Yesterday wasn't the most productive of days, but I believe everyone need these periods of slack to remind them that time is short, and to spur them to start working harder. After all, a person with less time to study would be studying harder than a person with the luxury of time, right? haha ok ok that's just rationalization on my part, but nevertheless, I still think there are sound truths in that idea.
We spent a lot of time discussing weird but entertaining questions like 'Who would you spend a week in the council room with?', 'Would you break up with your boy/girlfriend if you realize that he/she is a transvestite?', 'Who would you want to snog?' etc... Somehow, along the way, we did a 180-degree change in topic to talk about religion instead, and it was an extremely thought-provoking discussion.
'Why do you believe in God?' seems to be a simple question, but it is the hardest one to answer rationally. Answers tend to appear unconvincing once questioned by non-believers who nevertheless subscribed to the common grounds that God exists. Is believing God simply a marriage of convenience for Christians? i.e. to benefit from the calming effect, the moral goodness effect, the spiritual wellness effect, the commercial aspects, the 'better-to-believe-than-not' argument etc... Do Christians (those christened from birth) believe because they have been conditioned to believe, as opposed to a want to believe that arises independently? How about practising religion with a realist's touch i.e. accepting the belief of other faith without forsaking your own? But one of the Ten Commandments state that 'You shall have no other gods before me', so does that mean we cannot even accept the existence of other Gods i.e. that of the Buddhist faith or Islamic faith as well as others? Isn't the irreconcilable nature of different religious faith one of the many reasons why religious conflicts emerge i.e. the Crusades between Roman Catholics and Muslims in the 16th century and the Arab-Israeli conflict of the 21st century?
Of course, belief in religion is an entirely personal choice, but I have always thought that doubting is a core fundamental of believing, and that blindly following is really superficial believing at best.
There were also some radical questions posted that added colour to our discussion. They may appear blasphemous or even wrong, but do view the questions with an open mind, because questions will only serve to enrich one's understanding of the faith. If you feel that you cannot accept the following questions, feel free to ignore it.
What if Allah appears to you one day and tell you that the Bible you are reading is wrong and that all that you have thought was given to you by God was in fact of his doing? What if there exists many Gods, and that each God decided to carve out their own niches to compete to see who can get the most believers? What if free thinkers also belong to a religion to the God of Neutrality, so secularism is in fact a religion by itself? In a similar line of thought, perhaps atheists have a God too, the God of Non-believing. Is God a narcissist God?
There were many more questions, but these are the more prominent ones. And even though I like thinking, after a while, the content got so heavy that it became tiring just to think about it. Can't believe Hwee Leong, Wan Joo, Jiening, Ben and I spent 3h talking about it. Oh! And Wan Joo has been officially become part of our Cok family - she's the long-lost sister of Mr. Cok so that makes her our aunt! haha
Alright enough thinking about stuff for now. Back to studying!
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