Revelations of Nothing

Just visited my old blog. Haven't seen it for years. I'm surprised by the variety of things I thought about in those years, and how boring I found school life sometimes. I thought I enjoyed school a lot, but now I remember I enjoyed the access I had to libraries more than I actually liked classes and the pressure to perform. It's something that hasn't deserted me all these years--I can't shake off the academic perfectionism I have cultivated over the years. Can't even tell when it started--in Malaysia or here. It certainly crystallized under the need to maintain my scholarship. In a sense, in order to keep my beloved libraries, I had to leave off reading random crap and actually study. So the scholarship ensured I had a good balance of state-sponsored syllabi and random reading. If anyone asks me again, why I came to Singapore, I shall say, "For literature and for the libraries."

I also know why I abandoned the old blog. It was too angst-ridden. Looking back at a distance, I grimace at how my thoughts just bleed across the screen in a cool teal that belies the workings of a heat-oppressed brain. I'm much more reticent now. This is probably the first post on this blog which is confessional in nature, without being at all fictionalized or anything. Shall have to give it a new tag. Like: Warning! Read only when you want to be bored out of your wits. Or: Private property. Trespassers will be persecuted by revelations of nothing.

Matters on my mind. Concerning religion.

1. If God is both omniscient and omnipotent, then it's possible for him to see all our future choices and act in a manner which both preserves our free will and fulfils his ultimate will. I.e predestination and free will is a paradox only reconcilable if God has complete knowledge and full sovereignty. Discuss.

2. The ability to discern good and evil is different from the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil is not a precondition for having the ability to discern good and evil. Discuss.

3. What does my existence amount to? If I am only a heap of dust facing the accident of consciousness, then ethics and morality count for nothing but the amelioration of an existence that has no reason for being in the first place. Question I would ask if I didn't believe in God.

4. Why do people--even intellectuals--automatically assume that conservative religious people are either not rational or have never reasoned through their faith? (Probably because it's usually true, haha. And the bad rep of many vocal and unthinking conservatives who go around condemning everyone except themselves).

5. "I find it unfair that God has it all rigged from the start." Comment of friend on book of Romans, which states that God set up the law in order to condemn mankind for our sin, which resulted in death, so that we would realize we needed to be saved through Christ. Theologians usually call this rigging "grace," but plenty of Miltonists would agree with God being very underhand. To the shrewd he shows himself shrewd, I guess.