It must be spring..

There's a definite spring in the air here in the UK, the average temperature is rising, there are the first inklings of buds on the trees and soon we'll be seeing the first shoots of daffodils and crocuses emerging to meet the equinox in a few weeks. As the season progresses I'll be looking forward to the many milestones on the road to Summer, seasonal rack of lamb with a herb crust and tasty Pauillac, lighter evenings, carpets of woodland flowers and that quintessential sign of renewal, the call of the cuckoo.

For those not familiar with the life cycle of this bird it's a fascinating story, many millennia ago evolution for this species took a branch which lead to a path of parasitism. At some point in history it became more efficient (survival-wise) for cuckoos to fool other birds into expending the effort to continue their kind rather than the harder work of carving their own furrow. An evolutionary arms race has ensued ever since, with Cuckoos becoming ever more adept at exploiting their hosts as their hosts become ever more adept at recognising the imposters. There are many kinds of cuckoos and many different shades and hues of exploitation; here in the UK the cuckoo chooses hosts from our own native species and makes many adaptations to local habits and conditions, birds such as Robins, Dunnocks, Reed buntings and various finches all play host to the parasitic and destructive cuckoo. The parent cuckoo will alter the colour of it's eggs to better mimic the eggs of the host, the cuckoo will also adopt some of the habits of the host species, who will willingly sacrifice themselves in their endeavours to feed the ever ravenous and unfeasibly greedy cuckoo chick. Some cuckoos even learn suitable responses to the alarm calls of the particular host species that raised it and for example, female cuckoos raised in Robins' nests will continue the exploitation within their host community by specifically seeking out Robins for their own broods.

In the end all this mimicry and faux cultural assimilation leads to one outcome, the continuation of the cuckoo line at the fatal expense of the host. Of course it's important to understand that there's no malice involved, the cuckoo is not planning these outcomes it's a slave to genetic programming, the evolution of the cuckoo is not predetermined by cuckoo's it's guided by the forces of natural selection, all it would take to bring the whole pack of cards tumbling down for the cuckoos would be some tiny but pervasive switch in say the egg colour of a host or perhaps it's feeding habits, selection would do the rest.

Imagine if the power of parasitism wasn't arbitrary, imagine if the evolutionary arms race between parasite and host was being analysed and pre-empted by an intelligent force, now imagine that the parasite is the Catholic church and the host is you! Check out this story on the BBC Web site and think about the cuckoo.

So what do I think we have here, the way I see it we have an unfalsifiable, dogmatic, traditionalist and authoritarian system claiming to be interested in advancing the cause of science, yes science, the system of thought that rejects the supernatural, disregards ideas simply because they are traditional, abhors dogmatic and unquestioning acceptance of unfalsifiable ideas and seeks to discover the universal truths of reality wherever the data leads, rather than pre-conceived imaginary ones aligned to the self interests of a few.

The Catholic church has been at war with science ever since the enlightenment started it competes with it to define our reality; this is well known and well documented and I don't need to repeat the many examples and evidence here some of which are mentioned in the article. My sense of this is more simple, are we going to swallow the deception and feed the insatiable imposter or take the more rational approach, i.e. kick the egg out of our nest and let the cuckoo take it's chances and prove its worth by supporting itself.