Category Archives: skepticism

Guest post: Jim Sweeney on multiple sclerosis

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Joey| 9 Comments

Jim Sweeney, actor, writer and comedian, is probably best known to American audiences as a frequent competitor on the original British improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, alongside many of his friends from London’s Comedy Store Players. If you’re a fan of British comedy, you may also have seen him in Blackadder the Third as Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Jim, an atheist, has had multiple sclerosis for 25 years. It’s ceased his ability to continue performing on stage, but he continues to entertain on Twitter and YouTube, displaying a spirit not even close to being broken by his illness. He was very gracious to write this lovely post for Newly Nerfed about his experiences, the advice he will and won’t give newly diagnosed patients, and the link between MS and increased chocolate consumption.

OK.

You have just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Welcome to the Fellowship of the Scarred Up Nerve. You’ll find a wide variety of members ranging from those with Benign MS (or “MS Lite”, as I prefer to call it) to those of us with more hard-core taste who have chosen to skip the entrees and cut straight to the main course; Primary Progressive MS. (or “MS Special Brew”, as I prefer to call it.)

Where to begin?

Well, my eyesight became blurred in the autumn of 1985. At that time, I wore contact lenses (the Devil’s spectacles) and had just been given a new pair. My vision seemed to blur at the same time so I assumed the optician had messed up my prescription.

He had not.

Anyway, the next five years passed by in a blur (all puns intended) of consultants, tests, scans, urine samples, blood samples, tear samples (I had to sniff ammonia rather than just watch “Titanic” which would have triggered a steady flow of tears of boredom) and, the original Spinal Tap, the lumbar puncture; so good that I had two.

Finally, when there was  nothing left to prod or poke, I was told that it might be MS.

The initial shock subsided rapidly as I realised that I had actually no idea what MS meant. My neurologist had said it in a way that suggested that I should feel shocked so I looked shocked. After all, it would have been rude to behave otherwise.

It might seem incredible that I didn’t even ask him exactly what having MS would mean to my life. In those far off days there was no Internet to Google or Wikipedia to misinform you. Books? Blurred vision. Anyway, he had recommended that I got a second opinion from the specialist at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

The second diagnosis? It wasn’t MS but a rogue virus that had attacked the optic nerve. Fair enough, I thought to myself (who else would have I thought it to?) and I carried on with my life.

Over the following years as various bits of me stopped working, I realised that it probably was MS, although I still did not have any real understanding of MS. Had not read anything about it, had not sought advice, had not visited the doctor and had proved Mr. Pocock to be right; I was not academically minded.

Basically, I wasn’t in denial, I was in blissful ignorance.

However, MS decided to make its presence felt and lovely leg spasms arrived on the scene to encourage me to visit a doctor or increase the medicinal marijuana. After a few weeks of serious medicinal marijuanaing and its inevitable byproduct heavy chocolate abuse, I waved the white flag, picked out the Mars bar wrappers and tried to remember a) Who I was b) Where I was c) What it was I was going to do next.

Eventually, I made it to the doctor’s surgery and was welcomed as the prodigal patient. They didn’t sacrifice the fattened calf or throw a great banquet in celebration but they did throw open the medicine cabinet.

They also offered me Botox. Quite how walking around with a dead forehead was going to kill my MS, I didn’t know but if it’s good enough for Ann Robinson…
It turned out that they wanted to inject Botox into my legs: numb the nerve, stop the spasm. It worked for a few months but gradually the effects diminished. Also, it was disturbing because my legs looked younger than the rest of my body but were incapable of displaying any emotion. Back to the medicine cabinet and its anti-spasm tablets.

…and today? My eyesight is still blurred but the MS put its foot down and raced through the rest of my body so that my days are spent being hoisted from bed to wheelchair to commode to bathroom to bed etc. It took a quarter of a century but now I am a fully paid-up member of the housebound brigade with my trusty team of carers.

Advice? You will be swamped by a tidal wave of advice so I’m not going to pass on any pearls of wisdom. Diets? Drugs? Meditation? Surgery? Whatever works for you although marijuana does relieve leg spasms, helps me sleep and has opened my eyes to a world of luxury chocolate that has to be explored.

Actually, there is a piece of advice that I pass on to anyone and everyone but it certainly keeps me afloat. I’ll leave it with you now as well as reminding you that MS is an unwelcome houseguest but it is your house. If it wants to take over the running of the house, make it work for it.

Anyway, (drum roll) here’s my well considered piece of advice:

Each and every day, grab life by the ears and French kiss it to the ground.

Works for me.

(Photographs by Andy Hollingworth and Andrew Crowley)

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Seizing the day

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Joey| 5 Comments

The other day I was watching a Nova episode called “What Darwin Never Knew,” about how modern science is helping us to better understand the process of evolution. My mind wandered a bit as I thought about finch beaks and gene sequencing, when a comment suddenly brought me back to the TV: a reminder that On the Origin of Species is only 150 years old.

When I think about evolution, I think in terms of thousands, millions, hundreds of millions of years — staggering numbers. I think about fossils and living fossils, like the vampire squid, and I’m overtaken by how utterly amazing the whole thing is. But focusing for a moment on the age of the theory itself, it’s staggering in another direction to consider just how long religion has been part of human history — thousands, even tens of thousands of years.

It’s said that if you look at the age of the Earth in terms of a 24-hour day, modern humans have been here for only a scant few seconds or minutes of that day. Similarly, the theory of evolution takes up a tiny slice of religion’s “day.” How far it’s come in that amount of time, and how much further it needs to go!

For most secularists (I assume there are exceptions), evolution is a fact as solid as the combination of sodium and chloride producing table salt. But it’s also a fact now for many religious people, displacing the belief in divine creation they would have held just a century and a half ago, about as long as the saxophone has been around. This, even though it’s not nearly enough yet, is a triumph of science.

A month before I was born, an evolutionary biologist — a winner of the National Medal of Science and a Russian Orthodox Christian — published an essay, the title of which is frequently quoted as an example of how evolution and religion can coexist. His name was Theodosius Dobzhansky, and the essay is “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” It’s beautiful how the light of God, even for a believer, is not what illuminates the features of our world, but rather evolution.

I haven’t studied evolution formally or extensively, so all of this may seem derivative and/or painfully self-obvious. (To the former, I assure you I haven’t been cribbing from anyone, and the latter ought to prove it.) These are just my layperson’s thoughts swirling around election time, when the issue of who is going to educate our kids is paramount, especially given the purely incredible finding that the U.S. comes next to last in its acceptance of evolution, according to a 2005 survey of 34 countries. With the perspective of the religious “day,” though, it makes a little more sense that we aren’t further along than we are, and even seem to be backsliding at times.

A lot of people are doing a lot of work trying to encourage scientific and rational thought, and furthering the acceptance of evolution. Sometimes it seems that all the work is only chipping away at the enormous edifice of religion and creationism. But it’s the very enormity of that edifice that illustrates the success evolution has had in changing fundamental principles about how we view the world.

Maybe biologists and other proponents of evolution need more patience. I’m not saying, by any means, that we should become complacent or stop doing all that work. I believe another Enlightenment is possible, in which evolution and other principles of science win out over myth and superstition again. I don’t believe, though, that we’ll see the changes we want to see in our lifetimes, or in the next few generations — or even in the next few centuries.

So maybe it is faith that we need, faith in the process of evolution as well as the theory. Evolution is clearly the “fittest” explanation of creation on our planet, and I do have faith that one day, someday, it will survive and triumph over its opponents. It’s just going to take more than a moment of religion’s time to happen.

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I love religion

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Joey| 2 Comments

I’ve enjoyed visiting other countries, and it’s inevitable that notable houses of worship are included on the sightseeing lists. Most of those visits took place when I was college age or a little older, and the idea that I was an atheist hadn’t crossed my mind at all, although I really was one even then.

I did feel distanced from the religious history of the buildings, because most of them were Christian or Catholic and I was just starting to get more connected to my own Jewish history. But that never stopped me from being awed by the sheer dedication and artistry that went into building these monuments. When I viewed the striped cathedral of Siena or admired the unique blue stained glass of Chartres cathedral, I thought about the people who created these things so long ago, and all the immense work it took for so many years.

In a way I took a humanistic view of the buildings, although that word wouldn’t have meant anything to me at the time. Of course, yes, they were inspired by the evil Catholic church or other corrupt, money-hungry sects of whatever. That fact remains. But even though the first U.S. transcontinental railroad was partly built by what amounted to Chinese slave labor, can’t we still admire the feat?

Without religion, the requiems by Mozart, Brahms, Fauré, Verdi, and others wouldn’t exist. (Actually quite a lot of music wouldn’t exist; I’m just picking out a few.) Imagine the elimination of nearly all music from Gregorian chants to the Baroque era. Both religious patronage and inspiration helped to create that music, but I can’t imagine a world without it. In high school, I sang in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Christmas cantata Hodie, and the fact that it’s about the birth of Christ didn’t do a thing to dent the pure, amazing joy of singing that music in a beautiful hall with a full choir and orchestra.

And then there’s the enormous, secular body of literature, theatre, and film based on stories from religious texts. Okay, the world could probably live without Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, but supernatural Greek and Biblical myths alone are the basis for more of our libraries than I’d want to see disappear.

When I saw the Book of Kells, there was nothing religious to me about it. It was impossible to read, but that didn’t stop me from admiring the beautiful illumination by talented scribes. They may have been inspired by Jesus but I didn’t have to see it in that context: it was a work of art. The same went for the poster of Dali’s Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) that I hung in my apartment during college. There are many things that made me love that painting, perhaps more on the Corpus Hypercubus side than the Crucifixion side. It didn’t feel like I was putting a cross in my room; it was a work of art that moved and intrigued me.

I am not arguing against a secular society. Believe me. I hope one day there’s a place where religion plays no part at all, and science and discovery are worshiped and showered with money instead. I also think religion is generally an outdated and irrelevant system, and I’m not arguing for its promotion in the name of art.

What I’m responding to is when I hear people expressing disgust at the opulence of ancient churches or distaste for any music that has any relationship to God. To each his own. But there’s a further assertion that the world would be so much better if all that time, money, energy, and inspiration went into advancing science and knowledge instead.

That may well be true. But if we really are part of a multiverse, then there’s a version of our world where that did happen. There’s also a version where the U.S. and the Soviet Union destroyed the planet, and one where a space probe comes back infested with a hyper-intelligent sort of jam creature that goes on to form a coalition government with Madagascar.

So speculation doesn’t matter. The past is the past and this is our world. Religion has been the driving force behind shaping so much of our culture, it seems like a losing battle to ignore our history instead of at least studying it, if not embracing it. I don’t personally see the point in rejecting the masterpieces that religion inspired, and that can inspire us no matter what our own views are. I can’t agree with people who assert that religion has never brought any good to the world. Stick with your secular art on principle if that’s important to you — your choice doesn’t affect me, of course — but I can safely say I do love religion for bringing all these things into the world.

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