SOMEBODY’S BIRTHDAY
Today is Christina’s 30th birthday. Wow, she’s 30!?
So I went out with her, and her diverse group of friends, for dinner at the same place where we celebrated Chinese New Year/Valentines Day — Chinese Noodle House! Dumplings for dinner again, people! Afterwards, we went on a river cruise along the Tonle River. I spent the night at Christina’s and went with her to Church the next day. We, along with a small group of people from last night, had lunch at Cafe 33.
It is quite an eventful weekend, and I thank the Lord for this.
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PHILOSOPHY
But before I met up with Christina for dinner, I’ve spent the entire day listening to Bethinking.org’s audio lectures with regards to various Christian issues. It really is so great to have access to these resources.
The primary point of my interests deal with Philosophy. I have always taken a bit of interest in the discipline, as I’ve taken 9 units of Philosophy back in college (Ancient Greek Philosophy, Hermeneutics and Aesthetics) and 3 units of Introduction to Philosophy as part of my general education units.
Now, I am just extremely interested in Epistemology, which is a branch of Philosophy which seeks out certainty of claims, or the processes of knowing what’s true and real. Or something like that. And the Bible, and how we as people are certain that the claims of the Bible is true, is very much interconnected to this Philosophy. Or the process. And the lectures conducted under this topic is so remarkable that I’ve been introduced to contemporary philosophers I’ve encountered back in college, whose works have now stirred some interest in me to be read — Nietzche, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Hegel. The discussion traces the beginnings of man’s search for Truth from Plato, to the liberalist view many Christians now dangerously hold thanks a lot to Schleiermacher. It was astounding to see how worldviews change, and how it affects Christian principles in the process.
So below are new terminologies I’ve heard before but have made better sense now to me:
a) Realists — believes ideas have separate existence
b) Nominalists — denies that ideas exist separately, and are anti-metaphysical
c) Liberalism — Christianity based on inner experience rather than public truth
d) Perspectivism — seeing all human knowledge as situational
e) Materialism — basically focused on the object; denies transcendence; led to Marxism
The basic conclusions of the lecture are the following:
a) ”If nothing transcends the known, we are doomed to epistemological pessimism,” which is true of our culture today. You take away the idea of a higher being, you put instead a doomed view of the world in its place. There could be no sense of purpose, and we would all be in danger of committing radical skepticism.
b) God remians significant in the realm of ideas, because ideas do not exist apart from God, rather, it reflects and symbolizes Him. Our God is rational and coherent, and most importantly, very personal.
*****
Ravi Zacharaias is amazing! I have been quite a skeptic about his writings, thinking he may be some kind of liberalist or something, but no! He is a remarkable speaker, very witty, and very well-versed in Philosophy — probably one of our contemporary apologists today.
I have the privilege of listening to his lecture about Culture. The man is loaded with amazing quotations from different Philosophers and Theologians! He knows his material well, and he delivers impressively — gripping his listeners by their very ears! Even mine!
I haven’t finished the lecture yet, but here are some quotes from the lecture about contemporary culture:
“We have become so erotic that normal drives don’t tempt us anymore.”
“Secularization where religious ideas and interpretations has lost their social significance seems like a very innocent idea when it starts off, but the logical outworking that loses the shame in the culture provides unmitigated evil.”
“[on Pluralization, "which is a competing number of worldviews available to its members and no one worldview is dominant"] If it is taken to mean Ethical Relativism, that’s where the danger signs begin to appear. That’s where you begin to see how evil begins to look almost unidentifiable.”
Quotes he quoted from other well-known literary figures:
“The tragedy of disbelieving in God is not that the person ends up believing nothing, alas!, it is much worse. He might end up believing anything!” ~ G.K. Chesterton
And here’s the best quote ever from Steve Turner — “Turner’s Creed”:
Creed
by Steve Turner
We believe in Marx, Freud and Darwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don’t hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.
We believe in sex before, during, and
after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
We believe that everything’s getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.
We believe there’s something in horoscopes
UFO’s and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.
We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.
We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its
compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn
We believe in Masters and Johnson
What’s selected is average.
What’s average is normal.
What’s normal is good.
We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and
bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors .
And the Russians would be sure to follow.
We believe that man is essentially good.
It’s only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.
We believe that each man must find the truth that
is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.
We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.
If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear:
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man worshipping his maker.
In fact, while I was at Christina’s, I found myself checking out their bookshelves and saw this book by Ravi Zacharaias called, “Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message,” and just reading the Introduction already gripped me! Here are some of the quotes that I strongly believe to be very true today, and something worth thinking about!
‘We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally, you can practice anything, soo long as you do not claim that is it a “better” way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immmunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. …Such is the mood of the twentieth century.”
“A mood can be a dangerous state of mind, because it can crush reason under the weight of feeling. But that is precisely what I believe postmodernism best represents — a mood.”
“Moods change. Truth does not.”
I earnestly thank the Lord for existing apologists like him. Alleluia!