I listen to Melbourne breakfast radio every morning. Each day at work is a different station, but as my partner and I are waking up, having our morning coffee, breakfast, and getting dressed we listen to the Triple M radio show 'Triple M's Hot Breakfast With Eddie McGuire'.
Eddie is a very smart, very successful man. He grew up in one of Melbourne's poorer suburbs but now has an estimated net worth of about $55 million. Not too shabby.
Eddie also happens to be president of the football club I support, Collingwood. I think he's fantastic. Someone to aspire to. Someone who's done wonderful work for the community. He's also a Catholic. Well, at least, he was raised one. I'm not sure how committed he still is to the ancient religion.
But that's not what bugs me. I know a lot of Catholics and most of them share my surname. (or at least they or their mother's once did).
No, what bugs me is that each spring Eddie says something along the lines of 'It's like it gets to the last week of September and God flicks a switch and the weather improves'.
Now if you're reading this from the northern hemisphere, keep in mind that September, October, and November are spring in the southern hemisphere. Things do start to improve a little at the start of September but it's really towards the end where winter is truly gone and spring is truly with us.
'God flicks a switch'. It bugs me for a couple of reasons. First of all, there's a VERY reasonable and understandable reason for why the weather improves (providing you think sunny skies and warmer temperatures are an improvement) in spring. (I'm not going to go into details, because if you're reading this, I'm going to go ahead and assume you're fully aware of the axial tilt of Earth and the implications that has on the weather).
Second of all there's this absoluteness about it that suggests god is real. The analogy is about god flicking a switch - IE there's an almost sudden change in the weather. The 'God' flicking a switch isn't part of the analogy. It's an assumed fact.
So on one hand it's completely disregarding the science behind climate and how it works and on the other it's making the unfounded assumption that god is real. Neither of these things are good for critical thinking and learning about the world, the universe, and how it works.
As I said, it's a tiny thing, but for some reason, it really gets under my skin!
