The Adventure of the Exploding Detective

In which Sherlock Holmes is blown to pieces by his own reputation.  Its a bit tongue in cheek (to say the least) and, like my last Sherlock Holmes short, more of a singular event within an adventure than an entire story

It had been a full month since the shocking re-emergence of Professor Moriarty, discovered through a slip-up by one of his subordinates (who promptly vanished).  Accordingly, it had been a full three weeks and six days since the return of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes to London, following his retirement in Surrey.
Of course, we now realised how absurd it had been for us to assume that Moriarty had himself tumbled over the falls of Reichenbach on that fateful afternoon in 1891.  The man who so famously remained off stage in his criminal dealings, personally entering into a game of combat with his arch nemesis atop a thundering waterfall?  It was now so painfully obvious that he had sent an imposter, and that my friend had never in fact met Moriarty.  Holmes had spent many sleepless nights punishing himself for what he referred to as his 'abnormally human error'.
With the accused so long assumed dead, the arduous enquiries into Moriarty's criminal career had understandably been abandoned, and the campaign process to have them reopened was proving to be slow.  So Sherlock Holmes promptly set in motion his plan to once again bring down the 'Napoleon of Crime.'  He swiftly resumed residence at our old address and managed to once again rope me into his adventure.
One afternoon, Mrs. Hudson appeared in the doorway of our Baker Street lounge, clutching an envelope marked for the attention of Sherlock Holmes.  Upon one split-second glance in its direction, Holmes immediately sprang to his feet and snatched it.
'It is him' he groaned.
'How can you be sure?' said I
'The envelope is of the same type used the last time Moriarty sent me a warning.'
'Ah yes' I replied.  'That shocking business concerning the Valley of Fear.'
'Precisely.  Let us see what my sinister pen-friend has to tell me this time.'
He opened the letter, pulled the note from the envelope and, after speed-reading it, dropped it on the table. 
'The same, unusually thick type of paper used before' he said.
It read;

In the bustling centre
Between a house of faces and its Greatest
A London Monument lights up.

'Trafalgar Square' my friend exclaimed.  'He means to blow up Nelson's Column!'
'How do you deduce that?' I asked.
' "A house of faces and its Greatest" ', Holmes repeated.  'The 'house of faces' was rather obscure to decipher, but London's greatest face?'
'Big Ben!' Said I.  'The clock face.'
'Yes.  And what other 'house of faces' could he refer to, which faces Big Ben?'
'I'm not sure.'
'It could only be the Portrait Gallery which sits on Trafalgar Square staring down Whitehall, at the clock face.  So that leaves Nelson's Column as the London Monument.'
'But why would he blow it up?' I asked.  'Its an old, unpopulated statue.  What would he gain?'
'Fear' replied Holmes.  'He's spent years in the dark, meticuously gaining the allies and assets required to pull this off.  If he can orchestrate such an attack without having been thwarted thus far, he will have secured his long-coveted reputation as the world's greatest criminal mastermind.  I have considered him such for many a year, but alas the world does not take my word as seriously as it should.'
'You are more celebrated than you think you are' I remarked.  It was true, in the many years since his emergence as the world's only consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes had gradually achieved national celebrity through his incredible crime-solving skills and my regular reports of them.  He had, by his rather old age, become something of a London Monument himself.
Holmes waved in dismissal of my compliment and turned for the door.  The long years had not dampened his youthful energy.  'One more adventure' he beamed.  'Coming, Watson?'
I followed him out of 221b for the final time and jumped hastily into a hansom that he had hailed moments before.  At that we were bounding down Baker Street post haste to Trafalgar Square.

The Square seemed calm as usual, but knowing what was imminent only served to render that calm eery and ominous.  A lone bagpiper played on at the foot of the steps to the gallery, his disjointed, airy tune adding a chilling score to our endeavour.  Holmes strode through the Square to Nelson's Column, which he then began to scrutinise from every possible angle, dropping to his hands and knees and enthusiastically feeling the stone all around, squinting through his study.  I watched in anxiety from a distance as he returned.
'Nothing' he groaned.  'No sign of gunpowder or any tampering.  How is he doing this?'
I tried in vain to supply alternative theories.  'Perhaps the explosives are inside?'
'Impossible' replied Holmes.  'At least without producing tell-tale signs on the outside.'
'Maybe Moriarty has bombers positioned in the surrounding area?' I continued.
Holmes shook his head.  'There are few people here' he said.  'And nobody close enough is carrying anything that could conceal a bomb, anyone further wouldn't have the range.  He'd have to-'
Holmes stopped, mid-sentence.  'Of course!' he shouted.  'Watson, check over there.' He gestured toward a side-street leading to Charing Cross station.  'Watch for anyone suspicious-looking and report back immediately.'
I obeyed my friend and started down the street, curious as to his intentions.  I turned and looked back, expecting to see him hard at work once again, analysing every inch of the surrounding area for a clue he may have missed.  Instead, he simply stood there, head lowered, clutching what appeared to be Moriarty's note.
Then it dawned on me.
No sign of any explosives.  The unusually thick piece of paper.  Then the most unbearably obvious clue of all; A London Monument Lights up.  Moriarty had never intended to destroy Nelson's Column.  As I initially asked, what would be the point?  It was merely a red herring, a false hint to get Holmes exactly where he wanted him, tricking the world's greatest detective with his own obsession for complex puzzles.
Holmes was the London monument.  'You are more celebrated than you think you are' I had said earlier that day, and I have punished myself daily ever since for not making the link then.
All of this passed through my mind in seconds.  Then it happened.
The sound was deafening, and it threw me to the ground, sparing me from the most terrible of sights to behold.  My friend was blown to smithereens.  No corpse remained, no shape of what was my friend moments before.  Only bits of him.
It had already dawned on Holmes, the moment he asked me to check the side street.  He was simply getting me to safety.  There was no time for him to discard the bomb, concealed in the paper and triggered in a way that remains a mystery.  Then his 'One last adventure' remark from earlier in the day occured to me.  Had he already known his days were numbered or did he simply assume he'd finally beat Moriarty and retire for good?  I'd never know.
A day or so later, reports came of Holmes' deerstalker cap being found atop the head of Nelson, presumably from the explosion.  Although strangely I don't remember him ever wearing it.
It wasn't long before Professor Moriarty was linked to the crime and executed for it.  But he went to the gallows a happy man, having outsmarted and defeated his rival in his final act of criminal mastery.  No punishment could this world ever inflict upon him.  It was never found out why he didn't simply detonate the bomb at Baker Street when we received it, although I suppose he wanted Holmes' defeat to be public, or else he wanted me alive to suffer it.
Sherlock Holmes was dead, slain by one of the few things that eluded him; how much he meant to the world.

Why I don't believe in God.

Whenever I am asked if I believe in God, my mind becomes clouded with the myriad reasons why I don't and, verbally at least, my argument comes accross as insecure and ill-informed.  I'm frustrated by the question, as it is my choice and an individual's personal belief (or lack thereof) shouldn't be cause for concern to anybody else.  As the simplest answer; "because I don't have to" is clearly not sufficient, here are my reasons.  Some of them may be familiar from other sources but that only affirms that they stand up.  It is quite ironic that people following a faith that denies evidence and reason should ask me to back up my reasons, but there you go.  I hate religious debate (we've developed the cognitive skills and reason to overcome religious brainwashing yet it still exists) and hopefully this will be the end of it for anyone unhappy with my atheism.

- The idea of absolute power doesn't hold up to any logic or scrutiny.  If God was all powerful (bear in mind all powerful means limitless in ability) then he could conjure a rock that was so heavy, no being (divine or mortal) could move it.  This includes God.  In which case, if God could not move that rock, then he is not all-powerful.  Alternatively, if God could move any rock regardless of its weight, then it would be impossible for him to create one that he is unable to move.  Again this defies limitless ability.
- Humanity's obsession with design and purpose is what lead to the invention of God.  We have evolved our minds to the point where they have begun to over-think, and the concept of being on Earth for no real reason other to live and die is discomforting.  Like all other species, we can create life.  However, unlike all other species, we are sentient, reasonable and imaginative beings.  Combined with our natural ego-centricity, the concept that we must have been created by a conscious being is a natural one to adopt.  There hasn't been a credible argument for why we must be the product of a creator.  Many claim that we "must" be the creation of somebody, but why "must" we?  Just because we create things, that does not mean that somebody must have created us.. it is our own God-complex that, quite ironically, justifies to us the existence of God.  The 'Blind Watch Maker' theory is the most commonly applied, but even that is a poor argument.  It assumes that, similar to how it would be near-impossible to produce a functioning watch simply by shaking the contents in their casing, we are too complex and well formed to have just popped into being of no accord; but we now know that we didn't.  We are the product of millions of years of trial and error, far removed from the metaphor of the watch.
- For a group so bent on believing in design, this supposed God is certainly not showing much evidence of having a 'design' of any kind.  Imagine two nations that are near-identical in their worship of God and keeping sacred his word.  One of those nations is hit by a devastating natural disaster that kills thousands and destroys its cities.  The other nation is left untouched.  If God is responsible for everything, what discernable reason would there be for letting this happen?  His 'working in mysterious ways' would be the predictable response, but that is a redundant comment that religious flag-flyers use to maintain their self-delusion, it is not an argument.  Furthermore, when a victorious army or sports team claims to have had 'God on their side', why didn't the other team have that luxury?  If God loves all, why is he picking sides in such trivial instances?
- The inevitable argument that 'you can not disprove the existence of God' is, while true in itself, ultimately redundant and round-about.  It is also possibly the reason why belief in higher powers still exists.  It is not enough to apply this rhetoric, which is nothing more than a frustrating way to bring mature, reasoned arguments grinding to a halt.  If I were to lower myself to adopting this logic, then I can quite easily bombard you with 1001 absurd beings of my own invention, then maintain that they exist purely because you can't prove that they don't.  This would render me psychologically ill, and rightly so.  Yet in numbers it ceases to be a mental defect and instead becomes religion.  While this should be unsettling to a reasoned mind, it is accepted as the norm.
- Organised religion attacks science, when science is simply thousands of years of in-depth, meticulous research and findings of empirical evidence carried out by an unfathomable number of historical and contemporary genius.  Science does not make unfounded proclamations and then refuse to relent when they are disproven.  Science is humble, and accepts when it is wrong, then setting about to discover why it was wrong and what the correct answer actually is.  This is the stark opposite to blind faith, which maintains millennia-old beliefs and moral guidelines as truth without willing to be educated otherwise.  It is also the reason that the tired argument of 'science being simply another form of religion' is completely ill-informed.  It is snooty and unbecoming for an inexperienced pseudo-philosopher to come along and then denounce this evidence purely because it doesn't fit with their pre-established ideals.  The Universe adheres to certain laws of physics and, while one may argue that this reality is just an illusion (again a claim impossible to disprove), it is at the very least within this illusion that those laws apply, and therefore they do apply no matter how false you may think our perception of reality is.
- The religious will claim that 'without God there would be no worth', which, quite apart from being violently disrespectful to all loved ones, is also without merit.  Civilised society predates the invention of God and it is the belief of many atheists that life itself, and this planet alone, are wonderful things enough to satisfy the notion of a single existence.  It is not humble or endearing to defect family, friends and well being into a subordinate state of importance and use your brief time on Earth as a preperatory period, sacrificing many desires and dreams, for possible entry into another realm upon death.  I do not feel my life lacks faith enough to be fulfilling, and I do not agree that faith makes an individual stronger.  Finding God at a time of despair is little more than the theological equivalent of being given a comforting blanket.
- The worst argument of all comes from religious apologists insisting that the more absurd and fantastical Bible stories aren't intended to be true, but the existences of God and Christ are the truths within.  Where exactly did they acquire that conviction?  How can one pick and choose which bits of the scripture are supposed to be genuine without such authority on the subject?  As far as I am aware, the Bible is not annotated to distinguish the factual parts from the fictional.  If one can not accept the ridiculous stories of Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah or Job but is content with belief in the omnipotent creator that appears in each of them, that is the epitome of a crumbling argument.  In for a penny, in for a pound.
- Ultimately, I find it continually insulting that I am asked to explain myself when I say I don't believe in God.  People are conditioned to accept religion from a young and impressionable age at schools that aren't as impartial as they should be.  I do not harass God-believers into explaining their reasons, yet somehow atheism, which is merely an acting of bowing out; peaceful and non-aggressive, is treated more heavy-handedly than religious belief.  These are my reasons, and in my secure mind they are more formed and understandable than the contrary.  As such I will not be swayed.  Atheism may indeed be a herd-mentality as religion is, but is not one that is entered into without thought and reason.