They had loyalty, a sense of justice, cheerfulness, unity, were sacrificial, were willing to swallow defeat in the face and move on - they were a bunch of good kids. And however they may appear in front of the teachers, the vulgarities they sprout and the unruly behaviour they exhibited at points - those are but just superficial impressions of 'bad' boys. The outlawic gestures do not define them, and even as society demands expectations of such cosmetic changes, thats easy to deal with.While easing myself into their lingo and befriending them, I realised again the feeling of uncomplicated sincerity. And I acknowledged, they had good hearts.

The boys were a mix of Secondary 1 and 2 and were from a mission school's Basketball team, taking part in the second division's matches as they had won 1 and lost 2 matches the previous day. Another lousy defeat to a team younger than them and the way they handled it, an opponent's team jeering at them which caused mutual retaliation (it did not escalate due to the presence of teachers) Such events did allow me to have a deeper appreciation of how the boys stood together as a team. But the event that stood out the most for me was when I had tried to find out their response to the gospel.

I had kept in mind that Chapel service at school, the constant empahsis on aspects of the gospel message and the insistutional Christian atmosphere which encircled them each day probaly already hardened their hearts to the message - but still. While I could converse with them with everything else, the gospel message was what they are put off by and 'closed' to. And if it were explained just simply, it was an instant conversation ender with faces all frowning or sianed.

It is just saddening that when they had heard it so many times, they never really listened to it before - and in this way, the very repitition of such a structure positions those who are so close to it so much further away.

Familarity breeds contempt perhaps.

Labels: Life

Just academically speaking, the 'look at creation to figure out there is a creator' theory is the one that convinces me the most that God exists. I think most Christians would agree, by itself it is pretty strong. The argument as brought up by Paul in Romans - "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." when reduced to a textbook point level is simply that mankind should be able to deduce that there is a God by looking at everything that exists in theworld. The principle is that you look at a building, you'll know there is a builder. From things of the physical, intangible, moral and metaphysical dimensions - the world is much too complex to be without a creator, or at least (in sticking with my academical position for this entry sake) an intelligence that would construct it. Of course there exists the anti-thesis - with their own logic through observation, with claims that it is logically possible to see that the world came about without a God as well, like through evolution. And because of the immense academic content that is avaliable in this area of study as well as its expected connection to the field of science, it is easy for anyone to appear like some religious fantatic when writing against it (Yes, personally I think that the theory of evolution and the world's origins being due to some explosive bang of no reason is ridiculous.) where people of higher knowledge who don't require the human gratification of grasping for a 'God' will look upon , sigh and tolerate (-_- sigh.) But anyway, I think there can be a closer look at this usual argument beyond the baseline that 'complexity and utility of a watch indicates a watchmaker' to look at the nature of this complexity and praise the skill of the watchmaker if he really is blind.

First a disclaimer - if the arguments below are reasonable enough to convince one's logic (in postmodernistic light that is, though seriously speaking - logic is logic -_-) that there is a God, it might be tempting to say that perhaps its not God as in God but maybe a mystical force or conciousness or something else - but if so, we must examine whether its logical to think that this intelligence who crafted all can be limited by his craft. One should conclude that the 'intelligence' should be one that is ominpotent, ominsience and ominpresent as its only logically that the creator of all will not be restricted in such a manner.

Necessity of Order
Actually this one is quite a causual follow-up when one announces skepticism of big bang cum evolution -how could chaos generate order? The means that it can be done in this universe through deliberate effort all requires a direction - someone needs to be in control to produce and end result. A long period of time seems to somehow provide the ability for this to happen - but logically speaking, why should it? We deteoriate with a lack of action and can only change with effort and if we desire improvement, we need ability. At least thats the way the world works now and if we were to claim it to function differently or intelligently, a force has to be behind this very change of function.

Existence of Errors
Which show that there is a perfection, or at least somewhere where humans look to as perfect. Be it in beauty, physical form, morality and whatsoever - minus the relativism and that society made it so first and generalise, we can see that humans have standards. Where and how did such an appreciation which demonstrates exclusitivity, negetive/positive emotion, discrimination, whimsical selection and other random elements originate from? And note that cultures were developed, universal human rights could be generally agreed on and people hate each other and the situations in the world most of the time when they are asked.

Necessity of Laws and Relationships and Structures
To take a twist on a KI question - Why is knowledge constructed? Not the practical reasons, but reasons within philosophical boundaries? Why is the world as it is? The laws of physics and chemistry to just be? Why does the food chain of plant eaten by plant-eater eaten by meat-eater have to be this way? If some random pool were to explode randomly into an existence, wouldn't it be much easier to evovle into homogenous creatures that did not require the behaviours of eating, sleeping and drinking - why create such dependendcies and inter-relations and a very community in the first place if the randomness could randomate otherwise? Why responses and relationships of all fields work in such a way anway?

Formulation of Logic and Sequencing
How were thinking faculties formed? Why was rationality allowed? How did we get the concept of a linear progression and develop the anti-thesis of a cyclical existence instead? How did diverstiy through discourse actually come about? Essentially how did this thing just burst into existance like that.

Concept of Competition
We all understand competition and I think the surivival of the fittest theory is derived from it - but why this very concept in the first place. We understand the concept of harmony too, and evolution did not progress us by cooridnating us to harmonise and be unified in the purposes - instead, we are divided and diversified in interests, ability and inclinations. All creatures, even man.

And the other Abstract Constructs...
The other stuff like why the sky is above us. Why are we in such a human form. Why the world jigsaws itself to fit us. And in a nutshell, complexity is much more than just complexity.


And as the argument goes, is it really possible that the world can exist like such without a creator?

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On a side note, I've updated Zone 127. (Yeah.. its been loooong since I have, I know) and have renamed it Unneeded Theory .

"We don't need God. We can think of much better ways coming into existence."
"Yeah, and they sound smarter too!"
--Narrow-minded Atheists as presented by a Skeptical Christian :p

Labels: Life, Religion

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