Saturday, September 1, 2018

More complaints about science and god









When I was a child it was a well accepted truism that all the things one might want to eat, or drink, or smoke, were bad for you. Sugar, meat, butter, wine, a cigar, cocktails, chocolate, all of them cancer causing, heart attack inducing poisons.

So they made a bunch of horrible crap to try and imitate the good things; Diet Rite and Parkay and Valium, and those all turned out to be even more cancerous and poisonous according to the science. If one had the disposition one might have been inclined, at such a point, to curse god. Why make all these tasty, delightful things that we'd want to eat and drink and smoke and so on, and have them all kill us?

But then to everyone's surprise the good studies started coming through. Perhaps there was something profoundly healthful about chocolate. Coffee will save your heart, or prevent Alzheimer's. The French eat rich cheeses and much wine and they are very healthy. Bacon is better than boring old bread as long as you omit the bread. Drink red wine! Eat meat! Have a cappuccino! Enjoy butter!

The world was ours again and God restored to dignity and beneficence.

And then the shoe dropped again. These were shoddy studies, urged on by the very industries hawking all these tasty things, tricking us into dangerous permissions. The deep studies, the big scientific studies, in the end still conspired against us. You want to live a long time? Here's how: Don't eat animal fats. Slightly starve yourself. Spend your days abstaining and walking up hills in rural countryside. And never, ever sit down to a nice cocktail or glass of wine.

Yes, that's the latest big study I saw. A large scientific analysis just completed has determined that no amount of alcohol is good for you. Or to make it more clear: Any amount of alcohol ever is deleterious to your health.

And so what, that we might like, is still good for us? Anything?

Well, they say love is good for us. The science is still a little thin on this, though positive. But all the big studies by the poets seem quite clear on the matter. And since it's apparently all we have left going for us maybe we should stuff god and science in the closet. Maybe we should cast our lot in with the research of poets. Theirs is surely not full of good news, but at least it has some.










2 comments:

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