What's wrong? Can't you sense it?

Here is the previous post of the similar topic.

Forwarded emails urge me to voice out my opinion here again. Can we call the reaction of someone saying "Oh, that's cruel, we shouldn't do that!" while reading emails spreading news about killing of animals on the verge to extinct as human conscience? I have been trying to get involved in arguments such as humans have no right to deprive animals of their life regardless of their status or species. Whenever I read the typical comments cursing those inhumane sin done by either illegal butcher or hunter, especially on Facebook, I couldn't help myself to have my two cents pointed out in order to further scrutinize, review and try to bring an ironical sense into this issue.

For example, there was a documentary video showing seals' misfortune, suffering from the peeling of their skin by human in order to meet the high demand of raw material in leather industry. As expected, all the response towards this revealed sin could be generalised as rantings, condemnation and criticism accompanied by some cursing, or some of them might not even have the courage to continue watching because it was just too evil. For a greater understanding, I tried to make a simple comparison with the killing of poultry so that we could equate the cruelty of human act. Actually when we are taking meat from chicken and beef, we do contribute in this too.

Then, people started to refute my argument, stating that there is an obvious difference due to the reason torture and killing are not the same, and the sin of killing is definitely lower than the sin of torturing. They solidified their arguments Humans were created by god to be a "caliphate" on this earth and permitted to take advantage of all the natural resources there, but not to torture fellow creatures.

I have to admit the idea I advocate to is greatly influenced by teaching in Dharma talk. If you are not familiar with that, I would like to tell you that killing is prohibited, even killing an ant. And here comes the contact between religious views.

I do agree they are different above the surface, and I am trying to find an alternative perspective from the identity they share. I don't have the intention to defy any of the religious views but it is just intriguing for me to have a deeper insight towards this. Since both of them are sins and people don't wish to conduct any sinful practice, and logically and rationally people would say: "No, I don't want it to be like this." or "It is so wrong, we shouldn't do these." We would have criticized sinful people using different extent of phrases based on ascending "degree of sin". But for me, it brings contradiction when people would actually consider these as antonym, humane and inhumane.

If you read carefully, my point is very simple, that is "do not feel sorry or guilty for the animals when you are reading similar email or whatsoever, if you are dining in meat, such as KFC, perhaps?

There is another fascinating fact I would like to share. Whenever we flipped through the newspapers, bad news such as murdering and kidnapping would not fail to meet our eyes. Have you ever noticed that we have our own scale on judging the degree of sin conducted by those criminals? Sometime the scale would go imbalanced. For instance, when a little adorable girl was kidnapped, the newspapers would have some argh-she-is-so-cute photos gazetted to draw the attention of the public. Same analogy, people would look at the photo and say "where the hell do those kidnappers grow their conscience? How can you be so harsh to such a cute little girl?" How if miserably the victim doesn't have an attractive look? There is no an one hundred and eighty degree of change by public response, of course, but you can actually notice the great difference.

Things are artificial, and fake as well.

Randomly arranged? Designed?

Note: I would like to apologize for not being able to convey my thoughts precisely due to my limited access towards the terminologies involved and scarce proficiency in the language used. Ignore the syntax errors, and try to broaden your mindset to walk with me. This article is not written under the intention of offending nor challenging any believers that hinge to the conviction that our world is created by the only entity namely God. I find it fairly intriguing when I recently discovered I do have some points to raise in response to religious topics which I never really concerned.

To which extent do you believe our world is perfectly designed? You would be indoctrinated by tonnes of preaches convincing you the “truth” since childhood if born in a family held tightly to Christianity. You might question what you had been perceiving, or you might not. Most of those converted clearly understand the conflict they experienced that you might not. To those holding fideism, which compartmentalizes reason and faith, and believes merely on faith, believe or not, the argument that seemed as solid as rock to you has been an object of ridicule in some others eyes, mostly allegedly you may guess, but you should also be careful it is possible that the one with blindfold might not necessarily be those defying your faith.

In this article I focus only on the aspect whether the premise “world is created and perfectly designed” could be a strong argument. In certain books, some experts including scientists pointed out that the discoveries of science are actually in the direction of proving the existence of an intelligent creator. Cosmology, biology, physics and many other fields related on the basis of science are actually contributing to the conviction of theism, according to them. For example, the human genes, the biological molecules are miraculously coordinated. The laws of physics are designed such that the integrative complexity could be resolved using mathematics and logics. No one could explain why the speed of light must be approximately 300000000 metre per second. In similar context, they infer all of these behave beyond the naturalistic explanation. It is unnatural, where there is no chance to have the same situation happening if random ways are to replace it.

They always amaze us by using probability to show us how impossible it could be if random way goes. Yes, random nature is the point I advocate. You tell me in order for the human DNA to function properly, it takes certain probability to account for the systematic and perfect matches by monomers namely nucleotides, and to be able to synthesis proteins using amino acids, so it takes another probability. It goes on until how these biological molecules interact with each other, how the blood clotting mechanism is, how systems in a human body work by calculating the probabilities, and deducing it is almost impossible that human stays alive! You could have told someone, look, the probability is one over ten to the power of integer with astronomical number of digits behind, it is approaching zero, so the world we are living is not randomly arranged! You got a point, I have come across with a lot of so called evidences such as “do you know that if the earth is orbiting slightly nearer or further to the sun, the earth would be either too hot or too cold to sustain life? How amazing!” or “if the universe is expanding at a rate that is a little faster or slower, we could not have a universe that would be capable of supporting life!” They are indeed amazing, but to me it makes no sense to support theism.

People often attribute the fine-tuned universe we are living to the mighty creation by the god simply because it provides a better explanation where science has failed to do so, especially to explain the origin of universe and life. Now try to reflect on the probability. Let say something will happen by the chance of 1/100000000. When it does happen, can we say “99999999 circumstances have failed, and the one happening is right beside us.”? The same logic goes on if you insist to use probability. You say “our universe is created by god because it is fine-tuned!”, why can’t I say “according to your probability 1/N to have such a fine-tuned universe, we can have equal number N-1 of not-fine-tuned universes besides the one we have!”? Isn’t that there are more chances to have something not happening than just happening? As you know universe is vast, who knows there are universes in other dimensions of realms with more physical elements other than just time, space and matter? It could just happen =)

Thank you for finishing my rambling, sorry if you felt offended or annoyed, but that is truly what atheists think, and they may have the same feeling when you say "yours is the wrong one."

Not to forget to thank SuSu my senior who borrowed me the book "The Case For A Creator", I learned a lot =)

Another religious piece

Being a weak atheist, I always question myself, can human embrace to no religion? Without religion, can human still be able to generate and bring forth the civilisation assimilated with bloom, dignity and humanity? We shouldn't miss another point we must take into consideration: "Why is that religion there?"

Despite the different identities of each religion, I was so naive to categorise religions to an equal group of education based belief that has only been attempting to indoctrinate the followers without using justified theories in order to build a fine character. I have never been able to come so close to religious topics before stepping in a whole new environment which is totally different in comparison to Chinese Buddhist society I was bound and inclined to.

I was warmly invited to visit a church for my very first time in Subang. The to-and-fro trip took us two hours on the road. During that direct exposure, I learned a lot about perception of Christian towards the religion that has the greatest population of followers in the world. However the more I discover, the more I realise what I really need. Honestly, although I'm not a strong nor a devoted Buddhist, I felt embarrassed and challenged in the sense that I can't force myself to resonate with the talks given by those pastors. The reason is just simple, I don't believe in the existence of deities. Consequently, I felt so sorry whenever I rejected their invitations after that. I do appreciate their hospitality very much.

Besides, I constantly questioned my another housemate, a Bajau from Sabah who worships Allah. I asked something fairly sensitive, I consulted his opinion about why a Muslim can't convert, why Islam forbids pork etc. His told me he can't question or critic what has been stated in Al-Quran, he has no right and necessity to do so and it is possibly considered insulting the sacred ancient intellectual heritage.

On the other hand, I attended meetings held by newly formed Buddhist Society every week. Most of us had misunderstood Buddhism. Instead of religion, it should be called education by Dhama granted to mankind. There was a monk once told us: "If you are a free thinker, it is the best for you to attach to Buddhism."

We would always include this unique phenomenon whenever we were to write an essay concerning the mixture of compromised multiracial and multireligion background in our country, however those were the moments I felt I couldn't be more agree with that.

Buddhism, my religion.

Having mixed with peers who are mostly comprised of Buddhist along the period I was raised in my hometown, I was surprised by the fact that majority of the Chinese in my college, especially those eastern friends embrace Christian values. Well, I'm a Buddhist, but not the devoted one. Religion is something profoundly abstract to me. I didn't visit temple as regularly as Muslim to mosque, or Christian to church. The incident that motivated me to touch something religious at this time is that there is now a freshly formed association namely Buddhist Society in my college. Although I don't own a great depth of knowledge regarding Buddhism, it doesn't simply mean I'm not interested to explore more about it.

For now I advocate the saying “多个香炉多个鬼，没有香炉没有鬼” which means "to have more censers will result in attracting more ghosts" in direct translation. (Sorry for the not-very-precise-translation as it could be done better) I would like to stress on how sceptic I'm towards some aspects of the religion despite of the actual underlying message of the proverb. Normally Buddhist worships Buddha statues to attain spiritual comfort, hoping he will get rid of disasters or ailments. Some of the believers would make wishes to bring themselves about wealth, and this is the group of people that is prone to superstition.

I'm now going to review several religious acts here, whether it is significant or not. Is burning joss sticks, paper money and incense significant? In my humble opinion it creates pollution rather than achieving what the believers intended. It consumes multitude amount of one of the most essential elements on our planet - paper and it would end up turning into greenhouse gases as well as other harmful byproducts. I'm not going to comment more about the disadvantage of "open burning", yet I often found it ridiculous to see the people burning some high-tech oblations to their ancestors. If they are to burn a paper handphone, I would recommend them to burn an extra Digi simcard too, since it provides the widest coverage :)

I'm not sure if ancestor worship is related to Buddhism since religion would have undergone diverse variation before spreading to every corner of the world. Buddhism I've been following may not share the same aspects with that from the place it originates. It could only come into contact with me when it was festive season such as Wesak Day or it came the traditional funeral. So I might have digressed in some points I've raised here to the extent where it sounds ignorant for me to be a Buddhist.

*This post did occupy a long time of mine, thanks for reading it and it is always welcoming for you to share your two cents about this :)