place like it and it did my soul good to walk there. Many, many pleasant memories flooded through me, and I must admit I did feel a little emotional. There was a sense of oneness with Nature - nothing really mattered - nothing was really important other than enjoying being there and enjoying being alive. I snapped away with my little camera phone and will post a selection of them so that you can enjoy a taste of what I had.
It's the eve of something big. Something really big. In fact, it could be a big bang, or possibly a damp squib. The particle accelerator at Cern will be fired up and ready to roll tomorrow. Along a tube some 27 kms long, two particles will be shot at almost the speed of light towards each other. The data that is gathered will hopefully tell us something about what happened in the first one billionth of a second after the Big Bang.
And that's as far as my knowledge goes. I always regret not pursuing Physics beyond O-Level but I didn't have the Maths, and you need the Maths. Nevertheless, I continue to have an armchair interest in Science, to the point where I'm genuinely excited about what might be discovered after tomorrow. My worry is that it won't deliver the hype that's been generated, predominately by the press. My other worry is that if nothing significant is discovered then all that money will have been for nought: some £5 billion as far as I'm aware. Now I realise that 5 billion is the cost of a couple of weeks in Iraq, and even if Cern produces nothing it will be a thousand times better than what's been achieved via the 'war' there.
So I wait with baited breath. In response to the Daily Mail article that said we'll all die in a black hole, I'll leave posting off this month's credit card payment. Seems best.
Just back form the cinema with the kids having been treated to 90 mins of my life that'll I'll never get back. It was "Disaster Movie" by name and by nature. When did parody sink so low?! And why wasn't I told!?
It's not often that I sit through a film that contains NO redeeming features. There has to be a first I suppose. This was it. Live and learn!
The only good thing I can think about this appalling evening (no reflection on Dan or Soph here) was that I saw a poster advertising another film, "the boy in the striped pyjamas", a film about a young boy in a Concentration Camp.
It just goes to show you that there's no such thing as a a complete wipeout. If I hadn't been at Disaster Movie I would never have seen the other poster. Not a complete disaster then.
A couple of nights ago, spurred on by reading William Crawley's bog, from which the above pic is taken, I watch a live streaming from one of the healing services from the Elim Christian Centre in Belfast. Very much like the Lakeland 'Revival' stuff, in fact in Belfast they claim that it's as a result of Lakeland, the services in Belfast have run every evening for the last two and a half months.
On Wednesday and Thursday Joshua Mills took time out of his busy schedule (I've no reason to doubt this) to do 2 nights in Belfast. Mills comes from the Extreme Prophecies stable which is heavily into 'signs and wonders' which include the appearance of gold and sapphire dust, oil, diamonds, angel feathers and such like. It also includes healings, imparted anointing, prophecy, and so on.
Previously I've seen footage of various Shamen whipping people into frenzies from which they experience all sorts of things - the 'supernatural' if you will. Psychologists will tell you it's all to do with expectancy and allowing yourself to get into a suggestible state. In such a state you can 'see' and 'experience' all manner of stuff which you genuinely believe to be real, but which doesn't pass mustard in the cold light of day. Mills is a slightly tubby, slightly camp American Shaman.
Joshua Mills claims that people have experienced weight loss, whitening of teeth, appearance of gold fillings, healings of all descriptions at his revival meetings. Gold dust, looking suspiciously like glitter but no-one has actually analysed what it really is, has appeared on his hands and jacket. Oil has flowed from his hands, or possibly from out the tubes up his sleeves.
On Thursday he emphasised the power of the Hallelujah. Indeed, he used the word frequently, and I mean frequently - possibly six or seven hundred times in the space of two hours. It punctuated almost every other sentence he spoke. And boy did he speak. He hardly took a breath.
Stage hypnotists, and people like Derren Brown, use something called "anchoring": a technique where a particular word or touch is anchored, or linked, to a suggestion. The 'victim' is put into a light hypnotic state and the suggestion is implanted via the anchoring. The anchor will then trigger the suggestion in the subconscious of the individual. That's why in Derren Brown's programs people believe they have a free choice, whereas they've actually been conditioned to choose the card, envelope, whatever, that he wants them to choose.
Pastor Brian warmed up the cried shouting "Are you ready to see God at work!". When the cry of 'yes' wasn't loud enough he asked them the same question again. There was then a time of worship led by a loud rock band where there was singing and also prayers. Pastor Brian prayed by shouting into a mic(!) while the band continued to bash out a beat. By the time Josh stood to speak the crowd were well warmed up, but more importantly, they were expectant.
Then Joshua spoke for 2 hours. He talked of miracles. He talked of power. He talked of healing. He talked of the supernatural. He talked of change and glory. All these things were punctuated with "Hallelujah....Hallelujah....Hallelujah". The anchoring was done. He spoke so quickly that no-one had time to process and think about anything he said which was lucky for him as he made ridiculous claims (the power of the Hallelujah brought his house plant back to life; the power of the Hallelujah enabled him to lay hands of healing on Fluffy the dog). By the time people were queueing for healing the power of the anchoring Hallelujah was so deeply implanted that they 'experienced' healing. They were expectant, whipped up, and hungry and so they believed whatever they wanted to believe, or whatever they were told to believe.
You may ask, O kind reader, and by the way, thanks for sticking with me thus far, why I'm so sceptical about Joshua and his like. A reasonable question. Why can't I leave him, and the hapless gullible fools who lap up his bullshit alone, and instead let them be happy in their delusion.
Last week the 7 year old daughter of people who lived down the street was buried. She was diagnosed with a brain tumour in December 2007 and died in August 2008. No miracles. No gold dust. No power of the Hallelujahs. God wasn't to be found in that house in any healing capacity. Allegedly He is in places where Mills and others are - there in bucket loads. But not where He is needed. Not in that little girl's home.
My anger is because some people will be so convinced and deluded that they will say that real healing occurs, but won't be able to see the factors that cause people to pretend to see it. For them it is freak shows like the Mills spectacle that is proof of God's healing power. Would not greater proof of healing be in the quiet and despair of the 7 year old's house rather than in the self-induced and deliberately enhanced emotional and hypnotic whirlwind of these revival meetings?! Why does God fail to do what is needed for her, yet seems to turn up big time only when particular people claim to have certain gifts. To compound the cynicism, Joshua quoted from Corinthians ("God loves a cheerful giver") as the bucket was passed around and also informed people they could donate online (and if they were writing a cheque could they please make it out to ECC). God can't/won't heal unless He is properly funded.
