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"Silver is sometimes more valuable than gold, that is in large quantities." There was a period of time, where I was just sick of knowledge. Yes, you heard it straight from horse's mouth. I was sick of my betters who think they know it all. I was sick of the apathetic who could not be bothered. And I was sick of myself who had lost interest in reading. But everytime I get sick of studying, I just picked up a book written by Chesterton (aka the Prince of Paradoxes) and suddenly my interest renewed. With his lovely play of words, he got me reading again. And the thing he inspired me to be is an eternal rebel. "Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously." And I guess in a way, I tend to take things at face value without questions. But with Chesterton, he shows that even the brightest and best among us can also be wrong. He points out that we get into the swing of things or agree with popular opinion too readily. "A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." "Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." For instance, I was at many times reprimanded for being arrogant for the excessive sharing of views in class. For this, I simply quote: "It is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely." Chesterton also criticises the rebels without a cause. He questions what I fight for? Was I simply a rebel without a clue? "A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy." Even though I battle against the grate of the world, I am always reminded by Chesterton's words: "The most incredible things about miracles is that they happen." And suddenly I'm inspired again.
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Nietzsche was, and still is one of the most highly regarded philosophers of all time. As an atheist, he rants powerfully against the chains that religion and spiritual authorities could potentially hold. You may find it weird that I enjoy reading Nietzsche and about him. I like reading the works of people whom I disagree with, mainly because it challenges ideas and concepts that I hold dear. The result is simple-- either it strengthens my position, or I change it. Here's what some of what I learnt from reading Nietzsche: 1) Nietzsche exposes self-righteous behaviour Nietzsche (in his work On Genealogy of Morality) points out that people (both religious and the non-religious) can be stuck up in their own set of moral systems. If I am allowed to be honest on my own blog, I am tempted at times to say, "at least I am not like them." Let me list some variations of this: "I am glad that I am not as petty as her!" "Well, I would not have said that!" "I only lied to a few people, unlike him." "What an idiot! Clinging to an ancient tradition, unlike enlightened people like me."
And these self-righteous people (including myself) cannot stand the potential that our "sinning" friends can be forgiven. We can entertain the concept for a second chance, but we cannot accept it. This is because means that all our high starting moral points count for nothing if these "sinners" can suddenly claim equality with us. To Nietzsche, self-righteousness inhibits forgiveness. And if I'm not careful, I can easily slip into it. If that is all Christianity is, then the ultimate aim of Christianity is to look down to our counterparts in hell and laugh at their torment. Is this how I portray Christianity? 2) Nietzsche exposes truth claims as power play Nietzsche portrays any exclusive claim to truth as a form of manipulation. After All, everyone wants to follow what is right. People who are convicted and claim the truth for themselves are often very powerful people. Think of Hitler, who claimed to know the Final Solution. Think of Napoleon, who claimed to be the future Emperor of Europe. Think of Mao, who thought the Great Leap Forward would bring prosperity to the people. But to Nietzsche, all reality in flux except for one thing-- we set our conclusions before pretending to be rational to get there. Hence all claims to absolute truth are meaningless. As a Christian, do I manipulate people by claiming exclusive knowledge to God? Discussion I love Nietzsche, I really do. He was willing to raise an opposing voice, and take it all the way. Is a Christian simply a form of arrogant, self-righteous and know-it-all person? But I submit that Nietzsche, while right in his reasoning, missed the whole message of the Bible. Where was Jesus in his thinking? If humans are broken images of God, then why should we compare our own broken images with other broken images? Think of the way Jesus described himself in John 14:6: "Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." And as a Bible-believing Christian, I should compare myself, a shattered reflection with the real figure-- God. That should warn me against self-righteous thinking. This is where I set my conclusion from which all reality flows. Nietzsche was right-- truth is powerful. But stating the effects of truth has no bearing on the nature of it. However, Nietzsche did wonder where this power came from, although he was suspicious. It had the power to make people larger than life, overthrow authorities and defeat long-standing ideas. Truth as a concept, sounds almost divine. And I would think it is. Conclusion I am grateful to this German philosopher, as he makes me think, "Where is Jesus in my own thinking?" Thank you Nietzsche, for putting theology on trial. | | |
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The purpose of the Protestant Reformation can be summed up in this way-- it is a movement that seeks to return to the Christianity of the Bible after years of human tradition and corruption had marred it. In this way, it should have been Erasmus, the translator and publisher of Greek New Testament to be the hero of the Reformation, because he was the one who placed the Word of God into the hands of the public. But he wasn't. Instead, that fame went to Martin Luther. For all his hard work, Erasmus loved to play the moderate, unwilling to break from the traditions of the old to embrace the full implications of his translations (that salvation is by faith, not works). Unlike Erasmus, Luther acted on his convictions, and was willing to break the foundations of old if he had to. In his own words, "Peace, if possible; truth, at all costs." Luther spoke his mind, and went all the way in what he felt was right. Erasmus, while agreeing with Luther in principle, was very reluctant to act on his convictions as he recognised the movement Luther was leading would destablise the whole Europe. Despite having high respect for Erasmus, Luther pointed out the difference between Erasmus and himself very harshly-- while portraying himself as an independent scholar, Erasmus didn't care about the truth. He only knew compromise, and to Luther, there was no place for compromise in truth. And ironically, it was Luther who found peace via truth. And through this reflection, I can hope that I have not made myself immune to truth. | | |
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It's a story you hear from time to time. Everytime a great evil rises, an even greater hero is raised to defeat it. But somewhere along the line we have forgotten the hero, and this is the time when darkness reigns. Now we await the hero... Imagine starting of a novel with such an introduction. It would sound powerful, wouldn't it? But let's translate it to a game, where the viewer gets to be the actual hero! What a game! Imagine you have to design this game-- doesn't sound that great after all. Who is the enemy? Who are the main characters? What is the conflict? Where will these events take place? All these challenges are overwhelming. But one thing I admire about Shigeru Miyamoto, the game designer, is that he is willing to take on these problems. Even after coming up with Nintendo leading characters like Mario (from Super Mario Bros.) and Link (from the Legend of Zelda), he continues to come up with new ideas (such as Pikmin). He amazes me by coming up with ideas by just observing everyday, mundane objects. By looking at ants, he imagined a world (Pikmin) where an astronaut had crashed landed, and had to work with the miniscule creatures of the alien world to rebuild his spaceship. He could even work on places he had never experienced-- imagining the underground of New York to be a place filled sewer pipes, he designed the world of Mario. No wonder it was argued that the best way to travel is imagination. In this "rational", "sceptical" world that loves to put people in their place, I am reminded to take myself lightly-- and let my imagination fly. | | |
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Beauty in science The poet John Keats criticised the scientist Isaac Newton for destroying the beauty of the rainbow by reducing it to mere "prismatic colours". And sometimes science does sound that. The biologist Richard Dawkins is famous for promoting strict reductionism, the view that all biology can simply be explained by chemistry and all chemistry can be explained by physics. Following the spirit of Enlightenment philosopher Renee Descartes, many think that we can only understand nature via measurements and numbers. In other words, meaning and beauty has no place in science. No wonder he claims, "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference." -- River Out Of Eden (1996) Yet with the same breathe, Dawkins claims can there is beauty in understanding how things, even though he uses words like "selfish" to describe genes (in The Selfish Gene), "controlled" to describe man and animals (in The Selfish Gene) and "bytes of digitial information" to describe life (in River out of Eden). It's little wonder that many are turned off by his language. How awful! How boring! How ugly! So in that sense, Keats does have a point-- by reducing something to merely its individual components, science destroys beauty. And this is what I really detest about science. Ironically, it was Dawkins's PhD supervisor, Denis Noble who restored that beauty in science that I once saw. Dawkins and Noble Compare the following statements by both Dawkins and Noble: "[Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off fromm the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence." -- Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) "[Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and in me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence."-- Denis Noble in The Music of Life (2006) If there a difference between the two statements? Dawkins takes a more bottom-up approach, while Noble writes of a more top-down approach. Well, Dawkins himself admits there is no difference between the two statements scientifically speaking . What Noble warns against is that we tend to take metaphors in science as the literal truth. The problem with reductionism How science thrives is through methodological reductionism-- scientists attempt to refine their explanations by limiting or controlling a number of possible factors. However, how it does not thrive is via ontological reductionism-- the attempt to say all phenomena are simply explained by the particles they consists of. To Noble, it would be like saying a butterfly is just a bag of carbon and electricity. Where is beauty in that? But worse still, where is truth in that? Dawkins and promoters of ontological reductionism seem to ignore the concept of systems biology, the concept in which the living world has a hierarchical organisation, with feedback loops acting on every level, ranging from biochemistry to ecology. Sure it seems like we are simply the product of our genes, but these people forgot that organisms can regulate genes (haven't you heard of operons?). We have cases where environmental influences can be inherited (epigenetics), the organisms actually incorporating foreign genes (bdelloid rotifers) and the nature seems to have limited the number of natural solutions to a problem (convergent evolution). All these phenomena throw the Dawkins's ideas of strict genetic envrionmentalism into doubt. The best thing about being Noble Noble restored my love by biology by showing that the world isn't as one-dimensional as Dawkins promotes. We aren't simply the products of proteins, sugars and fats. It would be like reducing the beauty of an orchestra to a single note, ignoring that the conductor regulates the muscians, the musicans control their instruments and their instruments produce the notes. No wonder the idea of systems biology sounds like music to my ears. Thank you, Professor Denis Noble, for writing The Music of Life. For further reading Neo-Darwinism and Selfish genes | | |
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