Pills and Booze

Pills and Booze

by william hay

You promised that you'd love me/In sickness and in health

You promised that you'd love me/And you'd love nobody else

I know you loved your mother/And I know you loved your shoes

And I know you loved your automobiles/I know you loved your booze

How you loved your pills and booze

I know you loved your lies/I know you loved disguise

I know you loved your country club/But you really loved your highs

Marriage of white in a church with white steeples

Marriage of white in a church with high steeples

Glorious Night!

It's a glorious night to be alive.

Five fingers and five toes moving.

Eyes present.

Lips and mouth and ears all fairly functional.

City lights. Fresh air.

Rains have cleaned the streets

And washed away the blood of despair.

Hope sings anew.

Thank God this day is done.

It's a glorious night to be alive!

CCC, St. Patrick's Day Parade and Cheapskate

The day began with me in my black kilt, white knee high socks and Irish turtle neck sweater. I was mentally designing fur underwear for kilt wearers who foolishly ride scooters in freezing rain and sleet to church. On the scooter though, I got around the barriers set out for the 6th Annual St. Patrick's Day parade. In Christ Church Cathedral I arrived for mass and the sacred Irish hymn, Be Thou My Vision. The choir and congregation lifted their voices most high. A celtic harpist sang and played marvellously at the close.

Outside the Celticfest parade was coming steadily onward. The Irish kids were the most amazing wee people. In the freezing rain that turned to snow they just kept on dancing and playing their instruments. The crowds lined the streets and cheered. The bagpipe and drum police bands were at their finest. It was a truly great tribute to the spirit of the glorious land of poetry and song.

I'd bought tickets for Cheapskate ,the West End charity fund raiser weeks before. It was being held at the West End Community Centre Skating Rink. So next I found myself in kilt on rental skates on the ice for the first time in nearly 20 years. It was a terrific turn out with fabulous chilli and hot chocolate. A couple of the group were spectacular skaters and one in particular was flying high in the air doing magnificent leaps and turns. If I'd not worn my kilt I might have tried to emulate their pirouetting performances but modesty prevailed.

An hilarious auction followed. Priceless items from the "L word" show coupled with a Joe Average piece were mixed in with other donated ketch. One man or woman's junk became another's prize. I got caught up in the spirit of the thing and left with a bowling ball.

Carrying the bowling ball home on the scooter was a challenge but the sun had come out and the roads were no longer slippery.

Now my body cries out for a warm bath. Maybe there I'll remember why I bid on a bowling ball. No one else did.

Wet Reserves and Dry Reserves

Wet and Dry Reserves
By William Hay, MD

There are still those who believe that the disease of alcoholism is a sympton and not a cause. It is an idea that remains prevalent in some psychiatric circles which believe that alcohol is a “self medication” of mood disorder.

That it is an immediate acute temporary central nervous system depressant is not questioned by those who believe instead that chronic use, that is alcohol abuse and dependence are primary illnesses.

In the 80’s I had the great fortune to go to work with Dr. Jack Hildes. He was the head of Community Medicine at the University of Medicine but more reknowned for beginning the Northern Medical Unit http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/medicine/units/northern_medical_unit/which provided medical services to northern Canada. The Circumpolar Health Conferences which brought together the global care givers in the Arctic and Sub arctic areas was just one of the projects that Dr. Hildes was involved in initiating. He received the Order of Canada, the country’s highest award for his work in medicine.

Part of my work involved flying into northern Manitoba Indian Reserves, predominantly Cree or Ojibway nations, isolated from cities and towns by vast forests impermeable to roads except in winter when ice roads were built and supplied year round by planes.

The people of these reserves, some of my finest teachers and the warmest deepest humans a young man could care to encounter also had tremendous senses of humor and reserves of patience. They had long dealings with the white man and were never sure with good reason to wonder if any of his gifts weren’t yet another attempt to finally complete the genocide begun with the Indian Wars and following reserve movements.

“You’ll see the difference between the wet reserves and dry reserves when you fly into them, “ Dr. Hildes said. “You’ll also see the lead encephalopathies that come with gas sniffing by the children. “

I would fly north out of Winnipeg for most of the day in an old DC3 which I could have sworn had seen time in the war. I began going into the reserves I want to focus on when the snow was thick on the ground, up to one’s waist if you stepped off beaten paths. I wore a heavy blue nylon parka with a fur lined hood, down filled boots, and wore long johns under jeans and sweaters. I always had thick mitts and a wool toque and red scarf. I think the Northern Medical Unit paid for that parka which I bought at the Hudson Bay Store. My medical bag was a part of the packsack I carried with a light weight down sleeping bag I’d been taught in survivor training provided by the Northern Medical Unit was the best defense against a plane going down.

The DC3 was loud and usually I was the only passenger, though I once shared my window with a highly irritated infrequent flyer half german shepherd half wolf returning from a Veterinary visit to the city. He sort of joined me on take off and growled when I shifted under his weight. I don’t think he liked the view. The rest of the plane was filled with supplies. We were the sole passengers. He stayed on my lap till the co pilot came back to see if I wanted an instant coffee in a Styrofoam cup. He was able to convince the dog that I was perhaps not the sole reason for his predicament. The co pilot gingerly encouraged him to return to the floor. I had long ago completed my exam of the canine teeth and curled lip reflex so was most grateful for assistance.

“The Indians vote themselves whether the reserve is going to be dry. No one can bring in liquor after that. They don’t much bother the doctors and nurses and pilots since mostly they’re on the Hudson Bay lands where the store is. “ Dr. Hildes told me.

This reserve I flew into was a dry reserve. It could have been Little House on the Prairie. The streets were clean. All the children were well dressed. I attended the clinic and other than those illnesses peculiar to the region, like frostbite, and diabetes, the overall picture of health was no different really than that in the rural town I’d previously done family practice.

If anything the people were happier and there was a simple friendship network. Most folk went to church. The schools ran and after school hockey and other team games were important. There were volley ball games by the adults in the gymnasium in the evening and lots of good music with guitar and violin. Country and western songs were favoured by the Indians there. Johnny Cash was king.

I enjoyed my work there, doing home visits, getting my hot percolated coffee fresh from off the top of the big stoves used to heat the cabins. I’d see cuts and scrapes and listen to the chests of the old folk with my stethoscope. The nurses who did nurse practitioner work in the clinics served as doctor often. I as the doctor traveled to several different reserves by bush plane or ski doo and in summer by open boat with the evinrude outboards. The reserves were always on lakes or rivers having developed when the canoe was the main transportation. Trapping, hunting and fishing were still the main activities of the men though construction and some forestry was going on.

What was remarkable was the sister reserve. When the main reserve voted to go dry a few hundred folk decided they weren’t ready to give up alcohol.

“I remember being frightened around the men. When they were drinking with my aunt my grandfather told us to hide. There were 3 of us girls, all friends. We must have been maybe 5 to nine years old. The men would come stumbling after us. It was sexual. My aunt was raped. I heard her screaming. They were all drinking. Sometimes we hid under the bed but mostly we had to hide in the bushes.” She was a lot older when she was able to talk about those days.

“Henry was just hanging there. I found him out by the river. He’d been drinking. We’d all been drinking. I had my knife and cut him down before I went to get the others.” The young man told me that story back in the city in the psychiatry ward. He’d been diagnosed schizophrenic before there were cross cultural psychiatrists who recognized that PTSD was pretty well endemic in the wet reserves. Those whose lives were compounded with the Residential Schools experiences were worse.

I would walk across a bridge about a mile or so from the main reserve. The families who opted to stay wet had just moved a mile or so away. They just didn’t go over to the main reserve when they were drinking because that was the rules. The Indians in general were pretty good at following their own rules but not too particular about white man rules.

When I had clinics the folk would come from both reserves but when I began doing house calls with the nurses I really got to see the way it was. The nurses did all the public health. They were a dedicated rare breed of women, often from as diverse locales as Britain or Australia. Some Americans but mostly Canadians who faced all manner of hardship but lived to care for the people. They taught me a lot.

“Annie would have come to the clinic but she’s been feeling so poorly that she would have been ashamed not to be seen hardly able to walk. It’s her heart that’s bothering her and I’d certainly appreciate your seeing her, though, I’m sorry she’s in the worst part of the reserve and sometimes there’s trouble.” This was as much as I’d heard this nurse say in one go. She was a doer and native herself. Hardly five feet and a real ball of energy with a heart especially for the children.

In the wet reserve, the incidence and prevalence of all the alcohol related diseases was incredibly high. The contrast was extraordinary since the main reserve shared the same genetics and the only difference that could be seen was alcohol. Heart diseases, diabetes, pneumonias, liver diseases, skin infections, sexually transmitted diseases. All of them were over represented. The greatest tragedy was the children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

When I came across the bridge and walked along the snow packed trail between the scrub spruce and fir I got to the first of the shacks. All around the outside of the shack was garbage. This was typical of all the houses here. The dogs who were everywhere go into the garbage bags and spread the waste. Nobody bothered to carry it the extra steps to the containers. They just threw it out the back door.. Pea cans, milk cartons, plastic plates, all strewn across the white snow.

Further on there was a shack which had half the wall missing. It had been abandoned though the rest of the building and the roof at least looked relatively new.

“What happened, “ I asked.

“Some men were there. They ran out of wood for the fire. They were drinking. They just took the wood from the walls.” She said as we walked and her breath formed white mist with the cold.

“How come you’re outside, Elvis.” She asked the little boy we found coming around the corner to the main street. He was kicking at the snow and shivering.

“They’re having a party at my place.” He said, looking down. Behind him the music from the house was loud and it was only 10 am. Hard to tell when the party on the wet reserves began. Often they went on for a day or two, binge drinking being the normal pattern.

“Come along with us, we’re going down to Annies. She’d like to see you.” She said to him, putting her hand on his hooded head and bringing him along with us.

Annie’s was at the end of the houses and just to the back of f the main road. She wasn’t able to get up and the public health nurse just opened the door telling her in her own language that she’d brought the doctor.

Annie was in her seventies lying in bed breathing poorly but smiling to see us. She was covered in blankets and when I went to examine her I found she was wearing four dresses. Her pulse were weak and her blood pressure abnormal. There were a lot of rales and crackles in her chest. Her heart sounds were tachycardic and hyperdynamic. I got under all the blankets to press her feet and watch the slow filling of the imprints of my fingers tell tale signs of edema.

She was in classic congestive heart failure and luckily I had some lasix along. I started her on this and went on to discuss the rest of the treatment with the nurse who would continue it after I left for the next reserve. I sometimes wonder today if I’d just treat confidently on clinical findings and not get ekgs and chest xrays which of course weren’t available within hundreds of miles. Even if I’d wanted them, mostly the old folk weren’t keen to leave and go to the city. Annie never did learn to speak English though you could tell she understood more than she let on.

When I stepped out of the cabin I felt good. The little boy had stayed with Annie and the two of them were happy drinking the tea the nurse had made while I was doing my examination. We’d had ours before leaving and shared cookies with the boy who asked so politely and shyly if he could have two. The nurse didn’t refuse him and Annie smiled sitting up in her bed.

I’ve always loved medicine and healing but these cases were the ones where you saw the results immediately. There was the community intervention with the boy and then the medical miracle of Annie. She was already perking up by the time we left and she’d be up and about doing her house work when the nurse visited the next day. I felt like the doctor hero for a moment because quite frankly often the work is drudgery with the results only apparent over time.

That’s when the 3 young drunk bucks appeared round the corner. They were stumbling drunk.

“Hey, look it’s a white guy” one said

“Kill the whitey, “ said the next.

“You’d better run, “ the nurse said beside me and next thing I’d gone from hero doctor to fleeing doctor running alongside this nurse who despite her short legs was going full tilt.

“Get to the chief’s house, the last one on this side, Go.“ she said. I continued to run while she turned and ran straight into the belly of the biggest guy in the middle bowling him over, the two of them sprawling in the snow.

The other two slowed up for only a second and then I heard, “Kill the whitey again” I heard a bottle break against a cabin wall and they were coming after me again. I ran faster to the chief’s banging on the door until this drunk little guy came out. The two guys had stopped short of his veranda.

“Who are you, “ he said. “I’m the doctor.”

“Go away boys, he’s the doctor.” He slurred. The guys didn’t move so the chief pulled me in. “You stay awhile here, They’ll go away soon.”

All around the cabin there were bodies in various states of inebriation and a couple of the women were lying on the bed half undressed.

“Want a drink,” he asked.

“No, thanks, “ He stood staring at me after that and sort of wavered forward and backwards

The public health nurse came in at that point and said it was okay to come out.

“What were you doing tackling the big guy,” I asked as we walked back over the bridge.

I know him from when we were children. He’s wouldn’t hurt me. He just doesn’t like white men. Drunk he’s violent. He just got out of the penitentiary for manslaughter.” She said as we trudged in the snow.

Violence, death from freezing in the snow, medical complications of alcohol, substance abuse with gasoline sniffing and a regular Peyton Place of STD’s made the wet reserve a kind of Dante’s Inferno compared to the Home Sweet Home Little House on the Praire main reserve.

I just always wished my colleagues who never diagnosed alcoholism could have seen this contrast. Maybe then some of the 40% of people who are in hospitals as a consequence of drinking and the 75% of people in the jails could get the kind of medical treatment which would address their primary problem and give them hope for a normal life.

Even when the reserves went dry the bootleggers would still fly planes full of booze and land them just outside the reserve limits. In spite of this and the Hudson’s Bay wanting to profit selling alcohol and the government always happy to benefit from the taxes made off liquor the dry reserve movement keeps happening. It’s the foundation of the empowering of the Indian movement that lead to the profound changes in the 80’s and 90’s in the Indians achieving self government.

As long as the Indians were drunk the government could manipulate them, Iguess.

Maybe if the country as a whole could take a lesson from the Indians we’d see some improvement in government, I thought. Certainly the denial about the profound medical and social costs of primary alcohol abuse and addiction would be addressed.

I’m just thankful that I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Jack Hildes Northern Medical Unit and see first hand what a people could do for themselves and how prevalent. extensive and ubiquitous alcohol problems and addictions are.

I recently heard one colleague call it the “great masquerader”. It presents as trauma, seizures or heart disease but it’s really just alcohol. Kind of like infections which spread through the body and give rises to rashes and fevers and many separate things that the good clinician recognizes for what it is. Alcohol does this in the body but its most profound effect for me is at the community level and in men’s thinking about alcohol and addiction. Pretty soon whole communities live in denial about drugging and drinking. Sometimes even the medical profession chooses to ignore the problem.

Maybe it will just go away. Maybe it won’t.

Puppy Love

Puppy Love
By William Hay
I felt it was time to write of love. Not the love I know today that is jaded as a nation, sanquine with age and brittle. Even my soul today seems like an autumn leaf and the love I speak of is springtime fresh.
It was college of course. Something about higher education and meeting the dreams of parents and societies in that fantasy world of adult kindergarten. It’s called the ivory tower and the climbers still believe in rainbows and pots of gold. It’s also very intellectual and the hormones are begging to have a part in the great debates that change children and history.
Her hair was long and blond in the way wheat is. Her teeth were white as midsummer clouds. It was the fall semester and the world was changing colour. A north wind was blowing and leaves were chasing each other on the streets between the passing cars. I wore a navy double breasted pea jacket but had never been to sea. It was an age of costumes.
Her legs were infinitely long and she was slim and laughed so easily. Her pert breasts lifted as her back arched. Her face was radiant.
I don’t know if I fell in love with her when I first saw her because it seemed thereafter I never had not loved her. It was a sacred love. Eternal in it’s beginning and never ending in the end. Somewhere in between I was forever lost in the middle as so often happens when the intensity of the present precludes all thought of any other matter. Little mattered but to see her and to be with her.
It’s hard to believe in retrospect that I continued to attend my classes though as she shared several it was no great chore that my attendance was spectacular in those. I did however look less at the professors and chalkboards than I did at the nape of her neck . I always sat some seats behind her so the profs perceived my forward gaze as interest in equations or the arcane words they’d scribbled on their chalk boards.
When she sat in class I watched with fascination as her wool skirt rose exposing more of her strong athletic thigh. And if she spoke in class, asking a question after raising her exquisite hand and sculptured arm, my heart fairly sang. When ever I came near her I felt flushed and worried others might notice me blushing. If I had a tail it would have wagged uncontrollably at her approach.

I knew I was being silly. It was acute anquish to have the feelings of childish desire cascade and tumult inside a thoroughly adult body in a very meaningful and serious environment . I was studying to be a doctor and it was deeply disturbing to feel such oscillating emotions. At first my feelings soared just to see her but then I struggled for days to approach her because my nervousness around her quite overwhelmed my faith that in her presence I’d be able to speak.

With practiced casualness I sought her company after class one day and walked with her and then talked with her and tried to leave a memorable impression by joie de vivre, interest and humor. I was dressed in a blue suit and carried a brown brief case having to work after class unlike the other students dressed in studied dishevel.
Later she’d laugh and tell me that her friends called me, “super geek”. I had horn rimmed glasses and was studious and top in the class but never considered myself a ‘geek’. Feeling ever so ignorant , it came as a surprise that the latest costume of student was worn so convincingly.
But then I never thought that she was a ‘party girl’ and that ‘geek’ was her term for the title of ‘scholar’ I so aspired to. There were early clues. In the background the relationship might have heard the horror audience screaming, “don’t go in the shower!” But we weren't listening.
That name calling would be the root of the first argument we’d have lifetimes later older than Moses.
I was heavy. She was light as gossamer. I was the troll to her fairy angel. And the beauty of her lifted the soul within me but I could never rise so high and frivolously as she did with tinkling laughter and whimsical charm so reached desperately in the end. Running back and forth like a dog that has the mistress' scent but but cannot leap an insurmountable barrier. I had such short legs for my long body.
I remember her face like Lana in Doctor Zhivago. She is wearing a brown fur hat and long tan sheepskin coat with high suede boots. It’s outside the ancient brick of the university entrance where a great stone had been placed to commemorate history. At 6 feet I’m taller by only inches and she is looking up at me with fathomless eyes as snow falls around us. We may as well be little people in an upturned bowl of falling feather snow in a quaint forever tourist scene. It’s such a stationary moment of night and lighting. A brass street lantern had been installed not so long ago to replace a glaring neon light that kept away rapists but made the university look too much like a factory.
She is waiting as I am bending to kiss her. Our lips meet and I am never alone again and there is no more fear in the world and the feel of her in my arms beyond my parka and her coat is something purely wonderful. I have found a home. I hold her as cherished and precious while feeling strong beyond my years. This paradox of vulnerability and immortality would suddenly come alive to never leave me.
Later I would smell her perfume on my scarf and return to it over and over again as I wrote some long forgotten essay. There is really nothing I remember of those months of meeting but her. Every image of classrooms or halls is of her coming around a corner or her sitting there so poised. There must have been reels of tapes in memory banks of halls and classrooms and cafeteria moments when she was not there but they are all pushed aside by the details of the moments with her. All I ever recall is whatever she wore in those environments. Reality seemed an extension of her elegant attire.

Perhaps that came from reading Vogue. She loved that magazine and her clothing emulated the finest Paris haute coiffure in the little Canadian country town. It wasn’t really anything then but before I knew Paris, London, New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo and LA it was my only city.
Not long after that kiss everything became ours and I stopped to think of myself in any way but as ourselves. I don’t know that she ever did. I just assumed it like I assumed so much in that brief encounter with deity. A kiss can leave a trail of joy and tears.
In retrospect to her I must have seemed like a love struck puppy. I am quite sure I never humped her leg. I may well have drooled on her dress. I'm sure I messed her lipstick and mascara. We argued about such things. But when she showed me the pink leash and the lock for the cage I ran away to the northern timber and eventually went to sea. I might have noticed earlier had she not given me treats for doing tricks and carried me lovingly as she did, in her purse to the parties.
Sometimes when I’m alone howling at the moon I think of her. Scratching at the mange, I remember her forever young and beautiful . The scent of her remains indescribable.

Jesus the Jew

Jesus the Jew
By William Hay

It is lovely here in the courtyard of Christ Church. Church bells are ringing somewhere in the distance. Nearby in the palm tree there are birds singing. Across from me the Cathedral is a great artifice of shite stone spotted with age, a monument to man built for the love of God. The stained glass windows proclaim the message of the risen Christ.

It was built to bring the message of Jesus to Jews. Most Jews are secular and wouldn’t think calling oneself a Jew was a religious matter any more than my calling myself a Canadian is a religious matter.

Jesus was a religious Jew. At 12 he was a scholar and wonder child. Religious Jews don’t doubt him. Like the Moslems they believe he was a prophet of God. Jesus knew he was a Jew and this church and it’s ministry is to tell Jews that he was their own and his teaching was for them as much as for us.

I’m a Gentile. I’ve never thought of myself as such. It’s not the way I conceive of myself but here in the Holy City it’s the way I’m seen. Here you are Gentile, Jew, Moslem, or other. Yesterday I had the queer notion that they really ought to extend these walls a bit to the east and invite a Hindu temple and Buddhist Shrine and maybe an North American Indian sweat lodge.

There’s so much dissension over the little things here. But like Jesus it seems that all I talk to are mostly religious here and believe in one God. He’s out there somewhere and no one claims as close a relationship as Jesus does but as long as he doesn’t interfere with business he’s alright with most. Most pray for his intersession when things aren’t going right.

With the unrest between Palestine and Israel and the effect on tourism, the merchants in the markets have grown just a bit more religious. Religion thrives in times of stress and we don’t think of God much when our bellies are full and our loved ones surround us. We’re a race more prone to complain than praise. Whether we’re Arab, Indian, European, American or whatever that’s the nature of the beast. Blessing and worship and sacrifice and celebration even aren’t easy to come by as irritability, discontent and complaint. The very moment I have something I’ve longed for I want something more.

Jesus likened us to children and God to a parent. Jesus as a Jew drew his teachings from the Torah of his day. Here the vicar is a Jew. An Anglican jew who has become a Christian priest and is fond of saying that were Moses to return to day he’d no more recognize Judaism, than Mohammed would recognize Muslim or Jesus, Christianity. It’s a fact that these are historical grown religions that have expanded to be available to all mankind.

Black hari Krishna today stand in line next to Caucasian Native Sun Dance worshippers and we all try to forget our roots and seek to understand the roots of our chosen religion.

At Christ Church they know that Jesus was a Jew. So there’s the symbols of Judaism everywhere and after talking to Neil the Vicar I’ve picked up an Essential Talmud in hope of understanding Jesus better.

Here in Jerusalem its folly to be antisemetic. The priest in the little town of Chilliwack back in Canada who I first made a confession too had a sign above his door, “I work for a Jewish Carpenter.” If you really want to understand Jesus, the Historical Jesus, maybe not the Christ as opposed to the Messiah, then Judaism is simply the place to begin.

At dinner I talked to a Christian American Jew from the US as I listened to the new Messianic Music in the background.

Now the church bells are ringing and the birds are singing. Praise is music in whatever language and here they praise God in so many different tongues that I can only wish that all the religions of the world would congregate together and learn how to live in peace. While I a Gentile worship Jesus, a Jew, I really could use a sweat lodge with this Israeli Palestine conflict in the background or for that matter wish to have a student of Gandhi talk to the folk now meeting in Washington about the young men who I saw standing so courageous and afraid at the border crossing in Jericho. Why is it always young men?

I pray that Jesus’ sacrifice wasn’t for naught. I pray that Jews and Arabs and Christians and Canadians and all the people of the world can find peace in this time. I pray that others can come here as I have and smell the fresh fragrance of the flowers in the early morning and hear the bells and the birds sing. I pray we can all join in worship and seek the peace that Jesus taught and learn the laws of Moses as we walk as Gentiles, Arabs, Jews, Indians, Americans or whatever. I’m trying to stand erect here. I want to stop crawling and walk upright. And I know that’s so hard to do when bullets are flying.

May words of peace and love be in all hearts today. I know that’s what Jesus would have wanted. I know that’s what Arabs and Jews alike want. It’s what I want. The bird songs and the smell of flowers and the soft light of dawn all speak to that hope.

Intelligent Design

I just wanted to say something about Intelligent Design. When people hear about Evolution and Darwinism they seem to lack a fundamental understanding of the way science works. There are facts and there are theories. The term 'thesis' refers to an argument in favour of a particular position or idea. "Anti thesis" refers to the counter position. "Synthesis" follows as an appreciation for both points of view in which the best of thesis and antithesis are welded into a new robust idea. Science rests quite firmly on the three pillars of empiricisim, materialism and determinism. This does not mean that this is all there is to science. Science is much more than that but the three pillars are a foundation and a guide to the formation of theory. Deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning were further considerations in the development and provision of evidence to support ideas. Predictability was similiar to prophecy in that proof was evidenced by the recognition of universal physical laws. Gravity seemed to apply to Newton's apple and the house cat tossed through the air.

Empiricism simply meant that an idea was testable and reproducible in the physical sense. Determinism suggested that there were laws of cause and effect at play rather than fate alone per se. Religious argument in contrast began with faith or experience and then explained this based on a set of a priori evidence (factors agreed on beforehand). Indeed without faith it's rather difficult to have a religious experience. And having a religious experience makes it rather difficult to live again without faith. Also if I don't believe in something I'm rather less likely to experience it. In contrast science tends to explore the world with a 'hypothesis' or a mere working idea. The trouble with Evolution is that it became a religion for some supposed scientists. When astro physics demonstrated the age of creation, a fact to most scientists, this fact as facts are want to do royally pissed off the religionists of traditional religious ilk and modern scientist religionists.

The age of Creation was clearly not 7 days as it literally said in the Bible suggesting that perhaps that was a metaphor. Equally the fixed age of creation was too short for evolutions favourite notion that man was an advanced monkey. All computer programs to date show that no monkey could produce Bach based on Darwinian evolutionary principles in the limited time of creation. The greatest scientists of the modern age Newton and Einstein were both religious men. C.S. Lewis said that looking for god in creation was like looking for the architect in the wall of a building. The best we can see was the so called 'footprints'.

Intelligent design merely suggested an alternative to random unintelligent development of the earth based on only man's idea. Maybe there was some other idea or intelligence. This was not disimiliar to the religious cross roads of the Copernican Revolution. Evolution religionists would put man at the centre of the universe and say that he was alone and as much a product of random sorting of forces that popped out us humans and disconnected from all else. Indeed human consciousness may well be a mistake. They also have faith that there is no soul though they've clearly not disproved a soul. They represent the old church that said the sun revolved around the earth.

In contrast Intelligent Design suggested a higher power had some influence on the process possibly speeding up evolution in some way even to make monkeys play Bach. It was an inspired universe or a sacred one in which the earth revolved around the sun.

One was egotistical and perhaps arrogant while the other, Intelligent Design, was more truly scientific in that it puts forward an explanation which interestingly was supported by modern String Theory the latest and greatest of physics theories to date. String Theory didn't say there was a higher power but rather that there was room for one or more importantly that science could not say there wasn't one.

Intelligent Design was therefore a humble but robust post modern theory. The higher power could be Yahveh and Jesus or Krishna perhaps or a dead Elvis for all we knew scientifically. It was just an idea that let real scientists get back to the true job of studying the universe and not denying the existence of God which science never was in the business of doing. Science was truly agnostic and individual scientists were historically allowed the religious freedom to be theist, aethiest or agnostic. For whatever reason overnight a base political revolt occurred in science in which Darwin was no longer seen a scientist but rather a new prophet or some might say the Christ of this new scientist religion. As corporate politics intervened, the doors of science were literally locked threatening a new dark age until Intelligent Design opened the doors and restored religious freedom to scientists.

While I am a Christian I'm also a scientist. I can envision a world of Intelligent Design that has a Men In Black layer with a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy flavour all within String Theory but nonetheless ruled ultimately by a loving God with Jesus as son. It's a multidimensional computer age idea that's a bit beyond the mundane mechanical and darwinian explanations that appeared to work well within species but lacked interspecies validity. Darwinism was imaginative a century or so ago but while the mechanisms and processes of evolution continued to have validity it just simply didn't serve as a God killer. Indeed, if God were to be killed, God wouldn't be God. Even the son of God rose again and the soul was immutable.

However as the Buddhists say, go ahead, if you meet God on the road kill him. Enough said of Saint Darwin. I'm going to enjoy this Easter in peace.