Thoughts on "The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus" by Lee Strobel

Now, as has been promised:

Thoughts on "The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus" by Lee Strobel

Introduction

This book was mailed to me by someone I do not know after we had a brief online encounter. I appreciate the thought, but despite his intentions to the contrary, reading this book has not changed my convictions. Indeed, despite the book's claims to be a rational, objective quest of whether the contents of the New Testament are true or not, it falls far short of its objectives. Reading this book so perturbed me that I decided to jot down the many points that I didn't agree with, arguments that I thought were poorly presented and developed and the blatant lies and weasely half truths that were used to try to mislead the reader.

General Thoughts

The author set out, after his wife converted to Christianity, to discover the truth about it. By checking the historical roots of the faith, he hoped to debunk it. Instead, he found that there was a wealth of historical evidence that positively proved that Jesus Christ existed and is the Son of God. Or at least he found himself convinced, which is more than I can say for many non-Christians who have read the book.

Even granting that all the events chronicled in the New Testament did happen, and the Son of God did come down to earth, the problem that we brights have with modern day religion is that at present, there is (surprise, surprise) no evidence for the existence of higher entities. For all we know, God could have gone on a millennium long sabbatical at the start of the Age of Enlightenment (which is when, for some reason or other, supernatural sightings became much rarer). Further, there is much evidence that Paul perverted the original teachings of Jesus and weaved them with other influences to form his own religion, the Christianity we know today. Nevertheless, even after putting these objections at the back of my mind, I found much in the book and the author's (mis)use of the scientific method to disagree about.

One of the things that struck me most about the book was that it was very one-sided. The author proclaimed himself to be on a quest to discover if Christianity were real or not, but to this end he interviewed only Christian scholastic authorities, and made no attempt to pursue people who would be able to provide a balanced argument. Though he did present a smattering of common (and not a few rarely asked) non-Christian objections and queries, he did not do a very good job of presenting them, merely offering the weakest of them so they could be knocked down by the scholars he interviewed. In the face of fudging, dodging of questions, convenient avoidance of issues and blithe ignorance, he remained silent. In all, I couldn't help but feel that he was being half-hearted in playing the part of the prosecutor, and the lack of intellectual rigour disappointed me. Or perhaps he was never well versed in bright arguments, being an atheist by default and not by choice.

Another was that, as some apologetics tends to be, the logic used by many of the scholars interviewed was often ridiculous, even to the point of being farcical. It seemed that they assumed the truth of their beliefs and conclusion, then worked backwards to grasp at straws for their arguments, gathering stray points and facts and attempting to bend them to suit their purposes, thus coming up with some excruciating odd theories.

A tactic used by both the scholars interviewed and the author was to pose and then answer questions that nobody asks, or offer objections so weak that they were easily demolished. This is also known as the "straw men" fallacy - by prematurely answering doubts, and by demolishing putative points with seeming ease, they made their case seem ever stronger.

The lengthy preambles to each chapter, with Lee talking about various court cases and how evidence was found to convict or acquit the accused, were probably included to sustain interest and instruct, but I just found them incredibly dull. Worse were the page long introductions to each Christian authority, where their qualifications were listed in painstaking detail, making me wonder just why Christian authorities need so many qualifications - degrees, diplomas and honorary doctorates - and feel the need to list all of them. Also, the author described the interviewees in unnecessary, grating detail, listing their hobbies and quirks to establish them as credible authorities, yet still human, a flaw that further crippled the professionalism of the book.

One thing I did like about the book was the questions for reflection at the end of each chapter. Albeit slightly biased towards the Christian perspective, in general they were quite neutral and promoted critical thought.

A selection of pertinent specific points by book chapter

Question 1: The eyewitness evidence - Can the biographies of Jesus be trusted? (with Dr. Craig Blomberg)

It is stated that the early church was in accord about the authorship of the four gospels, and that there'd be to motive to fake their authorship. Talk of lost gospels is also pooh-poohed. Regarding the first point, as we all know, the church has not been above falsifying historical records (for example, the Donation of Constantine) and destroying material they didn't like (a great deal of apocrypha was destroyed by the early church and texts and creeds were standardised at the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325) or didn't corroborate their stand. Finally, just because everyone believes something to be true does not make it so (eg the earth being flat). And about motives for faking ownership - is not maintaining your livelihood and ensuring that you go to heaven motive enough?

The authority interviewed makes the claim that though the books of the Bible were written for ideological reasons, we can "reasonably reconstruct history" by looking at them. This is rubbish for there is no independent corroboration. Using this logic, we could "reasonably reconstruct history" by reading The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf.

A major point is that though it is believed that the gospels were only written down from 70AD onwards (and do note that this date is disputed by many, and the logic the scholar used seemed dubious to me), this is within the lifetimes of eyewitnesses who would be able to correct mistakes. Firstly, it surely took time - 5 years at the very least - for the manuscripts to circulate after they'd been written, this being the era before the printing press. Even if we allow for the date of 70AD, it is about 40 years after the last events purportedly chronicled by the gospels. We must remember that life then was nasty, brutish, and short and life expectancy was very much lower than today. By 70AD, most of the eyewitnesses would probably have died. Also, we do not know that no one disputed the authenticity and veracity of the gospels, and it would be logical to assume that such heretical works would have been on an early version of the Index librorum prohibitorum. Further, these said eyewitnesses would not have been in a position to correct the mistakes - most were illiterate, and anyway, even in the modern era with mass media and presumed greater public enlightenment, lies and conspiracy theories continue to circulate.

The scholar says that the biographies of Alexander the Great were first written down 500 years after his death, and since less time elapsed before the gospels were written, they are more reliable. Firstly, I would like to point out that this is a deceptive half-truth, for though the first biographies (if one uses the word loosely) were written down 500 years later, a wealth of primary sources exist (or existed, at any rate). Among them, Deeds of Alexander by Callisthenes of Olynthus and Aristobulus, Onesicritus of Astypalaea and Ptolemy's accounts of the campaign. There were also numerous other secondary sources published less then 500 years after his death.

But to return to the topic, the scholar's point assumes unbiased authorship. Furthermore, a wealth of records were available and the authors of the biographies surely drew on other books and sources - Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, and tangible remains of his deeds and legacy remained. And anyhow, nobody claims that the biographies of Alexander the Great tell the immutable truth - for example, the tale of his cutting of the Gordian knot smacks of semi-mythological symbolism.

Question 2: Testing the eyewitness evidence - Do the biographies of Jesus stand up to scrutiny? (with Dr. Craig Blomberg)

A piffling point raised at the start in defence of the gospel of Luke is that he declared that he intended to write it accurately. Why the interviewed authority bothered bringing this point up is baffling, for it contributes nothing to the discussion and indeed detracts from his more weighty points. Continuing in his presentation of mediocre points, the Christian scholar claims that Mark and Matthew are "close to Luke in terms of genre" and so it "seems reasonable that Luke's historical intent" closely mirrors theirs. If that isn't dodgy, I don't know what is.

For some reason weakening his argument, the interviewee then quotes John 20:31, which basically says that the gospel is written to convince people that Jesus is the Christ, which says nothing about the veracity of the gospel itself. The interviewee claims that for people to be convinced enough to believe, the theology has to flow from accurate history. A cursory look at the history of mystery cults and fringe sects suffices, though, to convince one that that isn't the case. On the contrary, for someone to believe, the theology needs to answer deep seated needs, longing or hopes within a person. Either that, or the person needs to commit intellectual suicide where spiritual matters are concerned.

In further defence of his view that the biographies of Jesus stand up to scrutiny, the scholar claims that there are no "outlandish flourishes" and "blatant mythologizing" in the gospels. What would one call the numerous allusions to the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies and indeed, the numerous accounts of miracles and other supernatural occurences? He also claims that a "majority" of Jesus' teachings presuppose a significant time before the world would end, but then it seems that he inferred what the "majority" of the teachings meant, when in fact it'd been clearly prophesied by Jesus in Mark 9:1 and Matthew 16:28 that the world would end within the lifetime of some of his followers. Some Christians try to twist the words in the most creative ways, but most avoid the issue which is wise, for the early Christians did in fact believe that the world would end within their lifetimes.

In a blow to Bible literalists, the interviewee admitted that in the oral tradition, through the process of inaccurate memorisation by fallible humans, 10-40% of any given story will vary when retold. This then, can explain the errors in the Bible. Be that as it may, it still does not wholly refute the theory that the gospels concur on most major points because they were written incestuously. However, he then goes on to claim, incredibly, that it is precisely *because* of these errors that we know that the Bible is true and the authors did not collaborate on it. Going by this logic, because myriad versions of fairy tales evidence variation in minor points, but concur on major points, we know that they are true.

The scholar then suggested a "character test", the logic being people of upright character would have not have written lies. Of all the things said by him so far, this was the most ridiculous. Notwithstanding the fact that the only source we might have to judge the character of the gospel authors by is the Bible - hardly a reliable or unbiased source, especially when considering what we're trying to prove, lies are after all justifiable if they lead people to convert. Furthermore, he incredulously demolished this point later, by saying about the disciples that "they look like a bunch of self-serving, self-seeking, dull-witted people a lot of the time".

Regarding the two genealogies provided for Jesus in Matthew and Luke, the scholar first claims that they differ because Matthew provides the lineage through Joseph, and Luke through Mary. This explanation rang a bit hollow, not least because it was unusual to trace descent through the mother in the ancient world, and on closer inspection was revealed to be a lie, for both Matthew and Luke provide genealogies ending in Joseph! The scholar's second theory is that one is the legal lineage and one the human lineage, but this theory seemed extremely weak to me. His third theory is that the names of the ancestors of Jesus were translated wrongly. That's plausible, but how can any translator worth his salt, especially one religiously inspired, mangle the names so utterly? Finally, his last suggestion is that some names were left out because they were insignificant, and this was "perfectly acceptable" at the time. Fair enough, but what was the criteria used for excluding names, and why is each link in the chain depicted as a direct father-son link? And if the people left in the genealogy were so significant, why did Matthew and Luke each leave different people in?

Then he said that Jesus was so honoured and respected by his disciples that for them to forge the gospels would have ben unthinkable. This point is acceptable, but is contingent upon his being honoured and respected. Besides which, personality cults are not so much concerned with what the object of adulation actually did, but what he was alleged to have done, or what he would have done - essentially, on glorifying him.

The scholar said that disciples had little prospect of financial gain. True enough, but for them, as for most theists, the prospect of heavenly rewards dwarved whatever suffering they would go through in their mortal life. What harm a few little lies if it were for the noble prospect of saving souls? He then argues that it was precisely because Christianity was so demanding a faith that we know it is true. By that logic, numerous mystery cults, which require lengthy initiation rites and have many rules restricting everyday life, are the true religions. Anyhow, it is common for religions to hold adherents to impossible standards of perfection, such that they will chase them relentlessly and berate themselves for not attaining them (and by implication not question the religion, caught up with feelings of inadequacy as they are). At a visceral level, we are all masochists and enjoy some bit of suffering, for it makes us feel righteous and holy.

He then points out that later, Jesus was called a sorcerer, but never a charlatan, for example in the Talmud. Since nobody disputed his power, it is obvious that he had power. Of course, one can easily see this argument is rubbish. How about witches in the Middle Ages? People accused them of having all sorts of powers, but it didn't mean they had any. If the Powers That Be have the choice between painting someone as a tool of evil, the embodiment of the devil, or as a harmless foolish charlatan, it is patently obvious that they will choose the former, for what better way to motivate your flock and distract them than by creating a malicious, menacing foe? The scholar goes on to add that nobody, especially Jewish authorities, criticised the Christian movement, so it follows that it must have been true. Firstly, we have don't know that nobody criticised the movement - as has been pointed out, the early and later Church destroyed many documents. Secondly, even if this is true, if Christianity's truth were so patently obvious, why didn't the whole of Judaea convert? Also, lack of criticism doesn't make a stand of view true - I think hardly anyone criticises the Raelians, merely dismissing them as nutty wackos. Besides which, Christianity was only one of a panoply of mystery cults which originated in the Near East during Roman times, so it wouldn't have attracted so much notice or criticism at the start.

In general, the logic used by the scholar interviewed for Questions 1 and 2 was shaky, for many times he got away with presenting arguments and theories and then saying that it "seems reasonable" to accept them. His shaky foundation, built on self-proclaimed "reasonable" assumption after assumption, did not look like a solid base on which to explore the author's other questions later, for in answering them he assumed that he'd answered the first 2 with a resounding "YES!". Granted, there is some truth buried in the gospels and there is some real basis for them, but to extrapolate and claim that they are thus inerrant, accurate and true requires an amazing leap of faith - not to mention logic. Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. Here, we have not even ordinary proofs.

Incidentally, the scholar claimed that people had their faith increased after studying the New Testament. On the contrary, I know of many whose faith was decreased.

Question 3: The documentary evidence - Were Jesus' biographies reliably preserved for us? (with Dr. Bruce Metzger)

This chapter opens with the interviewee admitting that corruption of the gospels has occured. For example 1 John 5:7-8 only appears in 15th-16th century texts. So I can give him credit for that at least. However, he claims that none of the corruption challenges church doctrine. For one, which church is he talking about? All of them have different doctrines. The reader can do further research on this if he pleases. A suitable start might be at http://www.answering-christianity.org/.

The authority talked about the three criteria for inclusion of books in the New Testament, the first being Apostolic Authority - they were included by tradition: Mark helped Peter, and Luke was associated with Paul. The second criterion was that the books had to concur with the accepted Christian tradition recognised by the Church. He deftly avoided answering the implications of this, for the early church liberally ignored what it didn't like. The last criterion was whether the books were accepted and used by many people. However, people, especially commonfolk, are wont to use and believe only what their church gives and teaches them. All churches choose texts that thye are comfortable with and which best corroborate and support their beliefs, and this should not surprise anyone. The interviewee then went on to talk about the Gospel of Thomas - it was not accepted by all the synods and councils because it didn't harmonise with the other gospels. Perchance, could this be because it told the truth, and the other gospels either had been censored or had always been lacking in some aspects?

The authority went so far as to say that "The canon is rather the separation that came about because of the intuitive insight of Christian believers. They could hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in the gospel of John; they could hear it only in a modified and distorted way in the Gospel of Thomas, mixed in with a lot of other things." Read: Cognitive dissonance and people rejecting what did not gel with what they believed in, or would like to believe in, determined what books were selected for the Sanitised Canon. So much for me always being under the impression that this inquiry of Lee's was a rational one. If one wants to talk about the voice of the Good Shepherd, there are plenty of people who believe that he has told them to murder other people in his name.

The scholar then talked about the Syrian church and how it was impoverished for not accepting Revelations as credible (in fact, a case can be made for the person who wrote it being on drugs, but that's another story). Perhaps it is because "they could hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in the other books of the New Testament; they could hear only the rantings and ravings of a madman in the Book of Revelations, mixed in with a lot of other things". I suppose one could say the same for most Christians and the apocrypha.

Question 4: The corroborating evidence - Is there credible evidence for Jesus outside his biographies? (with Dr. Edwin Yamauchi)

With this chapter, the case got interesting, for finally, the book was attempting to break out of its circular reasoning and attempting to prove something by assuming its truth.

Reference was made to the famous Josephus, author of The Antiquities Of The Jews. In it, he wrote of "a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ". This proves nothing beyond the fact that he was merely called "the Christ". You might as well say that since Vlad the Impaler was called Dracula, the vampire lord really existed. Besides which, there may have been more than one Jesus, it being a not-uncommon name. The Testimonium Flavianum was also mentioned, but thankfully, the scholar admitted that it'd been tampered with by Christians. Removing the probable additions by pious Christians, one arrives at a version that contributes nothing to the debate. He also talked about Tacitus' writings, but the relevant paragraphs merely talk about the existence of Christians in Rome in Nero's time, and that the founder of Christianity was crucified.

In a desperate attempt to bolster his argument, the scholar asked "How can you explain the spread of a religion based on the worship of a man who had suffered the most ignominious death possible?". Unfortunately, the answer is provided by sociologists and has nothing to do with whether the religion was genuine, as knowledge of the human psyche will reveal. His answer is that the followers believed he was resurrected. The keyword here, then, is "believed", and belief doesn't necessarily have to spring from fact, or even eyewitness testimony.

The interviewee talked about the eclipse and earthquake that purportedly took place when Jesus was crucified. The evidence that he cited was not very convincing, and anyway those events could have happened around the time of the crucifixion, and not at the specific time stated in the gospels, for the reckoning of time was not very precise in those days. Josephus also did not mention anything about a midday darkness, followed by an earthquake, even though his father lived in Jersusalem at that time. Besides which, it was also said that Dragons were seen in the skies when Lindisfarne was attacked, and that assorted natural phenomena (comets, eclipses etc) occured on other occasions (eg the births of Alexander the Great, Gaius Julius Caesar and other luminaries).

He then mentioned the Epistles of the Church Fathers, which again is disingeneous, his trying to use something to prove itself. Moving on, he talked about "the verdict of time". According to him, historian Gary Habernas provided 39 ancient sources which talked about the life of Jesus, but interestingly he cited no material, so I cannot comment, apart from to speculate why, if it was so compelling, he did not mention it. Unless the 39 sources were all either texts derivative of the gospels or documents like the Testimonium Flavianum, which said nothing about supernatural occurences.

Question 5: The scientific evidence - Does archaeology confirm or contradict Jesus' biographies? (with Dr. John McRay)

The scholar interviewed for this question makes the point that the things that Luke said were historically accurate, as far as we can verify archaeologically. All well and good, but I don't really see how much that has to do with the veracity of what we -can't- verify. Luke supposedly tried to be as historically accurate as possible, but in the 1st Century AD, it would've been hard to get all the facts right.

Again, an attempt was made to rationalise away a seeming contradiction - while referring to the healing of Bartimaeus, Luke said Jesus walked into Jericho, while Mark said he was coming out of it. A spectacular fudge ensues - the scholar says that there were up to 4 different sites where Jericho was throughout history. Fair enough, but at any one point in time, there would've been only one current Jericho proper - it makes no sense to have 2 cities, both named Jericho, at the same point of time.

3 riddles were then posed to the scholar. The first was of the census at the time of Jesus' birth. Now, it was proclaimed that "all the world should be enrolled". This is ridiculous, as it's not supported by independent documentation. Everyone was also supposed to return to the city or town from which their fathers came. Needless to say, this would have resulted in the Roman Empire being turned upside down, and such an unprecedented thing would never have been ordered by the non-deranged Augustus, without record of such an extraordinary event, no less. And finally, the census-takers would've moved around, not the taxed, both so the land ownership could be recorded and the whole country wouldn't be on the move. Thus the logical conclusion conclusion would be that Luke had to place Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, the City of David, since Old Testament prophecies said the Messiah had to be born there.

However, he also needed Jesus growing up in Nazareth, so he fabricated this yarn. What the interviewee claimed instead was that in AD 104, Gaius Vibius Maximus, Prefect of Egypt, ordered that, to expedite the census, all currently residing outside their provinces return to their homes. Now, this seemed all too convenient for me, so I did my own research and discovered that the decree said that, "The census by household having begun, it is essential that all those who are away from their nomes [Ed: An Egyptian administrative district] be summoned to return to their own hearths so that they may perform the customary business of registration and apply themselves to the cultivation which concerns them." The crux, then, is that they were to return to their own homes, and not to their hometowns or indeed the hometowns of their fathers.

The second riddle was of Herod dying in 4 BC, while Quirinius was Governor of Syria only in 6 AD. To reconcile scripture with the truth, the scholar suggested first that there were 2 Quiriniuses, claiming that a coin proclaiming "Quirinius" Pro-Consul of Syria in 11 BC had been found. This seems extremely unlikely and fishy, and begs the question of why there's no other evidence of this other Quirinius being governor. The second suggestion was that Quirinius was governor twice, but this theory is demolished by Josephus' Antiquities where it says that "Quirinius... had passed through all the other magistracies until he became consul... came at this time into Syria... to be governor". His final offering is that the Greek was translated wrongly, and that the line should read "before Quirinius was Governor" but that is a painfully forced reading of the original text.

And the last riddle is of Herod's bloodthirsty massacre of the children under 2 years of age. We have no independent confirmation of this noteworthy event, and the answers given by the scholar are totally unacceptable.

Near the end of his interview, the scholar included an amusing snipe at the Book of Mormon, about how archaeology shows it to have been nothing other than myth and invention. I'm betting that the Mormons were offended by that stark fact. Oh well, when you open your mind, you always risk offence.

Question 6: The rebuttal evidence - Is the Jesus of History the same as the Jesus of Faith? (with Dr. Gregory Boyd)

In this chapter, the book went on a wild tangent, ranting on and on about the Jesus Seminar, a group that seeks to discover the historical Jesus. The scholar accused them of making certain assumptions from which they continued their research and said of them that "they've discovered what they set out to find", which incidentally sounds like a description of most theologians' work. He also said that he's "against the idea that if Jesus doesn't meet these criteria, he could not have said it". Oddly enough, that too seems to sound like what many theologians do, and especially like how early congregations decided which books to include in Biblical Canon.

On the Seminar's (and many other's) findings that Christianity had been influenced greatly by many other prior religions and mystery cults, the scholar claimed that those cults only started after Christianity had, so it was they that borrowed from it, not vice versa. This view is grossly misleading though, for Zoroaster, founder of Zoroastrianism (where they take bread too, there is a cycle of death and rebirth, they believe in the coming of the Saoshyant [Savior], whose arrival will herald Ristakhiz (the resurrection of the dead by Ahura Mazda) and that there will be a Final Battle between good and evil, culminating in the latter's demise), was believed to have lived around 600 BC, and some put the date at 1000 BC or 1500 BC even.

The cult of Mithras, too, predates Christianity, and they do share vaguely similar traditions - adherents stand under a bull while it is slain and bathe in its blood (there are many allusions and references to blood and sacrifice in Christianity) and guts (baptism, albeit in blood) and then eat the bull's flesh (Communion?). The author says Jews would have found this barbaric and thus not have joined the religion, but in a later chapter, another scholar contradicts him when he points out that many practices of Christianity (I might add non-circumcision and the eating of pork, among others) were also thought blasphemous by Jews, but that didn't stop many from converting.

He talked too about other material - about the Cross Gospel for example, which has "outlandishly legendary material" like a giant Jesus coming out of his tomb and a talking cross. This is not strictly true, for Mat. 27:52-53 says that, "[When Jesus died on the cross] the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose. And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city [Jerusalem], and appeared unto many." Amazing that Josephus did not mention this in his detailed history of Jerusalem, no?

In my book, if one can believe that he was the Son of God, raised the dead, cured the blind, walked on water and came back to life, and that there was an eclipse and an earthquake when he died, growing in size is not a big deal and it's hypocritical to denounce it. And why's a talking cross less believable than a talking, burning bush?

This chapter offered nothing to challenge the Jesus seminar's conclusions but illogical arguments and much only peripherally relevant material. Perhaps worst of all, he interviewed not one member of the Jesus seminar itself, and merely let the scholar he was interviewing slam it repeatedly.

Question 7: The identity evidence - Was Jesus really convinced that he was the Son of God? (with Dr. Ben Witherington III)

Why Lee asked this question I do not know, as it's not a common atheist question, and most non-Christians accept that he *was* so convinced. But for the sake of argument, I will follow through on the points given by his latest Authority.

Aside: Has anyone made it this far? Also, a thought: If I believe in the divine right of kings to rule, and someone else in democracy, I can be thoroughly offended because of his defiance of my deity!

The interviewee for this chapter asked what happened after the Crucifixion that changed the minds of those disciples who denied, disobeyed and deserted Jesus (as we're led to believe by the Gospels). Perhaps because he'd run out of things to say, he said that "We have to ask, why is there no other first century Jew who has millions of followers today? Why... is Jesus still worshipped today, while the others have crumbled into the dust of history?" Instead of answering this question in terms of socio-historical terms, all perfectly agreeable, he answered it by claiming that "It's because this Jesus... is also the living Lord... He's still around, while the others are long gone". I guess he won't be sounding very happy when demographics brings another religion to the top spot, and anyway he shows an astounding ignorance of reality, for he ignores the 7th century Arab who has more than a billion followers, the various Hindu gods with hundreds of millions of followers and not least the various Jewish prophets of the Old Testament, who have more than 10 million followers still.

Question 8: The Psychological Evidence - Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God? (with Dr. Gary Collins)

As I read this chapter, it struck me that even their Shrink was a Christian scholar and worked in a divinity school, and from the way he talked he didn't seem very open to non-Orthodox ideas. The lack of objective analysis was really getting on my nerves.

Among other things, he said that mentally disturbed individuals exhibit inappropriate emotions and unsuitable behavior. What do we make, then, of the case of the fig tree? Destroying a fig tree because it wasn't producing fruit outside of fig season hardly seems like a thing for a sane individual to do. Some say that the story is a parable, and the fig tree a metaphor for the Jews, who were to be punished for rejecting Jesus, but this seems an inappropriate metaphor (the fig tree did not bear fruit because it was not the right time of year, so if we use the metaphor, the Jews did not believe he was the Messiah because they had no reason to believe so) and anyhow being spiteful, not in concordance of what we know of his personality. And what then of the incident in which he allowed demons to enter 2000 of other people's pigs, sending all of them to a bloody doom over a cliff? He also cursed others frequently and exhibited vituperation. Admittedly, apart from these anomalies, Jesus as the gospels portray him comes across as a person generally in control of his mental state.

The interviewee says people with psychological difficulties would be unable to carry out a logical conversation, but what if the speech were recorded down much later and in a form more easily understandable to the reader?

At any rate, the above still does not rule out a case of his being deluded yet lucid, for there is more than one way for someone to be clinically crazy, and they don't all include him being a raving, frothing lunatic, unable to string a sentence together. Besides which, since we are told he was either "Lord, Lunatic or Liar", he could have been the last.

Veering off-track, the interviewee started talking about Jesus' miracles. Regarding the various times he healed people, the power of psycho-somatic healing is already well known (and often those 'healed' suffer relapses later) - the authority himself cites a case where a 16 year old was cured of a skin condition by hypnosis.

What's more, of these, we seem to have no testimony outside the Bible, let alone proof - equally amazing feats have been claimed of others, with more proof too: physical inscriptions exist testifying of the miracles allegedly performed by Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, for example:

"I found [in writing this history] some who are reported to have been raised by him [Asclepius] , to wit, Capaneus and Lycurgus, as Stesichorus [645- 555 BC] says... Hippolytus, as the author of the Naupactica reports[6th century BC], Tyndareus, as Panyasis [c. 500 BC] says; Hymnaneus, as the Orphics report; and Glaucus...as Melasogoras [5th century BC] relates." Apollodorus, The Library, 3.1.3- 3]).

Further, we must remember that to the ancients, miracles were much more everyday events than they are today. Take these extracts from Josephus' The Jewish War, for instance:

"Thus there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet, that continued a whole year." [6.5.289]",

"[And in the Temple,] at the ninth hour of the night of the night a great light shone round the altar....This light seemed to be a good sign to the naive, but was so interpreted by the sacred scribes as to portend the events that followed." [6.5.291- 293]

And, "...chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running about among the clouds." [6.5.298 - 299] (Source: http://www.medmalexperts.com/POCM/pagan_origins_miracles.html - an excellent site about how Christians were not the only ones with monopolies on miracles, and how Christianity was heavily influenced by earlier pagan religions)

All this one page of the text.

The authority said that "It's just amazing to me how people will grasp at anything to try to disprove Jesus' miracles". What seems more amazing to me is how people will accept so easily the performance of said miracles and the existence of a god in the first place.

Question 9: The Profile Evidence - Did Jesus Fulfill the Attributes of God? (with Dr. D. A. Carson)

The interviewee for this section drew up characteristics of godhood and then proceeded to "prove" that Jesus fulfilled them - by quoting scripture (I could write my own holy book 'proving' my divinity this way). How anyone can accept this circular logic is beyond me, but nonetheless I will try meeting him on his (unfairly chosen) battleground.

He says that Jesus forgave sin. However, he only said that he forgave it, which has no bearing on whether the sin really was forgiven by any Higher Powers. He also asserted that Jesus was sinless, but from his various actions we can see that, though he might not have committed any major sins, he certainly had a host of venal ones (http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/william_floyd/mistakes_of_jesus.html), especially if we use common christian definitions of sin (ie everything is a sin). For example, in John 7:8 he said that "I am not (ouk, in Greek) going up to the feast", but later he did - so he lied. Even if we do accept that he was sinless, why should that be an attribute of godhood? The Judaeo-Christian-Muslim gods are unique in the worldwide pantheon in that they are said to be perfect, but to say that a sinful god cannot be a god is sheer religious bigotry.

The interviewee then talked about Jesus being divine, but it was mostly wordplay. Veering off-course again, he then touched on a topic close to most christians' hearts - sin and hell! Wisely, he fudged his answer and avoided the question, but essentially came out with a view that I'm not sure most christians would agree with - he linked 'bad things', 'evil' and assorted other negative concepts with one putting one's self at the centre of the world. Supposedly, those who put their god at the centre of their world will not commit sins. So just because people won't let god dictate their actions and control them like puppets, they will go to hell. Right. And of course he said nothing about the people who *do* put their gods at the centre of their lives, yet who do things which are roundly condemned - blowing up abortion clinics for example, or hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings.

The scholar claimed that it wasn't a lack of faith that put you in hell, but defying god. But of course, there are as many opinions on what this god wants as people, so this criterion is not very helpful. When he was asked if he thought eternal torment was vicious, he dodged the question and said that there are different degrees of punishment, implicitly admitting that regardless, it would still be eternal. He claimed that people who didn't repent desired hell, but then this assumes they believed in hell, and if this was the case, it wouldn't be a punishment anymore, would it?

Going even more wildly off course, perhaps because he lacked anything to say, the interviewee went on about how evangelical Christians stopped slavery in the 19th century by using British gunboats. As we all know, that is utter rubbish. Evangelical Christians, especially in the USA, used the Bible to justify slavery, and pacified the slaves by converting them to their religion, so directing their energies and frustrations heavenwards. Slavery ended not because of Christianity, but liberalism. Continuing, he talked about how god can change racists to non-racists, conveniently ignoring the many who were or became xenophobic and bigoted after conversion.

Question 10: The Fingerprint Evidence - Did Jesus - and Jesus Alone - Match the Identity of the Messiah? (with Louis Lapides, M.Div., Th.M.)

Starting off, this scholar demaned objective reality from a god, and claimed that the subjective reality which eastern religions provided was untenable. That's rich, for at least subjective reality is harder to prove, but the "objective reality" he claims his religion offers is nebulous.

He then threw himself into identifying if Jesus fit the Old Testament prophecies. Isaiah predicted that he would be born of a "virgin". Now, not only do we have no evidence regarding Mary's virginity (and wouldn't a man married to a virgin and not consummating his marriage be seen as weird, and that's putting it charitably?), modern scholarship on the pertinent line in Isaiah concludes that the word "virgin" should instead be translated as "young girl". Further, there is a theory that Mary was actually raped by a Roman Centurion, and Jesus was the result of that rape. I have not studied the theory in detail, but it does seem plausible. Perhaps most worryingly is the fact that Isaiah's "born of a virgin" prophecy had already been fulfilled by the time Jesus was born - the sign given by Isaiah to King Ahaz was meant to assure him that his enemies King Rezin and King Remaliah would be defeated. This prophecy was fulfilled in the very next chapter.

Then there is the prediction that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. To achieve this, Luke has to make the family run around half the Middle East on camel back (see above), and you can judge for yourself the veracity of this "fulfilment". After that, we have the ancestry. The gospels give Jesus 2 sets of genealogies, and we have no way of verifying them, so to conclude that he had the right genealogy is preposterous. Of course, we also have the resurrection, where the prophecy said that he would "not decay" and would "ascend on high". This can have a figurative meaning though, and since apologists love figurative meanings so much, why don't they apply it here?

The author said the odds of all the prophecies coinciding were one in many millions, but what is improbable is not impossible, as a basic understanding of the laws of probability will show. Just because something happened, you cannot work backwards and say that since it would be so improbable for the event to occur naturally, it follows that there was divine intervention, for that is begging the question. For example, to say the odds of our coming into existence naturally are ridiculously low, so therefore we were created, is to ignore the fact that it is only *because* we exist that we can ponder this question, and that we cannot prove something by assuming it. Furthermore, prophecies are by their nature vague, and it is always easy to twist events such that they appear to fit prophecies, as a study of Nostradamus will show.

Even if he did fulfill the prophecies, it does not mean he was the Messiah. A Jewish page (http://www.noahide.com/yeshu.htm) makes a compelling case for the intriguing possibility that Jesus was a false prophet. As the page points out:

Deuteronomy 13 tells of a false prophet who would:
- Be a Jew (v. 2, 7)
- Tell true prophecies and have the power of miracles
- He would try to seduce the people away from G-d's Law and towards strange gods unknown to Judaism to test their commitment to living under the Law, or be tempted to join a false path to salvation (v. 3-6, 7-8, 11)
- turn against certain details of the Law at key points (v. 6, 7)

If the extract is not enough for you, you are always welcome to visit the above page.

Concluding, the author appealed to us to "Ask God to show you whether Jesus is the Messiah". Well done, really, considering that so many people have asked that and have not received an answer (doubtless for his own inscrutable ends). If he really would show people this, I'm sure the "true religion" would have a market share greater than 50%.

At this point, it struck me that this book would be considered really offensive to Jews, especially this chapter of it, but it seems to be readily available in Singapore. Guess the Evil Zionists have not subverted the Singapore government yet.

Question 11: The Medical Evidence - Was Jesus’ Death a Sham and His Resurrection a Hoax? (with Dr. Alexander Metherell)

I really have no issue with this chapter except that, once again, we have a doctor who is a devout Christian (gee). I concede that if (a very big if) the account of the crucifixion in the gospels is accurate, he did die. But then, since there are 4 different accounts of Jesus' final words before death, we cannot be sure of their veracity, can we?

Question 12: The Evidence of the Missing Body - Was Jesus’ Body Really Absent from His Tomb? (with Dr. William Lane Craig)

This expert explained away the conflicting accounts of the empty tomb by claiming that though they differ on many details, the basic point of the accounts - that the tomb was found empty. He explains this by glibly saying that there was thus a "historical core" to the accounts. Conveniently, this does not tally with the points previous interviewees made, about the historical accuracy of the gospels (if all are "accurate" but give different accounts, surely not all of them can be true) and how there were plenty of eyewitnesses who would correct any errors in the gospels. And anyhow, another explanation for the accounts sharing a basic feature yet differing on most other details is that there was a common desire to "prove" that Jesus was resurrected, which only could have been justified with an empty tomb, ergo all four accounts agreeing on this one point. The authors didn't or couldn't agree on the details though, which explains the discrepancies.

Addressing the point that Jesus was dead for less than the prophesised time (Mat 12:40 - For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth), he claimed that Jesus' being crucified on Friday and rising on Sunday fit the prophecy, since he spent Friday, the whole of Saturday and part of Sunday in his tomb. This is sheer ignorance, for Jesus died at Noon on Friday (and was probably buried near dusk) and the tomb was found empty on Sunday. If we are charitable, we can agree that he spent 3 days (or parts thereof) buried in his tomb, but what about the three nights? However much one tries using fuzzy math, between Friday and Sunday there are but 2 nights, and the scholar conveniently ignored this point.

The scholar says that since the gospels say that women discovered the empty tomb, they are true since Jewish law regarded women lowly and their accounts wouldn't be believed. However, Christ wasn't a Jew and in other instances, women were elevated by Jesus, so there is a lack of consistency here.

Question 13: The Evidence of Appearances - Was Jesus Seen Alive after His Death on the Cross? (with Dr. Gary Habermas)

This scholar kept emphasising people's contact with the resurrected Christ, and the constraints of time. He said that people living at the time the gospels were written could verify the facts and ask the people who were still living whether they had really seen the resurrected Christ. Who would really bother to track these people down, though? Early Christianity was very much a religion of the poor and downtrodden, who would neither have the means nor the desire to verify the truth of what they were told, for thought is a luxury for the well to do - poor, hungry and forlorn folk rather accept what hope they are offered and ignore the possibility that it is false. Meanwhile, the rich and the Jews would have dismissed the fairy tales they heard, having heard their like millions of times before.

Even if there *were* people willing to track all the witnesses of the alleged sightings down, how would one locate them? Except for the disciples of Jesus and those close to him, we know nothing of the identities of the alleged witnesses. Furthermore, Judaea was a big place, people travelled around and this was all before the age of the phone book and mass communications. If it were really so easy to track Christians down, the Roman and Jewish authorities would have had no trouble at all.

We are told that the risen Christ appeared to 500 people at once. If that is so, how come these people (among others) did not, full of holy inspiration, convert or witness to others? We thus oddly have no accounts outside the Bible of people witnessing to the risen Christ. Further, the figure of 500 is dubitable, for,

'when Paul states that Jesus "appeared" to "over 500 brethren at once" (1 Cor. 15:6), that would have been to a far greater number of "brethren" than were said to have existed before Jesus' physical body supposedly rose into the clouds. (Only 120 "brethren" existed at the time - Acts 1:9, 14-15, 22). So by the Bible's own admission, whoever or whatever may have "appeared" to "over 500 brethren" could not have been a physically resurrected Jesus, since his body left the Earth before that many "brethren" existed.

Ironically, the "500" passage is thus an argument against the physical resurrection of Jesus. Far more likely is that if there genuinely were (which I doubt for the reasons above) 500 witnesses of something, then they were like those at many other emotional religious gatherings. People
sharing a common emotion which they interpreted as an experience of the "risen Christ," just as people still do at religious rallies today."' (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~slocks/asym/jreply3/emails1.html)

The authority asked, "How long do local stories circulate before they start to die out?". Pretty long, as anyone researching folklore, mythology and local tales would know, but with people actively propagating them, it is no wonder these "local stories" have survived to the present day.

Question 14: The Circumstantial Evidence - Are There Any Supporting Facts That Point to the Resurrection? (with Dr. J. P. Moreland)

In this chapter, using various peripheral points, the interviewee tries his hardest to construct a case for the gospels being true. Since this authority relies less on evidence purely from the Bible, it is easier to give him credit - but not by much, especially since all the evidence is circumstantial.

The authority says that many early christians were willing to give their lives for the faith, and many apostles were killed by the Romans, so this proves their faith was not false as they would not have died for a lie. This logic, however, is contingent on the apostles actually being killed (and we have no outside corroboration of that). Also, it is proven that lured by the promise of heaven, people can do anything. This could have motivated the early Christians or apostles, as it has motivated people through history, especially if they were already inspired by preachers or Jesus. Even in modern times, people are prey to such lunacy - witness the popularity of doomsday cults. For example, Heaven's Gate's founder, Marshall Applewhite (aka "Do") followed his cult to their deaths in 1997. The founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, went to his death believing in the religion he had founded to cheat people of their money, even though he had once said that, "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous, if a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion." Reality is no barrier when people believe in something and cognitive dissonance is in effect.

For some reason, the authority then compared the conversions of Paul and Mohammad, both formerly skeptics, to the primogenitors of their movements. He said Mohammad's conversion was a private experience, but then Acts does not even agree on the details of Paul's experience. Acts 9:7 says they "stood speechless, hearing the voice...", Acts 22:9 says they "did not hear the voice..." and Acts 26:14 says "when we had all fallen to the ground...", so whether this occasion actually took place or not is in doubt.

He also said that converts to Christianity had to give up many Jewish practices and precepts they held sacred. Why not, if they were disenchanted with the old corrupt religion and inspired by a charismatic speaker, or just wanted to try something new? If the power of Jesus were really so great, all the people involved in his life - the Pharisees, the Roman soldiers and the Jewish crowds, would have been converted. If an entire community of "at least ten thousand Jews" was converted, surely a significant event, why was this mass apostasy not recorded in Jewish or Roman chronicles, or lamented of in the Talmud? Thus I doubt so many converted so quickly.

The scholar then pointed, as many do, to the uniqueness of christianity in having communion and baptism - the former celebrating Jesus' death. So what if Christianity is unique? A thousand and one ways could be found in which other religions are unique, but that has no bearing on whether or not they are true. He claimed that there were no mystery religions believing in the death and resurrection but that is either blatant ignorance or a white lie, for what about the cult of Osiris, which had existed for 2000 years prior to Christianity?

He then said that Christianity swept the Roman Empire, and it was this successful because Jesus existed. How the conclusion follows from that piece of evidence, I do not know, for after 40 years, all the witnesses to the resurrection would have died, and it took Christianity a good 300 years to become the empire's pre-eminent religion. If Christianity was so successful due to Jesus' existence, why is the whole world not now converted? Religions spread because of socio-political reasons - Islam for example was spread by Arab traders to Malaysia and Indonesia, and eventually almost the entire population of those areas was converted.

The authority then started talking about famous Christians and concluding that Christ existed, conveniently ignoring famous non-Christians. He also talked about "the ongoing encounter with the resurrected Christ that happens all over the world, in every culture, to people from all kinds of back-grounds and personalities." People all over the world (especially Americans) will also testify to seeing UFOs, Little Green Men and Elvis. Further, the "encounters" are dwarved by the non-encounters.

His final point was that there was an "experience test". Interestingly, many have taken this test, but have failed to experience anything. Ultimately, no matter whether the resurrection can be proven or not, this is the crux of the issue - is there credible evidence that a god exists today? For many, the answer is simply - no.

Conclusion: The Verdict of History - What Does the Evidence Establish - And What Does It Mean Today?

The author concludes by saying how Christianity has changed his life, and how he was a horrible person before, ignoring the cases of people made into worse persons by Christianity. He says that in other religions you need to do things, but in Christianity they are already done, ignoring the emphasis placed on Good Works by the Catholic Church, and that Christianity holds adherents to impossibly high standards where everything (including living) is a sin, and makes them work towards them, on pain of eternal torment.

Conclusion: My verdict

My emphasis on outside corroboration may seem picky, but without at least some form of outside corroboration, we will not know what truly happened, and commiting yourself to a lifetime of worship, giving of your time and effort, and then dying to no end is truly a waste. There is abundant evidence that a personality cult grew up around a real Jesus, and Paul later transmogrified the fledgling Christian faith into what we know today and furthermore, there is no verifiable proof of the Christian God's existence today, not any more than there is proof of the others.

Despite structuring the book so as to build a progressive argument for Christ's resurrection, Lee's arguments fell flat since he never adequately answered each question that he posed before moving on to the next one, with the assumption that all his previous questions had already been answered satisfactorily.

This book does make valid points from place to place, but overall it is a poorly written, poorly argued effort. An excellent book could be written on this topic, pitting Christian and non-Christian arguments against each other but sadly, this is not it.


For more excellent material on this and related subject, some useful sites are:

Historical Jesus or Jesus Myth: The Jesus Puzzle

Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story

CHALLENGING THE VERDICT - A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel’s The Case For Christ

Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth

Review of Lee Strobel THE CASE FOR CHRIST (Reading this, I am ashamed at how my review pales in comparison)

Even more weird shit from Melvin, from unspecified forums:

Trojan Games 2003 - Their events are... interesting, to say the least.


Re: This Strip

Usually Garfield is lame and brainless, but I like Jon's face at the end :)

ARGGGHHHhhhh.... i'm looking thru my junk mail and i'm actually identifying the drugs that various e-companies are hawking via spam email.......

GEP alumnae fill this in!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=93230296021

Why can't i get anything vaguely interesting or out of the ordinary on Memgen?? Am i that boring a person?? The most unconventional one was this, and it's not weird interesting, it's just weird .

"You are a drag-queen goth! Your outfit cost $56 and your secret is you listen to britney spears, yes for her music"

OH oh oh i found one i like~!!! Ok.... maybe not the orange yes bit but everything else!!!!

Be An Anime Character by mangacatgirl
Character Name
Eyes	Orange
Hair	Short Red Spikey Hair
Fashion Style	Black... Always Black
Attitude	Always Hungry
Role	Slave
Created with quill18's MemeGen!

I found this really funny. (As usual, those who are unable to contemplate thoughts and concepts they do not agree with should skip this portion. But if you judge yourself mentally sound enough to continue, I would be delighted to hear some thoughts :) )


Top Ten Signs that You're a Christian:

10- You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of your god.

9- You feel insulted and 'dehumanized' when scientists say that people evolved from lesser life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8- You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Trinity god.

7- Your face turns purple when you hear of the 'atrocities' attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in 'Exodus' and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in 'Joshua' -- including women, children, and animals!

6- You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5- You are willing to spend your life looking for little loop-holes in the scientifically established age of the Earth (4.55 billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by pre-historic tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that the Earth is a couple of generations old.

4- You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects -- will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet you consider your religion the most 'tolerant' and 'loving'.

3- While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in 'tongues' may be all the evidence you need.

2- You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1- You actually know a lot less than many Atheists and Agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history -- but still call yourself a Christian.


"If, as they say, God spanked this town
For being much too frisky,
Why did He burn His churches down
And save Hotaling's Whiskey?"
[Poem on 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, in which the city's largest whiskey distillery was left unscathed]

The following was recommended to me by an excellent source and I must say it's very interesting. To think that names have such potential to reveal accurately to you a person's inner compatibility with you!

Try it! The results will amaze you. They sure amazed *me*!

http://www.crushcalculator.com/cc.cgi?id=1068165243nzd


Six Degrees of "Asian Prince"

Back in high school I would get my hair cut at Le Nam, a Vietnamese-owned salon across from my mom's dental office. One time I sat next to this guy whose look referenced both "Purple Rain"-era Prince and Little Richard. I remember seeing his mug on posters for area concerts. He was very talkative and he asked me what kind of music I was into. I mentioned that I liked the Smiths. His blank expression led me to think that he wasn't down with the Moz and Marr.

Years later, my friend Janna sent me a link to Asian Prince's Web site. I recognized the guy that I met in the hair salon. "Asian Prince" is actually Tuan Anh, a local Vietnamese singer of some renown who's appeared on some "Paris By Night" videos. Some white Aussie guy thought his schtick was funny, so he made up this site about a pathologically self-absorbed singer with a fake Chinese name ("Wo-Hen Nankan") using Tuan Anh's photos. "Asian Prince" was something of a sensation a few years back, judging by Google searches.


Mystery of mysteries, which is the real Asian Prince on Friendster?

Wo-Hen or Asian Prince?

If pressed, I'd say the former though since it's linked to from his Official Journal!


I like this selection from the latest Demotivators collection:

AaahHhh! Marcel Marceau (mime extraordinaire) is performing at Her Majesty's Theatre on next tuesday and wednesday.... and i've got exams....and i don't have cash to watch it either.....

Download this song! lovely mellow tones.

TItle: Paano
Artist: Freestyle
Album: Divas I
Language: Tagalog

Well well.... you must remember who you're haggling with!

Easiest supper ever- courtesy of Her Highness Nigella Lawson. I'd been looking at this recipe for some time now, but refused to believe it was as easy as it sounds ... and makes great comfort food. Health-wise ... forget about it. Bacon, no veg, .... But it's fast, relatively cheap, easy (most anyone can do it ... i'm sure even RGS girls can figure it out) and satisfying (eaten hot!). Minimal washing up and no splattering of bacon-oil so you don't emerge smelling foul!

Serves 2 people, or one person being greedy (Not me i never!).

Ingredients:
125g pasta (your choice, personally i like fusilli - spirals)
125g bacon
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon minced garlic/ 2 cloves of garlic, minced

And get ready an ovenproof baking dish and a pot/saucepan.

Preheat the oven to 240 degrees C. Put a pot of water to boil (for the pasta) and add a couple of teaspoons of salt to it.

Dice the bacon, and mix with olive oil and minced garlic so it's coated somewhat evenly. Do the mixing in the ovenproof dish to save washing up, and ensure u coat the sides of the dish with some oil - it's easier to clean later as bacon won't stick to the dish that way. Nigella uses a rectangular enamel dish, I use a square Pyrex glass dish. Ensure the bacon is spread out evenly across the dish and put it into the oven.

Immediately after that, pour the pasta of your choice into the boiling water (should be boiling by now) and turn the flame down to simmer. Leave it to cook - should take 10-12 minutes. If you're not sure, sample the pasta- should be al dente (slightly firm).

By the time the pasta's done, yr oven should be giving off wonderful fragrant aromas ... drain the pasta (reserving a little of the pasta water) and take the dish out of the oven (using gloves). Transfer the pasta into the dish of bacon and mix thoroughly, adding drop by drop of the pasta water to lubricate if needed. Nigella suggests a sprinkling of fresh grated parsley; parmesan cheese is an option, but anything will detract from the potent mixture of bacon/olive oil/garlic. Eat out of the dish. Ta-daa!!

And if you're careful all you have to wash are: 2 tablespoons, 1 fork, 1 pot (which is hardly dirty), and one dish!

If you will recall, you DID offer home, hearth and board - and the chance to browse through your library - in exchange for my regaling you with rousing tales and stirring epics. We had a classic wandering-troubadour/feudal-lord arrangement!

And it was only a $7.40 taxi fare! That hardly constitutes "largesse"!

And finally, I only chomped merrily on ONE you tiao.

Since i discovered this... My newfound hobby!


http://www.fanta.dk/showmovie.asp?mid=7A5453A6-645D-4F8E-8F82-A0B341821D90

http://www.fanta.dk/showmovie.asp?mid=075CB66B-6D5E-4E91-B86D-AFDC9894C01A


http://www.fanta.dk/showmovie.asp?mid=9511F88E-72F4-4294-AA8F-B5D45C8783EC

Today, I was once again favoured by a visit from He Who Must Not Be Named, who thumbed eagerly through my gamebook collection and chomped merrily on you tiao, while still relying on my largesse to pay for some of his discretionary spending.


More weird shit from Melvin

Really lame Chinese Flash thing

The Economics of Suicide - Why trying to kill yourself may be a smart business decision.

Girls pummel man who exposed himself - A man described by authorities as a known sexual predator was chased through the streets of South Philadelphia by an angry crowd of Catholic high school girls, who kicked and punched him after he was tackled by neighbors, police said Friday.

Of blogging and unemployment - M$ employee loses his job because a photo he took of Mac G5s being used at M$ was deemed a "security breach" (Hmm. Sounds familiar)


Tried WMA for my MP3 player so I could fit more songs in. 64kbps WMA sounds rather muffled compared to 128kbps MP3. Maybe I'll get better results with 96kbps.


For better or for worse, my hits have been levelling off.

Unique hits this year:

Jan 3688
Feb 3265
Mar 3722
Apr 4104
May 1826
Jun 3560
Jul 5472
Aug 1002
Sep 3025
Oct 876
Nov 4


Some mystery fan sent me this:

-- bollywood fan -- has sent you a movie from
www.fanta.dk.

To see your movie, click on the following internet address:
http://www.fanta.dk/showmovie.asp?mid=ECD1D37B-237F-4E67-A4F6-7D69ADA07FF6

Hmm. :)

Fanta Shokata

My sore eyes are cured, so it's back to camp.

Fanta Shokata

This site seems to let you sub Bollywood clips. Why it's called "Fanta Shokata" I don't know, for there seems to be absolutely no relationship with Fanta. Besides which, it's on a .dk domain, so it's probably some prank site.

Carjacker on tricycle shoots self in foot - A gunman who allegedly tried to hijack a car was apparently no better at driving it than he was at maneuvering his original vehicle: a tricycle.

Six schoolboys hospitalised after taking Viagra - One of the pupils, all aged between 12 and 13, is believed to have brought the Viagra tablets into an all-boys school in Winnersh, west of London, and handed them around to five of his friends.


Blitz! (Warning. Turn back now if you value your sanity)


You're Andros and Zhane - a pairing that is so
romanticised and angst-filled it's beautiful.
Being separated for so long allows one member
of the pair to change, while they other misses
two years.


What is your Power Rangers (slash) pairing?
brought to you by Quizilla


You are an Unclassified Ranger! You tend to be a
loner and a hero, saving the day and then
fading into the background again. You stay
away from the crowds, but you are extremely
loyal to your friends and loved ones. Former
Unclassifieds include Jason (Gold), Zhane
(Silver), Mike (Magna Defender), Ryan
(Titanium), Eric (Quantum), and Merrick (Lunar
Wolf).


What is your Power Ranger color? (incomplete version)
brought to you by Quizilla


ORIGINAL RED RANGER


WHO IS THE RED RANGER U R BEING?!
brought to you by Quizilla

[NB: The above quiz is disturbing. Sample question with selectable answers: You just jumped out of an airplane straight into Lord Zed's lair. He is having the sexual relations with Rita. WHAT DO U DO?!

1) GET IN ON THAT HOT ZED ACTION!!!
2) You tell Zed to beat it! "HANG BACK ROOKIE, I'LL SHOW YOU HOW IT'S DONE!"
3) Totally wuss out and colour your hair more.
4) HOLY CRAP U JUMP OUT AND DO XTREME LANDING ON ZED'Z FACE!]


You are the Blue Ranger


Which Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger Are You?!?!
brought to you by Quizilla


billy


Which Original Power Ranger Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla


goaten the lion-goat


Which Power Ranger Monster are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


You're Kimberly Ann Hart, the petite gymnast.
You're cute, fun, cute, and you have a SIZZLIN
HOT boyfriend.


Which Power Ranger princess are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


You are Zhane, the silver Space Ranger! The Silver
Ranger was said to be the most powerful ranger
in the universe. After the attack on your home
planet, KO-35, you were critically injured.
Your best friend, Andros, put you in a
cryongenic sleep and you recovered. The word
that best describes you is girl-crazy. You
wanted Ashley and heck, even Astronema! After
you fought bravely in Dark Spectre's final
assault of the universe, you retired alongside
your fellow Space Rangers.


Which Space Ranger are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


Desert Thunder, Turbo Power! You are Adam! Deep
and complicated, you are a mentor to your
friends. You often meditate things through
before you act, which is a good thing. Your
experience in life will help others, including
yourself. You passed your Turbo Powers on to
Carlos.


Which Turbo Ranger are you?
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You're Ashley, the Yellow Space Ranger. Despite
being the slut that you are, you finally settle
on Andros. Too bad he has a stick up his ass
most of the time.


Which Space Ranger are you?
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Kimberly - The Pink Ranger The weakling of the
group. I always found you were more of a
liability, what with the "Save me, save me
Tommy's" and the "Oh my gosh...
that's like, so ugly... I might break a
nail!" However, you were the young maiden
in the high tower, and created excitement for
all the young boys, who had to see Tommy get a
girl.


Which second cast Power Ranger are you?
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You are Kimberly! You're typecast as the bubbly,
cheerful valley-girl, but inside, there is a
real fighter whose courage, grace and charm
make for a winning combination. You have the
distinction of being played by a good actress,
unlike some of your cohorts.


Which Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger Are You?
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I knew these existed! Too bad few have pictures, and most of them are very sloppily done (as are most quizzes). Perhaps the best of the lot is Which Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger Are You?. Finally, since they seem to give contradictory results, we can conclude that these quizzes are just a crappy way for bored people to waste time (surprise surprise).

Incidentally, I like the following results:


You are Kat. You replaced Kimberly, attached
yourself leechlike to Tommy, and are the reason
the author of this quiz stopped watching the
show. Shoot yourself now, or else I will.


Which Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger Are You?
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You are the yellow ranger.
I have this theory that the only reason the asian
ranger got yellow as her color, was because of
racial reasons. Damn racists!


Which Power Ranger are you?
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HIPPIE STONER POWERRANGER~
when all the ther little children were making
friendship bracelets with the little henna
string u were smoking it!...u like tie dye and
the 70's....remeber when u had to save the
kitty out of the tree?..yea you started barking
at it and being a dog cuz u were to high to
know whut wuz goin on..ur magic power is tiedye
zap


Which screwed up POWER RANGER are you?
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Of all the confounded things out there, we now have a Quiz: Wad girl's school should you be from?

So far I've manipulated the results to get:

Raffles Girl's school
Smartest of the lot with unprecedented arrogance.
And pUhlEeese... start Cheering like girls and
be RGS girls not RI GUYS!


Wad girl's school should you be from?
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Nanyang Girl's school
Good girls who always listen to teachers. you don't
break rules, you dont disobey orders but OH
GOD! ENOUGH CHINESE!


Wad girl's school should you be from?
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CHIJ
You scream for your school at any opportunity and
for some strange reason you love your school to
no end. You wear your belt so low that ACS
boys' pants would be considered high (yeah.
oh.. my..god)


Wad girl's school should you be from?
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SCGS
You're a very hard nut to crack.. stubborn and
sometimes a little bitchy.. you at one time or
another, wear your school tee over your
pinafore.
Situated between ACS barker and SJI... you'd still
pick SJI guys...


Wad girl's school should you be from?
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I was looking for one "you are a guy" option. Oh well. If anyone manages to get other results, please post them in the comments box below. Danke.


7 months, 2 weeks and 2 days to ORD!

We have spent the last 2 weeks preparing for the upcoming IQA inspection (now postponed till next month - yeh!). Being intimately involved in the preparation, I have had opportunity to meditate on the ridiculousness of all this ISO and Quality business, sprung from the body of New Age Management Rubbish (ala Dilbert).

IQA assumes that we live in a perfect world, and expects us to deliver perfection, or at least the appearance of it. Draw your own conclusions about what happens.

Among other things, we have to fill up paperwork that absolutely no one looks at except the inspection team (which brings to mind the question of why it's needed in the first place, as it doesn't help us provide Quality Service to the patients). Wasting time on the paperwork, we have less time and energy to spend on doing -real- work, so our level of productivity actually goes down. Also, we are not supposed to leave anything inside the temporary slots of medical dockets - what then are the slots for, I ask (except for lazy - mostly Tekong - medics to stuff visit summaries instead of filing them properly)? I find that the slots are good for putting fragile things - like x-ray reports, printed on thin paper. So now I've to file the reports in, and they'll probably tear in a few years. Furthermore, we're not supposed to stock more than one month's supply of drugs at anytime. The problem is that stock takes forever to come, so the alternative is to run out of drugs (and get screwed by the MOs).

All these requirements were probably thought up by people in High Places who envisioned them as leading to a improved quality of health care, but the sad reality is that on the ground, most of it doesn't work and in fact backfires, not only resulting in time, effort and resources wasted on paperwork and skulduggery, but an ultimately lower standard of work. The most laughable - and ultimately indefensible - part of the ISO requirements, though, is the Quality Manual (and related gobbledy-gook). Now, these grimoires on the Philosophy of Customer Service, Quality Policy and related Dark Arts (which staff are supposed to memorise?!) are so thick, jargon ridden, repetitive, unused and in a word: useless that how anyone in a proper frame of mind can think they improve standards is totally beyond me. The only reason why all this rubbish exists in the first place is to provide employment for the ISO people, pure and simple. Since they are the ones setting the criteria for ISO certification, they take the opportunity to stun clueless top-level management with their Arcane Manuals and Incomprehensible ISO-Speak, who then believe that these are Good Things (TM), when they are mere ploys to increase the bulk and complexity of the bureaucracy needed to adminster ISO certification, which benefits - surprise - ISO by allowing it to grow, hire more employees and generally better sucker companies of their money.

Of course, the SAF wanting to be a World Class Organisation (and to hell with the real situation) is not the only reason why all these measures are foisted on us. Us being unwilling slaves, there is no incentive for us to work well, so this is a way of making sure we do our work. Unfortunately, the law of Unintended Consequences applies again, as always.

Why we work so hard, I do not know. Maybe it is out of a misguided sense of responsibility.

The madness of inspections does not only affect us. We asked a unit for a vehicle to send someone to A&E, but they refused at first, because of their own upcoming inspection. Well done. So since the medical centre is preparing for an inspection, we should refuse to see all patients or give out any medicine and ask them everyone report sick outside (actually that way both the patients and us are happy - the former get bountiful MCs and we get less work while earning the same amount of money).


I am rather pleased with the SAF's handling of the POW training incident. There is greater transparency now, and less covering up. Perhaps this is due to a change in mindset. Or perhaps they realised that IRC chat rooms can spread the news faster than Pioneer Magazine can! As a fellow malcontent remarked: "The country is moving towards the right direction. The higher command can no longer be complacent. Not the increasingly critical tone of the st."

As I probably have mentioned before, the doing things by going up the Chain Of Command is useless. Your superiors don't care, and they are all friends, so complaining about one to his superior may not do much good, and may bring retribution. If your CO does not care about your problem, you supposedly can call an "Armed Forces Council", but few know that they exist and nobody (except the Chief Clerks) knows how to summoned one, and even if they do, is there any guarantee that one will be convened? Is it any wonder then that people like to write letters to their MPs, pull strings or otherwise circumvent military channels? There's always the SAF Hotline, but I venture that that's more to stop servicemen defenestrating themselves, thus resulting in a gargantuan PR disaster. For real complaints, the average serviceman has little recourse. For example, in the recent POW training incident, there isn't supposed to be physical contact, but they'd been drowning the trainees for god knows how long. Nobody bothered to report about this breach of training safety because they feared reprisals or being ignored. Hell, the people they were supposed to voice their concerns to were condoning or actively encouraging the drowning, and going beyond them was either unfeasible or unlikely to bring results (probably due to collusion?). The very chain of command that is supposed to solve servicemen's problems creates them by perverting training (among other things). There really should be an anonymous hotline to report abuse or other cock ups in the system.

Jason tricked me one day. He needed 10 oxygen tanks changed at the Army Logistics Base, and claimed that since Ban Xiong wasn't around, he had to remain behind, being the only specialist. I was suspicious of his motives, but not having been to ALB, I had no idea of the horrors in store for me. So me and Yao Shun merrily went to ALB. The vehicle we used was also sending patients to A&E, so it could not pass the ALB gate. Consequently, me and Yao Shun had to trudge all the way to level 3 of the warehouse with our heavy loads. By the time I got there, my shirt was thoroughly soaked. When we finished, we had to wait some time for the vehicle and so decided to eat at their canteen, since we wouldn't be able to return to the cookhouse in time. Their canteen turned out to be horrible. I had Chinese Fried Rice, normally a safe dish, but somehow, it was the only place in the world to cook Chinese-style Fried Rice with Chilli in it.

One day, Melvin and I were tasked to cover NSmen's IPPT... in Tanjong Gul camp. This camp was rundown, hard to find, and perhaps even further from civilisation (factories in Tuas don't count) than ours. Further, the mess we had breakfast at was both expensive and lousy. The people conducting the IPPT were very on-the-ball - they even asked the NSmen to count timing for their warmups louder (of course, the NS men ignored them). I sure hope I don't go to this sort of NS unit. The sole beacon of light in our visit was the E-mart. There, they had packets upon packets of white and black socks (out of stock in our E-mart for *months* - now we know what happened to the stock) and even several field packs! The food and toiletry selection was relatively extensive too.

The ATC cookhouse is learning from the old SMM's - I saw "Fish Fillet ala Meuniere" (fish with a lemon sauce) and "Vicky (Vichy?) Carrot" (which turned out to be diced carrots) one day. Oh no!

I am used to seeing instant noodle particles in the toilet sinks and water coolers, but what I saw one day dwarved my previous sightings - what must have been at least 1/15 of a packet of instant noodles was clogging up the sink of the water cooler. After a day, no one had bothered to remove it, so I nobly scooped most of it up with a piece of newspaper, knowing that if my CSM had found out, she'd have banned everyone from eating instant noodles.

I think if we go to war, some regulars will be the first to die as their men will shoot them.

The stray dogs in camp are becoming an ever-bigger nuisance these days. They fight more often and more noisily, especially in the wee hours of the morning, they bark incessantly after the sun has set and generally get in people's way. Now, I like dogs but the ones in camp are less predictable since they're not tamed. Besides which, they are huge, mangy and more dirty (especially the "Disgusting Dog" who has a serious case of piles and hangs out at the ATC Cookhouse during meal times, grossing diners out). One experience, especially, shook me. One morning before 5BX I was in the toilet. When I finished, I noticed one of the dogs had parked itself outside the door. Plaintive pleas did not work, so I jumped across the threshold and landed behind it. I was proceeding to the area where 5BX was to be conducted and then I noticed that the dog was following me. Even when I crossed a road, it followed, finally ending its "pursuit" at the chinup bars - probably another dog's territory. Now, I know he was just trying to be friendly, but when you're groggy at 5:20am, dressed in PT kit and there's a big dog you don't know following you, it is natural to be apprehensive.

For some reason, Lion Company pronounces their company's motto (when falling out) as "Firm and Fear'y". Maybe they're scared of something.

I was investigating the MINDEF Forums, which I had heard so much about. It seems a very censored place which is a cruel perversion of what a forum should be. Users are banned for the most trivial reasons: complaining (even in mild ways) about the SAF and the Government (as you might expect, the bulk of bans are because of this), posting of incoherent and nonsensical posts (that just shows he is a fool. Why ban him?), spending too much time on the forums during working hours (can you believe one person got banned for that?!), selling handphones ("moonlighting") and speculating who will win the next World Cup (somehow, this constitutes "betting" - preposterous). To their credit, though, the administrators do not (or at least, not that we know) reveal the identities of flouters of the forum's draconian rules to the Powers That Be, and allow appeals.

SAF is ending the use of manual leave forms. I guess they finally realised people were taking Magic Leave (TM).

I was discussing accents with 2 others, and they said I had a neutral, non-Singaporean accent which was identifiable - contrary to Jie's claims that I had the accent of a chinese-educated Singaporean (at times).


One issue of the crappy New Paper on Sunday which I happened to read one Monday had this feature on "tweens". I've always thought that the phenomenon was overrated, since the years 8-14 are not those when children traditionally have their identity crises. Maybe, with the chemicals in the environment these days, people are reaching puberty faster, so. Anyhow, according to the feature, lots of funky things can happen during girls' sleepovers - makeout sessions for example as they "take the opportunity to explore themselves sexually and physically". I was always under the impression that girls were more skittish about this type of thing, but then children these days...

Some quotes that puzzled/amused me:
1) "Sixteen is a cool age to lose our virginity. Anyway, we can't lose it any younger or we would get caught" - Yes, but it's the male who gets punished, so why do you care?
2) "Many people think that we're sisters because both of us have long hair" - This girl should be shot.
3) "Girls are prettier than boys. Boys are very dirty, rough and mischievous. I don't like them."
4) Article: "She surfs lesbian porn websites but she thinks that sex between 2 women is disgusting" - Isn't that what lesbian porn is about? These girls are dumber than I thought.
5) "It's disgusting to touch each other's private parts. It's abnormal. My girlfriend has never wanted it either." - Nice to see they share a solely emotional and spiritual bond. Anyway, it's not like society thinks their relationship is any more normal.

According to some girls schools, their students' homosexuality is an expression of their angst. Bah.


It seems people use Friendster to look for pictures of "chio bus" [Dialect: Pretty girls]. What, then, do the "chio bus" use it for? To look for pictures of "yan daos" [Dialect: Handsome guys]?

More traditional disingeneous advice debunked: If facing your fears is the best way of dealing with them, then those who fear being knocked down by a car, infected with flesh eating bacteria, molested or raped should "face" their fears and subject themselves to said activities.

It's evil how developers are moving to 3D games to force consumers to upgrade their systems, while saving on production costs by having the "movies" rendered by the in-game 3D engine instead of rendering or filming their own Full Motion Videos.

I realised I got conned again when I got Command and Conquer: Generals a second time. I suppose it coming in a single disc should have tipped me off, for when I played the game, there was no pre-Mission briefing, no unit sounds and perhaps worse of all - almost all of the terrain tiles had been stripped and replaced with black. Now, I'm no graphics freak but it is nice to admire the (relatively) beautiful terrain as rendered by the 3D engine (though it may never look as beautiful as 2D terrain). More importantly, I need to see ravines and other terrain so I know where to deploy my troops and where I cannot station them! Luckily, DirectConnect came to the rescue, so. I miss the FMV, though. Tanya was really brought to life by the clips in Red Alert. Incidentally, after returning from the UK I have not the patience for medieval total war. That's bad.


I think my introverted trait has been coming to the fore in the past 14 months or so.


Quotes:

[On Friendster] I'm your friend's friend's friend. Want to meet tonight for sex?

[Me on an X-ray at CMPB: Wouldn't you rather stay out and go there tomorrow morning?] Are you crazy? You know how many times I've booked out this week? Wah lao. Cannot tahan. [Me: This is the first time I've heard someone complain about booking out too much.]

[On Screwed Up Regulars] Don't you know? 42 is a dumping ground.

This medical centre is mine. You dare to put anything inside the fridge? I will eat it for you. [Someone: Stool sample.]

[On someone] He's the oly one in the Medical Centre whom nobody calls friend.

Masturbate - left hand. Eat pork - left hand. All the dirty things use left hand (things: use)

[Someone on not stopping CPR if you fracture a rib: Do you want to save lives or save organs first?] Save organs lor. After die can donate (you die you can donate them)

[Me on answering the phone] Hello, MO Room 4. (3)

[Sign] Hotel Pheonix (Phoenix)

[On Tanjong Gul's 'Camp II'] Camp 11? They have so many camps here ah?

[Sign] Care For Soldier (Soldiers)

She males cannot get jobs, so they take pictures of themselves.

Gabriel, you're supposed to be on a diet. I forbig you from eating vegetable (vegetables)

Many people speak about Miracles

"In the case of cancer, there are occasionally spontaneous remissions. If one of these happens under the time frame of a "healing," it will seem to be a miracle. For lesser health problems, there is the placebo effect - the mind is sometimes a powerful aid to healing and if one believes strongly enough that healing will work, it sometimes does. This phenomenon is still not well understood. What is dangerous, however, is feeling better temporarily and attributing it to "healing," when in fact no healing has taken place, and the patient will eventually get worse."

"Many people attribute to miracles that wich can be explained naturally. For instance my sister-in-law says it was a miracle her mother stopped smoking. My husband however tells me it was because he, as a little boy, told his mom that when he grew up he was going to smoke just like her. "

" Now, what constitutes seeing a "miracle"? Had you no knowledge of atomic weapons and witnessed the explosions over Japan, would you not see those as miracles? Just because we view things as miraculous does not mean there isn't a natural explanation that is just not understood by the individual. Many majicians may be viewed as performing miracles if the viewer does not understand that slight-of-hand is being used."

"I come from the heart of the bible belt and I've seen first hand how people are lead to believe that if these so called "healings" do not come about
then it isn't gods will.Conversly, if you are"healed" it is the will of god. Obviously a no lose proposition for the faithhealer. Many of these modern tent revivalists "heal" psychosomatic dis-eases that are easily mistaken as legitimate. People in these healing ministries believe,for the most part, what they are told or expect."

"In the occassional miracle tent crusades in this area and in church services, with the laying on of hands etc. supposed demons being expelled from some of them. I've seen and know many the people laying claim to god healing them. Much fanfare at the time but the reality of the matter is this. These same people who still live in this village are still as sick as ever, some of course have died. These are the same people who came down to the front of the church or tent and claimed the healing power of god had come upon them. These poor people who got caught up in the emotional hype of the night were victims of hyper active suggestion. There are some people in all walks of life whether religious or atheist who go into remission. This is as yet not understood but is leading more and more to positive suggestion."

"There was a popular faith healer, some time back, named Kathryn Kuhlman. At the time I lived in Los Angeles, she would fill the enormous Shrine auditorium, and her "healings" were numerous. People on crutches and in wheelchairs suddenly had bodies that could do extraordinary things, for all in the audience to witness.

A family member of mine, who was a nurse, told me that their emergency room had to put on extra staff for the few days following each of Kuhlman's visits to town."

"All religions have miracles. It makes them more appealing and helps explain anything we don't know. Most of the christians I know are apt to call anything good that happens to them a miracle. Charismatic churches teach that everything is a work of god or the devil. I challenge anyone to come up with someone that has lost a limb and had it regrown from a miracle. Why would this be any more difficult to god then healing cancer? Thing is, you won't find it. Any lead you get on a miracle like that dissapears when you chase it. If something like this did happen it would be HUGE news. Any doctor would be blown away to see that."

"Faith healers bury their failures... literally. The dead don't get to give testimonials about how God smote them down. The terminally ill who believe in such generally continue to cling to hope to the end, so they're not going to say anything to tick off the big cheese. And chronically ill people who eventually lose faith don't usually draw a large audience to hear their non-testimony of non-healing. So we usually hear only about the "successes." Anyone have any impartial statistics on faith healer success ratios compared to spontaneous remission rates? Hmmm... I wonder if it could be exactly equal be some strange coincidence."

" Does it not surprise anyone that when god has delivered a "miracle", everyone hears about it and everyone praises him, but the 9,999,999 other times when he does nothing, nobody notices or say that it is his "divine will"? Seems the odds of this god delivering a miracle are the same as that of the "miracle" occuring naturally. How convenient." (My own contribution)

Alcohol is a wonderful virtual CD program. Unfortunately, it's exorbitantly priced, and the claims of reading virtual CDs at up to 200x speed must be taken with a pinch of salt, since you'd be reading from and writing to the hard disk simultaneously.


I still think the Sunday Times is an atrocious, disorganised mess, divided into only 2 sections so at most 2 people can read it at any time. Regardless, their back page interview fills me with mirth:

Reporter: You seem to delight in controversy. Almost all your plays are rated R(A). Shopping and F***ing had scenes of gang rape, sex orgies, drug abuse, Bent had gay characters parading in leather G-strings while Fireface dealt with necrophilia and incest. Very dark and disturbing preoccupations for a Raffles Girls' School (RGS) girl, wouldn't you say?

Beatrice Chia: Oh no! On the contrary, my penchant for R(A) plays is inspired by my days at RGS! Underneath all those A1s, thick glasses and pinafores, we had very sexy minds too, you know. In fact, the school disciplinarian is my inspiration for this photo shoot. I dedicate this picture to her. Filiae Melioris Aevi (means: daughters of a better age) Mrs Lim! Remember that RGS didn't just produce such luminaries like Claire Chiang, Kit Chan and Emma Yong, we produced Annabel Chong too. We were very well-balanced, I think. I am definitely going to send my daughter to school at RGS.

Reporter: You spent two years studying at a boarding school for boys in England. How has that experience shaped you as a person and taught you about boys and men?

Beatrice Chia: Seriously, sexually frustrated British boys aged between 13 and 18, locked up in a boarding school that looks like Hogwarts can be pretty scary. They seemed to think that screaming 'Slapper-face!' at a girl 30 times a day and emotionally abusing her was 'smashing!' and 'wicked fun!'

By the time I left, I felt as if I had been through two years of BMT in Pulau Tekong.

Until I went to boarding school, I always thought William Golding's Lord Of The Flies was pure fiction.

Reporter: Apparently you got into regular fights with them.

Beatrice Chia: Yes. Those were some of the best days of my life. When you fight with scary British boys, you have to be prepared to fight to the death. Some of our fights would last for days. But I always knew how to hurt them bad. I would just confiscate their porn magazines. That always got them good.