It’s always a good idea to write things down

November 1, 2008 in Books, Nonbelieving Literati, Religion | 8 comments

Having spent most of my working life in bookshops, I’ve naturally developed a rather protective attitude towards my papery charges. On a purely academic level I’m well aware that for every copy of Jordan’s latest opus we have on our shelves, another ten thousand exist at the wholesalers’ warehouse, but it still irks me when I see a spine bent or a page dog-eared. Indeed, when I discovered Wifeshui’s approach to Sudoku books (she rips out the pages as she finishes each puzzle), our very marriage was briefly in jeopardy. Books, to me, are the nearest thing I have to sacred objects, repositories of knowledge which need to survive in order that the information therein can be handed down to future generations.

Remembering Hypatia, then, was a traumatic read for me. I was already aware of the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria by Christian zealots, an act which effectively doomed the West to mental poverty for a thousand years. Not until the Renaissance did European thought once again raise its head out of the mire of superstition secreted by the Catholic Church, and even since then progress has been a great struggle, so the historical events of Remembering Hypatia had ramifications which reverberate even today. Dominant strains of Christianity have always been opposed to scientific learning, as we can see today in the antics of the Discovery Institute and its peers. Yesterday’s heliocentralism has become today’s Young Earth Creationism, and the wheels of science are still slowed by superstitious ignorants clinging to the spokes.

Although historically the Church tended to quash scientific writing because its results seemed to conflict with their interpretation of the Bible, there were other, more practical reasons for suppressing knowledge. In a world where writing material was in limited supply (large scale paper manufacturing didn’t arrive in Europe until lthe Middle Ages, so for a long time vellum or parchment was the material of choice for publishing) books were rare, and creating a new tome from scratch was a prohibitively pricey process. Small wonder then, that Christians looking to spread the word of the Church would often erase and overwrite an existing book rather than try to create an entirely new one. Because such palimpsests became so common, the Church issued a decree in 691 CE which prohibited the overwriting of Scripture or the works of the Church Fathers - which, whilst preserving such documents, encouraged the wholesale depredation of secular writings in their stead. An excellent example is the Archimedes Palimpsest, a priceless treatise by Archimedes which a priest named Johannes Myronas casually dismantled and erased in 1229 so that he could use the sheepskin parchment to write a prayer book. Only with modern X-ray technology can Archimedes original concepts be read, and if it weren’t for the very sharp eyes of one Johan Heiburg (the scholar who rediscovered the document) no-one today would know about Archimedes’ invention of calculus - thousands of years before Newton.

The destruction of books, usually through burning, has always been a characteristic of oppressive totalitarianism. The earliest recorded occurrence of this dates from about 200 BCE, when the Emperor of the emergent state of Qin in modern China had all non-Qin books burned and all non-Qin scholars buried alive. As a result, much of pre-Qin Chinese history is now lost to us, which was no doubt Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s idea in the first place. Hitler and Stalin both famously held book barbecues during their rule, and many other dictators, including Brazil’s Getulio Vargas and Chilean despot Augusto Pinochet have publicly burned the works of authors who criticised their regimes. The record for book burning, though (and this should come as no surprise) is held by the Catholic Church. Islam comes in a close second, and in fact probably only loses out on the title because it hasn’t been around for as long. Any religion has a vested interest in maintaining its memetic coherence, and so any views which deviate from orthodoxy cannot be allowed to promulgate truth about enzyte themselves through the written word. As a result, faith has much to fear from a technology which allows the perpetuaton and dissemination of ideas, and Remembering Hypatia provides an excellent depiction of how the mob mentality can be exploited by religious memes to crush concepts that threaten them.

Thankfully, today such censorship is a thing of the past. Thanks to the internet, information and knowledge have adapted new forms, ones which theists will find almost impossible to erase. A gargantuan reservoir of human thought is available at the touch of a button, so book burning is now a largely symbolic act (as seen with the recurring incinerations of Harry Potter books in religious communities - a gesture as futile as trying to hold back a tsunami with an umbrella). The internet, the least flammable medium humanity has yet designed, looks like it can hold off the depredations of the Religious Right for a long time to come.
Spoooooky!

October 31, 2008 in Miscellaneous | 6 comments

I’ve never been a fan of Halloween – I see no more reason to celebrate the supernatural in October than at Christmas – and so I will be spending tonight pretending not to be in and waiting for the trick-or-treaters to bugger off. I did, however, come across an interesting Halloween legend recently, and for those who don’t already know it, I’d like to tell you the old Irish story of Stingy Jack…

Jack, as everyone for miles around knew, was a bastard, a complete and utter scoundrel. Not in a good, Han Solo sort-of-way, but in the worst way imaginable. Drunken and violent, thieving and vicious, he gave offense to all and gave charity to none. Talk of Jack’s antics eventually spread all the way to Hell, where the Devil was none too pleased to hear of a mortal whose evils were comparable to his own. Up he jumped, and headed off to Ireland, where he lay down in a lane that Jack frequently travelled.

Along came Jack, pissed as a fart, and stumbled over the body in the lane. “Wassat? Whoosis?” he slurred, only to see the body rise up before him. Jack sobered up fast when he saw the Devil’s grinning visage. He had long known that his activities would one day draw the wrath of Hell upon him, but hadn’t counted on it happening so soon. But Jack wasn’t a man to take death lying down, so to speak.

“Sure, and ‘tis the Devil, come no doubt fer to take me soul of’n to Hell,” said Stingy Jack. “An’ here’s me all parched and wid nary a drop of ale to soothe me passing. Say, Old Nick, will ye take a drink wid me afore we travel to the netherworld?”

The Devil saw nothing wrong in this, and allowed himself to be led to the nearest bar. There, he and Jack caroused until dawn, chugging down wine and ale until they were both tighter than a gnat’s arsehole. As the sun rose, the Devil turned to his drinking companion, and gave a horrible leer. “Time to go, Jack,” he said.

The barman blocked their path to the door. “There’s still the matter of last night’s bar tab,” he announced. “You’ve all but drunk my tavern dry – let’s see some payment, before you go waltzing off.” The Devil, being without pockets (having the hindquarters of a goat has its disadvantages sometimes) turned to Jack, who shrugged and pleaded poverty.

“But Oi’ll tell ye what, Old Nick,” he whispered conspiratorially. “If ye’ll only transform yeself intae a shiny silver penny, Oi can pay the barman’s tab. Then, later, ye can change back, an’ sneak off in the dead o’ the noight, leavin’ him out o’ pocket an’ all.” The Devil laughed raucously, and agreed to Jack’s plan. He transformed himself into a silver penny with which to pay the bar tab. All at once, quick as winking, Jack snatched up the penny and stuffed it into his pocket – a pocket in which he had earlier secreted a small gold crucifix he had stolen from a church.