You scored as Philosophy. You should be a Philosophy major! Like the Philosopher, you are contemplative and you enjoy thinking about the purpose for humanity's existence.
What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!) created with QuizFarm.com |
posted by nicho @ 8:03 AM
0 comments
if I leave, who'll care?
sincerely.. frustation..
who's Bernie? ask Frankie!
wearing thick gloves makes you look stronger.
to hell with the big five!
familiar feeling..
posted by nicho @ 12:43 AM
1 comments
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html
1. Eastern Orthodox (100%)
2. Roman Catholic (100%)
3. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (91%)
4. Orthodox Quaker (87%)
5. Seventh Day Adventist (86%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (85%)
7. Orthodox Judaism (83%)
8. Islam (78%)
9. Hinduism (76%)
10. Sikhism (66%)
11. Bah�'� Faith (65%)
12. Liberal Quakers (64%)
13. Jehovah's Witness (63%)
14. Mahayana Buddhism (61%)
15. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (60%)
16. Jainism (59%)
17. Theravada Buddhism (59%)
18. Reform Judaism (56%)
19. Unitarian Universalism (50%)
20. Scientology (44%)
21. Neo-Pagan (41%)
22. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (37%)
23. New Thought (36%)
24. New Age (36%)
25. Secular Humanism (22%)
26. Nontheist (18%)
27. Taoism (13%)
posted by nicho @ 8:47 AM
1 comments
You love someone when you want her to be happy, and you would just do anything to make her happy.
posted by nicho @ 5:14 PM
0 comments
The problematic process of finding the truth of many things, such as historical evidences and prophecies, on which many beliefs are based upon, brings me back to the essence of knowledge. The first question is, undoubtedly, what is knowledge? Over centuries have the world's greatest philosophers tried to define knowledge, debated over its nature and acquisition, and a thin line could be drawn among their dark pages of theories, although it may not be exactly clear nor correct. Knowledge is justified true belief. Belief, or opinion, is what people think about anything. True belief, or true opinion, is a belief that somehow match with the real truth, regardless how people come about believing it; it could just be Homer Simpson's Eenie Meenie Miney Moe or through deep reasoning. Knowledge is justified true belief. In a completely closed, insulated, sound-, light-, scent-proof, a group of people may give different opinions whether it is raining outside, assuming they have been there for such sufficient time that they, indubitably, cannot have any insight of ouside's weather. All of them have opinions, but some of them have true opinions whereas the other have false ones. Only after they confirm that it is raining outside, that the opinion saying that it is raining outside can be a knowledge. That means, that true belief's truthfullness must be proved before it can be 'upgraded' to knowledge. Here the problem comes into light. Who is to be the judge to justify whether a true belief is really true? How can he be sure that it is really true?
It is premature acceptance of opinions to be knowledge that has been causing sciences, with mathematics, geometry, and sciences of that sort as probable exceptions, went through hard times of buildings, collapsings, and recontructings over and over again. Rene Descartes, the Father of Modern Philosophy, realized this and hence tried, in his book "Meditation", to find a strong, sound, and lasting foundation of science. I have just read his First and Second Meditations, and thus can only ponder those two, although I have also read a very brief synopsis of the subsequent Meditations. In his search, he uses the famous method of doubt, which basically doubts everything. The principal rule is: For any belief of His, B, if he can think of any reason, R, for doubting B, he will doubt it. If he cannot remove or counter R, by subsequent reflection or investigation, he will conclude that he dows not know B. And by 'think of any reason for doubting', he effectively instructs himself to ask something like: Can I think of any way in which, for all I know, it might turn out that B is false?
Descartes' Method:
1. Never accept anything doubtful.
2. Divide each difficulty into as many parts as possible.
3. Conduct my thought in an orderly way.
4. Make complete enumerations and general reviews.
His "First Meditation" is completely devoted to doubt. He gives some arguments. One of them is the dream argument. What if I am in our dream? What if this reality is just my dream , a dream that I might not be able to wake up from? Could I tell that I am in my dream? Most of the time I cannot. Then the so-called knowledge I got from our sense perception would just be vanity. I could not tell whether it was true, since in a dream everything can happen. The only thing I can still accept as true is mathematical expressions, like 1+1=2, a rectangle has 4 lines, and so. Now consider a malignant being, all powerful evil-demon who constantly deceives me at all time in my life. In this case, absolutely all my beliefs are destroyed. I cannot believe that 1+1=2, since it may be so because the evil-demon is constantly whispering in my ears, saying that it is true, in spite of the absolute truth that, say, 1+1=3. The naming and symbolizing are not the problem here, but the concept is. If this radical skeptical assertion cannot be countered, I cannot hold any single belief! Plato, in "The Republic", gives a clearer description of this Matrix-like argument by his "Myth of the Cave".
In the Second Meditation, Descartes finds one thing that can still be believed even if the evil-demon argument stands, namely that I am, I exist, since I think, and I exist if I think. I must first exist before the evil-demon can deceive me. Hence the sole essence of man is mind, a thinking mind, and not necessarily body. Modern scientists may argue that without body, especially brain, mind cannot exist anyway. However, that is not the main point here.
Now that the only thing I can be sure of its existence is I, the only one possible judge to determine and justify the truthfullness of belief to be accepted as knowledge is me. However, there is a possibility that I am blindfolded in determining something's truthfullness by catching only the reasonings that favour my own opinions. Hence I am back with this unanswered enquiry of man's nature of knowing. Can I know anything at all? Sometimes I feel I might be better not questioning anything and living happily in this earthly world, as people who took the blue pill in The Matrix and whose lives were completely controlled by the Matrix...
posted by nicho @ 5:31 PM
1 comments
Yay! I did my oral defence already, it was not so satisfying though. I came to Ms. Chan's office, which I was quite afraid of being the killing field, execution site, for me and my group mate, quite early. My group mates had not come yet. I then did the finishing touch for my preparation for the presentation while waiting for my group mates. They came just in time when the previous group walked out of my scary yet kind tutor's office with confusion and shock on their faces. Having not enough time to even feel nervous, we walked inside her office, pretending to be ready to present our project and expecting to be asked with difficult questions, some general and some specific ones, by her. To my surprise, she directly asked us a question to begin the oral defence. We answered, and some other questions and answers went back and forth between her and us. We were very confused back there, since the oral defence was supposed to be started with our presentation of our project, and after which she should start asking questions that we had to answer. In contrary, the oral defence went on with questions and answers until she stopped asking questions and dismissed us. We went out with confused faces, still did not believe what had just happened. Where was the presentation? Haha.. who knows? Probably it was the same thing that made the previous group also left with confused faces. Overall, the oral defence was quite OK, although I did not manage to answer many questions. It took about fifteen minutes, which can be considered fast, in comparison with the previous group that took the whole thirty minutes as scheduled. Anyway, I am happy now, only one CA left, the final quiz for ME2103 next monday, and I just played FIFA 2004, and the singing practice for ICy's Exam Mass was quite refreshing, although not many people attended. Haha..
On to the serious things. Following from the previous post, I still do not have a sound foundation for my faith. Had not I been born in Catholic family, baptized when still being baby, sent to Catholic schools in which I found a whole lot of friends of the same faith as mine, and happened or fated, no I am not talking about pre-determinism, to meet so many people who constantly helped and encouraged me with my faith, I would presume that there was small chance of me being Catholic and having this Catholic faith. I start contemplating on how the very first disciples of Jesus gained their belief. How did they know that they were on the right path? How did they convince themselves that they were believing the right faith? How did they know that what Jesus said should be accepted as belief?
One of the objections that the anti-Catholics nowadays may assert is that Jesus was just another philosopher, whose teaching could be either accepted or rejected or taken as a belief or trashed away by anyone, whose story of life was just exaggerated from one generation to another, whose claim of being the Son of God and of His resurrection were questionable and should be examined thoroughly from many different points of view as well as approach. Another objection that I have heard is that most of Jesus' disciples were fishermen, planters, slaves, disabled persons, peasants, pagans, and other people of that sort, who were not intellectually dependable and reliable, and therefore their claims of bare-witnessing what Jesus did are also questionable. I am sure many Christian thinkers have already provided their defence towards these attacks, and of course the other attacks as well, as I have read and heard some, but most of them base their argument on history and Bible, which may become sources of other problems.
The main thing here is how they could possibly know that it was God speaking to them. How did Abraham, Noah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Moses, and the other prophets know that it was God speaking to them through their vision, dreams, and experiences? Then how can I determine if someone who said that he just heard God speaking to him, or saw a vision in which God sent a message to him, or dreamed something related to God, is telling the truth in the sense that what he heard or saw or dreamed was really God speaking to him? How should Judah people believe that Jeremiah was telling the truth when he foresaw the destruction of that city instead of the other false prophets that announced the glory of the city? How should the Pharisees and people in that time who went against Him knew that what they did was wrong? How can I know that people next to me is saying the truth? How can I know that this whisper in my heart is God's voice? How can I assure that this feeling is what God says to me and not what my own mind conceive to be what God is saying?
posted by nicho @ 10:39 PM
0 comments
Hello World..
This is me..
(Hehe.. the first two lines of Belle Perez' "Hello World" )
This is my first post, in fact my first ever blog. :P Haha.. A sudden thought came into my mind a few hours ago, inspired by some blogs my friends have, that I need to pour out the contents of my mind somewhere, record them down neatly, so that someday, if necessary, I can always view those things that ever dwell in my mind, instead of letting them be blown away by the strong wind of my ever-changing paradigm. So now, here I am, sitting in front of my computer, trying to remember and type down the things, happenings, or phenomenons that ever came into my life and mind so far since I got stuck in this tiny little island, where I wanted to pursue my silly academical education, where I went leaving my lovely mother and best friends I ever had, if any, before, and yet, where I really started to become me.
I had never been me before I came here. I was never really conscious of who, or what, I was. I went with the flow, I just did whatever I was supposed to do and whatever was required or expected from me (not to say that I do not now), I never thought about what I was doing and aiming, whether it was really necessary or essential in my whole life here on earth nor my eternal life with God in heaven, assuming I would get it. There was no real purpose, or, to be exact, a really well defined purpose, in my life. I was never rational, which could be due to either my lack of effort or my lack of skill to be rational. I never wanted to go to the Church, in fact I was, almost always, bored when I went to Church, for even if my body was there, my imaginations took me everywhere else. I could hardly remember any of the preaches given by any of the Pastors, for I never really set my mind to be there. In most of my non-religious matters, I was about the same, I remained skeptic and ignorant about anything. Time flied, I remained calm, without any effort to step my foot ahead, without even any thought of having the effort to do so. What a waste of time. I was never me in the first, nearly, seventeen years of my age.
After completing my high school, I decided to continue my education here, in Singapore. I was not deciding actually, for I never put any considerations of mine to arrow me where I ought to be studying. I knew not where I was going to pursue my education after high school; even I applied to neither NTU nor NUS until the very last day of the application date. I took the entrance examinations to both NTU and NUS, with having some seniors there as the sole reason. I was accepted at both, giving me another dilemma of deciding where to go. God helped me by offering scholarship at NUS, and to my relief, not at NTU. Hence I chose NUS. It proves now that God made me choose NUS for a certain good reason, or more. Nevertheless, this is one recent example of my past reluctance of thinking things that was really essential for me.
My life changes here. I started to think. I became me. I was reborn. I am free. My ratio started working. I began questioning things; things that were, in the past, simply, or maybe unconsciously, indoctrinated to me by my environment. This overwhelming curiosity and anxiety grew as the time went by, and they reach the peak now, and maybe tomorrow's present, the day after's, and so on, I do not know. To put it in a way, now I can see clearly what I was not able to see before. In another way, a thick mist blinds me from the truth that I was never aware of before.
My first year had nothing much. I was just trying to adapt to a new lifestyle, paradigm, mindset. I was still that self-centered young boy, trying to grow beyond the limit. I complained when I was not satisfied, wrath conquered me when something insult me. I am still like that now. However, now a new enquiry comes to my mind. Does it my feeling that influence me to do what I do? Is it not my mind that thinks that I have such feeling? Am I feeling happy because I am thinking that I feel happy, or because I am actually feeling happy? Am I sad because I am really sad or because I am thinking I feel, or maybe I want to feel, sad? What comes first, feeling or thinking? Do I have feeling? Can reflective movement be considered a feeling? Or is it the only one true feeling? Is it true that happiness is just a state of mind? Can I control what I am feeling? Can I believe in what I feel? Or feeling is just vanity, one kind of special way of thinking, which initiates from my own mind, and which therefore cannot be trusted completely?
This thought struck me quite hard, for if I cannot convince myself that feeling can be trusted, I may have to review my perspective of my Catholic faith. So long as I have apprehended, I do not always completely believe in my faith, since I do not always find a really justifiable proof of my faith. Most of my belief in Catholic, I do not say all, comes from my personal feeling, faith and experience with Him, and this is very weak and fragile evidence to be a basis of my faith if subjected to thorough anti-Catholic assertions. I have tried to ask my friends, but no answer has satisfied me so far. What is the ground of the faith I am holding now? Is it not possible that the whole thing I have learnt is just an indoctrination, thanks to my innocent mind when I was young? Is it not possible that what I have experienced with God so far is just another thought-perceived-as-feeling? Is this mind of mine that powerful?
OK, so much for now, still another so-much for another time. Haha.. Now I have to practice for today's oral defence. Hope it will turn out as I wish, although "Your will be done". Haha.. What a selfish thing I am.
posted by nicho @ 11:25 PM
0 comments
