Dyw ddim yn wneud pethau fel hyn yn aml, ond newydd glywed bod Robert Anton Wilson yn marw ac heb yr arain i dalu ei rent. Mae’n debyg bod digon o arian wedi dod i mewn i’w helpu dros dro, ond dyma dyn sy wedi helpu cymaint o bobl gyda ei lyfrau oedd yn amhosib beidio twlu bach o arian mewn i’r gronfa. Cafodd ddarllen y trioleg Illuminatus, a’r cyfres Cosmic Trigger, effaith mawr arna i pan o’n i’n ddyn ifanc, ac mae effaith dal yna yng nghefn fy meddwl dosbarth canol, parchus-i-bob-golwg.

It should be obvious to all intelligent readers (but curiously is not obvious to many) that my viewpoint in this book is one of agnosticism. The word “agnostic” appears explicitly in the prologue and the agnostic attitude is revealed again and again in the text, but many people still think I “believe” some of the metaphors and models employed here. I therefore want to make it even clearer than ever before that

I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING

This remark was made, in these very words, by John Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity on the part of most viewers. It seems to be a hangover of the medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must “believe” something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X, one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse of X.

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.

Pob hwyl, Bob, a diolch.