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April Fools Day - fishy stories - fool's errands - absurd stories told with a straight face: I suppose I could give you a learned account of the origins of 'All Fools Day' - but if I did, I'd be fooling you, because in fact its origins are lost in history. Nobody knows!
In any case, I don't suppose you would see yourself as gullible, would you? Perhaps you'd argue that you don't believe anything unless you see the hard evidence for yourself. Jesus' disciple Thomas ('Doubting Thomas') took this line - as we're told in the Bible - when he missed out on meeting the risen Jesus just after the first Easter. And when, a week later, he did see the marks on Jesus' hands where he had been nailed to the cross, he jumped to an astonishing conclusion - naming Jesus as "my Lord and my God".
If you are really suspicious about things, particularly anything you might describe as 'superstition', maybe it's because you've been brought up to think that science has all the answers, and that what science cannot prove cannot be true. Your problem, though, would then be that most scientists wouldn't agree with you. The human mind and the study of the universe don't work that way!
The problem for all of us is this: For just about everything we do, we have to act on the basis of belief - faith - rather than absolute certainty. We assume that the car will start and that the light will come on when we press the switch. We assume that other people will behave with a reasonable amount of consistency and predictability.
Trusting 'science' is just as much an 'act of faith' - or a piece of naive superstition! - as any form of religion. We have to live this way.
The most popular superstition today surely doesn't involve gods or astrology. Instead too many of us are hooked on the magic of the marketplace. If we're feeling low, we indulge ourselves with a bit of 'retail therapy'. Advertisers have conned us into believing that if we have more things, we'll feel better. Innate greed probably also plays a part! And we now seem to have a whole economic system that depends on this illusion.
Whatever else it is, this consumer lifestyle is folly - on April Fools Day and on any other! Human beings can't go on consuming as if there's no tomorrow and we don't feel better anyway!
So, if 'acts of faith' are unavoidable, how do we avoid putting our trust in something stupid? If we pretend that we are 'doubting Thomases,' the only result is that we don't recognise the possibly ill-considered acts of faith that are in fact shaping our lives. All this means that, when people tell us that human beings are clever enough to operate in a 'secular' society and not live by faith, that's probably the biggest con trick of all. Don't be April fooled!
John Cole
