Went to see Dickie Dawkins last night with Alan. He rather looks up to the man - he told him, whilst having his copy of The Greatest Show on Earth signed, that reading The Selfish Gene at a time when he was also reading up on Buddhism and feng shui was a pretty pivotal moment. Me? I can't help but wonder if the man is tremendously arrogant, if only because of what andrewhickey refers to as the 'New Atheism' - people discovering atheism as something to cling to in the same way they would have Slipknot, macrobiotic diets or nihilism, and seeing it not so much as a set of theories and ideas that both critique and compliment the religious world but as a way to tell people different to oneself that they are entirely stupid. But then, I'm agnostic. I believe that there are things that science is yet to explain and that this explanation may not turn out to please the skeptics; that if there is a God, he/she/it is less theist and more humanist, creating things according to some plan or other then setting them off to do their own thing; that the Abrahamic religions believe in more or less the same God; that you could do worse than Jesus Christ as someone to look up to, and some of the religious types I have heard and seen aren't worthy to call themselves 'Christian'; that religious doctrine should allow movement and updating for the times in which we live now, rather than being the unassailable Word; that a belief in a religion is like love - you feel it or you don't and not much will change that - and finding comfort in God/Allah/Yahweh/Buddah/a large egg is a great and enviable thing, but using this as a way to tell others that they're going to Hell for not living by your rules is, well, somewhat de trop.

Anyway, it was interesting - a quick crash course on evolution. I still find it bizarre that anyone doesn't believe in evolution - besides, fossils are fucking brilliant. I left people more learned than myself to ask the questions. Amongst them was a young boy who started off by saying 'Me and my friend go to a Catholic school and we've gone from being religious to pretty hardcore atheists....,' getting a round of applause from the crowd. 'Catholic school will do that to you.' I remember even at eleven, when I thought swearing was a terrible thing and arguing with the Bible probably not far off, wondering how we knew that Greek and Roman gods weren't real but God god was, why Jesus is the Son of God but Davids Koresh and Icke were mere nutters, and most of all, the part of the Mass where we said 'it is right to give thanks and praise' - and learning what the Catholic view of many of the things which affect women's lives came later. And I didn't expect to hear from Mr Dawkins that the Bible is something worth studying as a way to understand our literature and culture if not as a way to live your life - very close to how I feel about it. Later, he spoke about how a novel's age can be pinpointed not through cultural references but through the moral compass exhibited, going on to the idea of moral values changing meaning that a book written 2,000 years ago will barely have social relevance now. Interesting stuff.

We saw the atheist kid and his friend in the queue afterward and chatted with them for a bit. Smart kids, They probably would have got expelled from my school by that point - they had a debate in class on atheism vs. Catholicism and were clearly still buzzing from the exchange. The lad who asked the question - as cute as a CBBC actor - had an ironic 'Remember Jesus Loves You' sticker fixed to his green striped jumper. I wanted to adopt him.

In the pub, Alan handed over my new spacephone. I've never had a phone on contract before, and as I have a phone which is perfectly adequate for calls and texts the thought of taking in a new one - buying into built-in obsolecence - filled me with consumer guilt. Do I *need* handheld internet? Do I want to be plugged into the web everywhere I go? What if I leave it on the bus? Am I not too chimp-handed to send coherent texts anyway? But, today I was off work as I've been diagnosed with an ear infection and felt too rough to think, and when I went out for my prescriptions, I read the Guardian on the bus with a special app that downloads everything for me to read offline, and then when I saw a book that looked good in a charity shop window, instead of purchasing it I could look it up on BookMooch and get a copy for free. I'm almost converted. Almost. Now, does anyone want a barely-used but much carried Sony Ericsson W200i?