A God Believer

I was brought up in a hardcore christian family, that doesnt mean that i was oppressed and forced to accept the religion or anything. In fact, I had willingly accepted God into my life after i've personally experienced His presence and greatness.

However about a year ago, i've started to seriously thinking whether to continue to call myself LITERALLY a Christian or not. Don't get me wrong, i'm neither abandoning my religion nor thinking of converting. Its just that i've seen some lights for the past 1 year and it sorta led to a shift in my view and thoughts on religion. Anyway, what i really trying to say is that i wanted to identify myself more as a God believer rather than strictly a 'Christian' who wholly and only follow what the church/congregation/denomination's doctrines or creed says.

Recently i have seen so many examples of how things went wrong if we claim ourselves to be religionists who only serve single church or denomination's interest. Think about Protestants and Catholics conflicts, or conventional and charismatics debates, you'd be surprised at the vibrancy and occasional nastiness over musty theological tomes. Although Islam, Judaism and Christianity serve the same Yahweh God, however they are still blind and incompromise towards each other. Recently, there was a religious conflicts in local scene when Catholics lodge report against Al Islam for trespassing. Frankly, i'm sad and to an extent angry towards all these meaningless fightings and arguments as we all serve the same Kingdom of God.

I grew up in a conventional Methodist church, but attended a very much charismatic church when i first came to KL, it was funny that i went reverse and subsequently attended a conventional independent church in Liverpool when i study abroad. On top of that, occasionally i still go to Peter's Catholic church, and i have a mix of close friends who are Catholics, mainstream protestants and charismatic christians.

Prior to this, i have a very narrow definition of what Christian is, and its very much what the church taught me so. Instead of being a God believer, I was shaped into a church believer. And because of this, Peter and I have some heated discussion due to the differences of our understanding towards certain God teaching and principles. However most of the time, it was me who insisted that my way of being a christian is the right way and unwilling to think outside of the frame.

After that, things happened, which drastically and dramatically changed my believes. However its not the right time to share it here yet.

The point is, doesnt matter you are a protestants christians, charismatic christians, catholics, Jew, or even Islamic, you are a God Believer. I'm not saying our God is a also the God of greeks, Indian mythology or Chinese lagendary stories, but i am suggesting that our God is a universal God.

Maybe you are wondering have i been striked by lightning or what, to come out with such a blasphemous thought. Well the answer is no, but the impact or the aftermath maybe the same. Honestly, i was confused and i have struggled badly when my so called 'church cardinal belief' were challenged, but at the same time i began to open up and i know more now than i ever knew in my life. And still, i'm craving to know so much more.

Parallelly, being a science thinker had also open up my horizon like never before. A lot of scientific discovery fascinates me, and it bring out another perspective for me to understand God's work. In fact, I still think that our God is the greatest scientist of all, He had created the life itself, and human was merely trying to solve all the riddles in the name of science. Probably its really like what my friend Dorcas said, when we meet the creator one day, it will be the biggest science convention of all time, as all the truth of life will be revealed once and for all.

I can imagine myself sitting on the audience seat, raising my hand asking God on the stage, excitedly, "God, why does our genetic makeup is so much similar to the apes?" * chuckles *

Anyway, i better shut my mouth now. I may not be strike by lightning, but i maybe stoned to death if i continue. Sign off!

Where did human come from? Pt1

This week is a lazy week for me.

Apart from having the usual vendor/customer meetings, the one and only 'unusual' task which i'm working on is to prepare a scientific presentation for my company fortnightly get together session.

My company has a very weird policy, which is anti-knowledge base (KB). The management does not believe the concept of computerized collection, management, retrieval of knowledge a.k.a storing knowledge in a database. In their opinion, Knowledge can never be stored. Knowledge acquiring is a process of interpreting and understanding a sets of information or data, and that process only happen in a person's brain. As such, the management came out with this idea called 'Xchange' to encourage free flow of knowledge, vertically and horizontally (peers to peers/ science to technical team/management to employees) within the organization. In which, all the employees of my company were required to take turns to present a science/technical intensive topic during this Xchange session.

Well, it is my turn to present next week.

I have been scratching my head for the past few days to come with a scientifically sound topic, yet interesting and able to ignite thoughts. After reading through tons of papers, here come my final topic "Where did human come from". My thoughts of line is looking the subject matter from religion and scientific point of view, and whether there is a harmony between the two.

I hope my colleagues are not reading my blog, cuz its a big spoiler since i am gonna write some of my thoughts for the presentation here.

From the religion point of view, the origin of human dwells around the concept of creationism. I'm appalled at how similar the concept of creationism among different religion. They all sharing two things in common, which summarizes the creationism sciences:

• There is a creator-the deity or deities
• The creator(s) creates human

For example,

• Christianity and Jew talk about God (Yahweh) make man in His Image (Genesis, 1:26-27, Bereshit)
• Islam talk about Allah created man from dust and little fluid and make them pairs (Al Quran: Surah 35, Ayat 11-12)
• Hindusim talks about Brahma splitting himself into 2, one have the form of man and the other have the form of woman, which together the two created the beings (Siva Purana)
• Greeks believe that Zeus instruct Prometheus to form men in the image of God, while Athena breathed life into them
• Taosim principle stated that The way give birth to unity, which in turns give birth to duality, which in turns give birth to Trinity, and Trinity give birth to myriad creatures (Tao Te Ching)

The only outlier is Buddhism, the religion simply ignores the question of origin of life. Buddha said that "Conjecture about (the origin, of) the world is an unconjecturable that is not to be conhectured about", why? because they are not connected with the goal, are not fundamental to the holy life, do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, unbinding, self awakening. (AN 4.77, Acintita Sutta, Unconjecturable)

When i read this, i'm utterly impressed. Being a human, its kinda hard not to care about where are we from, and what makes us the human we are today isnt it? In fact, some said that life is nothing but a journey of soul searching, of who we are and what is the purpose of life. However, its not too hard to understand where the ideology come from as Buddhism practice detachment.

Anyway, back to my point, mainstream scientific research produces conslusions which reject the creationism sciences. For this reason, creationism was labeled as pseudoscience and were perceived as a set of believe instead of a proven scientific hypothesis. The most notable disputes is Darwin's 'human come from apes' theory.

Anyway, you know what my next post will be....

To be continue...