Azaleas are arrayed once more.
Our political potter, Richard Jones, finds a sunny Sunday morning a perfect moment to wish everyone a Happy Mithras, and to give us, in his indomitable fashion, a wonderful link between flowers, science, religion and more…
Azaleas are arrayed in all their glory once more. This morning I saw the Flame tree was also covered in bright red flowers and being visited by the Mistletoe bird. Happy Mithras Day by the way. Every Sunday is Mithras day- it was reserved as a holy day for the sun god. Until about two hundred years after Christ was executed, Mithras was the main god and worshipped from India to as far west as Scotland. He was born on December 25 of a virgin mother who was adored as the Mother of God. He was placed in a manger and attended by shepherds. He also had twelve disciples. Strange similarities?
I’ve talked about this in a session on beliefs and truths recently at the Byron Philo cafe. I quoted Bertrand Russell who said: “Minds do not create truth or falsehood. They create beliefs, but once the beliefs are created, the mind cannot make them true or false, except in the special case where they concern future things which are within the power of the person believing.
Talking of beliefs – since 2009 the loss of ice in Antarctica and Greenland has tripled. The loss is now 500 cubic kilometres a year. This loss is now unstoppable. Sea level rise is locked in. Climate sceptic Tony Abbott boycotted the UN Conference on Climate Change and when Julie Bishop spoke, most nations walked out leaving the chamber virtually empty. You didn’t read about that in the Murdoch media. We are the pariah of the southern seas. We have so little faith in science we don’t have a Science Minister and have slashed science funding to the lowest levels in a generation. It is particularly relevant today when false beliefs are determining our future.
Anyway, it’s a fittingly beautiful Sunday and I’m off to find some more mulberries accidentally left by the birds and to water newly planted trees and pumpkins.
