Tim Minchin: So Live Page #5

That a muffin presupposes a baker,

So you must agree sooner or later,

That this proves there's a creator.

So if I put my foot in a stinker,

You'd assume the existence of a sphincter

Thus you don't need to be a great thinker

To coclude that God's a bum,

Which negates the words of Genesis 1

Which made Him out to be so much fun,

Until Adam succumbed

To temptation,

And then His only son

Got nailed to a gum,

Or the Middle-Eastern equivalent,

Which suggests that God's omniscience

Is nullified by His ambivilance,

Unless it turns out that He's impotent,

And if God can't get a boner,

I guess that explains the plethora

Of huge erections in His honour -

Because we all know a steeple's just a subconscious compensatory manifestation of a huge stiff penis -

Still He tells us that it's heinous

To stick a penis up your anus

Even if you're famous,

Even if you're good at tennis.

So you're gonna live in Paradise

With a ten-foot cock and a few hundred virgins,

So you're gonna sacrifice your life

For a ride on a UFO,

And when the Lord comes down with his big, stiff, slippery rod of judgment,

I'm gonna be the first to go,

He's gonna send me down below,

He's gonna whip me like a hoe,

Do you really think so?

I'm gonna be the first to go.

Thank you, thanks.

Thank you.

So, um. Thank, thank you.

So, sometimes, uh ...

Sometimes, 'cause material like that doesn't necessarily respect

entirely some of the, um, idiosyncracies of a couple

of major monotheistic doctines, um,

people make the assumption -upon listening

to such material- that I'm not religious myself.

Which is,uh ...

pretty spot-on.

But,

it's sort of beside the point.

I don't wanna be divisive.

You know?

And, besides, I think

I think you can be spiritual.

I think you can have a big sense of spirituality without

actually adhering to any of the major religions, um ...

As it turns out, I'm...

not at all spiritual.

Uh ...

I've just got this real sense of ...

emptiness.

But I believe in things, you know?

I believe in ...

uh, rocks.

And, um...

gravity, and uh-

And I have, like a relativist morality.

Which I can manipulate to suit my world-view.

So that I can justify group-sex.

For example,

while [?] group-prayer.

Works for me.

But you have to admit, really

ironically, I guess, given all the

religious violence in the world,

one of the things that actually binds us all,

that we all have in common, across all cultures,

and indeed all time, since the beginning of recorded thought,

is this tendency to invoke the supernatural

to help us explain those things in our lives

which we find difficult to explain

using only the evidence at hand, you know?

A modern example of this:

I saw on telly recently

a show about, um,

it was called, uh ...

I think it was 'Miracles in the Womb'.

Or, or 'Extreme Wombs', or ...

Something, 'Changing Wombs'!

It wasn't that.

And, anyway, it was about multiple births.

And a women had given birth to naturally-conceived, identical quadruplet girls,

which is very rare.

And she said:

'The doctors told me there was a one in

64 millions chance that this could happen.

It's a miracle!'

But, of course, as we know, it's not.

Because things that have a one in 64 millions chance of happening,

happen

all the time.

To presume that your 'one in 64 millions chance' thing is a miracle

is to significantly

underestimate

the total number of

things

that there are.

Maths.

It's interesting, actually, now that I live overseas,

it struck me anew, when I came back

to Australia this time, that

here, we seem-

This compulsion towards the supernatural and mystical,

seems to manifest itself, mostly, in Australia

in the presence of bumper stickers.

You know the ones I'm talking about?

They're usually purple,

and they generally imply the existence of

a benevolent spirit of some sort,

looking after us all,

especially the people who

bothered to put the sticker on their bumper.

They say things like 'The goddess is dancing', and, uh ...

My favorite probably is

'Don't drive faster than your angel can fly'.

As if, of all the possible restrictions an angel might face,

speed is the-

Unless that is proposing the possibility

of the existence of unfit angels.

And probably the one that annoys me most,

because it's most common, I think, is

- I'm sure you've all seen it-

'Magic happens'.

'Magic happens'?

They usually sparkle.

I just- I just- I don't know what it is about 'Magic

happens' stickers on cars,

but everytime I see one, I wanna get my permanent marker and

sort of sneak over and write

underneath it 'So does

cock death.'

Under which a spiritual person,

with a slightly more ephemeral marker

might choose to write something like, um ...

'Yeah, but

sometimes, the magician has to do bad magic

in order to

a) test our faith

our b) for the purpose of a greater good.'

Under which someone like me,

with their permanent marker

might choose to write something

along the lines of

'F*** off'.

Thus ending an otherwise perfectly sensible

bumper-based philosophical argument.

I have a particular religious friend I go head-to-head with,

and get very boring at dinner parties with

on these sort of big questions, and, uh ...

He always seems to think that to be skeptical

is to be cynical.

And that my view of the world sees no beauty.

Which, I always argue, is not the case, I mean-

I find the world a really exciting place.

There are ideas that are a bit more science-y

that are just as exciting as the kind of magic he

wants, you know?

Like- One of the greatest ideas of all time: evolution!

The theory of natural selection, you know?

Not only is it, um...

um ...

How do you say?

right.

I'm just practicing my timing for

my American tour.

Pause, 'right', and duck!

Duck.

Well, I mean, not only is it good science,

bu it's also really

thrilling, don't you think, this idea that an individual

of a species can be born

sort of mutated

in a good way!

And in the moment of that individual's birth that

holds within its genetic code

the potential for its entire species to take

a huge evolutionaty leap forward.

It's amazing! And I always think, what would life

have been like

being one of those individual

mutant freaks?

You know, what did the other kids think?

Imagine being the first dude ever to have feet.

I reckon that would be really tough.

And also what I wonder is, how do these individual

with their new bits, like,

how do they figure out how to use them?

Do they just stumble upon their potential purpose

one day, just accidently, you know?

Imagine you're a fish.

And you're just swimming in the ocean

with your school, and you're just hangin out,

swimming, same as always,

'cause you're

um, fish.

And suddenly, out of nowhere,

Tony

F***ing Tony

Tony just goes ...

Uh...

I'm getting out.

Yeah, I'm, uh

freezing.

You're a fish, Tony.

Yeah, well I'm a cold fish. I just wanna pop out for

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