The Problem of Evil

I'm always curious to see how religious people rationalise or explain away the problem of evil or suffering.  Plantinga's "free will defence" does not help and it's easy to show what a whole lot of rubbish that is especially when it's used to defend the Christian God who is supposed to be all-compassionate but we'll leave this for another post.  I just listened to a talk by Ravi Zacharias and I want to deal with his arguments.  He begins by taking issue with the way non-believers bring up this problem of evil as a means of tripping up the Christian.


What did Ravi do?  Did he offer a solution to the problem of evil and explain how an omnipotent and all-compassionate God could sit by as untold sufferings occur every minute of the day?  I've seen how apologists and philosophers try to wrangle God's way out of this mess but nothing has worked.   Naturally, I was curious to see if Ravi could do what no Christian thinker has been able to do satisfactorily in the past 2000 years.


Ravi did not address the problem at all.  Instead, he tries to say that an atheist is not in the position to talk about evil because for there to be evil, there must be a moral law.  If there is a moral law, there must be a moral law giver.  Ergo, God.

For centuries, mankind has sought to look for some evidence for God's existence and since God is spirit and any material evidence of him is elusive (in other words, there is zilch evidence for God's existence notwithstanding the fact that he supposedly intervenes in human affairs in a big way), some have attempted instead to discover the God equation, some equation to determine the existence of God.  Unwin's equation, for example, "shows" that there is a 67% chance for God to exist.  Not bad for an entity for which there is zero evidence.

Of course these desperate attempts to defend God can at best be looked on as no more than a joke.  I don't know of a single rational, sane person who accepts the equation as proof that God probably exists.


As Ravi continues to talk, his voice gets increasingly triumphant but the victory in his tone cannot make up for the emptiness of his argument.  Like all the arguments of apologists, his is flawed and filled with presumptions.  It's reminiscent of the above God equation or any other equations in which some complex figures and symbols are placed in a mathematical formula and the conclusion that follows this abstruse equation is that of course God exists.


Let's examine Ravi's argument.  Is there evil?  Of course there is evil.  The Holocaust was evil just as the Rape of Nanking by Japan (which incidentally remains defiantly unrepentant to this day) an act of extreme evil.  If God did cause two she-bears to tear up 42 boys for merely teasing Prophet Elisha for being bald, that massacre of children too is an act of evil.   It matters not who it is who is standing in the dock.  The act is evil and the perpetrator is evil, let's make no mistake about that.


Is there then a moral law?  That's what Ravi would ask and I've seen him in countless videos shutting his eyes and trying hard to look intelligent as he asks this question, believing that this question, his trump card, will vanquish his opponents.


You can call it a sense of morality, an idea of right and wrong or if Ravi likes it all that much, it's all right, we'll call it a moral law.  I can almost see Ravi leap in triumph.  "If there is a moral law, there must be a moral law giver", is what he will say solemnly.


Now, there is something I have observed about apologists.  When they say something stupid, they usually do it with a stern, authoritative voice.  "If there is a moral law, there MUST BE a moral law giver".  And don't you dare question that.  No, they don't expect a humble "Amen, Lord have mercy" from you godless atheists but they hope that you will at least be bound by some rules of courtesy and you won't question the statement.


When an apologist does that, the right approach is to fight back and be equally belligerent.  Do not accept his statements as if they are fact even if they raise their voices and sound pugnacious.  Growl back, "Why must there be?  Your Holy Book says so?"


That's precisely it.  Why on earth must there be a law giver just because there is a law?  Here is where Ravi Zacharias displays a child's level of thinking.  Only children insist that everything must have a maker.  If a child sees a watch on the table, he'll usually ask, "Who made it?"  His father will probably reply, "The watchmaker".  If he sees a tree, he will ask the same question, "Who made the tree?".  If his father responds with the question "Why do you assume that a tree must have a maker?" the child will no doubt reply, "Since a watch has a maker, so must the tree."  His father may explain that the watch is a manufactured object and naturally such an object is made or manufactured by someone else.  A tree is not a manufactured object so to draw a parallel between a tree and a watch is incorrect.  Now, Ravi and the child obviously cannot grapple with this concept.  They both will go away thinking still that since the watch has a maker, so must a tree.  You may find this amusing but let me assure you that very many people think in that way.


A law does not necessitate a law maker.  It's illogical to suggest that it does.  In science, a law is a statement of fact deduced from observation.  Newton's laws are examples.  

Ravi may be employing another trick that apologists are famous for - confusing the opponent.  Ravi is injecting ambiguity into the word "law" so that you think of the law of the land which, as we all know, is man-made and naturally has to have a maker.  Ravi wants us to think of a king giving his law (like Hammurabi and his famous Code of Laws) or a Parliament enacting a law.  It's easy to jump from that to God.  But that's not the same kind of law as Newton's law or a moral law, although the same word is used.  One is clearly man-made and has a maker while the other is entirely different and to impute a maker to it is like a child insisting that since a watch has a maker so must a tree.


So, the answer to Ravi is "No, a moral law need not have a giver.  The law of the land needs a maker (eg Parliament) but that's a different kind of law from a moral law even though the same word is used".


Why then is there morality?  Here again is one big problem the apologist has.  He questions everything in the hope of finding one question that yields no answer and he jumps on it and declares that God is the answer.  Our ancestors used to employ the same trick with the lightning at a time when nobody knew how it came about.  It had to be from God.  Today, we've moved on from the lightning to other aspects of the universe where there are still no answers and we plant God there.  I recall reading somewhere the proposition that dark matter was evidence for God!

Every communal animal will exhibit some sense of moral code.  To survive, communal animals can't be too selfish.  If it's too selfish, other animals may shun it totally and in times of famine, it will probably have a smaller chance of survival.  At the same time, an animal can't afford to be too altruistic and go about its way giving its food to others or it too will not stand much chance of survival in this harsh world that it lives in.  A balance is usually struck with the selfish animal showing altruism when it has plenty.  Instances of altruism in the chimpanzee, our closest cousin, have been documented.  We can have all this without having to assume that there is some cosmic law giver dishing out a consistent moral law.


Here is yet another huge flaw in Ravi's argument.  He assumes that the moral law is consistent and unchanging.  He makes fun of the assertion that our morality comes from our humanity.  He says that in some tribes, you love someone by eating him up.  He draws the conclusion that humanity is incapable of coming up with a consistent immutable law of morality.   That leaves only the cosmic law giver of course.

Again, Ravi's argument is totally misconceived.   Morality or moral law is never immutable and consistent.  It changes from time to time and from culture to culture.  It's the same everywhere, even in religion.  In other words, even God's morality changes with time and culture.  I'll give examples from my own religion, Christianity.


We read in the Bible the story of a man who was caught one Sabbath evening collecting firewood.  The people brought him to God for his punishment.  God the law-giver had earlier given the law that everyone had to rest on the Sabbath day.  This chap had transgressed the law and so what ought to be done?


The Bible tells us that God told the people to take him out of town and stone him to death.  As God put it in his admirable, no-nonsense, cocksure way, "Surely he must be put to death".  God has made his law very clear.  No flouting it and if you do, you die a cruel and excruciating death - by stoning.

We read in the Gospels how the Pharisees accused Jesus and his disciples of transgressing the Sabbath laws.  What was Jesus' reply?  Did he say, "Oh blimey!  I should have known better.  Now take me out of town and stone me to death"?  Or did he try to defend himself that he had not offended Sabbath day laws?  This is the explanation given by most scholars who take great pains to show that Jesus NEVER broke any Old Testament law.  [Explanatory note to non-Christians: we need to show that Jesus never broke any biblical law because he's got to be sinless and that's the only way he can effectively be the "Lamb of God" who takes away the sins of the world.]  But let's forget what scholars say.  After all, it's obvious they have their own agenda.  Let's see what Jesus himself said.  Jesus gave examples of how King David in the Old Testament broke some religious laws and implied that since David did it, so could he.  But I don't want to get into a debate on this point with Christians because this part isn't important.  What's important and indisputable is the fact that Christ himself after giving his example of King David concluded that:

"The Sabbath was made for men and not men for the Sabbath."

Made for men?  Why didn't you say so when that poor man was caught picking up wood on a Sabbath evening?  Why did you (or your Father who is also you because the two of you are one with the Holy Spirit) not say precisely this statement and spare his life?

The answer is clear.  Even God's moral law changes from time to time.  I can give many more examples from slavery (which by the way remained the same throughout Scriptures but the Church in very recent times ordered the change and God presumably agreed), sexism, infanticide, genocide, etc but this blog entry is already way too long so I'll talk about the rest another day.

Before I end, I should add something about myself.  I keep getting emails and messages about me being an atheist and I want to put an end to this misconception.  I am a devout Christian who (if I may say as humbly as possible) is far more pious than most parishioners.  I take a deep interest in my faith and read up extensively about it while most parishioners are only interested in the lust of the world (if I may borrow this colourful expression from the good book).  I have also served the church in various capacities since my earliest days whereas you'd be lucky if a tenth of parishioners attend church once a month and we're not even talking about actually serving the church regularly.  Although I am a devout Christian, I also believe in the importance of truth and honesty.  I'll be happy if there is evidence for God's existence or if there is a cogent logical argument for God and I don't mean the philosophical sophistry that some apologists and philosophers employ.  I would be overjoyed to see a good chunky solid piece of evidence but as matters stand, there isn't even the tiniest sliver of evidence for God's existence.  But what I take strong objection to is the lies that some of my fellow Christians come up with to defend God.  Many don't tell lies but they rely on seriously flawed arguments and I sometimes wonder if they are aware of these flaws and if they are, they are guilty of dishonesty.  If they aren't aware of the obvious flaws, they're just stupid but not dishonest.  

I want to play fair.  If we have no logical argument for God and zero evidence for his existence, we have to own up.  We can't cook up evidence or give misleading arguments.  The Bible tells us that "God is truth".  To tell lies for God must surely be the height of blasphemy.

All in one day

Before the sun rises, let me take you on a journey round Singapore.  Our first stop is Marina Bay Sands where idiots gamble away their money.  Gamblers either hate money and can't think of a better way to get rid of it or they really can't come to grips with the law of probability.

Here's a pic taken before dawn.

Broad is the road that leads to ... the casino.

Next stop is where there's a large satellite dish on the rooftop:

What follows next is a hearty breakfast.

This is one of the commonest breakfast items in Singapore.  Yew char kway or yew tiao may still be common in China and it used to be the main breakfast food here a long time ago, but no longer.

Next stop is where lots of people are going to within the next few weeks for the medical check-up preceding the compulsory military enlistment called National Service.

That's as far as the photos go.  Cameras and phone cameras are not allowed within the facilities.

Why the popularity?

I got up at 6 when the alarm in my phone sounded and although I had roused myself from sleep, I didn't really get ready as I should have.  Instead, I was engrossed in my own reading until time was running out.  I got dressed, rushed to the car and sped off.  The roads were deserted and it took me only ten minutes to get to church.  I expected to be able to park my car by the road just next to the church but the entire stretch of the road was lined with cars even in parts where it was illegal to park.  I had to park right on the hilltop where there were still a few places left.  Carrying my instrument in one arm and my jacket in another, I rushed down the hill.  I could hear the loud singing of a multitude of people.  They were singing a familiar Easter hymn for it was Easter (this happened just two days ago) and I was to join the rest in my group at 7am for a quick rehearsal.  As I was going down the hill, a strange sight greeted me.

The rooftop of one part of the church was filled with people.  It then dawned on me that these must be parishioners who had gone for the 6am sunrise service.  If there were already so many people at the 6am service, what was I doing playing at the other two morning services?  Would there be anybody attending since most of them would have gone for the 6am service?  As it turned out for both the subsequent services, the church was filled to the brim and even the courtyards outside the church were packed with worshippers.

Why are churches in Asia and Africa attracting so many people when elsewhere in the world, churches have been turned into concert halls and tourist sites?  Last November, I attended services in Canterbury Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral and on other occasions, I have been to churches in various parts of Europe and if there's one word to describe church attendance in most of Europe, it's dismal.  In Salisbury Cathedral, there were only a handful of worshippers and they were all very old and I was possibly the only one there who didn't need a walking stick.  I was seated next to an old grandmother whose grandson was singing in the choir and she told me that once her generation had passed on, there'd be nobody left to attend church.  There were more choristers than parishioners in that cathedral.

I know for a fact that people in China are dying to embrace the Christian faith.  I say this with confidence because a missionary in China I know confirmed this.  But China is a strange country and is not representative of the rest of Asia.  As I understand it, people in China associate Christianity with the West, particularly the US and anything American is good enough for them.  Christian converts run into the millions but it's highly questionable if they are "true" believers - so says this missionary I corresponded with.  He has this niggling suspicion that if all Americans turned Mormon overnight, the people in China would do the same.

China has been through almost a century of Communism and the Chinese are now mainly atheistic.  Adopting Christianity is no different to them from putting on Western clothes.  Christianity is high fashion and the trendsetter is the US.  The rest of Asia (and I would surmise, Africa too) is quite different.  People in Asia are generally superstitious and they have their own religions and Christianity would be looked upon with some suspicion or at best, a competing religion.

But for some reason that is not entirely clear to me, Christianity appears to fare better than other competing religions.  Christmas is celebrated by everyone and in Singapore, non-Christians celebrate it in a big way too, complete with the Christmas turkey, Christmas tree, presents, the singing of hymns but I think (I'm not sure of this) the average heathen Singaporean would stay away from the prayers.  They tuck into their Christmas turkey without saying grace.

The partiality to Christianity among non-Christians in Singapore can also be seen in the adoption of the names of our saints and other names from the Bible.  I have spoken to a few devout Buddhists and they have no qualms about naming their children after Christian saints but they would stay away from names from the Buddhist sutras.  I do not know of anyone who names his kid "Siddhartha" or "Ananda" although presumably, these names would have a greater meaning to devout Buddhists and Buddhism is the majority religion in Singapore.

It is for this reason that churches are able to propagate the faith without the slightest hitch.  The whole nation is highly receptive or if I may borrow the words of our Lord, the harvest is white.

Is this a good thing?  The sort of Christians we get in such an environment are those who aren't really bothered about the details of the faith.  They aren't interested in the intellectual aspects of Christianity.  There is a parallel with China Christians here.  Whereas China believers may very well have taken on the faith as a trendy fashion, many Asian Christians have merely traded one superstition for another.  Apart from a total lack of interest in the faith, they are also not prepared to read critical works of the Bible or books on textual criticism.  Being deeply superstitious, they are fearful that any form of criticism of their new-found faith will offend the forces within their religion with terrifying consequences.

Christianity as the favoured religion in many countries today seems like a totally different religion from the Christianity of the early persecuted church.  In the early days of Christianity, non-believers stayed away from anything Christian also because it was a despised religion.  Only those with deep convictions remained in the faith.

Ask any believer what makes him or her think that the Bible is the word of God, or worse, for the fundamentalists, that it is the inerrant word of God.  I have not found a single person who can give a satisfactory answer.  But you have to exercise caution.  Merely asking such a question is offensive to some people, particularly if they know you are a Christian too.  There is an unwritten code that fellow Christians are obliged to conceal the weaknesses and all the glaring errors of our faith, a code which I reject as dishonest and un-Christian.

That all religions are fraught with errors and untruths is a statement of fact.  Anybody who is honest enough and knowledgeable enough is sure to admit to serious irreconcilable problems within his own faith.  99% of believers are in the dark about these problems.  But surely there must be at least 1% of believers in all the different religions who are aware of the problems with faith?  These are not minor problems.  They have the potential to challenge the truth of religious claims and expose the falsehood in religion.

How does this 1% react?  Many of them are religious scholars and that's not surprising since we are dealing with the intellectual part of the faith and not the mumbo-jumbo feel-good emotional aspects.  Some, like Bart Ehrman, have left the faith.  But he didn't immediately leave the church.  He stayed on for 10 years as a pastor before leaving it.  He's now a renowned Bible scholar.  He writes books to tell the lay person what he styles as things that all scholars already know but have kept the laity in the dark.

Some just go on with their lives and religion without any fuss.  There are many people who can live with the fact that their holy books contain not just errors but deliberate lies as well.  I can't speak for other holy books but I know for a fact that it is certainly the case with the Bible.  It contains errors and deliberate lies.  The lies usually take the shape of cooked up stories by the Bible writers (principally the Evangelists) and they do that because they felt it was needful to convince their readers that Jesus was the Messiah who fulfilled Old Testament prophecies.

I should add that I do not make a claim unadvisedly and I'm able to defend every word I've said about the Bible with clear evidence.  That I can incontrovertibly prove these things about the Bible is not an issue.  The real question is this - what should our reaction be to all this?  Do we leave our childhood religion and declare ourselves atheists?  I must confess I did exactly that in my younger days.  Or do we look at religion in the context of its history and culture and see what good to humanity Christianity can do?  Even the most hardened sceptic must admit that there is a lot of good that the church has done.  No other organisation on this planet can hold a candle to the great charitable works of the church, the orphanages, hospitals, hospices, old folks' homes and countless other homes and charitable institutions it runs.  It's a huge sacrifice to the church and a thankless service too but the church continues to do it not for earthly rewards or recognition but as an expression of Christ's love for the world.

Second Easter Service

Now that I'm in the midst of the second sermon, I have time to say a few things about the evolution of faith. This verse from Heb 6 that Melvin is talking about has been variously interpreted over the centuries, just as the very nature of God has undergone tremendous changes, from the firm unity of the sheema to the trinity. Even our great Christian thinker Origen became posthumously a heretic for writing that Jesus was the first creation of the Father. Come on, those who are familiar with the Pauline Corpus would no doubt say; didn't St Paul write that Jesus was the firstborn of all creation? How can the firstborn of all creation not be a creation? That would do violence to the verse. But you see. After Origen's time, the church developed further the concept of the Trinity and Jesus became co-eternal with the Father. So St Paul's verse must be reinterpreted. Now, we don't bat an eyelid when we hear that the firstborn of all creation is not a creation. Poor Origen. He didn't have the benefit of our indoctrination.

I'm now getting arthritis of the fingers from typing on my phone. It's time to listen to the rest of the sermon a second time. Cheerio!

Sent from my iPhone

My record shows that the above was sent at 12:14pm when I was still in church.  Blogger, like most blog hosting sites, allows for email entries to be made which is of course quite cool.  I thought I should just add something that I noted in both services.  Melvin, in his prayer at both services, asked us all to think of someone who is on the verge of leaving the faith.  I felt a little uneasy because naturally, I thought that there were those who would be thinking of me.  I wish to make it absolutely clear that I'm not the one anyone should pray for.  I have no intention of leaving my childhood faith.  If anything, I'm probably one of the most pious parishioners in the entire church.

As the famous hymn goes, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; Prone to leave the God I love" applies to ALL of us including me.  We who take a deep interest in the faith of course will have the tendency to stray from the faith and why?  True biblical scholarship shows up the flaws in the faith.  But that's not synonymous with LEAVING the faith.  I may know the faith is full of logical flaws.  I may know the existence of God and other supernatural entities cannot be supported by even the smallest shred of evidence.  I may know how unreliable the Bible is and I can debate with the best apologist and cut him down to size.  But leaving the faith is not on the cards.

A person whose faith is untouched by doubts is a person who takes no interest in his religion.  He does not read up about his faith and frankly, he doesn't care two straws about these things.  He's more interested in other things (it's usually money) and if he reads a book, it'd probably be something on investments.  He looks upon his faith as a supporting pillar for his wealth-making and that's all Christianity means to him.  Is such a person more faithful than someone who takes a deep interest in his faith and discovers it can't stand logically?

So, folks, when you are about to say your prayers, please save your breath.  I'm very grateful to you but I'm firmly secure in the Father's hand, as the saying goes.  Neither blah blah blah nor blah blah blah can separate me from the love of God through Christ Jesus, as the verse goes but I've forgotten the exact words and I'm too lazy to look up the good book.

First Easter Service

Melvin is dealing with that vexed verse in Hebrews that I intend to dwell on when I have the time. This has a lot to do with the choice between Hebrews and the Shepherd of Hermas and as we know, the former succeeded. More of this later. I'm in the middle of the sermon now. I'm playing at both services so I'll get to hear this same sermon again later this morning.
Sent from my iPhone

Happy Easter

The Lord is risen!

And so am I from a slumber that regretfully could not be prolonged.  We are to meet at 7am for a quick rehearsal.

So, it's true after all.

This is upsetting news.  The guy I spoke about previously is indeed homeless.  I was near the Esplanade on a different day and a different time and I took this pic.

It's such an obscene picture with the opulence of the Marina Bay Sands in the background and a homeless man sleeping on a bench.

A BJ fan discovers new flavours

I used to be pretty certain that I had eaten every flavour that Ben & Jerry's have come up with but for some months, I stopped buying BJ ice-cream in the hope that my cholesterol could be lowered.  I was in the supermarket this morning when I discovered two flavours I hadn't tried before.  I immediately bought them (there are more important things in life than one's cholesterol reading) and I had both of them one after the other:

"Everything but the..." really has a little of everything.  The chocolate is scrumptious and I could taste a bit of caramel fudge, chunks of chocolates, peanut butter, etc.  It's pretty good but I thought the gooey marshmallows and the fish-shaped chocolate chunks in Phish Food were a trifle more exciting.  The chocolate flavour tends to predominate over all the other flavours and that makes it hard to isolate the different flavours.   All in all, it's very good and has a little of everything.

Clusterfluff is really good.  It's like Peanut Butter Cup but I detected traces of Cake Batter and I thought there was a hint of Strawberry Cheescake and of course, it's no surprise that there's a lot of Chubby Hubby in it too.  This is good stuff.  It's more peanut butter with the delicious batter of Cake Batter.

A few years ago, when Cake Batter took the ice-cream world by storm, I remember eating dozens of tubs of it because it was so delicious and novel.  I don't think "Everything but the..." is that revolutionary but it's really quite good still.

It's awfully hard to write a review of BJ ice-cream because all the flavours are truly good.  I catch myself saying - this flavour reminds me of that other flavour of BJ which is good but then this is good too!  What help is that to the reader???

There's really only one piece of advice that I should give my readers - if you haven't eaten most of BJ flavours, you don't know what ice-cream is like.  Keep eating one flavour after another and really, it's not such a tough job to do!

Homeless in Singapore?

I find this sight very unsettling.  I felt I just had to take a pic so I can talk about it and find out more about the real situation in Singapore.

As I understand it, there are no homeless people in Singapore.  That's what makes Singapore such a wonderful country - everyone is taken care of.  The West can make a din about human rights but if they can't even give a home to their homeless, it's all empty talk; true human rights must include a home for every human being.

There is no problem of homelessness in Singapore.  Vagrancy is an offence and in any event, homeless people are sure to be housed in some home by the Social Services Department.

Why then are there people who seem homeless?  Granted it's not a common sight unlike in other cities where you know for a fact homelessness is a real problem and homeless people are not such a rarity that anyone would bother to take a pic of but if there are even a few homeless people, this problem should be addressed.  Singapore should maintain its squeaky clean slate of being possibly the only country in the world that has no homeless people.

Crime in low-crime Singapore

This pic was taken at 9:07 this morning.  I'll leave it to your imagination what could possibly have happened.  There were shards and fragments of green-tinted glass strewn all over the road just below the smashed windscreen.

This is a reminder to all of us not to leave our belongings in the car.  It's so easy for the thief to smash the windscreen to steal whatever is left in the car.

Singapore at dawn

The city that sleeps at decent hours.

You can see how quiet the roads are:

God died today

Good Friday has always been a solemn and sad day for me.  I'm not exactly a religious person and those who know me well will know that I've since my early teens always been courting atheism on the one hand and my own religion on the other.  There were distinct periods in my life when I became an atheist.  My religion usually succeeds in the end but as far as my head goes, atheism is of course much more appealing.  It's logical, rational and (dare I say it?) true.  In my mind, I have always created a separate category of truth which I call "supernatural truth" that is quite different from real truth.  This has helped me to keep my faith.

But Good Friday has always meant a lot to me, particularly in my younger days.  Singaporeans can be quite rude and I've been greeted "Happy Good Friday" but on each occasion, there was never any intention to be facetious on the part of the person greeting.  A person's intention is all that matters to me and so I always took the greeting well.  Malaysians treat religion more seriously and they won't talk about a religion they are not familiar with.  One reason why Singaporeans greet others on this day has a lot to do with the fact that it's a public holiday in Singapore and they naturally expect public holidays to be days of wild celebration.

But I was not that tolerant with a hotel which sent out its flyers advertising its spread of "Good Friday buffet".  "Come celebrate" it says.  I called up the Food and Beverage Manager to give him a piece of my mind.  That was before the advent of digital cameras or I would most certainly have taken a pic and posted it here.

For a long time, Good Friday was a day of fasting for me.  I would attend the Service of the Seven Words which stretched from 12 noon (the hour when the sky turned black) to 3pm (the moment when our Lord died).  Those who are not Christians may not know this but there are essentially seven separate services in this marathon church service, complete with seven different sermons!  I used to think rather irreverently (although I have never really said it) that I wasn't sure which was worse - to be on the cross or in the church on Good Friday.

As in any church on Good Friday, the altar in my old parish church was stripped bare and the cross was draped with an old piece of rough cloth (unlike the expensive-looking satin used in my current church, very much to my annoyance).  The sombre mood was further increased in my old parish church by the attendance of an old Indian lady who always appeared on her own, dressed in a sari of solemn colour and she would always sit not far from us.  She would weep quietly throughout the service and from time to time, she would mutter something inaudible.  Once, she happened to sit next to me and this time, curious as to what it was she would be saying, I made a special effort to listen to her.

The moment she uttered a single syllable, I was fully ready and my eager ears picked up the words.  "GOD DIED TODAY" was what she said.  For a moment, I almost wanted to tell her, "It happened 2000 years ago, for crying out loud!"  But then I reflected, if God truly did die even if it was 2000 years ago, wouldn't that deserve much more than the mere weeping of bitter tears?

Of course the story doesn't just end with the death of God.  Christ rose again on Easter morning in triumph.  As I write this, I realise I am doing precisely what ancient scribes used to do.  We, Christians, always try to ensure that every talk of Good Friday does not end in despair.  St Mark's Gospel originally ended in despair but scholars tell us that scribes added the subsequent verses to keep up the buoyant and positive spirits of early Christians.  But the scribes went too far and added ridiculous verses about how Christians could drink poison and handle venomous snakes unharmed.  To this day, there are cults that attempt to "live up to their faith in the word of God" and die because they take seriously the embellishments of these ancient scribes.

As I talk of our Lord's death and his subsequent victory over the tomb, my head keeps reminding me that it didn't happen the way it was recorded in the Holy Gospels.  Quite apart from transmission problems and scribal corruptions, there is enough evidence to show us that the Gospels, to put it mildly, got it wrong and they contradict one another like crazy so at the very least, however pious one hopes to be, the 4 Gospels can't all be right.  If they get it wrong in such an important, pivotal part of the faith such as the Death and Resurrection of our Lord, how reliable can they be in telling us other aspects of the faith?

In matters of faith, it's always useful to listen to one's heart and ignore one's head.  My heart somehow repeats, in line with my head, the final word of our Lord before he died, the Seventh Word:

IT IS FINISHED.

As we observe the Passion and Death of our Lord and consider the finished work on the cross, let us remember the unfinished work that's left on earth - the poor, the sick and the oppressed.   

Waterfalls of yesterday

There were some pretty waterfalls in Singapore but you had to search hard for them.  But they now belong to the past.  Like many things in Singapore, they were demolished to create space for new buildings.

Here's another one that was torn down to make way for development:

Can you guess where these waterfalls used to be?  I believe they were so obscure that most Singaporeans aren't able to give the right answer today.  What's more; I may very well be the ONLY person who has these photos!!!  There may be fame or profit in "camwhoring" after all!

Look, I baked this!

I did everything, right down to putting it in the oven and taking it out.  The pie is longish and I cut it to show the fillings.

A matter of angle

It's really just a matter of the angle a photograph is taken.  Look at this pic:

It looks just like a kampong in Malaysia or Indonesia.  But just scroll down to two days ago and you will see a pic taken from the same location but from a different angle and you will see it's not that kampong-like.

Milk and Honey and All Things Nice

I have been asked many times on Facebook what milk I would recommend.  There used to be a time when Vishnu, a local milk producer, produced the best milk in the country.  But lately, Vishnu milk seems to lack milk fat and it tastes bland.  This milk (see pic below) is now the most reliable; it's always consistently good.  I pick the low-fat variety for health reasons and if you think low fat milk isn't your cup of tea, you are wrong.  It tastes better than Sainsbury's and Tesco's semi-skimmed milk (same percentage of fat) and I'm willing to swear that it's a lot better than the milk I've drunk fresh from Jersey cows.  This is the real thing and it's widely available.  Avoid their UHT version which isn't very good.

Over a murmuring brook

I tested out my cyclometer after installing the battery. 2050mm for tyre length seems to be the best calibration for my bike.

I felt strangely out of sorts the whole day and I knew why.  We ran out of milk and I didn't drink any the whole day.  That's the thing about being a mammal - we need milk.  Most mammals need milk only in their infancy but we humans have evolved to a much higher level.  I took my bike out in the evening but the view too tempting for me to just hurry on.  I felt constrained to stop at a footbridge over the canal to take a pic as the sun began to set.  It isn't really a footbridge.  It's more a road with a pavement.  Speaking of a footbridge, there used to be a real footbridge over this same canal further down the road.  There was a McDonald's just next to the canal.  They were all torn down to make way for a road over the canal. 

In need of a new battery

My cyclometer stopped working today. It had been rather erratic these past two weeks. Replaced the battery and it's now working fine.  The battery is the one I used in my rear lights for two years until last year when I replaced it because I thought the battery had gone flat when it hadn't.  I don't expect this battery to last.  Both my cyclometer and my rear lights use the same CR2032 battery.

Fort Canning Tunnel

This is what caused the old and much-loved National Library red-brick building to be torn down or am I wrong?

Seconds before disaster!!!