Faith

This is for Christians. I got this from a blog by an Adelyn. I'll link this. Thanks, Cat.

Although I'm pretty much an atheist myself, this story is still very inspirational. Enjoy.

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"Let me explain the problem science has with Jesus Christ." The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand.
"You're a Christian, aren't you, son?"
"Yes sir," the student says.
"So you believe in God?"
"Absolutely."
"Is God good?"
"Sure! God's good."
"Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?"
"Yes."
"Are you good or evil?"
"The Bible says I'm evil."
The professor grins knowingly. "Aha! The Bible!" He considers for a moment.
"Here's one for you. Let's say there's a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help him? Would you try?"
"Yes sir, I would."
"So you're good...!"
"I wouldn't say that."
"But why not say that? You'd help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could. But God doesn't."

The student does not answer, so the professor continues.
"He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him How is this Jesus good? Hmmm? Can you answer that one?"
The student remains silent.

"No, you can't, can you?" the professor says. "Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?"
"Er...yes," the student says.
"Is Satan good?"
The student doesn't hesitate on this one. "No."
"Then where does Satan come from?"
The student : "From...God..."
"That's right. God made Satan, didn't he? Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?"
"Yes, sir."
"Evil's everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything, correct?"
"Yes."
"So who created evil?" The professor continued, "If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil.

"Without allowing the student to answer, the professor continues:
"Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?"

The student: "Yes."

"So who created them?"

The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question. "Who created them? There is still no answer. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized.

"Tell me," he continues onto another student. "Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?"

The student's voice is confident: "Yes, professor, I do."

The old man stops pacing. "Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?"

"No sir. I've never seen Him"
"Then tell us if you've ever heard your Jesus?"
"No, sir, I have not."
"Have you ever actually felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus orsmelt your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that matter?"
"No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't."
"Yet you still believe in him?"
"Yes."
"According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?"
"Nothing," the student replies. "I only have my faith."
"Yes, faith," the professor repeats. "And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith."

The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of his own. "Professor, is there such thing as heat?"
"Yes," the professor replies. "There's heat."
"And is there such a thing as cold?"
"Yes, son, there's cold too."
"No sir, there isn't."

The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain.

"You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can hit up to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest -458 degrees. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it."

Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer.

"What about darkness, professor. Is there such a thing as darkness?"
"Yes," the professor replies without hesitation. "What is night if it isn't darkness?"
"You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light, but if you have no light constantly you have Nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?"

The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him.
This will be a good semester. "So what point are you making, young man?"

"Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed."

The professor's face cannot hide his surprise this time.
"Flawed? Can you explain how?"

"You are working on the premise of duality," the student explains. "You argue that there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it."

"Now tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?"
"If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do"
"Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?"

The professor begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realizes where the argument is going. A very good semester, indeed.

"Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher?"

The class is in uproar. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided.

"To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean."

The student looks around the room. "Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?" The class breaks out into laughter.

"Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt the professor's brain, touched or smelled the professor's brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir. So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?"

Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers. "I guess you'll have to take them on faith."

"Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life," the student continues. "Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?"

Now uncertain, the professor responds, "Of course, there is. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens whenman does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

Links

I've put links on my blog to some of my friends' blogs that I think is worth reading if you have a whole lot of time to waste and/or (why do I keep using this?) want to know the life of a complete stranger.

I'll add more links to other blogs that are interesting (to me, of course, but you might enjoy them, too) if I come across some. And I'm assuming that everybody would like a little bit of publicity so nobody is gonna kill me for linking them ... Right?

FAQ

Ignore the title. What I want to say here is please comment on the posts, not to my face.

I mean, for those whom I meet on a near-daily basis, please don't give me comments personally because most of the time when I'm not in front of a PC, I don't like people mentioning what I put in the 'Net. It's like I have two different personalities, see? I'm one person in the real world and another on-line. I don't want my head to be on the computer 24/7.

To me, this is irritation and often leads to aggravation. And unless you happen to be a very close friend of mine and/or can run fast, don't talk to me about what I do on the Internet.

Reunion

It's the Chinese new year! And what better way to celebrate it than having your whole family gather at one place to stuff themselves with belly-bloating, laxative-imitating, heart attack-inducing food? I know, stuffing ourselves with food without all the above descriptions! Except maybe the bloating, that's unavoidable with Chinese cooking. Well, my family's recipes at least.

1815 hours:
Cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents are arriving. The aunts arrived first so as to be able to prepare the dishes. Meanwhile the uncles and cousins who were unlucky enough to have mothers or wives who participated in the preparing of dishes lolled around the living room staring at various programmes on the tube. You can't imagine how freakin' hilarious the whole picture looked from my angle. A whole room of people focusing on a black box.

1915 hours:
Everybody's seated at the three tables in the garden. My cousin sister found the camera and started snapping. The dishes have started covering the tables. We had eight or nine courses; I was feeling too nauseous after the third to count. I can't list out all the dishes in order but I know what we had for the first. It was a five-in-one dish. It was all vegetarian and was decorated with tiny cookie-mice on the sides, in honour of the year we're celebrating. The dessert was an ensemble of fruits in a watermelon bowl. But since we had only one watermelon and therefore, only two bowls, so my table got the whole container instead.

2130 hours:
Everyone's cleared the food and've gone to the living room to stare more at the TV. We caught a movie halfway and when it ended, my third aunt brought out something which turned out to be the noise-making tube-things for the Project Superstar concerts. The tubes made annoying metallic sounds when slapped against each other. Everyone fooled around, played cards, board games or just plain chatting.

2315 hours:
Everybody went back home to catch some Zs for the home-visiting, angpau collecting trip which is starting at 7:00AM the next day. Did some cleaning and clearing-up. Mom got started on the broth for the steamboat dinner two or three days later that will officially end the celebrations.

My cousin sister took pictures but there was an error in uploading them and now my camera has problems connecting to the PC so I can't show you all the fun. I'm currently trying to fix this and hopefully I can get the pictures out soon. I'll post them if I succeed.

PS: I posted this late because I just realised I didn't publish it and saved it as a draft instead. Sorry.

Death

Yeah, yeah, I know, people put exciting events, special occasions and/or a miracle or two in their blogs but let me start off with something I've been experiencing on an almost weekly basis since a few years back: Death.

Yes, death: noun, the end of somebody's life: the end of the life of a person or animal; in art: a creature that looks like a skeleton used in paintings, stories etc as a sign of death and destruction; the end: the permanent end of an idea.

Well, the death I'm talking about is the first one. The one meaning the end of a life. You see, ever since we moved into this house, mom got a garden for her own. After that, we got trees, bushes, flowers and all sorts of plants. But then we got pests, too. Rodents. Black, grey. Whiskers. A long tail. Rats.

And we also got a nice pond filled with shiny, orange Japanese kois. And even that became a problem. See, sometimes, not often, but more often than not, when it rains, the fishes take it to their heads that they'd like a good splash and one or two are sometimes unlucky enough to land on the lawn instead of back in the pond and we find these few dead and bleeding all over the grass from their oxygen-deprived gills. And it's always my job to pick them up and dispose of them. You can't imagine how sad I felt whenever mom finds one during her routine garden watering. And disgusted. Imagine holding something hard and slimy that you know was alive and moving only a few hours ago. Nasty.

We had about 10 kois and then they multiplied so we had about 13 or 14. A few months ago we had around 20. But after the horrible incident, the "Aquatic Masacre", as I called it, we were left only 3 fishes. Somehow, a rat managed to gnaw through the PVC tube for the filtering system of the pond and the mini-waterfall stopped flowing and therefore, no air for the fish. The whole pond and its contents decayed overnight and in the morning, the smell spread through the house. We went out to see the pond turned into a revolting swamp. Spider-webs were everywhere and murderous-looking insects spawned. The water became a disgusting greyish mixture of death and decay and the poor kois were bloated and afloat in the disgusting concoction. They made me fish out the "casualties" and put them into a huge garbage bag and toss it on the pile of junk not far away. The whole picture was so horrible I almost cried and I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture of it even if I wanted to. I was relieved when I saw one or two small ones still swimming in that muck. I got the survivors out and put them back when the pond is clean again.

I thought I've seen the worst but no, it was just the beginning. A few weeks later, rats started dying in the garden. Most of them were small babies which probably lost their way and starved to death. They were tiny so mom could handle them but just today, only about two hours ago, mom called me out into the garden for something. She usually calls me if there was raking to do or she needs me to take out the huge bag of dead grass and/or leaves out to the pile of trash. And since I didn't see any dead grass and/or leaves to rake or a huge black plastic bag of any sort, I got suspicious. And I was right to be. She wanted me to scrape the huge, balding, rotting rat from out of the corner of her vegetable patch where she plants her curry leaf trees, aloe veras and lime plants. The friggin' monster was stiff and had white-ish bald spots and flies all around it. And the only tools I get from mom is a small shovel. Damn.

We have at least one dead rat a month and it's not stopping. And most of the time, it's me who cleans up these messes which include dead lizards in the house but that's not so common, thank goodness. This is what I have to deal with every two to three weeks or so and I'm relieved that that this area is so urbanised that I have as much chance for discovering a dead garden snake as I have for joining the Vienna Philharmonic.

I wish this will stop and I wish the Grim Reaper will stop using me to clean up after him. If you're trying to train me to become the next Reaper will you please at least tell me so I can be more prepared to meet your "clients" after you've given them your "service"?

Damn.