There’s More Than One Way Of Saying I Love You- featuring Lucy Stimpson- Maynard and the Mustard Seed Soul Band from the album Uplifted recorded and produced by Bob Ross

First an explanation of why COP26 is so called – COP stands for Conference of the Parties, and was attended by countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – a treaty agreed in 1994. The 2021 meeting was the 26th meeting, which is why it’s called COP26.
Sir David Attenborough addressed the recent conference and concluded with the following words:
It comes down to this. The people alive now, the generation to come, will look at this conference and consider one thing. Did that number stop rising and start to drop, as a result of commitments made here? There’s every reason to believe that the answer can be yes. If working apart, we are force powerful enough to destabilize our planet, surely, working together, we are powerful enough to save it. In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery. That desperate hope, ladies and gentlemen, delegates, excellencies, is why the world is looking to you and why you are here.
Sir David is an amazing 95 years of age and for so long has focused on the wonders of the natural world and more recently been vocal in support of environmental causes. Being so involved in the life of our planet I wondered what his religious believes are – it turns out that Attenborough considers himself an agnostic so he neither believes nor disbelieves in God or a god or religious doctrine. Agnostics assert that it’s impossible for human beings to know anything about how the universe was created and whether or not divine beings exist. I suppose another way of saying it is that an agnostic is someone who says that they don’t know whether there is a God or not. On the surface that would seem a very reasonable stance – not sure whether to be a believer or an atheist, so sit somewhere between the two.
Interesting, however what Stephen Gaukroger says of agnostics in his book “It Makes Sense” says of Agnosticism:
Either there is a God or there isn’t – one or the other. To the question “Are you married?” the answers “Yes” or “No” are the only two options. “Possibly” is a nonsense answer. The atheist could be right – those who believe in God could be right – the agnostic is bound to be wrong!
Imagine for a moment you are drowning at sea and two boats come to rescue you. You know that one of the boats has a bomb on it and will explode within minutes but you don’t know which. Because you know only one of the boats can be trusted you choose to stay in the “safety” of the water. Sure, enough one of the boats blows up and sinks like a stone while the other sails off to the safety of a harbour – meanwhile you drown! You were so right that only one boat was safe but so wrong to stay in the water. The option was 100% doomed to failure. At least in one of the boats you had a 50/50 chance of success. Permanently ignoring the only two options an agnostic is condemned to making the wrong choice.

Quote of the week