#260: hmm..
I didn't do a scrap of work yesterday, in view of the coming exams. Not a single scrap. Ok, I printed off biology past papers. Does that count? But I was feeling absolutely crap. Absolutely. I don't know what I did yesterday, Oh yes. After sleeping for a crazy 9 hours last night, (I woke up at 9! Even WITH my alarm clock that is SO annoying - hence it works very efficiently), I went to sleep from 11:30 all the way to 1:30! -.- and I'm still sleepy. (Mat, I slept!) And then I went to school to go over essay questions with Dr. Young (I can't believe she still thinks I'm from China!??!!) But that was very productive. Came back and watched a bit of "Keeping the Faith" and decided that Edward Norton (from the Fight Club) is extremely cute, even as a catholic priest and that Ben Stiller, despite his handsome face, is sometimes annoying. :(
Anyway, I headed to Starbucks to write in my diary, and write I did. I wrote like… so many pages. I think I was suffering from a case of verbal diarrhoea. :( I have absolutely no one to talk to, no one to vent out every single stress that I'm feeling, no one to confide all my thoughts and emotions to and to help me get off my very, extremely crazy mood swing (-.-)
I decided summer was a time when everyone Asian comes out of hiding. Seriously, I never see so many Chinese people out walking during winter! And like, there are SO many people now in Waitrose! Haha. :) I don't think I'm a weather-kind of person, though it affects me. Rain or shine, I need to go out walking. (and usually that ends up with me in extremely wet clothes but that's another story)
Then I hopped over to Costa (I know, this is coffee place hopping) and settled in a comfgy chair and brought out "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis. Ok, everyone, I have an announcement to make. I think that C.S. Lewis is one of the most brilliant argumentative writers in history. His book, (and I'm only up to Part 2 chapter 3) is amazing. And amazing is an understatement. (Some excerpts from his book later) but wow. It IS such a fabulous read that I'm going to find ALL his books and devour them. And then maybe move on to "Conversations with God". But I'm still considering that, (and I did promise Mum that I wouldn't buy any new books! So I might get those in Singapore instead. Hehe. :)) I need to seriously catch up on reading. I haven't touched an amazing book since I put down the the book that Kah Yoke gave me (I can't even remember what its called but I know its by Rob Bell!). I have "How to find God" by Deepak Chorak(?) and "Is religion dangerous?" by Keith Ward and I'm hoping to read "Conversations with God". Those are on my list at the moment. Oh yes, and I went to dive into a classic as well. I think I might go back to Jane Eyre again (my all-time favourite) or Anne of Green Gables series or Little Women. I so cannot live without books.
We all know we want someone to curl up and watch Friends with. Someone to love us when we're grouchy, someone to have mad passionate sex with, someone to make slow delicate love to, and someone who knows that special spot that makes us tingle.
There are 2 (general) views in this world.
The materialistic view:
Matter and space just happened to exist and always have existed. Nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By 1 chance in a thousand, something hit our sun and made it produce planets and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature occurred on one of those planets, and so some of the matter on this Earth came alive, and then, by a long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us.
The religious view:
According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything we know. That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. And on this view, it made the universe, partly for the purpose we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like itself - I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds.
Note: You cannot find out which view is right by science in the ordinary sense. Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, "I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 am on January the 15th and saw so-and-so."
Supposing science ever became complete, so that it knew every single thing in the universe. Is it not plain that the questions "Why is there a universe?" "Why does it go on as it does?" "Has it any meaning?" would remain just as they were?
If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe.
We have 2 bits of evidence about this Somebody.
- The Universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then, He is a great artist (the Universe is very beautiful) and He is merciless and no friend to man (the Earth is very dangerous and terrifying)
- The other bit of evidence is Moral Law, which He has put into our minds; this gives us inside information. From this, we can see that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct. But there is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and does not seem to care how painful or dangerous or difficult it is.
A non-Christian's argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But HOW had he gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What are you comparing this universe with if you call it unjust?
Of course, he would have to give up his idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of his own. If he did this, then his argument against God would collapse too, for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please his fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist (in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless) he found that he was forced to assume that 1 part of reality (namely, his idea of justice) was full of sense.
If the whole world has no meaning, then we should never have found out it has no meaning, just as if there was no light in the universe, and therefore, no creatures with eyes should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.