Faith is non-comparable

Today, i got approached by one of those people who go door-to-door promoting christianity, which inevitably got me thinking about the touchy issue of religion. before i say anything else, let me just say first that i'm an apathetic agnostic (for those of you who think otherwise, agnosticism is NOT the same as atheism), which basically means that i believe there is no human way to confirm or disprove the existence of a god, and since acts of god are indistinguishable from extreme coincidence or undiscovered science, there is also no discernible impact on humans whether a god exists or not. simply put, it means i "cant be bothered, but with logical reasons". it's not a religion, but rather an ideological opinion on religion. personally im neutral to all religions, so please dont take what i have to say as anti-christian or satanic or wadeva, cos seriously i get enough of that from the music i listen to already -.- (die, metal-haters!)

i think that basically many religions involve living in accordance to the rules set by a certain deity or god, or in other words they are simply philosophies to live by, but with the added factor of punishment/reward from a god depending on how you carry yourself. since there is no conclusive objective evidence of the existence of any god from any religion (if there was, the existence of atheism and agnosticism would be null, wouldnt it?), there is no way to deduce which religion is "right" and which are "wrong", which would mean that it is equally right for a person to follow any religion as long as the values it promotes are morally acceptable (which is why religions like satanism are the minority which i would outright disapprove of).

of course, people will start defending their own religions, quoting from their respective books of teaching which prove that their religions are true, and i dont have a problem with that. after all, having faith in your own religion is alright, and in times of confusion and uncertainty faith could be the very element to pull you through. what i do have a problem with is people trying to convert others to their religion and being pushy and insistent about it. if, at all, a person converts to a religion, it should be because he has sorted his thoughts and realised that one religion has had a greater impact on his life than all the others, or because he has taken the leap of faith and believes in the religion, and not because people constantly urge him that it is the right religion and that they would be doomed if they didnt convert. providing information about your religion and letting people make informed decisions is alright, but coercing and nagging at people to convert is not. in short, when it comes to getting people to convert to a religion, passive promotion, and not active promotion, will yield a more devoted and wholehearted group of followers in the long run.

ok, now that that's over and done with, i can get on about the rest of my day. went to sentosa for the class outing, but attendance was kinda (very) pathetic: myself, jtan, lionel, yicen, brenda, jj, tzumi and gabby. a pity rayson fell sick and couldnt make it :( get well soon! so anyways we all wore the class tee, which is light blue with a stripy 09SH27 wording on the front. the design met with negative to mixed reviews from the guys, but we're all thankful for the effort put in by the "shirt committee" (if im not wrong it's yicen, brenda, tzumi and jj) :)

The class shirt (picture is from the 09SH27 blog). models are tzumi and yicen i think?

the bunch of us went to the beach, and lionel and i initially wanted to swim over to the nearby island, but it turned out that most of the guys didnt bring clothes to change into (come on, who goes to sentosa's beaches and doesnt bring spare clothes?) so that idea was quickly scrapped. played frisbee for a while, and i got saboh-ed very early on when someone threw the frisbee too far and i got arrowed to swim over and get it back (i ended up being the wettest guy at the end). in the end, we spent quite a lot of time... digging a hole -.- at first we wanted to bury someone in the sand, but as we started digging we lost focus and decided to dig until we reached water, and then it became a project to dig out our very own foot spa. the water became very foamy and disgusting, so we wanted to dig a channel to irrigate the "spa", but the wall collapsed and we inadvertently created a mini bay/lagoon. afterwards we just spent the time maintaining the walls and watching the rising tide slowly erode the bay. it's quite cool to see everything you learned in geography enacted in real life and soon we could see cliffs retreating towards shore and beaches forming at the foots of the cliffs. jgan and jacob joined us for dinner, which was at JustAcia at dhoby ghaut. jgan, jacob and gabby started "poisoning" each other with weird concoctions arising from the free flow of drinks and ice-cream, think we made quite a scene there. jacob got us souvenirs from taiwan, which were pens with heads of various cartoon characters on the top (winnie the pooh, hello kitty, and even the rarely-seen mian4 bao1 chao1 ren2!), and you could press a button to make their bodies pop out. i myself got a three-eyed alien from toy story. now there's something else to entertain us during boring lectures! :)

cant believe i'll be going to sentosa again tomorrow for the orientation external hunt preparations -.- sentosa is seriously overrated imo, but i guess it's a conversation starter for your orientation to be held at sentosa.

and i'm still hooked to metal/rock remixes of pokemon songs :)