Speed of Life

Soft Targets

2006-02-23T17:40:00.000+07:00

Ever noticed that people often prefer arguing against a charicature of someone's position than what their opponent really believes? *

Here's a quote I came across today:

"Scripture is entirely trustworthy in the sense that its message conveys the true knowledge of God and his works, especially the way of salvation."

{International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, quoted in Essentials of Evangelical Theology, DG Bloesch}

That strikes me as a pretty good working definition of what I believe by 'inerrancy'.

If there is a God that created - out of nothing - the universe, humanity et al, then it seems to me a very small step of faith to believe that He has given a self-revelation to us that is amply adequate to lead us (back) to Him.

* This fallacy is known a 'Straw man' argument.

The tooth and nothing but the tooth..

2006-02-10T19:11:00.000+07:00

... I'm in the middle of having a root canal done. Expensive and painful.

Just waiting for the local to wear off to see exactly how painful the second session was.

Only one more to go! {Smiles lopsidedly... dang anasthetic}

Yawn or Vomit?

2005-11-17T11:16:00.000+07:00

CS Lewis has this to say about those who hold to naturalism and yet make pleas for our action towards a better world:

"Do they remember while they are writing thus that when they tell us we 'ought to make a better world' the words 'ought' and 'better' must, on their own showing, refer to an irrationally conditioned impulse which cannot be true any more than a vomit or a yawn?'

{Miracles, chapter 5 - CS Lewis}

There's no sin

2005-10-23T14:00:00.000+07:00

There's no sin so vile that people won't condemn it in others while practicing it themselves.

Sigh... human nature...

If Evolution is true, then Naturalism is false?

2005-09-25T12:14:00.000+07:00

Plantinga has an interesting argument along these lines:

"... if naturalism is true, there is no God, and hence no God (or anyone else) overseeing
our development and orchestrating the course of our evolution. And this leads directly to the question whether it is at all likely that our cognitive faculties, given naturalism and given their evolutionary origin, would have developed in such a way as to be reliable, to furnish us with mostly true beliefs. Darwin himself expressed this doubt: "With me," he said, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the
convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

The same thought is put more explicitly by Patricia Churchland. She insists that the most important thing about the human brain is that it has evolved; this means, she says, that its principal function is to enable the organism to move appropriately: Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . .

Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival [Churchland's emphasis]. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.

(....)

Churchland's claim, I think, is best understood as the suggestion that the objective probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given naturalism and given that we have been cobbled together by the processes to which contemporary evolutionary theory calls our attention, is low."

Basically, Plantinga is saying that evolution does not select for true beliefs, but for advantageous behaviours - and this, given no oversight of evolution by a Creator, means that it is unlikely that our beliefs are true.

Spam me

2005-09-25T12:00:00.000+07:00

Spam - the curse of email - has now moved into blogdom.

Lovely people will spam comments on your blog inviting you to check out their 'blog'. And when you do, it is a site advertising refinancing your mortgage or some such nonsense.

Check out the comments on the post below for a couple of examples. Feel free to visit the sites and add your spam to their site...

Bleh!

Post-script: The post above has had a spam comment added not less than 20 minutes after I posted it. : (

Internally incoherent agnosticism?

2005-09-03T12:45:00.000+07:00

A very tought-provoking post from 'FoolForChrist':

If God exists as described in the Bible (the Creator and sustainer of all - including our minds and our very thoughts), then independent verification is clearly impossible since, at every point, our attempts to verify any fact (even the fact of God's existence) is dependent upon God's upholding power. Therefore, we say that man's knowledge is mediate, analogical, and proximate. It is not autonomous, immediate, or ultimate. And since independent verification is impossible (if it is the case that God exists), insisting on it is logically equivalent to precluding the possibility of God's existence (at least, the existence of the God described in the Bible).

Since independent verification of facts is impossible given God's existence and autonomous man insists on verifying facts independently, his insistence on "verification" of God's existence (via facts/proofs acceptable to man's arbitrarily chosen standards of knowledge/truth) is really a pretense because he has made verification impossible by insisting on independent verification. That is, what autonomous man really wants God to do is, at least temporarily, "undo" man's createdness and resign His own Creatorship so that man can go "back of" his Creator and double-check the facts for himself without dependency on the fact of his createdness.

So, we see that independently verifiable proof of God's existence is neither independent nor verifiable. This is a presuppositional conflict. There is no common ground (theoretically, in any case) available from which discourse can begin to resolve the problem. Thinking in a certain way (autonomous reason) precludes the possibility of God's existence. And worse, Insisting on mental autonomy while making a pretense of agnosticism w.r.t. God's existence is dishonest and internally incoherent (I know and don't know fact X, where fact X in this case is "God does not exist"). So, autonomous man chooses irrationality over acceptance of God's rightful authority in every realm - including epistemology.

{emphasis added}

Read the whole thing here

Don't you tell me

2005-09-03T12:40:00.000+07:00

what I can't do.

Locke - 'Lost' TV series

Latchkey kids

2005-09-01T17:56:00.000+07:00

Somsak gets home from school at about 5pm, depending on how much time he spends playing computer games at the Net cafe. Some days he sees Mum or Dad for an hour or so before they go off to work their shift at the factory.

Weekends are pretty boring. Usually Dad and Mum both work at least one day in the weekend, and the other day they're to tired to do much anyway. So mostly Somsak watches Japanese cartoons on TV and reads comics.

School's not much fun either - he's in a class with 50 other 14-year-olds, and there are more than 3,000 kids at his high school. It's a pretty impersonal place. Most of his teachers don't know his name unless they read it from the front of his school shirt. Some days Somsak can't really focus on his study - those late nights up alone watching TV really tire you out.

But it's not all bad... in a couple of years Somsak will be able to leave school, and hopefully he can find a job - maybe where Dad and Mum work. He might be able to get a place packing instant noodles into cartons for shipping.

Then he'll be set - he can save up and buy a motorbike... a nice Honda Wave 150 would be really cool. With that, Somsak will be able to impress a girl, maybe even get a steady girlfriend. That's the ticket then... doze through high school, get a job in a factory, a motorbike and a girl...

What more could life have to offer?

Elastic-sided boots

2005-08-29T17:41:00.000+07:00

When I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn't go to the churches and Gospel Halls; [...] I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.

~C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, "Answers to Questions on Christianity", (1944)

Can we ever know God?

2005-08-15T16:51:00.000+07:00

Given our 'status' as time-constrained, finite human beings, can we ever know the Transcendent, Ultimate, Unlimited Being?

Three answers to this question:

1. We cannot know God (complete agnosticism)

2. We can know everything about God (dogmatism)

3. We can know some things about God (realism)

1. We cannot know God
This comes very close to being a self-stultifying statement. If we take a series of either-or propositions about God ('God is good' 'God is just' 'God is love' 'God has green hair') then 1. is saying that we cannot know whether these propostions are true or not true of God. The difficulty is, how does one know that one cannot know?

2. We can know everything about God
Carl Sagan once said something like: 'The Cosmos is all that is, ever was or ever will be.' Sagan's statement is a claim to complete and unlimited knowledge of everything that is, was or will be. That's a big stretch, even for someone as smart as Carl was. The dogmatic who claims to know everything about God is in effect, claiming as much knowledge as God Himself.

Sadly, many perceive Christians as being as dogmatic as this. And even worse, sometimes that perception is right.

3. We can know some things about God
This is (should be) the Christian position. We can know some things about God because:

A. We can draw some conclusions about God's character from what He has made.
{Romans 1:20 (NIV): 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.}

B. God has specifically revealed Himself to us in historical space-time, via His interaction with the Israelite people, and most importantly, via Jesus Christ.

So there are some things we can be definite about in regards to God. We can be sure that God is some things (e.g. love) and isn't some other things (e.g. an old man with white hair).

Where confusion arises is when we think that we therefore know everything about God (see 2. above), or when we think that we have grasped some aspect of God completely. God is love - but knowing that doesn't mean that we know completely what love is, nor that we know the depth and extent, the intensity of God's love.

We do not know everything, and even what we do know has limits... but we do know enough to love, honour and trust God. And that is what faith is.. trusting God for what we don't know, based upon what we do know.

Danger Anger

2005-07-29T18:24:00.000+07:00

Question of the Day: Are you angry about anything?

Related question: How do you express your anger? Is it healthy for you and for others?

You can never know anything for sure.

2005-07-29T18:15:00.000+07:00

Think about that for a while....

This may help:

Let's Start with Breakfast...
Imagine the following comical scenario. A fellow Earthman runs up to you, with glazed and feverish eyes, and proceeds to explain how he has discovered a fundamental and absolute truth about himself. When you ask him to tell you this awesome truth, he blurts out this: "The fundamental truth is that I cannot pronounce or write the word 'breakfast'!" You are not sure you heard him correctly, and so you ask him to write the truth down on a sheet of paper. He then writes legibly on the sheet: "I cannot pronounce or write the word 'breakfast'."

There is something obviously wrong here (other than the fact that the guy's elevator doesn't go all the way to the top floor!) and what the obvious wrong is is clear--the speaker contradicted himself in the process of speaking. He rendered his 'truth' ineffective--he stultified himself.
This is a special case of reductio ad absurdum -- but the absurdity was that "what he said" (the words, pronunciation, the speech act itself) contradicted the "what he said" (the content, the intention, the meaning).

Now let's generalize this type of argument.

The Nature of Self-Stultifying Statements
A self-stultifying statement is a statement that contradicts:

1. itself;
2. the case it advances as proof (if any);
3. the presuppositions inherent in the subject matter being discussed;
4. the presuppositions inherent in the speech act.

Let's illustrate these cases with a simple example.

Case 1: Contradicting itself ("Even though a horse is black, it is not black.")
Case 2: Contradicting the proof ("This black horse is not black")
Case 3: Contradicting the subject matter ("This horse is black half of the time"--horses don't change color often.)
Case 4: Contradicting the speech act ("I am a black horse"--semantic acts, of the English variety at least, are not performed by horses.)

If you want to read more on this, it can be found here

For ref... Incandescent Blue

2005-07-15T18:48:00.000+07:00

I sneaked across the border -- it was threatening rain--
So I could stand in this tunnel, waiting for the roaring train
And watch those black kids working out kung fu moves
If you don't want to be the horses' hoofprints you got to be the hooves

Hear that lonesome violin play
See the notes float up into the overcast
and change to white birds as they sail on through
and soar away free into incandescent blue

People getting ready behind all those rectangles of light
"Put on your grin mask, babe, you know we're steppin out tonight"
You hear that sound, like hammers only small?
It's what the people's heads say when they beat them against the wall

Hear that lonesome violin play
See the notes float up into the overcast
and change to white birds as they sail on through
and soar away free into incandescent blue

Concrete vortex sucks down the wind
It's howling like a blinded violin.
Oh -- tongues of fire, come and kiss my brow
if I ever needed you, well I need you now

Hear that lonesome violin play
See the notes float up into the overcast
and change to white birds as they sail on through
and soar away free into incandescent blue

bruce cockburn, Incandescent Blue, Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws

Are you experienced?

2005-07-15T18:17:00.000+07:00

Some more on 'God-experiences'..

How do we evaluate people's claims of experiencing God? To what extent are such claims evidence for God's existence? Should we assess such experiences by the same criteria that we assess other experiences?

Here's part of a post I made on CARM:

One of the big problems here is that all such experience is, by it's nature, subjective.. So how do I 'prove empirically' to you something that I have experienced and you have not?

Let's say for example, that your girlfriend told you that she "loves you deeply, no matter what" while you were alone on a beach one evening. How can you empirically prove to me that she said that? No-one else was there, there's no tape recording, no writing... Even if I was to meet
your girlfriend and ask her, she'd tell me that "that's between me and my man"... No empirical proof that she said that, but nonetheless, she did. You'll never forget it...

To come back to how I evaluate my experiences of God/ the supernatural (and believe me I do. Christians are specifically told not to just accept every such thing blindly "Test the spirits..").

*My 'God-experiences' are internally self-consistent.

*They are consistent with what I read of in the Bible of how God interacts with His children.

*They are consistent with the experiences of many others that I have come to know personally... I know/ have known well Christians from countries including: New Zealand, America, Poland, Thailand, Malaysia, Fiji, Sri Lanka, France, England, Korea, Iran and Australia..
These people I know/have known are from diverse social, educational and cultural backgrounds. I have got to know them in different contexts - socially, at work, at university, and even at church. And they all report very much the same experiences as I have had.
This is not to mention the written and taped testimonies of many many more from across the world and across the years..

*They are consistent with them being caused by a personal being. They exhibit the features of intelligent communication and interaction.

*They have been at times not at all what I expected - but still complying with all the above features.

*Finally, there have been occasions when I have experienced something that is completely 'other'. Call it transcendent, celestial, mystic if you prefer. It's just different

When we experience God...

2005-07-13T18:06:00.000+07:00

.. what should we expect our experience to be like?

People sometimes stumble at this point. They expect that our (or others) experiences of God should be verifiable in much the same way as our sense experiences are.

We see a three-legged table in our room, for example. We can verify this by looking again, by touch, by asking others if they also see the same table, etc. We can leave the room and go back in, to see if the table is still there. We can consult a carpenter to see if such a thing is possible. We can research to see if other three-legged tables have been observed, and so on.

However, if we apply this exact same model to claims of an experience of God, in an attempt to see if that's evidence that God actually exists. we are making an error..

"God is too transcendent, too "wholly other" for us to expect to be able to predict, much less control, His behavior, however accurate our particular experiences of His presence. And it is part of that unpredictability that we cannot expect to ascertain lawful regularities in His manifestations to our experience. Even if our particular readings of God's presence were 100% accurate, we could not expect to discover the general conditions under which a human being would experience a certain divine activity if it were really taking place. Insofar as we have any idea of what conditions are required for an individual's being aware of God, they have to do with subtle factors like openness and purity of heart, factors for the presence of which we hardly have an effective test. Therefore, since there is no reason to expect these achievements, however reliable the practice, their absence is no reason to brand it as unreliable, or even to doubt its reliability."

William P. Alston

Which is not to say that all claims of God-experiences are in fact any such thing...

Naam Phrik

2005-07-08T17:27:00.000+07:00

A popular Thai condiment. Fish sauce with fresh chilli and some lime juice. It's salty, sour and spicy hot. Thais use it on almost everything they eat - rice dishes, omelettes, fish, noodle soups...

Today's question: What is the 'spice' in your life? What do you really look forward to? What is absolutely central to your life? Is it something that has value and meaning beyond just the here and now?

All the world's a stage...

2005-07-08T17:19:00.000+07:00

When the author walks onto the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.

... That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it or not.

C.S. Lewis

Where does your road lead?

2005-07-02T09:52:00.000+07:00

Our lives have many roads that can lead us to many places...

Where is the road that you're on today leading you?

Here Be Dragons

2005-07-02T09:38:00.000+07:00

'Here' being my flat in Thailand...

The other morning, I looked out of my kitchen window to see a rather large monitor lizard slurping up some rainwater in my back yard. Rather large being about four foot from nose to tail..

My yard is enclosed by a five foot concrete block wall, but looks out onto a uncultivated field at the back. I'm not sure how the beastie got in, I doubt it could have climbed the wall, and there are no trees leaning over to help it. Maybe there's a tunnel somewhere...

The Origin of Religious Subjectivism

2005-07-01T17:47:00.000+07:00

The idea that 'my religion' and 'your religion' can at the same time be contradictory and yet also both true... that's religious subjectivism.

It's expressed in phrases like: "If that works for you, great, but my beliefs are different."

Here's a quote on the subject:

"Finally, subjectivism usually originates in materialism, both in theory and in practice. In theory, it usually begins in empiricism, as Plato shows in his “Theaetetus”; for empirical appearances are indeed relative (the same orange tastes bitter to you, sweet to me).

In practice, subjectivism usually begins in America’s two favorite materialistic occupations: consumerism and eroticism, greed and lust. Almost always, the practice comes before the theory; moral sensualism precedes epistemological sensualism. Addicts cannot see objective truth clearly.

One form of love — cupidity — is indeed blind. The other form — charity — is the opposite of blind. It is the road to truth, according to the man who said “I am ... the truth” (John 14:6), for he also said: “Blessed are the pure in heart [love], for they will see God” (Matt 5:8). "

{from Kreeft and Tacelli: Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions. 1994. Emphasis added}

Another way of saying that is:

Religious subjectivism comes about because people want to create their own personal belief system. A belief system that will provide an 'ethical' basis and justification for the moral lifestyle that they have already chosen.

We don't want to be faced with the reality that some of our actions and moral values are, quite simply, wrong - so we create elaborate systems to making ourselves morally 'right'. And those systems often involve religious belief (or non-belief), as an adjunct to the real issue... our moral behaviour.

Convenience or Community?

2005-07-01T17:39:00.000+07:00

Where do you do your grocery shopping?

Mostly, I get my bits and pieces at various little shops in the local market.
They're often run during the day by uncles, grandmothers, while the younger family members work elsewhere. Sometimes their stock is a bit old, and they're not always very tidy or clean places. But you get to know the ones that are good, and you also get to know the owners. Once I've done my shopping, it's a 5-minute trip home.

About once a month I do a shopping expedition to the 'Big C' supermarket at 'Future Park Rangsit'... a very big (40+ checkouts) supermarket at a very big mall. It's a good place to get stuff in bulk, or to get odd items of houseware. There's a selection of most things and it's all air-con.

Well, my current lifestyle is about to change... a brand spanking new Tesco-Lotus superstore has just opened about 2 minutes from home - even closer than the market. It'll be more convenient, cheaper and the stock will be newer than the old shops at the market. And it has KFC and MK Suki chain restaurants attached.

Who knows how this'll affect all those wee shops at the market? Perhaps some will go out of business, and others become even less frequented. And a small part of the community will disappear. People won't stop to chat as often in the Tesco-Lotus. They will rush from their car (handily parked underneath the store) into the air-con comfort, whizz around the aisles getting their things, and hurry through the checkout along with several hundred other busy shoppers.

We'll have more convenience... but we may have to sacrifice some of our community for it.

Champions!

2005-06-24T18:31:00.000+07:00

Let me be the first to congratulate myself on supporting a winning team...

the new NBA Champions, the San Antonio Spurs.

After a well-contested series with the Detroit Pistons, the Spurs have won 4 -3, with great contributions over the series from Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Robert Horry and Bruce Bowen in particular.

Why do I like the Spurs? This says it all... they're a team.

Tim Duncan is a true NBA superstar, but one without the ego and selfishness of so many others. He doesn't boast, showboat or belittle others.. he just goes out and gets it done.

Tim could put up better personal stats, he's almost unstoppable on attack, but he's wise enough to recognise that winning means sharing the ball with his team-mates... passing out of the double team to an open team-mate for an easier shot.

Today's question: Are you a superstar that lifts those around you? Or are you most concerned with your own personal success?

I am the News!

2005-06-20T18:00:00.000+07:00

We seem to be obsessed with 'personality' these days.

We want to know what some 'famous' presenter thinks about the latest happenings... but do we ever stop to ask ourselves just how well-founded the presenter's opinions are?

Here's a few snippets from Paul Holmes (world-famous in New Zealand) on 'personality' and his career in television current affairs:

"When I began, years ago, to do a television current affairs programme I never had any thoughts about having a unique style or trying to impose my "personality" on the issues and the discussions. I simply did things as best I could and I struggle still every night to do so. "

"It is absolutely fundamentally understood in broadcasting that people are fussy about the qualities of the person they allow to read them the news and hold the discussions. They want a specific kind of "personality". "

Paul may well be right... people do seem to want 'personality' in their news-readers and interviewers. But at what cost? Do we really get a fair and balanced view of events, or do we get one person's particular slant on things?

Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy... when someone says "Believe this because Paul Holmes said it was true"... Paul Holmes, or Tony Blair, or Richard Dawkins, or....

Such an appeal is valid only when the 'expert' appealed to really is an authority on the topic under examination. Accepting the opinion of an expert paleontologist about the development of religious belief may be no more reasonable than asking your aunty.

Paul tries to paint himself as a neutral reporter of events... but those of us who have seen him at work know that that is far fro the whole story. An interview by Paul is just as likely to be about Paul's opinion on the topic as about the opinions of the expert he's interviewing.

His current show's lousy ratings are, I hope, a reflection of New Zealander's finally seeing through him and seeking something more objective and informative.

Spurs lead 3 - 2

2005-06-20T17:35:00.000+07:00

And they have home-court advantage...

The Spurs managed a 96-95 overtime win away at Detroit... the first away win by either team in the Finals this year. If they can win the next game, at home, then that's it... another NBA championship for San Antonio.

Highlights:
Tim Duncan 26 points, 19 rebounds
Robert Horry 21 points, including the winning 3-point shot with 5.8 seconds to go in OT.

Chauncey Billups scored 34 points for Detroit.

I love sporting contests like this..

Site of the Week V

2005-06-15T16:24:00.000+07:00

What: Leadership University http://www.leaderu.com/

What's good: Lots of interesting articles on a range of topics, usually they're quite easily readable. There are articles by some leading thinkers in various philosphy/religious fields.

They have a bunch of articles around current topics { e.g. currently they have: Star Wars: Jedi Spirituality } so you get a look in a bit of depth at something.

You might notice something about their tagline... hope that's not copyrighted!

Eat the Famous

2005-06-15T15:48:00.000+07:00

The Michael Jackson trial....

Innocent or guilty, this whole sad and sordid business makes me wonder where 'our' civilisation is going. Michael is a classic example of someone who has been eaten alive by the fame industry.

He became a superstar at about 9 years old, and has never known anything like a normal life as a result. And we wonder why 'Whacko Jacko' is such a weird guy.....

While it's obvious that Jackson has to bear responsibility for his own behaviour, nonetheless I can't help thinking that we also bear some responsibility when we contribute to the industry that took an innocent, talented kid and warped him into the man we see today... all so we could be 'entertained'.

Belief and Potholes

2005-06-07T17:58:00.000+07:00

About two years ago the country road out to Sontaror School* was resurfaced with new ashphalt.

It really needed it too, it was full of potholes and parts that had sunk up to a foot or so below the rest of the road.. so bad that in parts traffic was forced to use only one side of ther road.

I somewhat cynically suspect that the road resurface was timed to coincide with local elections... giving the incumbent something concrete he could point to as his achievement for the community.

Well, a bit under two years have passed since we had a nice smooth road, and it's well on the way back to it's former state. Some really good sunken bits are developing, taking up half of one side for about 10 metres at a stretch. And some excellent potholes are developing. The current rainy season should help these a lot...

Why is this road so problematic? My opinion is that there are two problems: a) the foundation of the road is of poor quality, and thus subsides easily, b) there are some heavy trucks that use the road, and it's just not built to take that kind of loading.

So what's all this got to do with the title of this post?

This: our beliefs, our worldview must have adequate foundations.

What we believe about life, God, truth, meaning, purpose, values and so on must be solidly grounded in reality as it is. What we believe to be true must be what is actually true.

If our beliefs are not adequately grounded in reality then we are like the country road... we start out looking good on the surface, but as time goes on, and the heavy traffic comes (and it will come) our beliefs develop potholes and sunken bits...

...and they can't take us anywhere.

*Sontaror School is a small Thai state high school where I teach English two days a week. The community is rice farming-based, poorish, nice people.

Site of the Week IV

2005-06-07T17:47:00.000+07:00

Actually this is a particular section of a site that I enjoy:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/funny_old_game/robbo/4612985.stm

That's the link to this week's commentary by 'Robbo' on UK sport. He's amusing and usually has some good insights as well.

If you're a Premier League fan, or just into sport in general, check out Robbo's rants on www.bbc.co.uk , in the 'Football' section.

Here's a sample: After moaning about tennis in general, Robbo gets on to the topic of claycourt tennis...

"Any road, the French Open is probably un peu worse. Running about in orange dust is just weird.
I know the young bloke Nadal is impressive enough, but the rallies just go on and on as far as I can tell.
And why clay? They need to sweep the whole lot of it into a bag and make some nice plates and vases and that out of it. It'd be more entertaining. "

Spurs to win it all

2005-06-05T15:38:00.000+07:00

Yes, basketball fans, the San Antonio Spurs are looking good to win the NBA this year.

They're into the Finals (comfortably defeating Phoenix in 5 games), and should face the Detroit Pistons (who are all square at 3 - 3 against Miami).

If the finals are Spurs-Detroit it'll be a tough defensive-minded series, and should be very close.

If Miami manage to recover from star Dwayne Wade's rib injury and make the Finals, I predict that the Spurs will win... they have too many options and showed against Phoenix that to beat them, their opponents need more than just two superstars. Amare Stoudemire scored over 30 points in most of the games against the Spurs, but Phoenix could still only win one game in a 5-game rout.

Why do I like the Spurs? a) David Robinson's old team b) Tim Duncan - the anti-superstar... no fuss, no ego, technically superb, just gets it done c) Tony Parker - French NBA star d) they're not the LA Lakers e) I like black and white (Spurs strip).

For more on the NBA, visit www.nba.com and www.insidehoops.com and www.slamonline.com

C.S. Lewis is judgemental?

2005-06-03T16:22:00.000+07:00

Maybe you've read the quote over there on the right-hand side... and maybe you've winced to yourself and thought 'another judgemental christian, thinking they're right and everyone else is wrong..'

If you've thought those things, or something close to that, I don't blame you. But I also urge you to dig a bit deeper. C.S. Lewis was a very sensitive and gentle man - read some of his Narnia 'children's' books, or something like Mere Christianity. So perhaps he was not being so judgemental as he might appear.

"Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. "

C.S. is telling us that those who build a life centred around satisfying their own needs and desires will eventually collapse in on themselves like a human black hole. They may have everything in the world, but none of it can satisfy them...

"But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

Here C.S. is reminding us of Jesus' words in Matthew 6: 31 -33

"So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

It's when we put Christ and His desires at the centre of our lives that we find freedom - freedom from worry about the things we need for our daily lives, and the freedom to truly be who we should be.

Here's the dare for today: Put Christ at the centre of your life

Set a thief to catch a thief

2005-05-30T17:35:00.000+07:00

Here's a slice of (sadly) typical Thai political life:

The NCCC [National Counter-Corruption Commission] is a body of supposedly impartial 'wise men' set up to help deal with corruption in high places in Thailand.

The nine current members of the NCC have just all resigned, over political meddling in their attempts to perform their duties.

No, that's not it. They resigned because they weren't given enough resources to tackle corruption.

No, that's still not it.

They resigned because "The Supreme Court's political crime section last Thursday found all nine members of the National Counter Corruption Commission guilty of abusing their power by awarding themselves pay rises, and handed down a two-year suspended jail sentence to each of them."

Their monthly salary was a measly 110,000 baht each (for comparision a junior teacher with a university degree gets about 7,000 baht a month). They (illegally) voted themselves a 45,000 baht a month pay rise. Obviously it must have been hard to maintain their no doubt frugal lifestyles on their initial salary...

Woe to a country where the supposed guardians of the public good find it so easy to dip their snouts into the public granary. At least they have been removed...

Great Grace

2005-05-29T14:21:00.000+07:00

Being a Christian challenges me and satisfies me intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. I can find no other belief system that comes close to doing that in all those areas.

Best of all - the gift of knowing God is free, and available to everyone.

Site of the Week III

2005-05-28T09:56:00.000+07:00

The third in my series of cool websites is: http://www.aldaily.com/

What's good: An accessible compendium of current articles on all sorts of topics.

It covers news commentary, social issues, academia, literature and culture.

Each linked article is highlighted with a short 'blurb' to whet your appetite, and there are often other links to related articles.

Why I like it: It's a good source for the 'intelligentsia' view on the world. High-quality articles about interestng stuff.

Oh, and it started off in New Zealand..

Correspondance and truth

2005-05-27T17:34:00.000+07:00

I've been reading a little on the Correspondance Theory of Truth.

wikipedia { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_theory_of_truth } summarizes it as:

"The proposition that P is true if and only if P corresponds with the facts."

Another way of putting it is:

"in order for a proposition to be true according to the correspondence theory, there must exist some fact to which it corresponds: the proposition P has to correspond with the fact that P, if the proposition P is true. So, we can say that it is true that P if, and only if, there exists a fact that P. In this case, it is true that some dogs bark if, and only if, there exists a fact that some dogs bark."

Of course, like any philosophical idea, the Correspondance Theory is not without it's detractors, but to me it seems like a common-sense approach to the issue of truth.

Here's a quote from J.P. Moreland that touches on some of this idea:

"Reality makes thoughts true or false; a thought is not made true by someone believing it or by someone being able to determine whether or not it is true. "

{J.P.Moreland : 'Moreland on Postmodernism' a lecture given November 2004 http://www.str.org/weblog/blog_archives/00000131.htm }

He is asserting that there is a knowable reality that exists independantly of whether you (or anyone) believes it, or can discover it or prove it. And further, that the truth of our beliefs can be established by their corrspondance with that reality. If we believe something that clearly does not correspond with reality, then our belief is untrue.

This is where the fun really starts... determining what that reality really is.

Dallas Willard, in a lecture called 'Truth in the Academy' gave this answer to an audience question:

"What can we do to help those who are advocating a relativist understanding of truth?

Answer: Well, there are various things that you can do. Many of them are helped just by pointing out that they are making an absolute claim about the nature of truth itself. They are not telling you how they think truth is—they are telling you how it really is. And they expect you to agree with their claim and not just say, "Well, that's nice. You believe that. I don't believe that." They are not willing to leave you with your belief about what truth is, and that's a dead giveaway that they are not just telling you what they think truth is. They are telling you what it really is. And some people are helped by having this pointed out to them. Now a consistent person will at that point back off and tell you, "No, I'm just telling you what I think." But that's what you would call a Pyrrhic victory, because if he's only telling me what he thinks, that carries no weight with others. Obviously he is not. He wants to tell me what I should think. But why should I think what he thinks I should think? No reason, unless there is something called truth beyond opinion, the truth about truth. "

{ http://www.christianethicstoday.com/Issue/021/Truth%20-%20Can%20We%20Do%20Without%20It%20-%20By%20Dallas%20Willard_021_12_.htm }

He neatly summarises where relativism breaks down:

If there are no truths that are absolute (i.e. true for everyone, everywhere, all the time) then even the proposition :"There are no absolute truths" has no absolute meaning. It becomes just another opinion to be accepted, discarded or ignored as we feel like.

Love is....

2005-05-25T16:42:00.000+07:00

... never having to say you're sorry.

Remember those cutesy 'Love is...' cartoons? They featured a cherubic 'Adam' and an equally cherubic 'Eve'. Well one of the cheesiest ones had the line above as it's theme. Personally, I can't think of anything more asinine than thinking that because you're 'in lurve' you are automatically forgiven, and never need to express your contrition.

Anyway, I posted this because I heard on Aunty BBC World Service that China is in a snit with Japan, apparently over Koizumi's insistence on visiting a shrine honouring Japanese war dead (some of whom were convicted of war crimes).

A high-up visiting Chinese dignitary abruptly canceled the remainder of their visit and went home, and a Japanese spokesperson was on the BBC complaining that the Chinese guest could have at least sent a wee apology or an excuse for having to leave so quickly...

That struck me as a supreme irony, coming from the Japanese, who have yet (AFAIK) to apologise at all to the Chinese, or most of Asia, for their barbaric conduct in WWII.

Bodyguard

2005-05-22T14:34:00.000+07:00

Your air of detached indifference
might fool the casual observer
Not me - I’ve seen your kind before
Watchful, missing nothing
Never far from her side
Beneath your calm professionalism
lurks a little impatience
Bodyguard of a VIP
I guess it has it’s moments of tedium
a job like that
But your thorough attentiveness
doesn’t waver
At least this VIP
will never step on any cracks
or miss something interesting
along the way
Like a pretty flower
or a bird’s lost feather
Not while you’re on the job
Walking your mum to school

Site of the Week II

2005-05-19T18:49:00.000+07:00

This week's groovy website is: http://www.apologeticsindex.org/

What's good: A huge database of all sorts of people, philosophies and groups associated with religion and spirituality.

Easy to find the entry you want - just use the alpahbetical index.

Has links to other sites with more info on the topic you're looking at

Why I like it: It's interesting, readable, and useful...

I got in a fight last night

2005-05-16T16:43:00.000+07:00

As I was walking home yesterday I got into a fight... a fight I didn't want to have. I beat some stranger up. Now I can't sleep...

I was walking home downtown late yesterday afternoon, in kind of a hurry. There weren't many people around. I passed a group of three students, going my way, carrying their schoolbags and still dressed in their uniforms from their after-school karate class.

Not long after that, I saw a guy coming the other way. He was young and thin, with his hair cropped short. He was wearing loose grey pants and a grey judo jacket pulled together with a frayed belt. That's all that I would have been able to tell you about him, except that, as we passed each other, he stuck out his leg and half-tripped me with it.

I stumbled over his leg, reacting too slowly to avoid him. As I regained my balance he looked at me in an odd kind of way and said "You kicked me." Of course, I'd done nothing of the kind. I mumbled an apology, and was truning to go when he grabbed my arm.

"You kicked me." he said again. "That's a challenge. We have to fight."

"I'm not fighting anyone. You tripped me." I replied and walked on, a bit faster than before.

" I challenge you!" he cried after me "What is beauty? What is power? What is truth?"

I kept walking homewards, thinking 'Great, just what I need, an encounter with a nutcase.' As I crossed the next side street, I glanced back over my shoulder to see... He was following me. Oh great, a real nutcase. I'm a pretty fast walker, so I put my head down and sped up, hoping that he'd get discouraged and stop following me.

Suddenly he ran lightly past me, stopped in the middle of the next side street and turned to face me. I stopped at the kerb, half-hoping that those students I'd passed earlier would help me out... But they just gawped at me, wondering what I'd do...

The guy in the grey judo gear stood there in the road. "You kicked me. That's a challenge." he said again.
"I didn't kick you".

He lifted one leg up into a kicking position, and moved it slowly in a half circle from left to right. His hands were bunched into fists, and his head was tucked low between his shoulders.
"Your leg hit mine. That's a kick. You must fight me."

"I'm not fighting you."
I stepped off the kerb and went around him quickly, walking away. He almost lost his balance as he turned to watch me.

"What is beauty? What is power? What is truth?" he called after me.
He really was some kind of crazy guy, I was thinking. On a second look, he was pretty small and thin, almost half-starved looking. I was trying to walk really fast now, but without looking like I was hurrying away from him. But he kept following me, calling out his wierd questions again and again:"What is beauty? What is power? What is truth?"

I had no desire to fight him, what with his delusional code of honour, but boy was he irritating. This went on for a couple of long blocks, me walking on, and the crazy 'karate kid' following me, calling out his questions and his challenge. It was embarrassing, having some half-crazy idiot following me like that. I wanted to lose him, the last thing I wanted was him following me all the way home.

A second time he ran past me and stopped in the street ahead. This time he just stood there, his head tilted back a little. I hesitated when I got to the kerb."You can't answer, can you? What is beauty?... You don't know, do you?""And truth, you're frightened of truth, aren't you?"
"Shut up" I growled at him.

He just spoke louder still."As for power, you haven't got any power, have you?" he cried, almost happily. I ignored him and walked by again, crossing the side street.
"You kicked me! We must fight! I challenge you!" he yelled gleefully.
"You're afraid! Afraid!"I just walked on, leaving him in the street behind me.

He ran up past me a third time. This time he stopped just in front of me, forcing me to stop too, or bump into him.
"What is beauty?" he spat at me "What is truth? What is power?"
"You... are... afraid." he said, poking me with a finger and grinning maddeningly at me.
That's when I lost it.

I shoved him, hard, into the doorway of a shop, sending a display stand of books tumbling down. And I hit him, three, four, maybe six times. I don't remember exactly, I was so mad. He fell down among the books, not even trying to defend himself.

As he lay there, books scattered and loose pages fluttering around, I leant over him."You're crazy!" I told him. He just wiped his cut lip with the back of his hand, and grinned at me. "You're afraid!" he said again.

One of the loose pages lying there was from a children's picture dictionary. Picking it up, I saw it had a picture of a mandolin on one side, and a definition of 'power' printed on the other side. I thrust it in his bruised face, jabbing my finger at the picture of the mandolin. "That is beauty." I told him, "Perfectly made artistry. And this is power", shoving the definition up close. I threw the page down on him and turned to go.

" I won" he said quietly "... I won."

As I began to walk away he called out one last thing: "What is truth? You didn't answer... What is truth?"

I left him there, lying in the bookshop doorway. I'm at home now, it's late but I can't sleep. Two things haunt me... his eyes, as I stood over him in that doorway... he wasn't afraid of me at all. Even after I beat him up, I was afraid of him.

Two things... his eyes, and his last words to me..

"You didn't answer... What is truth?"

- from a dream I had last night

It's your truth, not mine

2005-05-16T16:01:00.000+07:00

I want to touch on one of the reasons that leads people to treat others as less than human (see the previous post - "They're not like us").

A philosophy that seems to underly a lot of modern thinking is that of relativism.
It's the idea that truth is relative to the believer. That is, something can be 'true for me' and not 'true for you'.

At first glance, this seems reasonable. After all, it is true that I am male, blue-eyed, slightly below 'average height', nearly (gulp) middle-aged. And those four truths are probably not all true 'for you'.

It's also true that in my home country I'm average-looking, and here (Thailand) I have often been told that I am handsome. So that 'truth' seems to vary with my location and cultural environment.

It even seems that moral truths and religious beliefs are relative to the believer... that 'If it works for you' is an accurate way of looking at things. But this is where the fog descends....

If there are no absolute moral truths, if everything is relative to the circumstances, then there is nothing that is always wrong in every place - and slaughtering people like cattle, brutalizing them and torturing them is entirely conceivable.

And thus we have a root of the thinking that leads to genocides.

Perhaps you've noticed that relativism has a contradiction at it's heart. If we claim that 'There are no absolute truths', then we have made a self-contradictory statement. Thus 'absolute' relativism is self-refuting and cannot be true.

I also believe that 'limited' relativism - 'there are no absolute moral values' or 'religious truths are not true for everyone' is also untrue. Jesus either is or is not God, and he either is or is not the only way to the Father.

"They're not like us."

2005-05-15T16:03:00.000+07:00

"In fact, they're not even human."

The recent anniversary of VE Day, and an interview I heard on BBC World Service reminded me of some unpleasant realities.

The interview was with a Canadian Colonel, who was in command of the very limited numbers of UN peace-keepers in Rwanda before and during the genocide there. He spoke of the way that power-holders in Rwanda manipulated people to carry out the genocides so that they could retain power... and how those people had not yet been called to account for the massacres they initiated.

How can people treat others so inhumanely?

A few years ago I had the chance to visit Auschwitz concentration camp, in what is now Poland. I had previously seen various pictures and documentaries about the Holocaust**, but actually being in a place where so many were brutalized and killed was.... chilling.

What really struck me, again and again there, was the clinical efficiency of everything. Nothing was wasted - hair, gold teeth, spectacles, clothing... everything possible was recycled and re-used by the Nazis.

Just like we run an abbatoir, slaughtering cattle, they slaughtered people.

And that, I think, is the key to why 'ordinary Germans' could participate in such things with apparently clear consciences... because they didn't see their victims as people, but as something less, something sub-human, something animal.

And that, I believe, is why Rwandans, Serbs, militias in Darfur, and so on, can slaughter their fellow human beings - because "They're not like us... In fact, they're not even human."

What kind of thinking leads one to conclude something like that?

** A powerful documentary on the Holocaust is "Nuit et Brouillard" (Night and Fog). The repeated denials of responsibility by everyone at the Nuremburg War Trials are stunning.

Griengjai

2005-05-12T17:29:00.000+07:00

"Griengjai" is a word you'll hear quite often in Thailand. It's used a lot in social interactions, usually as a one-word sentence.

"Would you like a Pepsi?"

> "Griengjai"

"So what does 'griengjai' mean?" - That's where things get tricky.

Griengjai describes a particular attitude that is somewhat peculiar to Thai culture (as compared to Western culture). It can't really be translated by one English word, although usually you'll see it described as 'consideration for others' or something similar.

Griengjai describes a feeling of not wanting to put another to any trouble;

"Would you like a ride home with me?"

> "Griengjai" {It's a long way out of your way to take me home}

or feeling that someone is being overly generous to you.

"Here, take this leather briefcase. It's really no use to me."

> "Griengjai" {That briefcase cost a lot of money. You're being very generous.}

It allows the person offering something to confirm that they really do want to offer it to you, and aren't just doing it to be 'polite'. It can also be used to politely refuse an offer - which is what can be confusing for us non-Thai. Does our Thai friend mean "No thanks, I don't feel like an ice-cream" or "I'd like one, but it's poite to refuse" when they say "Griengjai" in response to our offer of an ice-cream?

After five years here, I'm still not always sure which it is. That's the wonder of Thailand... a surprise around every corner. A new nuance to learn and understand.

Relating this back to the broader topic of communication, as Christians we do have a very different conceptual framework than other people. And often they simply can't understand quite what we mean unless we take the time to allow them to dig into our 'culture', and see what Christianity means in the context of our lives.

Like "griengjai" in Thai, as Christians we have some concepts that do not exist in other 'cultures' philosophical frameworks. People we communicate with can not always grasp what exactly we mean unless they have the chance to discuss, question and observe.

'Context is everything'

Man vs Animal

2005-05-12T11:12:00.000+07:00

What differentiates Mankind from the animals?

Evolutionary theory gives the answer: 'Nothing'. Man is just an animal writ large. All the qualities and abilities we possess can be found in animals, even if only in vestigal forms.

I find that to be an unsatisfactory answer... I think that humanity has a number of characteristics that clearly separate us from the animals, to wit:

imagination and creativity

ability to think and reason in the abstract

sense of morality and ability to act as moral agents

self-awareness

Anything that you think should be added to that list? Or perhaps you think there is something that should be removed from the list... send me a comment!

Site of the week

2005-05-11T13:57:00.000+07:00

This week's great website is: www.stuff.co.nz

What's good: Great site to catch up on New Zealand news and current events.

Want to know who the Hurricanes beat in last weekend's Super 12 games?

Want to know what's going on in NZ politics?

Want to know local NZ news?

Want to know what Peter Jackson's up to on his latest movie?

It's all there on stuff.... and lots more

Why I like it: I'm a Kiwi living away (far away) from home, and I need a weekly fix or two of Kiwiana to keep me going.

It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for

2005-05-10T17:20:00.000+07:00

Ever noticed that people's conviction that they are correct often varies inversely with the force with which they put their position?

Some people argue so strongly and so aggressively that one wonders if they really are sure that what they are saying is right...

In complete contrast to that is Jesus. He strikes me as someone who spoke calmly and with utter conviction. What He said was truth... and He didn't need to shout opposing voices down to assure Himself that He was correct.

Isaiah 42:

1 "Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. 2 He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.

So which are you... a 'shouter' or someone who speaks the truth with conviction?

A mixture of...

2005-05-10T16:46:00.000+07:00

... all the usual blog stuff...

thoughts

incidents

pictures

philosophy

demented ramblings

cheesy poetry

... or maybe not...

wait and see!