F is for... Fear, Faith, Facts, and... yes, Farts.

 26 Letters: all the words in the Bible (originally written by a bunch of bronze and iron-age Middle eastern folk), Newton's Principia, Darwin's little pocketbook about the Ascent of Man, and - of course - those invaluable intellectual tomes "The Illuminati" and the collected Dan Brown "novels"...  all those words and ideas and stuff, all made up of those 26 Letters. Howzat, Esperanto!

I occasionally wonder which came first: Fear, or Faith? And were they driven by Facts, or explained away by Facts?

These are the thoughts that take hold of me when I wake at 3.00am, and can't be bothered getting up to have a leak. So I lie there, clenching whatever muscles require clenching to avoid drastic leakage, Fart a little, and think.

Generally, I think that Faith came after Fear. It was perfectly natural for prehistoric humans to have a fear of natural phenomena - fire, floods, lightning, and wolverines.

Wolverines were self explanatory: a vicious little bastard of an animal that would eat you, despite the fact you outweigh it ten to one. There were plenty of those, and in fact they were invaluable in helping early hominids invent language" "Fred! Wolverine to the left, Smilodon to your right. It's been nice knowing you, buddy!"

But lightning? That was big, scary, and made the hairs on your arms stand on end. Volcanoes? Sure, Ngaire from the band over to the west had made fire once, and tamed it... but what, or who, caused the volcano to blow and the lava to flow? What or who made the river to flood? How about drought? 

Folk stories must have started about the things that couldn't be understood. People in the sky made it rain. Powerful wolverine people who live over the horizon got annoyed with with us because Fred tried to avoid becoming their totem's lunch.  

Men (it wasn't always men. Woman became shamans, too) tried to appease the invisible Volcano people and the Wolverine and Drought and Fire and Flood people / gods and so created Faith. This wasn't at all unreasonable. 

It was, in fact, scientific thinking: if, after considering all possibilities the only thing that's left, however incredible, must be the truth.

To slightly butcher AC Doyle's enigmatic super-hero's words.

But as further facts came to light, we stopped giving credit where it wasn't due. Wolverine-God vanished in the face of Evolution. It's just a fucking mean little animal, closely related to the weasel and the ferret. 

Volcano god vanished as we started understanding volcanology, back before Socrates was born. Rain gods and drought gods and fear, fire, and flood gods all became as wisps of fog after the sun rose. They couldn't survive in the face of Facts.

Yet, somehow - Fear still holds Facts at bay. Fear of what happens after death. Mortality. Aging. All these signs of decrepitude scare us, because they're all leading to that sour pit that our mortal flesh will be deposited into.

Unless, of course, we go for the barbeque option. Mmm. Toasty!

So Fear and Faith still hold sway over many people who can't or don't want to face the Fact of death.  And you know something? That's all right.

As long as the Parson or Priest People live good lives, follow the Golden Rule, and don't try to convert me, then I'm perfectly happy.

Because I have Offler the Crocodile God and her Daughter, Brenda. They've got my hairy arse covered.

DANTE SAID:

Everywhere is here, and every when is now.

Remember tonight. For it is the beginning of always.

If you give people light, they will find their own way. 

Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.