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.

A challenge to Rick Warren

Challenging Rick Warren... is it possible? So I asked myself.

The pastor from Saddleback Church, California tweeted today saying Tweet! Tweet! (not exactly, follow link to read). Though I would just as soon pass over his tweet amidst a rapid stream of tweets I follow in a day, something about what he said has to be challenged.

But I want to say something here about the guy before I unpack my challenge. I'm a fan of Rick Warren. I benefited from his book The Purpose Driven Life and I believe God is using this man mightily to advance His kingdom. For those who aren't familiar with this guy, he's the man who delivered invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration. So I just want to say that I respect this man and what he aims to achieve as my brother in Christ.

Having said that here's the challenge to Rick Warren. More than 27,000 people were following his Twitter feed as he said in one of his tweets, "Everytime u hold ur tongue when attacked or misrepresented your spiritual power grows. Humility gives u authority."

I could almost see the folks who nodded along with Rick's statement. My brothers and sisters in Christ who buy into this seemingly harmless piece of advice. But of course, they would say, that's what Jesus himself would have done! How do I know? Look, Rick gave the evidence in Matthew 27:12: When [Jesus] was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer.

I get a shiver down my spine whenever a verse is plucked from the Bible and emblazoned with a be-all and end-all finality. The attitude that slaps the slogan "thus saith the Lord so nothing more needs to be said about it" on top of every Bible verse taken out of context to support our own agenda or misreading of the Bible.

However I don't believe that's what's in this man's heart. Still Rick holds Matthew 27:12 as one of the examples for Christians to keep their silence when, as he put it, "attacked or misrepresented". Let's say we give Rick the benefit of the doubt. What happens then when another verse from the Gospels is quoted where Jesus did speak out when he was attacked or misrepresented? Like the time when the Pharisees accused Jesus of breaking the law of the Sabbath in the beginning of Luke 6, or the time when Jesus answered those who tried to trap him by what he said in Mark 12:13-17?

In light of these and many other verses in the Bible that demonstrate the exact opposite of what Rick teaches, would you think Jesus himself was misrepresented when Rick say "Everytime u hold ur tongue when attacked or misrepresented your spiritual power grows" and tag Jesus' signature on the dotted line?

There's literally more to a Bible verse than being read in isolation. And it's called context. Ripped off of its context, I could make any Bible verse say whatever I want it to mean!

You read the paragraph, not just the verse. You take stock of the relevant material above and below. Since the context frames the verse and gives it specific meaning, you let it tell you what's going on (Stand To Reason). Things would clear up if only Rick Warren starts his reading of Matthew 27 at the very beginning... from verse 1 where it says: Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death.

With the context in view, we now understand the real reason why Jesus was silent on this occasion. He must have known that the chief priests and the elders already had their minds made up to kill him. Doesn't that make much more sense now? In fact that also coincides with what Jesus taught his disciples earlier when he said: Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces (Matthew 7:6). Obviously Jesus thought it unwise to defend himself when attacked by a bunch of goons who weren't seeking to listen to the truth in the first place!

Therefore I believe Rick Warren was seriously mistaken when he paints an inaccurate picture of humility. The Bible urges us to speak out for the truth whenever there is a willing audience:

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander (1 Peter 3:15-16).

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone (Colossians 4:5-6).

There is no reason for followers of Christ to carry on a sort of victim mentality tradition whenever persecution enters the picture of evangelism. I understand where Rick Warren is coming from. He is teaching humility but he only painted half of the picture. Unlike Rick's encouragement to hold your tongue everytime so your spiritual juice overflows, it takes true spiritual discernment to know when to respond and when to be quiet. And Jesus is the best teacher to learn that from.

Here's your take-home message: Never read a Bible verse. At least read a paragraph.

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?

More thoughts on writing

Through the years I learn that it is not up to the writer to be interesting, but merely to be truthful. For writers are nothing more than conveyors of truth when they can latch on to it, even if it meant doing it in various disguises of lies or wildly disconnected images.

In that regard, whether or not the writing is good is not to be determined by the writer, who in any case is only a messenger waiting or coaxing on the edge of the tangibles. A master of his craft he might be, his craft serves solely as a facilitator of truth echoed from the beyond, therefore the only way he can progress in his trade is in improving the accuracy at which he relay what he received. That's all any artist can do; learn the basic rules of the means - in this case, language - and learn to pay intense attention.

Then again there is this relatively new school of thought that propounds the idea of making art for art's sake; such as a door is no longer a door but a cat. In all that a writer does, his primary task is to be truthful, and then to make sense. I believe these two are one, or came from one single source. To be truthful is to be boldly honest. By making sense I mean keeping the truth in check, for we can be overly bold unto self-indulgent and forget to be truly honest.

The truth conveyed could make sense without anybody yet recognizing it, but it must make sense. The internal coherence has to be there and conform to the shared principles of reason or the whole message breaks down. To make a door a cat might sound avant-garde but is in fact dangerous. Art could be an overlooked message projected into space that never falls onto a right-distanced wall, but it isn't nothing. Art for its own sake isn't a form of art. Art for art's sake, like any meaning turned on its head, is nothing. And it is always dangerous to make something out of nothing - a task even God does not attempt.

Truth... or tricks?

I received an interesting e-mail today that sent me on a little scientific excavation. And the result demonstrated how a little bit of careful thinking goes a long way in the quest for truth.

First let me reconstruct the original e-mail here:

In black you can read the word GOOD, in white the word EVIL
(inside each black letter is a white letter). It's all very philosophical too,
because it visualizes the concept that good can't exist
without evil (or the absence of good is evil).

Can you see why this painting is called optical illusion? You may not see it at first,
but the white spaces read the word optical, the blue landscape reads the word
illusion. See for yourself!

The word TEACH reflects as LEARN.

In brown you can read ME, and when you look through
you can read YOU. Read this text aloud.

The word THE is repeated twice...but did u notice???

Very well.

I did a little experiment having nothing at all to do with these pictures, but with one of the statements accompanying them. My experiment was based on the first picture's comments:

"It's all very philosophical too, because it visualizes the concept that good can't exist without evil (or the absence of good is evil)."

Somehow I knew that doesn't sound quite right. But it's not good enough to "just know". Just what exactly is wrong with this statement? And if something's wrong can I prove it? So my hypothesis was basically this: Is this statement's assumptions about good and evil correct?

Here's a detail of what I found out:

If we study this quote a little more carefully, what mistakes can we spot from the above statement describing the first picture?

Notice the statement's assumption that "good can'’t exist without evil" IS THE SAME AS "the absence of good is evil" (established by the conjunctive 'or' in parentheses).

To better understand what the quoted statement really means, let's convert the above into logical equations: Let's represent good with the letter 'G' and evil with the letter 'E'. So now we have the following:

1. "good can't exist without evil" becomes
   "G - E = -G"
   
   
2. "the absence of good is evil" becomes
   "G - G = E"

In the first equation, we see that G cannot exist (or G has a negative status) without E. In other words, if we take E out of the equation, G by necessity disappears as well. The application of this is that, if equation #1 is true, then a world without evil is also a world without good.

Whereas in the second equation, we see that E can only exist when G is taken from the equation. In other words, if we take G out of the picture, then E will appear. The application of this is that, if equation #2 is true, then a world without good is a world where evil exists.

Now here's the heart of the problem: Is the statement's assumption a right one? Are both equations/statements saying the same thing, like what the anonymous writer would think or have us believe?

OBVIOUSLY NOT!

Why not? Here's why:

Proposition #1:

G - E = (not G)
G = (not G) + E

Proposition #2:

G - G = E

G = E + G

G = G + E

According to the law of noncontradiction, we can see from the workings above that Proposition #1 DOES NOT EQUAL TO Proposition #2.

Therefore, we can safely conclude that "good can't exist without evil" IS NOT THE SAME AS "the absence of good is evil".

Now let's recap the original observation:

"It's all very philosophical too, because it visualizes the concept that good can't exist without evil (or the absence of good is evil)."

With the help of the test that we'’ve just done, we can see more clearly now that this statement obviously contains error. If according to the anonymous writer the first picture visualizes any concept at all*, it's either it visualizes the concept that "good can't exist without evil" OR "the absence of good is evil", but the picture CANNOT VISUALIZE BOTH CONCEPTS at the same time.

So which concept is the right concept and which is not? Is Proposition #1 correct and Proposition #2 incorrect? Or is it the other way around? To better answer that, we need the help of philosophy on top of the logical thinking we've just applied, but that is an entirely different topic all on its own.

For now let's just bear in mind that, from the result of the test that we've done, "good can't exist without evil" IS NOT THE SAME AS "the absence of good is evil".

*I did not include in the above analysis one observation that I made after the experiment. As creatively as these pictures are presented, I never believed they illustrate any philosophical concept at all (especially not when alleged truths about good and evil are inferred from the first picture).

In other words, just because we are capable of twitching images to accommodate certain ideas doesn't mean that we have established valid evidence for those ideas, good or bad. For example, as the first picture demonstrates, you can't even hope that the picture would support ideas like "good can't exist without evil" without manipulating the letters in some way to fit the intended meaning. In Genting or Vegas that's called a loaded dice. Likewise in a science lab, that's tampering with the apparatus. What you end up with is not a proper 'G' or 'D', but the likeness of a 'G' or 'D' or whatnot (that's when optical illusions gain an upperhand in fooling the mind to trust the eyes). As soon as the distance between the letters or the thickness of the lines by which the letters are formed is altered, or one stroke curving or ending without certain flourish, the whole thesis breaks down.

The pictures might speak a thousand words in this case, but they certainly don't speak a word of truth.

C.S. Lewis: The godfather of layman apologists

These days C.S. Lewis is better known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Those who are fond of his children's stories (equally enjoyable to adults) will find that Lewis has much more to offer than weaving tales of fantasy and adventure.

I was first introduced to C.S. Lewis by a friend's recommendation of his book Mere Christianity. What I found interesting about Lewis after the first reading was the intense intellectual workout he can put you through, but at the same time making you enjoy it. I think the reason for that is that you cannot read Lewis without being impressed by his natural ability to marry reason and imagination.

Visit this nicely done fan blog dedicated to Lewis, a daily updated site featuring snippets from his vast body of works. Since Lewis is someone you'll find yourself going back to over and over again, I've put this link on the navigation panel to the left under the heading "Blogs I Read".

The importance of the mind in Christian living

J.P. Moreland first gained recognition when in a debate with renowned atheist Kai Nielsen, he displayed an uncanny ability to connect with the audience in arguing for the existence of God. This turned into a book, Does God Exist?, co-authored with Nielsen. Dr. Moreland has since become a well-known name in Christian apologetics, speaking and debating at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

In this audio clip, Moreland addresses an assembly of Christians in Texas A&M University on the importance of the mind in Christian living. Listen or download.

Can you stomach the truth?

Friendlier people have tried to hide their wince whenever I steer conversations to touch upon the issue. Most I've met hate to take part in any of the arguments (a word which is sadly taken by many to bear an equal meaning to quarrels), either because knowing themselves, they fear they would turn hostile as the discussion gets interesting, hence hurting the acquaintanceship (which is a hasty correlation at best), or they really only fear to talk about something they never paid serious mind to.

But it's interesting to see that I was seldom the person determined to bring up the topic. Seeing the flag raised by another, I merely seized my opportunity and refused to let it slip off the conversation before it was amply addressed. When I did choose to take over the helm I did that simply because I've realized that such issues haven't been amply addressed in most cases, and that in turn has damaged our ability to think clearly about really important matters; namely, the perception of right and wrong conducts.

It is not my intention to expound my arguments here and demonstrate an upper hand over people whom I've ever engaged in this kind of discussions with. For the purpose of this entry I only want to accentuate the fact that it is most unnecessary for anyone of us to sidestep the issue as if treading a mine-filled territory. I know many people favor social congeniality over the pursuit of truth. But unfortunately for many (including myself), truth is not always something likeable by virtue of its nature. Unlike what some think, no wrong conduct can be made right or justifiable simply because we like it or hope something good to come out of it.

Truth is tough stuff, both intellectually and emotionally. But without truth that is not subjectively defined life instantly becomes a bondage of lies and delusions; it is the only basis upon which true and lasting freedom is built. And to my fellow believers in Christ: Are we to prize emotional and intellectual comforts above Him who did not spare the ransom to demonstrate to us the truth of our fallenness and to free us for His love?

Universality of truth

Adelaine's post prompts you to think: Is it really that hard to accept the universality of truth?

Imagine two people talking:

Conversation #1

"Truth doesn't exist."

"Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Wait a minute... If that's true, then truth exists!"

Conversation #2

"OK, maybe truth exists. But it certainly cannot be known."

"So you're saying now that truth cannot be known?"

"That's right."

"Then how do you know that that's even true?"

As soon as we reject the existence and knowledge of truth, we start to draw square circles. We get into a more serious problem than trying to figure out what is truth - or who has truth.

Believe it or not, truth exists and it can be known. Knowing it not just intellectually but loving it as well makes all the difference in life.