one year

In 3 weeks I'll have been with my girlfriend for a year. So I drew this lotus for her.

Tomorrow I will cut off the tatty edges of the paper I used (not visible in this scan) and send the picture to her.

1+1=。。。

A new pigeon has arrived at my place and seems to be romantically involved with my landlady's pigeon. Now my landlady doesn't want to be overrun with baby pigeons, so she's giving out less pigeon food in the hope that one of the pigeons will go elsewhere. I'm thinking the pigeons might not be that smart, and preventing the baby pigeon invasion may involve eating a few eggs.

HST repaired

I hadn't been following the news on this, but apparently the hubble space telescope has been repaired and is once again taking amazing pictures. The official site is here.

You can look at them yourself. I'm also going to pick out a couple of favourites.

Refuting someone

Well I found out my worldview falls under the definition of theistic evolution (it did before, but I hadn't given it all the thought I needed). Theistic evolution is in fact the worldview held by the majority of Christians throughout the world, so I'm definitely not alone.
Anyway, I just thought I'd refute someone else's article speaking against the way I see the world. His article can be found at http://creation.com/10-dangers-of-theistic-evolution.
His article takes the form of 10 "dangers" of the theistic evolution worldview. I'll present my arguments regarding each one in the same order as he's presented them.

1: Misrepresentation of the nature of God
The basic issue here is that evolution depends on the death of countless unsuccessful organisms in order to promote the successful ones. And it's assumed that death, suffering, etc could not have taken place prior to the original sin. The problem here is that the first sin mentioned in the bible is not the eating of the forbidden fruit but the deciept of the serpent. Therefore even in the literal account, sin had already entered the world before the fall of man.

2: God becomes a God of the gaps
Here, the article's author presumes that in accepting evolutionary theism, we reduce the role of God in our view of creation. This is plain naive and a blatant misrepresentation of the theistic evolutionist worldview. I don't just say "God did it" when I don't know how something happened: I believe God is part of how the universe works, even the parts we CAN explain!

3: Denial of central biblical teachings
For his third objection, the article's author essentially denies the gospels and presents the first chapter of Genesis as the core foundation of the bible. He obviously hasn't read the bible: he hasn't even read the second chapter of Genesis, which gives a completely different creation story. Obviously, if a literal interpretation of those chapters is self-contradictory, then they were never intended to be taken literally!

4: Loss of the way for finding God
Here he pretends that theistic evolution denies the existence of sin. He's completely wrong. Only one group of people doesn't believe that many of the world's problems are caused directly or indirectly by human greed (commonly recognised as a sin). We call those people sociopaths.

5: The doctrine of God's incarnation is undermined
No it isn't. There is no logical contradiction. None at all.

6: The biblical basis of Jesus' work of redemption is mythologized
Once again, the article's author is asserting a logical contradiction when none is present. Finding a few quotes which on first reading appear to support one's reading does not prove that one has an understanding of the quote's source, or that the quote's source is in agreement with one's conclusion. Claiming that Adam is the basis for Jesus' work completely undermines the gospel of Christ, and denies all responsibility for one's own sin.

7: Loss of biblical chronology
If chronology was so important for the biblical authors, they would have written everything in chronological order. They didn't. The author claims the age of the earth can be estimated from the genealogies of the bible: that is in fact a bald-faced lie. It ignores the number of biblical personnages who are given multiple contradictory genealogies which cannot be reconciled within a literalistic interpretation. In short, a literalistic interpretation is reliant on an extremely limited knowlege of biblical text.

8: Loss of creation concepts
Here the article's author is merely restating his belief that a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis (even though he hasn't read the second chapter) is the only reason for the bible's existence.

9: Misrepresentation of reality
My rebuttal is in the author's own dishonesty and misrepresentation of his own religion.

10: Missing the purpose
Unlike the author of that article I know that the whole idea behind christianity is that the life and death of Jesus bridged the divide between God and creation. John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life". Unlike the author of the article I'm refuting my belief actually motivates me to read the bible instead of just assuming what someone else says about it is actually true.
For all that: I cannot believe that God is inconsistent enough to save the apostle Thomas (who refused to believe in Christ's resurrection without hard evidence) yet refuse to save Richard Dawkins, whose sin is no greater, but who will most likely die without seeing hard evidence. Humans are inconsistent, human expression of God's inspiration is inconsistent (and I believe often at odds with the source of the inspiration), but the God I believe in is not inconsistent.

Faith

Well where to begin...
I suppose it started with exploring the link between climate change denial and Christian fundamentalism. I suppose this process I've been going through was triggered by the realisation that people calling themselves Christians are telling bald-faced lies to further their own political agenda for their own short-term gain and complete disregard for the rest of humanity and even their own descendants. How can someone who claims to take the bible literally show such disregard for the 9th commandment. But it's not just deciept, people are already losing their lives in areas where the climate no longer supports agriculture!
Well I'm not sure how but thinking about the corrupt morals of supposed Christians somehow got me thinking about my own worldview, why I believe as I do, and whether I should continue in the same beliefs.
Here's what I came up with, in roughly the order I came up with it:

Theory of evolution is pretty much correct. I did have a doubt regarding evolution of different karyotypes but Chilocorus stigma was kind enough to resolve it for me. Oh, and I've actually done experiments proving most of the other aspects of evolution, albeit with fruit flies (their short lifespan helps).

Life can probably arise spontaneously within the framework of this universe. This hasn't actually been proven, but enough aspects of abiogenesis have been proven that it's not much of a stretch.

However, I haven't stopped believing in God, although I have changed some of my beliefs regarding him. I believe his behaviour is perfectly consistent. That consistence, combined with his omnipresence, mean that it is logically impossible to distinguish whatever "interventions" he may involve himself in from regular laws of physics. Therefore, one would EXPECT all his actions to be explainable through naturalism: the laws derived in naturalism are derived FROM his actions!
I do not believe that God is a person, although I'd say he at least has something like whatever you call that thing that hears when you think in words. I suppose it's called consciousness, but what I mean has nothing to do with the ability to think.
Well, I haven't just modified my beliefs about God slightly. I actually lost most of my original reasons for believing him and found a few new ones. I could try and explain the new reasons, but I really can't. It was neither through logic nor against it. I could go on about it for weeks and not explain it any better than that.

Two weeks break ending

My 2 week break from university is almost over. But one of the highlights isn't until tomorrow. Four or so friends and I are getting together to eat wonton soup and watch a Chinese movie (preferably Liang Zhu, but we'll settle for something else if that's not available)

I meant to blog this earlier: two weeks ago I went to my friend's book launch. It's a great little poetry book called "Wit of the staircase".

Saradha Koirala (author and friend) reading one of her poems.