Norman Ralph

As I am sure many of you are aware my life has been in somewhat of a state of flux recently. New housemates, new girlfriend, new friends, new job, new starts, new found enjoyment of life etc etc all add up to something resembling upheaval in my life. I am not generally one for getting too flustered by most things, in fact it is often pointed out as a personality flaw that I tend to not to publicly experience highs or lows.

Well, I thought I would take a few moments and take some sort of stock of where I am at the moment and what I think of a few things.

I will start with my domestic situation. It has come to my attention that I tend to play quite a downer on my family, particularly my parents and that is something that does not accurately reflect my current relationships with both my mother and my father. My mother is a proverbial god send. I do not know where I would be without her. We do not agree on everything and we have been known to have some rather passionate disagreements over the years. I will say though, that we are probably as close now as we have ever been. She is my confidant and the one I seem to turn too when things are hard. I realise that she does tend to only see the worse side of me when we get together, but then I do seem to only turn to her when I am at a loss and cannot fathom any other solution. Anyway, thanks for everything you have done and probably will do over the next few years!

My father is a different matter altogether. He has been absent since I was very young and hence I have never really experienced a father-son relationship with him. To be honest, it was never something that I felt was necessary, not until I moved to Leeds and started to look at my life and try to make some head or tails of it. Since then it has been something of a rollercoaster, with a lot of downs along the way. At the moment though, there seems to be something amiss as we have barely spoken (through no lack of trying on my part) for a a few months now.

Now, onto the good news. Liz and I are flourishing. I think it is safe to say that the initial honey moon period is probably over and yet we are still as strong as ever. Which is always a good sign. I know I have a habit of jumping into these things with both feet, but I feel that if something is worth doing and caring about then its worth doing properly and with all of your heart. It brings to mind one of my favoured quotations, although the name of the quoter escapes me temporarily….”Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” It always manages to instill me with a sense of duty and inspiration to go out and achieve whatever it is I am aiming for. In summary then, I am in love.

The current friends situation is also quite rosy with no great fallings out going on or any on the horizon. I am probably not paying enough attention to all my friends across the country, but I think I am doing OK. As mentioned previously, I have found a new level of relationship with many of the people I know. Namely, Si and George. Mine and Sarann’s relationship also seems to be going from strength to strength at the moment. I am really loving living with her. I think the closeness of our working relationship over the Summer has really helped and done a massive favour for our personal relationship. I now consider her one of my very closest friends. Otherwise a lot of my friendships are as steady as they ever were and I am still loving my new housemates! It’s turning out to be a lot of fun!

I have been reading a lot this Summer, mainly around atheism and related topics. I am hoping to really get my teeth into running A-Soc this year as Secretary. I’m looking forward to taking a more active role within union politics too. I have a lot to say about a lot of things, not just religion based, although that is my area of knowledge at the moment, and I definitely feel I have a future in politics. I realise that my relatively right wing attitude can often be construed as unhelpful and unproductive in a student environment, but I feel that a lot of my ideas are fairly central and often liberal in nature. I am very much a centre-right thinking person. With traditionally conservative views on crime, punishment, immigration and capitalism. Although my views on families, homosexuality and religion are particularly liberal in stance.

In other news, I am looking forward to Solfest in August, going to prague with Liz for my birthday and the start of the new term. I can’t wait to see how my rediscovered zest for life will be transferred to my work and study environment.

Roll on the rest of Summer!

While at Sarann’s this week, I got involved in a long conversation about religion and rationalism with Kat, Sarann and Joanna.

I am a Rationalist, I belive in what I can prove. I do not believe in a god because I can define no experiment that can prove their existence independently. This means that I cannot consider myself Christian and live according to the Bible. At this stage Sarann pipes up with “Am I a girl?”, an interesting question as how can I belive Sarann is a girl without any evidence? After some debate on definition, I decided the only way to prove Sarann was a girl was by testing her chromosones. However, I act as if she were a girl without this evidence, so – as Joanna asked – why can I not believe in God existing and live my life according to the Bible without the proof? An interesting point.

I decided that, ultimately, the answer lies in the methodology of the proof process. I can define an experiment that can prove that Sarann is a female, this experiment would have repeatable outcomes that could be verified by any number of witnesses. I cannot say the same for proving the existence of a god. I think, in the end that rationalism is determined by the definitions one applies to a situation. I am rationalist and define my rationalism by saying I choose to belive that a god does not exist because there is no evidence to the contrary and that Sarann is a girl becasue there is no evidence to the contrary. Would it be wrong for the opposite to be true? I.e. could it be rational to believe that a god exists until their is proof to the contrary and that Sarann is a boy until there is proof to the contrary? I think not.

This conclusion has led me to the belief that you can be rational and religious.

Today has been fun, I say fun, I mean wierd.

Started off with a telephone call from my Mum, who has agreed to finance me until my next student loan comes in, which is always a good thing. Then had the thrill of a meeting with someone from the NHS who decided that I was relatively fit to look after myself, which is also always good!

Ended up in the Terrace with George, Kara, B, Maths Chris, Kat, Matt, Si, Izzy, Chris and Michelle over the evening – there was much coming and going! I hadn’t been out drinking in ages, so decided to quaff a few pints of Guinness as it is still £2 a pint after St. Paddy’s day. As I got tipsier and tipsier I started to chill out quite a lot, which I have really needed after all the stress of the last few weeks and months. Michelle, Chris and I ended up back at Chris’s as usual, with guest appearances from a drunken B and a seriously pissed off Maths Chris.

The topic got onto freewill, something I feel very strongly about, especially as I do not believe that it is possible to have an omnipotent “creator” and free will. Hence my atheism! After a long debate and various metaphors ranging from breakfast cereals to video players we eventually agreed to disagree. Me and Chris still maintain that free will cannot exist within a theistic belief system and Michelle still thinks it is compatable – although I think we raised some very interesting points for her to think about.

As it got to 3am (having been in the Terrace since 5pm) I called it a night. Just got to grab some sleep ready for my adventures tomorrow – me and Kat are off to Sarann’s for a bit of a holiday.

Night all.