Fairy Tales

Referring to yesterdays post... Anne Hathaway most certainly deserved an Oscar.

I had not realized that "Rachel Getting Married," was directed by "Silence of the Lambs," Jonathan Demme. It's good to know that he's still productive and churning out quality work. The film was a tad painful to watch as I could relate to Anne's character Kym a little too much. It's a tribute to Ms Hathaway that she made me feel so uncomfortable.

And she's so pretty.

But I digress.

After watching "Rachel Getting Married," I still had enough time before the local broadcast of "Married with Children," to watch Bill Maher's "Religulous," his fascinating and courageous documentary concerning the follies of religion.

But let me digress.

Let's discuss growing up and fairy tales. Before I begin ragging on religion, any religion, I'm not prejudiced, whether it be Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Scientology, whatever, I think we need to examine other institutional beliefs that might not have been sufficiently scrutinized.

1. Santa. The evidence concerning the existence of Mr. Claus is circumstantial at best (although actual photos of small children sitting on the lap of said Santa in certain local shopping establishments could, by some, be considered direct evidence. As far as I know, no claims of photographic trickery have been substantiated regarding the huge amount of pictorial evidence available at the time of this writing). Children go to bed on Christmas Eve, wake the next morning to happily discover gifts under the Christmas tree that had not been there the previous evening. NORAD annually tracks an unidentified flying object hurtling from the northern polar regions toward the North American continent (apparently under some undisclosed agreement with the federal government, as no instances of scrambled F22 Rapters can be ascertained to intercept this interloper within U.S. airspace). And cookies and milk left for Santa routinely disappear by X-mas morning. On a scale of 1 to 10, the evidence for the existence of Santa Claus stands at 3.571.

2. UFO's. There is a great deal of evidence regarding the existence of Unidentified Flying Objects. NORAD annually tracks a particular UFO hurtling from the northern polar regions toward the United States each December. Anecdotal evidence abounds of American citizens being routinely abducted by said objects, and probed without mercy. Photographs and movies of objects zooming across the skies are ubiquitous. Further, the very definition of the term "Unidentified Flying Object," pertains to any object detected in the atmosphere that has not yet been categorized, be it bird, flying dinnerware, the planet Venus, or swift moving swamp gas. On a scale from 1 to 10, UFO's rate a 8.212.

3. The Tooth Fairy. Again the evidence for said fairy is extremely circumstantial, yet promising. A child retires for the evening placing a recently extracted molar under their pillow, and lo and behold, some type of monetary compensation is discovered the next morning, attributed, one can imagine, to some type of calcium deprived spectral entity called a Tooth Fairy. Evidence scale = 4.175.

4. Leprechauns. I'm not even going to get into Leprechauns. I know they're real from personnel experience. Wiley little bastards. 10.

5. God. As yet there is no physical, photographic, or circumstantial evidence for the creator of all things that remains credible. All evidence for this entity is anecdotal, and derived from ancient, convoluted and contradictory documentation, that has since been proved obsolete by the rigorously applied standards of the modern scientific method. It is understood that the use of "God," or "Gods," depending at which point in history one is examining, was exceptionally beneficial for the human race while in it's infancy, although still extremely problematic. With the advent of scientific inquiry, it has been discovered that there is little that cannot be explained in nature that is more readily defined by science than through theologic rationalization. It is acknowledged that by the very nature of the definition of "God," it is as difficult to disprove as it is to definitively prove, therefore on a scale of 1 to 10, the evidence for God remains at 1.216.

So here we have discovered that there is more evidence for Santa, UFOs, the Tooth Fairy, and Leprechauns, than there is for God. As Mr. Maher rightly points out, in this day of religious fundamentalism, within this country and without, linked to global, possible nuclear terrorism, it is imperative that our species abandon adolescent myths and embrace the lonely, sometimes daunting responsibilities associated with living in the real world.

Bill Maher states the case eloquently.

"We have to grow up... or die."