Metaphorical Madness
02/10/2009
By Styrer
(No fictional baths, dogs or cats were harmed in any way in the angry typing away of this piece.)
Don’t berate me just yet as an environmentally-unfriendly tosspot, but yesterday instead of my usual shower, I had a bath. I had some time to kill and so I simply watched the bath filling from the single tap, checking every now and then to make sure that the hot and cold streams were mixing nicely. Just for me.
I was suddenly struck by a mildly interesting impression. Thinking of the two streams coming together to make a comfortably warming third, I imagined the hundreds of miles of unseen piping required to permit little old me to wet his toes. Just for me.
During this utterly idle couple of minutes, by some metaphorical co-incidence I remembered the pathetically straw-clutching and risible story of Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project, and now NIH director of the US, falling to his knees in theistic ecstasy before the wondrous sight in the Cascade Mountains of…a big frozen waterfall, divided into three separate streams. This peculiar fellow accepted Jesus on the spot because of what he’d seen and what he thought had been given by this sight to him. Just for him.
As various unsympathetic phrases popped into my head as I thought about this, I thought I’d have a bash at generating a little more empathy than usual for theists, at least for this particular world-renowned scientist. Not having a frozen waterfall to gaze upon just at that moment, I had a good old stare at the stream of water filling my bath (admittedly only two streams, but surely I could push a third in there, for the sake of an empathetic match-up with Collins if not also for the sake of this piece), imagining the two streams coming together to create a third and thinking ‘this should do the job’. More staring.
Perhaps it wasn’t working because it wasn’t grand enough, perhaps not ‘natural’ enough. But what of all that ingenuity, skill, time and effort, all that financial and collaborative commitment that had gone into getting this water to me? Was this not just as impressive as a big old waterfall, admittedly frozen, simply doing what waterfalls tend to do? Perhaps if I had dragged in a couple of shrubs to green things up a bit, I’d have felt something akin to Collins’ own curious experience.
If you are finding the metaphorical link I’ve made between my ablutionary non-revelation and Collin’s theistic epiphany unconvincing, then I’m happy to take it on the chin as an illustration of my point. For what can be more unconvincing, more absolutely smothered with inanity than Collins’ own metaphorical linking of a waterfall and the supposed realisation of the truth of one incoherent and vacuous doctrine (the Trinity) from one particular slavish and dignity-denying belief system (the Catholic Church/Cult)?
It is theistically-inflicted casualties flagrantly abusing their innate capacity for the metaphorical, rather than those of us who properly engage with and enjoy for themselves their metaphorical and rational capacities, who laughably create the warm fuzzies which lead seemingly inexorably to the assured assumption that a deity considers them to be the very centre of existence. Must we commit our brains’ capacity for metaphor, in this case, to the sinbin of irrationality against which there is consensus that it is highly advisable to fight?
Not at all. It is my contention that this noble part of us – the metaphorical capacity – has been wantonly and indecently usurped by theist and superstitious supernaturalist alike, such that it is now of supreme importance – as Christopher Hitchens wisely noted that he could have done more of in his theistic encounters up till last year – to wrest back the numinous from the belittling minds of the faithful and reclaim it, together with our concomitant gift for metaphor, as the ennobling, beautiful, and ultimately rational phenomenon that has its rightful place in humankind’s awe-inspiring array of talents. If theists were actually any good at this whole metaphorical game, then it might not be quite as bad as I’ve suggested, but they really are, when it comes to their religious interpretations, just so stunningly bad at it. There are different interpretations of metaphor, of course, but at least one – cognitive metaphor – supports my point here in its holding that metaphor is not only a mode of language, of linguistic usage, but a mode of thought. If this is true then theists everywhere should consider thinking a good deal more about the enormous disservice they are doing both themselves and the rest of us by selling out so promiscuously this worthy capacity we all possess. Frances Collins, and all the multiple ignorant cunts who promoted this Santa Clause-level believing eejit, should be properly ashamed of themselves, at the end of it all, with Collins particularly required to say: ‘Yes! I’ve become a wanker and so I can no longer be the representative of all of science in the US, the most powerful nation on the planet! I must recuse myself immediately. For I like metaphors more than evidence!’
Next week: why cats and dogs don’t actually cause multiple concussions when it’s raining heavily
Styrer
