365 Days In A Year = God Exists!

It’s the Sunday Tribune letter page again!

This weeks entry comes from Fr Con McGillycuddy of Drumcondra. He writes:

Richard Dawkins claims there is no God. Using common sense, anybody can prove the existence of God. Look at any device or machine and ask who first designed it? Answer: an intelligent person. Now look at the world and how it works. The earth travels on a space journey of millions of miles around the sun every 3651/4 days. This journey brings about the four seasons of the year – spring, summer, autumn and winter, which in turn result in the production of food for everyone in the world.

Even a child knows that the clock was invented by a very intelligent designer, so why deny there is an intelligent designer of the first clock invented, the one that works 3651/4 days a year, the one on which you live. It never breaks down, it never loses a minute. Some clock, some inventor.

There you have it. There are 365 days in the year, therefore God exists.

Except of course, that the concept of a 365 day year was created by men. Holy men, mind you, but men none the less. The Gregorian calendar, what we use today, came into being in 1582, and was adopted by the wider world over the centuries.

And it had nothing to do with the seasons or crop growing. It was so the festival of Easter could be more accurately marked.

Fr McGillycuddy’s view also depends on the idea of things like “seconds”, “minutes” and “hours” being divine in nature. As if God left a post-it note for Adam and Eve explaining the concept of time measurement.

The idea of an hour is first seen in place like Egypt and Sumer actually, according to the historical record.

As for the seasons, well, we all know they are only loose approximations of weather patterns. It doesn’t automatically start being sunny on May 1st and it doesn’t stop being freezing cold on January 31st. If God make that clock, he’s a bloody cowboy and we should ask for our money back.

Also! Since I love being pedantic, I’ll point out to Fr McGillycuddy that the Gregorian calender is not 365 and 1/4 days. It’s 365.2425 days. Might seem like nothing, only the calendar the Drumcondra man seems to be referring to is the Julian Calendar which is indeed 365.25.

You know, the one that Julius Caesar, a pagan, came up with.