Two minds of @JeffSchweitzer

Schweitzer calls the gap between Christianity and science an "unbridgeable gulf", yet his theorizing of primeval times subverts his own opinion:

"Traits that we view as moral are deeply embedded in the human psyche. Honesty, fidelity, trustworthiness, kindness to others, and reciprocity are primeval characteristics that helped our ancestors survive. In a world of dangerous predators, early man could thrive only in cooperative groups. Good behavior strengthened the tribal bonds that were essential to survival. What we now call morality is really a suite of behaviors favored by natural selection in an animal weak alone but strong in numbers. Morality is a biological necessity and a consequence of human development, not a gift from God." (from Two Americas: Rationalists and Arationalists)

How convenient for Schweitzer to deploy his criticism of theists to dovetail his own faith in the undocumented human evolution of morality! Nowhere in his argument were the evidence and arguments of the best from the other side (say, Michael Behe's irreducible complexity) reasoned against or even mentioned. If this is all his article amounts to—a gross double standard in his own reasoning—at least I now know not to take Jeff Schweitzer's layman's ramblings seriously.

The New Silent Generation (or "What I hate myself for")

Two things turned me inside out today while I was out taking a walk in the city. The first was my response to a comment I heard that fumed me, and the other was a display of apathy including my own; both belonged in their own ways to a disability to speak up caused by what I believe to be a derailed sense of morality that is weaving through the fibre of society.

When I boarded a tram a lady in the tram who was trying to get off after the other alighting passengers were gone said to her companion referring to the boarding passengers, "How rude these people are," and then raised her voice saying, "excuse us! We're trying to get off!" Then and there, my ears turned fuming hot and I so wanted to give the lady an earful about how it was her who dilly-dallyed when other passengers were alighting before her. How dare she blame others for her own indecision!

Another frustrating incident also happened to have taken place in a tram! - does public transport bring out the worst in people? A half-drunk youth was harassing two ladies seated next to him and for minutes after insufferable minutes, the women were left to their own limited resort to ward off the slurring nuisance and nobody went to their rescue!

The bottom line is, men from my generation (myself very much included) are incapacitated from acting as men when it counts. We are more than glad to stand by and watch others suffer than jump into the hot seat to relieve others. We haven't been taught how to stand up for the needy, but how could we? Men my age were raised by men and women born in the Silent Generation. As the Time magazine described our parents in 1951:

Youth today is waiting for the hand of fate to fall on its shoulders, meanwhile working fairly hard and saying almost nothing. The most startling fact about the younger generation is its silence. With some rare exceptions, youth is nowhere near the rostrum. By comparison with the Flaming Youth of their fathers & mothers, today's younger generation is a still, small flame. It does not issue manifestoes, make speeches or carry posters...

...so their children naturally follow in their footsteps.

I'm not asking my generation to issue manifestoes, carry posters or burn books. These things have been and should continually be debated for their validity. I don't even have the right to ask anything of others until I do something about it myself; as Chesterton was rumoured to have supplied the two-word answer to the question what's wrong with the world, "I am." All I can do is to refrain from inaction in the future when action is needed on the side of good. No more silence when speaking out could save. There would be no more fear of declaring the truth if the fear of God triumphs.

People suffer when we fall by the wayside. What are we going to do?

Just as well I'm leaving

Melbourne really isn't the charming place to start over with a clean slate as I thought she would be. Not that I've accumulated too much snow on my slate to need cleaning, but the idea of starting life in a city totally unfamiliar was initially appealing and, I'm shameless to say, quite adventurous. Six months have passed since the move to Melbourne and the transient sense of excitement in the beginning has quickly been replaced by ruts of daily routines.

It's not that Melbourne fail to accommodate the life I was expecting when I first set foot here. You felt like a wide-eyed tourist in the first two months, but as soon as you make a new city your home, the charm that fills a tourist's holiday disappears and you quickly give up the artist's stroll for the express line, aimless people-watching for break-time gym programs slotted in between ferocious 24-hour rotating shifts. Instead of adventures, Melbourne threw me the exact same things I abandoned in the old life - only on a larger scale. So you start to long for adventures in some distant land across the seas.

Though it happened quickly, it didn't happen by accident. I believe somewhere along the way I gave Melbourne permission to slip the hamster wheel under my feet. More than ever, this is the time when I find myself relating to Hans Christian Andersen the most as he wrote in 1840, "It's just as well I'm leaving; my soul is unwell."

But where? It's one thing to entertain the thought of running off to some remote corner of the world on a moment's whim, and quite another to actually take leave from your daily cares and stand under the giant flapping schedule board in a train station picking a destination. And then there is the piled-up bills on the desk and the distant but distinct voices of well-meaning friends and parents who beg you not to throw away your senses for something so illusive and selfish. Deep down you fear that they might just be right. After all you can't even put a name to this unreasonable urge to "take it to the winds."

It's just as well I'm leaving; my soul is unwell. The desire to run off will not quit until the wayfarer recognizes his signpost and heads down the path that nurse his ache of standing still.

The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

- Blaise Pascal

A musing on St. Valentine's Day

This is a day in the year that is suffered either in silence or months in advance and, if the night pays off, days after. People who have a conscious cause for Valentine's, usually in the form of someone special, often see themselves planning and preparing for the execution weeks or months ahead (depending on the extent of the person's affection and, in this commercial day and age, budget). This is the kind of people, specifically men, who resolve to condense in one day what they should have been expected to perform the whole year through but couldn't find it in their genes to do: getting her flowers, opening door to restaurant and car, staring across the table with an undivided attention. It's become a day when the guys would say, "Here's what you've been pestering me to do all year... lucky I only have to do it once!" The fact that we need to declare a romantic day to commemorate a history of none of these is ironic and a telling indication of our (specifically the ladies') lowered expectations.

It might seem unfair to the blokes to dispense such a criticism, as if the sole obligation of the day and, in fact, of the whole relationship, lies with us. But since when hasn't that been so down through history from as early as, or maybe even before, the Middle Ages? The warring brutes back then couldn't pick up a fork in the court and the educated scribes would rather spoon their eyeballs than face the battlefields. But it was a special class of men - the literal knights - who were expected to do both with equal courage and grace. Contrary to what we believe, the term "knight in shining armour" is not used loosely nowadays, nor should it be referred to as just a metaphor. The reason why most men today can only put on real acts of chivalry one day in a year (though not a complete act at that, since it often only display the "meek in halls" quality but seldom the "fierce in battles" trait) is because they've mistaken it as a silly idea that only the ladies fancy. We think it's fake because it's unnatural. But as Lewis puts it, "The man who combines both characters - the knight - is a work not of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium." And as Lewis knows best, any true art needs to be attained and strived for.