Hi readers,
Hopefully, you have read the previous post, where someone replied to my arguments. I guess I am humbled by some of his points which I will clarify for sure. Most of it is due to my brief explanations, so it does cause some confusion, and I apologise for that. Thanks to the blogger (how should I address you? Local Atheist?) who pointed the confusing parts, despite our differing worldviews.
I respect LocalAtheist because what he could have said was "Look at this moron ( or something like that)-- he misrepresented Taosim!". But in his graciousness, he pointed out a few of my errors quire amicably in his post.
1) Puropse of my post (Reply from a Christian Observer)
I made a mistake of sounding too harsh in the post, that readers treated it as a counter. Although majority of the post counters the writer of "Letters to a Christian Girlfriend", I guess I wrote it more aggressive than I should. My purpose was to clarify some of the points he made that I felt were unfair for two reasons-- intellectual honesty, and to present Christianity as something reasonable to believe in.
2)Where do non-believers go?
I think I probably wrote this too poorly, resulting in the major misunderstanding by "Local Atheist" (the blogger). I didn't say that Christians were sinning by marrying non-believers. In fact, it is not a sin at all. That said, it is hard for Christians in such a relationship because of differing world views.
Everyone is doomed to hell (eternal separation from God) becuase they are sinners. However, in accepting Jesus to cleanse our sins, believers join God in heaven.
So in a way (bearing in mind I'm simplifying a lot), it's fair in the sense that God honours our choice whether we want to spend time with him eternally (in heaven) or not at all (in hell).
3) Science and the universe
This one, was a major mistake by me. I failed to clarify certain issues. I wrote "Atheism is not as pro-science as you think". What I mean to write was "Atheism is not ALWAYS as pro-science as you think". And I failed to add that in a sense I agree with Stephen Jay Gould, that science is equally compatible with atheism as with religious belief.
It's hard to understand the second part too. God is by definitation in and out of the universe at the same time. Persoanlly, I am troubled by it, because it does sound like a cop-out. And I was not using this explanation as evidence of God, but rather to clarify why in Christianty God has no beginning (and no end).
PS: I know the writer of Letters to a Christian Girlfriend is agnostic.
4) The what if hypothesis
I think the bigger issue I failed to highlight is that how do we know ANYTHING is true if everything is environmental (or genetic)? I think if we push this hypothesis to the fullest, it seems to argue against the concept of ultimate reality. In other words, if we cannot know reality as it is, then how can I be sure that something exists as real at all?
It's quite hard to grapse, I concede. I myself took quite some time to get my head around it.
5) Bible as moral compass
I admit this part of my response sounds the weakest, but bear with me, because I am still reading on it.
I guess when I write "in context", we must take the "text" in the time it was written in. You say if the Bible inerrantly true, it should be unmistakeable throughout time. However, you realise that societies change over time, and hence interpretations vary. And I agree. But some interpretations are just wrong.
Let's take the case of King David and the death of his unborn child in 2 Samuel 12. After finding out his baby died, he said that "I will go to him, but he will not return to me". Does that mean the Bible (from this passage) says that all fetuses who die before birth will go to heaven? Maybe, but you have to remember that this part of the Bible is written as a narrative (of what David said), rather than what God told David.
Admittedly, it's hard to get the context of the Bible in normal reading at times. Hence Christians are encouraged to attend sermons/Bible study/read various translations of the Bible. That said, reading the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek and learning the historical context of the times is the best way to go about it, but not everybody has that gift.
6) Evidence
I will handle this at the last part.
7) Religion/Philosophy/Science as a tool for harm.
I largely agree you on this issue. If you were next to me, I would hi-five you :)
Science in its purest sense, is just a tool with no bearing of right and wrong. That said, scientific naturalism as a philosophy can lead to people doing good or bad things.
8) Professors
I did not say that majority of academics believe in a Christian God. All I wanted to point out was that there were academics who were Christian, and it's not the odd one or two.
I heard that 40% of scientists believe in a "personal God who answers prayers" (i.e. a theistic belief), but this survey was done in the United States only (I think). (Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you are lying). I hear from cell biologist Kenneth R. Miller that for science academics, majority do not believe in God because we are simply trained to be skeptics. So scientists are less likely to believe in anything. I don't know about other academics, though.
9) Funeral rites
Again, I apologise for misleading people. Bowing is a form of respect for parents, I agree. But in some Chinese religions, it also involves asking the deceased parents for protection. Isn't it a form of worshipping too?
And one more thing, about the contradiction, it is not a sin, if it is simply respect. The issue is up to an individual. If his conscience is weak, then he better not do it. (i.e. if he feels that by bowing to his parents, he feels guilty, it is better he does not do it). You may oversimplify the funeral rites (eg: Josssticks to sandalwood, bowing as respect), but some of us do not. Admittedly, I was never in such a position (I was an atheist when my grandparents passed away), so I can't tell you what I would have done (or how I would have felt).
(For reference see 1 Corinthians 8)
10) The problem of evil
I admit that these is a problem I struggle with in Christianity. Like why does God let bad things happen? In letting bad things happen (eg: He lets Satan destroy Job's home, wealth and health in Job 1 -2), isn't He a direct cause of them?
Let me be clear: If you quiz me on stuff like what is the theological reason everyone except a boy died on a Libyan airplane crash on May 12, 2010, or why God let a tsunami happen, I will answer you honestly-- I don't know.
There could be a number of reasons-- a consequnce of natural law/free will, judgement (although for someone to say so conclusively is insensitive; see Luke 13:1-5), or a warning. The point is I don't know.
The main point I was highlighting was the fact that we can recognise something as evil, right or wrong, hints towards a God. Local Atheist suggest simulations (I'm not too sure what he means), but to do so seems to give free will without consequence.
You point out the benefits of a moral system, in primitive animals, and I applaud that. But I just want to point out that it does not mean that it being beneficial disproves God (nor does it prove God).
6) Evidence
As promised, the evidence for belief. While there are many hints towards God existance, such as beauty, moral systems, etc, I just want to get straight down to it and talk about Jesus, which is the strongest case of Christianity.
Mainstream historians (as far as I know), accept that there was a man called Jesus. He claimed to be God, did miraclous things (Roman and Jewish historians who did not like him said he did black magic), and died on the cross. They wrote that more than 500 eyewitnesses saw him alive three days after his execution.
However, the implications of this (ie: whether He was God or not) differ among historical scholars. I will cover this in a later post.
But I would say if you can prove that a) Jesus didn't exist, b) Jesus didn't die or c) Jesus stayed dead, you would disprove Christianity. Again, I will cover this in a later post.
Conclusion
I'm sorry if my points are brief.
To my friend LocalAtheist, I don't know if you will write a response to this, but if you do counter this, I probably won't write a reply, because I want to move on. I will either focus on my journey towards Christianity or why we pray.
For our next post, why don't we list some books that will be helpful for our readers?
And have a good week ahead!
PS: Can I link your blog to mine?
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Letter to a Christian Girlfriend – the counter, and the counter-back
Hi readers, I'm currently busy with an olive tree project in Silwood Park , Ascot, UK.
Unexpectedly, I received a reply to my post on "Reply to a Christian Observer". I do not personally know the person, but I am hopeful we can have a good, honest discussion.
The replies are in two posts:
http://localatheist.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/letter-to-a-christian-girlfriend-the-counter-and-the-counter-back/
http://localatheist.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/a-reply-to-a-christian-observers-response-continued/
His posts are really enlightening to read, no matter what your religious/philosophical background is.
Unexpectedly, I received a reply to my post on "Reply to a Christian Observer". I do not personally know the person, but I am hopeful we can have a good, honest discussion.
The replies are in two posts:
http://localatheist.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/letter-to-a-christian-girlfriend-the-counter-and-the-counter-back/
http://localatheist.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/a-reply-to-a-christian-observers-response-continued/
His posts are really enlightening to read, no matter what your religious/philosophical background is.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Reply from a Christian Observer (to the "Letter to a Christian Girlfriend")
Dear non-christian peer,
I do not know you nor your girlfriend personally, and thus it would be inappropriate for me to comment on your relationship. As the Eminem song "Like Toy Soldiers" goes, I do not want to write about "anything I know nothing about". I may not fully understand your frustration, but I see that you are hurt, and I just want to pray for you.
Reading your widely publicised letter, I see that you are particularly antagonistic when it comes to religion, particularly Christianity. After you probably did derive the name of your letter from a book by atheist Sam Harris, Letters to a Christian Nation. Now, I see that you wrote it under emotional pains, so I am in no way condemning you. However, as I read on, I see that you bring up many, many good points, but most of those points are pure misrepresentations of Christianity. Let me start point by point, as you did in your letter.
Undone by Corinthians 6:14?
When reading the Bible, one must take things into context. You picked out one line from one verse in the Bible ("Do not be equally yoked with non-believers"), and then claimed that Christians believe they will go to hell for marrying non-believers.
Now, the apostle Paul did write it, but as a guideline for relationships. It is hard for Christian and non-Christians to get into a serious (but not impossible) relationship because they have different goals. Both want to please the spouse, but for the Christian, marriage is a way to bring us in a closer relationship with God.
I am unsure if you read the whole passage, but if you did, you will realise that the Bible did not say Christian go to hell for marrying non-believers. In the Christian doctrine, people go to hell because they are sinners. That is why we need Jesus to cleanse us from our sin to enter a relationship with God.
A reason driven life
I have no real comment about this section. I applaud your determination to better yourself though the ages. Like you, I was brought up to consider evidences carefully and critically, and I emphasised with you in this aspect.
You have great questions here-- Do Christians have unquestioning loyalty to God? Is Christian faith blind faith?
I would disagree. Even Jesus questioned the Father on the cross as He was dying (Mark 15:34). Do Christians have doubt about their beliefs? I do. And every time we do, we are encouraged to real about it and settle it for ourselves. If the evidence is lacking, should we continue being Christian, or search harder?
The sciences (Bang Bang, Age of the Earth, Noah's Ark)
As an undergraduate biology student, there a lot of things here I can say "Amen!" too. However, you have to bear in mind that Creationism and Christianity are two different things (even though some proponents insist otherwise). My issues with Creationism is the same as yours. That said, you must remember that although evolution is often named to be anti-Christian, the Big Bang was once regarded to be anti-atheistic (as it implied the universe had a beginning). Atheism is not as pro-science as you think.
But you bring up a good point is this. God is described as always existing, even though no natural analogue exists. That's just it-- the Christian God is not purely natural, but also supernatural. If you insist that the natural world is all that exists, it's not a scientific statement, but rather a faith statement. Then your probability of God is zero. However if you entertain questions like, "Does meaning exists?" and "Why am I here?", you will probably find God.
So many religions, which one is true?
I agree with you on the issue of many religions to a large extent. You say maybe all religions are true in some sense or another, and they can't all be right. However, I must impose here. To say someone's religion has a touch of the truth, is only valid if you have the whole truth.
Then you go on with "If you were born in country X (Japan/India), you would be Y (Shinto/Hindu)". In philosophy, this is known as a what if hypothesis. It is another faith statement. Would it make atheism/agnosticism any less true, if it was pointed out that you are like that only because you had a certain background? What if hypothesis is an interesting concept to explore, but meaningless to follow up on.
Bible being not a good moral compass/Cherry-picking within the Bible
Again, this might sound surprising, but I do have roughly the same issues. Why did God test Abraham on Issac? Why did God have such harsh laws? Why did God approve of genocide? It's something I do not have all the answers to, yet I am reading on them.
And I am glad you get the point that the God of the New Testament is the same as the God of the Old Testament.
Just because we have issues about something does not render it invalid. You misunderstand what apologetics say about Israel in the Old Testament.The Israel of Biblical times were one nation following God's laws, to be God's representative on Earth. Thus their punishments were harsher (stoning for adultery etc). However, no one nation today can make that claim. You can't take something of the Old Testament out of context and accuse Christianity of playing double standards. Remember Jesus spared an adulterous woman from stoning in John 8. Oh, but you would not accept that, would you? However, if you read John 8 in its whole, it is exactly address the issue you made a fuss of, and that's not "cherry-picking".
By the way, your one line from Confucius can only triumph all Christianity if you accept it to be your epitome of moral perfection. But again, that is a faith statement to make.
Why did Jesus need to die? Because the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Punishment for sin is separation from God, and is not to be taken lightly. And through the Old Testament time, a sacrifice (usually a lamb) had to be used for a sin offering. So a death was necessary to cleanse us from sin. However, with Jesus's death, we no longer need to do it.
Disagreement among various sects
You say Christians differ on so many issues. I agree. However, disagreement does not render something invalid. Evolutionary biologists differ over punctuated equilibrium and systematic gradualism when it comes to the fossil record. Does that make evolution invalid. Some atheists promote a militant lifestyle (advocated by your hero, Richard Dawkins), while others are more accomodative (Michael Ruse). Does that make atheism any less valid?
(I would not consider Mormons Christians in any sense, for their perception of sin and salvation is drastically different from mainline Christianity.
Worldwide conflicts as results of religion
Religions can cause great harm, no doubt about that. However, so can science and political ideology (eg: Korean War). You have to tease out what is an excuse and a reason. For instance, if you asked the Northern Irish if they were Protestant, they would say yes. If you ask them if they go to church, they would say no, but they were from Ulster. Does mainline Christianity sound like it is involved there.
Radicalism?/Christians as good role models?
You cherry-picked a few issues to further suggest religion cause conflicts. I already covered it in the paragraph above, but your statement about scholars and religion is just wrong.
No religious scholars? Really? What about Christian scholars? Do they count?
As for scientific scholars (since I am in that field), there are definitely many of them. Francis Collins, Simon Conway Morris and Kenneth R. Miller are few of the many Christian professors of science out there.
Contradictions between Commandant 1 and 5
I was most irritated by this comment, to be honest. Just because you cannot see how you can honour God by honouring your parents does not make it invalid.
Do you know why the converts do not want to carry out the full Chinese funeral rites? Because it involves bowing and worshiping the parents, which would place their parents above God. But I think you would object to that, saying that being filial is more important than following God.
Wait a minute, first you accuse Christians of not following the Bible to the letter to be hypocrites. And when they do, you paint them as blind and in this case, unfilial. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
The problem of evil
You described natural disasters issue very well. I have no idea why God would allow such terrible things to happen. But to say that disproves the Christian God you are assuming that there is no benevolent reason why an omnipotent and good God would allow a disaster to happen.
Furthermore, the fact that you can recognise something is evil must have come from something. After all, the fact that you can call something bad and good when it comes from nature is unusual, isn't it?
Satan as an excuse?
Satan, according to the Bible is the Prince of lies. However, no where in the Bible does it pin the responsibility of sin on Satan, but rather on men.
Conclusion
When it comes to examples of bad Christians how religions can be misused, you basically ace the test. However my friend, you know little about theology/philosophy and thus it drives you to misinterpretation at times.
I do not know you nor your girlfriend personally, and thus it would be inappropriate for me to comment on your relationship. As the Eminem song "Like Toy Soldiers" goes, I do not want to write about "anything I know nothing about". I may not fully understand your frustration, but I see that you are hurt, and I just want to pray for you.
Reading your widely publicised letter, I see that you are particularly antagonistic when it comes to religion, particularly Christianity. After you probably did derive the name of your letter from a book by atheist Sam Harris, Letters to a Christian Nation. Now, I see that you wrote it under emotional pains, so I am in no way condemning you. However, as I read on, I see that you bring up many, many good points, but most of those points are pure misrepresentations of Christianity. Let me start point by point, as you did in your letter.
Undone by Corinthians 6:14?
When reading the Bible, one must take things into context. You picked out one line from one verse in the Bible ("Do not be equally yoked with non-believers"), and then claimed that Christians believe they will go to hell for marrying non-believers.
Now, the apostle Paul did write it, but as a guideline for relationships. It is hard for Christian and non-Christians to get into a serious (but not impossible) relationship because they have different goals. Both want to please the spouse, but for the Christian, marriage is a way to bring us in a closer relationship with God.
I am unsure if you read the whole passage, but if you did, you will realise that the Bible did not say Christian go to hell for marrying non-believers. In the Christian doctrine, people go to hell because they are sinners. That is why we need Jesus to cleanse us from our sin to enter a relationship with God.
A reason driven life
I have no real comment about this section. I applaud your determination to better yourself though the ages. Like you, I was brought up to consider evidences carefully and critically, and I emphasised with you in this aspect.
You have great questions here-- Do Christians have unquestioning loyalty to God? Is Christian faith blind faith?
I would disagree. Even Jesus questioned the Father on the cross as He was dying (Mark 15:34). Do Christians have doubt about their beliefs? I do. And every time we do, we are encouraged to real about it and settle it for ourselves. If the evidence is lacking, should we continue being Christian, or search harder?
The sciences (Bang Bang, Age of the Earth, Noah's Ark)
As an undergraduate biology student, there a lot of things here I can say "Amen!" too. However, you have to bear in mind that Creationism and Christianity are two different things (even though some proponents insist otherwise). My issues with Creationism is the same as yours. That said, you must remember that although evolution is often named to be anti-Christian, the Big Bang was once regarded to be anti-atheistic (as it implied the universe had a beginning). Atheism is not as pro-science as you think.
But you bring up a good point is this. God is described as always existing, even though no natural analogue exists. That's just it-- the Christian God is not purely natural, but also supernatural. If you insist that the natural world is all that exists, it's not a scientific statement, but rather a faith statement. Then your probability of God is zero. However if you entertain questions like, "Does meaning exists?" and "Why am I here?", you will probably find God.
So many religions, which one is true?
I agree with you on the issue of many religions to a large extent. You say maybe all religions are true in some sense or another, and they can't all be right. However, I must impose here. To say someone's religion has a touch of the truth, is only valid if you have the whole truth.
Then you go on with "If you were born in country X (Japan/India), you would be Y (Shinto/Hindu)". In philosophy, this is known as a what if hypothesis. It is another faith statement. Would it make atheism/agnosticism any less true, if it was pointed out that you are like that only because you had a certain background? What if hypothesis is an interesting concept to explore, but meaningless to follow up on.
Bible being not a good moral compass/Cherry-picking within the Bible
Again, this might sound surprising, but I do have roughly the same issues. Why did God test Abraham on Issac? Why did God have such harsh laws? Why did God approve of genocide? It's something I do not have all the answers to, yet I am reading on them.
And I am glad you get the point that the God of the New Testament is the same as the God of the Old Testament.
Just because we have issues about something does not render it invalid. You misunderstand what apologetics say about Israel in the Old Testament.The Israel of Biblical times were one nation following God's laws, to be God's representative on Earth. Thus their punishments were harsher (stoning for adultery etc). However, no one nation today can make that claim. You can't take something of the Old Testament out of context and accuse Christianity of playing double standards. Remember Jesus spared an adulterous woman from stoning in John 8. Oh, but you would not accept that, would you? However, if you read John 8 in its whole, it is exactly address the issue you made a fuss of, and that's not "cherry-picking".
By the way, your one line from Confucius can only triumph all Christianity if you accept it to be your epitome of moral perfection. But again, that is a faith statement to make.
Why did Jesus need to die? Because the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Punishment for sin is separation from God, and is not to be taken lightly. And through the Old Testament time, a sacrifice (usually a lamb) had to be used for a sin offering. So a death was necessary to cleanse us from sin. However, with Jesus's death, we no longer need to do it.
Disagreement among various sects
You say Christians differ on so many issues. I agree. However, disagreement does not render something invalid. Evolutionary biologists differ over punctuated equilibrium and systematic gradualism when it comes to the fossil record. Does that make evolution invalid. Some atheists promote a militant lifestyle (advocated by your hero, Richard Dawkins), while others are more accomodative (Michael Ruse). Does that make atheism any less valid?
(I would not consider Mormons Christians in any sense, for their perception of sin and salvation is drastically different from mainline Christianity.
Worldwide conflicts as results of religion
Religions can cause great harm, no doubt about that. However, so can science and political ideology (eg: Korean War). You have to tease out what is an excuse and a reason. For instance, if you asked the Northern Irish if they were Protestant, they would say yes. If you ask them if they go to church, they would say no, but they were from Ulster. Does mainline Christianity sound like it is involved there.
Radicalism?/Christians as good role models?
You cherry-picked a few issues to further suggest religion cause conflicts. I already covered it in the paragraph above, but your statement about scholars and religion is just wrong.
No religious scholars? Really? What about Christian scholars? Do they count?
As for scientific scholars (since I am in that field), there are definitely many of them. Francis Collins, Simon Conway Morris and Kenneth R. Miller are few of the many Christian professors of science out there.
Contradictions between Commandant 1 and 5
I was most irritated by this comment, to be honest. Just because you cannot see how you can honour God by honouring your parents does not make it invalid.
Do you know why the converts do not want to carry out the full Chinese funeral rites? Because it involves bowing and worshiping the parents, which would place their parents above God. But I think you would object to that, saying that being filial is more important than following God.
Wait a minute, first you accuse Christians of not following the Bible to the letter to be hypocrites. And when they do, you paint them as blind and in this case, unfilial. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
The problem of evil
You described natural disasters issue very well. I have no idea why God would allow such terrible things to happen. But to say that disproves the Christian God you are assuming that there is no benevolent reason why an omnipotent and good God would allow a disaster to happen.
Furthermore, the fact that you can recognise something is evil must have come from something. After all, the fact that you can call something bad and good when it comes from nature is unusual, isn't it?
Satan as an excuse?
Satan, according to the Bible is the Prince of lies. However, no where in the Bible does it pin the responsibility of sin on Satan, but rather on men.
Conclusion
When it comes to examples of bad Christians how religions can be misused, you basically ace the test. However my friend, you know little about theology/philosophy and thus it drives you to misinterpretation at times.
Letters to a Christian Girlfriend
I decided to start of my new blog with a controverserial post from a NUS student. After breaking up with his Christian girlfriend, he posted this on his facebook notes, calling it "Letters to a Christian Girlfriend". I must put a disclaimer though, I do not know him personally, nor did I have his permission to use his note on my blog. I just thought it was thought-provoking, for me as a Christian. I will post a future response to it, not to mock him or put him a bad light, but to clarify some issues which I strongly felt misrepresentated.
Some Memories; No Doubt just Ramblings to the Passerby
When I first entered the National University of Singapore, I was the loner kid who did not bat an eyelid at girls. Girls, with all their idiosyncrasies like gossiping or buying pairs of shoes after shoes, were too much for me to handle. I was more interested in climbing, and girls only served to take away my climbing time.
You first approached me. You started giving me gifts, like chocolates and small cards. These little nuggets made a boring day suddenly exciting. In all your little notes, you asked about my life; you dropped encouragements; you made me feel special in a way no other person has managed to. Any unfeeling heart would melt under these circumstances.
In the one year that we spent together, I cannot remember a single unhappy moment. Sure we had disagreements, but we sorted them out as soon as they surfaced. Never once had we an argument. I still remember the incident when you crashed the car. To the best of my ability, I arranged for a mechanic to repair the damages, negotiated for a good repair price between the accident victim and the mechanic, and paid for all the upfront costs first. Do you remember how I told you then since you did not have any liquid assets; you could try to barter your fully stocked cupboard with the parties? A little nasty yes, but all for your own good. In the end, I still helped you make the payment with the money I scrupulously saved.
I still remember our overseas trips. Those weeks spent away from urbanisation, getting to learn more about each other, and gaining insights together. All these memories I hold close to my heart. But they aren’t important anymore. After one year together, without warning, you dropped a bombshell on me – convert or break up. I was devastated. I cannot begin to describe the hurt and anguish I felt. You’ve left me behind to walk the long road ahead on my own. I languished in my grief. I can’t even do the thing I loved to do most – climbing. All the fight has been drained out of me. How long will it take to pick up the pieces? I wonder. One Chinese proverb particularly lent me support: If you can pick it up, you should be able to put it down. In my desire to understand how a religion, which in its entirety claims to preach love and compassion, drove you to unilaterally and resolutely want the break up, I achieved revelation. Indeed, the learning process is accelerated when feelings are invested.
Undone by 2 Corinthians 6:14
Do not be unequally yoked together with non-believers. You believe that God created you in His image, and that He is ‘a member of your body’. Because of this religious doctrine, you believe that the resulting union between a Christian and a non-Christian is unholy. You believe that you will not be granted entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. You believe that if you commit the sin, you will burn for eternity in hellfire.
I realise now how you could be so calm when you made your decision to break up known to me. I collapsed with grief, whereas you could still go jamming with the rest in the immediate aftermath. You felt like you were doing God’s work, and you found peace in Him. I had no such consolation. My life just fell apart. In sorrow, I grasped at reasons at why you might be unhappy with me. Did I treat you badly? Was I overly possessive? Was I not spontaneous enough for you? All these queries drew a blank.
Only after reading the scripture did my hurt, disappointment and anger subside. I realised the very difficult spiritual position you were in. Just like how Christ is head of the Church, the man is to be the head of the house. I cannot provide you with the spiritual support that is demanded of me in the bible. The bible you believe to be the divinely inspired word of God.
A Reason-Driven Life
You shared with me how you attended Sunday school since you were in primary school and finally got baptized in secondary one. You shared with me how you were previously a naughty and unruly girl, and how religion has changed you for the better. Unfortunately, I do not share that same background as you. But like you, I am a social construct of our upbringing.
I used to be the typical nerd in school and studied diligently. From a young age, I’ve learnt to correlate good results with hard work. If I studied hard and obtained good grades, I deserved all the credit. If I decided to be lazy, took a back seat and get punished with bad grades, then I reap what I sown. I do not praise the Lord for everything good thing that happened in my life and vice versa, blame Satan for everything bad. Rather, I encourage and berate myself in accordance to my successes or failures. As a result of my firm belief in effort and reward, my grades have always been above average, if not excellent. In the blink of an eye, 23 years have passed. In that same duration I have lived without a God in my life.
Because of this upbringing, I am firmly steeped in reason and anecdotal evidence. Just like how you are indoctrinated in unquestioningly faith as a virtue, I am indoctrinated in intellectual scepticism as a merit. For me to convert to become a fundamentalist Christian like yourself, instead of becoming a half-past-six Christian (as one Christian friend has appallingly recommended me), I need to be surrounded by overwhelming, mutually self-reinforcing evidence. I embarked on reading the Bible, and within the first few chapters of the holy book I already found several distasteful contradictions. Contradictions I am unable to reconcile. At this point, we must decide if we think whether intellectual scepticism or blind faith more virtuous. Should a child be inquisitive and ask and question and debate or should he be obedient and servient and accept everything spoken to be the truth of the world? Perhaps I failed to read the Bible spiritually, or adopt its teachings with the same unquestioning acceptance as you did. If I were to become a baptized Christian, then all my queries have to be answered to me by the faith, one by one. Prepare yourself for a deluge of intellectual bombardment.
Big Bang Theory
Mathematicians have calculated that the probability of us coming into existence out of random chance is very, very minute. Therefore, some higher being must have created us. But this hypothesis creates more problems than it solves – the problem of infinite regress. If you follow the logical train of thought, if God created us, then who created Him? Christians tell me that their Judeo-Christian God is uncreated, and that he has simply always existed. There is no analogy, no basis for comparison against this argument in nature, and I cannot wrap my head around this claim. If I were to worship a God, then naturally it behoves me to worship the ultimate creator. Can you conclusively prove to me that your God is the ultimate creator? Just because you firmly believe in something doesn’t necessarily mean it is correct. If I firmly believe that there is a teapot orbiting around the Earth, then the onus is on me to prove my theory. The onus is on you to prove your God to me.
So many Religions, Which one is True?
How are we supposed to know which religion is the true religion? Just because someone follows a certain faith does not necessarily mean it is the right path. Perhaps no one religion contains all the truth of the world. Perhaps every religion contains fragments of the truth and it is our responsibility to identify those fragments and piece them together. Or perhaps there are no gods. No one can say for sure. There were 3200 religions in the world since the start of time. Since only 1 religion can be correct, then the other 3199 religions must be wrong. Christians say their God is the one true God, as do the Muslims, Jews, Hindus and more. And radicals from each faith are willing to be a martyr for what they think is the highest ideal.
Do you not see that the place of your birth determines your religion? If you were born in Japan, you’ll be a Shinto. If you were born in India, you’ll be a Hindu. If you were born in Tibet, you’ll be a Buddhist. If you were born in Norway during the times of the Vikings, you’ll believe in Thor and his hammer! The fact that Christians think a child to be the child of God, instead of a child of Christian parents, or Hindu parents, or Muslim parents, is unacceptable.
Do not all religions appear strange to those who stand outside of them? A case in point: when I recounted my predicament to a PRC friend, she found religion to be a ludicrous myth. Only an insidious force such as religion can break up such a happy relationship, she told me. She also shared with me how the Fa Lun Gong Movement is creating a lot of social problems in China.
Age of the Earth
Creationists argue that the world is 6000 years old. But science, through using several independent methods of radiological dating, has repeatedly proven the world to be about 4.5billion years old. Dinosaur fossils are tested to be about 65million years old. That the age of the Earth is 6000 years old is a myth. How Christians stand steadfast in their story of creation in the face of such staggering evidence defies understanding.
Noah’s Ark
Genesis 6:15 states that Noah's ark was 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits in size. Today, experts agree that a cubit was approximately 18 inches, yielding a volume (if perfectly rectangular, the most voluminous possible shape of three unequal dimensions) of 1,518,750 cubic feet. Into this, you must fit two of each of the 30,000,000 species on earth (60,000,000 creatures altogether), plus all the food needed to keep all of them alive for about a year when the flood raged. Even without the mind-boggling amount of food required, it is technically impossible to pile all the creatures in the ark, together with space for bedding or room to stand. Furthermore, Noah has to go the Arctic to collect 2 penguins, go to Antarctic to collect 2 polar bears, go to Kalahari Desert to find 2 meerkats, go to Asia to find 2 tigers, and get 2 Tyrannosaurus Rex to enter the ark.
Also, if it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, then given the severe drop in salinity of the seawater, most of the fragile marine species should have died out – something not evident in the world today. Given the above analysis, the story of Noah’s Ark cannot be true.
Bible not being a Good Moral Compass
God tells you to stone people who believe in other gods to death
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy father; Namely, of the god of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the Earth; Thou shall not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him, neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shall thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die (Deuteronomy 13:6-10).
Abraham makes an offering of his son to appease God’s whimsical wishes
And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of (Genesis 22: 1-2).
Abraham heard an imaginary voice in his head telling him to murder Isaac. He subsequently lifts the blade to his son’s throat. These actions demand unquestioning belief. It requires what philosophers refer to as a leap of faith. Earlier, God had promised Abraham that he would spread his seed far and wide for him. A dilemma is presented at this point. How can I possibly spread my seed if I kill my only son? That God ultimately did not claim the sacrifice is of secondary importance. What if one day, you hear an imaginary voice in your head, telling you to sacrifice your child? I can only imagine hapless believers, killing their children over what they think is God’s mandate. To people outside the faith, this act of abomination is nothing less than cold-blooded murder. Furthermore, this contradicts with the ‘Thou shall not murder’ commandment. So many inconsistencies, yet you can effortlessly accept where I find it morally repulsive to.
Moses the Prophet
Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves (Numbers 31: 17-18). Moses, who was angered at the Israelites merciful restrain towards the conquered Midianite people, ordered his men to kill innocent children in cold blood, and kill every female that is married to the Midianite men. What sin did the Midianite male children and married females commit that demands this genocide? The greatest irony is that it was Moses who brought down the 10 unbreakable commandments inscribed in stone. Given the savage nature of what you have already witnessed, it should come as a big surprise to you that one of the commandments were actually Thou shall not kill. Yet, here was Moses, ordering the mass slaughter of children and women in cold blood, not unlike the gas camps of the Nazis or the killing fields of Pol Pot.
Rape My Daughter as you Please
Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him. And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, and said unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly. Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go. Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her lord was, till it was light. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place. And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid down hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel (Judges 19: 22-29).
This entire particularly nasty paragraph describes the inferior status of women, equivalent to that of playthings, as sanctioned in the Bible. The man offered his concubine to be raped, instead of fighting to defend her, as I would have done without hesitation. Following that, the same man desecrated her body when she died instead of providing her with a proper burial. I hope this piece of scripture shocks you as much as it has shocked me. In today’s civilised world, such acts of betrayal and moral destitution are considered socially repugnant, yet these are the teachings you meekly accept with unquestioningly faith. These are the issues that you must grapple with if you truly accept your faith in its entirety.
Cherry Picking within the Bible
Of course now Christians will be protesting, because they claim that Jesus, who has descended onto the world to die on the cross for our sins, has changed the world since the nasty days of the Old Testament. No doubt the New Testament is an improved version of the Old Testament from a moral position. The idea is that God had himself incarnated as a man, Jesus, in order that he should be hideously tortured and executed in order to redeem our sins. And not just the original sin of Adam and Eve, but all future sins, whether we decide to commit them or not. Ultimately when we die, God is both judge and jury in the decision to allow entry into the gates of the Holy City. So then, why does he need to die on the cross for us to atone us for our sins just so he can judge us again at the end? Why not just forgive us outright? Is he not supposed to be all powerful and all merciful?
In fact, contrary to what many Christians believe, the New Testament openly endorses the laws of the Old Testament. Think not that I am to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For I verily say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled (Matthew 5: 17-18). All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (2 Timothy 3: 13). It cannot be any clearer. The laws in the Old Testament are to be obeyed. It is downright shameful how Christians can interpret otherwise.
Christian apologetics reason that in the days of the Old Testament, we had to follow the moral, civil and priestly laws. For them, because we are not under a theocratic system today and because by sacrificing himself Jesus fulfilled the priestly law, only the moral laws apply today. This explains why homosexuals and adulterers were stoned in the past, but are not today. This explanation is flawed. The moral law is created by God, the civil law by whichever political system was governing the country at that time, and priestly laws by the priest. If God commanded that adulterers be stoned, then it is solely a moral law set by him. Do the civil or priestly laws have the right to interfere? Do you mean to tell me that the state or the priests have more power over the supreme Creator of your universe? How can Christians allow the moral law of their God be tainted by the secondary laws set by humans, especially since human beings were intelligently designed to be imperfect? I would think that if you were a true Christian, you would follow your God’s law to the letter.
As much as the Bible supposedly preaches values of love, compassion and mercy, it also advocates slavery, hate, pettiness, anger, jealousy and narrow-mindedness. Just one line from Confucius could triumph all the moral pretentiousness of the Bible. “Do not do unto others what you do not wish to be done unto yourself”. Imagine if this phrase was incorporated as one of the tenets of the 10 commandments (instead of the morally inept “You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife” commandment). It is obvious that the world will see much less conflict or better still, no conflict at all. Not to mention the irrational breaking up of a perfectly happy relationship.
Disagreement among the Different Sects
There are many different Christian denominations, all of which disagree with one another over which doctrine to place emphasis on, which church to follow, etc. The faith is spilt into the 3 branches of Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism and Protestantism. Under each of these denominations there are further sub-groups. For example, under the Protestant group, further denominations include the Anabaptists, Pentecostals, Adventists, Baptists, Calvinists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists and Lutherans. Not forgetting other sects like the Puritans or Pletism that have died out since the 1800s.
As if the disagreement between various religions is not conflict enough, denominations within the Christian faith all disagree with each other. Catholics believe that Mary had no original sin, remained free of sin throughout her life, is the “Mother of God” and the new Eve. They also believe of her bodily assumption into heaven instead of death. Other Christian factions disagree. Seventh-day Adventists believe that the Saturday, originally the seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week, should be the Sabbath. Other Christian factions disagree. Mormons think that all drugs, including caffeine in coffee and tea, are a travesty to biblical laws. Other Christian factions disagree. It appears that conflict, not consensus, is a central theme of Christianity.
Debate over Homosexuality
Recently, the issue of gay pastors has been thrust into the limelight in predominantly Christian America.
In August 2006, leaders of the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination began a tense debate in Minneapolis on whether to ordain gay men and lesbians. The denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is considering lifting a ban on noncelibate gay and lesbian pastors, permitting the ordination of people in committed same-sex relationships. Let’s see what the Bible has to say about homosexuality. If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them (Leviticus 20: 13). Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolater, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, not extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6: 9-10). Is it not peculiar how the Lutheran Church leaders interpret the scripture in a vastly different way from how you interpret it? Such church leaders, with the power to influence the minds of all of their gigantic congregations, has despite the warnings listed down in the Bible, decided to go ahead with the vote to ordain gay pastors. Can you not see how religion is susceptible to starkly contrasting interpretations, and subsequently abuse? I cannot imagine the day when Singaporean church leaders decide to interpret the Bible in the fundamentalist way (that their religion is the one true religion and all other religions are profoundly false and necessarily wicked), and incite religious hatred against other faiths.
In November 2006, leader of the 30million-member National Association of Evangelicals in the US, Pastor Ted Haggard, resigned after being embroiled in a gay sex scandal with another man. The other party, prostitute and masseur Mike Jones felt he had to expose the hypocrisy behind Pastor Ted’s anti gay marriage preaching on one hand, but engaging in sexual activities with a man on the other. Pastor Ted has since been stripped of his ministry. Saying one thing but doing another? That’s old news to me, at least where Christianity is concerned.
A Holistic Interpretation
Here is what the Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford, has to say on the issue of homosexuality. “Well if you take the issue of homosexuality, there is no doubt that more so in the Old Testament, but also present in the New Testament, that there are a number of texts, not as many as people think there are, but there are a few, that clearly regard homosexuality as wrong. But it is a question of how you interpret the Bible - whether it is right to extract a few isolated texts, rather than seeing the whole message of the Bible; the whole message of Jesus.” He says that in the past during the Roman times homosexuality as a choice is frowned upon; whereas from the understanding that biology gives us today, it appears that homosexuality is a circumstance. Progressive values espoused from such an authority figure in the religious circles are steps forward for mankind. Christians need to read the Bible in its entirety and inculcate the over-arching loving and compassionate message of Jesus.
If the Bishop of Oxford says that extracting a few isolated texts from the Bible is morally unjustifiable, then extracting the sole “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers” line, and basing your decision to break up on religious dogma should be considered most absurd!
Worldwide Conflicts as a Result of Religion
I see how you remain blissfully (or should I use woefully) unaware of current world affairs. Whenever I point out conflicts arising as a result of religion to you, I notice how you always looked shocked. It is as if you live in protective little bubble your religion provides, and think it impossible how so much evil can arise out of a supposedly good thing like religion.
You are fortunate you reside in Singapore, where religion is kept separate from politics. Having the Internal Security Department hawk over the evangelical groups to toe them in line, though admittedly draconian, does have the merits of preventing religiously intolerant religions like your own from inciting racial and religious hatred. Case in point: Pastor Rony Tan shooting his mouth off in his sermons.
Do you not see that incompatible religious doctrines have divided our world into separate moral communities, and these divisions have become a continuous source of bloodshed? Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it has been at any time in the past (Crusades and Spanish Inquisition). The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews vs. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians vs. Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians vs. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants vs. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims vs. Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs. Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims vs. Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims vs. Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims vs. Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite vs. Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians vs. Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis vs. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point.
I sincerely hope that I have opened your eyes to blood spilt all over the world by people who fight over whose God is truer. You still think religion is always a force for good? Think again.
Radicalism
In 1994, Reverend Paul Hill shot Doctor John Britton and his bodyguard, James Barrett outside the doctor’s abortion clinic in Florida. The crime of the doctor, as religiously perceived by Hill, was the carrying out of abortion procedures for a woman who requested it. In a religious fervour to do his version of God’s work, Hill turned his back on progressive values and went against civil law. In a statement before his execution, Hill said that he felt no remorse for his actions, and that he expected a great reward in Heaven. In his last words, he encouraged others who believed abortion contravenes the word of God to ‘do what you have to do to stop it’.
This psychopath, who somehow managed to get himself ordained as a reverend, is telling his followers to go and commit more of such cold blooded murder of abortion practitioners. Has he decided to selectively skip the ‘Thou shall not kill’ commandment? In the course of his journey to become a priest, has the values of love and compassion and mercy (the same values that you probably hold dear to your heart) not been drilled into him? How can he commit such an atrocity and yet remain defiant even till his deathbed? Perhaps just like the peace you found in God when you decided to break up with me, he found his peace too. This same ‘peace’ has led to uncountable nights of me sobbing into my pillow. The same can probably be said for the wife and young children the doctor has left behind.
In Malaysia, dispute over the use of the word Allah in Christian doctrine had erupted in conflict. Churches were vandalised and set on fire by fanatical Muslim youths who believed that the word Allah belonged their faith and not to Malaysians who practiced other faiths. Retaliatory attacks were soon launched on Muslim mosques. How many more places of worship has to be defaced, how many more lives have to be lost, before you peer out of your cocoon and see the truth of the world?
Religion is seen by the scholars as false, by the commoners as true, and by the politicians as useful. Case in point: United States President George Bush Jr. told the American public that God gave him the mandate to attack Iraq. In a media boo-boo, he said that it was a crusade against evil. Crusade. The word rings a bell, doesn’t it? The reason behind the illegitimate invasion was to destroy the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein kept, but they found none. They found barrels of black gold though.
Christian Leaders as Good Role Models?
AWARE Saga
Earlier I pointed out how the Bible is not exactly the best moral compass. Similarly, the actions of some Christian leaders leave much to be desired. A right-wing Christian group who perceived the campaigns of AWARE (a non-profit organisation), as being pro-homosexuality, storm-troopered the advocacy’s group annual general meeting and snatched power. AWARE saw a stunning leadership change when newcomers captured 9 of the 12 executive committee posts. Older members questioned their motives as well as the sudden influx of new members who joined AWARE just months before the AGM. The new team sacked the AWARE centre’s manager, a paid employee, changed the locks at the AWARE office and had a stand-off with old guard members who turned up later.
With four of the new exco members attending the same church – and having the same ‘feminist mentor’ in the form of lawyer Thio Su Mien – and all espousing ‘pro-family’, anti-gay sentiments, it is obvious that a religious group is trying to impose its agenda on a secular non-profit organization. Do you not see the problem here when religious people, no doubt in the zeal to do God’s work, go beyond simply evangelising their beliefs to attempting to pass their preferred moral practices into legislation. By their actions, the Christian Right has notoriously established a benchmark for religiously inspired activism that may well be emulated by people of other faiths. This is the start of a slippery slope. The consequences of skidding down that slope are unimaginable for a multi-religious society like Singapore’s.
Father Joacquim Kang
Kang was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail in 2004 for misappropriating $5.1 million in church funds while serving as a parish priest at St Teresa's Church. I wonder if his followers will still have faith in him. Leadership by example, anyone?
Pastor Rony Tan
Rony Tan, the leader of Lighthouse Evangelism, an independent church with 12,000 members, ridiculed Buddhism and Taoism in his sermons to his church. The most appalling thing was that as he was inserting snide remarks and nasty untruths about other faiths, the entire congregation was laughing together with him. I shudder to think that some of my Christian friends may be sitting among those in that congregation.
Catholic priests molesting children
The catholic sex abuse cases are a series of lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and scandals related to the sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests against minors. Beyond the actual abuses, much of the scandal focused around the actions of some members of the Catholic hierarchy who did not report the crimes to legal authorities and reassigned the offenders to other locations where they continued to have contact with minors, giving them the opportunity to continue their sexual abuse. Again and again, we see examples of how these people with religious authority abusing their power and causing hurt and suffering in their charges. How many more examples do you need before you understand my unwillingness to be blindly led around by the blind?
Personal Contradiction between 2 of the 10 Commandments
Commandment 1: You shall have no other gods before me
Commandment 5: Honour your father and mother.
My father and mother pray to other gods. When they die, as the eldest son, I have the traditional duty to conduct funeral rites for them, which would inevitably conflict with Commandment 1 should I have converted to the Christian faith. But if I do not take up this duty, then I am guilty of contravening Commandment 5. A lose-lose situation. Personally, I place a higher premium on filial piety than on religious dogmatism. During his 2009 National Day Rally speech on religious tolerance, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong recounted stories of Christian converts who refused to do as their parents wished on their deathbed and ended up hurting the very people who have painstakingly brought them up for many years. Fulfil your parent’s deathbed wishes – to do or not to do? Honestly, I am repulsed at the actions of those ingrates and will definitely do as my parents wished to the best of my ability.
I found it ridiculously easy to reach this conclusion just with rational reasoning. There is no need to commit to a book to resolve moral questions of this sort.
Natural Disasters
Explain the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami or the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. When the waves of the massive tsunami crashed into the city of Aceh and when the gusts of the hurricane slammed into New Orleans, what was going through God’s mind? Why did God, in all his omnipresence and omnipotence, not stop the tsunami from crushing the lives out of hundreds of thousands of innocents, many of them children? What crime did the children commit? Hundreds of thousands of lives were killed in an instant. These were people of faith, dying! In New Orleans, did he not hear the prayers of the elderly who fled to the attics to escape the rising waters, only to be slowly drowned as they murmured their prayers? What kind of all-powerful and all-compassionate God is this?
Not surprisingly, the people who survived reaffirmed their faith. Praise the Almighty Lord for delivering us from harm, they would say. But do they not see that the same God who has supposedly spared their lives has also mercilessly drowned infants in their cribs? If you accept that there is a God, then He must be powerless, or evil, or He does not care.
Why is it that the Bible can dedicate huge chunks of texts to encouraging slavery, to promoting gender inequality, to curtailing sexual behaviour, to describing in gory detail how to punish adulterers and homosexuals, yet it cannot prophesize natural disasters of such biblical proportions? God told no one of the impending doom. Science did. Hours before the tsunami or hurricane struck, meteorological calculations and satellite imagery foresaw the imminent disaster. Meteorologists rushed to warn people to evacuate the danger zone. Without science, more lives would have been lost.
Isn’t it amazing how God can address the prayers of those who ask for good grades in their exams, or good results for their competitions, but fail to hear the prayers of those about to die?
Promising Young Lawyer Killed in Mumbai
Ms Lo Hwei Yen, 28, a promising Singaporean lawyer, was one of at least 188 people, including 22 foreigners, killed in a shooting and grenade rampage by 10 militants who terrorised Mumbai for 60 hours in 2008. Incidentally, she happens to be a devout Christian.
Why did God put such a promising girl like this girl into the world, only to claim the life back when she is at the prime of her life? Is the purpose of her life to die in the cross fire of some religious extremists?
Do you think the Muslim terrorists from Pakistan, indoctrinated with their highest ideal of introducing an Islamic state in South Asia and liberating Muslims residing in Indian-administered Kashmir, cares about the collateral damage? It saddens me to note what extremism in the name of religion has led to the passing of a beautiful yet innocent soul like Ms Lo. It should sadden you too.
Satan as the Convenient Excuse
Please do not be so foolish to think that Satan is the cause of all these evils. It was apparent in my conversations with you that you think that Satan is solely responsible for everything you cannot explain. In my conversations with more enlightened Christians, they tell me that Satan influences, but ultimately the choice belongs to the person. Father Joacquim Kang and Reverend Paul Hill should have known better. And if God is all-powerful, why didn’t he eliminate Satan? Or better still, why didn’t He simply just not design Satan?
For Better or for Worse? Till Death do us Part?
Much to my chagrin, there have been several attempts by Christians who earnestly invite me to their church time and time again. I appreciate their goodwill and kind gestures. However, my issues with the faith cannot be simply resolved by repeated visits to the church.
In one of your letters to me, you told me that you liked me for my big brain. I’m assuming that you like me for my intellectual discourse. Oxymoronic then, that what attracted you to me in the first place is also responsible now for turning you away.
This brain of mine is my blessing. It is also my curse. I just wonder if I were indeed intelligently designed by Him, why didn’t He erase my persistence in reason.
The heartache
Dull sensation in my chest
Never seem to fade away
There is no all-seeing, all-loving God which keeps us from harm. Atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of a next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have – an inspiration to make the most of it. Atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be.
Richard Dawkins, Oxford Professor and Prominent Atheist
Some Memories; No Doubt just Ramblings to the Passerby
When I first entered the National University of Singapore, I was the loner kid who did not bat an eyelid at girls. Girls, with all their idiosyncrasies like gossiping or buying pairs of shoes after shoes, were too much for me to handle. I was more interested in climbing, and girls only served to take away my climbing time.
You first approached me. You started giving me gifts, like chocolates and small cards. These little nuggets made a boring day suddenly exciting. In all your little notes, you asked about my life; you dropped encouragements; you made me feel special in a way no other person has managed to. Any unfeeling heart would melt under these circumstances.
In the one year that we spent together, I cannot remember a single unhappy moment. Sure we had disagreements, but we sorted them out as soon as they surfaced. Never once had we an argument. I still remember the incident when you crashed the car. To the best of my ability, I arranged for a mechanic to repair the damages, negotiated for a good repair price between the accident victim and the mechanic, and paid for all the upfront costs first. Do you remember how I told you then since you did not have any liquid assets; you could try to barter your fully stocked cupboard with the parties? A little nasty yes, but all for your own good. In the end, I still helped you make the payment with the money I scrupulously saved.
I still remember our overseas trips. Those weeks spent away from urbanisation, getting to learn more about each other, and gaining insights together. All these memories I hold close to my heart. But they aren’t important anymore. After one year together, without warning, you dropped a bombshell on me – convert or break up. I was devastated. I cannot begin to describe the hurt and anguish I felt. You’ve left me behind to walk the long road ahead on my own. I languished in my grief. I can’t even do the thing I loved to do most – climbing. All the fight has been drained out of me. How long will it take to pick up the pieces? I wonder. One Chinese proverb particularly lent me support: If you can pick it up, you should be able to put it down. In my desire to understand how a religion, which in its entirety claims to preach love and compassion, drove you to unilaterally and resolutely want the break up, I achieved revelation. Indeed, the learning process is accelerated when feelings are invested.
Undone by 2 Corinthians 6:14
Do not be unequally yoked together with non-believers. You believe that God created you in His image, and that He is ‘a member of your body’. Because of this religious doctrine, you believe that the resulting union between a Christian and a non-Christian is unholy. You believe that you will not be granted entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. You believe that if you commit the sin, you will burn for eternity in hellfire.
I realise now how you could be so calm when you made your decision to break up known to me. I collapsed with grief, whereas you could still go jamming with the rest in the immediate aftermath. You felt like you were doing God’s work, and you found peace in Him. I had no such consolation. My life just fell apart. In sorrow, I grasped at reasons at why you might be unhappy with me. Did I treat you badly? Was I overly possessive? Was I not spontaneous enough for you? All these queries drew a blank.
Only after reading the scripture did my hurt, disappointment and anger subside. I realised the very difficult spiritual position you were in. Just like how Christ is head of the Church, the man is to be the head of the house. I cannot provide you with the spiritual support that is demanded of me in the bible. The bible you believe to be the divinely inspired word of God.
A Reason-Driven Life
You shared with me how you attended Sunday school since you were in primary school and finally got baptized in secondary one. You shared with me how you were previously a naughty and unruly girl, and how religion has changed you for the better. Unfortunately, I do not share that same background as you. But like you, I am a social construct of our upbringing.
I used to be the typical nerd in school and studied diligently. From a young age, I’ve learnt to correlate good results with hard work. If I studied hard and obtained good grades, I deserved all the credit. If I decided to be lazy, took a back seat and get punished with bad grades, then I reap what I sown. I do not praise the Lord for everything good thing that happened in my life and vice versa, blame Satan for everything bad. Rather, I encourage and berate myself in accordance to my successes or failures. As a result of my firm belief in effort and reward, my grades have always been above average, if not excellent. In the blink of an eye, 23 years have passed. In that same duration I have lived without a God in my life.
Because of this upbringing, I am firmly steeped in reason and anecdotal evidence. Just like how you are indoctrinated in unquestioningly faith as a virtue, I am indoctrinated in intellectual scepticism as a merit. For me to convert to become a fundamentalist Christian like yourself, instead of becoming a half-past-six Christian (as one Christian friend has appallingly recommended me), I need to be surrounded by overwhelming, mutually self-reinforcing evidence. I embarked on reading the Bible, and within the first few chapters of the holy book I already found several distasteful contradictions. Contradictions I am unable to reconcile. At this point, we must decide if we think whether intellectual scepticism or blind faith more virtuous. Should a child be inquisitive and ask and question and debate or should he be obedient and servient and accept everything spoken to be the truth of the world? Perhaps I failed to read the Bible spiritually, or adopt its teachings with the same unquestioning acceptance as you did. If I were to become a baptized Christian, then all my queries have to be answered to me by the faith, one by one. Prepare yourself for a deluge of intellectual bombardment.
Big Bang Theory
Mathematicians have calculated that the probability of us coming into existence out of random chance is very, very minute. Therefore, some higher being must have created us. But this hypothesis creates more problems than it solves – the problem of infinite regress. If you follow the logical train of thought, if God created us, then who created Him? Christians tell me that their Judeo-Christian God is uncreated, and that he has simply always existed. There is no analogy, no basis for comparison against this argument in nature, and I cannot wrap my head around this claim. If I were to worship a God, then naturally it behoves me to worship the ultimate creator. Can you conclusively prove to me that your God is the ultimate creator? Just because you firmly believe in something doesn’t necessarily mean it is correct. If I firmly believe that there is a teapot orbiting around the Earth, then the onus is on me to prove my theory. The onus is on you to prove your God to me.
So many Religions, Which one is True?
How are we supposed to know which religion is the true religion? Just because someone follows a certain faith does not necessarily mean it is the right path. Perhaps no one religion contains all the truth of the world. Perhaps every religion contains fragments of the truth and it is our responsibility to identify those fragments and piece them together. Or perhaps there are no gods. No one can say for sure. There were 3200 religions in the world since the start of time. Since only 1 religion can be correct, then the other 3199 religions must be wrong. Christians say their God is the one true God, as do the Muslims, Jews, Hindus and more. And radicals from each faith are willing to be a martyr for what they think is the highest ideal.
Do you not see that the place of your birth determines your religion? If you were born in Japan, you’ll be a Shinto. If you were born in India, you’ll be a Hindu. If you were born in Tibet, you’ll be a Buddhist. If you were born in Norway during the times of the Vikings, you’ll believe in Thor and his hammer! The fact that Christians think a child to be the child of God, instead of a child of Christian parents, or Hindu parents, or Muslim parents, is unacceptable.
Do not all religions appear strange to those who stand outside of them? A case in point: when I recounted my predicament to a PRC friend, she found religion to be a ludicrous myth. Only an insidious force such as religion can break up such a happy relationship, she told me. She also shared with me how the Fa Lun Gong Movement is creating a lot of social problems in China.
Age of the Earth
Creationists argue that the world is 6000 years old. But science, through using several independent methods of radiological dating, has repeatedly proven the world to be about 4.5billion years old. Dinosaur fossils are tested to be about 65million years old. That the age of the Earth is 6000 years old is a myth. How Christians stand steadfast in their story of creation in the face of such staggering evidence defies understanding.
Noah’s Ark
Genesis 6:15 states that Noah's ark was 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits in size. Today, experts agree that a cubit was approximately 18 inches, yielding a volume (if perfectly rectangular, the most voluminous possible shape of three unequal dimensions) of 1,518,750 cubic feet. Into this, you must fit two of each of the 30,000,000 species on earth (60,000,000 creatures altogether), plus all the food needed to keep all of them alive for about a year when the flood raged. Even without the mind-boggling amount of food required, it is technically impossible to pile all the creatures in the ark, together with space for bedding or room to stand. Furthermore, Noah has to go the Arctic to collect 2 penguins, go to Antarctic to collect 2 polar bears, go to Kalahari Desert to find 2 meerkats, go to Asia to find 2 tigers, and get 2 Tyrannosaurus Rex to enter the ark.
Also, if it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, then given the severe drop in salinity of the seawater, most of the fragile marine species should have died out – something not evident in the world today. Given the above analysis, the story of Noah’s Ark cannot be true.
Bible not being a Good Moral Compass
God tells you to stone people who believe in other gods to death
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy father; Namely, of the god of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the Earth; Thou shall not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him, neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shall thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die (Deuteronomy 13:6-10).
Abraham makes an offering of his son to appease God’s whimsical wishes
And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of (Genesis 22: 1-2).
Abraham heard an imaginary voice in his head telling him to murder Isaac. He subsequently lifts the blade to his son’s throat. These actions demand unquestioning belief. It requires what philosophers refer to as a leap of faith. Earlier, God had promised Abraham that he would spread his seed far and wide for him. A dilemma is presented at this point. How can I possibly spread my seed if I kill my only son? That God ultimately did not claim the sacrifice is of secondary importance. What if one day, you hear an imaginary voice in your head, telling you to sacrifice your child? I can only imagine hapless believers, killing their children over what they think is God’s mandate. To people outside the faith, this act of abomination is nothing less than cold-blooded murder. Furthermore, this contradicts with the ‘Thou shall not murder’ commandment. So many inconsistencies, yet you can effortlessly accept where I find it morally repulsive to.
Moses the Prophet
Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves (Numbers 31: 17-18). Moses, who was angered at the Israelites merciful restrain towards the conquered Midianite people, ordered his men to kill innocent children in cold blood, and kill every female that is married to the Midianite men. What sin did the Midianite male children and married females commit that demands this genocide? The greatest irony is that it was Moses who brought down the 10 unbreakable commandments inscribed in stone. Given the savage nature of what you have already witnessed, it should come as a big surprise to you that one of the commandments were actually Thou shall not kill. Yet, here was Moses, ordering the mass slaughter of children and women in cold blood, not unlike the gas camps of the Nazis or the killing fields of Pol Pot.
Rape My Daughter as you Please
Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him. And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, and said unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly. Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go. Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her lord was, till it was light. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place. And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid down hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel (Judges 19: 22-29).
This entire particularly nasty paragraph describes the inferior status of women, equivalent to that of playthings, as sanctioned in the Bible. The man offered his concubine to be raped, instead of fighting to defend her, as I would have done without hesitation. Following that, the same man desecrated her body when she died instead of providing her with a proper burial. I hope this piece of scripture shocks you as much as it has shocked me. In today’s civilised world, such acts of betrayal and moral destitution are considered socially repugnant, yet these are the teachings you meekly accept with unquestioningly faith. These are the issues that you must grapple with if you truly accept your faith in its entirety.
Cherry Picking within the Bible
Of course now Christians will be protesting, because they claim that Jesus, who has descended onto the world to die on the cross for our sins, has changed the world since the nasty days of the Old Testament. No doubt the New Testament is an improved version of the Old Testament from a moral position. The idea is that God had himself incarnated as a man, Jesus, in order that he should be hideously tortured and executed in order to redeem our sins. And not just the original sin of Adam and Eve, but all future sins, whether we decide to commit them or not. Ultimately when we die, God is both judge and jury in the decision to allow entry into the gates of the Holy City. So then, why does he need to die on the cross for us to atone us for our sins just so he can judge us again at the end? Why not just forgive us outright? Is he not supposed to be all powerful and all merciful?
In fact, contrary to what many Christians believe, the New Testament openly endorses the laws of the Old Testament. Think not that I am to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For I verily say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled (Matthew 5: 17-18). All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (2 Timothy 3: 13). It cannot be any clearer. The laws in the Old Testament are to be obeyed. It is downright shameful how Christians can interpret otherwise.
Christian apologetics reason that in the days of the Old Testament, we had to follow the moral, civil and priestly laws. For them, because we are not under a theocratic system today and because by sacrificing himself Jesus fulfilled the priestly law, only the moral laws apply today. This explains why homosexuals and adulterers were stoned in the past, but are not today. This explanation is flawed. The moral law is created by God, the civil law by whichever political system was governing the country at that time, and priestly laws by the priest. If God commanded that adulterers be stoned, then it is solely a moral law set by him. Do the civil or priestly laws have the right to interfere? Do you mean to tell me that the state or the priests have more power over the supreme Creator of your universe? How can Christians allow the moral law of their God be tainted by the secondary laws set by humans, especially since human beings were intelligently designed to be imperfect? I would think that if you were a true Christian, you would follow your God’s law to the letter.
As much as the Bible supposedly preaches values of love, compassion and mercy, it also advocates slavery, hate, pettiness, anger, jealousy and narrow-mindedness. Just one line from Confucius could triumph all the moral pretentiousness of the Bible. “Do not do unto others what you do not wish to be done unto yourself”. Imagine if this phrase was incorporated as one of the tenets of the 10 commandments (instead of the morally inept “You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife” commandment). It is obvious that the world will see much less conflict or better still, no conflict at all. Not to mention the irrational breaking up of a perfectly happy relationship.
Disagreement among the Different Sects
There are many different Christian denominations, all of which disagree with one another over which doctrine to place emphasis on, which church to follow, etc. The faith is spilt into the 3 branches of Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism and Protestantism. Under each of these denominations there are further sub-groups. For example, under the Protestant group, further denominations include the Anabaptists, Pentecostals, Adventists, Baptists, Calvinists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists and Lutherans. Not forgetting other sects like the Puritans or Pletism that have died out since the 1800s.
As if the disagreement between various religions is not conflict enough, denominations within the Christian faith all disagree with each other. Catholics believe that Mary had no original sin, remained free of sin throughout her life, is the “Mother of God” and the new Eve. They also believe of her bodily assumption into heaven instead of death. Other Christian factions disagree. Seventh-day Adventists believe that the Saturday, originally the seventh day of the Judeo-Christian week, should be the Sabbath. Other Christian factions disagree. Mormons think that all drugs, including caffeine in coffee and tea, are a travesty to biblical laws. Other Christian factions disagree. It appears that conflict, not consensus, is a central theme of Christianity.
Debate over Homosexuality
Recently, the issue of gay pastors has been thrust into the limelight in predominantly Christian America.
In August 2006, leaders of the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination began a tense debate in Minneapolis on whether to ordain gay men and lesbians. The denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is considering lifting a ban on noncelibate gay and lesbian pastors, permitting the ordination of people in committed same-sex relationships. Let’s see what the Bible has to say about homosexuality. If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them (Leviticus 20: 13). Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolater, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, not extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6: 9-10). Is it not peculiar how the Lutheran Church leaders interpret the scripture in a vastly different way from how you interpret it? Such church leaders, with the power to influence the minds of all of their gigantic congregations, has despite the warnings listed down in the Bible, decided to go ahead with the vote to ordain gay pastors. Can you not see how religion is susceptible to starkly contrasting interpretations, and subsequently abuse? I cannot imagine the day when Singaporean church leaders decide to interpret the Bible in the fundamentalist way (that their religion is the one true religion and all other religions are profoundly false and necessarily wicked), and incite religious hatred against other faiths.
In November 2006, leader of the 30million-member National Association of Evangelicals in the US, Pastor Ted Haggard, resigned after being embroiled in a gay sex scandal with another man. The other party, prostitute and masseur Mike Jones felt he had to expose the hypocrisy behind Pastor Ted’s anti gay marriage preaching on one hand, but engaging in sexual activities with a man on the other. Pastor Ted has since been stripped of his ministry. Saying one thing but doing another? That’s old news to me, at least where Christianity is concerned.
A Holistic Interpretation
Here is what the Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford, has to say on the issue of homosexuality. “Well if you take the issue of homosexuality, there is no doubt that more so in the Old Testament, but also present in the New Testament, that there are a number of texts, not as many as people think there are, but there are a few, that clearly regard homosexuality as wrong. But it is a question of how you interpret the Bible - whether it is right to extract a few isolated texts, rather than seeing the whole message of the Bible; the whole message of Jesus.” He says that in the past during the Roman times homosexuality as a choice is frowned upon; whereas from the understanding that biology gives us today, it appears that homosexuality is a circumstance. Progressive values espoused from such an authority figure in the religious circles are steps forward for mankind. Christians need to read the Bible in its entirety and inculcate the over-arching loving and compassionate message of Jesus.
If the Bishop of Oxford says that extracting a few isolated texts from the Bible is morally unjustifiable, then extracting the sole “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers” line, and basing your decision to break up on religious dogma should be considered most absurd!
Worldwide Conflicts as a Result of Religion
I see how you remain blissfully (or should I use woefully) unaware of current world affairs. Whenever I point out conflicts arising as a result of religion to you, I notice how you always looked shocked. It is as if you live in protective little bubble your religion provides, and think it impossible how so much evil can arise out of a supposedly good thing like religion.
You are fortunate you reside in Singapore, where religion is kept separate from politics. Having the Internal Security Department hawk over the evangelical groups to toe them in line, though admittedly draconian, does have the merits of preventing religiously intolerant religions like your own from inciting racial and religious hatred. Case in point: Pastor Rony Tan shooting his mouth off in his sermons.
Do you not see that incompatible religious doctrines have divided our world into separate moral communities, and these divisions have become a continuous source of bloodshed? Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it has been at any time in the past (Crusades and Spanish Inquisition). The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews vs. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians vs. Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians vs. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants vs. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims vs. Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs. Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims vs. Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims vs. Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims vs. Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite vs. Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians vs. Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis vs. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point.
I sincerely hope that I have opened your eyes to blood spilt all over the world by people who fight over whose God is truer. You still think religion is always a force for good? Think again.
Radicalism
In 1994, Reverend Paul Hill shot Doctor John Britton and his bodyguard, James Barrett outside the doctor’s abortion clinic in Florida. The crime of the doctor, as religiously perceived by Hill, was the carrying out of abortion procedures for a woman who requested it. In a religious fervour to do his version of God’s work, Hill turned his back on progressive values and went against civil law. In a statement before his execution, Hill said that he felt no remorse for his actions, and that he expected a great reward in Heaven. In his last words, he encouraged others who believed abortion contravenes the word of God to ‘do what you have to do to stop it’.
This psychopath, who somehow managed to get himself ordained as a reverend, is telling his followers to go and commit more of such cold blooded murder of abortion practitioners. Has he decided to selectively skip the ‘Thou shall not kill’ commandment? In the course of his journey to become a priest, has the values of love and compassion and mercy (the same values that you probably hold dear to your heart) not been drilled into him? How can he commit such an atrocity and yet remain defiant even till his deathbed? Perhaps just like the peace you found in God when you decided to break up with me, he found his peace too. This same ‘peace’ has led to uncountable nights of me sobbing into my pillow. The same can probably be said for the wife and young children the doctor has left behind.
In Malaysia, dispute over the use of the word Allah in Christian doctrine had erupted in conflict. Churches were vandalised and set on fire by fanatical Muslim youths who believed that the word Allah belonged their faith and not to Malaysians who practiced other faiths. Retaliatory attacks were soon launched on Muslim mosques. How many more places of worship has to be defaced, how many more lives have to be lost, before you peer out of your cocoon and see the truth of the world?
Religion is seen by the scholars as false, by the commoners as true, and by the politicians as useful. Case in point: United States President George Bush Jr. told the American public that God gave him the mandate to attack Iraq. In a media boo-boo, he said that it was a crusade against evil. Crusade. The word rings a bell, doesn’t it? The reason behind the illegitimate invasion was to destroy the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein kept, but they found none. They found barrels of black gold though.
Christian Leaders as Good Role Models?
AWARE Saga
Earlier I pointed out how the Bible is not exactly the best moral compass. Similarly, the actions of some Christian leaders leave much to be desired. A right-wing Christian group who perceived the campaigns of AWARE (a non-profit organisation), as being pro-homosexuality, storm-troopered the advocacy’s group annual general meeting and snatched power. AWARE saw a stunning leadership change when newcomers captured 9 of the 12 executive committee posts. Older members questioned their motives as well as the sudden influx of new members who joined AWARE just months before the AGM. The new team sacked the AWARE centre’s manager, a paid employee, changed the locks at the AWARE office and had a stand-off with old guard members who turned up later.
With four of the new exco members attending the same church – and having the same ‘feminist mentor’ in the form of lawyer Thio Su Mien – and all espousing ‘pro-family’, anti-gay sentiments, it is obvious that a religious group is trying to impose its agenda on a secular non-profit organization. Do you not see the problem here when religious people, no doubt in the zeal to do God’s work, go beyond simply evangelising their beliefs to attempting to pass their preferred moral practices into legislation. By their actions, the Christian Right has notoriously established a benchmark for religiously inspired activism that may well be emulated by people of other faiths. This is the start of a slippery slope. The consequences of skidding down that slope are unimaginable for a multi-religious society like Singapore’s.
Father Joacquim Kang
Kang was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail in 2004 for misappropriating $5.1 million in church funds while serving as a parish priest at St Teresa's Church. I wonder if his followers will still have faith in him. Leadership by example, anyone?
Pastor Rony Tan
Rony Tan, the leader of Lighthouse Evangelism, an independent church with 12,000 members, ridiculed Buddhism and Taoism in his sermons to his church. The most appalling thing was that as he was inserting snide remarks and nasty untruths about other faiths, the entire congregation was laughing together with him. I shudder to think that some of my Christian friends may be sitting among those in that congregation.
Catholic priests molesting children
The catholic sex abuse cases are a series of lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and scandals related to the sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests against minors. Beyond the actual abuses, much of the scandal focused around the actions of some members of the Catholic hierarchy who did not report the crimes to legal authorities and reassigned the offenders to other locations where they continued to have contact with minors, giving them the opportunity to continue their sexual abuse. Again and again, we see examples of how these people with religious authority abusing their power and causing hurt and suffering in their charges. How many more examples do you need before you understand my unwillingness to be blindly led around by the blind?
Personal Contradiction between 2 of the 10 Commandments
Commandment 1: You shall have no other gods before me
Commandment 5: Honour your father and mother.
My father and mother pray to other gods. When they die, as the eldest son, I have the traditional duty to conduct funeral rites for them, which would inevitably conflict with Commandment 1 should I have converted to the Christian faith. But if I do not take up this duty, then I am guilty of contravening Commandment 5. A lose-lose situation. Personally, I place a higher premium on filial piety than on religious dogmatism. During his 2009 National Day Rally speech on religious tolerance, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong recounted stories of Christian converts who refused to do as their parents wished on their deathbed and ended up hurting the very people who have painstakingly brought them up for many years. Fulfil your parent’s deathbed wishes – to do or not to do? Honestly, I am repulsed at the actions of those ingrates and will definitely do as my parents wished to the best of my ability.
I found it ridiculously easy to reach this conclusion just with rational reasoning. There is no need to commit to a book to resolve moral questions of this sort.
Natural Disasters
Explain the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami or the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. When the waves of the massive tsunami crashed into the city of Aceh and when the gusts of the hurricane slammed into New Orleans, what was going through God’s mind? Why did God, in all his omnipresence and omnipotence, not stop the tsunami from crushing the lives out of hundreds of thousands of innocents, many of them children? What crime did the children commit? Hundreds of thousands of lives were killed in an instant. These were people of faith, dying! In New Orleans, did he not hear the prayers of the elderly who fled to the attics to escape the rising waters, only to be slowly drowned as they murmured their prayers? What kind of all-powerful and all-compassionate God is this?
Not surprisingly, the people who survived reaffirmed their faith. Praise the Almighty Lord for delivering us from harm, they would say. But do they not see that the same God who has supposedly spared their lives has also mercilessly drowned infants in their cribs? If you accept that there is a God, then He must be powerless, or evil, or He does not care.
Why is it that the Bible can dedicate huge chunks of texts to encouraging slavery, to promoting gender inequality, to curtailing sexual behaviour, to describing in gory detail how to punish adulterers and homosexuals, yet it cannot prophesize natural disasters of such biblical proportions? God told no one of the impending doom. Science did. Hours before the tsunami or hurricane struck, meteorological calculations and satellite imagery foresaw the imminent disaster. Meteorologists rushed to warn people to evacuate the danger zone. Without science, more lives would have been lost.
Isn’t it amazing how God can address the prayers of those who ask for good grades in their exams, or good results for their competitions, but fail to hear the prayers of those about to die?
Promising Young Lawyer Killed in Mumbai
Ms Lo Hwei Yen, 28, a promising Singaporean lawyer, was one of at least 188 people, including 22 foreigners, killed in a shooting and grenade rampage by 10 militants who terrorised Mumbai for 60 hours in 2008. Incidentally, she happens to be a devout Christian.
Why did God put such a promising girl like this girl into the world, only to claim the life back when she is at the prime of her life? Is the purpose of her life to die in the cross fire of some religious extremists?
Do you think the Muslim terrorists from Pakistan, indoctrinated with their highest ideal of introducing an Islamic state in South Asia and liberating Muslims residing in Indian-administered Kashmir, cares about the collateral damage? It saddens me to note what extremism in the name of religion has led to the passing of a beautiful yet innocent soul like Ms Lo. It should sadden you too.
Satan as the Convenient Excuse
Please do not be so foolish to think that Satan is the cause of all these evils. It was apparent in my conversations with you that you think that Satan is solely responsible for everything you cannot explain. In my conversations with more enlightened Christians, they tell me that Satan influences, but ultimately the choice belongs to the person. Father Joacquim Kang and Reverend Paul Hill should have known better. And if God is all-powerful, why didn’t he eliminate Satan? Or better still, why didn’t He simply just not design Satan?
For Better or for Worse? Till Death do us Part?
Much to my chagrin, there have been several attempts by Christians who earnestly invite me to their church time and time again. I appreciate their goodwill and kind gestures. However, my issues with the faith cannot be simply resolved by repeated visits to the church.
In one of your letters to me, you told me that you liked me for my big brain. I’m assuming that you like me for my intellectual discourse. Oxymoronic then, that what attracted you to me in the first place is also responsible now for turning you away.
This brain of mine is my blessing. It is also my curse. I just wonder if I were indeed intelligently designed by Him, why didn’t He erase my persistence in reason.
The heartache
Dull sensation in my chest
Never seem to fade away
There is no all-seeing, all-loving God which keeps us from harm. Atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of a next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have – an inspiration to make the most of it. Atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be.
Richard Dawkins, Oxford Professor and Prominent Atheist
Sunday, May 02, 2010
What to expect from this new blog
Well, if you are expecting a deep analysis of religions and different world views from this site, I am afraid I might disappoint. You see, I am a undergraduate student in biology, and my knowledge of theology and philosophy is third-hand at best.
So what I will have to say on this blog is quite amateurist, and I will not be able to sustain arguments to as high a quality as my scientific blog, www.defensedefumer.wordpress.org.
Nevertheless, this blog will cover my relationship with God, how I view Him and my deep discussions with my friends. I am happy to entertain opposing views, but due to my schedule, I will not be able to respond to most of them if challenged.
Thanks!
So what I will have to say on this blog is quite amateurist, and I will not be able to sustain arguments to as high a quality as my scientific blog, www.defensedefumer.wordpress.org.
Nevertheless, this blog will cover my relationship with God, how I view Him and my deep discussions with my friends. I am happy to entertain opposing views, but due to my schedule, I will not be able to respond to most of them if challenged.
Thanks!
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