Writing – The Other Place

Gutsy. Published in Paragraph Planet December 11, 2025.

Missed the Last Ferry. Published in Paragraph Planet October 25, 2025.

Savage Supermarket. Published in Paragraph Planet September 22, 2025.

Corner Store. Published in Paragraph Planet July 22, 2025.

Colours Don’t Exist

They’re all in your head.

Cells in your retina are sensitive to different wavelengths of light. Some more or less so in others. No one sees things in quite the same way, though close enough that someone direct another to a “red door” and others will understand, except in the case of colorblindness. Even then, people with this condition can figure out what objects are “red” by way of inference and contextual clues.

These wavelengths are interpreted as different colors by your brain.

Objects absorb and reflect these wavelengths of light that hit them. When we say an apple is red or an orange is orange, we are talking about the interpretation of absorbed wavelengths of light in the object. These wavelengths of light correspond to different colours which are measured in nanometers (nm). For example: yellow is approximately 600 nm and violet 400.

Similar to the way in which humans perceive a limited range of sound frequencies we also perceive a limited range of wavelengths of light. Other animals perceive a broader spectrum.

So, whoop dee whoo!

Religion Distorts Thinking

At the root of knowledge, you must accept certain beliefs. Within empiricism, in the use of our senses, within mathematics, logic, etcetera.

The difference being that scientific hypotheses are falsifiable and testable. A well-tested scientific theory is as close to truth as we can come. There is at least some form of evidence. Hopefully better than the possible alternatives. ¹

Not everything is currently explained by science, and some things may not be provable at all. However, science has disproven concepts that were explained by God, and if the future is anything like the past, science will disprove more concepts explained by God. God as a placeholder for things unexplained by science creates a barrier to future truths revealing themselves. As science explains more those with religious thinking will resist ideas for which there is greater evidence than God.

Is there a God?

If there is a way to prove this, I am open to the idea. All of the “evidence” of God can be explained otherwise. Show me the proof of this could only be evidence of God, and I will change my mind. Underline only. I have not seen this evidence, and I have done some looking. ^{2 3}I categorize myself as agnostic rather than atheistic because I always leave the door open to possible evidence. ^{4 5} Though, the atheistic point of intellectuals such as Sam Harris is worthy of serious consideration as well. ⁶

What does it mean to be religious?

There are different degrees of religiousness and different religions. Every religious person at least believes there is a Higher Power. ⁷ There is a supernatural element involved. Why is this belief in God more credible than the belief in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus or the belief in Magic? There is exactly as much proof (zero) in each of these concepts.

Many (but not all) religious people believe in the following:

There are a list of moral rights and wrong, and these are beyond question because they are the Word of God. God created all things. This conflicts with the thoroughly scrutinized and verifiably predictive Theory of Evolution. ^{8 9} There is an afterlife. Religious texts are the Word of God, and by extension perfect.

Can a person be essentially religious without the supernatural?

Yes. Social Justice ideology is a form of this. As John McWhorter elaborates on in Woke Racism, ideology can become religious. When I say religious in this context, I mean dogmatic. Beyond question. ¹⁰ “Believe women” is another form of this where people are supposed to take women at face value with allegations of sex assault. ¹¹ Innocent until proven guilty is the more intellectually rigorous standard (proof being the term of importance vs hearsay). There are many other forms of non-religious intellectual dogmatism, these are just a few examples. If you feel the urge to use the Karl Marx quote “religion is the opiate of the masses” cut that shit out, you cliché motherfucker! Get a more obscure and interesting reference!

We should allow religion as part of a free society. However, we should note that religious belief is a mark against their intellectual credibility. Though, it is possible someone might be intellectually rigorous, but they must be in spite of their belief, rather than because of it.

Works Cited:

Rock Collector

Danny was a rock collector. Danny would go around the neighbourhood collecting rocks. Orange red as the morning sun. Layered like a dirt cake. Jagged as an armored porcupine. He had discerning taste, not every typical stone would make the cut. He lived in a small town near the outskirts of Tuscon, Arizona. I can’t remember the name. Some dusty collection of gravel mazes not yet gridded by a city planner. The point being it was terrestrially diverse.

Mom and dad worked nights. They weren’t around after school. Danny was free to explore. It was the 80s, that’s just how you raised children. Don’t judge. Sometimes Danny would come across the things other little boys hoped to find hand guns, fireworks, porno mags. Once, he passed up a pair of nunchucks. He only had eyes for rocks. His vision narrow of focus in the way that happens when you stare at a colored pencil drawing for too long. Those cool deep purple skied evenings searching.

He would store the stones in his closet. His mother complained. What are you doing with all that gravel? You are going to give yourself asthma with all that clay dust! One summer when Danny was visiting his grandparents in Tuscaloosa, mom emptied out Danny’s collection. Danny was inconsolable for a month of dried out tears, that didn’t really wet his face. More like some painful facial contractions in the Arizona air.

It wouldn’t be long before Danny recollected. Mom found out a threw a few at Danny in frustration. Fissures in his hard head. Cracks on his pyramid.

When Danny grew up he became a boonie hat wearing geologist. He travelled the world working for various environmental research groups, archeologists and treasure hunters (the dignified name for thieves). He kept adding to his collection as he travelled the world, and finding more novel bits of the earth. His spine curved from carrying the weight. He joked that he was half-man half-mule and all hoarder. Humour turns insanity into charm. Wit dry as a tanned hide.

Finally, Danny was satisfied he found all the interesting stones after overlapping the globe’s hotspots a few times over. That is when he retired to his tannish-grey walled second floor walk up. He was looking over his collection one day. It fell over. Rattling as an earthquake. Not a stone touched him, but the tremor caused him to go into shock and get cardiac arrested.

Centuries later in a world that you couldn’t imagine a small child uncovered a fossil. The local news claimed it as an unmarked grave.