More.

The Christian group at UWS, the uni I go to, has this theme happening for this semester called More. Nice and simple, monosyllabic for those who have difficulty with the longer words. The basic premise of it all is that, as humans, we always want more. And God can give us more.

That may seem a strange idea to some, as religion is often seen as less rather than more (lot's of "Don'ts"), but I have combatted that particular argument before, I believe. But God can give us more - more than anything, or anyone else can give. That doesn't mean that he always will - he's not a magic wish fairy, there to satisfy your every desires. He knows when you need to be staying off stuff a bit. But he has that ability to give us more out of life than we can by ourselves, which is a great thing.

For those of you guys reading this who are at UWS with me, there will be a human Pacman game in K foyer on this Wednesday from about 1 (cause Pacman works well with More, wacca wacca wacca!) and a BBQ outside building H (same time) on Thursday (cause everyone loves some food). Would be great to see a few familiar faces there :)

The First Cause.

One idea that many people - both Christians and non-Christians - seem to struggle with a fair bit is the idea of God being the first thing out there. It just doesn't seem to work with the principle of causality. For example; the common way that Christians might put it (if they were looking at it from that scientific perspective) is that God 'caused' the universe. But then the skeptic/atheist/whatever then poses the question - what 'caused' God? I've seen non-Christians who think that this is almost an unanswerable question, and Christians who get absolutely stumped by it.

I suppose I got lucky, in a sense. I got a book when I was a kid that explained it pretty simply. Causality is the reason for the ruckus, here. Causality basically means cause and effect. The effect follows the cause. Here's where it falls down, though; causality depends on one crucial element: time. Without time, causality don't really work too well, because there's no 'after' or 'before', so you can't really have an effect following after a cause. God created time, so he was before time, and causality doesn't apply to him. Simple as that.

The love of laughter.

Had a gig last night at Mars Hill cafe, which you may or may not have heard about. As an aside, really cool place. Heck, any place that has pi written out to who knows how many decimal places on the toilet wall has to be pretty cool. Given that it also has the motto, "Where thinkers drink", and you may see why I find it pretty cool. But it also has a really great, warm atmosphere that I really love. Anyway, end of Mars Hill cafe plug.

I was on - as I often am - next to last. Thankfully, this time, I wasn't playing to only half a dozen people. In fact, pretty much only the ones with little kids had left, which was really great to see. And, as I mentioned in the post that I put up on FB, I had a really good reception, a good few people telling me they really liked it, and a lot of people laughing at the songs.

Though one thing I really found great - one of the other performers who played had actually gone into a bit of an emotional thing partway through the performance. A friend of hers had only committed suicide a week or so beforehand, and the last she did was a tribute to her; she struggled to sing even half of the words because she was crying. She went out for a while then came back in. But what was really great - just so you're not thinking that I'm sadistic or something, getting high over this girl crying - is that, after how emotional she was before, I managed to get her to laugh with my song.

And that's why I love doing comedy - it really has that power to cut through so many different barriers and just let people smile and laugh, even if only for a while. That's why I do what I do.

Blank Pages/ Your Turn.

Feel like I've written a fair bit about what I think of myself. Thought I'd see what other people think. Write whatever you like, good or bad, won't hold it against you.

A Free Pass.

I have said a few times that I'm a pretty closed book. I hold most of my cards pretty close to my chest, so to speak. As such, it can be pretty difficult for most to really know me at all. I mean, yeah, there's some things you can probably know almost straight off the bat, depending on where you know me from. If you know me from my course, you know that I play at least one instrument; if you know me from church, you know that I'm either a Christian, or my family or a very good friend is; if you know me from school - well, if it was Bradbury or Macarthur, since they were both selective, you know that I had some decent level of smartness, if Rosemeadow - I guess you didn't really know anything off the bat. And it wouldn't take you too long to figure out, wherever you know me from, that I'm fairly smart - logically minded, that sort of thing - I'm pretty quiet; and probably that I do a bit of music.

Too much more than that, though, and anything about me you probably know either by guessing or by me telling you. As such, I thought I should post this. This will effectively be a free pass through the guessing game, pretty much.

Basically, if you want to get me to actually talk about something, asking about any of these will get me talking a fair bit - though you'll still need to figure out what questions work best :D but I'm sure you can manage that... Anyways, any of these will work well: my music; most things in philosophy/theology/psychology; my trip to Thailand; and most of the things that I've posted up here, really. Oh, and asking me about my love life is a sure way to get me to clamp up quickly. :P

Probably not many will see this, I don't exactly get a huge boatload of people coming through my blog. That's cool, though. Never really wanted any attention - as I've mentioned a couple of times as well :p

Lost thoughts...

I have a lot of ideas. That's part of who I am - I just do a lot of thinking, and a lot of ideas pop into my head, from all over the place. About everything, too - whether it be music stuff, God stuff, life stuff, funny stuff, whatever. I just get a lot of thoughts.

And that's part of the reason I started this blog, really. Because I have so many thoughts, and they don't really do much when they're sitting around in my head. The most it'll amount to there is a song. Which is cool, yeah, but it's still not a massive amount. So I thought it'd be a good idea to get some of those ideas I have out there.

But there's another reason as well. (Well, if I really wanted to have a look at it, there's probably a dozen reasons, but these are what I'm calling the main two :P) So many of my ideas I have, if I don't write them down somewhere, I forget. And they can be really great ideas. And I was really hating losing them, so I decided to start writing down ideas here, so that I would remember them a bit better, and they wouldn't be lost somewhere in my brain...

Being thankful.

Most people have certain defaults that they can find very difficult to get out of. Unfortunately, one of my defaults is that it's my first reaction to critique. Sometimes, I'll manage to bite my tongue, but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

Which ain't good, basically. I need to change that. Because it can cause for some decidedly awkward moments. For example. Rewind to last Sunday afternoon, when (because of me getting baptised) my aunt gave me $50 to get a couple of Christian books that I thought would be helpful from Koorong. My instant reaction was, "With all the books that Dad's already got here?" Wasn't good. It was a fair enough, point, I think; I mean, my Dad was a preacher, and he went to Bible college as well. So we do have heaps of Christian books, Bible books/analyses etc that he used/bought. Enough that I don't know if I'll ever finish them all, so it seemed a bit strange to me to get me to buy more. (Even if many of Dad's books are a few years old.)

But it was still the wrong reaction, and I'm going to need to work on that a lot in future. Because defaults are always a big problem, unfortunately. Though, if you get them right, they can be a big help.

Confusing myself...

Generally, I'm pretty good at figuring out stuff. And it's usually pretty hard to get me confused. However, this situation that I thought up today had me pretty baffled as to what the heck I would do... I'll see if you guys can make head or tail of it...

Firstly, person A and person B are friends. Let's say you're person A, randomly walking along, some sort of portal/transportation/whatever thing happens and you find yourself in the body of person B. However, their mind is still in there, and they can still control their body as well. You can both hear each other's thoughts. Added to this - not only have you gone across space, but also time. Person B is actually one year ahead from the when that you came from.
Not finished yet. The same thing happens with the person B from your time and you from the one year ahead time. And then you and person B are both in a room, about to have a conversation.
So there's actually four people in the room - you and person B from your time, and you and person B from one year ahead. You'll have no idea which one is talking when future you/person B talks, and person B will have similar difficulties with you/future person B.

Err... what the heck do you do? You could ask questions about your future/their past, but may end up with an Oedipan dilemma (that is, if it didn't cause some sort of space-time fabric tearing that makes the universe explode or something); you could just attempt to ignore the situation altogether, but it would be missing a unique opportunity. Argh!

(Oh, and by the way, Mozart, this is what I was meaning when I said the hypotheticals I think about I usually don't think will come to pass. This is one of my more elaborate, but the majority of others are fairly similarly unlikely.)

Oh, and sorry for the late post, and the headache that this may have caused.

Baptism.

Today, I got baptised.

My parents had been wanting me to for a while. But I hadn't wanted to because I didn't really see any importance in it; to me, it was just a ceremony, telling people something that they already knew. Which didn't make any sense to me, and so I didn't have any interest in it.

But, like I said in a post a couple of months back, things changed. I guess the 'click' happened - the switch from head to heart, from knowledge to passion.

And so I thought I'd write down my new take on baptism.

I've realised that, in part, baptism is about being obedient to God. If it's something he's asked you to do, then doing it is an act of obedience and service to him. But it's not about saying, "Oh, how obedient and great and amazing a Christian I am". It's about saying how amazing and powerful and loving God is. Because baptism represents the death of the old life, and the birth of a new one - a life of dedication and service to God, to Jesus. If God wasn't amazing, powerful and loving, why on earth would we want to give a life of dedication and service to him?

Or at least, that's my logic.

Women.

This is my actual blog post for today. The essay's more just for those who are really interested.

There's a pretty strong idea that women and religion don't go together too well. And in the course of history, that's certainly been true; events like witch burnings, the church condemning the latest fashions, as well as saying that a woman can't lead in the church, has caused a fair bit of controversy and bad feelings.

Unfortunately, there are still many Christians today who believe that women should not teach in the church; I had one of them as the speaker for my recent camp. Apparently, he's fine with them preaching to women only congregations, however. Guess that's better than nothing.

But I really don't think that's what God is wanting, or what the Bible is saying; several times, it says that men and women are equal. And that we have all been given gifts, and we should use them. To say that women can only teach other women - that, to me, seems to be restricting their God-given gifts. I don't think God would want that. God wants people to know about Him.

We have women doing the communion talks at our church fairly regularly; and now, the preacher's wife also does a sermon fairly often. That's how it's been for my whole life. And I certainly haven't been led astray by any of their teaching, if that's the fear. To the best of my knowledge, neither has anyone else.

If people are more interested in this topic, someone does a full argument on it here. Not totally agreeing with the conclusion they make - I'd hope that women teaching men would be better than just 'permissible' - but the argument they use is pretty good.

As an aside - does anyone know if those against women teaching men are also against female teachers in schools? Because if so, they have a pretty big darn fight on their hands...

Psychology Essay

Similarly to my friend over at Pocket Spiral Notepad, I thought I might post up my essay here that I did surprisingly well - HD level - at. It's also a pretty interesting topic, so it shouldn't be boring or anything. It's about 1500 words. I'll put up the question at the top, then the abstract, then the essay, and references will be at the bottom.

Critically evaluate the statement that it is inappropriate for psychologists to use Western standards of psychological health to interpret and diagnose the behaviour of culturally different people.

Abstract

The question asks to make an evaluation regarding using Western conceptions of mental health to recognise and diagnose behaviour in people of different cultures. This essay argues that, firstly, Western and non-Western worldviews are very different, in particular taking the example of intelligence; secondly, that their ideas of mental health are also very different, and incompatible; and thirdly, that if one idea of mental health is imposed on the other, then detrimental effects will occur. Thus, when looking at non-Western cultures, it is needed to take into account their worldview, and relate directly to them, so that we do not risk endangering their mental health.

Consequences of imposing Western views on other cultures: an analysis of differing ideas of psychological health

Every different person has their own set of values and ideas; their own way of explaining and defining reality, commonly called a worldview. Cultures, similarly, have unique worldviews. Unfortunately, worldviews often carry with them a sense of superiority; they deem themselves to be more dominant or correct in comparison to other worldviews (Ranzijn, 2009). When we look at the case of psychological health (which is usually equated with mental health, and is what it shall be referred to as hereon in), this becomes a serious issue. So if an examination of applying Western ideas of mental health to different cultures - with the intention of interpreting and diagnosing behaviour - is undertaken, then three main problems would quickly be recognised. That is, firstly, that non-Western cultures are significantly different to those of Western cultures, and so have differing worldviews; secondly, due to this, they have considerable distinctions in their ideas of mental health, which are potentially incompatible (Brown, 2001); and thirdly, that imposing one idea of mental health on the other can have adverse consequences (Vicary, 2003).

When looking at different cultures, one of the seemingly most obvious differences is economic, resulting in varying levels of resources available. One study done by Kathuria and Serpell noted that the subjects - African children - were more familiar with clay than pencil and paper (Kathuria & Serpell, 1999). Other differences that often come to mind can be those of language, history, or religion. All of these contribute to that culture’s worldview.

In Western cultures, there is often a focus on the individual (Hilty, 2010). This can be seen in many of the rights that are often taken for granted by many; that each person has freedom of speech; each person can freely choose any religion (or none); each person can freely move in and around the country; each person has the freedom to meet with others as they wish, or join any organisation that they choose. Of course, all of these are usually subject to the law of the country, and these are in no way solely Western ideas; they are, however, examples of individualistic thinking.

Non-Western cultures, by contrast, usually emphasise the clan, group, tribe or community. The priorities of the community are placed above that of the individual, whose main purpose is to further the goals of the community as a whole; this is known as a collectivist mindset (Ranzijn, 2009). Some ideas like this are present in our own society; the idea of community service, for example, is a fairly collectivist idea.

These two cultural backgrounds certainly seem to be very different; though it should be noted that these are not simply a binary opposition: they are two different ends of a scale, which a society can lie anywhere on. As well as this, the views of the culture are not necessarily similar or compatible to those of the individual (Brown, 2001); and, thusly, any conclusions made do not hold true to every individual, but are instead a generalisation about the society as a whole.

If we take a closer look at one aspect of psychology - intelligence - then these contrasts are  further illustrated. Mpofu’s analysis of different studies (2002) in Africa about differing ideas of intelligence showed that many African cultures saw intelligence as primarily social or practical; whereas the Western idea of intelligence is mainly intellectual (Hilty, 2010). 

So the variances between the different cultures is seen to be considerable.

When we narrow our focus to the issue of mental health, we can again see many important differences. Other cultures, for example, often have a more holistic approach, while Western cultures have an analytic attitude. A holistic idea is similar to the collective idea that was expressed in the previous paragraph; that is, that something is more important as a whole than just the result of adding together each different part. The community is more important as a collective entity than all the people together that are in it. An analytic mindset, conflicting with this, primarily works by breaking something down and looking at its smallest parts (Hilty, 2010).

If we take these two different views and then apply these to mental health, then further differences are noted. In an analytic view, mental health is about the lack of sickness; each part of the mental state functioning as it should. In a holistic mindset, however, this is not all that mental health is; many cultures do not distinguish between mental health and health in general, and believe that many other ideas, such as emotional, cultural and spiritual, also play a part (Ford, 2003). As well as this, health is about bringing the full potential of the individual out, so that they can then contribute and realise the full health of the entire community (Brown, 2001).

One example of these differences is mentioned by Vicary (2003), who has worked with Indigenous Australians frequently. He notes that many Indigenous Australians deliberately avoid the Western mental health system, simply because they have been sent away to mental health hospitals in the past. In an individualistic, Western mindset, sending them to the hospital makes sense, because then they can get better as a person. But in the holistic mindset of the Indigenous Australians, people being sent away detracts from the community as a whole, and means it cannot function to its full capacity.

These two differing ideas of mental health are sufficiently alien to another that they are arguably incompatible.

If, then, we accept this idea that the two alternate views of mental health are incompatible, it presents an immediate problem; because many have tried to impose the Western individualistic ideas of health onto different cultures, with negative results. In particular, a study done by Vicary (2003) on a group of Indigenous Australians indicated that they thought of the Western mental therapy as possibly detrimental; most also said that they would prefer to try to fix any problems themselves, in preference to using any Western method of treatment, even if they managed to make it worse by doing so. Similarly, Dingwall and Cairney (2010) noted that mental health issues could easily be not recognised or treated, if examiners are unaware of the cultural background.

This is a very serious setback for the Western system. If people from different cultures with various mental health problems are not treated or recognised, then the health of the population will suffer greatly. Further to this, if they are misdiagnosed, and therefore treated incorrectly, this will increase tension between the different cultures, and the affected parties may decide to not seek help again, in fear of again being incorrectly treated, and the mental health of the population may suffer even more greatly. And, as many (Brown, 2001; Cairney & Dingwall, 2010; Ford, 2003; Haswell-Elkins, Margolis, Tsey & Ypinazar, 2007) different sources note, cultures like that of the Indigenous Australians, or third-world countries similar to South Africa, often have a much poorer mental health level than usual. (However, it is fair to note that it is unclear whether this is solely due to cultural background, or also because of misdiagnosis. Nevertheless, it seems probable that at least a sizeable portion of these figures is due to the differing background.) So something certainly needs to be done, or we may well bear witness to the dwindling of many different populations.

From the points that have been argued above, it is clear that not only do Western and non-Western cultures have very different worldviews, they also have greatly differing ideas of mental health; one individualistic and analytic, the other collectivist and holistic. The two views arguably oppose one another, and are also incompatible. As has also been mentioned, this had lead to many adverse effects, when people have tried to impose one view on the other; cultural tension is increased, and the mental health of populations suffer.

And so a change must be made; if psychology is looking at the mental health of non-Western cultures and people, it needs to be able to do it from their perspective, and in a way that relates directly to them; otherwise we are at risk of endangering relations with their cultures, as well as endangering their mental health. Thankfully, there has been some (Vicary, Izod, Westerman, Kathuria, and Serpell among them) who have started to take this approach, but much work still needs to be done.

To conclude, consider this quote from Christina Lee, editor of Australian Psychologist. “...psychology cannot usefully exist without reference to other disciplines and to the sociocultural context in which it is practiced.” (2000, p. ii)

References

Brown, R. (2001). Australian Indigenous mental health. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 10, 33-41.

Cairney, S. & Dingwall, K. M. (2010). Psychological and cognitive assessment of Indigenous Australians. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 44, 20-30.

Droždek, B. & Wilson, J. P. (2007). Voices of trauma: treating psychological trauma across cultures. New York: Springer Science + Business Media.

Ford, S. (2003). Bridging cultures: psychologists working with Aboriginal clients. InPsych, October 2003 issue.

Haswell-Elkins, M., Margolis, S. A.,  Tsey, K. & Ypinazar, V. A. (2007). Indigenous Australians’ understandings regarding mental health and disorders. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 41, 467-478.

Hilty, A. (2010). Western Psychology, Eastern Cultures - Mismatch? 

http://www.freud-sigmund.com/western-psychology-eastern-cultures-mismatch

Kathuria, R., & Serpell, R. (1999). Standardization of the Panga Muntu Test - a nonverbal cognitive test developed in Zambia. Journal of Negro Education, 67, 228-241.

Lee, C. (2000). Editorial. Australian Psychologist, 35, ii.

Louw, J. (2002). Using history to understand psychology in on-Western countries. South African Journal of Psychology, 32, 1-8.

Mpofu, E. (2002). Indigenization of the Psychology of Human Intelligence in Sub-Saharan Africa. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture (Unit 5, Chapter 2). 

http://www.wwu.edu/culture/Mpofu.htm

Ranzijn, R. (2009). Worldviews and culture. In Psychology and indigenous Australians: Foundations of cultural competence (pp. 13-30). South Yarra, Vic: Macmillan.

Vicary, D. (2003). Counselling as yarning: Aboriginal insights into western therapy. Australian Journal of Psychology, 55 (supplement), 219.

Creation vs Discovery.

I'm going to write today a bit about something I think about as a songwriter.

I've already mentioned - a few times - previously that I don't fancy the limelight a lot. And for those who create, if they do well, that's a bit hard to avoid. Unless you're only recognised posthumously, like Vincent Van Gogh or something, or get someone else to perform/showcase your work as their own or something. But those who make things that are unique always seem to be well recognised by society.

Discovery, on the other hand, is very different. And I think it's more what I do - when I write a song, I don't feel like I've created it; I feel like I've discovered a great idea, that I want to share with people. And I think that's what discovering is really about; it's about the discovery, not the discoverer. You know, when the guy found the Grand Canyon, I don't think he was saying, "Wow, I'm so amazing, I found the Grand Canyon". No, he'd be saying, "Come look at the Grand Canyon, guys, this is epic!" (Probably wasn't called the Grand Canyon back then, but oh well. You get the idea.) The discovery takes precedence over who it was that discovered it.

And I suppose that's how I always want it to be with the music that I play - not about me, but the music, and the messages and ideas in that.

Gaming!

I do a fair bit of gaming here and there. Not as much as some people do, but a bit. I'm mainly a PC gamer, for a couple of different reasons; firstly, because of cash, which is in short supply; and secondly, because of privacy, which is easier on a PC when you can just plug the headphones in and go for your life.

The main types of games I play areeither RPGs or FPSs. I like RPGs more, but multis are better as FPSs, I generally find. So I do a fair bit of both.

The main RPG I'm doing at the moment is Mass Effect. Yes, it's a bit old by now, but I'm a bit of a completionist when it comes to these games. I only got it recently-ish, went through it once, and didn't realise you couldn't do the side missions after you finished. So I'm going back and doing all of those, because when you transfer the character to the second game, all of it effects the gameplay, apparently, which I'm really interested in. I like having a good level of immersion in the game.

The main FPS I'm doing - which I've really just started - is APB. Decent game, but hard to start getting decent at it. Started doing it because a couple of friends were, so was cool to play with them and stuff. If you're interested the guy (who does the Zombie Arcade, one of those on my links page) does a live stream - most nights - and does a fair bit of APB with another friend of mine (who does Theality Bites, another one of those on my links page). Here is the link. It is restricted to 18+, cause he does swear a bit and such, but I don't think I've got any readers that that would be a problem with.

That's it for today. Nothing really insightful, but there you go. Sometimes it's cool to just have fun for a bit without needing to think too much about the whys and wherefors.

Looking into the future...

Hey dudes/dudettes. Remember (if you happen to actually read this regularly, so that's probably one or two maybe) a couple of posts ago when I wrote "Also, only just remembered what I had originally planned to do for this post :P But that's cool, can save it for next time." As it happens, completely forgot what that thing was. :P Should really write these things down, cause I remember it was a good idea. Oh well. I'll just write on something else, unless I can remember that original idea.

Hmm...what to talk about. Well, how about we have a look today at a fairly scary place to be... my mind, that is.

A heck of the lot of the time, what I'm thinking about/imagining is hypothetical situations/possibilities. Of various kinds and instances. But I'm the sort of person that thinks about this stuff a lot - I'll take one situation, and take it to dozens of different tangents with ease. Suffice to say, I've got quite an imagination, but it works hand in hand with my analytical mind.

As a strange aside, in my imagination, there always seems to be quite an emphasis on sounds, rather than images. When a scene is playing out in my head, unless I'm actually concentrating on trying to do otherwise, I'll get a lot of details in sound, but only glimpses/senses/impulses (attempting to find the right word) of what the scene looks like. Perhaps it's because I'm more of an auditory learner, I dunno. Anyone else get their imaginations dominated by a particular sense?

Back out of the aside. So yeah, my mind is a lot of the time on what might happen in some distant (or not-so-distant, it varies) future. It's a lot less on how to get from A to B, and barely ever on what I'd actually do if I somehow managed to make it to B. Which isn't really very practical.

Which isn't very good. I mean, anyone could probably tell you that I'm more of a thinker than a doer; I'm not an extremely active person - when it comes to much at all, really. I talk/think/write/type/sing a fair bit about doing/changing/being various things, but it's not too common that I actually walk the walk. I suppose perhaps because I've never had that much motivation to do so. It's very easy to just be a voice, and leave it at that.

I'm hoping to change that. It's going to be difficult, but I'm going to give it my best shot. I know that I'm going to have a decent hand from God - because he wants me doing this more than I do - so once I get going, I should be able to do this. I think. It's the getting going that's always difficult.

In Christ.

OK. Just got back from a camp this week. Was an MYC, or Mid-Year Conference. For a few of the Christian groups from some of the unis. This one was UWS, Sydney Cumbo, and the Gong. Was originally meant to be on Relationships, but what with one thing and another, got changed to Humanity at the last moment.

It was really good :) Basically, a lot of it was about being in Christ. The idea was, if you're in something, then whatever happens to it also happens to you; so being in Christ, all that happens to Christ happens to you. It's the idea of being united with Christ, rather than just getting closer to Him. It's a great idea, and hopefully one that I should be able to implement it and not just have it as an idea. Which has always been difficult for me, but it's something I'm going to really try to work on - consciously thinking about these sort of things instead of just putting them on the backburner or whatever.

Also, a couple of other quick things. Firstly, an idea I've had means I will actually be doing an EP launch fairly soon (though only electronic), but that will be a different EP to the one I've been talking about before. Should be happening fairly soon, and I'll be getting the link up to that here when that does happen.

As well, will also be updating the post I did before on Christians and homosexuality in the next couple of minutes with another idea I've had recently. If you're interested in checking that, this is the link: http://modnarama.blogspot.com/2011/06/somewhat-touchy-issue-for-some.html
OK. Until next time.

Godly humour.

I've had the idea for a fair while that God has a great sense of humour. In some ways, I believe that's fairly obvious. like I said in my "Randomified" page, he put a race of beings with no claws, sharp teeth, spines, disguise mechanisms, great speed, size, tough skin, outer shell/exoskeleton, or wings in charge of many different creatures who did. I know he goes for the whole "first will be last, last will be first" kinda thing, but that's just ludicrous. How on earth did we manage to survive early on? You put a human, without anything else, against any kind of aggressive animal - generally speaking, the animal will win. Unless they're extremely small, in which case maybe a swarm.

Also, I've had a fair few times when I've been looking for someone/something for ages, given up, and then one second later I see it, or they walk right past me. And it always makes me think that God's laughing up there in Heaven, saying, "You could've just asked!" or something to that effect.

There's more examples I've thought of before - many people talk about the platypus or the kangaroo, which seem to be faunal mash-ups - but I've either forgotten them, or they're a bit too specific to post up here at the moment. Also, only just remembered what I had originally planned to do for this post :P But that's cool, can save it for next time.

If anyone else has examples, would be great to hear.

Unexplainable.

Tonight (as in, when I wrote this, which is Sunday), I managed to initiate an extremely lengthy conversation between two of my friends (well, technically three, but he didn't come in much) on my Facebook by posting this status: "Some things don't have logical explanations. They still exist, despite being unexplainable." One of them was a mathematician, who didn't like that at all. The other does science, I believe. Will check that this week (since I'm seeing him on this camp) and update. [Edit: He actually did engineering, specialising in mechatronics. That's my memory for you. :P] If you really think your head can manage it, the full conversation is here: http://www.facebook.com/Bjraymond/posts/2239018414897?notif_t=feed_comment


When I first posted the comment, my original thought was of abstract concepts like love. Yes, science tells us it's the result of hormones and neurons firing off in our brains; but do you really look at your mum/dad/sister/brother/girlfriend/boyfriend/god and think, "I feel the way I do about you because of a reaction in my brain,"? I suppose I just think that there's more to it than that. That if we made a robot and replicated the neurons firing, and the hormones happening, I don't think it would be the same. There might be something there, I dunno, but I don't think it would be the same.


What do other people think? Interested in other opinions on this.

Defining faith.

Said I'd do this post, so this is me doing this post. Hopefully I haven't already written something to this effect.

Faith is often defined as belief despite proof to the contrary. Simple enough to understand, it's a common argument against faith/beliefs in general, not just Christianity.
I'd argue against this for one main reason - because there are many people who come to believe through proof and logical thought. Also, I think my definition makes more sense, and is better :P And I'd say that it describes more blind optimism than anything else.

I think that faith, quite simply, is trust. If you have faith in someone/something, you trust them, simple as that. It means that you think that they have a better idea of something than you do, whether they be a friend, deity, family member, person of power, whatever. It doesn't have anything to do with proof.

That's actually it for this post. I know, amazing, I haven't gone into epic length :D

I'm going to be away from tomorrow morning until Friday arvo, so I'll be doing the next two posts beforehand.

Lack of proof.

Many times I hear words to the effect of, "Yes, but you can't prove it!" That always makes me sigh a little.

Generally speaking, when people say this sort of thing, they don't mean that there is no proof whatsoever for a God. Because, of course, there are; enough that many people have come to believe through them. I won't go over that now, because that would take a very long post, and more knowledge than I have handy; but there's definitely proof out there. They usually mean something that basically means there isn't enough proof to prove there's a God. Which is a fair enough argument; and, most probably, many Christians would agree with that.

And that's a thing with most faiths, which is why they have their name. There is an element of "faith" involved. That's what is one of the fundamentals of it - though that doesn't mean believing despite lack of proof, or in the face of opposing proof (I think I've written about this before. Will check, and if not, will do so soon) (EDIT: Checked, funnily enough, can't find it. Thought I had done a post called "defining faith", but apparently not. So, that one will be coming shortly. Hopefully I haven't just renamed that one as something else and so you're getting this twice :P). Each person who believes will do so for different reasons. But there's always that element of faith involved - even if it's not much (especially when they don't think they do), it's still there.

So I suppose what I'm saying is this; to a certain extent, there's not much point in saying "but you can't prove it!" when that's kinda part of the point; and there is a fair bit of proof out there for God. Whether there's enough to actually prove there's a God, to a guy like Richard Dawkins or something - I'd say probably. The trick is in finding it and presenting it well.