Of Revenge

Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong, putteth the law out of office.

Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon. And Solomon, I am sure, saith, It is the glory of a man, to pass by an offence. That which is past is gone, and irrevocable; and wise men have enough to do, with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labor in past matters. There is no man doth a wrong, for the wrong's sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man, for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge, is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed, the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man's enemy is still before hand, and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desirous, the party should know, whence it cometh. This is the more generous. For the delight seemeth to be, not so much in doing the hurt, as in making the party repent. But base and crafty cowards, are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable; You shall read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our enemies; but you never read, that we are commanded to forgive our friends. But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: Shall we (saith he) take good at God's hands, and not be content to take evil also? And so of friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well. Public revenges are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death of Caesar; for the death of Pertinax; for the death of Henry the Third of France; and many more. But in private revenges, it is not so. Nay rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end they infortunate.

--- Francis Bacon - The Essays

Currently struggling through a Penguin Classics edition of the above. This essay is one of the more understandable ones. Maybe I'll be able to comprehend the rest better in a few years.


On the Wheel of Time:

"Ugh, I hate this guy. Robert Jordan is the Britney Spears of hack fantasy novelists, whose greatest glories are his overhyped, masturbatory, enormously sloppy brick-sized tomes full of scrabbled-together ideas stolen from his betters, which he seems to be able to produce at the rate rabbits reproduce, and his apparent utter inability to know when to shut the fuck up. Will someone please send this greedy bastard to Mars before he writes any more? Jesus. //"

Perhaps only those not possessing archaic, anachronistic and outmoded morals will not find the act of selling inherently "degrading and contemptible", but are able to look beyond the holier-than-thou moralising to see it for what it is - a simple commercial transaction.

As is the selling of the mind.

Only if the act of "selling" is inherently "degrading and contemptible", or maybe the mind possesses certain characteristics which are not despoiled by commercial transactions, whereas the body does (or at least that's the common delusion). I'm sure there are many other flaws to your syllogism.

If the mind is higher than, and superior to the body, is not the selling of the mind an altogether more degrading and contemptible act than the selling of the body?

[Ed: A note to nitpickers - this is a mere thought, and does not mean that I hold the selling of the body to be degrading and contemptible.]

The Webmaster would like to clarify that his selection of quotes does not in any way reflect his personal opinions.

He would also like to state that not all quotes make sense, and despite that (or indeed, because of that), they are put up for the world to view.

I was outfield and monkeys were wreaking havoc. They were extremely numerous and daring, stealing our trash bag, the CSM's bread and a few packets of combat rations. That same day, some of the bread I'd brought along to eat got filched by many people for - of all things - bait for fish. Gah. Later in the day, Guohan unlocked the hidden potential of the SAF jack knife - I never knew it had a pair of tweezers inside. Further inspection revealed a toothpick as well.

The SAF likes to drone on and on about security, but I think that one big security threat of its own creation is its obsession with looking for contraband (so it can deter people from bringing in luxury items and punish those who do, thereby making them miserable) at the expense of searching for eal threats to security (eg plastic explosives). Contraband poses a negligible threat to security - for example CD-RWs are no use without CD-RW drives, and ditto for floppy discs. Hell, going by this logic, pen and paper should be illegal too, and we should all be subjected to mind wipes on booking out to erase classified information from our minds.

Instead of just ordering less food from the cookhouse, my CSM has devised an elaborate scheme to ensure that we all eat our food. We are all getting a meal card with our particulars which we will drop in a box at the cookhouse before each meal. The COS will tick our names off a list and the CSM will check the cards after each meal. She will then return the cards to our Platoon Sergeants, who will in turn return the cards to us before the next meal. Wonderful.

Due to my punishing all-week exercise routine, the delirious, semi-conscious states I enter during company runs seem to be coming on earlier. I wonder what level I'll degenerate to next.


I brought the Victoria's Secret catalogue (so risque, it's more explicit than all the local Men's Magazines) to camp since it was going to be thrown away. I put it at the reading materials area one night before I went outfield, intending to see if it'd disappear in a day. The next day, I found that the other medics had already spirited it away for their own viewing, presumably not wishing the patients to become more sick after seeing the catalogue.

Sometimes I really can't stand the bunk. Walking in most mornings, its oppressive air hits me like a hammer. It's so hot, humid and smelly, I wonder how anyone can sleep there. It's bad enough when I sleep on the table, so I don't understand how some people can sleep far away from the fans, cover themselves with blankets and leave the windows shut, and not die of heatstroke. Maybe they're masochists.

I've realised that to prolong the longevity of my uniforms, I can take several measures. Nowadays, I try to stay in the medical centre for as much of the time as possible, and when I walk out of it, I walk slowly and alone (others like to walk extremely quickly some reason). The results have been quite pleasing.

Some people brought in durians from outfield and gave me and Melvin one. They were small, but otherwise weren't bad actually.

Ban Xiong and I bought 2 pillows at Lot One for $12.85. Yeh. I've labelled mine and squirrelled it away. If it gets stolen regardless, may the black little heart of anyone who dares steal it be doomed to eternal hellfire!

A friend of mine got charged for sleeping and fined $100. Gee.

I've been trying to brainstorm new titles for our favourite Local Third Sergeant, so he can rival Duli Yang. So far, I've come up with: Our Poor Suffering Local Third Sergeant, soon to be a Poor Suffering Substantive Third Sergeant, the Self-Proclaimed "Master Of Office", the All-Knowing Holey Man, Top Bio Student in NJC In His Year, the Lord of the Chair, He-Who-Cackles-Evily-To-Himself, the Gatherer of Unspecified Friends - Tan Ban Xiong.

Melvin got a fly in his laksa at the cookhouse. So much for safe food.

Gee. Even the good ole SMM is on Friendster. Eek.


My parents have a penchant for watching gratingly bad chinese TV shows at night. Usually whenever I pop in, I get disgusted after a while and walk out. This probably explains why we don't talk much at night.

The forum letters where every line is a question, and which end off asking a relevant authority to clarify its stand or give more information on the relevant matter are damn irritating. Actually I think all those letters are sent in by the same person.

I wonder if I'm still capable of writing anything longer than a paragraph and still have it remain cogent and lucid, given my recent propensity for short, disconnected writings. A bottom up approach to writing may mean more bases are covered, but the end result will inevitably be more incoherent and disorganised. But then how else is it possible to chronicle stray thoughts and scattered vignettes with no apparent link between them?


Quotes:

[On the definition of subversion] A forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social or religious beliefs, attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas - sounds like the army.

Even those at night prowling, don't go one corner and sleep or just follow the dog and walk. (For those prowling at night)

[On a presentation] When it's time to clap, please help them to clap.

[Someone on a phone query: So how did you deal with the matter?] [Me: I made her giggle and put down.]

Monica Bellucci is a porn star lah... She's got more class, cos she's French (Italian)

[On a film name] 'Apartment Comma L Apostrephe'. French is such a cool language.

[Me: Hello, Medical Centre] I'm calling from the Ops Room. [Me: Which Ops Room are you from?] 42 Ops Room. [Me: Oh ok, what are you calling regarding?] Err. I'll call you back later.

If Shostakovich is playing Piano Concerto then I will go. (they are playing Shostakovich's)

[On an SCGS girl on the street] I take leave, can wear slippers out. Chee Bai, wear slippers with uniform. [Someone: Wah lan eh, SCGS] All the big boob girls are from here. [Someone: All the lesbians]

[On rich people] Wah fuck he got 4 cars. 2 of them are BMs... No curtains. Have sex never put curtains.

Next time when I make it big... limouisine, hundreds of bodyguards. [Someone: I'm gonna employ my own militia. All carry MP5.]

Who should I send for the 50 kilometer run?... Gabriel! It'll take you three days to finish walking it.

[To me] Please do not put your breasts on the table in front of me when I'm eating.

[Me: My friend's letter just got published in the Straits Times. There are so many issues nowadays - I don't know whether it's about oral sex or LKY.] Maybe it's thanking a taxi driver.

[On trying the reflex test on my elbow, then knee and failing due to his incompetence] You have no reflexes.

Mom Finds Out About Blog - I'm sure we can all relate to this.


The Book of Imaginary Beings

Celebrities with and without makeup

The Observer | Travel | Size 24 and too shy for an XXL bikini? Fat chance


Some Great Helpful Hints

1. Flies or bees bothering you? Spray them with hair spray and they will take a quick dive.

2. Sealed envelope - Put in the freezer for a few hours, then slide a knife under the flap. The envelope can then be resealed.

3. Use Empty toilet paper roll to store appliance cords in. It keeps them neat and you can write on the roll what appliance it belongs to.

4. For icy door steps in freezing temperatures: get warm water and put Dawn dish washing liquid in it. Pour it all over the steps. They won't refreeze.

5. Crayon marks on walls? This worked wonderfully! A damp rag, dipped in baking soda. Comes of with little effort (elbow grease that is!).

6. Remove permanent marker on appliances/counter tops (like store receipt BLUE!) use rubbing alcohol on paper towel.

7. Whenever I purchase a box of S.O.S Pads, I immediately take a pair of scissors and cut each pad into halves. After years of having to throw away rusted and unused and smelly pads, I finally decided that this would be much more economical. And now a box of S.O.S. pads last me indefinitely! In fact, I have noticed that the scissors get sharpened this way!

8. Opening brand new jars can be a feat in itself. Well, I have found a way to make it the easiest thing to do. Instead of banging a jar of jam, pickles, etc., with a knife until it loosens up, I simply reach into the drawer and pull out the handy nutcracker. It adjusts to the size of the jar and I give it a good twist and off pops the lid!

9. Blood stains on clothes? Not to worry! Just pour a little peroxide on a cloth and proceed to wipe off every drop of blood. Works every time!

10. Use vertical strokes when washing windows outside and horizontal for inside windows. This way you can tell which side has the streaks. Straight vinegar will get outside windows really clean. Don't wash windows on a sunny day. They will dry too quickly and will probably streak.

11. Spray a bit of perfume on the light bulb in any room to create a lovely light scent in each room when the light is turned on.

12. Place fabric softener sheets in dresser drawers and your clothes will smell freshly washed for weeks to come. You can also do this with towels and linen.

13. Candles will last a lot longer if placed in the freezer for at least 3 hours prior to burning.

14. To clean artificial flowers, pour some salt into a paper bag and add the flowers. Shake vigorously as the salt will absorb all the dust and dirt and leave your artificial flowers looking like new! Works like a charm!

15. Stuff a miniature marshmallow in the bottom of a sugar cone to prevent ice cream drips.

16. Use a meat baster to "squeeze" your pancake batter onto the hot griddle and you'll get perfectly shaped pancakes every time.

17. To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.

18. To prevent egg shells from cracking, add a pinch of salt to the water before hard-boiling.

19. Run your hands under cold water before pressing Rice Krispies treats in the pan and the marshmallow won't stick to your fingers.

20. To get the most juice out of fresh lemons, bring them to room temperature and roll them under your palm against the kitchen counter before squeezing.

21. To easily remove burnt on food from your skillet, simply add drop or two of dish soap and enough water to cover bottom of pan, and bring to a boil on stove top.

22. Spray your Tupperware with non stick cooking spray before pouring in tomato based sauces and there won't be any stains.

23. When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking pan, use a bit of the dry cake mix instead and there won't be any white mess on the outside of the cake.

24. If you accidentally over-salt a dish while it's still cooking, drop in a peeled potato and it will absorb the excess salt for an instant "fix me up."

25. Wrap celery in aluminum foil when putting in the refrigerator and it will keep for weeks.

26. Brush some beaten egg white over pie crust before baking.

27. Place a slice of apple in hardened brown sugar to soften it.

28. When boiling corn on the cob, add a pinch of sugar to help bring out the corn's natural sweetness. (Works for carrots, too.)

29. To determine whether an egg is fresh, immerse it in a pan of cool, salted water. If it sinks, it is fresh, but if it rises to the surface, throw it away.

30. Cure for headaches: Take a lime, cut it in half and rub it on your forehead. The throbbing will go away.

31. Don't throw out all that leftover wine: Freeze into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces.

32. If you have a problem opening jars: Try using latex dish washing gloves. They give a non-slip grip that makes opening jars easy.

33. Potatoes will take food stains off your fingers. Just slice and rub raw potato on the stains and rinse with water.

34. To get rid of itch from mosquito bites, try applying soap on the area and you will experience instant relief.

35. Ants, ants, ants everywhere ... Well, they are said to never cross a chalk line. So get your chalk out and draw a line on the floor or wherever ants tend to march. Borax acid powder also works if you spread a thin line in the crevices that are not visible within the cabinets. See for yourself.

36. Use air-freshener to clean mirrors. It does a good job and better still, leaves a lovely smell to the shine.

37. When you get a splinter, reach for the scotch tape before resorting to tweezers or a needle. Simply put the scotchtape over the splinter, then pull it off. Scotch tape removes most splinters painlessly and easily.

38. Now look what you can do with Alka Seltzer. Clean a toilet. Drop in two Alka Seltzer tablets, wait twenty minutes, brush and flush. The citric acid and effervescent action clean vitreous China.

39. Clean a vase. To remove a stain from the bottom of a glass vase or a cruet or coffee pot, fill with water and drop in two Alka Seltzer tablets.

40. Polish jewelry. Drop two Alka Seltzer tablets into a glass of water and immerse the jewelry for two minutes.

41. Clean a thermos bottle. Fill the bottle with water, drop in four Alka Seltzer tablets, and let soak for an hour (or longer, if necessary.)

42. Unclog a drain. Clear the sink drain by dropping three Alka Seltzer tablets down the drain followed by a cup of Heinz White Vinegar. Wait a few minutes, then run the hot water.


This is pathetic. Hits by day:

09 Nov, Sun 2
10 Nov, Mon 4
11 Nov, Tue 2
12 Nov, Wed 3
14 Nov, Fri 3
15 Nov, Sat 2

Suspect the counter is spoilt.


Quote of the Post:

[On the iMac 2] It's very phallic you know. Like a breast. - Brother in Law

Send Your Name to a Comet - Certificate for Gabriel Seah

DEEP IMPACT MISSION
First Look Inside a Comet

Participation Certificate

Presented to

Gabriel Seah

On November 14, 2003

Thank you for your participation in the Deep Impact Discovery Mission to Comet Tempel 1. A compact disc bearing your name will be mounted on the impactor spacecraft that will collide with Tempel 1 making this the first mission ever to look deep inside a comet.

You are now part of the future discovery of clues about the beginning of our solar system as your name makes a Deep Impact!

Dr. Edward J. Weiler
Associate Administrator
NASA Office of Space Science

Michael F. A'Hearn
Principal Investigator
Deep Impact Mission
University of Maryland

Certificate No. 387442


Send your name too!

Deep Impact: Send Your Name to a Comet!

In response to a comment,

Things I have faith in: Human goodness, the progress of technology, open source software, the power of love, secular humanism, doggies, Blue Bear

Things I have no faith in: Realpolitik, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Gods, magic stone salesmen, pussies, spammers


I never imagined that when I posted the CrushCalculator (a most wonderful and accurate program, that) link, there would be 49 tries in 7 days.

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

We are currently converting to the SAR 21, ending reliance on the half a century old technology that is the M16. It has a few nifty features, such as being able to stand on its butt, but is damn heavy. I shudder to think of doing SOC with it :(

During physical activities, they always ask if anybody isn't feeling well. This is but a formality, for more often than not, those who fall out get scolded and are suspected of trying to "keng" (Ed: skive). In a peripherally related point, falling out of physical activities when one is on the verge of collapse or has sustained serious injury, is just like downgrading someone after he's been injured during training, or sending wreaths to the funeral of someone who has died in "service" to the SAF - pretty gestures, but ultimately pointless, since the damage has already been done. The root causes of the problem are not addressed, only the symptoms.

The SAF's forcing us to eat breakfast at unearthly times, like at 6+am, has many disadvantages. Needless to say, no one cares to wake up at an unearthly time just to consume the unpalatable slop they spoon onto your plate. The SAF thus wastes its own money, especially if people refuse to go to breakfast, but for regimentation and appearance's sake, breakfast is indented for them anyway. In addition, many people get hungry by around 10am, and then go for a canteen break. If they do not resist the temptation to eat lunch then, they will then be unable to eat the cookhouse's lunch, and eat again at about 3pm. Their appetite for dinner will then be spoilt, and they will eat instant noodles in bunk at night. Thus, we can see that an unearthly early breakfast can screw up your whole day! Whee.

I find the obsession with encouraging your weaker comrades-in-arms puzzling. Personally, when I am struggling to accomplish whatever physical feat has been assigned me, I find hollered encouragement to be more of an annoyance than a help, as it distracts me. Of course though, it beats getting screwed.

Why do some people prize suffering so much? Whether they view is as something to be desired for oneself, or to be inflicted on other people, it is equally perverse. For example, during company PT, I was "encouraged" by the people around me doing 2 pushups for every 1 that I did. How was their suffering more supposed to strengthen or encourage me? I am not a sadist, nor do I gain unholy energy through the torment of bound souls.

Why are orders and instructions always phrased in such a way as to try to scare people? "Non-compliance will be severely dealt with" and lines of its kind are always found in each day's routine orders, and on signs everywhere. The creation of a climate of fear cannot be good for morale. Also, army people have a fetish for the word "personnel", using it even when it is inappropriate - when referring to one person, for example. "Personnel" is an awkward word to use, and hard to fit in many sentences, but people don'tcare and just jam it in any-ole-how.

I always thought that the baton and wicker shield used during guard duty turnouts was useless. After witnessing one turnout, however, a moment of revelation came to me, and I've realised the purpose of the baton and shield - to defend the guardhouse against the likelihood that a gang of stray dogs (cats in the old SMM) charges it. Just like everything in the army, this seemingly useless practice has a purpose (*cough*).

The War On Me Continues

I have been shoved into the Unit Fitness Program, conducted on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays by the PTIs. They are all pleasant, unlike in BMT, but speak in a certain way - perhaps the speech patterns are taught to them in PTI school. Their training can be quite xiong [Ed: tough] at times, but they are much friendlier than most of the 42SAR trainers and their sessions thus less intolerable. On other fronts, the pressure has been stepped up. However, the conduct of company runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays means that I will be exercising daily, and it is only a matter of time before I get injured. I, together with all obese people in 42SAR, have been banned from the canteen on pain of us signing extras (together with our Platoon Sergeants) who needless to say will make everyone else sign too. So if lunch or dinner is hot, lousy or both, I will go hungry, since sometimes the cookhouse food is so bad I'd rather starve than eat it.

There is some flurry about my weight, and sometimes I feel like I'm a pig being fattened up for the slaughter - except in reverse. What does one make of a unit where, during the CO Conference, half an hour is devoted to one's esteemed self? So much for "The Cutting Edge Family". Also, I get bad vibes from them, and the unfriendly energies emanating towards me unnerve me, as if it's becoming personal - after all they even took the trouble of pulling me back from my attachment just so they could whack me harder and better.

I have always been urged to accept the situation I'm in since I cannot change it, and to adapt. My reply has always been that, if everyone had this sort of defeatist attitude, women would still not have the vote, and slaves would still be slaves. If such issues are not close to your heart, how about this - if Lee Kuan Yew and his team had had this mindset, Singapore would still be a British Colony. Lim Bo Seng and Force 136 were ultimately useless in the resistance against the Japanese during World War II, but they are still acclaimed as heroes. In an attempt to make me buckle, I am also told by them this is all "for my own good". Soviet political dissidents were put in asylums and subjected to electro-shock therapy "for their own good" too since they were judged mentally ill. In all, I realised recently that the reason why I persist is to draw strength and purpose from my resistance.

I'd like to think that, though by common reckoning, I'm judged mentally weak, this is but a screen, a protective layer in front of my true mental bulwark - despite attempts at psyching me, I am not brainwashed, and continue steering my course resolutely. I am not sure how it's appropriate, but somehow I recall this boy, less than 12 years old, who read about the plight of child workers working in carpet factories in Pakistan and started to campaign for the children's rights. In an interview, he was asked why he did what he did, and his response was: "If not me, then who? If not now, then when?" Of course, he *did* get killed later, so.

IQA

In our last minute preparations for IQA, our audit, we put up standing orders everywhere - even in the dining room. This led me to wonder if there were standing orders for the toilets:

- Male personnel are to pee into the urinal/toilet bowl, and not outside
- Non-muslims are to use toilet paper after defecation
- All personnel are to flush the toilet bowl/urinal after use
- Non-compliance will be severely dealt with

Anyhow now our audit is over, and we did slightly better than last year and rose slightly in ranking. Who, though, but the commanders and regulars care about this empty, petty competition between them? Sorry, but whatever modicum of pride I may have in being in a "good" medical centre is far outweighed by my shame at being in the SAF. Why is ranking so important anyway? Even if everyone is good, there will always be someone at the bottom, but it doesn't mean they are lousy. Those who rank higher are better at creating the illusion of a perfect world, one that even the auditors know is a mirage.

I wonder how those in the consistently highest ranking medical centre feel. Perhaps their thoughts are as follow: "I feel so happy and proud of being in the best medical centre in the entire SAF! The sole purpose of my life has been accomplished and I can now die in peace! Finally, I can walk erect down the street, my head lifted up high and a spring in my step, knowing that we are NUMBER ONE. My family name has been burnished. Now I can boast to everyone I know that I am one of the best, one of an elite cadre. People will now look at me with awe, respect and reverence."

Explained, many ISO requirements do make sense, but the benefit or boost to service complying to them brings is dwarved by the cost of conforming to them. But then, it's poor suffering NSFs who do all the work. The cost is not borne by those who push the drones, so they push on regardless of the cost-benefit ratio. Where staff have no pride or incentive to give of their best, there is a resort to ominous statements. If we had unlimited time, manpower and motivation, I'm sure we would all get full marks, but all 3 are in short supply, especially for those of us in combat units which sap all 3 with their petty, spiteful and inane antics and tomfoolery.


Our Emart now sells Cleo and other women's magazines apart from Seventeen. I never knew such magazines were so popular among the largely male population of my camp. Perhaps it's the barber who buys the magazine - or maybe it's an evil plot by the Emart woman: she pays a retailer's price for the magazines and reads them herself, getting a discount on the normal price. Ooh, cunning.

Colonel Bernard Toh (Director, Public Affairs, Mindef) has spoken - if both your superiors and the SAF Hotline/MINDEF Feedback Unit (didn't know we could write to the latter) do not address your grievances satisfactorily, you are allowed to write to your MP. So much for the talk they scare you with, of getting charged for writing to your MP.

I found instant noodles and other unidentified particles in the water cooler sink again, but this time I didn't clean it up, to prevent the danger of a moral hazard (which is the same reason why I refuse to donate to the Straits Times' Pocket Money Fund)


Current Affairs and the Parlous State of the World

The President of the Cat Welfare Society wrote that if 10% of HDB dwellers take 1 cat home, there would be no more strays on Singapore's streets. Gee. That little statistical nugget is about as enlightening as the fact that if everyone in Singapore gives me $1 each, I'll be rich. Besides which, Ken pointed out that if 2 cats remained, they'd quickly cause a population explosion, especially without competition from other strays. She also advocated sterilisation, and said culling was not the solution. Even if culling cannot succeed in eliminating the stray cat population, how is sterilisation any better? Both reduce the birth rate of stray cats, but at least the former also reduces the stray cat population, and is almost certainly cheaper too.

I recognise the geopolitical reasons why Singapore accepts China's preposterous and immoral claims over Tibet and Taiwan, but I can't help but observe that there are potentially serious implications for Singapore. If, on the basis of loose historical precedent, China can claim Taiwan and Tibet as part of its sovereign territory against the will of their people's and the principle of self-determination, what's to stop Malaysia or Indonesia from claiming Singapore as part of their lands?

The 2 year sentence meted out to the policeman for having consensual oral sex with a 16 year old is ridiculous. Why don't they charge the girl for abetting a crime then? This is yet more evidence that our legal system is weighted against males where sex crimes are concerned. And I thought they'd stopped charging people with sex crimes, unlike good ole Ma-laysia. Looks like I'm wrong, but at least the unanimous (afaik) public outcry is heartening.

It is ridiculous how people describe the put-your-hand-on-a-car contest as a test of the human spirit which strenghtens you mentally. It seems these days that motivational speakers and writers have elevated any moderately difficult task, regardless of its nature or reasons for it, into a test of the individual's inner strenght, and a way for one to emerge stronger. It is a case of the means justifying the ends. In the case of the put-your-hand-on-a-car contest, I see it more as the sad triumph of materialism and stupidity over common sense - c'mon, you even have people crying when they get disqualified.

There's this guy who has 20 EZ-link cards and says he keeps them as souvenirs. He must be really bored, since there's only one design available.

The New Paper proudly proclaims that "We're Singapore's No 1 Tabloid!". I'm glad they realise.

In the past few weeks, Channel Newsasia has been screening a so-called 'International Varsity Debate', where the teams consist of people of Chinese ethnicity and who speak in Chinese. What's so "international" about a debate involving the chinese diaspora, I don't know, and it is a very misleading name. If they'd called it the "International Chinese Varsity Debate", I wouldn't be so miffed, but to call it an "international" debate is sheer arrogance and misleading in the extreme and reflects the sino-centric view of the world, where China and Greater China *are* the world, that many chinese still possess today.

Singaporeans are too apathetic, always refusing to help others even when to do so does not require much effort on their part. People can be beaten up on the streets in broad daylight, and the crowd around them can just stand and gawk, refusing to help the victim because they don't want trouble or bother themselves, or to "interfere" in others' affairs. We are also too compliant, always ready to do what we are told, and to take the easiest path of least resistance. The American Dream is of someone starting from humble roots, starting a business and then striking it rich. The Singaporean Dream is to get a PSC OMS scholarship and become an apparatchik. I suspect that, if Singapore is invaded and occupied, especially if there are no atrocities or gross mistreatment, Singaporeans will not form a resistance movement, and will instead adapt to life under their new masters, since it is the easiest thing to do, at least cost to themselves, and they are used to complying. Therein lies the failure of the past few decades of social engineering - you get economic growth, at the expense of a compliant (not to mention uncreative) population, as materialism is the focus for all of one's energies instead of socio-political avenues. Happily, the Powers That Be have realised that this cannot last, not least because it threatens economic growth and are taking steps to loosen up.

Other thoughts

A scorched earth strategy is sometimes adopted by states in desperate times. Yet, no one ever accuses such states of cutting off their noses to spite their faces, even though this strategy fits the idiom well.

One thing that has always puzzled me is the weird way the Chinese choose their heroes. For example, take Qu Yuan, the former official who fell into disfavor with the king after "bad" officials bad-mouthed him, and then commited suicide by jumping into a river when he found out that his country had fallen, is lauded as a hero by many, despite the fact that he had been unable to face up to reality and had taken the easy way out by commiting suicide. By modern reckoning, he was cowardly and didn't think of all the poor common folk who adulated and loved him, so would be severely distressed by his death. Yet, we still commemorate his death by making dumplings.


Quotes:

[On a female who gave a talk] Aiyoh, the face is just like Ban Xiong like that. (Ban Xiong's)

Next time you go to Orchard Road, don't say 'look at her butt'. Say 'look at her glubs'. No one will know what you're talking about (gluts)

Which part of the body is your favourite? [Someone: Lan Jiao {Ed: Penis}] Zha bor {Ed: Females} lah.

kelvar plate (kevlar)

sastisfaction forms (satisfaction)

IQA all wayang - you guys also know lah. Even the top management also know lah (know that, knows)

You know what he does all day? He sits in his office thinking, [folds hands] 'Hmm, how should I torment Gabriel?'

You look sick. [Me: I'm sick of 42.]

[On getting 2 years' jail for having oral sex performed on oneself] Life imprisonment? Might as well deal with drugs and get hanged. (in)

Have you ever seen a bicycle travelling faster than a tonner?... That's the greatest insult

I love to see you eat. All the deft touches - so fast, so furious. It's almost an art.


Link of the fortnight: By invitation: Harold Hongju Koh - Rights to remember

"Freedom from fear has become the obsessive watchword of America's human-rights policy... Witness five faces of a human-rights policy fixated on freedom from fear. First, closed government and invasions of privacy. Second, scapegoating immigrants and refugees. Third, creating extra-legal zones, most prominently at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Fourth, creating extra-legal persons, particularly the detainees of American citizenship labelled 'enemy combatants'. Fifth, a reduced American human-rights presence through the rest of the globe."


Quote of the fortnight:

"Because I hate war. And I hate young, reckless madmen such as yourself who want to achieve glory by spilling blood all over the world. I will make you eat dust, Alexander. I will force you to return to Macedon, to die with a dagger in your back just like your father" - Memnon of Rhodes (c.380-333)

Extract from Alexander - The Sands of Ammon, Page 211

My brother in law forgot to send in the cheque for renewal of our Economist subscription, despite my reminding him (my sister will find this familiar), so I can't read it this week. Bah. Worse, it takes up to 28 days to get the first issue of the new subscription. Bah x3. At least I can catch up on my reading - "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson

He wanted to look at pussies at the SPCA today, so I humoured him. Many of the dogs looked gaunt. Of all of them, I particularly liked this Prince Charles:



After that, he humoured me by going to watch the Nam Wai Pai Qigong Demo, which I'd been wanting to go for quite a long time, ever since seeing the ad in the papers.



The audience was rather large, included many English speaking people - surprise and even one guy from Sri Lanka. Needless to say, at least 5 of us had cameras or videocams.

It was really amusing, for to promote their Qigong, they demonstrated many fantastic moves. For example, what is described in the ad as "See the Master using his 'Qi' to repel 8 strong men charging at him". A series of frames from some of the videos I took follows.









And then was the part where some demonstrators absorbed "Qi" from the ground (considering this was on the 5th storey, I assume if they'd done it on ground level, they would have been so powerful, they'd have been able to fly ala Chinese Gongfu Movies). It looked quite freaky, like they were in a trance.



After charging themselves with "Qi", they invited "young, strong" audience members to hit them. Naturally I was chosen. I hit his back 3 times with each forearm, and after that my arm felt a bit warm and tingled (probably from the increased blood flow). If it'd been up to me, I would have kicked him in the stomach to test his "Qi" but, oh well.



And the penultimate demonstration was the Master using his Qi to repel 8 strong men lined up in front of him.











It was all very melodramatic, but easily faked.

Through the session, Qigong was touted as having lots of therapeutic properties - from lowering blood pressure, to getting rid of asthma, to destroying lumps in one's breast. I'm not sure what to believe, but the power of the mind is great indeed, and there is much about the human body that modern medicine does not yet know.

[Update: I'm told NUS has a Nam Wah Pai Qigong club too. wth?!]

My brother in law's cheek is galling.

He is fond of coming up from out of nowhere and flipping my earlobes repeatedly - again and again, like some deprived pervert. Taking advantage of me relentlessly without mercy, sating himself on my body parts and violating me, he fulfils some perverse need inside of him.

It didn't use to be so bad - when he first discovered this secret, forbidden need, he would content in but one jerk of his finger. Nowadays, his addiction has grown on him, like some insatiable parasite, and every time the irresistable urge comes over him, he descends on me, his eyes clouded by the lobe-lust, and immediately starts flipping away as if his very life depended on it.

Maybe it's because he has no one to practise his fingering skills on, but each episode leaves me feeling increasingly soiled and used, and tempted to elbow him vigorously, as I did today.

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)