bilblogz

(revised from an earlier blog on Facebook)

Earlier this year I went to a Humanist meeting, only the second time I’d been to one. These days I feel horribly uncomfortable at gatherings where I don’t know anyone, and this being at an unfamiliar pub added to my nervousness. Still, it would to be a meeting of people with a similar outlook on life, hopefully I’d feel at ease in such surroundings.
Once I’d found the place and spotted the discreetly labelled tables, I felt more relaxed. I bought a pint, and grinned sheepishly as I sat down in a vacant chair with three other earnest-looking people who were all drinking water. Awkward introductions over, we began tentative conversations : how had we all come to be humanists? had we started off as Christians? how had we heard about the meeting? etc.
Then suddenly, the mousy man sitting opposite me said : “So, do you know why you’re here?” 
All three of us looked a bit blank, the grey-haired woman laughed and asked if anyone really knew why they were here, she certainly didn’t. I remarked something similar.
The man smiled smugly, and retorted : “Oh, I know!”
“You do?” we all stared at him a little surprised. Warning bells chimed loudly in the back of my head.
“Oh yes,” he gushed, “I’m quite sure.”
“Pray tell us!” The woman had a slightly wicked twinkle in her eye.
I was wondering if he was some foolhardy Christian who’d dared to come in there to try and direct us onto the righteous path.
“You see,” he began, “we’re all Von Neumann machines, the universe is just maths, and the elementary particles which make up matter are nothing… nothing more than units of information…” 
He rambled on a bit, I’d read this sort of theory in the New Scientist before, and found it a bit far-fetched, and to me there seemed to be some very unsatisfactory gaps in the reasoning. The two women were looking completely lost, and at last one of them interrupted him, saying that she didn’t understand a word of what he was wittering on about. He smiled beatifically. 
At this point I told him that this was all just one fringe hypothesis, and that most scientists had other views, at which he bridled.
“Oh no, it’s Fact, it’s the Truth! Life is a Von Neumann machine in the universal computer, it’s been proved,” he asserted, fierce and wide-eyed, “all scientist are coming round to agreeing with it. You’ll see, in a few years it will be firmly established, and there’ll be no need for any more research!”
This was too much. 
“That’s what they said at the end of the nineteenth century,” I told him, “that’s what they believed until Einstien came along, then there was Quantum Physics, then String Theory - that’s the thing about science, something new is always being discovered, there are just no final answers.”
“Rubbish!” he snapped, “this is the Truth! This is Fact, you can’t argue with it!”
“Oh, but I do argue with it!” I challenged, feeling emboldened by his sheer arrogance. I noticed the woman next to him looking at his face with a worried expression. 
“Then you’re a fool!” he bawled at me.
I was taken aback at this - I’d only been there about fifteen minutes, and already I was being insulted by this monomaniac. Now I was angry.
“I think you’re the fool,” I blasted back, “you misunderstand the very nature of science!”
He was not to be put off. “I know the truth, I’m a mathematician, I have a degree, I’ve studied physics, don’t worry, you’ll come to learn in time that you were wrong.” 
He wore that ghastly self-satisfied expression which born-again Christians have.
“How dare you patronise me!” I barked, “no one knows these things for certain, it’s all just theory. You’re just as bad as the Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to the front door haranguing us about their Truth.”
“Oh you’re just an uneducated idiot,” he told me.
I wasn’t going to take that lying down, I let fly some four-letter words, then cursed myself for losing control.
“We haven’t come here to be preached at,” one of the women told him, “I think you should save your lectures for a different occasion.”
He eventually slunk off when he realized that he wasn’t going to have a group of fawning admirers at his prophetic feet gasping in wonder at his great revelations. He joined another table, where, from his gestures, it was clear he’d begun all over again with some more victims.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that on your first visit - rest assured, we don’t usually get that sort of thing,” the older woman said. 
I’ll probably go back to another of their meetings, and somehow I think I won’t need to beware of the born-again Von Neumann machine. 
He won’t be there.