All about religion?!

I recently visited the AAR (all about religion) thread in a local forum recently to set up some discussions with the locals there.

What I got? A bunch of personal attacks and straw men argument (along with some conspiracy theories about Jesus and the Bible)

I find it so frustrating that these people who preach open mindedness and free thinking are unable to think and reason with logic rather than with Chinese folkore and culture.

I got an argument like this "Christians are cunning because they thank God instead of their ancestors who use their hand and bring them where you're at"

Meaningless?

As some of you might've known, I've been suffering from alot of emotional problems recently, alot to do with my self-esteem and my identity.

I've sometimes argued that if there was no objective purpose in life, then I would have hung myself already.

And today, whilst feeling the pain of my wounds, I feel like expounding on this argument, and why I find it so emotionally compelling (yet still be logical).

My first premise is that if (something Kant argued) the grave suddenly swallowed the righteous and the unrighteous, then it's hard to see that moral obligations do matter ultimately.

That is to say that if there was no afterlife of any sort, and we all just die, then ultimately, if I've lived a moral life or an immoral one, it doesn't matter. Sure, maybe your whole bloodline will be disgraced if you commit an immoral act now, but when the universe collapses and when humanity is no more, your immoral acts or moral acts will mean nothing. The acts of a righteous man then is of no significance just as the acts of an unrighteous man if everything ends at death.

Now someone might argue that we don't know that humanity will go extinct, but I think we know enough to say that our planet and even our universe will no longer be hospitable to our species in a few more billion years. And even if you do believe (a huge claim to make) that the human species will live on forever and ever, if a persons life ends at death, then why should he care about what he does? Why sacrifice pleasures just to "do the right thing", when you can have all the pleasures you want in this life, since YOLO? (you only live once)

Life without an afterlife is therefore, meaningless. Sure, you can definitely add your own meaning to it (and it can be quite pleasurable to do whatever your body desires), but in the end, there is no objective meaning past your life. Think about it in terms of playing a game; You can create your own purpose when playing a game. For example, I want to be the player who has the most amount of kills or I want to be the player with the most amount of assists in the game. But when the game ends or is shut down, it doesn't matter what you did anymore. Only oblivion awaits you.

My second premise is that God exists. This is based off other external arguments (though an argument can be made that it is rather absurd to live purposeless lives), and then the conclusion follows that our life has an objective purpose that has to be based off whichever God you believe in.

As for me, the implications are huge. If the Christian God exists, then it follows that our lives are to be set apart for Him. It follows that we ought to resist our fleshly desires which is sinful. It follows that we ought to put Him first (or at least try our very best to) in all things. It also follows that we will be mocked, ridiculed, laughed at for not enjoying the pleasures of the world.

And that means what to me? That meant losing my best friend, giving up on the girl of my dreams (because trying to do so would mean going to church for the complete wrong reasons and to lie my way through things) ,and basically get my self-esteem beaten down to a point where it can't seem to get any lower. If I do discover that God doesn't exist then I think suicide is better for me since at this point, I'll probably suck at being worldly and what not.


Then we have Pascal's wager. (or a form of his argument). The atheist can ask :"What if you're wrong? You waste your life!"

But the atheist doesn't realize that if there is no afterlife, then it doesn't matter at all what you do in this life, whether it is to pursue false religions or to sleep around with many women etc. You're not gonna be there to regret anything at all!

Local objections to Christian Theism pt 1.

Today's post is inspired by a short discussion yesterday during CG time where some of them were talking about how many Malaysians today seem to have a problem with the idea of a belief in God, or that they have this idea of all religions being true at the same time and what not.

As someone who's spent quite awhile debating the local Malaysian scene on issues regarding the existence of God and Christianity, I think I should talk about a few common objections that local "skeptics" often raise against Christianity or theism in general.

Definitions
I'll start with getting my definitions clear.
Theism is the belief that there is a God, and He is a personal God. In contrast to a Deist, who believes that God exists, but He is not personal. Atheism is the belief that there is no God (though some would contest this definition) and agnosticism is the belief that we cannot know (the middle position) whether God exists or not.
Religious pluralism is the belief that all roads lead to God.

Cultural borders
While I've been widely influenced by the westerners in their discourse on whether or not God exists or is Christianity true or viable, I realize that Malaysians are very different in their objections. Malaysians don't particular solid critical thinking, rather they mix their thoughts with alot of emotions most of the time. This cannot be blamed solely on them as our education system is one that has nearly 0 emphasis on critical thinking at all, unless the west. The arguments Malaysians often make against Christian theism are often targeted at the idea of religious exclusivism (the idea that there is only one way to God) since we come from a background of a diverse amount of races, religions and customs.

Which leads me to the first common objection to Christianity that I hear alot...

There are so many religions out there, it's arrogant to claim that yours is the only one that is true etc.

This argument takes multiple forms, like the one above and another form where it goes like this "There are so many religions out there, therefore we cannot truly know which religion is truth". This argument I think, relies alot on the assumption that if there are disagreements, therefore there is no truth. Which I think doesn't hold. Why think that just because many people disagree with something, therefore there can be no truth? Scientists disagreed previously on the structure of the atom before all the experiments took place, yet we now know that there is indeed someone in the debate that was right after all. Simply put, just because there is disagreement between people, it doesn't mean that no one is right.

Another issue that local detractors of religion point out is the problem of "knowing" which religion is true. Alot of Malaysians are given their "religion" based on what religious sect. their parents believe in, hence leading to the idea that religion is just something that is passed down, not reasoned with. It's like a man's race. You cannot change it. You are born with it. So they conclude from this assumption that religion is merely a family tradition that is passed down from generations to generations, saying that one is truer than the other will be like saying a chinese is more true than an indian (which makes no sense).

I agree to some extent that alot of Malaysians treat their religion like a family tradition, but is that really what a religion entails?

A religion is a set of beliefs regarding the supernatural and a worldview in general. It's beliefs comprises of statements that are either true or false, it is not like nasi lemak or what not. The objection assumes that ALL religious believers have not reasoned about their own faith and are blind to the world around them, which is of course a flawed assumption. There are many who know why they are a Muslim instead of a Christian, Hindu instead of a Buddhist or what not. People reason about their religions (and it's beliefs) and connect it to others etc. It might not be a coherent reason for believing, but nevertheless, it's not always a matter of mere blind faith.

Then this leads us to a more common proclamation by Malaysians trying to be peaceful and intelligent. They say "all roads lead to God actually" or "Claiming that there is one way to God is arrogant!"

They claim that there is one God, and He has revealed Himself in multiple forms in the form of the different world religions today.

Two things, firstly, for a claim that large, do they have anything to back up their statement? My moral teacher, Ms Geetha argues that it's only fair for God to reveal Himself to all and not just a particular race, but who is Ms Geetha to tell God what to do? Let's put this in the perspective of Christian theology. Christianity believes that Men have been separated from God because of their sin (their wrongdoings), and perfect justice demands that Men be put to death for their wrongdoings. Yet for God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son to die on the cross for the sins of the world. The gospel began when God revealed Himself to the Isrealites in the old testament. Now we see that justice isn't an issue here, because if Ms Geetha wanted God to be just, in the eyes of Christian theology, she would want God to wipe out the entire human race because that is what justice truly demands. The fact that God even revealed Himself to a particular group of people at the beginning is already an act of grace.

Then there's the claim that all religions can actually be true at the same time. Which I think is a political statement more than a well thought out one. Every religion contradicts another to some extent, even religions which say that other religions are true.

For example, religion X might claim that all the world religions are equally true at the same time, but we have religions like Islam and Christianity which makes truth claims that there can only be one true religion, and by saying that all the religions are true, religion X is claiming that Islam and Christianity are wrong with their truth claims. To claim that they are all true at the same time is like claiming that a married bachelor can exist!


You are a man of faith, I am a man of science.

Now this isn't an objection that is restricted to Malaysians only. It is common for people to express skepticism over religious belief in an age where science seems to be able to explain everything...

Cave men believed in God because they heard the sound of lightning and concluded that "God did it!". This is a common line of reasoning that people give to argue that religion is of no use as science is teaching us more and more about nature and how the world works.

But is the purpose of religion really to merely explain the workings of the universe? Yes, some religions do make certain truth claims about how the universe that might or might not contradict science (for example, if the static universe model was true, then the universe is eternal, and religions which assert that the universe had a beginning would be in trouble) But then this boils down to whether or not there are truth claims being made by any religion that clashes with our current understanding of science and what not.

Look at Christianity for example. Galileo Galilei was imprisoned by the Catholic Church back then because he claimed that the earth was not the center of the universe because the Catholics thought it went against the biblical teaching that the earth was the center of the earth (which is a literal interpretation of metaphorical or allegorical text). Then we have the ever painstaking creation evolution debate going on today. Did Genesis really literally happen? Did God create the earth in 6 days and did it happen 6000 years ago?

Many Christians would read Genesis allegorically (even St. Augustine suggested that the Genesis creation account might've been allegorical even when evolution was a few hundred years away from even being suggested!), but some would argue that Genesis ought to be taken literally to some extent, and evolution isn't entirely true and what not.

Which brings us to the problem of knowledge within science. Yes, the scientific method is a really good way for us to know truth, but it is not the only way. There is logic and mathematical truth (I don't know if I should categorize the two together though). Some philosophers (primarily from the Intelligent design movement) would argue that there are problems with evolution from a philosophical and sometimes scientific standpoint (though I personally would disagree). The creation-evolution debate is a sticky topic, but my own personal stance is that God created via evolution.

Which goes to show how science and faith can be reconciled in most cases. But this doesn't seem to be the biggest problem I think. It seems that many people who argue that science and faith are incompatible seem to be assuming more than just the fact that there are things religious people say about the world that is against science. They seem to be assuming that if science cannot prove something, then we do not know whether it is true or not. But this is self-defeating, for the statement "Science is the only way in which we can know truths about the world" isn't a scientific statement at all! You cannot prove the truth of this statement in a laboratory setting or what not. What other ways can we know truth then? By reason. Christianity, is a reasonable religion. It calls it's followers to always be prepared to give a defense of the faith. God is believed to be the truth. I understand that most Christians in Malaysia are somewhat fideistic (meaning that they "just have faith"), but in essence, Christianity is a reasonable faith. You can prove it wrong by coming up with an argument against the existence of God or that Jesus never actually existed in history before and so forth(that is, if your argument holds).


The issue of science and faith is a wide topic though, I might just blog more about this next time. But hopefully I've successfully demonstrated that the whole idea that science contradicts faith is false.




If your God is so good and all loving, He won't send people to hell...

According to Christian theology, Men have sinned and therefore fallen short of the glory of God. What this means is that while God is a loving God, He is also a holy God. That means that no one deserves to live because we all have sinned, for the wages of sin is death. So He didn't owe it to us to save us, yet He did. But those who reject His grace get what they deserve in the end.

C.S.Lewis put it something like this; On judgment day the words "thy will be done" will be said, either by God or by man. He means to say that God doesn't send people to hell, they choose to go there themselves. God says to the man "thy will be done", which is to say that God lets the man go to the place where he wants to be; eternal separation from God.




end thoughts
I'm actually not too sure if I did a good job with my defense. I have a problem with this because I feel that I'm occasionally forgetting which objections I'm addressing since some arguments sound so similar but are very different in nature. I know there are more objections to deal with, such as the ever so famous problem of evil and what not, but that deserves a post on it's own to handle.

If anyone has any questions, do pm me on facebook or twitter!

Postmodernism...

Here's a somewhat continuation of my previous post...

Suppose someone argues that all our 5 senses can be tricked and we cannot honestly say that we 'know' anything at all.

Suppose there isn't a good argument against this form of skepticism.

Does this favor the postmodernist?

I don't think it does. It brings into question how we know things, but it doesn't bring into the question of whether or not truth is relative or objective (IF the postmodernist is trying to assert relative truth).

I do find the idea that logic is still tangible in a world even in a world where our 5 senses are unreliable.

Think of it this way; If they postmodernist argues that our 5 senses are unreliable, therefore there is no objective truth (or some other variation of this), then the postmodernist is using some form of logic to establish his/her point.

Anyway though, if the postmodernist does make that argument, then he/she would also be arguing that the fact that "there is no objective truth" is objectively true. Which is self-defeating... Unless of course they simply just "believe" that there is not objective truth, and it's merely a subjective truth, then I don't see why we should even believe in their arguments or any sort.

Some thoughts about postmodernism and truth

I've been talking to Ben and Jian Han alot recently about truth and reality in general.

How do we know that something is true?
Isn't everything based only on our perceptions of it?

These were the core questions we were throwing around the discussion table. For it seems that a statement like 'that chair is red' might be true for me, but might not be for you. Red is after all, experienced.
So how do we know if we're both experiencing the same thing?

Let me dig into this:

What is 'red'?
I guess we science students can start by asking the question 'What is red?' or how we even get to see things in the first place.

A simple way to describe the mechanism surrounding the process of a person seeing a red chair is this; light gets reflected off the chair that corresponds to a certain wavelength of light that corresponds to what our brains process to be what we experience as 'redness' (this though, will probably open up the can of worms called 'consciousness and dualism').

From the above process though, I don't think it's too big a leap to make to assume that something is red, even if a color blind sees it as grey because red in this case, is an objective description of a wavelength of a certain quantity.



Which Ben replies to by asking "But even the measurements of wavelengths are subjective to some extent, are they not?"

I guess this then boils down to how accurate our five senses are and how reliable they are in determining reality (five sense being touch, sight, smell, sound and taste).

This then possibly might go back all the way to Descartes demon and deeper into the realm of philosophy which I dare not tread for now...

But if the worry is postmodernism (which I think it is) then I guess more can be said about this later on...

Biology

A levels is tough, but it's definitely informative.

I've learned for example, why there's so much carbs in rice and plant based stuff while there's so little in chicken meat or what not. (yes it's a why, I'm not stating a fact that we've learned in form 2 science. It's an explanation)

The explanation comes from the whole idea of a food web, where energy from the sun is absorbed by photosynthesis (but only a small portion of energy is absorbed because of various factors), and then when the primary consumer eats the plant, some of the energy (biomass, I think) in the plant will be transferred to the primary consumer, which will then use energy to move around, respire and etc.

When the secondary consumers eats the primary consumer, lesser energy is gained because of the above factors and more (for one, not every part of the animal is able to be consumed)... and so forth. And that's apparently the reason why there aren't like 1000 trophic levels in a food chain/web.

So we're actually getting our energy from....the sun.

waw.

Beautiful savior

It's been awhile blogger.

Maybe it's easier for more people to see things here rather than on Tumblr.

But anyway...

AS USUAL, I would most likely come up with some emotional jargon about how hurt I've been and how bad my year has been...

But, learning from the past, I learned alot this year from my sufferings and from my hurts. They say our struggles make us a stronger person. I concur.

When my heart broke the second time; When my life came crashing down again; When I broke into tears again; When I felt like ending my life, again; When I felt like giving up on my principles and beliefs in favor of a life that will give me more pleasure and happiness (for the first time)...

I learned.

Having nearly the same event happen to me again this year made me look back at when the first time it happened. I was so childish, so immature, so naive.

I saw it coming this time too, but to no avail. Yes, I would say that I acted better this time around, but my emotions still clouded my judgment. I still felt so hurt; so very hurt.

But what I learned after being more of a thinker this time around from the event has taught me much about myself. I learned that I(mainly lah):

1. Couldn't give a large part of my life to God willingly, as much as I wanted to believe that when I sang "all I have is Christ", I meant it, I didn't.
2. That the problem of my heart is a problem that has to be fixed some other way.
3. That when you hit rock bottom, the only way you can go from there, is up.


For (1), having my best friends stripped away; having my source of comfort and joy stripped away, showed me how much I rely too much on them to be happy. Yes, friends are important. Yes, losing them will make you sad. But I idolized some of them. They became my idols. It's perfectly fine to be feeling suicidal and all emo from a secular standpoint when you've lost your best bud, but it's hypocrisy if you go to Church on Sunday and sing about how all you have is Christ. I have to learn how to have more faith! (though I confess, I'm not really sure if it's wrong per se. to feel sad because you've lost your friends, as it is a sad event regardless of who you really live your life for. However, given the fact that I was sad until a point where I felt like living no more revealed alot.

(2)? My family, my burden. Love is something I probably hardly grew up with; or at least in a screwed up manner. I was brought up thinking that love = money, that when someone spends alot for you and gets you nice gifts, then he/she loves you. As I grew up perhaps I started to understand why I this wasn't so, and that I was lacking so much. So whenever I met a girl who was loving, caring and could accept me as a friend despite my weaknesses, I would tend to fall for her, and scarily enough, regardless if she had a boyfriend or not(I tried fighting it...guess a year or two was enough to break me down). I guess the problem with me is obvious; I have a broken heart, yearning for love. But I'm starting to understand that I am seeking for it in the wrong places (or at least, my body has been doing so without my consent) (I guess my solution to this isn't to be a celibate or what not, but to remember that relationships work two ways. I have to think of what I can do for that special someone and how I will impact her life. Then maybe things will become more realistic...)

(3), well, I guess I'm recovering, albeit slowly. I don't know how much scars I'll have, but so far, so good.
Looks like the only thing burdening me now is my a-levels examination (and of course I do still think about what has happened...sometimes)



I am a thinker. My potential cannot be used if my mind is always being clogged up by emotions :x