school is starting
a kind of excitement's buzzing inside me
it feels like it's going to be a very different semester (academically)
different in a good way
(:
i can't wait to get going.
~
perhentian was incredible
like postcards coming to life! I asked myself everyday how could waters end up that pretty?!
and in the night, it was a ghostly beauty.
on my 12hr journey to the island, i thought to myself about many things.
i always think this thought whenever i'm traveling the NS highway. just somehow...!
what is the probability of our earth coming into existence by chance?
I thought about natural creation:
- the probability of a perfect combination of atoms to form the perfect atmosphere for living things to survive: oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide
- the probability of a perfect combination of hydrogen and oxygen to form water.
- the existence of atoms. how did atoms come about? from nothing?
I thought about living cells and how they got together to form all the amazing things of our world. Trees, forests, insects, birds, animals, marine life. not just that! each and every creature has its own colour! how did colours come into existence? from the light? what about the colours that grow on the skins of living things? how could fishes possess such colourful, cutting edge, and intricate designs? what about the corals? their details are barely even 1mm big. and these cells are smart enough to know how to evolve.
what is the probability of each and ever detail coming to life by chance? and then think about the most jaw dropping creation of all - human beings. and our brains. and how our entire body functions. how in the name of chance did that happen?
if you multiply the probabilities of all atoms coming into existence,
then multiply that answer by the probabilities of all the living cells coming into existence,
then multiply that answer by the probabilities of each minute detail of every single living organism (those that have existed in the past, that are still alive, and have yet to come) coming into existence,
then multiply that answer by the probability of them coming together to function in that particular manner and to look that particular way,
the answer is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo close to a zero.
so i had two conclusions.
one, there is a God higher than all of the earth and the atoms of the universe. He is the beginning of everything. He came from nothingness.
and because the answer, though almost nearly a zero, is still not a zero,
two, there has to be an exact replica of our entire Earth within or beyond the universe. and i mean exactly the same. atom for atom, cell for cell, ant for ant, this zebra for this zebra, Lee Xin Tian for Lee Xin Tian. same body, same mind, same soul, same spirit.
if you ask me which is harder to belief, i'd choose the second.
maybe that's why i couldn't sleep.
exciting eh?
14 comments:
well, yes.
i can't help but to agree that there must be a creator of this earth. i've thought long and hard about it too. these thoughts run into mind especially when i'm shitting. but yes.
nothing can come out of nothing. there must be a creator. there can't be a chair if there wasn't a carpenter. there wouldn't be wood if there weren't trees and erm people who cut those trees. and so forth.
but do you think that this creator of higher power loves us? he may create beauty, but he may not be beautiful. he may have made wonders, but that does not make him wonderful.
it is only ideal that this creator love us.
ah but why do you not think he loves us?
well. the answer is i don't know. (whether this god love us)
all these ideologies of a god that loves us also have no basis, but somehow in my own opinion i feel that because it is so widespread, so heard about, so comforting, people tend to think that way. people even kill to hold that belief. the belief that a creator must love his creation.
yes its a generalisation, but when was the last time you thought that 'hey this god might not love me'
im not saying that this god hates us or wants us to live in suffering. i just want to make my point that i don't know. there's enough doubt in my mind to tell me that i can't be sure that god loves me. so instead of loving god, i'll love those people that do love me (e.g, parents). if my parents could love me before i knew how to love them, i don't see why god can't.
why do you think that he loves us then?
dear Thinker,
how can beauty be created by one who doesn't know beauty? it is impossible for an artist to create something that is completely apart from himself. so whatever the artist creates is, in the least, a fragment of who he is.
i think that this creator loves us because he was the one who created love, and made it such a huge driving force of our human spirit. y'know how it's true that we will only know what love is when we are first loved? it all began with him when he created everything from nothingness. and i believe he loves because his creation of love is such an inseparable part of who he is.
dear tian,
beauty only can be created by someone who knows beauty. i agree with that! but knowing beauty does not equal embracing it. i know what love is, but that doesn't mean i embrace it, or i love.
i beg to differ with your last sentence! with no offence, i feel that it is a statement coming from a lot of belief.
it seems that you think that god is perfect. well i think god is powerful, not perfect. if god is perfect, why is his creation so imperfect?
sorry i accidentally clicked the bin. here's my post:
haha that is a question I often ask myself too. even as a christian, i have questions. I know that the common answer to your question is free will. we were made so that we have the capability of rationalizing (we're the only creatures who can do it!) and making sense of our emotions. and then making an informed choice. imperfection came when we made poor choices. choices that took our world away form the perfection of God.
then i asked myself again, what is free will when God ultimately determines everything that happens? so it isn't exactly free will in its purest sense. so i wonder if free will is really the answer to your question.
anyway, i googled something out and i think that this explanation is pretty good.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080627021510AAsvfvK
lol.
so funny. the previous post i made was accidentally deleted too and i had to type it again.
anyhow. read the first article (assuming you are reffering to it).
well, first. in this article, the author mentions about contradictory attributes that can co-exist. quoted, 'contradiction does not negate truth.' he doesn't explain it very well, though. is he trying to say that truth is only held on one level? we know that newtonian logic is proven to be wrong, but because the world has been using it for so long and it has been working for us, we are not moving away from it all yet. we just say that quantum physics is another kind of physics. but now we know that light ARE indeed quantum particles, this explains why the stars and blackholes and supernovas behave as they do. newtonian logic can't explain that.
so the issue here is this: we are believing something for convenience sake. and the author is saying that, look, it doesn't mean that its wrong to do so. as long as it works. my answer to him is: hey! isn't that what religion is about as well? actually not! religion, in his example, is like a group of newtonian scientist that REFUSE to believe that quantum physics works as well.
second, look at his 4th paragraph. 'God created all things. That means he created physics, gravity.. AND logic'. --- i would just like to point out that this is a circular arguement. look. in his mind, god is perfect already, therefore the logic is perfect and because of freewill and all it got spoilt.
but to me, the god who made us is not perfect. the logic he/she made is imperfect either!
what the author needs to explain is this: why does he/she think that god is perfect in the first place.
instead, the author ASSUMES that god is perfect, then uses this assumption to explain why god is perfect! circular isn't it?
there are many more points i want to make but thats enough for today. my language doesn't permit me to write in a way that can sustain a long arguement.
for another time!
hmm.. what if we think about it from another angle?
take away all us human beings from the world and then imagine the rest of creation. do you think it's then possible that all of creation is perfect? all the plants and animals that walk our earth, living within our ecosystem with their own food chains, functioning and evolving exactly the way they are supposed to. just the way nature is when left to its own. I think it does paint a perfect picture. perfect even in our own sense of what perfectness is.
then now we put human beings back into the picture of creation. things go bizarre. that's when all the evilness, suffering, and yup imperfection come into existence.
so the problem IS us, the human race. we were the ones who screwed everything up. that part is undeniable regardless of whether we have a religion or not.
but we may argue that human beings were God's one big mistake in his work of creation. then let's bring it back to probability again. what is the chance of a creator who created the perfect complex universe and the perfect natural wonder of our planet to have made a mistake with the human race when he could achieve all of those? it is the same concept as the one in my blog post. if you accept that the creator makes mistakes, then you're saying that there is a chance that the sun was not suppose to give out that amount of energy. that there is a chance that the earth was not supposed to be this exact distance from the sun. there is a chance that the combination of oxygen, nitrogen and CO2 in our atmosphere wasn't supposed to be in the proportion it is today. but is there really that chance? i don't think so. the chance is zero. or else the earth wouldn't even have existed.
this is a tough argument because, like what the author had brought up, perfection is so subjective. whose standards of perfection are we using as the benchmark? yours? mine? should the standard of what is perfect and imperfect in this universe revolve around my ideal? I don't think so. I think having our standard of perfection evolving from the Creator of all things is the most sensible thing. After all, what is more powerful and higher than the Creator of all things who is the Beginning that was there from the point of nothingness? who else did a better job than him? what he has done is the best that anything in this universe can do. no one can beat his creation of this universe and this world. that is why he should be the standard of perfection.
thus, he is perfect.
if you can accept that none of the creator's creation is better than the creator who began everything from the state of pure emptiness, then the creator is THE best and is the ABSOLUTE top of everything in existence. since absolutely (mathematically) nothing in existence can be better than him, he has to be the absolute perfection.
that was what i was trying to say.
Also, imperfection only exists in relation to perfection. it is the shortfall of what perfection is. if one does not know what perfection is, then how could one know imperfection?
so even the imperfection of the human race is also measured by the standards of the creator's perfection. nobody would know that imperfection exists if he didn't know what perfection is (which explains why he has to be perfect to know it). he knows what we were supposed to be in our perfect state. but we aren't. and we would not know what we were supposed to be if he hadn't told us. Remember, only the creator was there at the beginning and there when we were created. so only he can know.
this imperfection is a function of the creation of choice (of the human mind). it is something that the creator allows. but only temporarily. an artist of perfection would want to rectify anything he deems a blemish on his artwork if he could. that helps to explain the wrath of the creator that sets in when the period of grace is over. at the end of it all, this imperfection is not allowed in the perfection of the creator. at the end of it all, everything will be perfect according to the ABSOLUTE top standard of everything in existence. the perfect creator and his perfect creation.
dear tian,
i refer to your first paragraph. and again, i beg to differ! the assumption to take away human beings from the picture cannot be made. why?
the assumption you make by removing humans out of the equation is like, taking the lead actor out of a movie and asking if the movie made sense. yes, you could watch the cinematics or supporting actors, but there would be no significant dialogue, no feelings, no plot to the movie.
disclaimer:
i'm NOT taking the stand that human beings are too important to this earth, i treasure life, all forms of life are important, one not over the other. but you can't assume that earth does not have humans, because if there weren't humans, we wouldn't be asking this question of where life came from.
here: i'm not saying that animals don't think (they very well might!), i'm just saying that, for sure, humans do. and because we are the ones thinking, it isn't fair to have a world without us and say its perfect.
second para: what's the probability that god made a mistake? well, lets not get into that. if you could take my point of view, for just 1 second, that god MIGHT not be perfect, you would see how i feel that he MIGHT have just made that mistake.
again, i've got to make it clear that i'm not claiming that this higher being isn't perfect. i'm just saying that i don't know. even if everything around us seems beautiful and perfect, i still wouldn't rest on my laurels and call god perfect.
third para: on pefection being subjective and whose standard to use. yes! i like this concept. now, assume that there is a higher being, shouldn't we all live to his standards? since he created us, his law is the 'best'. in that sense i can accept that he is 'perfect' but only because he is the highest power. its like saying my government is 'perfect' because i voted for them and they are the highest power in my country.
even then, governments come up with policies about how people should function in a society. they make it clear to people. but what is god's law?it is not written anywhere (or rather, written in too many places), nor has the world seen it.
what is/are the law(s) to be 'perfect', like god?
regards,
thinker.
dear tian, 20.
i really, really like your post at 4.16AM, especially the part on imperfection being a shortfall of perfection, but before i go on, let me explain ask you of something:
is one perfect if one has absolute power?
absolute power corrupts absolutely, my dear. being on top doesn't equate perfection, but yes, PERHAPS we should live our lifes modelled after this absolute power. but thats another thing all together.
now, to your second point.
how does man know he is imperfect? nobody has ever shown this age of man what perfection is. i guess this all boils down to the million dollar question of 'how do we know/who deteremines/what is.. right and wrong?'. does doing something "wrong" make you imperfect?
well, by modern society standards, i have done wrong. i've stole, i've cheated, i've killed.. i 'know' i'm imperfect. but what if the god that made me was like that too? according to your theory of conforming to the behavior of the absolute power, i would be 'perfect'.
this point of yours, i feel, negates all our previous discussions, because it is a more important question. until we can answer what does 'perfect' mean, we can't say if there's a '''perfect''' god.
sleepy yet amazed,
thinker.
dear thinker,
i think the reason why you say that we cannot remove humans from the equation of creation is because you are taking human beings to be the point of reference (the lead actor). What I did was to make the creator the lead actor instead, because he is the main character in this entire contention about whether he is perfect or not. even if humans didn’t exist and this question about his perfection was never asked, it doesn’t alter the existence of the creator and his other creations.
the analogy of the government and god is kinda inappropriate, i feel haha. because the government is not the highest possible power because they can be overthrown and there are definitely more capable people out there than themselves. but god is the ULTIMATE. nothing can overthrow him as creator. I think that it is important to first grasp the weight of the fact that the creator is the absolute and the ultimate.
the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely was written as an opinion of a historian and moralist. the real quote is "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." It is a tendency, not a constant truth.
moreover, the idea is actually derived from only within our human experience among human beings. but the creator we are talking about here is not human. so it would not be relevant to draw a relation between humans and the creator as there is no similar basis.
you agree that imperfection is the shortfall of perfection. so if our creator is imperfect, it means that he is short of something. then let me ask you... what is he short of? to whom is he short of?
we have to understand that a creator’s creation can never be better than its creator. an artist’s sculpture can never be above the artist (it can’t even come to life!); the most sophisticated robot in the world can never be more intelligent than its inventor. so since the creator was the beginning and has no creator of itself, then to which of his creation can he be short of?
if there is no answer to that question, then this creator is the best that has ever been and will ever be into eternity. and if something that will ETERNALLY be the best is still not perfect, then you’re saying that perfection does not exist. you’re saying that there is no limit.
but, that can never happen. there is a limit. the limit is the creator. you can’t go beyond that because it’ll be pure emptiness.
yupp. so...
perfection exists. perfection is the limit.
our creator is the limit.
our creator is the definition of perfection.
then how do we know that exactly that perfection is? how does the creator tell us what it is? i think that is another whole issue to be debated and discussed!
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