Pursuing dreams

Science vs Faith

2009-06-23T06:03:00.000-07:00

Someone sends me this. I really like the illustration of Science vs Faith. It clearly points out the serious problem of living your life based on "faith".

Teaching religion in a science class?

2009-06-10T15:30:00.000-07:00

Background:

In Hong Kong, the new senior secondary school biology and combined science curriculum effective from September 2009 contain a statement in the part of evolution that may encourage unscientific theories to be propagated in science classes.

The related passage reads: "In addition to Darwin's theory, students are encouraged to explore other explanations for evolution and the origins of life, to help illustrate the dynamic nature of scientific knowledge."

News media reported that at least 31 secondary schools in Hong Kong have already admitted to teach Creationism and/or Intelligent Design as an alternative to the theory of evolution during science lessons.

The Education Bureau first turned their back to the complaining scientists from the University of Hong Kong, but later stated in a TV program that creationism is not “considered as an alternative to Darwin’s theory”.

In the same TV program a secondary school principal lashed out at the scientists for being narrow-minded by expelling religious ideas. Another secondary school principal said on the newspaper that "Our religious belief does not approve of evolution" .

In early May 2009, a group of 62 people, including educators and scientists, signed a statement calling for controversial guidelines to be retained because it is "stimulating, balanced, non-biased and has worked well" .

To date, the theory of evolution is the only robust and established scientific theory regarding the biodiversity on Earth. It has stood numerous tests ever since publishing, and is supported by overwhelming evidence and confirmed by other areas of sciences like biochemistry, genetics, anatomy, physics and geology.

This central theory in biology has substantially contributed to many of the greatest scientific and technological advancements in modern medicine and agriculture, thus has saved many lives and improved their living.

The other "explanations", such as Creationism or Intelligent Design, are not even consistent with the definition of science, and have been dismissed by scientists worldwide as pseudo-sciences with strong reasons. Scientists have already stated openly and widely that these unscientific ideas should not be taught in science classes .

The problematic statement in the new biology and combined science syllabuses will open a loophole for pseudo-sciences, resulting in a great damage to quality education in Hong Kong, whereby knowledge on the theory and fact of evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied, or confused with ideas or notions not testable by science, and thus contradicts the objectives of science education.

There are evidences showing damages have already been made to science education, as schools and teachers with religious background unscrupulously teach Creationism and Intelligent Design during science classes.

Education Bureau, as stated in its vision statement, is responsible for providing quality education to our next generation; it must address this problem seriously and with urgency, and clearly expresses their position publicly, to prevent this problem from further spoiling Hong Kong’s international image.

My comment:

I have changed my earlier title because it may sound a bit offensive, but to me, Christianity is really a stone-aged belief system. It was initially created by the Hebrews and later propogated to the whole world when all of the teachings in the Old Testament were clearly only meant for the Hebrews (or Jewish). Some of the examples including the idea of Messiah to save the world (when in the Old Testament, Messiah was meant to save the Jews only), slavery (according to the bible, all foreigners other than Jews can be LEGITIMATELY enslaved, just read my earlier post on this). I used to believe so deeply in it when I was ignorant about all these issues in the bible, when I did not think critically about these issues and when I was unaware that all these hidden issues can be so hurtful to certain groups of people (like women, gays, black people who used to be enslaved etc, non-believers etc).

And I think this book is not only hurtful and offensive to some of the fellow human who do nothing but just being who they are or who they are born to be, it is also an impediment to the human progress. I always believe that if you intend to learn more about the universe (natural science), learn more about the society and human behaviour (social science), you have to first admit that you're so ignorant on many things. There are still so many things out there that you don't know about, you have to first humble yourself and admit your ignorance in order to appreciate the awe that the knowledge of the universe can bring you.

Learning new things works best when you don't have pre-supposition or judgement about things that you want to learn. When you have the following presumptions in mind:

1. There must be a God

2. Universe must be created by a God

3. God must have created the universe in 6 days

4. No other theory is right, bible, which was written thousands of years ago, must be right

how can you learn new knowledge? How could you continue filling water into a glass that has already been filled? What else is there for you to research or prove about the origin of life if you believe that everything is created by God (which is not provable at all)? That to me, is more of an excuse to slack and inhibit the progress of humankind to discover new knowledge, it's totally not helpful to human progress at all. Why should we teach this kind of wishful/unhelpful thinking or attitude to children in school, and to make the matter worse, in a science class?

Life is full of uncertainties, full of unknowns, full of possibilities. I'm willing to admit that I'm not well-read enough to know all about the origin of life, to know all about the history of humankind on earth. I'm willing to admit that I know too little, and many of the times, I don't have answers to many questions, eg: Does God exist? Does God create all of us and the universe? My honest answer is "I don't know". The one that says he/she knows, is either lying, or being misled by some people or some books (which is written by people and claimed to be written by God) to think that he/she knows the answer.

As a child, I used to demand for certainty, everything must be either in black or white, good or evil, good guy or bad guy, and what bible says must be the truth. But hey, we grow up, and growing up means accepting more uncertainties and grey areas, it means you have to think more for yourselves and no more standard answer to spoon-feed you. Many values I learn as a child, are either too simplistic or inconsistent with each other. I learn to exercise more critical thinking and evaluate them as I grow up and acquire more knowledge about the world, either through interaction with people from different backgrounds, countries, genders, or cultures or through reading books about people's experience, scientific discoveries or simply thinking about it.

Everyday, everywhere, every moment and every occasion, I see learning opportunity, that is the day when I realise that bible is no longer, and can no longer be the guidance of my life, that there is no standard answer there for me to rely upon as the source of truth.

Source:

http://www.gopetition.com/online/28149.html

Is homosexuality a choice?

2009-05-16T07:05:00.000-07:00

For those who believe that homosexuality is a conscious lifestyle choice made by an individual, and it is contagious and can spread to other people like a virus (Note: some people argue that if homosexual behaviour is legalised, there will be more people "choose" to be gay and cause the social fabric to break down. The fact is, all western developed countries have already legalised it many years ago and some have even extended it to gay marriage, and nothing of such has ever happened or is happening. Globally, all the developed countries have legalised it (except Sg), currently only those very backward countries like Muslim & 3rd world countries are still criminalizing homosexual act.), it's time to update yourself with the latest scientific findings and get rid of your ignorance.

Also, for some (religious) people who are incapable to think/evaluate for themselves and have to rely on the bible (which is so wrong on many things) to say that "homosexuality is a sin" without the application of any logical reasoning, maybe you should start to exercise your "precious & intelligent mind" (possibly) created by your God.

These series of videos show the journey of a British actor John Barrowman in his quest for answer to the question "why is he gay?" I wish people can shed off their ignorance and gain enlightenment about "homosexuality" after watching these videos. Enjoy! (I believe ah cat would enjoy the "sexy british accent", haha!)

Conventional Logic vs Religious Logic

2009-05-16T04:39:00.001-07:00

This really makes me laugh! And it's so true, so many (religious) ppl are having this kind of "religious mindset", no matter how well-educated they are. It's a sad reality.

Can the bible withstand public scrutiny?

2009-04-28T06:06:00.000-07:00

While ah cat has been watching/reading Twilight saga, I have been watching another non-fictional saga unraveled over the past two weeks. It's about a Singapore NGO, called AWARE--Association of Women for Action and Research. I heard about this organization before as it was a fairly outspoken organization, especially on women issues, but I never paid much attention to it in the past since it is a women organization, till recently.....

On 28 March (Sat), something unusual happened such that it made news in the media.

A bunch of newcomers, who joined the NGO for just a few months, had won 9 out of 12 positions. Many old guards who had been with the organization since its establishment in 1984 lost the elections. And during the AGM, there was an unprecedented large turnout of new members (about 80%), who joined during Jan- March 2009. The number of turnout was tripled that of normal times. When this happened, people who read the news would naturally have the following questions in mind:

Who are these new women?
What do they wanna achieve?
Why was there such a big spike in new members during Jan- March 2009?
Where were they from?
What do they have in common?
What is their agenda?
Was this an orchestrated takeover or just simply a coincident (which is quite unlikely)?

Well, the ST (Straits Times) reporter was really smart in finding the links between the newcomers. Slowly, as more and more news were reported (either press media or online media), people began to see their hidden agenda. The unraveling of the incident has really been an exciting and interesting episode.

To let the public have some clues about the background of the newcomers, the reporter had given the following information:
- previously during the episode of the repeal of the anti-gay law 377A (which was then also hotly debated), a number of the newly elected members or spouse had written to the media to condemn gays and termed it as a "lifestyle", as if people intentionally wanna choose to be gay to be discriminated against.
- 6 of the newly elected members attend the same church
- The church they attended has a very strong view against homosexuals

With these 3 pieces of information, and a few subsequent statements made by the new members and their "mentor", known as Dr Thio Su Mien (former NUS Law Dean, who is clearly the mastermind of the whole orchestrated takeover) who appeared suddenly during the press conference, everything seemed to fall in place nicely. Guess what, Dr Thio, who is former Law Dean, tried to convinced the public that AWARE was promoting homosexual lifestyles, and the old Excos were promoting homosexuality with her flawed logic. Sometimes, it makes me wonder what does it mean to claim to be a christian when you can make such a false claim so blatantly and knowingly that even a person with secondary education knows that it's false (you can just read what AWARE has done in the past on its website), let alone a Law Dean. To know the arguments and counter arguments, you may refer to this blog post.

As the whole saga is too long to be told here, you can visit here if you are interested to know the whole saga in detail.

Now, you might ask: So what has it got to do with the bible?

As their agenda was exposed by the media and online bloggers, and their church was widely publicized, people start to question many things they found on the church's website, one of the articles found was this. In the article, there are some quotes from the bible that preach questionable/unacceptable values (related to woman) in the context of our modern society (you don't have to take my quotes, you can read the whole chapter on your own if you think that I quote out of context):

(i) Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. (Ephesians 4:13, English Standard Version)

(ii) Let the woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a women to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing-- if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. ( 1 Timothy 2:11-15, English Standard Version)

(iii) Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband.......But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. For some have already strayed after Satan. If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are really widows. (1 Timothy 5:9-16, English Standard Version)

All the three parts are clearly outrageous and are clearly preaching "stone-aged values", especially when read by a female who believes in gender equality.

I would especially like to comment on the third part. It's INSULTING, VERY VERY INSULTING. Mr Paul, you're insulting my mum OK! Let's see what Mr Paul said in point form:

Only widow who is older than 60 years old is a real widow (if you read the whole chapter)
younger widow has stronger sexual desire ("passions" is the euphemism), so they tend to marry again
her choice to marry again is to be condemned
young widows learn to be idlers, gossipers, slanderers, busybodies
so, let them marry, bear children, do house chores, so that they don't have the chance to slander
let woman who has relatives who are widows care for them, DON'T BURDEN THE CHURCH
BECAUSE YOUNG WIDOWS are not REAL WIDOWS (This is really unconscionable and insulting to me!)

I am truly furious when I see this: condemning a woman whose husband has just passed away, just because SHE IS YOUNG (not more than 60)! And you call that a book that preaches love and salvation?! I bet you will be more outrageous if you read the whole chapter!

And how can the public not furious, not question, not criticize this kind of totally biased values? And this is not a quote from any person, it's from the "holy bible", which is supposed to be the foundation of Christianity!

Ok, I have finished venting my anger. Back to my question: Can the bible withstand public scrutiny? You be the judge-- objectively and honestly. Dear ladies out there, I hope you can really say something, this is about you and I said this before, please defend your conscience, not the book!

Pop Quiz on "The Passion of Christ"

2009-04-12T03:50:00.001-07:00

This is a quiz to test your general knowledge and understanding of the stories on The Passion of Christ (designed by me) starting from the moment Jesus entered Jerusalem. Everyone, including those who know little about the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus are welcome to do the quiz if you're interested. I think those who are interested can read my previous post to gain some background understanding of the questions below.

Ready?

1. When Jesus entered Jerusalem during the Triumphal Entry, how many animals did he ride?

a. 1 animal—colt
b. 1 animal—donkey
c. 2 animals—donkey & colt
d. All of the above

2. What did Jesus say to Peter regarding his denial of Jesus?

a. Before the rooster crows twice, Peter will deny Jesus 3 times
b. The rooster will not crow till Peter had denied Jesus 3 times.
c. All of the above

3. Who carried the cross which Jesus was going to be crucified on ?

a. Jesus himself
b. Simon of Cyrene
c. All of the above.

4. What was Jesus’ reaction during the trial before Pilate?

a. Jesus answered “You have said so” when Pilate asked him if he was the King of the Jews and gave no further answer.
b. Jesus told Pilate that “his kingdom that is not of this world”, “he has come into the world to speak the truth”, “declaring Pilate has no ultimate power over him, except what has been given him by God”.
c. All of the above

5. When was the curtain of the temple ripped?

a. The curtain of the temple was torn in two after Jesus breathed his last.
b. The curtain of the temple was torn in two before Jesus breathed his last.
c. All of the above.

6. What did the centurion said when Jesus died?

a. Truly this man was the son of God
b. Certainly this man was innocent
c. All of the above.

7. What did the criminals who were crucified with Jesus do to Jesus?

a. They mocked him like what the priests, scribes and elders did
b. One of the criminals mocked Jesus, but another rebuked him and insisted that Jesus was innocent and asked Jesus to remember him when Jesus came into his kingdom
c. All of the above.

8. How many times did Jesus die?

a. 1 time
b. 2 times

9. When did Jesus die?

a. 9 a.m., the Day of Passover
b. About noon, the Day of Preparation for the Passover
c. All of the above, though it sounds absurd.

10. Who dealt with the corpse of Jesus. ie: wrapped in a linen shroud and laid him in the tomb?

a. Joseph from Arimathea only
b. Joseph from Arimathea and Nicodemus
c. All of the above.

11. Who actually went to the tomb?

a. Mary alone
b. Mary and another Mary
c. Mary Magdalene, Mary and the mother of James, and Salome
d. The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee (possibly Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other unknown women)
e. All of the above.

12. What did they see when they were at the tomb?

a. The stone had been rolled away from the tomb, and a young man in the tomb
b. A great earthquake, an angel descended from heaven and rolled back the stone and sat on it.
c. Stone had been rolled away from the tomb, and two men in the tomb
d. The stone had been taken away from the tomb, no one inside, but Peter went again and saw some linen cloths lying there.
e. All of the above.

13. If the women met someone in the tomb, what were the women told by the “messenger(s)” they met in the tomb?

a. Told the disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead, Jesus was going to Galilee before the disciples, asked the disciples to go to Galilee to meet him.
b. Told the disciples that Jesus had risen, like how Jesus once told the disciples when Jesus was in Galilee.
c. All of the above.

14. Did the women tell the disciples what they saw?

a. They ran to tell the disciples what they saw and heard.
b. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
c. All of the above.

15. If the women told someone what they saw in tomb, who did they tell?

a. The eleven disciples
b. The eleven disciples and all the rest
c. Simon Peter and another (unnamed) disciple, the one whom Jesus loved
d. All of the above

16. What did the disciples do in response?

a. They had no response because Jesus appeared immediately after the women told them
b. They did not believe the women because it seemed like an “idle tale”. Peter rose and ran to the tomb.
c. Peter and the other (unnamed) disciple ran to the tomb to see for themselves.
d. All of the above

17. Where should the disciples suppose to go to meet Jesus?

a. Galilee
b. Stayed in Jerusalem, not to depart from Jerusalem
c. All of the above.

18. Where did Jesus ascend to heaven?

a. Bethany
b. Galilee
c. All of the above.

Enjoy doing the quiz! If you're keen to know the answers to all the questions, please click here.

Jesus, Interrupted-- by Bart Ehrman

2009-04-06T06:17:00.000-07:00

I started out this blog due to boredom. Now that my lifestyle has changed, my enthusiasm to continue posting has gone down tremendously. Nevertheless, I will still continue posting, just my my frequency of posting will decrease by a lot.

Talk about my recent life, I'm truly happy recently. Not that I'm not happy in the past, but quite a number of things which are of significance to me have happened recently (including the moment when I'm writing this post), which have really made me happier than I used to be. Nevertheless, I shall keep to my policy of not discussing about my personal stories here in this blog.

Recently, I have also read a few really good books. One of them is Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) by Bart Ehrman. It is really a very fascinating book to read. Though I have come to the realisation that bible is just another human book, the bible still remains to be a source of fascination to me. And Bart Ehrman's honest relevation of the truth is really what makes the book so interesting and so informative. After I read the book, I'm just amazed by how ignorant I used to be when I hold the bible so high up and told people that it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In my past few posts about bible (here, here and here) I mainly talk about the old testament, very few about the new testament. This book deals with the problems in the new testament. As Bart Ehrman is an academic historian specializing in the study of new testament, he evaluated the claims in the bible with regard to the authorship (who wrote the new testament), historical Jesus, origin of christianity and the reasons for the (many) contradictions in the gospels.

I shall just quote some of the interesting excerpts for the benefit of those who don't have the chance to read the book.

Of all the 27 books in the new testament, only 8 of them are almost certain to have been written by the people traditionally thought to be their authors.

The Gospels for the most part do not provide disinterested factual information about Jesus, but contain stories that had been in oral circulation for decades before being written down. This makes it very difficult to know what Jesus actually said, did and experienced. Scholars have devised ways to get around these problems, but the reality is that the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels (for eg the divine being become human in the Gospel of John) represents a later understanding of who Jesus was, not a historical account of who he really was.
There were lots of other Gospels available to the early Christians, as well as epistle, Acts and apocalypses. Many of these claimed to be written by apostles, and on the surface such claims are no more or less plausible than the claims of the books that eventually came to make up the New Testament. This raises the question of who made the decisions about which books to include, and of what grounds they had for making the decisions.

Though the author, through his profession, came to the realization that Christianity was just a human creation, his attitude is relatively different from mine, he adopts a more nuanced approach to his belief. Below are some of the excerpts that might summarise his attitude towards Christianity:

In my case, when I came to realize that Christianity was a human creation, I felt the need to evaluate what I thought about its claims. And I came to think that they resonated extremely well-- with how I looked at the world and thought about my place in it.
But the religion built up around God and Jesus was based, I came to believe, on various myths, not historical facts. Jesus' death was not a myth, but the idea that it was a death that brought about salvation was a myth.
Salvation, for me, became less and less a question of whether I would go to heaven or hell when I die. I came to realise that these concepts were also, in a sense, myths. There is not literally a place of eternal torment where God, or the demons doing his will, will torture poor souls for 30 trillion years (as just the beginning) for sins they committed for 30 years. What kind of never-dying eternal divine Nazi would a God like that be? (Note: I couldn't agree more with this statement.)
There came a time in my life when I found that the myths no longer made sense to me, no longer resonated with me, no longer informed the way I looked at the world. I came to a place where I could no longer see how-- even if viewed mythically-- the central Christian beliefs were in any sense "true" for me, given the oppressive and powerful reality of human suffering in the world.

For those who think that the bible has a unified theme throughout the 66 books in both New & Old Testament, and can be summarised into a simple statements (for eg: "the ten commandments", or "it's all about a loving, fair and just God"), this is his advice:

It would be impossible, I should think, to argue that the Bible is a unified whole, inerrant in all its parts, inspired by God in every way. It can't be that. There are too many divergences, discrepancies, contradictions, too many alternative ways of looking at the same issue, alternatives that are often at odds with one another. The bible is not a unity, it is a massive plurality. God did not write the bible, people did.
In my opinion, people need to use their intelligence to evaluate what they find to be true and untrue in the bible. This is how we need to live life generally. Everything we hear and see we need to evaluate-- whether the inspiring writings of the bible, or the inspiring writings of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, or George Eliot, of Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, or the Dalai Lama.

And Bart Ehrman has many interesting comments on the various gospels-- Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. These are the materials taught in the major advanced bible study institutions in US and are well-known among the bible scholars but are never passed down to persons in the pew-- to quote his words --" It is the view taught in all the major textbooks on the New Testament used in these institutions. It is the view taught in seminaries and divinity schools. It is what pastors learn when they are preparing for ministry. And why isn't this more widely known? Why is it that the person in the pew-- not to mention the person in the street-- knows nothing about this? Your guess is as good as mine."

About Matthew (one example, you can read the book for more examples):

We have seen that Matthew is particularly keen to show that everything in Jesus birth, life and death was a fulfillment of Scriptural prophecy. So why was he born of a virgin? It was because the Hebrew prophet Isaiah indicated that "a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call him Immanuel" (Matthew 1:23, quoting Isaiah 7:14). Actually, that's not exactly what Isaiah said. In the Hebrew bible, Isaiah indicates that a "young woman" will conceive and bear a son, a prediction of a future Messiah but of an event that was soon to take place in Isaiah's own day. When the Hebrew bible was translated into Greek, however, Isaiah's "young woman" (Hebrew alma; there is a different Hebrew word for "virgin") came to be rendered by the Greek word for "virgin", and that is the form of the bible that Matthew read..... So Matthew wrote that Jesus was born of a virgin because that's what he thought Scripture predicted.

About Mark:

It appears that the final twelve verses of Mark's Gospel are not original to Mark's Gospel but were added by a scribe in a later generation. Mark ended his Gospel at what is now 16:8, with the women fleeing the tomb and not telling anyone what they had seen. In my discussion I accept the scholarly consensus that verses 16:8-21 were a later addition to the Gospel. (Note: I check my bible and do find that there is an indication that these 12 verses were added by scribes and not found in the earliest manuscript.)
Since the nineteenth century, scholars have recognised that Mark was the first Gospel to be written, around 65-70 CE. Both Matthew and Luke, writing fifteen or twenty years later, used Mark as one of their own accounts. That is why almost all of Mark's stories can be found in Matthew or Luke, and it is also why sometimes all three of these Gospels agree word by word in the way they tell the stories.

About Luke:

The historical problems with Luke are even more pronounced. For one thing, we have relatively good records for the reign of Caesar Augustus, and there is no mention anywhere in any of them of an empire-wide census for which everyone had to register by returning to their ancestral home. And how could such thing even be imagined? Joseph returns to Bethlehem because his ancestor David was born there. But David lived a thousand years before Joseph. Are we to imagine that everyone in the Roman Empire was required to return to the homes of their ancestors from a thousand years earlier? If we had a new worldwide census today and each of us had to return to the town of our ancestors a thousand years back-- where would you go?........Why then does Luke say there was such a census? The answer may seem obvious to you. He wanted Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, even though he knew he came from Nazareth. Matthew did too, but he got him born in a different way.

About John:

One of my favourite apparent discrepancies-- I read John for years without realizing how strange this one is-- comes in Jesus' "Farewell Discourse," the last address that Jesus delivers to his disciples, at his last meal with them, which takes up all of chapters 13 to 17 in the Gospel according to John. In John 13:36, Peter says to Jesus, "Lord, where are you going?" A few verses later Thomas says, "Lord, we do not know where you are going" (John 14:5). And then, a few minutes later, at the same meal, Jesus upbraids his disciples, saying, "Now I am going to the one who sent me, yet none of you asks me, "Where are you going?" (John 16:5). Either Jesus had a very short attention span or there is something strange going on with the sources for these chapters, creating an odd kind of disconnect.

I think these excerpts should be interesting enough to entice you to read the book. It is a light-hearted reading with no jargons. Hope you enjoy the book!

Thoughts on Afterlife III: Response to DS' comments on my previous post

2009-03-20T04:14:00.000-07:00

Finally I have a chance to really write something on my blog. And as promised, I will respond to DS' comments on my previous post. As there are many issues raised, I shall respond to them one by one, some requires a lot of clarifications but some don't.

1. "religion = a belief
believer = people who practice their belief"

My response:
Agree, I think I never mix up religion and believer in any of my post before. I'm clearly aware of that distinction, as I was a christian before, and I'm very well aware of that kind of criticism from non-believer, ie: "because a christian does something wrong, therefore christianity/bible is wrong". Maybe you are referring to me quoting the example that a mother (who happened to be a christian) who stoned two of her sons to death and left the third with permanent injuries because she claimed that she heard God telling her to do. Maybe it's my language problem, and thus my writing gives you the impression that "so it's like u saw a christian murdering, then u related it to 'bible say murder is right" , if that is the case, I must say sorry for my language problem, because I never intend to mean that way.

Before going into further discussion, let me lay out the biblical background first:

Summary of the event:
a. God tested Abraham by asking him to kill his son.
After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." (Genesis 22:1-2)

b. Abraham did what god told him.
"When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son." (Genesis 22:9-10)

c. God eventually told Abraham not to kill his son.
"But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I." He (referring to angel) said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." (Genesis 22:11-12)

After understanding the background, let me now ask some fundamental questions.

i. Will god (I mean the same god in the bible) asks a human to do something unethical/immoral?
The answer is clearly, yes. This is not only referring to this specific case of Abraham sacrificing Isaac (because god asked him to do so), you can also revisit the list in my letter.

ii. If god can ask somebody to do both ethical and unethical/moral and immoral things, how can you be sure that everytime when you hear your "invisible friend" talking to you, he must be God? And not Satan? And not your own imagination? Again, how can you be so sure?

iii. Let's imagine your dad asking you to sacrifice your son to show that you fear him/you love him--> is this morally right?

iv. Let's imagine you're Isaac who was just a few years old, who was tied up and put on the altar, with the person that you trust the most, love the most holding a knife on your face and trying to kill you.
Let's just go through this thought process, how traumatic do you think you would be as a little kid?
What kind of effect do you think you would have, mentally and emotionally to go through this kind of process?
Do you think there is no harm done to the child at all? Do you seriously think that?
And do you believe that a God who did this kind of outrageous (if it happened in today's society, just see the case above) and inhumane thing to an innocent small kid can be called all-loving, fair and just? Remember that that is not just a number, but a human life with life stories, aspirations and relationships like you do. Just put yourself in his shoes and ask yourself these questions.

So what is the relevance of all these with the woman killing his son?

i. Obviously, (from your comment) you think that god did not tell her to kill her son like what god told Abraham in the bible (quote from your comment "this mother twisted her understanding in her religion, obviously"). But how can you be so sure? God did that before, what makes you think that he wouldn't do it again just to "test her" like how he tested Abraham before?

ii. Assuming that God did talk to her, why was she wrong? She was just doing what god told her to do? She was just doing what Abraham did to his child too-- trying to kill his son. So shouldn't you praise her for what she had done, for her being so faithful to the calling of the god? (if you truly believe that what Abraham did was morally right and worth praising, ie: by calling him father of faith) And shouldn't she be called "mother of faith"?

This is the background and my response to your first issue. Sorry for the long reply, but I hope it adds more clarity to my previous response. Now I move on to second issue.

2. "about the Abraham and Isaac, this incident is indicate that in the future god is also capable of sacrificing his son for the world. as for abraham, he's known as 'father of faith' becoz he strongly believe that life was given by HIM. but then in the end, god stopped him last minute"

"so, the difference in your comparison is that, the mother killed her son vs Isaac wasnt killed"

My response:

I must say something, not referring to you in particular, but the Christians that I have met and discussed with about this issue so far. Without generalizing this to all the Christians, I must stress that what I say is only referring to the few Christians that I have discussed with so far (including DS).

Usually Christians defend the obscurities in the bible by the following ways:

i. Using speculations to support a (biblical) argument
For eg in this case: there is not a single passage, or verse in the bible that says "this incident is indicate that in the future god is also capable of sacrificing his son for the world." If you find one, you can let me know. Yet this explanation, which is a speculation or a wild imagination (not found anywhere in the bible) is so prevalent among Christians (that I have discussed with). I'm very well aware of this explanation, of course, I have been attending sunday school since kindergarten. It's almost like a standard answer to this issue. But the truth is, it is merely a speculation or interpretation.

Why I don't like to use a speculation/interpretation to support a (biblical) argument? The fact is, interpretations can be so diverse, so varied, so subjective and so unreliable. Anyone can interpret bible verses their own way (since no one has monopoly over the interpretation of the verses). So, if I'm gonna make a statement about the bible, I'll surely quote the verses, and not making any speculation or interpretation myself. Let the bible speaks for itself, it doesn't need a spokeperson.

Having said that, I will still like to entertain your speculation. So you think the intention of this incident is to "indicate that in the future god is also capable of sacrificing his son for the world". The intention is noble, no doubt on that, but does that justify asking a father to kill a little innocent kid, does that make killing a son morally right? To give you an analogy, let's say I intend my son to behave properly, there is nothing wrong with my intention right? But does that justify me abusing my child to achieve my intention? In chinese, I would say that is “不择手段". It doesn't matter how noble your intention is, asking a person to kill his son is just plain wrong, I don't think any further explanation is required. This leads to my next point.

ii. Lowering morality/ethical standard to fit the bible
As mentioned above, asking a person to kill his son is simply morally wrong, please don't tell me that "asking somebody to kill his son is right because the intention is noble."

Another point is:
It doesn't matter whether eventually the son was killed by Abraham, ordering a person to kill his son to show his fear or love for his father/master is simply wrong.
To give an analogy, it doesn't matter whether a president is eventually successfully assassinated, employing an assassin to kill the president is just plain wrong. The result doesn't justify anything. Please don't tell me that "because Isaac was not killed, therefore, God asked Abraham to kill his son is right."

The point I want to make here is that "Defend your conscience, don't defend a book for the sake of defending it. Please don't lower/corrupt your morality standard to fit a book. Stand for what you believe is right (I don't think you will believe "asking somebody to kill his son" is morally right)." This is also my plea to all Christians who still have conscience and a rational mind.

iii. Quoting out of context
This is also one of the most popular arguments given by Christians when I discussed about contradictions or unacceptable values in the bible. I will often ask: "Maybe I'm not intelligent as you are, maybe I'm ignorant, but if you think I quote the verse out of context, please tell me what is the context, and please point out to me from which part of the bible you get the context". That will be my response. You're welcome to tell me the context, and justify it using bible verses/passages, please don't give me speculations or your own interpretations.

3. "if u read the bible in more detail, u will realize that new testament is actually the reflect of the old testament, they complement each other"

My response:
Thanks for reminding me about things that I have learnt in my sunday school since kindergarten. I never deny this in my post. What I'm writing about in my blog are things that you don't and will never learn from sunday school or any sermon ( I don't think any pastor will preach about "contradictions in the bible"). The bible contains complements, as well as contradictions. The contradictions here are not only referring to "textual contradictions", but also "values contradictions". On one hand, bible talks about loving and caring, on the other hand, bible talks about slavery is ok, human sacrifice is ok, discrimination against the handicapped is ok. On one hand, every single word in the bible is claimed to be the "word of God" and absolutely right, yet on the other hand, it's contents had been changed so many times by scribes and unknown authors (if you have read "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman, if you are lazy to read, you can listen to the relevant radio broadcast here, here & here)

4. "about the 'newness' u mention, u can refer to the bible which said that they were exiled from eden to a world with limitation and suffering. so this can be referred as time, space, lifespan, etc etc. So when everthing is unlimited in that world, being happy is like 'breathing' u wont feel xian at all.yes time always exists, but the dimension that afterlife exist is the other dimension distinct from the dimension where time exist. ok.. this sound very weird but then, as said 'time' is a finite factor. in current world we may think that 'time' is increasing as time goes by, but every living thing or energy form in any part of the universe is sort of like having their own 'clock system' which is in a countdown mode?"

My response:
Thanks for your speculations. Seriously, the only honest response I can give is "I don't know", and I don't believe any living person actually knows how heaven (if there is) is like. I can only base my discussion on things that I can see, feel or imagine from my past experience of life (which may not be reflective of how the heaven looks like). Of course, heaven could have different meaning to different people, and I think everyone has their own "model of heaven". I shall refrain from disputing your "model of heaven" here.

5. "And go read up, bible do say tat not all so-called christians may go to heaven, and not all non-believers go to hell. seriously, u really need to read every corner of the 'newspaper' not just the highlighted one.."

My response:
Sorry I must say this, and sorry if my understanding of your statement "And go read up.......seriously, u really need to read every corner of the 'newspaper' not just the highlighted one.." is wrong, I couldn't help but wondering if you think that I intentionally pick the "malevolent verses" and try to mislead people without reading the whole passage. If that's my purpose, I'm in no way more honest than those christians who try to pick the "benign verses" and try to mislead people to think that bible is all about all-loving, fair and just god.

If you think that I miss out something, feel free to point out to me, I admit that I don't have super-memory and am not capable of remembering every single word and passage in the bible. But if I were to discuss with somebody about biblical stuff nowadays, I will point out to him the exact verses or passages to counter his argument and I will assume that he misses out that line, and not think that he purposely tries to mislead me.

On your point about "not all so-called christians may go to heaven, and not all non-believers go to hell.", I agree with you that, according to bible, not all so-called christians may go to heaven--> "Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 7:21),

but disagree with you that not all non-believers go to hell (according to bible)-->
i) "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:16)
ii) "Jesus said to him, " I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)

And let's revisit my previous statement--" I don't think that having a hell filled with more than 80% of the people on earth suffering (since there are only about 10-20% of the people on Earth claim to be Christians) is a way to make me feel happy if I were to be in heaven."

I'm very fully aware that not all christians will go to heaven (according to the bible), that's why I think there will be more than 80% , probably 90% of the people going to hell. I must say that I don't know what qualifies you as a christian that can enter heaven, pls see my letter on "How to have eternal life/ inherit the Kingdom of God?" for the various criteria (not just one), I bet not more than 1% of the people on earth can enter heaven (if according to the criteria laid out).

6. "and about slavery and stuff u mention, it's actually a very interesting part.. go read up the whole chapter which state the origin of slavery..i forget which part, i'll show u when i happen to pass by that chapter again..slaves are normally foreigners, u have to find out the origin and the foreigners as well, and also the consequences the israelites have to bear to have slaves."

My response:
Yes, I agree it is interesting that a god that is claimed to be all-loving, fair and just actually sanctions slavery, an abhorrent practice which is clearly against humanity. There are two main parts of the bible that explicitly mention about the law of slavery, of course there are also other parts that contain slavery, but I shall just focus on the two main parts which are the central passages to understanding of the slavery practices in the bible.

The two parts are:
i) Exodus 21:1-11, 21:20-21, 21:26-27, 21:32
ii) Leviticus 25:39-46

According to the bible, there are 2 types of slaves-- Hebrew slaves (in Exodus) and non-Hebrew slaves/foreigner (in Leviticus). In fact, either in the Old Testament or New Testament, there is no single verse that condemns or prohibits the practice of slavery. Does it matter whether the slaves are foreigner or Hebrew? Is it implicitly assumed to be morally right to enslave a foreigner but not a Hebrew? I don't know what's the point of you mentioning whether the slave is foreigner or Hebrew. It doesn't matter whether I enslave an Indonesian or a Malaysian, the practice of slavery is just plain wrong. Again, please defend your conscience, not the book. I have actually written a post on slavery, not sure if you have read it. It's my further elaboration on this issue.

7. "and dont relate some of my thoughts to christianity as well, like the one i think tat this world is so meaningless, and i'd rather do nth and die LOL... "

My response:
Did I do that? I actually did not have any biblical reference in my 1st post on afterlife. Again, if my language misleads you to think that, I'm sorry for that.

8. "bible actually say u should actually nourish urself and the ppl around u given ur talent and conditionand time is limited, u've to treasure it by doing sth meaningful, for u will be rewarded or punished accordingly. (of coz i paraphrase, im not a bible, i dont remember every verse, i summarize and remember the main point)"

My response:
With due respect, I think you're referring to Matthew 25:14-30, just my guess, sorry if I'm wrong.

9. "im not implying that u're anti-christ o wad la. i feel that u're more of anti-supernatural-being-existence"

My response:
Sorry, your guess is incorrect. I'm actually open to things that I don't know.
Do I believe in the existence of God, heaven, hell, afterlife, angel, ghost, holy spirit, miracles (true miracles, like turning water into wine, not magic tricks) ? Frankly, my most honest answer to you is I don't know. I will not pretend that I know for sure, which a lot of religious leaders preach about. All I can say is "I DON'T KNOW", and I believe any honest person should give this answer too, and not pretending that they know everything for sure, especially about things like supernatural-beings, or extra-terrestrial beings. Of course, I'm open to the possibility of the existence of those things, if not I won't be bothered to discuss about god, heaven, hell and etc.

But there are many things that I can be sure of. One thing is that bible is really the word of human, not the word of god. Another thing that I'm sure is that if I were to choose a religious text that preaches love and compassion and good morality, the bible, which contains so many "hateful elements" will surely not be listed in my top 5.

10. "i strongly believe there is the existence of a powerful being/creator, normally human give it a name, 'GOD'. this feeling turn stronger and stronger throughout my uni times becoz i realize there's a lot of phenomenon which cannot be explained in whole scientifically.eg. the big bang theory."

My response:
Again, I'm totally open to the possibility of the existence of a God. But I will not immediately jump to the conclusion that the god in the bible is the "true god". There are hundreds and thousands of gods on earth, how can you be so sure that the god in your bible is the "true and only god"? And contrary to your uni experience, my study of economics actually opens up my mind to the possibility that there could be no god at all (of course not directly, since economics doesn't study about God, but in an indirect way). Evolution might be the way how we come about. It's a possibility that I cannot ignore. Again, my answer to the question of the origin of life is "I don't know", and I don't attempt to simply fill in that gap with "God" just because I don't know how it happens.

Of course, to say that "God created it" when responding to the unknowns is an easy solution and easy way out, but when I stood in front of the fossils formed millions and billions of years ago when I was in Australia, I asked myself, "Aren't we supposed to be more humble and be more diligent in searching for answers to the unknowns, rather than filling in the gaps with the word "God", and pretend that we know how everything comes about (ie: God created it) just because somebody unknown (the author of Genesis is still unknown today, and it's not Moses), who didnt even know a teeny-weeny bit about astrology, biology and chemistry etc wrote it thousands of years ago?

Finally, I must thank you for raising so many issues so I can have the chance to really clarify and discuss about them. Thanks!

Thoughts on Afterlife II

2009-03-10T04:38:00.001-07:00

DS, your comment on my previous post raises a few interesting points that I would like to respond to. Because I anticipate my response to be quite long, so I think it would be better for me to write a post instead.

First of all, thanks for your comment. I usually will not dismiss somebody's view as absurd as long as it makes logical sense. And I must clarify that I'm not against Christianity, I'm just against accepting claims made by a book or a person on face value without considering their validity and sensibility. There are in fact a lot of good teachings in the bible, for eg: the Golden rule: Do unto others as what you would have them do unto you (Luke 6:31) is the teaching that I like the most. The reason why I seldom talk about the good values in the bible is because I believe there are myriads of people out there who are much more qualified than me to talk about these good verses. But if you want to be honest with yourself about your belief, you should also confront the "dark side" of the bible openly and honestly and not trying to escape, hide or rationalise them with speculations. And just to respond to ds about the triviality of some of the bible contradictions mentioned in my letter to my friend, I do agree with you that some contradictions are trivial (I mentioned about this in my letter too and I have read about them on the wiki), but they're not if you demand perfection since the book is known to be "words of God", how can there be careless mistakes given that God is perfect?

I'm actually ok to give all those contradictions the benefits of the doubt (that's why I put them at the bottom of the letter), I'm much more concerned about the moral values emanated from some of the "malevolent verses". Do you know that there was actually a mother who stoned two of her sons to death and left the third with permanent injuries because she claimed that she heard God telling her to do so, exactly like what God told Abraham to do with his son Isaac? Can you blame her for doing so, or call her crazy or insane, why don't you praise her for her "faith" and "obedience" towards God's calling, like how many Christians praise Abraham for his "great faith in God"? I'm glad that I have stimulated your interest to read The book, you should really read it, start from the Old Testament. Like I've mentioned before, it's funny and weird that so many Christians put so much faith on a book that they know so little about. And I encourage you to read it with a critical mind, just like how you read newspaper, I bet you'll discover a whole lot more "interesting" things. If possible, read the English version so that you can access to more original translation.

Ok, I'm a bit out of topic, back to my thoughts on afterlife. I agree with you that happiness does stem from certain biological factors and the exhaustion of the chemical substance will cause one to cease to be happy. But I think there are more things at work, we are often happy or unhappy because of our memory of the past. For eg: we don't always feel happy when we have food to eat everyday, or have clothes to wear, or have a proper bed to sleep on, or a beautiful house to live in, or see our parents everyday, why is that? Because these things are already in our memory, they are not new to us, they are not "surprises" that make us feel happy. If all these are presented to a kid from Cambodia, Myanmar, North Korea or any 3rd world country, I believe the kid will be thrilled. Why do you think many guys still have extra-marital affairs even when they have beautiful wives? It's because of the "surprise" or "newness" that the external parties offer. Unless I will lead a memoryless life in heaven, I don't know how am I gonna be happy perpetually for more than a thousand years. Regarding the time, I believe we are talking about the same thing, it's just that I describe eternity as "unlimited free flow of time". Whether you like it or not, time always exists, but when you have eternal life, time becomes meaningless (Sorry, I don't remember the bible mentions otherwise, maybe you can point out to me).

Oh, you also mention about hell, which I didnt mention in my previous post. Of course I know there is a hell, and I don't think that having a hell filled with more than 80% of the people on earth suffering (since there are only about 10-20% of the people on Earth claim to be Christians) is a way to make me feel happy if I were to be in heaven. Even though I consider my life now as heaven-like, I'm not happy at all when thinking about many people who are still suffering out there, who are forced to work as prostitutes to support their daily meals in Cambodia (I heard this from one of the volunteers), who are forced to give up their dreams and are unable to live as a normal person because of their disability, who are deprived of the love from their parents because their parents are incarcerated-- these are all real life stories happening everyday and every moment. And will I and can I be happy when watching so many of the fellow human beings suffering in perpetuity in hell? I wonder how.

Finally, I would like to present this wonderful song which I like a lot:

Thoughts on Afterlife

2009-03-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

One of DS' posts has prompted me to express my thoughts on afterlife. Since I was a little kid, afterlife in heaven has always been a fascinating thing for me. I remember when I was still a small little kid (prob primary 1), I had a very interesting conversation with my mum about afterlife in heaven (Ds, I know my memory is scary). Our conversation was as follows:

Me : 妈，天堂是怎样子的？

Mum : 天堂就是一个没有烦恼，没有痛苦的地方咯！

Me : 这样在天堂我们还要不要做工？

Mum : 当然不用啦，在天堂你就每天享受生活，不用愁吃愁穿。

Me : 这样钱从哪里来？

Mum : 在天堂，你要什么上帝都会给你的。

Me : 这样子在天堂每天都不用做工，就一直玩耍？

Mum : 对啊，每天都不用做工，每天玩耍，所以生活就没有烦恼咯！

Me : 可是在天堂的日子很长哦，每天玩耍玩到一千年不会xian的meh？你每天快乐，过不久也是会麻木的哦！

Mum : (有点不耐烦）不知道哦，这个你就要问牧师了。

Haha，I don't know why, till now, I can still remember this conversation so vividly. Looking back now, I'm quite amazed by my ability to comprehend and ask such a philosophical question at such a young age during that time. I'm not bragging about myself, even till today, I'm still asking myself and thinking about the last question that I asked.

In my opinion, there are two problems with the concept of a "heaven" that enables people to live happily forever after-- Happiness and Sadness must always co-exist. You will never know what it feels like to be happy without knowing the meaning of sadness. For eg: how do you know going back home to see your family is a happy thing? It's because you have experienced the loneliness and sadness of staying away from your family. How do you know getting good result will make you happy? It's because you have experienced the disappointment and unpleasant experience of scoring badly in your exam and being scolded by your parents and teachers, or you can also know that from other people's experience. Happiness and sadness are always two sides to a coin. You won't know what it means to be happy without experiencing or knowing sadness in the first place.

The second problem is the concept of "living forever". To me, life is precious and meaningful because it will come to an end one day. That limitation of life and the scarcity of time makes me even more acutely aware of every second and every moment that passes by. I know I have only that limited amount of time to do things that I like to do and to make this world a better place. In fact, I dont understand why I need to have a "forever life" so that I can live a meaningful life. Forever life means that I have plenty amount of time, everything can wait and wait and wait since time will never end. I will just keep on procrastinating and keep on wasting my time without the fear that time will end one day and I have yet to do anything meaningful. Do you think this kind of life is more meaningful? There is a saying that "天下无不散的筵席”，it is precisely because of the limited amount of time that makes every gathering with friends and family so meaningful and precious, because once I miss the opportunity to see my friend this time, I might not be able to meet up with him/her again in the future.

When I was a small little kid, I used to think that "living forever" is the best, probably it's due to the fear of death. But now, I understand that there's a start and end to everything, it's just like watching a movie. Can you imagine watching a movie forever with no ending? I don't think anyone would wanna watch that kind of movie, it's precisely because there's an end to the movie that makes the movie unique and memorable. And death is just an ending to one's life movie.

After going through this thought process, I find that "forever life" is more scary than "death". Because I may just become a robot (since I will be numbed to the feeling of happiness) after some time and yet I will be living forever as a robot, with no ending.

Movies on One of The Darkest Moments in Recent Human History

2009-02-28T20:04:00.000-08:00

I have watched two magnificent movies worth recommending recently. The background of both the movies was in German during World War II. Both of them show that there is still glory of humanism in the abyss of despair, they also show how easily human's mind can be corrupted by propaganda, be it political or religious, if human fail to think rationally for themselves and lose the curiosity to find out the truth. The price that human have to pay for getting easy, standard answers from a book, a person with authority (but not necessarily honest) or rumours is much too heavy.

When I started learning history in secondary school, I was told that the word "history" comes from "His Story"-- it's all about God's deeds. If that is true, I wonder how Holocaust could ever have happened, whereby 6 million Jews were tortured and masacred, 2-3 million Soviet prisoners of war killed, 1.8-2 million ethinc poles slaughtered, and a few hundred thousands of Romani, disabled, freemasons, gays, Jehovah witnesses exterminated. If I were to read the biography of a great, capable, all-loving, fair and just man, I wouldn't expect this kind of thing to happen under his rulership, let alone an almighty god. A country under a capable ruler would at least let his people have the chance to enjoy the fruits of peace and prosperity and see their standard of living increases by several folds over the course of development. At least I don't find such tragedy happening in Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew's biography or in the history of Singapore development. Is it really so unfair to expect a bit more than that from an almighty god (if there is one)?

The 1st movie that I watched was Valkyrie, starred by Tom Cruise. Valkyrie is actually an operation to remove Hitler from power by a group of people. The movie explained how and why the assassination of Hitler failed and paid respect to those people who exercised their clear conscience to oppose the brutality and insanity of the Hitler government. The movie is based on a true story, which shows that when the darkness falls, there are still people out there who are alert and not easily fallen prey to the propaganda and dogmatism imposed by the authority through media, books or rumours.

The 2nd movie-- The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas is also fantastic. It tells a story during the Holocaust through the lens of a kid, called Bruno. This movie is based on a bestselling novel by an Irish novelist John Boyne. To me, this movie really brings out the theme-- "curiosity" very well. Kids are arguably the most curious human category. In most cases, they like to ask questions, try out new things and experiment with new ideas. However, as they grow up, their curiosity is suppressed, diverted or flushed away by answers from authority that contain bigotry, lies, biases or inaccuracy. In the movie, Bruno was puzzled and unconvinced by the statements like "All Jews are evil", and guess what his teacher told him? --"You'll become the greatest explorer if you could ever find a nice Jew". The movie is about the encounter of two boys-- an innocent German boy who was curious but was not told the truth and an imprisoned Jewish boy who was tortured in a concentration camp. I must warn that this is not a happy movie as I was weeping uncontrollably throughout the movie-- sad, but reflective of the suffering experienced by the victims in the concentration camp.

Just my 2 cents about these two excellent and meaningful movies. Welcome your comment too if you have watched them.

My affair with A & E

2009-02-27T07:32:00.000-08:00

I seldom talk about my personal stories in this blog. This time, I'll talk about my (love) affair with A & E in my tertiary education. It's also a journey of my self-discovery, helps me understand my likes and dislikes and make up my mind with certainty.

My affair with A started since high school. I first knew A when I was joining my friends in a party and chit-chatting with them. A didn't catch my attention at first sight and was not very well-known and popular among my friends, so I didn't really get to know A personally. Subsequently, I met A in another occasion, then I started noticing about A. I started chatting with A to find out more about A. A was shy though, and I couldn't really have the chance to get to know A well. I tried to find A's friends and ask them about A to get to know A better. Though A was not popular among my friends, I still managed to learn more about A through various sources.

My affair with A really started when I entered university. I met A quite often, nearly everyday. From then, I get to know A really well. I discovered that A was very intelligent, very sophisticated (knew a lot of weird and funny, but highly technical stuffs) but was also very shy and very quiet. A was not good at expressing feeling in words, that's why A didn't really chit-chat a lot with me when I met A. I could also barely communicate with A, though I met A nearly everyday. I ate lunch with A, go to library with A and brought A back to my room. So that was how my first year relationship with A, not much talking and communication, but still manage to maintain a fairly good relationship.

Apart from A, in my first year, I also met with E, another friend of mine. E was really very charming, always had a pleasant smile on the face. E's dressing was more retro. E liked the old British style of dressing up, so I always met E wondering if E was from another era. Despite E's weird old British style of dressing, E managed to catch my attention too. I was really attracted to E after my first conversation with E. E was very passionate about human behaviour and E's worldview really amazed me. I had a very pleasant and enjoyable intellectual discussion with E and I really thought that E was a very intelligent and ambitious person. So gradually, I began to shift my attention to E. As time passed on, my affection for E grew stronger and stronger, I felt really interested in E and I spent a lot of my time with E than with A. However, I didn't really mention to A about E. I just told A that I was getting busier as there were more works to do, so I had less and less time meeting A. A didn't mind me spending less time together, as long as I can accompany A and study together with A during exam period. A was very particular about exams, that's why A always wanted me to study together. While I was studying with A, I would always think about E, and wondering how good it would be if I had been able to spend more time with E.

However, I didn't really want the affairs to continue like this. I wanted to make up my mind and decide who I wanted to be with for the rest of my life. I was quite sure that I was no longer that interested in A. So I intended to break-off my relationship with A. Eventually, I told A about it and A was a bit sad, but I told A that I hope we could still be friends in time to come as I really learnt a lot from A. A taught me how to see things differently, though A couldn't express feeling well, A had a flair in analyzing complicated situations and summarizing them in a very useful and succinct ways. A taught me how to use sophisticated methods to summarize things and transform them into very useful information. I really owed A a lot and I can never thank A enough throughout the years. However, I knew that things cannot go on like this forever, I must make up my mind. I had chosen to dedicate my life to E.

After spending sometime with E, my interest in E grew even more, not less. E always fascinated me with E's broad knowledge of how the world works. E was also very passionate about poverty and had been pondering on the problem endlessly. I really like to discuss with E about these issues-- poverty, suffering, government policies, environment, human behaviour etc. I can spend my whole night talking with E without feeling tired-- I was really deeply in love with E. E's compassion about many social issues causes me to rethink about my own opinions and positions on these issues. I used to have a lot of unrealistic assumptions, biased views and baseless impressions about many social issues, but E, with patience, had always explained to me why my positions don't make sense. E's influence on me was profound, if there is one person that ever changes my stand on many issues, it must be E.

Currently, I'm still enjoying my relationship with E. I'm glad that I have found out who I really like and want to spend the rest of my life with. I'm so thankful that I have the opportunity to know E, who eventually becomes the most important person in my life. Of course, I'm also thankful to A and I expressed my heartfelt apology to A for my cheating.

Now, wanna know who is A and who is E
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Don't need to crack your head. A= actuarial science, E= economics, friends= my books & magazines

(Inspired from a joke by my friend, WX)

Religulous (2008)

2009-02-21T05:52:00.000-08:00

This is a documentary movie by Bill Maher-- Religulous. He asks questions that people usually don't ask about their religion. Questions like : Why is faith good? Why suspending logically thinking and believing in something without real evidence is good? Why do you think your religion is the truth? Why still clinging on to a book written thousands years ago and looking for answers which can be found in modern physics, astrology, biology, psychology etc? Why believing in Jonah's story in the bible, of whom stayed in a big fish for 3 days and not the story of Pinochio, who also lived in a whale for 3 days Why god does not obliterate the devil now ? What is he waiting for?....etc

He asks questions, but he does not give the answers. He let you ponder upon them yourself, rationally and honestly. It is his journey of realisation and discovery, which in some ways or another, reflects mine too.

Disclaimer: For those
- who believe that bible is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
- who think that they cannot handle and tolerate questions or alternative views with an open mind,
- who think that this documentary is the deed of Satan who deliberately wants to confuse human beings,

then I would advise you against watching this movie!

Below is the link to the movie, enjoy!
http://www.supernovatube.com/play.php?viewkey=2bf4699ca1c062980545

Debunking myths about economics

2009-02-15T07:08:00.000-08:00

Recently due to the ongoing, unresolved economic crisis, economists have been in the limelight. Many economists are caught in limbo, many come up with differing views and opinions with little consensus. However, this doesn't mean that economics itself is flawed, to understand why is this the case, we need to recognise the fact that economics is a study of the market's ongoing dynamics with different economic agents (businesses, government, consumer, institutions etc) reacting to different incentives. A government policy which originates from good intention to benefit the people, may end up jeopardising the economic development, resulting in more havoc and miseries. A government policy that aims to improve businesses and creates more jobs may end up stifles the private sectors, impedes the progress of economic recovery and therefore prolongs the economic crisis and creates more unemployment instead of increasing employment.

Having recognised this fact, when an economist talks about implementing a certain policy to cure the economy downturn, he will not be able to take into account all the interplay among different economic agents in an economy due to the following limitations:
- ever-changing interactions and dynamics-- a policy have to be implemented at the right timing to be the most effective
- unavailability of data-- lack of the latest data or indicators means that economist can only rely on the past data to draw conclusion or provide policy recommendation
- limited understanding of the economic structure-- as the economy progresses, economic structure of a country 10 years ago could be significantly different from now, for eg: 10 years ago, a country might have a significant portion of agricultural sector, but now, the country has transformed into a manufacturing-based economy, so a policy which was effective 10 years ago might not have the same impact now.

Due to the above limitations, an economist can only provide their policy recommendations based on the best information that they can get, but as new information comes in, they might change their views again. That's how economics works, because people are always reacting differently when new policy is introduced. High oil prices will change people's consumption choice, force them to travel by public transport, share their cars or travel less, but if the high oil price persists, businessmen will find ways to make cars more oil-efficient and less oil-dependent or come out with alternative energy solutions in which will bring down the demand for oil and keep the prices affordable, that's what makes economics forever so interesting.

The moral of the story is, to understand why economists provide different policy recommendations, we must first understand their underlying assumptions and evidence and assess their recommendations base on which one has more realistic assumptions. Therefore, a profound understanding of economics is definitely a must if you want to know which policy will likely to work and which one will do more harm than good to the economy, and not taking the words of the economists or policymakers on its face value. This level of critical thinking and assessment is what differentiates one who studies economics and one who doesn't.

Let's come back to current economic crisis. I believe people who are following the news, but with limited understanding of economics will have a hard time to follow what the economists are proposing. I believe following are a few questions that might arise while reading the recent news:

1. What are the tools available for the government to tackle the present economic crisis?

Ans: Generally, the textbook provides 2 solutions: monetary policy & fiscal policy

Monetary policy involves the use of interest rate to stimulate the economy. How it works? When the central bank lowers the lending interest rate, businesses will be able to borrow money more cheaply and not burdened by high interest payment, therefore, they will be able to expand their production capacity and produce more goods. For consumers, low interest rate discourage them from saving, they will tend to spend the money instead of saving it since saving it doesn't produce as much return in the future as compared to the satisfaction of spending it now. As the consumers spend their money, businesses will become more profitable and that brings the economy out of the recession.

Fiscal policy involves the use of government spending to stimulate the economy. Generally, during economic recession, private sector will be cutting costs, consumers will be saving more instead of spending, so government is the only economic agent who has the ability to spend. Therefore, government can increase spending so that the businesses will not suffer so severely from the economic downturn. Another way is to cut taxes and let the people have more money to spend. The spending by one person will create "multiplier effect"-- which means, when a consumer spends his money, the businessman's business will be more profitable, therefore, he can afford to employ more workers. The workers employed will then spend part of their salary and more businesses will benefit. This compounding effect of spending is called "multiplier effect". That is how fiscal policy works.

2. What are the limitations of monetary policy & fiscal policy?
For monetary policy, there is a limit to how much the central bank can cut the interest rate to stimulate the economy. The lowest the central bank can cut the interest rate is 0%, which is what the US central bank is doing right now. Their interest rate is now at 0%, yet the economy is still mired in recession and there is no sign of recovery in the near future, which means the monetary policy has loses its power of stimulating the economy.

For fiscal policy, if the government cuts taxes, the caveat is that people might save the tax cuts and not consume them. This will not create the "multiplier effect", and therefore, it might not work for an ailing economy like the US. Another reason why the economists oppose the "stimulus plan" is that, we all know public sector is often very inefficient, even involved with corruptions, especially when construction projects are being sublet to the private firms. Companies with political connection tend to be able to get a good deal from the bureaucrats. The higher the amount of the stimulus plan, the more the businessmen with political connections can suck away the resources to their own pockets.

Another reason, which is more specific to the US economy against implementing government stimulus plan is that the US government has already incurred a gigantic amount of debt. The US government does not save during good times, so they have nothing to fall back on during recession. The more the government spends today, the more needs to be repaid (including interest) in the future. There are only two ways the government can repay the debt -- increase taxes or reduce spending. Since there is "no free lunch", the US future generations thus could expect to pay a higher level of taxes. The more debt the US raised to fund their fiscal stimulus plan, the more fragile the economy becomes. This is why a lot of economists have been critical about the need to incur such a high debt to save some banks. It's not that fiscal policy doesn't work, it's because people have no trust in their government, which tends to be inefficient.

Hope my sharing can improve your understanding of the economic issues that are happening around the world!

As the economy falters, who is still smiling?

2009-02-09T03:56:00.000-08:00

I saw this very interesting news. Would like to share with you here, hope you can have a good laugh after reading!

Forbes
Tuesday, 03 February 2009

Strippernomics

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and "Girls Gone Wild" king Joe Francis facetiously asked Washington for a $5 billion stimulus package for the porn industry in early January. "Americans can do without cars," said Flynt. "They cannot do without sex."

Or at least a reasonable substitute. Strip clubs and other adult businesses are booming as the rest of the economy craters. Rick's Cabaret International, a nationwide chain of jiggle joints, reported that for fiscal 2008, revenue is up 87% to $60 million.

Rick's attracts 70,000 customers a month to its 19 clubs. At its New York spot alone Rick's posted just over $1 million in revenue in December. "The stimulus package has been very, very good to us," cracks Allan Priaulx, Rick's head of investor relations.

Francis Koenig, the goateed, 32-year-old chief executive of AdultVest, the first hedge fund for porn, reported a 50% rise in its returns last year, though he won't say how much or which ones delivered.

Koenig's funds, called Bacchus and Priapus, invest in gentlemen's clubs and companies that acquire them in the U.S. and Canada. AdultVest purchased strip club chain VCG Holding last May and recently bought iPorn.com, a site that hosts online dating and live video.

Amid all this froth, AdultFriendFinder, which owns Penthouse magazine and other adult brands, floated a $400 million IPO in December, though the ticker is not trading yet.

Not that skin trade stocks are on fire. Shares of adult oriented companies like Rick's and VCG Holdings are lagging. Others, like New Frontier Media, Playboy Enterprises and Private Media Group have been in the tank for months as Web porn offered by sites like AdultFriendFinder kill adult DVD sales and slam nails in the coffins of hide-bound adult magazines.

So how to account for the sex boom? Part of it is human psychology. Strip clubs and porn sites are about consumption and discrete gratification--typically the last kinds of behavior people change when their wallet thins. It's what makes Rick's a cash-rich company.

Rick's also thrives by its ability to re-brand on a dime. The Rick's club in Philadelphia saw its sales skid recently, prompting the company to re-name it Club Onyx, after another chain of strip clubs it owns aimed at celebrity sport stars and hip hop artists. The location is right: Onyx is within a mile of sports complexes where teams like the 76ers and Eagles play. According to Priaulx, the club has since tripled sales.

In Dallas, just down the street from the future site of the George Bush Library and Institute, Rick's has converted its latest club into another brand it owns: XTC Café. It is the largest all-nude strip club in the U.S. but does not serve booze. "I think our non-alcohol policy would make a certain former president very comfortable here," says Priaulx.

Food for thought

2009-02-06T10:02:00.000-08:00

Another form of slavery..... by God

2009-02-01T01:41:00.000-08:00

Today I joined a volunteering activity organized by Friends of Disabled Society. It was a social gathering for Chinese New Year celebration, attended by all the disabled friends. It was my first time joining such an activity.

It was truly an eye-opener event for me. I promise myself to join such activities every weekend if possible. The activity was held in a church, which is really very ironic and satirical, as the God once ordered that people with blemish should be forbidden from drawing near Him, for they may PROFANE His sanctuaries (direct quote), see how seriously the disabled people were once discriminated against. (You don't have to take my words, read Leviticus 21:17-24). Nevertheless, I'm relieved that human's wisdom and society's progress has led us to abandon these kinds of ridiculous laws.

I call disabled another form of slavery, but this kind of slavery is a bit different from the one I mentioned in my previous post. This form of slavery is not a result of what one man does to another man, it is a result of what the God (if there is one) does to a man.

I see many different kinds of disabled friends there, many of them sit on a wheelchair for various reasons: legs are amputated, muscular dystrophy, stroke, spastic, those who don't need to sit on a wheelchair, they suffer from mental illness, hands amputated etc. Some of them have very clear conscious, they know what they want, they know how they can get it, they know how to think clearly and rationally, they can speak very well, but they are entrapped by their physical bodies, their physical imperfections have enslaved them, forbidden them from reaching their dreams, living their normal lives and acquiring many basic necessities in lives.

I got the chance to help some of them to go to toilet. Before this, I have never pondered seriously how difficult it could be for a handicapped person to go to toilet to do his business. The proximity of the toilet doesn't make it easier for them, it only magnifies the difficulties that a handicapped faces. A mere action of unzipping or unbuttoning your pants, washing your hands, flushing the toilet bowl, putting your clothes together after doing the business... everything, every action that doesn't take me even a second to think about how to do it is a challenge for them, and these are only the very basic routines that you do in your everyday life, what about the bigger challenges in life like financial burden, making friends, finding life partner, finding a job etc that even physically sound people like you and I have difficulties to live up to those challenges?

Don't tell me this is a test of faith from God (please think carefully before you say this). Don't tell me this is a punishment from God (I don't think I'm more righteous than them). Don't tell me they will be rewarded for their suffers in the after-life (so are you telling me just leave them alone, since they ought to suffer to receive the rewards?) I seriously don't know how you can repeatingly telling me that your God is an all-loving God in the presence of all these people.

Ok, some of you may say Jesus did heal the disabled in the New Testament, so the God did do something about the sufferings, He did heal them. However, please think carefully, who made them handicapped in the first place? Who created them with genetical deformities? Who created hundreds and thousands of viruses and bacteria and let these micro-organisms breed and spread rampantly in the first place (If according to the Creation theory)? It's your God, the Mighty Creator. He creates the problem, sure He knows how to solve it and He ought to solve it. It's like the global warming, which is created by human activities and therefore, human ought to and have the obligation to solve it together. We created the problem, and we should shoulder the responsibility to solve it, there's nothing so good and loving about solving the problem that we have created on our own. We don't deserve to be praised for solving the problem that we have created, why a different standard when it comes to your God?

What it means being a slave?

2009-01-28T04:54:00.000-08:00

W is a close friend of mine. I always enjoy having intellectual discussion with him. I respect him for being honest, open and rational when discussing about many issues. He is a new Christian believer, even though he hasn't been a believer for long, he is very committed to his belief (much like when I was in my secondary school who was also a very very committed Christian, it is amusing when I look back now). Recently, he has been discussing with me a lot about my issues with the bible.

Two weeks ago, we had a lunch together. During the lunch, we discussed about the "slavery" in the bible. He defended the slavery practices in the bible and insisted that there is an equivalence between the slave in the ancient time and worker/employee in our modern days. To be frank, I was really very surprised-- how could an intelligent person like him equate a slave, who is deprived of any form of freedom as a human being and is treated not as a human but as a property (in the bible, Exodus 21:21, Leviticus 25:45) to a modern day employee, whose personal freedom and liberty is protected and accorded by the constitution and whose decision to be employed is based on mutual consensus and is well-protected under the employment law? (No offence to W if you happen to read this, but your explanation is seriously unacceptable.) Below is an excerpt of our conversation:

W : I really think that slavery is just a form of employment in the ancient time. During that time, those people who were captured in the war were not able to fend for themselves, the only way they could survive in the Israelite society was to become a slave. In fact, I would think of the employment in our modern day as a form of slavery too, just that we call ourselves employees and not slaves.

Me : I cannot agree with your equivalence. How is our current employment different from the ancient time's slavery? From economics perspective, our current employment is built on a mutually consensual foundation, it's a mutually beneficial transaction. You benefit from being fairly compensated for your worth of service, your employer benefits from receiving the service that you rendered, both of you get what you want. Whereas in the case of slavery, it is based on coercion, the employer would have to resort to violence to force the slave to be obedient and faithful to him, so obviously, only the employer benefits while the slave suffers.

W : But the slave also gets compensated in the form of food provided to him while serving his master. It's just a different form of compensation.

Me : So do you think the slave agrees to be compensated in the form of food? Do you think the slave is given the freedom to choose how he is to be compensated? Do you think the slave can choose to stop working when he feels tired? Do you think the slave can resign from being a slave to his current master?

My explanation did not convince him though. Nevertheless, he promised he will study more about the issue and discuss with me next time. In our conversation above, I only talk about the difference between a slave and a normal employer from economics perspective, in fact, there are more to that, both economically and socially.

To really imagine and understand how it feels to be a slave in the ancient time is rather difficult for me personally, this is especially due to the fact that I'm born in an era that too many things and rights have come so naturally upon birth that I have hardly thought of losing them for a moment. I have, in fact, enjoyed these rights and taken them for granted for so many years that I could hardly imagined losing them for even a second. Despite that, I still try hard to imagine what it means being an ancient slave in the bible.

What it means to be a slave? Even though I cannot provide a full picture of the life as an ancient slave, the bible could give you a tip of the iceberg.

1. Foreign slave (non-Hebrew) is to be treated as a property. (Exodus 21:21, Leviticus 25:45)
2. Foreigners can be bought and sold as slaves (just like you can buy and sell animals/livestock) (Leviticus 25:44-45)
3. Slave is a property that can be bequeathed to your son as a possession forever. (Leviticus 25:46)
4. A slave's ear shall be bored through with an awl by his master. (Exodus 21:6)
5. For a sex slave, if she couldn't please her master, the master shall let her be redeemed and should not sell her to other people. (Exodus 21:8-11)
6. If a master strikes his slave and the slave die immediately, then the master will be punished; but if the slave survives for a day or two, then the master shall not be punished, because the slave is his property (or money). (Exodus 21:20-21)
7. A slave is worth 30 shekels of silver. (Exodus 21:32)
8. A slave who is given a wife by his master and his wife bears him sons or daughters, his wife and children shall also become the property of his master. (Exodus 21:4)

These are just some of the commandments by God in the bible. Of course, this is not a complete picture yet, there are many things more to lose from being a slave.

What else do you lose being a slave?
1. You have no right to education, you have to serve your master since young.
2. You have no right to choose what you eat and how much you want to eat.
3. You have no right to choose when you want to work and when you want to stop working.
4. You have no freedom to speak freely and express your feeling, even when you feel extremely sad and tired of being lonely.
5. You have no right to love and marry the person you love, everything is arranged by your master.
6. You have no right to resign and go back home, once you become a slave (for non-Hebrew slave), you'll become your master's property forever.
7. You have no freedom to choose where you want to sleep and don't expect to have a proper and clean bed free from fleas and insects
8. You have no right to pursue your dreams, your passions and your own happiness in life, basically, you live to serve your master until death.
9. You have no right to make friends, as you can hardly meet other people, unless your master can arrange a wife for you.
10. You cannot expect to be treated with human dignity, because you're nothing close to a human. To your master, you're merely a movable property, like cows, chickens, dogs, sheeps etc.

When I go through the list, I'm truly amazed at how many things and rights that I have been so used to take for granted are actually luxuries that an ancient slave can hardly even dream of getting.

Just take a moment, imagine yourself being a slave in the bible and imagine yourself losing all these rights that you have taken for granted upon birth. And then, ask yourself: What it means being a slave? Is He really an all-loving God that you know of? Can a God that sanctions the practice of slavery be called an ALL-LOVING, FAIR AND JUST GOD?

About human cloning

2009-01-19T04:48:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting to blog about this topic, after inspired by springsoul's post about human cloning. The thing I want to talk about here is somewhat related to human cloning, but it covers more than that.

Personally, I will neither condemn cloned human (if there is really one), nor despise and discriminate against them, instead, I will just treat them like any another human being conceived as a result of sexual intercourse (which some people say "the natural way"). Really, I see no difference between a human born as a result of testube conception or sexual intercourse. Should we discriminate against clones just because of the way they are conceived? This sounds funny and even ridiculous to me.

Of course, there is another issue, which is that the clones are used as a tool of experiment. It's like the human experiment conducted during 2nd world war by Japan (see here) and Nazi (here). I couldn't agree more with you that this kind of activity should be condemned. Human experiment is truly a terrible, horrible and appalling crime. Here, I believe you know what kind of human experiment I'm referring to, not the sociology, psychology kind of research on human being, but the barbaric, brutal, cruel, vicious and inhuman medical experiments on human being. No matter what the intention is, be it to invent medicine to save people's lives or to help develop new biological or chemical weapon, it is beyond doubt, a serious crime to do such a horrible thing to fellow human being. I believe no one, as a sensible human being would hesitate to condemn this kind of activity.

Now, whenever someone tells me God makes human suffer as a test of faith, it reminds me of the Japan and Nazi human experiments. See what God did (or condoned Satan) to Job in the Old Testament: He destroyed all his livelihood, ravaged his family, tortured him with diseases, the only thing He didnt do was to kill him. Why? Because He was conducting an experiment on Job, He wanted to test to see whether Job could still be faithful to him after the disaster, hence the torture and destruction of Job's life. The difference is, however, that He had already known how the result would turn out to be (since He is omniscient, He knows the past and future) and His experiment was purely a proof to win the bet against Satan.

In fact, Job wasn't the only example, even in today, when some unexplained sufferings occur, like Indonesian tsunami, Burma's cyclone, plane crash, the person you love most died of war, natural catastrophe, diseases etc, Christians tend to say "that is a test of faith from God". What they actually mean is "God is doing an experiment on you", the kind of experiments can range from "killing, torturing or impoverishing the person you love the most to putting diseases on you yourself, destroying your belongings and your family". The purpose of the experiment is not important at all, as I mentioned above, "what the intention is does not justify the horrible crime at all". However, Christians don't regard that as a horrible crime when God does it, they think it is something good, and even worth experiencing.

Ask yourself (if you are Christian) honestly, rationally and objectively, will you say such thing (eg: it is good and worth experiencing) when Nazi or Japanese did these to fellow human like you and I? If not, please, please don't say or give such an abhorrent explanation to people when they suffer. By making this kind of claim or giving this kind of explanation, you're making Japanese or Nazi look like an amateur when compared to what your God does.

A letter to my friend-- My list of questions about bible

2009-01-13T07:13:00.001-08:00

I promised earlier on that I will publish a list of questions that I have compiled about the bible after my discussion with my friend W's friends. Since I have already had the discussion, I would just publish the questions.

Also, I have promised myself to move on and not arguing endlessly about these questions. Therefore, I will just publish it the way I wrote to my friend W and refrain from making any further comment. Here is the list of questions:

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear W,

This is my compiled list of questions about the Bible. Forgive me if any harsh words were used to describe the values that I cannot emotionally and rationally accept in the Bible. My intention is clear, I'm not out to offend anyone, I'm just trying to embark on a journey of soul-searching and questioning to re-evaluate what I am really believing in.

Moral values in the bible that are questionable/not acceptable by today society's standard

First of all, many Christians say that their moral authority comes from the Bible. As a matter of fact, there are many questionable and totally unacceptable moral values (if evaluated against today's common-held social values), alongside with the message of "love and peace" in the Bible. And people often conveniently ignore these "hateful" passages which are as equally important as the "benign" passages of the Bible (since they are all assumed to be God's words).

Now, imagine you don't know Bible is a "sacred book", without that pre-conception, you happen to come across this book in a bookstore and it contains the following elements, what would you think?

1. Ritual of Human sacrifice

The sacrifice of Isaac – Genesis 22:2
The burn of Jepththah daughter – Judges 11:30-39
Josiah's human sacrifice – 1 Kings 13:2 & 2 Kings 23:20
The attack and burn of non-believers – Deuteronomy 13:12-16

2. Treatment of war captives

Kill every male including children, kill every women who are non-virgin and keep the virgins for oneselves – Numbers 31:13-18 à Just imagine what would happen if Americans do these to Iraqis today.
Keep the woman captured as wife upon one's liking -- Deuteronomy 21:10-13

3. Treatment of women

Laws of rape – Deuteronomy 22:28-29
Death punishment to the rape victim – Deuteronomy 22:23-24
Sell daughter as slave is allowed – Exodus 21:7-11
Death punishment to women who are not virgins on their wedding night – Deuteronomy 22:20-21
Women not allowed to speak in church – 2 Corinthians 14:34-38, 1 Timothy 2:11-15
Story of Sodom & Lot the Righteous offered daughters to be raped? – Genesis 19:7-11
Giving birth to a child a sin for woman? – Leviticus 12:6-8

4. Capital Punishment Crimes

Stone medium or fortuneteller (wizard) to death – Leviticus 20:27
Death for people who curse their parents – Leviticus 20:9
Stone children who are stubborn and rebellious to death – Deuteronomy 21:18-21
Death for adultery – Leviticus 20:10
Death for people who work on the Sabbath – Exodus 31:12-15
Kill innocent children for trivial reason – 2 Kings 2:23-24
Kill Uzzah for helping (for no good reason) – 2 Samuel 6:5-7
Kill the sons because of their guilt of their fathers – Isaiah 14:21
Kill Onan because he didn't want to give his semen – Genesis 38:8-10

5. Slavery supporter

Buying slaves from foreign nations as one's property-- Leviticus 25:44-46
Laws about slaves – Exodus 21:1-11
Treatment of slaves – Exodus 21:20-21
Value of slaves – Exodus 21:32
Children of slaves are also slaves – Leviticus 22:10
How slaves should behave – Ephesians 6:5-8, 1 Timothy 6:1-2,
Paul even condones slavery – 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, especially 21

6. Discrimination

against people who are handicapped and suffer from genetical problem -- Leviticus 21:17-24
against people from other nations (by calling a foreign lady "dogs", imagine if it happens in today's society) – Matthew 15:21-27
against people who have certain diseases, such as leprosy? – Leviticus 13:45-46à I understand this as a precautionary step to prevent the disease from spreading. Consider this kind of rules are to be followed in today's society (since God's word is eternal), wouldn't it be ridiculous? Also given the advancement of medical technology, leprosy is no longer a deadly disease to be afraid of, wouldn't that add to the case against practicing such rules?

Leviticus 14 talks about the treatment of lepersà with today's medical knowledge, would you have agreed to the treatment prescribed by the passage at all? But insistence on the Bible as the words of God would require you to do that to lepers, even in the modern society.

7. Polygamy supporter

Exodus 21:10-11
Deuteronomy 21:15-17
Condone Gideon for having many wives – Judges 8:30-31
God himself gives David many wives – 2 Samuel 12:7-8
Rehoboam's many wives – 2 Chronicles 11:18-21
Abijah's many wives—2 Chronicles 13:21-22
Polygamy is right in the eyes of the Lord? – 2 Chronicles 24:1-3

8. Principles of marriage (1 Corinthians 7, Matthew)—Some values are no longer acceptable in today's society

Forbid divorce – 1 Corinthians 7:10-11
Wife is made commit adultery if a man divorces his wife for other reason than sexual immorality – Matthew 5:32, 19:9
A man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery – Matthew5:32

Questions about Jesus

1. How to treat your enemies

Love your enemies – Matthew 5:43, Luke 6:26
Condemn them – Mark 16:15-16

2. Jesus came to bring chaos to the world? Or peace?

Matthew 10:34-36, John 14:27

3. Erratic behaviorà you can just ask yourself, would you have done the same thing too.

Mark 11:15-16

4. Hate family to follow Jesus?

Luke 14:26

5. How to have eternal life/ inherit the Kingdom of God? (these verses are contradicting each other)

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, love neighbour – Luke 10:25-28
Follow the commandments of Old Testaments, sell everything and give to the poor, follow Jesus (be disciple) – Luke 18:18-22
Hate family to follow Jesus (be disciple ) – Luke 14:26
Eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus – John 6:53-58
Change and become a little children – Matthew 18:2-3
Born again of water and the Spirit – John 3:3-8
Follow and teach all the commandments of the Old Testaments, surpass the scribes and Pharisees' righteousness – Matthew 5:17-20
Believe in Jesus – John 3:16

6. On the principles of marriage (see above)

Questionable practices in the bible

1. Ritual of eating flesh and drinking blood of Jesus (although symbolically)—doesn't it seem like cannibalism?

Mark 14:22-25
John 6:53-55

2. Circumcision as a sign of covenant

Genesis 17:9-14
I want to raise this because imagine in the ancient time, like few thousands BC ago, people don't even have proper medical equipments (probably just primitive sharpened rock or metal) and hardly understand the hygiene requirement to perform circumcision, bacterial infection is highly likely under this situation. There are thousands other ways of signifying a covenant, so why circumcision?

Bible contradictions

Here are some examples of the contradictions in the bible if the texts are taken literally and as chronological accounts. Some of them may seem very trivial, but my point is, if Bible is really the word of God, and given that God is absolutely right and perfect, surely these petty mistakes won't even occur in the first place right? If by stating out these petty mistakes, I seem like a nuisance who is trying to make something out of nothing, that's all because the God that I know is all-perfect and all-knowing and committing these mistakes certainly doesn't fit that sort of image.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretations_of_Genesis

1. a. Genesis 2:17 – God says to Adam, "for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die

b. Genesis 5:5 -- Adam lives several hundreds of years after eating the fruit.

2. a. Genesis 7:2-3 – bring seven pairs of every animal

b. Genesis 7:8-9, 15—bring 1 pair of every animal

3. a. Genesis 10:5 -- Before the Tower of Babel, the land was divided according to tongues

b. Genesis 11:1 -- Before the Tower of Babel, the whole earth was of one language

4. a. Genesis 5:24 – Enoch did not die but was taken away by God

b. John 3:13 – No man hath ascended up to heaven

Source: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html

A few examples:

Who was at the empty tomb
1. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary – Matthew 28:1
2. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome – Mark 16:1
3. Mary Magdalene only – John 20:1
a. Isaiah 14:21—children slaughtered for the sins of their fathers

b. Deuteronomy 24:16 – children shall not be put to death for their fathers' sins

8. Different versions of creation chronology:

a. Genesis 1—Sky, Earth, Light (Day 1), water, dry land (Day 2), plants (Day 3), sun, moon stars (Day 4), animals, insects, water creatures (Day 5), human—both sexes (Day 7)

b. Genesis 2:4-24-- Earth and heavens, Adam, plants, animals, Eve

9. How did Judas die?

a. falling headlong, burst asunder, bowels gushed out – Act 1:18

b. Hanged himself – Matthew 27: 5-8

I am really glad to have been able to engage a conversation with you the other day. Our conversation has inspired me to compile this list of questions about Bible that I probably always have problem accepting but never (or rarely) voice out to anyone. On top of that, the exercise of compiling this list of questions also leads me to have a renewed understanding and view of the Bible, and has certainly sparked my interest and curiosity to go out of the way in search for external readings.

For your information, besides doing this exercise, today I have also gone to a bookstore and read some external materials. I came across a really, really very good book – Misquoting Jesus—The Story Behind who Changed the Bible and Why, written by Bart D. Ehrman. I find the author is very objective in his writing in that he doesn't have a pre-supposition that Bible is the word of God, thus, he is able to step back and have a more objective and rational look at the evidence and let the evidence speaks for themselves. It is certainly a highly captivating book. It brings me through a journey of rethinking and re-evaluating the Bible that is both challenging and fascinating. I have finished reading the whole book as it is so addictive that once I got hold of the book, I couldn't stop reading. I believe that it will surely be of great benefits to you too!

To tell you the truth, before this, I have never spent so much time and effort to really confront my own religious beliefs. Having compiling this list and having read the book that I mentioned, I have become pretty convinced that Bible is really a human book, not the word of God in literal sense as it is claimed to be. Nevertheless, I'm willing to have an open mind to engage in more dialogues and discussions with you and any other people. I will engage in dialogues with no pre-supposition that Bible is the word of God. Though I will not expect the person that I will be discussing with holds the same view as I do, my hope is that the person is willing to have an open and honest discussion with me too.

Thanks again for inspiring me to embark on this journey!

Regards,

Francis

Why good intention is not enough?

2009-01-11T02:51:00.000-08:00

Why are there so many bad policies in nearly every country? Be it a democratic country or an autocratic one, there is no exception to it. The only difference is, a democratic country can get rid of the bad policies through polling, while in an autocratic country, bad policies tend to perpetuate until the autocrat dies or replaced by another ruler. However, even in a democratic country, there still exists many bad policies that not only waste the resources of the country, but also impoverish the country and retard the growth of the country.

Very often, bad policies originated from good intention. For eg: the unemployment benefits which are distributed in many Western developed countries actually aim to alleviate the suffering and pain caused by job loss, but the policy ends up subsidizing those who are less hardworking and punishing those who work harder (through paying higher taxes). If I were to give a list of "bad policies", you'll probably be surprised that most of the "bad policies" originated from good intention. I'm not saying that good intention itself is bad, but having good intention is not enough to implement policies that can benefit the society as a whole. Below I would like to list out a few bad policies that are harmful and wasteful to the welfare of the society:

1. Affirmative policy (like the New Economic Policy in Malaysia that aims to help a targeted race because they are deemed to be economically disadvantaged)
Intention: To help the targeted race get out of poverty through giving special privileges in terms of subsidy, priority and restriction to other races
Consequences:
a. Greater reliance on the government assistance by the targeted race since they are sheltered from intense competition and thus do not have the incentive to work harder to increase their productivity and enhance their competitive advantages
b. Brain drain-- Citizens from other races flee to countries that are more likely to appreciate their talents and skills in search for better opportunities and more equal treatment. This will cause the country to lose their precious human capital and experience labour shortages. Therefore, it will not be able to transform itself into a developed country with high technological advancement in the long term
c. As more and more skilled labours move to other countries, not only the economic pie will shrink, the country will not be able to increase its productivity and competitiveness and the citizens who continue staying in the country will not be able to improve their living standard due to economic stagnation.

2. Fuel subsidy
Intention: to lower the fuel price in order to maintain lower living expenses
Consequences:
a. Fuel price becomes cheaper than it is supposed to be, people tend to travel more often in private transports and consume more fuel than they are supposed to. This creates much more pollution and impose a greater costs to the health of the population in general. Also, as people tend to travel more, it causes much more serious traffic congestion than it is supposed to be. Traffic congestion is the most wasteful and unproductive phenomenon, imagine how much resources could have been released and better utilised during the 1-2 hours time stuck in a traffic congestion everyday.
b. The subsidy could have been better used for investment in public transportation infrastructure which saves more energy and reduces traffic congestion for the long term (say 15-20 years). By giving it away as subsidy, the government trades-off the country's future growth by spending unwisely today.
c. Fuel subsidy tends to be regressive. Rich people travel more often in bigger, more luxurious cars, therefore they tend to consume more petrol than an average Joe. Hence, fuel subsidy is in fact subsidizing the rich more than the poor, since the rich consumes more energy and uses less of public transports.

3. Protectionism (as opposed to free trade)
Intention: to promote domestic industry (like Proton) so that they are able compete with other foreign manufacturers. Among the protection measures include: higher import taxes on foreign goods, tax incentives (for eg: tax-free for the first 5 years), subsidy etc.
Consequences:
a. Due to the lack of competition from foreign manufacturers, domestic industry lack the incentive to improve their products and services, therefore, consumers would be worse off since they have to buy more expensive goods and bear with lower quality of services.
b. The lack of competition will also cause the domestic industry to be inefficient and incompetent. They will only be able to operate in their own country and are vulnerable to the intense competition from foreign manufacturers with higher technology and better services.
c. Resources that could be used to develop other industries or infrastructure or investment in human capital are wasted on domestic industry which is inefficient. Therefore, taxes collected from taxpayers are wasted and only a small bunch of people who are working in the industry are benefited. So the domestic industry benefit at the expense of taxpayers.

4. Price control
Intention: During Chinese New Year or other festive seasons, the government will often impose food prices control. The intention is to help to make prices more affordable to the people in general.
Consequences:
a. Prices of goods fluctuate based on demand and supply. Interference with the price signal will cause the disruption of the demand and supply. When goods prices are cheaper than they are supposed to be, demand will increase dramatically, more people will be consuming the goods. However, the producers will be reluctant to produce more because the prices are lower than they expected. Therefore, price control will only lead to under-production and overwhelming demand.
b. For some goods, there exists a black market when the prices set by the government are too low from the market equilibrium. Sellers will not want to carry the goods because no profit can be made from selling the goods, but buyers will want to buy the goods since they are so cheap. Therefore, a black market develops whereby people buy and sell without the interference from government regulation. This kind of underground economy is often the breeding place for gangsterism.

5. Tax the rich to subsidize the poor
Intention: to narrow the income distribution gap so that the poor can improve their standard of living
Consequences:
a. The rich transfer their assets or companies to other countries. This makes the country worse off since the government can now collect much less revenues from the rich.
b. Productivity declines-- More hardworking people are punished (through higher taxes) while less hardworking people are rewarded (through subsidies). So why work harder?
c. Lower investment rate- since by investing more and earning more, you get taxed more heavily, why save and invest more? When people start to decrease their investment, the future growth of the country slows down or even turns negative, productivity declines, income reduces and people become poorer.

6. Communism
Intention: Communism once had a great influence on human's civilisation. A number of countries with the world's biggest populations were under the rule of communism. The ideology itself also originated from good intention. It is to create a riskless society, whereby everyone is guaranteed a job (but people cannot get to choose), no exploitation of workers by the employers (or capitalists), no distinction between rich and poor since everyone gets the same pay, your medical bills are taken care by the government. It sounds attractive and it was once called the "utopia". But what are the results?
Consequences:
a. Low productivity- since everyone gets the same pay, why worker harder? Slack all you can, and enjoy the fruits of labour of others.
b. Low saving and investment- since government takes care of everything from craddle to grave, why bother to save? And with low saving rate, investment will surely be low since investment fund comes from the pool of savings.
c. Low motivation to enhance competitiveness-- since your job is guaranteed and you have no risk of being fired, why bother to perform better? So what if you perform badly? You still keep your job and get paid like everyone else. So, how can people get motivated with this kind of environment?
d. Low innovation and technological advancement-- innovation is more risky, technological advancement needs a lot of resources, since everyone gets the same pay, why want to take more risk? When people are not adequately compensated for the risk they take, they will not choose to take up the risk. Therefore, the society's progress comes to a standstill.

In short, these are just some policies which originated from good intention but end up with bad results.

The moral of the story is : When we evaluate a policy, don't just focus on the intention of the policy, but the results or consequences that follow.

This is what I call "LOVE"

2009-01-06T06:22:00.001-08:00

Today when I read the newspaper, I notice a news about a teenage son's death. It reports the father's love for his son. Even though it is just a very simple news, reported in a very simple language, the love expressed by his father towards his son strikes and touches me. When I think about "a loving father", I guess I couldn't think of any other better illustration than this simple but touching one. Below is an excerpt from the news:

6/1/2009 TODAY newspaper
WE ARE HEARTBROKEN

Film star John Travolta has spoken for the first time about the death of his 16-year-old son Jett, "the most wonderful son that two parents could ever ask for."

"I did everything I could to keep him alive," said Travolta in his first public statement since Jett's death. " I tried the kiss of life for about 20 minutes. I wouldn't give up. The paramedics took over when they arrived, and they continued."

Travolta said that he and his wife, actress Kelly Preston, were "heartbroken" by their sudden, unexpected loss.

Jett, who started suffering from seizures from age two, was found unconscious on friday morning after apparently falling in the bathroom of the family home at the Old Bahama Bay resort in the Bahamas.

"Jett lit up the lives of everyone he encountered," Travolta said on his website. "We are heartbroken that our time with him was so brief. We will cherish the time that we had with him for the rest of our lives."

2008 In Retrospect

2009-01-04T06:28:00.000-08:00

I have not logged in to my blog for quite a while. As I have started working last week, also due to Ds' visit to Singapore, I have been experiencing a busy week.

I actually wrote this before 2008 ended, but I didnt manage to complete it at that time.

I can't believe we have reached the end of 2008. When we see the time unit in terms of year, it's easy to lose sight of the precious moment in every second, minute, hour, day, week and month. A year is a combination of all these, there are many things happening around the world in the unit of second. According to some (dubious) statistics, there are babies born every 8 seconds, on the other hand, there are babies born with birth defects every 30 seconds. Every 2.43 seconds, there are people dying of starvation, water-borne diseases and AIDS, 85% of them are children. And please bear in mind, these are all innocent children or babies. There are many many things that can be uncovered in the unit of second, let alone minute, hour, day, week, month and year.

2008, like many other years before, still portrays a world full of miseries and never-ending crises. This year, aside from the usual natural disasters like earthquake, hurricane, cyclone, flood etc that strikes the Earth from year to year, the misery is compounded by a huge man-made disaster-- American economic crisis, which has now spread globally and becomes a global phenomenon. Here, I want to recount the top 5 news events of 2008 (which are of significance to me) and give my takes about some of them.

1. Sichuan Earthquake & Cyclone-stricken Myanmar & Israel-Palestine war

2. US & global economic crisis

3. China poisonous milk scandal

4. Michael Phelps achievement

5. My transition to a new phase of life (not only in terms of transition from being a student to a career man, but in terms of my religious belief and my philosophy of life too)

One thing I like to highlight is about the 1st event. Just in the year 2006, we had tsunamis in Indonesia and some parts of the region. I want to highlight this because recently I had read another book of Bart Ehrman-- God's Problem: How Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--" Why We Suffer?"According to him, the bible gives a total of 5 explanations about why human suffer, and each explanation has its own limitations and problems.

1. Sufferings are the consequences of sin
Even until today, many people are still holding this view, that says people suffer because it is a punishment for our sin. This is in fact the most dominant form of explanation in the Bible, either in the Old Testament or New Testament. There are many problems with this explanation. In the book of Job, Job is described as being a righteous man who was innocent of committing any sin, yet he still suffered. Also, as I pointed out earlier, there are so many innocent babies and children today who are dying, do you think that's because of their sins? If yes, what are their sins?

2. Suffering has a redemptive purpose (Like Jesus died because of the redemption for human's sin)
"Through suffering, God actually has a better plan for you, you must have faith in God."That is a typical response of a Christian to console someone who is suffering from accident, sickness, natural disasters etc. In the bible, the story about Joseph's being sold to the Egypt and enduring all sorts of hardships actually had a redemptive purpose-- to save his family from famine later on when he became the Pharaoh's right-hand man.

But does every suffering has a redemptive purpose? Just look at the people killed during Israel-Palestinean war or Iraq's war or Russia-Georgia war, what kind of redemptive purpose is there for these people? And take another look at people who were killed by natural disasters-- typhoon, cyclone, earthquake, hurricane etc, these people didnt even have the chance to say a word to their loved ones when natural disasters strike. What redemptive purpose is there, what can be achieved (by God) out of this mess of events?

3. Suffering is a test of faith

This explanation is probably the most repulsive to me, personally. Let me ask you, how could you imagine an all-loving God, torture you until near-death, and tell you, "Hey, that's just a test of your faith towards me! I just want to test you, to see whether you are faithful to me even when you're inhumanly tortured!"If you cannot accept this portrayal of God, and you think I make all this up, read the book of Job. As mentioned, Job was a righteous man who did what was right in the eyes of God. But God wanted to test his faith, just because He had a bet with Satan, and so did that justify Him to destroy the livelihood, children, and even the health of Job?

Like I have mentioned in another friend's blog, can you imagine your neighbour treating his child like that-- abusing his child, starving him until the child fall sick, torturing him in all kinds of inhumane ways that you can think of or even can't think of, and then tell the child, "Hey, I'm just testing you to see whether you love me, whether you trust me as your father. So you must have faith in me, I'm doing THIS (horrible things) for your own good." I believe no one, even the worst human being with a little sense of goodness would ever tolerate this kind of behaviour.

But why, and how can (a lot of ) Christians readily accept and say this kind of thing when suffering occurs? If you cannot even accept this kind of standard on human being, how could you even accept it when it comes to God, who is supposed to be all-loving?

That really really puzzles me: why one of the most repulsive crimes (child-abuse) when it is done by God, all of a sudden, it becomes an act of love? Even in today's discussion (I went to church today, amazing right?) with two church seniors, the act of Abraham killing his son because God ordered him to do so became an act of love, just because it was a God's test of Abraham's faith, suddenly, everything becomes LOVE. And they had no problem at all with God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son.

Just imagine in our society today, let's say John (who is a President) asks Peter to sacrifice (or put it more obviously, to kill) his son to show loyalty or faith to him, will you even tolerate this kind of instruction? I don't know if you will (because I just encountered two persons who had absolutely no problem with that), but it is certainly a crazy and repulsive act to me, and I will have no hesitation at all to call the police. If you cannot even tolerate this kind of thing happen to our fellow human, how could you tolerate, let alone believe in a God, who is supposely all-loving and morally upright to give this kind of instruction to his children?

4. Free-will argument
There is still one reason given by the bible-- because human are given free-will and they abuse it, that's why human suffer. This view cannot explain the miseries caused by natural disasters. Also, assuming that human still have free-will in the heaven (human cannot become robot in the heaven right?), why would heaven be a better place than Earth? Since whenever there is free-will, there is a possibility of man choosing to do evil things and thus introducing suffering to themselves.

5. No answer at all.
This is the answer given by the book of Ecclesiastes. According to Ecclesiastes, there is simply no reason to suffering at all. The author of the book saw that good people may not be rewarded and evil people might triumph. He did not see suffering as a consequence of sin, neither is there a redemptive purpose. And that life is short and useless. The only way to make life meaningful for people is to "eat, drink and enjoy themselves" (this is a direct quote). It's a very interesting perspective, nonetheless. But it is probably the hardest answer for some people to accept.

Conclusion:
1. I don't understand why people's moral standard changes when it comes to God. When God does it, the worst crime (for human) becomes an act of love.
2. The 5th answer, which is "no answer" is probably the only answer that I can accept. Maybe there is simply no reason at all for all the sufferings.
3. The world is still moving on, so should I.

Why is there suffering?

2008-12-28T19:46:00.000-08:00

Here I'm presenting an argument that was presented by one of the great intellectuals of the 17th century, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to explain a logical problem of why there can be suffering if God is all powerful and wants the best for His people.

We start off with the following assumptions:
1. God is all powerful

2. God is all loving

3. There is suffering

These are all reasonable assumptions right? There is no good reason to say otherwise. Ok, the problem is they cannot all be true. If you cannot see why, let's see the following explanation:

1. God is all powerful, so he is able to remove all the sufferings from people (at least from innocent people, like babies if you think that human is generally wicked, even though I don't agree).

2. God is all loving, so he is willing to remove all the sufferings from people.

3. But there is still suffering, see the problem?

If you still can't follow, here is another illustration in the Q&A format.
Question: Why is there suffering?
1. Is God willing to prevent evil but He is not able? Then He is not all powerful

2. Is God able to prevent evil but He is unwilling? Then He is not all loving

3. Is God not willing and not able to prevent evil? Then He is not all powerful and all loving

Conclusion: With the existence of suffering, at least one of the assumptions about God must be false. I'm not willing to admit that, emotionally either. But anyone can give me a better conclusion? Or there is simply no reason for suffering at all?

An Interview with Bart Ehrman

2008-12-26T21:27:00.000-08:00

This is an interview with Bart Ehrman, the author of "Misquoting Jesus--The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why?"

In the Introduction you recount having a "born again" conversion experience admist feelings of loneliness as a young teenager. And yet, this is a common theme in religious conversion stories-- many people convert during times of personal crisis. What's going on here?

I think part of being human is having a sense of finitude. By our very nature, we are limited, impartial, incomplete beings. That is why we need, crave, and love family, friends, activities, distractions, pleasures, and so on. Some people have a deeper sense of emptiness than others and try to fill the void, for example by throwing themselves into their work, by seeking constant entertainment or physical pleasure, or by entering into multiple intimate relationships, whether licit or illicit.

One of the ways people sometimes deal with the emptiness they feel is through religion-- especially a religion like evangelical Christianity that emphasizes a personal relationship with God. When I was an evangelical Christian I felt that God was part of my life and that he filled the void that I had within.

This belief in God involved a number of doctrinal commitments and beliefs, and these beliefs were rooted in certain historical claims about what had happened in the past (for example, in the history of the people of Israel and in the life of the historical Jesus). They also involved certain views about the Bible (that it provided an inspired and infallible guide both to the past and to how to have a relationship with God). As a graduate student, when I began doing serious research into these historical claims and into the nature of the Bible, I began to see that the foundation of my faith was not nearly as secure as I had assumed it was.

Eventually I came to see that the Bible is a very human book, written from very human points of view, and that these points of view often differ from one another. The biblical authors were human too! They had likes, dislikes, opinions, prejudices, biases, perspectives and so on, like the rest of us; and all these things affected how they saw the world. The "infallible" book I had based so much of my faith on came to look very fallible. As a result, the faith that I once had (rooted in the Bible) began to crumble. It took several years of hard thinking, but eventually I came to realize that I could no longer hold on to the historical foundations of my belief.

This in itself did not lead me to become a non-Christian. But it did lead me away from the evangelical fold of Christianity, into a more "mainstream" form of belief that saw the Bible as conveying, in some sense, God's word, but not as a book that contained the very words from God. It was only later, and for other reasons, that I eventually decided that I could no longer be a Christian. People have frequently asked me what I believe now, after all these years of intense study and hard thinking. About seven or eight years ago, I became an agnostic. When I tell people this, they often tell me they think that's sad-- so perhaps I should add that I don't find it sad. I feel like I have a much better grasp on the "truth" than I did before, and that I understand our world and our relationship to it better than ever. And as I have said on numerous occasions, I have a fantastic life-- a brilliant and beautiful wife, a great pair of kids, a terrific teaching position with bright students, lots of time (though never enough!) for leisure and writing, and on and on. And so I consider myself a rather "happy agnostic".

What big question(s) would have to be answered to your satisfaction for you to return to the Christian faith or some form of religious observance?

The biggest religious issue for me is actually not the one I address in Misquoting Jesus. As I indicated in my previous answer, the issue that I deal with there involved my understanding of the Bible, as I came to realize that Bible does not provide us with an infallible guide for faith and practice. Once I realized that we don't have the originals of the New Testament, or any direct access to what the originals said, I felt compelled to give up my belief in the Bible as containing the inerrant words of God (for reasons I spell out a but in chapter 1 of the book). But I remained a Christian, believing in Christ as the way of salvation.

What I don't explain in the book (but plan to explain in a forthcoming book with Harper) is that eventually I left Christianity altogether and became an agnostic. I came to a point where I no longer knew if I could believe in God.

The big issue that drove me to agnosticism has to do not with the Bible, but with the pain and suffering in the world. I eventually found it impossible to explain the existence of evil so rampant among us-- whether in terms of genocides (which continue), unspeakable human cruelty, war, disease, hurricanes, tsunamis, mudslides, the starvation of millions of innocent children, you name it-- if there was a good and loving God who was actively involved in this world

For me to come to believe again, I would need to understand how there can be a God given a world such this. I should add that I do know how most Christians, and people of other religions, answer this question. There are lots of answers to it! But I find none of them satisfying. At the end of the day, I don't know how we can say that God exists, given the senseless pain and suffering in the world.

Maybe I should point out that I do not see it as my mission in life to convince other people to agree with me on this issue. I'm always happy to talk with people about their beliefs, honestly and openly, and to share with them why I no longer can believe. I don't think they are lacking in intelligence for believing (my wife is far more intelligent than I, and she's a believer), and I don't think that I'm evil for not believing. What we need in religious discussion is a frank and brutally honest sharing of views, not simply an insistence that everyone comes to believe, or disbelieve, what we do.

Why do so many people-- including some ultraconservative scholars with full access to the manuscript record-- insist that the Bible is without error? And why is the inerrancy of Scripture the supposed foundation upon which all other Christian beliefs stand or fall?

Actually, the view that the Bible is completely inerrant is a completely modern idea-- it is not the traditional "Christian" view since time immemorial. Many Christians, especially in my part of the world, the American South, don't realize this, but simply assume that belief in the Bible has always been the central tenet of the Christian faith. But that's not true. In fact, the views of inerrancy held by evangelical and fundamentalist Christians today were developed less than a century ago, in a set of conflicts in Christian circles in United States.

I tell my students that there are two approaches that one can take toward the question of whether the Bible is inerrant. One approach-- the approach that I took as a late teenager-- is simple to presuppose that it is inerrant. If you take this approach, then anything that looks like an error in Scripture is obviously not an error (since the Bible cannot have any errors). I no longer find this approach satisfying. This presupposition about Scripture as without error is a modern invention of fundamentalist theologians; it is not the traditional Christian view of the Bible. And if we simply want to presuppose a belief (about God, Christ, the Bible), rather than rationally thinking about it-- what good is it to have a mind to think with? Some people object to this, saying "How can you question God?" My response is that I'm not at all questioning God; I'm questioning your opinion about God.

The other approach to the question of inerrancy is to remain neutral on the question of whether the Bible (or any other book) has any mistakes, and simple read it for yourself to see. If there are errors in it, then it is not inerrant!

Once you open yourself up to the possibility that there can be inconsistencies, contradictions, geographical mistakes, historical misstatements, scientific errors, and so on in the Bible, you will certainly find them. They are in there, all over the place.

In short, I think it is best to approach Christianity (any kind of Christianity: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, mainstream Protestant, evangelical, or any other kind), or any faith, with an open-mind-- making sure to use the mind! Those who believe in God surely think God gave us a mind to think with. And so no one should check their brains at the door when they enter through the portals of their religion.

You once viewed the Bible as encapsulating the very words of God. Then, during your time at Princeton, you came to regard the Bible as "a human book from beginning to the end." Why does it have to be one or the other?

Actually, I don't think that it does have to be one or the other. In fact, most Christian thinkers whom I know think that the Bible is both: a book containing the Word of God and a book shaped by human hands.

When I started out as a believer in high school, though, I thought (and was taught) that the Bible was unsullied by human hands, that it was completely divine, down to its very words. This was the view taught at Moody Bible Institute, where I went to college; we called it the "verbal plenary inspiration" of Scripture. Inspiration was verbal (down to the very words) and plenary (complete from the beginning to the end).

Now I realize that most Christians throughout history never thought any such thing about the Bible. And most Christian thinkers today do not think so. The Bible is understood in many, many ways (by many, many different Christians); but for most Christians it in some sense contains or conveys the Word of God, even though this word comes through the human words of the text, written by human authors.

That was more or less the view I adopted when I stopped being an evangelical Christian, and began associating with more mainline Christian denominations (Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian), during my graduate student days and later.

I eventually came to think, however, that I could no longer subscribe even to this broader understanding of the inspiration of Scripture. In large part this was because of my studies: I came to see that Bible was a book written by human authors, and if it was "inspired", it was in the way that other sacred books (the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Christian apocrypha) and other great literature (Shakespeare, Milton, John Donne) were inspired. Many of the books of the New Testament ( for example, Mark, John, and Galatians) are works of religious genius, and sometimes we just have to stand back in reverential awe at their beauty and power. But in my opinion, they are human books nonetheless. They are filled with human biases, perspectives, opinions, and ideas, and often one book stands completely at odds with the views of another book (as I have tried to show in some of my other writings). That's why it is a problem answering the question, "What does the Bible say about X?" Often the Bible will say many different things about "X". And about "Y" and "Z" as well!

Bruce Metzger, your mentor in textual criticism to whom this book is dedicated, has said that there is nothing in these Scripture that challenges any essential Christian beliefs (e.g. the bodily resurrection of Jesus or the Trinity). Why do you believe these core tenets of Christian orthodoxy to be in jeopardy based on the scribal errors you discovered in the biblical manuscripts?

Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions-- he is firmly committed Christian and I am not-- we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement-- maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands.

The position I argue for in Misquoting Jesus does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger's position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript traditionn of the New Testament. What he means by that (I think) is that even if one or two passages that are used to argue for a belief have a different textual reading, there are still other passages that could be used to argue for the same belief. For the most part, I think that's true.

But I was looking a the question from a different angle. My question is not about traditional Christian beliefs, but about how to interpret passages of the Bible. And my point is that if you change what the words say, then you change what the passage means. Most textual variants (Prof Metzger and I agree on this) have no bearing at all on what a passage means. But there are other textual variants (we agree on this as well) that are crucial to the meaning of a passage. Anhd the theology of entire books of the New Testament are sometimes affected by the meaning of individual passages.

From my point of view, the stakes are rather high: Does Luke's Gospel teach a doctrine of atonement (that Christ's death atones for sins)? Does John's Gospel teach that Christ is the "unique God" himself? Is the doctrine of Trinity ever explicitly stated in the New Testament? These and other key theological issues are at stake, depending on which textual variants you think are original and which you think are creations of early scribes who were modifying the text.

All study Bibles, across the full range of translations, include notes that identify verses with questionable historical accuracy. Why do you think that most people are unaware of these New Testament problems that you reveal in the book?

This is a great question, and it's one that I've often wondered about. My guess is that there is a simple answer: most people don't read the footnotes!

The facts that I explain about the New Testament in Misquoting Jesus are not at all "news" to biblical scholars. They are what scholars have known, and said, for many, many years. These are the facts: we have thousands of copies of the New Testament in its original, Greek language, written over a period of centuries; these copies all differ from one another in ways great and small; most of these differences do not affect the meaning of the text, but other differences are significant -- some of them slightly significant for understanding an author's nuances, others of enormous significance affecting the interpretation of an entire passage, or even a book.l

Why is it that this came as "news" to many readers of Misquoting Jesus? In large part because scholars (and Christian pastors and teachers) have been reluctant or unable to communicate the message to a broad audience. But this is information that readers of the New Testament have the right to know! It should not simply be tucked away in footnotes, but should be loudly proclaimed in Christian education classes, by Christian leaders and educators, in books about the Bible, and in editions of the Bible. It should be proclaimed from the rooftops and taught on the ground. This is information that is crucial for our understanding of the Bible, the most important book-- whether looked at religiously or culturally-- in the history of our form of civilization.

Do the same kinds of textual mistakes show up in the Old Testament as well? What about Koran?

The Hebrew Bible is filled with lots of textual problems-- as we have come to realize, for example, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, where copies of the Hebrew Bible a thousand years older than our previously earliest copy turned up. Even though Jewish scribes were incredibly meticulous and exacting in the Middle Ages, in earlier centuries (for example around the time when Christianity arose, and earlier) scribes made numerous changes in their texts. You can see this simply by looking at a good modern translation of the Hebrew Bible, such as the New Revised Standard Version, where in the footnotes to books like 1 and 2 Samuel there are numerous passages where translators are not sure what the original text was. And this is not counting those intriguing passages, such as a number in the book of Job, for example, where translators are not even sure what some words mean because they are so rare!

One difference between Hebrew Bible is that there are far, far fewer original manuscripts than for the New Testament. The standard editions of the Hebrew Bible, in Hebrew, depend on the readings of one manuscript that was produced around the year 1000 CE. With the New Testament, the standard editions are based on thousands of manuscripts that date all the way back to the second century. It appears that when Jewish scribes of the Middle Ages copied their texts, they destroyed the manuscript they were copying. Christians didn't do that, so there are many more manuscripts for the New Testament: and the more manuscripts there are, the more errors you will find!

After I wrote Misquoting Jesus, I started getting a lot of emails from all sorts of people. One common kind of email was from people who wanted me to know that even though the New Testament had textual problems, the books that they revered were absolutely perfect, with no mistakes and no textual erros. Most commonly these emails came from people who wanted me to convert to follow either the Book of Mormon or (on the other side of the religious spectrum!) the Koran.

My own view is that every piece of religious literature is produced by human hands, and that human hands are never perfect. Anyone who claims that a religious book is perfect is making a statement of faith, not a statement of fact. People believe that their own sacred texts are perfect, but very few of these people (including the kindhearted ones who have sent me emails) have actually engaged in the kind of detailed textual study of their texts that I, and others like me, have engaged in with respect to the New Testament. If they did so-- what would they find? My hunch is that they would find that all works of religious genius are produced by human hands, and they all have the imprints of those hands still upon them.

End of interview

Self-realization vs self-denial

2008-12-26T19:40:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, I had a chance to chat with a friend W about the questions I have about the bible. After the interesting conversation, he asked me to compile a list of all the questions that I have about the Bible and he would be able to help me arrange a meeting with someone who knows more about the bible than he does. I agreed and thus I had spent my last two days to prepare the list of questions that I want to ask. I shall post them here after I have my discussion because in the process of doing the exercise, I stumbled across many "new" things that I never knew existed in the bible and they are really worth mentioning and sharing. It was a fascinating and challenging exercise for me, because even though all these while I have been talking about bible stuff, I have never spent so much time and effort to really confront many issues I have in my mind about bible face-to-face.

By now, I have written quite a number of posts about my religious beliefs. If you have read my earlier post, I have actually mentioned that I wanted to talk no more about religious stuff. But deep inside me, I knew it was not true, it was just a form of self-denial. As rational as I am, it is still hard for me to get out of my comfort zone, it is hard to come to the realisation that the things I'm taught to be the "truth" since young aren't really the case. Just see how hard it is for Michael Scofield to get out of the prison (it's already Season 4 now!) and you'll get a sense of the level of difficulty to get out of the "mind prison" that I was in. So, I don't blame people who are not able to come to that realization or encounter that moment of enlightenment, I know it's not easy!

Going back to the exercise of compiling the list of questions that I mentioned. That exercise has left me so fascinated that I went out of my way to a bookstore to do some external readings. I came across a book called "Misquoting Jesus-- The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" authored by Bart D. Ehrman. The author specializes in the textual criticism of the New Testaments. I think he has a very objective view in that he actually doesn't have a pre-supposition that bible is the word of God (but he admitted that he used to have that assumption in mind and dropped it during his postgrad study). He presented the evidence he found in his research, given both sides of arguments and made a conclusion based on logical reasoning. It is really a very informative and captivating book to read. I couldn't put it down once I got hold of it.
Realising that bible is a human book gives me a very different perspective when I read it. Previously, by presuming that it is the word of God, I have the following assumptions in mind when I read it:
1. Perfection--since God is perfect, no error, not even a tiny, picayune mistake or contradiction is allowed
2. Absolute authority--since God is always right and never wrong, what He says must be absolutely true
3. Eternity-- since God's word is eternal, it must be true and applicable both in ancient and modern society, regardless of the advancement in science and technology and human's understanding of the universe
4. Universal -- since there is only one true God in the universe (according to Christian belief), what the bible says must be true for all humankind regardless of the cultural and geographical context
I believe these are all reasonable assumptions if you read the bible based on the presumption that it is the word of God. However, to view it as a human literature gives me a completely different feeling. I have a sense of empathy, since they are just human who are prone to making mistakes like you and I, they are just as likely to be tired, to be falling asleep when writing, to forget some details, to mess up the chronological order of the events, to copy from other texts, to make up their own stories (either intentionally or unconsciously), to incorporate their personal judgement and biases and to make some spelling or vocabulary mistakes. Not only the authors themselves, the scribes who were responsible to copy the texts in order to be distributed (remember they didn't have photocopy machine) and not just one scribe, hundreds and thousands of them spreading across different geographical regions and time horizons are just as likely to make mistakes along the way. Currently the earliest copy of manuscripts found only dated back to about 200 AD, more than a 100 years after Jesus (if he existed) and all the first generation apostles died, the original ones are still yet to be found.

What if the originals were found? Aren't the originals inspired by God and therefore ought to be respected as God's words?

To answer this question, I shall quote Bart Ehrman's words.
"This became a problem for my view of inspiration, for I came to realize that it would have been no more difficult for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would have been for him to inspire them in the first place. If he wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have given them to them (and possibly even given them the words in a language they could understand, rather than Greek and Hebrew). The fact that we don't have the words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not preserve them for us. And if he didn't perform that miracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words."
In other words, if He didn't preserve the exact wordings for us to follow in our life time, what's the point of inspiring them in the first place?

This journey has led me to be more comfortable to confront and talk about religious stuff that I used to be uneasy with. I'm no longer staying in the self-denial zone that shuts my ears, my eyes and my mind to the possibility that bible could be wrong, and thinking that it could be wrong no longer makes me feel uncomfortable. My intention of sharing this is not to convert any of the readers into non-believer, as I mentioned a lot of times previously, I believe you have the ability to evaluate your own beliefs with your intelligence and honesty.

Of course, I still maintain an open mind. And I shall just wait and see what additional information can I get about the bible from the discussion with W's friend tomorrow. Also, I want to share a piece of interview a journalist made with Bart Ehrman in the book which I think is absolutely enlightening (will I get sued for doing that? Nvm, just see how it goes). You can see that in my next post.

Miscellaneous thoughts on a Christmas Day

2008-12-24T21:17:00.000-08:00

Of all the blogs that I read, I think mine paints the gloomiest picture in this joyous and heart-warming season, ie. by reporting about economic crisis and doubting the authenticity of the bible as the words of God (which might be offensive to some people). Sorry to my dear readers if I spoil your festive mood, I guess I'm just being more realistic. The reality might be unacceptably cruel or heartless, but I still think the best thing to do is to confront it and not try to escape from it or deny it.

Nevertheless, amidst the cruelty of the reality, I'm still an optimistic person, and I think that, given what I'm endowed with, I'm still capable of making this world a better place to live in by contributing what I have to this world (and I believe everyone of you has that ability too, the fact that you can access to internet and read my blog is already a great privilege denied to many other people in the world).

As I woke up this morning-- the morning of Christmas Day, I have been thinking-- what if Jesus didn't exist? What if Jesus is just a myth, like Father Christmas (or Santa Claus in US)? What if bible isn't word of God (which I'm pretty sure it isn't)? I say "what if", because I don't know for sure whether he did exist or he didn't, and no one, including the authors of Matthew and Luke can know for sure, given that they couldn't even agree on the year which Jesus was born and given the many contradictions of the critical details of the birth of such a significant man.

Would it render the Christmas celebration meaningless if Jesus didn't exist?

Well, it might be to many religious people, but not to me at least. Even if Jesus really didn't exist, his message of peace and love for humankind is still very well alive. In fact, the message of peace and love is consistent with another Christmas iconic figure-- Father Christmas, who is known to be delivering presents to all children in the world during Christmas, that resembles a message of love.

So, Christmas is still a festival worth celebrating as a reminder to everyone of the peace and love for humankind, so long as the world is still thirst for them. Therefore, I make up my mind to devote my next Christmas to do community services or any other volunteering services. In fact, I want to devote my every Sunday, if possible to volunteering services, like giving tuition to less privileged kids, distributing food, involving in recycling activities and etc to make this world a better place to live in. Isn't that a much better and more meaningful thing to do than going to church which doesn't help to improve anything or any life?(Haha, I know many Christians will surely disagree with me.) So that is my 2009 New Year resolution. Anyone wants to join me? You're certainly welcome to do so!

How bad is the US economic crisis?

2008-12-24T07:18:00.001-08:00

I can't find a better person who explains the US economic crisis so clearly and easily understood other than this man. In this video, he explained why this time the crisis is so serious that the news reports use the word "fallout" to describe the crisis. Hopefully you'll have some understanding of the US economic crisis after watching these video. Enjoy!

Why 'Fallout' for the financial crisis? from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Next video gives me a chill down my spine, the US situation is much much worse than I have expected but it's real. The first video tells you the theory and clarifies the meaning of some financial terms. This one tells you the statistics and opinions of respectable experts who have done thorough research on the US economy. I believe their opinions paint a quite accurate picture of the US economy.

Reexamining the birth of Jesus

2008-12-22T23:21:00.000-08:00

This week, I will not be able to start working yet, as I haven't had my PR application completed. Meanwhile, my organization is doing a temporary employment pass for me, and it takes one week to do it, so the earliest date I can start working is next monday.

On the other hand, as the Christmas is approaching, I have taken the opportunity to re-read the biblical account of the birth of Jesus, even though I have heard about it for countless times since young. After all, what could be a more meaningful thing to do than to "put Jesus back in Christmas" (as suggested by ks)? I would also encourage those who really care about what they believe to have a closer and more objective look at the biblical account of Jesus' birth. (I believe this is not a demanding request as you just need to read Matthew chapter 1- 2 and Luke chapter 1-3 for the birth of Jesus, if you really care)

Having re-read the biblical account of Jesus' birth and having done some research online, I found many interesting things worth mentioning (of course, for those who really care). Following are the issues/findings that I would like to share with you all in Q&A format.

Oh, before that, I must stress again, my point of sharing these is not to offend anyone, I'm just presenting the information according to what was written in the bible and the research of bible scholars.

Jesus genealogy
1. Who was Jesus descended from (start from David the king)?
i. Matthew chapter 1: 6-16
ii. Luke 3:23-31
Compare this with
iii. 1 Chronicles 3:4-24

You know, I used to skip these chapters when reading the bible because "what's the point of reading all these names?" But they are actually very important in order to fulfil the prophecies in the Old Testament. If you're lazy, wikipedia has them all sorted out nicely for you. A comparison of the three chapters gives you the following observations:

1. From David to Jesus, Matthew has 28 generations, Luke has 43 generations, the difference is 15 generations, assuming 1 generation is 20-30 years, the difference is 300-450 years.

2. If you look closely enough, there are only 5 common names between the Matthew and Luke's accounts of Jesus' genealogy (David, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Joseph, Jesus)

3. Compare those names with 1 Chronicles, you will find that Matthew's account fits the Old Testament (1 Chronicles) better. But, according to a website introduced by louis,
"Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy, he is possessed of the true historic sense...in short, this author should be placed along with the greatest of historians."
If that is true, how could he get this very important information wrong? So, who's right and who's wrong? And please be reminded that "God's word is eternal and absolutely true". (Isaiah 40:8)

Of course, when you read the wiki info, people presented many many explanations, trying to explain away the discrepancies instead of admitting that it is a pure error on the author's behalf, some are even completely laughable and ludicrous. My response to those explanations is -- read the verses again, there is absolutely no ambiguity in both verses: "and Jacob, the father of Joseph -- Matthew 1:16" & "Joseph, the son of Heli-- Luke 3:23", unless you admit that one of the authors was wrong, otherwise, I can't think of any other possible credible reasons that can explain away all the three doubts I presented.

Chronology of events of Jesus' birth
Matthew:
i. Matthew started off mentioning that Joseph and Mary were both in Bethlehem and thus Jesus was born there (no mention of moving from Galilee because of the census) -- Chapter 2:1
ii. Wise men from the east came to search and worship Jesus (no mention of sherpherds) -- Chapter 2:2
iii. Herod wanted to get rid of Jesus -- Chapter 2:3
iv. Wise men found Jesus in the house (not manger) by following the star, offered him gifts -- Chapter 2:11
v. Joseph was told to escape to Egypt from Herod that night -- Chapter 2:14
vi. They stayed in Egypt until Herod died (at 4 BC, see the link) -- Chapter 2:15
vii. Herod killed all the children in his region -- Chapter 2:16
viii. They returned to Nazareth, Galilee after Herod died -- Chapter 2: 23

Luke:
i. Joseph and Mary stayed in Nazareth, Galilee, went to Bethlehem because of the census -- Chapter 2:2-4
ii. The census was decreed by Caesar Augustus, and it was when Quirinius was the governor of Syria -- Chapter 2:1-2
iii. Jesus was born in a manger -- Chapter 2:7
iv. Shepherds came to see Jesus ( no mention of wise men) -- Chapter 2:16
v. They stayed in Bethlehem for at least 8 days (no mention of Herod's massacre and Joseph's escaping to Egypt) -- Chapter 2:21
vi. After that, they brought Jesus to temple to perform the purification according to the Law of Moses (public appearance of a child with no fear of massacre?)-- Chapter 2:22
vii. Only after performing everything, they returned to Nazareth, Galilee (not after Herod's death) -- Chapter 2:39

So, from the chronological events, we can see that, there are some discrepancies between the two gospels. Ok, some are trivial ones (like wise men, sherpherds, house, manger), which I shall just give the authors benefits of the doubt, but the major ones can hardly be ignored.

1. Was there a census (historically, not according to bible) at the time when Jesus was born?
According to the website by Louis & wiki, there was indeed a census held around 6-7 AD when Quirinius was the governor of Syria.
But according to Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (or Herod I) who died at 4 BC, 10 years before the census was held (at 6-7 AD). To know more about this historical event, see here.
Again, who is correct and who is wrong?

2. Was there a massacre of children by Herod?
The great massacre of children was only recorded by Matthew, not by Luke, Josephus, a Jewish historian (also found in louis' article--聖經文獻可靠嗎?) and any other credible historical records. Remember, Luke was "claimed to be a first rank" historian, how could he miss out the massacre of children by Herod-- such an important and major event? It's like the Qin Shi Huang's burning books and burrying scholars (焚书坑儒) event. It turns out that Luke might be right to not mention about it, because currently there exists no historical or archaeological evidence of this event having actually happened aside from the account by Matthew. To know more about it, see here.

3. Did Joseph escape to Egypt from Herod?
To answer this question, we don't even need to refer to external sources, you can get the answer directly and plainly from the bible, and you'll see the sharp contradiction between the two gospels' accounts.
In Matthew, Joseph escaped to Egypt the night Jesus was born, as ordered by the angel.
However, in Luke, they didnt seem to face any problem, Joseph and Mary were still at Bethlehem for at least 8 days and waited for the day to come to perform necessary rituals according to the Law of Moses at a temple (which must be more than 8 days) with no fear of Jesus being killed. That is a major major contradiction that could hardly be explained away.

I can't believe that re-reading the bible could give me so many new information. I thought I have heard more than enough of the stories of the birth of Jesus, but apparently, I never understand and examine closely and deeply enough to discover all these puzzles and contradictions. It is interesting how "bringing Jesus back to Christmas" can actually be so fruitful and enlightening to me (and hopefully to you too)!

Things about Australia

2008-12-22T07:54:00.000-08:00

Here I would like to summarise about things that I like and dislike during my trip to Australia:

I like:

1. to be able to see my friends in Perth & Melbourne whom I have not seen for ages, and for the hospitality that they had shown, couldn't thank them enough for that.

2. being told that my friends are all striving hard to pursue their goals in life (some will be doing postgrad, some are doing their final year, some have started working, some just graduated and plan to work while studying part time) and on their way to realise them, that really gives me a lot of inspirations to achieve mine too!

3. Australian cities, I have visited 3 major cities in Australia-- Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane, they are all relatively unpolluted, good planning, clean, with well-maintained parks

4. Australian's marvellous service attitude

5. Australia weather in the summer-- not too hot, dry & windy

6. Caucasian kids, they are so cute!

7. Australian buildings, great architectural design

8. Australian fruits, they are relatively cheap (as compared to Sg) and many of them are my favourites.

I dislike:

1. Jetstar flights, often delay without even informing.

2. rainy days, especially the day when I reached Melbourne

3. Australian restaurant food portion, it's so huge (see my facebook photo), enough for 3 people of my appetite to finish a plate of food. Probably that's why Caucasians are much bigger in size.

4. High living costs, especially eating out and rental costs

Back from my Australia trip

2008-12-22T04:24:00.000-08:00

I was back from Australia last Friday. But there were many things to be done such that I didnt even have the chance to start blogging about my trip. I did write my own travel diary just in case I forget any details of the trip. On the whole, it was really a wonderful and fulfilling trip, at least I achieved my objectives. So what are my objectives of travelling?
1. Experience the Australian/ Caucasians' culture (I've never been to a Caucasian country before)
2. Meet up with some friends that I have not seen for more than 3 years since I graduated from high school & since I studied in Sibu.
3. Enjoy the breathtaking views of Australia (parks, streets, people, cities, beach etc)

Before giving my thoughts on the trip, I really want to tell a terrible thing that happened to me during the trip. I was so upset when it happened. You know, I had taken plenty of pictures when I was in Perth. But I accidentally pressed the "FORMAT" button when I was in Gold Coast. I was too bored and playing around with the camera, and somehow, I just accidentally committed the stupid mistake. I was seriously terrified. However, I kept telling myself, there must be some way to recover the data, since people could recover Edison Chan's "interesting" photos last time. Even though still worried, I somehow managed to calm myself down at that thought. At that time, I still had like 4 more days before I got back to Sg. So I didn't want that incident to spoil my mood of the holiday. When I got back, I googled for the software and thanks to Google and the advancement of software, I found a software that could recover my data file. And that was how I recovered all my data, and I don't have "interesting" photos like Edison Chan's, haha, no worries. Today I've uploaded all my photos to facebook, feel free to take a look if you're free.

About Caucasian culture, I must say that I always admire their culture, call me whatever names you want, I just like their culture. However, that doesn't mean I like their government policies. It sounds a bit ironic because their culture is most probably shaped by their government policies. But anyway, first thing, I like their culture of work-life balance. Probably they can afford to place less emphasis on the pursuit of monetary benefits due to their government's generous handouts. I shall just keep the government policies aside first and focus on their culture. Also, they are very liberal in their parenting. They don't pressurize their kids much. Often times, I think Asian kids are being pressurized too hard that they have the impression that parental pressure is necessary to succeed. Ok, probably it's just me who think differently and probably I'm the minority, but I personally don't understand why one has to be given pressure by an external party to keep moving. Why one cannot just take control of your life and be responsible for your own goals and doings? I personally hate to have my parents telling me what to do because I believe that I know what I want better than my parents do, that my way of doing things is much better than my parents' and that my approach can produce much better result than my parents'. Who else knows what you want or interested in more than yourself?

Also, they parent with reasons, less on authority (like saying "you must listen to me because I'm your parent and don't ask why"). That's why Caucasians can express themselves much better as compared to Asians, they can give reasons for what believe and what they do, unlike a lot of Asian kids who just believe or do something because "my parents want me to do that".

I remember during the surfing lesson, a few small kids, probably about 5-7 years old were also joining us. They asked questions whenever they thought they didn't understand, naturally and without any fear. I think Asian and Caucasian culture have very different opinions on "respect". Asian culture thinks that people that are older naturally "ought to be respected", regardless of the fact that the older person could be wrong too, despite their rich experience. But Causasian culture thinks that "respect is earned through reasoning", parents do not necessarily command respect if they are bad parents, older people are not necessarily right just because of they age older. That's why their parents can talk to their kids like friends chatting with each other, and they are not afraid to question their parents when they think their parents are wrong. This is just my own opinion, probably those who know Caucasian culture more than I do can give me other opinions.

Another thing about their culture is their generosity. I won't think or say that money is not important to them, that would be an absolutely ridiculous conclusion. I guess it is their propensity to consume (in economics term), meaning the tendency of them to consume their earnings is much higher. They are willing to give out some money to street performers after watching the show whereas many Asians will just walk away(that happen in Singapore too). They will also tend not to free ride when taking public transport like trams (no bus conductor to check the tickets).

I was thinking about the possible explanation and the probable reason might be due to their government's policies. Their government provides very generous medical benefits, unemployment benefits, kids' benefits ($600 per month as pocket money for every kid in every household, Shao Mei told me) etc. Even though they pay higher taxes, they still have considerable amount of money left-over for leisure spending since many aspects of their lives are being taken care of by the government, Asians however, spend a lot of their money on their kids and other necessities that governments do not provide much support.

Will they change their way of spending if the government were to abolish all the welfare system? I have no answer for that, but I myself think that they probably will. Even though I have no liking for their culture of lavish spending and low savings, I still like their way of parenting their kids with reasons and not on authority.

Going for holiday

2008-12-06T17:13:00.001-08:00

There will be no update for my blog for the next two weeks. I'm going for a "long-awaited, highly-anticipated" trip to Australia later. Hopefully I have a lot of stories to tell when I'm back.

To those who will be confronting dreadful exams: wish you all the best!
To those who are attending job interviews: wish you'll land on an ideal job soon!
To those who are also enjoying holiday (like me): wish you Happy Holiday!

Ok, I'm really excited now. Gotta go!

Voting by feet- Leaving for a greener pasture

2008-12-04T08:01:00.000-08:00

I went to the Singapore Immigration and Checkpoint Authority (ICA) to do my PR application few days ago. I went during the weekday and I was quite surprised to see so many people during weekdays queuing up at the level that dealt with the Singapore citizenship application.

It was not long ago when the Chinese actress Gong Li decided to take up Singapore citizenship. So I guess I shouldn't be too surprised to see so many other people doing the same thing. People are just behaving rationally, pursuing their self-interest--better standard of living. The opportunity to be able to exercise their voting power--voting by feet, is especially valuable for people who are denied their voting rights in an undemocratic society. The most dramatic example of people voting by feet was during the period when China was taken over by Communist Party in 1949, there were waves of migrants from mainland China to Hong Kong, which was a British colony that promised better standard of living and economic opportunities, for fear of persecution by the Communist government.

Pursuing a better standard of living has always been the most important motivation for people to leave their home country and immigrate to a foreign country. I have a discussion with a friend C about the nationality issues involved when a person decides to immigrate. My personal view is that, in a much globalised world today, free mobility of human capital is an issue worth arguing for. I have always been advocating policy that embraces competition. Free mobility of human capital means that different countries around the globe impose less stringent criteria or even no restrictions on the movement of human resources which effectively encourages competition between countries to attract talent to their countries. Free movement of goods and services has been prevalent among countries due to the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and World Trade Organization, however, the movement of workers are still heavily restricted through measures such as Visa, work permit, travel permit, maximum period of stay etc. Currently, European Union is the only region that allows free movement of workers between countries.

Why is free movement of workers/human capital so important and what are the benefits associated with it?

1. Increased competition

As mentioned, the free movement of human capital increases competition between countries to provide the best offer to lure talent to their countries. Countries that have sound economic policies, such as low income tax rate, strict enforcement of rule of law, embrace meritocracy, protect and respect human rights, free of discrimination, low inflation, stable political system, government with high integrity and free of corruption will be able to attract the best talent. This provides incentives for governments to improve their policies because if they don't, they will suffer from severe brain drain (people vote by feet) and get stuck with poverty. As government improves their economic policies, the people in the country benefit and that improves the welfare of the whole society.

2. Increased specialization

This is a very important concept when we discuss about the benefits of free movement of either goods or workers. Specialization can greatly enhance people's lives in a society, however, there is a pre-condition, people must be allowed to trade or exchange their goods or services freely, in short, businesses must be allowed to flourish. The reason is that specialization enables everyone to do things that they are best at doing. When people are doing things they are best at doing, they will be able to produce goods or services most efficiently--that means higher quality at a lower cost. So consumers would surely be better off with increased specialization.

But some people like to talk about "patriotism". Some people will label those who take up other country's citizenship as "traitor. I quote one of the comments appeared online when Gong Li took up Singaporean citizenship.

“Traitors like this don’t even love their own country. These people were only fake countrymen of ours. Let them slink off to other countries and die!”

Another much quoted sentence of patriotism is by former President of the US, JF Kennedy-- "Ask not what your country can do for you-- ask what you can do for your country."

I agree with neither of the statements. Here I would like to quote from a great economist, also whom I admire a lot-- Milton Friedman in his book "Capitalism and Freedom".

"The paternalistic "what your country can do for you" implies that government is the patron, the citizen is the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, "what you can do for your country" implies that government is the master of the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of the heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.

The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather " What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom?"

In short, government is just an instrument for your to achieve your purposes in life, a means to achieve certain common goals such as maintainence of rule of law and democracy, not an entity for you to swear allegiance or loyalty. Every individual has his own goal in life and has the right and freedom to pursue his own happiness, why should one constraint himself and stay in a country which one is not able to pursue his own happiness?

Brief comments on Ls’ articles

2008-12-04T07:45:00.001-08:00

For those who like to have "another side of the story", you may look out here. Just some comments from me regarding the articles. I must mention that my intention of posting the materials is not to sway anyone, I'm just merely an information provider and processor, I believe my readers have the necessary intelligence and judgement to make an informed conclusion based on the information provided.

Firstly, about the author/provider of the information:

Blog	My blog		Louis blog
Source	The History Channel		Know why you believe	批判「達文西密碼」	遺失的偽福音書
Author	Banned from the bible (Multiple)	Who wrote the bible (Robert Beckford)	Paul E.Little	梁燕城	王守仁牧師
Description of author	Multiple	British academic theologian at Oxford Brookes University	Assoc Prof of Evangelism at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois		Ph.D. Emory University﹐Asbury Theological Seminary
Date published	2003	Dec 2004	February 2000

Next, the articles answer some of the questions, leaving some remained unanswered while for some questions, they give contradictory answers.

Questions answered:
1. How to prove that the Old Testament is reliable? –Article 1
a. Dead sea scrolls (but this only proves consistency(一致性), not necessary accuracy (准确性))
b. 七十士譯本 (same as above, only proves consistency, but not accuracy)

2. How to prove that the New Testament is reliable? –Article 1
a. Not much difference in terms of verses (same comment, proves consistency but not accuracy)
b. Writing can be dated back to very early days, about 130A.D.
c. Gnostic school used them—I thought Gnostic school is a corruption of Christianity? Article 2(諾斯底派的偽福音書的多份文獻)
d. They were widely used by Churches as lectionaries, not earlier than 6 A.D. – That’s 600 years after Jesus died?

3. Was the Jesus story told in the Gospels accurate eye witnessed accounts of the disciples?
- No, based on word-of-mouth – Article 3 (口傳資料的可靠性)

4. What were the factors in deciding which scriptures to be canonised?- Article 1
- Were they written by disciples? (它是否為使徒所著？)
- Which church or how many churches used them? (該書是不是為某一重要教會，或多數教會認可)- Does that mean majority is always right?
- Did they fulfil the standard teaching? (符合教義標准)—but who set the standard?

Questions unanswered:
1. Do the bible descriptions fit archaeological evidence?
2. Who wrote/rewrote the first five books (known as Torah) of the Old Testament, if not Moses (only), since he could not have written about his own death, and things that happened after his death?
3. Why are there many repetitions in the Genesis if it was written by only one author (traditionally is Moses)?
4. Who else wrote the Paul’s letters? (1 Corinthians 16:21-- I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.)

Questions that give contradictory answers:
1. How was the New Testament put together? Who decided what to include and what to exclude?
a. God decided/inspired –Article 1 (它們是神所默示的，而不是因為任何團體投票贊成，它們才成為正典)
b. People decided
i. Article 1 (他們清楚界定何者有權威，何者沒有權威。)—who are “they”?
ii. Article 1 (亞他那修（Athanasius）的一封信)
iii. Article 1 (迦太基（Carthage）會議)

2. How was the Old Testament put together?
a. God decided/inspired –Article 1 (因為它們被公認為是神所默示)
b. People decided
i. People believed the prophets had the authority - Article 1(他們相信：他們說話時帶著權威)
ii. Why did people believe? We don’t know the reason – Article 1(為什么他們接受這些著作的權威？我們不知道理由。)
iii. Article 1 (羅馬天主教自 1546 年天特會議（Council of Trent）以來，把旁經（Apocrypha）也包括在內)

3. When was the New Testament canonised/finalised?
a. About 4 AD –Article 1 (正典是在第四世紀被最后确定的)
b. Immediately after the Gospels were written –Article 3 (所以一寫好就立刻被普世各地的教會接受為新約聖經正典)

These are the comments from me. Welcome other views from you.

Who wrote the bible?-- A journey of soul-searching by a Christian

2008-12-01T16:17:00.000-08:00

It intrigues me that many Christians treat a book that they do not know much about, in terms of contents (many Christians never even finish reading the whole book) and authorship (who wrote it?) with such a great, absolute faith and certainty, some even go further to believing every single word in the bible literally is the word of God, no discrepancy is allowed, no human judgement or bias is acknowledged, no doubt is raised and no questioning of the authority of the book is permitted.

The following series of videos are also produced by "The History Channel". They take the Christians on a journey of soul-searching to find out who really wrote the bible. The journey was carried out by a believer who was raised as a Christian, taught to believe that every single word in the bible is the word of God in a Sunday school (very similar to my own experience), but grew up realising things weren't so simple and straightforward and thus started his journey of questioning and soul-searching. What I would like to quote is the final conclusion, which to me is a very appropriate one, "Who wrote the bible? Well, it's a complex question and it takes some thinking through. And that tells me that to have faith in the world today, is to ask questions and never to have the world pulled over your eyes."

Again, I have to put a disclaimer.
Warning: For those
- who believe that bible is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
- who think that they cannot handle and tolerate alternative facts or views with an open mind,
- who think that they will be emotionally distraught and disturbed by these historians' study,
- who think that these are all deeds of Satan who deliberately wants to confuse human beings,
- who think that these are all a pack of lies, like the discovery of dinosaurs (many Christians do not believe the existence of dinosaurs, despite the mounting evidence)
then I would advise you against watching these videos.

Following are the videos. Enjoy!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 7:

Part 8:

Part 9:

Part 10:

Part 11:

How the bible was put together? -- Study by historians

2008-12-01T05:48:00.000-08:00

I really love the man who created youtube, it is a place that provides a tremendous variety of views, information and ideas. I would like to share a series of videos from "The History Channel" I came across on youtube that present how bible was put together by the early church authority.

Warning: For those
- who believe that bible is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
- who think that they cannot handle and tolerate alternative facts or views with an open mind,
- who think that they will be emotionally distraught and disturbed by these historians' study,
- who think that these are all deeds of Satan who deliberately wants to confuse human beings,
- who think that these are all a pack of lies, like the discovery of dinosaurs (many Christians do not believe the existence of dinosaurs, despite the mounting evidence)
then I would advise you against watching these videos.

I must say that these videos are not presented in an inflammatory way that deny Christianity, they just show how the ancient church authority had picked and chosen the scriptures that suited their views (or the majority views) and decided what they wanted the believers to read and believe in. Some perspectives in the banned books are interesting, many are "unorthodox". There's a saying that "History is written by the winners", I think the same thing goes for the bible. I'd especially like to quote a conclusion made by a historian in the videos, "The majority decides what is orthodox and what is heretical. The majority is orthodox, the minority is heretical. The majority goes to heaven, the minority goes to hell, for their heresy."

Following are the videos. Enjoy!

Part 1

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Part 7:

Part 8:

Part 9:

Why self-responsibility is not enough?

2008-11-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

Recently, I have encountered two incidents of the same nature that disturbed me. These two incidents led me to ask myself why some people cannot be responsible for themselves and is it government's duty to take care of these people, if not, how should these people, which impose a cost to the society be dealt with.The incidents I'm talking about are with regards to the problem of senior citizen having financial problem.

Yesterday evening, I was having dinner with my friend C. We were eating while chatting with each other and I did not realise there was somebody watching us from behind. He was targeting the "zhui kueh" (水粿）I ordered, because I was eating some other food and thought to eat that afterward. However, as I was eating, suddenly the old man appeared from behind and laid his hands on the food, I was a bit shocked. Initially I thought he was one of the cleaners who worked there and was clearing up the table (in Sg, it is usual for the cleaner to clean up the table even before you finish eating your food, so sometimes you'll have to stop him/her). But apparently, he was not, he asked for the food and ate hastily, which had dirtied my bag (I put beside it) a bit. Not only that, after he ate the food, he started asking for money. But I wasn't in the mood to donate anything. My friend was a bit annoyed, I was too, but I was having a mixed feeling of both annoyed and sympathetic.

Another incident happened this afternoon when I walked out from MRT station and was topping up my Ez-link card. Then an old man came forward asking for money to take the train. So I just gave him S$1. On my way back, some questions were hovering over my mind. I must say that it is not just only about giving donation, it is about a bigger issue-- self-responsibility.

After taking a course on Singapore Economy this semester, I learnt that there are many senior citizens in Singapore who do not have enough money for retirement. And a lot of them, who are still capable of working, are forced to work as cleaners in different places like canteen, food court, hospital, office etc at a minimal pay in order to sustain their living. These group of people are probably the lowest-income group because their jobs are easily replaceable, they don't have the bargaining power to bargain for higher pay.

But there are another group of senior citizens who are capable of working, but choose not to and rely on people's assistance or government's aid (which is very little) and makeup the shortfall by asking for donation from others. Another group of senior citizens are those who are not capable of working and probably don't have children or other relatives to rely upon.

My question is, why people cannot be responsible for their own retirement financial security? Post-retirement is a phase which everyone must go through, yet some of the people are so ill-prepared for it. It is a serious problem for the society. Because of these people who are not responsible for their own financial affairs, other responsible society members have to subsidize them for their mistakes. Although I agree that there could be some unforeseen circumstances, like chronic illnesses or children's illnesses that could possibly deplete their savings, that fact is, in most cases, these people know that they are going to retire without adequate savings, yet they do nothing or very little to remedy the situation. When they can no longer sustain their living (because they don't save enough or they spend too much), they demand other members of the society to help them, or worse still, they demand government to subsidize them.

Another question is that, is government supposed to subsidize these people?
Remember government's income comes from working class of the society members. The tax revenue collected is people's hard-earned money. Should this money be used to subsidize people who cannot sustain their living because of their own mistakes? In a capitalist society, the most important principle that enables a society to function effectively is self-responsibility or accountability (I mentioned in my previous post), the lack of which, the society's function would be impaired, because then everyone would be waiting for free lunch (that's why the saying goes "there is no free lunch"). That is also the reason why communism has failed, it lacks the element of self-responsibility and accountability. Therefore, in my opinion, the government should not be subsidizing people who are ill-prepared for their own retirement, because everyone has the freedom to decide on how to spend their money. To subsidize people who do not save adequately for retirement is akin to reward spenders and punish savers, it indirectly transfers the wealth from the well-prepared people or working class to the ill-prepared people. It will reduce the incentive for people to prepare adequately for their retirement, since they are punished for savings or since the government will take care of them and that destroys the spirit of self-responsibility.

But the problem is, if the government doesn't take care of these people, who shall they turn to? They don't have relatives or children (or because their relatives or children abandon them), some of them incapable of working, and some of them might be capable of working but what they earn is not enough to sustain their living. That's the question that bothers me. I'm not advocating people not to help those people, rather, I'm advocating people to have self-responsibility for their own matters so as not to impose costs to other society members.

For a society to function well, no one in the society should deprive other members from enjoying the fruit of their own labour and no one group of people should have the right to take away the wealth from another group of people. If everyone has the discipline and determination to uphold the spirit of self-responsibility, then everyone would be better off because everyone can pursue their own goals and happiness without interference from others (meaning wealth transferring to other members).

One of the solutions to this problem is through the charity organizations. I believe that it should be the role of charity organizations to help these people and not the role of government. Charity organizations raise funds from people who voluntarily donate (not forced to donate or pay taxes), therefore, people who want to may help while those who are reluctant may decline. Raising funds through charity organizations gives people freedom to help the less fortunate ones while leaving those who are reluctant to help alone. But when this function is taken over by government, everyone, no matter willingly or not, must pay taxes which will be directed to helping the senior citizens who are ill-prepared.

Many western countries have very generous welfare to the senior citizens, in terms of the retirement benefits and medical benefits, which is why their savings rates are very low and their taxes are high. People who are working, earning hard-earned money, are required to subsidize the old people who are ill-prepared for retirement, the end result is, no one will have the incentive to save enough for retirement, so everyone is hoping for free lunch. But the money must eventually come from somewhere, there is no such thing as free lunch, by doing so, the future generation will have to bear a much higher tax burden, which is very unfair to the future generations.

Luckily, Singapore does not distribute this kind of generous welfare for the older people, unless they fulfil very stringent conditions (such as no relatives, no children, sick, not capable of working etc). I hope this kind of philosophy can continue to be upheld by the government, because only under this environment, people can get used to being self-responsible for their own action. However, as Singapore population ages, there will be more and more ill-prepared old folks which could become a serious social problem if not handled delicately. There has been calls and pressures for the government to do more to help the ill-prepared old folks, even though I personally don't favour that idea. This is currently still an unresolved social problem in many developed countries that have ageing populations.

This makes me laugh-- Another incredible news

2008-11-27T04:12:00.000-08:00

Agence France-Presse - 11/26/2008 10:38 AM GMT

Malaysian PM wades into yoga row

Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Wednesday waded into a row over a ban on yoga for Muslims, saying they could practise the exercise as long as it had no spiritual elements.

Malaysia's highest Islamic body, the National Fatwa Council, on Saturday banned yoga for Muslims, saying it could erode their faith.

But the decision triggered uproar from moderate Muslims, and from royal state rulers who are considered the guardians of Islam in the country and are demanding that they consider the issue before it is banned.

"I wish to state that a physical regime with no elements of worship can continue, meaning, it is not banned. I believe that Muslims are not easily swayed into polytheism," Abdullah told state media.

Abdullah said Muslims who performed yoga exercise without chanting Hindu mantras could carry on with their activity as it was good for their health.

"What I understand from the decision of the National Fatwa Council is that it was aimed at explaining to Muslims the implications of yoga practice," he said.

He also said that the "fatwa" or religious edit banning yoga would only be implemented if it received consent from a council of state rulers.

Once a state gazettes the fatwa, it will become part of the law.

Malaysia's population is dominated by Muslim Malays, and the ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities are becoming concerned over rising "Islamisation" of the multicultural country.

Comment:

It is always interesting to hear people talking about their religious views which are obviously ludicrous and do not make any (common) sense with such an absolute faith and certainty. Yes, "Faith" is the precise word to describe it, it means suspending logical thinking and reasoning and blindly believing in something or someone.

It makes me laugh for these reasons:

1. It is inconceivable to me that moving into 21st century, as we live in the age of information technology whereby information is so easy to come by, whereby lies can be disputed in a matter of minutes or seconds through the efficient dissemination of information online, there are still people who would hold on to such a bigoted and narrow-minded view.

2. If they are so afraid that their religion faith could be eroded by just "practicing yoga", doesn't it say something about the nature of their religion? If a belief is in fact a truth, it should be able to withstand the test of time and opinions, it will not wither or be falsified because of people's opinion. Just like the sun will not rise from the west just because someone believe or say so. Only when a belief doesn't represent the truth will the leader of such a belief be afraid of any public scrutiny or interrogation, only when the foundation of a belief is so vulnerable and easily shaken that people's faith could be eroded by just "practicing yoga". So when someone is advocating the government to ban this and ban that because it could threaten their religion, they are really mocking their own religion instead of doing any good.

I would like to end here with a quote from my prof: "Sometimes, common sense is really not so common."

What determines exchange rate?

2008-11-26T00:22:00.000-08:00

Exchange rate has always been an exciting topic for me. I remember that I still owe ks an explanation ( I forget which post and lazy to find out). I haven't replied for quite some time because it is a very large topic. And I hope I can explain it as succint and simple as possible.

My interest in exchange rate was initially picked up during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) in which by that time M'sian ringgit was depreciating like hell against US$. As my sister was studying in US at that time, it had caught my attention even though I didn't know what happened then. No one around me (especially my father) knew or could tell what happened that caused the ringgit to depreciate at such a drastic rate. It remained a mystery to me until I entered university where I got the chance to learn about the causes and implication of this crisis.

But I'll not be talking about AFC today, probably I'll do it in the future post. I want to first explain how exchange rate is determined and then answer ks question about why Australian dollar has been depreciating against US$ lately.

Basically, you can view the currency as a kind of good, just like an apple in the market. The exchange rate reflects the price of the currency. In technical sense, the price of the currency is determined by the supply and demand for the currency, just like how the price of an apple is determined. This would mean that if the supply is more than the demand, then the price of the currency (exchange rate) will go down, otherwise, the price will go up. But it is not meaningful if I just tell you this, because you would want to know what drives the supply and demand for a currency.

Supply

First of all, what drives the supply of currency? This is similar to asking who can create money? The entity that drives the supply of currency must be able to create money and inject them into the market. So the answer for this question is simple, government, or more accurately, the central bank creates money and thus drives the supply of the currency in the market. Therefore, the central bank of a country is able to influence the value of a currency. Now why would a country's central bank wants to depreciate its own currency? I will answer this question later.

Demand
Next, we come to the demand side. What affects the demand for currency? To answer this question, you must ask yourself, what do you use money for? You use money to buy goods and services. Therefore, if Country A is able to produce goods or services that are highly demanded by other countries in the world, then there will be high demand for Country A's currency because in order to purchase the goods or services from Country A, one must convert his currency into Country A's currency. Of course, there are other reasons other than using the currency for purchasing goods and services, for eg: China and many East Asian countries have been accumulating huge amount of US$ as their reserves. This is a special case because many East Asian countries suffered from the speculative attack during the AFC and large amount of US$ was needed back then to fend off the speculative attack. Also, the demand for a country's currency also depends on the country's political stability (stable political system attracts more people to invest in the country), banking system (good and transparent banking system attracts more people to put their money in the country) and return from the investment in the country.

The value of a currency is determined by the intersection of supply and demand curve.

Short term value of exchange rate

In the short term (less than 1 year), it is often hard to predict the direction of the currency because the short term demand for the currency is often very volatile. It behaves just like the stock value in the stock exchange-- volatile and hard to predict the direction. But one of the most important factors that influences the short term value of exchange rate is the interest rate of the country. If the central bank increases the interest rate, then many investors would want to invest in the country to earn a higher rate of interest, which will increase the demand and appreciate the currency (in the short term).

Long term value of exchange rate

The change in the long term value of exchange rate is determined by the competitiveness of the country. A country with increasing competitiveness will see its currency appreciating over time, otherwise, its currency will be depreciating over time. The reason is simple, the more competitive a country is, the higher the quality and quantity of good and services it can produce given the limited resources that the country has.

What are the factors that determine the competitiveness of a country? There are a list of things here that could affect the competitiveness of a country:

1. The quality of government & political environment

If a country has a government with high integrity and capability, is able to implement good economic policy, pro-business and transparent and there is political stability in the country, then it provides a very good foundation for businesses to flourish, economic to prosper, therefore, the quality of the government is a very important factor that determines the competitiveness of a country

2. The quality of workforce

A country can only become competitive if it has high quality of workforce which is very productive and innovative. To increase the quality of workforce, the country must invest a great deal in education and healthcare. A country definitely cannot be competitive without developing its human resources.

3. Macroeconomic environment

A country must maintain low inflation and price stability, low unemployment to nurture social stability and pro-competition policy to encourage more innovation and efficient use of resource. A country with high inflation will just end up with depreciating currency in the long term because it will not be able to compete with other low cost countries in its export goods and services.

These are not an exhaustive list but they are the major factors that impact the long term value of a currency.

Having laid out the reasoning and mechanism to determine the currency value, I can now try to answer ks' question about why Australian dollar has been depreciating against US$ lately as you can see from the chart below.

It has been a sharp depreciation against US$. One year ago (Nov 2007), you can buy US$0.89 with AS$1, but now, it has gone down to US$0.66 to AS$1.

There are 3 main reasons that I can think of to explain the continued depreciation of AS$:

1. The depreciation of AS$ due to lower demand for the Australian exports. Australia's largest export markets are Japan, China, the US, South Korea and New Zealand (Wiki). And its main exports are natural minerals (like coal, iron, gold, natural gas etc), agricultural (wheat and wool) and manufactured goods. Currently, the major export countries are either slowing down or heading into recession. Japan, US, South Korea and New Zealand are currently in recession while China's growth is slowing down due to the recession in US.

Moreover, the commodities' prices (including natural minerals and agricultural goods) are now dropping.

You can see the oil price drops from a high point of over US$140 per barrel to US$50.77 per barrel currently. Even though Australia does not produce oil, because the commodity prices are often highly correlated, so other mineral prices are also dropping and also because many countries are now slowing down or in recession, the demand for these commodities reduces.

With the weak demand for Australian exports and decline in commodity prices, AS$ is sure to depreciate in the short term.

2. Interest rate adjustment by Australian central bank.

The Australian central bank had lowered the interest rate recently by increasing the supply of money into the market, and the increase supply of money will depreciate the currency. Why would the central bank want to do that? It is because by lowering interest rate through increasing money supply, the central bank can pump up the economy by discouraging people from saving their money in the bank (now earning lower rate), and thus encouraging consumption, which will then drive the businesses. It also enables businesses to borrow loan at a lower rate, so businesses can continue their operation and not be burdened by high interest rate. So it is a tool to stimulate the weak economy.

As interest rate is lowered, investors would pull out their money from Australian banks and put them in other places that can give them higher return. Thus, the demand for AS$ reduces and this depreciates the currency.

3. Strengthening of US$

As AS$ is weakening, US$ is strengthening amid the recession. This is because the financial instability has prompted investors to search for a safe haven to park their money temporarily. Many investors are now investing their money in the US govt bond, which is deemed to be a risk-free investment. Because of the instability and volatility in the current US financial markets, there is now higher demand for safe investment products, and US govt bond naturally becomes a very sought-after investment product.

As a result, despite the US financial turmoil, US$ actually appreciates because of the excess demand for US govt bonds.

These are the three main forces that are currently still working to drive down the AS$. AS$ is very much dependent on the commodity prices and demand, as long as the demand for commodities remain weak, AS$ is not likely to appreciate in the short term, and might even depreciate further.

Transition to another phase of life-- Unofficially Graduated!

2008-11-24T07:59:00.000-08:00

Today as I handed in my final exam paper to the invigilator, I was so happy that I have finally unofficially graduated. I was (and still am) glad that I can finally call an end to my undergraduate student life and start my journey towards another phase of life.

Then, I have this conversation with my friend Y.

Y: Why are you so happy? You're leaving NTU and you'll seldom have the chance to come back again.
Me: I'm happy because my burden is now over and my undergrad life has come to an end and I look forward to start working very soon.

I think it is this "forward-looking" attitude of mine that keeps me from looking back and living in the past. I have always been looking forward to my future rather than dwelling on my past. Also, another reason is that I can finally, officially say goodbye to my "parasitic life" as a student and start to be financially independent. I really like that kind of feeling, a feeling of shouldering my own responsibility in anything in my life without dependent on others.

Even though taking up responsibility means I'll have to be responsible for both my right and wrong actions, I guess it's better that I'm the one who make the mistake instead of letting others making the mistake on my behalf (I will be blaming that person) and in this way, I will be forced to think twice before carry out any action. I always dislike people who refuse to make their own decision, who pass on that onus to somebody else and later blame the person if any bad thing goes wrong. That's why I always tell myself, it is always easier to criticize than to actually doing something on my own, before I start criticizing, I'll ask myself whether I can actually do it.

What's wrong with Japanese model-- More on Japanese model

2008-11-23T01:16:00.000-08:00

First of all, I must admit that I admire the Japanese diligence, responsibility, their insistence on perfectionism and their team-spirit. However, as we all know, hardworking is not enough, working smart is just as important as working hard, if not more important. Here I would talk about some of the flaws of Japanese model which had led Japan to unable to sustain its superlative during 1950s and 1960s, in fact, Japan's economic growth rates went so low in the 1990s that it was called "The Lost Decade(s)"-- if you want to include 2000s as well, then it will be nearly 2 decades that Japan has mired in extremely low growth rate, 1.6% annually-- 0% growth rates in several of the years.

Data from International Financial Statistics

As you can see, Japan's growth rate since the asset bubble burst in 1991 has been very low. The Japanese model had brought Japan prosperity from 1950s to 1980s, but it had also caused severe recession in the 1990s. There were some benefits associated with this model, but also a lot of prices paid by applying this model of economic development. Today, while Japanese have one of the world's highest GDP per capita, it's living expenses are very high as well relatively to other countries with similar GDP per capita. Here I would like to show you some data.

GDP per capita, PPP means that it has already adjusted for level of living expenses. This is the GDP per capita in 2007 for all the three economies. From the diagram, you can see that without adjusting for level of living expenses, Japan has the highest GDP per capita while Singapore has the lowest, but after adjusting, Japan becomes the lowest while Singapore becomes the highest. This shows that US$1 earned can buy more things in Singapore than in Japan, so despite the higher income, Japanese have relatively low standard of living.

It was during 1980s that Dr M advocated M'sia to have "Look East" policy, but in 1990s, Japanese model turned sour and therefore, it is worthwhile to take a closer look at what's wrong with this model of economic development.

What are the characteristics of Japanese model? There are mainly 3:
1. Big companies offer lifetime employment & seniority-based system
2. Main banking system- one bank serves a conglomerate
3. Businessman, politician and government bureaucracy form an Iron Triangle
I will explain the flaws that exist in each of these element.

First of all, the big companies in Japan usually offer lifetime employment for the employees. That explains why Japanese have very high level of loyalty towards their company. In addition, the company offers salary increment and promotion based on the employee's seniority, less on performance. In a Japanese company, the presence of hierarchy is strong, junior employee should behave very respectfully towards senior employee. What's wrong with these?

1. Lifetime employment means reduced risk of unemployment and redundancy. As long as the employee doesn't make very big mistake, they are likely to stay with the company for their whole life. It is not a good way for both employees and the company. Employee loses the incentives to perform at their highest level since he now has an iron rice bowl (no job competition from outsider). The company loses the chance to recruit the best and replace the mediocre. The moment the employee joins the company, the company will hardly fire him.

2. The longer the employee joins the company, the less likely the employee will leave the company since his salary and promotion is based on his seniority in the company. Senior employee gets promoted or more salary increment even though he may not perform the best or may not be the most productive while junior employee, even though short on experience, tend to learn things faster and more productive, does not get rewarded accordingly. This kind of unfair reward system creates perverse incentive for the employees. This system started off relatively well, because at first, everyone is junior employee in the company, but as these employees get older, they enjoy more pay rises while their productivity decline. The company will have to bear a much heavier burden trying to feed these old but less productive employees, this renders the system becomes unsustainable because of the high costs of employees, in the end, the company either goes bankrupt or unprofitable and everyone gets hurt as a result.

3. The presence of strong hierarchical is one of the feature that I dislike the most. Many Fortune 500 companies are American companies which do not have very strong hierarchical structure. Flat structure is more conducive for the expression of ideas and innovation, it also enhances communication between employees an employers while strong hierarchical structure inhibits communication between employees and employers because of the junior employees, who usually have more innovative ideas, are supposed to respect the senior employees, who usually lose touch with the consumers' needs and wants. Just to tell a story here, I heard from a Korean friend during my internship last time that in Korea (similar to Japan culture), they have to reach the office earlier than their boss and leave later than him, it's quite unfortunate to work in such company with strong hierarchical presence I would say (unless you like that).

Now, the next feature is the main banking system. The Japanese corporations are very different from western structure. In Japan, a bank will serve a particular conglomerate with a few companies. For example, Mitsubishi conglomerate which involves in a few different businesses will be serve by one bank while Matsushita conglomerate will serve by another bank. As you can from this kind of system, there is no free competition between banks as they serve the conglomerate. The businesses within the conglomerate usually borrow a significant amount of debt from the bank, which is very different from the western companies which raise most of their capital from stock market instead of borrowing from bank. When the economy is good, everything is ok, but when there is a recession, and the businesses could not pay back the debt, then the bank will be forced to lend out more and more to sustain the businesses even though they become unprofitable and unsustainable. This will lead to more and more bad debt as the unprofitable businesses become more and more unable to payback. This happened in the 1990s when the Japan asset bubble burst and led to a deep recession.

Thirdly is about the Iron Triangle relationship structure between businessman, politician and bureacrats. The symbiotic relationship between the 3 parties can best be illustrated below.

Politican & businessman- while businessman provides political and monetary support for the political leader of the party, the politician gives favourable treatment, such as directed more credit to the industry or company in return.
Bureaucrat & politician- bureaucrats provide administration guidance to the politicians, while politicians provide bureaucrats with cushy jobs after they retire through their contacts with businessmen.
Businessman & bureaucrat- businessman can provide cushy retirement job to bureaucrat while bucreaucrat provides favourable treatment, for eg: close one eye if the businessman has any malpractice.
This Iron Triangle relationship worked very well at first because bureaucrats were of high quality and integrity from Japan top-notch university like Tokyo University while the businesses sector were weak. However, the relationship dynamic changes when businesses becomes more competitive and have more influenced on the economy, and the bureaucrats started to accept bribery and involve in corruption. Also, because of the businesses support, the politician must implement policies that are in the interest of their donors.

These are the flaws inherent in the Japanese model which once worked well but fell apart when there was economic recession. I think I have written too long for this post, thanks for finish reading this post.

Some thoughts about career

2008-11-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

This is a response to the post by ks about career attitude. In Japan, workers usually have very high level of trust and loyalty to their company. This could be due to various reasons (I will talk about it in another post). Frankly, I don't agree with the notion that a person who is committed to his career is a "moron", but I would think that a person who is committed to his company completely is a "moron". There is a difference between "career" and "company". I don't agree that a person should be completely loyal to his company, but I do think that a person should withhold the highest possible work ethics. What do I mean by withholding high work ethics?

1. Excel in the work or job that you do, make sure you know every nuts and bolts of your job and become as specialized as you can

2. Responsible for your own personal development, invest more education and training in yourself to upgrade your skill, enhance your capacity to take on larger role when opportunity comes

3. Ensure company confidential information is handled with care, but that doesn't mean you have to be completely loyal to the company. Why do I say that?

- Imagine if you know that your company is producing products that could jeopardize the health of the public (like the case of poisoned milk), by having a complete loyalty means you'll have to keep quiet even if you know it is unethical to do so. The right attitude is to blow the whistle, let the management know and take necessary action. My prof has used a good yardstick in deciding when you should become a whistleblower-- the Golden Rule- "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".

By the way, I always view career as a journey of personal development and self-discovery. Having a career is not synonymous to enslaving yourself to a particular company, it's about you yourself, not about the company. Your experience increases along the way, you increase your capacity to take on greater responsiblity, you hone your skills as you work harder and you discover who you are and the types of job that you like or dislike and good or not good at. Well, you may say that's from my personal viewpoint, from the company perspective, of course the company would demand you to dedicate yourself completely to the company with complete loyalty.

But if you see from an even wider perspective-- society or country, a country as a whole would be better off if individual can maintain their own autonomous and independence and not enslaving themselves to the company. Why is this the case?

1. Job specialization

Company is a place that provides you with the opportunity to discover your potentials and abilities-- discover things that you like, dislike, good, not good. Once you are sure of your preference, you can leave the company to develop your full potentials and realise your dreams by doing things that you like( usually people perform better at doing things that they like), that's why we have very good software programmer like Bill Gates, good actor like Jacky Chan, George Clooney etc, creative people like Steve Job etc. Job specialization makes the society better off because when everyone does things that they are best at doing, all of us gain from the exchange of different goods and services from one another. But if you continue working for the same company doing a job that you're not really interested in doing, you're not contributing your highest ability to the society, and that makes the society worse off.

2. Creating competition

Remember in the previous post I mention about creating competition is the best policy? If individuals maintain their autonomous, they create competition for the company to treat them better. Imagine if you just work for one company for your whole life, the company will not have the incentive to treat you better, because no matter how they treat you, you'll still continue working for them, so why should the company treat you better? If the company treats its employees poorly and the employees are required to be completely loyal, then the society will be worse off, because employees will not have the motivation to work harder or improve the performance of the company.

Different types of jobs

Ks mentioned that Japanese maintain very high level of team spirit. While I agree that maintaining high team spirit is good for certain careers, it is not all true for every type of career. Here, I make a chart that spells out the different requirements for different types of career. I classify them into 4 types:

1. Individualism and organic job scope- This type of career often involve judgement and discretion, there is no clear cut rule or exact formula to determine how things should be done. People who have a career in this quadrant will need to exercise their individual judgement on case-by-case basis and usually they do it on their own, there is little teamwork needed. Usually this type of career is more on providing services than creating products. According to the McKinsey(consulting firm) report, this type of career has the highest pay because of the importance of good judgement and experience, which set a high barrier of entry (not like you can enter the profession whenever you want). Examples are like lawyer, accountant, banker, doctor, economist etc.

2. Individualism and structured job scope- This type of career has a clearly defined job scope and usually involves fairly large amount of repetitive tasks which do not require a lot of judgement. And it is usually performed individually, there is less emphasis on teamwork. Examples are clerk, entry level jobs, secretary etc.

3. Group conformity and organic job scope- This type of career usually involves very large projects which needed to be carried out by a team. And under this quadrant, individual will need to exercise certain amount of judgement because there is no clear cut answer but also need to conform to a common solution to solve a certain problem, that's when team spirit comes in. This type of career is also related to providing services than creating products. Examples are like business consultant & engineering.

4. Group conformity and structured job scope- This type of career needs high level of group conformity and the job scopes are very clearly defined and often involve repetitive tasks. I personally hate this type of job because if you work in this quadrant, you're doing more or less the same thing everyday, creativity is highly prohibited. And the type of jobs that Ks mentioned fall mostly into this category, where workers have to adhere strictly to a standard procedures and process of manufacturing products. And I think probably Japanese culture has a higher emphasis on group conformity and following specific orders with high level of precision, that's why they are really good in manufacturing products with superior quality.

As compared to Japanese, Americans usually prefer doing organic jobs to structured jobs because they are good in supplying creativity, that's why they are so good in producing excellent movies and dramas (category 3). And their society also does not have high conformity, Americans tend to be more vocal and have strong opinions, that's why they have some of the world's best universities, best lawyers and economists.

Different jobs have different requirements, that's all I can say. Creativity is good for careers that fall into category 1 and 3, but disastrous for category 2 and 4. High conformity is good for careers that fall into category 3 and 4 but hardly useful for 1 and 2. So I guess Ks' career advice doesn't seem so relevant to me and others who are pursuing careers in category 1. That piece of advice about group conformity, high precision is probably more suitable for people who work in manufacturing or construction sector.

Sign of progress

2008-11-19T02:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday when I was on the MRT, I noticed something different. Previously, the signboard was nothing like this. It used to not have the "light" to tell you where the train is going to and which station it will be stopping.

Of course, it is not a problem for me, because someone would announce those information at every station. But it is a problem for handicapped people, especially people who have hearing difficulty. This shows a sign of progress, it shows compassionate and empathy towards minority needs.

And notice the four different languages-- English, Chinese, Malay & Tamil under the MRT map? That was not new. The first time I came to Sg, I noticed that the signboards in MRT stations were mostly multi-lingual. I was truly impressed by that. Well, what's so special about that?

It tells me what a "multi-racial, multi-cultural" society really means. It tells me the tolerance and openness level of the society. It tells me that the country is proud of its racial and cultural diversity, and that they work to preserve diversity instead of attempting to eliminate or make them invisible. That may seem to be a simple thing, but some countries cannot tolerate that, I wonder why.

Consumer and businessman

2008-11-18T00:26:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about the roles of consumer and businessman and would like to share some of my ideas. Basically, a businessman is someone who sells his product or services in exchange for something else that he desires while a customer is someone who buys things or services that he desires by paying with some of his resources. Usually the resource refers to money, but ultimately, it refers to time that one possesses.

You see, whenever we involve in a transaction to buy certain goods, we usually refer to ourselves as consumers. But on the other hand, we are businessmen as well. What do we sell then? We are selling our time, the time used to earn money to carry out the transaction in exchange for something we desire. And a person's life is made up of many tiny bits of time, so effectively, we are selling part of our lives in exchange for something that we desire.

I believe every businessman wishes to sell things at the highest possible price and buy things at the lowest possible costs in order to earn the highest possible profits. If we can think from this perspective, we are not likely to spend our "money"-- which is essentially our lives in exchange for junks and worthless goods, such as fast food (also known as junk food), unhealthy food, nice-to-see but useless goods (like some branded items) etc. Unless we are lousy businessmen, or else, we are not likely to exchange our precious lives for these things.

Hopefully my sharing can shed some light on your spending behaviour. Hopefully everyone can be a shrewd businessman and trade their lives for things that really matter to them.

Talking about crisis

2008-11-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

The recent US financial crisis has prompted me to think about many economics issues. Looking at the current crisis, I have some flashback memory about what happened back then in 1997 during the Asian Financial Crisis. There were a lot to be talked about Asian Financial Crisis, but I think the central problem is about "money" or more accurately, the "exchange rate policy". But I'm not going to talk about that, it will be a long story.

I've been thinking about Dr M's allegation during that time. He singled out Soros and other hedge fund managers and pointed his fingers on them and said it was some sort of Western conspiracy that they didn't want to see Asia to be prosperous. It could be true that they were the "culprits" who caused all the mess, but let's just think about the allegation for a moment.

Assuming that now you are a consumer, and you see a good bargain, you think that the product is grossly underpriced, will you give such a good opportunity a miss? Surely you wouldn't, right? Would you even stop for a moment to think whether the seller would make a loss by selling you the product? Would you even think whether the workers who are working in the factory are underpaid for producing this product? Would you even stop for a moment to think whether the workers are low-income earners and have a family to raise and if they are underpaid, they will not be able to make their ends meet? Would you even think about whether the producer of the product will go bankrupt because of underpricing his product and making a loss for selling the product?

I can be fairly sure that no normal person will even stop to think about these problems when they see an underpriced product. It is totally fine and normal that people go for the lowest bargain and seek the highest profit. That's the source of forces that improves human lives, because we seek to have the lowest bargain, therefore, sellers of the product have the incentive to sell it at the lowest possible price and producers of the product have the incentive to produce it at the lowest possible costs so as to earn the highest possible profits. That's the survival rule not only for the businesses, but in every life incident as well. No one can earn extra profit unless he can be more productive than others.

Now, let's turn to the allegation made by Dr M back in 1997. He blamed the Soros and a bunch of hedge fund managers for bringing down the Asian economies. Just think of Soros and his followers as the consumers. The same logic applies, a consumer will not care what are the consequences of the seller selling the underpriced product, all he cares is his own welfare. So when Soros and others saw there was a bargain opportunity, who, as a rational person would let it go? Anybody who saw the opportunity would go for it. The person to be blamed in this case should be the seller, for not pricing his product properly, right? Will anyone blame the customer for buying an underpriced product? Not anyone that I know of will do that.

So, in the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the people who caused the crisis cannot be Soros and others, they were just behaving like normal consumers, looking for the best bargain every now and then. Instead, it was the leaders of the country who were corrupted, who propped up inefficient state-owned enterprises, who allowed cronyism and nepotism to flourish that should be blamed for the crisis.

People can only take advantage of you when you allow these kinds of weaknesses to exist in your country, Dr M. Stop blaming on others, look at the mirror and ask yourself and answer with your heart, have you not done it wrongly?

It is very easy to jump onto the bandwagon to blame outsiders when bad things happen. That's why we should never jump to an easy conclusion when dealing with any matter. There is always a cause-and-effect relationship. Asking "why" would help you sort out this relationship.

First of all, ask why the crisis happened? Dr M said it's because of Soros and others. Ok, that answers the question partially.

Next, ask why Soros and others launched speculative attack against M'sia and not other countries like Singapore? Even if they did attack, why other countries could stand firmly against their attacks while M'sian ringgit fell like hell when being attacked?

Then you get the answer, the root cause of the problem is not Soros and others, they are not even the cause, they were just shopping for the best bargain and happened to see that your currency was underpriced, that's why they went for it. It's you who priced the product haphazardly, it's you who did not do the product control.

My point of writing this article is to let people know how to ask questions and beware of jumping to an easy conclusion whenever an issue arises. I'm not sure if you understand what I'm writing, because I only present part of the picture of Asian Financial Crisis. There are a hell lot things to talk about Asian Financial Crisis. Ok, I shall stop here for now.

Ron Paul-- A US Congressman that I deeply respect

2008-11-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

This may come a bit late, as the US Presidential campaign has already over. But I really have to say, I'm seriously deeply in love with this man (don't take it literally, haha). I totally agree with what he has to advocate, on foreign policies, on economic policies, on his social values and his relentless pursuit of individual freedom and liberty. I have become addicted to his youtube videos and have been listening to what he has to say on various issues. I can't help but totally respect and agree with him as he speaks with logic reasoning, sound and firm grasp of fundamental economic principles and his deep passion and strong adherence to the principles that he is holding to and advocate. I will just briefly state his stand on various policy here:

1. Limited government intervention and regulation--allowing individual to be free to pursue their happiness and exercise their freedom as prescribed by the Constitutions

2. Firm believer and follower of the US Constitutions laid out by the US founding fathers, particularly the Declaration of Independence that emphasizes on individual liberty and freedom to pursue happiness.

3. Low taxes and low government spending

4. Strong believer in free market economy and capitalism, allowing private enterprises to flourish and prosper

5. Eliminating welfarism that punishes hard work and rewards laziness, and that negates the "no-free-lunch" principle

6. Strong anti-war position, advocate non-interventionism foreign policy, ending the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, having diplomatic relations with all the countries, making friends and not creating enemies

7. Strong supporter of free trade, advocating trading with other nation as a tool to promote world peace

8. Promoting sound monetary policy, attributing the current crisis to the Fed for its past inflationary monetary policies

9. Walk the talk-- credible political track record that demonstrates his firm belief of the values that he holds on to

10. Not a religious fanatic like the outgoing Bush administration

Just a little bit more introduction. He was once a doctor and he became very fascinated with the economics, especially on the topic of "monetary policy". So as he learnt more and more about economics, he decided to speak up and serve his nation.

Unfortunately, political environment usually does not allow a person with strict principle and integrity to survive. He did fairly well in his campaign ( in terms of fund-raising and support) for president but was not able to get his party (Republican) nomination. Nonetheless, his vision is higher and wider than that, and he is now campaigning for liberty and still tirelessly educating people about sound government and monetary policies.

In short, he really wins the respect of many, including mine. Here is a short clip of introduction to this respectable man:

A remark from M'sia former PM

2008-11-13T04:58:00.000-08:00

This is the latest "racist" comment from M'sia former PM. I was once a big fan of his, and I went to his blog to read his opinions and ideas about some of the issues which were happening in the country. It was really through his words and his opinions that I truly understood about who this guy really is. Only through his blog, that I discovered this man was only caring about the welfare of his own ethnic. Being a former highly respectable statesman, I expected him to speak for the nation, instead of fighting for the welfare of his own ethnic alone and forming opinions that are divisive and racist. I'm not sure if I could still regard him as the former PM of MALAYSIA, since he is only concerned about his own ethnic and looking issues from his narrow racial perspective.

A very good example of his demonstration of narrow-mindedness would be during the Permatang Pauh by-election. I remember there was a member of UMNO who made an extremely racist and provocative remark that said M'sian Chinese were the immigrant ethnic and should be driven back to China. And Mr M went on to defend that person's remark in his blog and did not even feel an iota of responsibility as a former PM of M'sia to stand up against such racist remark.

Undeniably, he had brought tremendous development to the country and enabled me to have a fairly good standard of living as well as receive good quality of education, but under his (notorious) New Economy Plan (NEP), he "succeeded" in promoting higher level of racial tension between ethnics. He had totally been heading to the wrong direction under NEP by denying non-bumiputeras some of the economic, education and business opportunities. He was wrong about the idea that by denying other ethics the opportunities, he would be able to make bumiputeras more "equal" with other ethnics and thus making the country better off. Instead of bringing the country forward, his policy dragged the whole nation backward.

As an analogy, in a 100m race competition, everyone starts at the same starting point at the same time. Of course, not everyone can run at the same pace, some run faster while some slower. To impose an NEP-like policy is as though tying some of the fastest-running runner to the slowest-running, dragging the whole team of the runners from moving forward and reaching the destination faster. He may be able to make his own ethnic more "equal" with others, but he made the whole country worse off. He fulfilled his own narrow racial agenda at the expense of the whole nation's welfare.

So, in evaluating whether he had really done the country and the people a favour, don't forget, he did it at a far greater costs than it should have been. Without those unnecessary constraints and racial agenda, he could still have achieved remarkable development, if not greater, the only difference is, at the same time, he could have promoted a far better social system-- meritocracy and thus eliminating all the racial injustice and tension.

Analysis of Obama's policies

2008-11-10T01:49:00.000-08:00

Having said that I'm thrilled and amazed at the progress of US social values and the diminishing racial barrier, I must say that I'm not really for Obama's policies. From what I have heard in his 2 Presidential debates, I can provide a brief summary of his stand on various issues and give my opinion about these policies:

I'm for Obama's...

1. Foreign policy on Iraq
US spending on Iraq war has been staggeringly high, according to the latest estimation, it would be US$15 billion a month. And according to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Laureate in Economics and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard professor, they estimated the true cost of the war to be 3 trillion dollar! They took into account many hidden costs which were not taken into consideration by Bush administration, such as the loss of soldiers' lives, the opportunity costs (forgone investment in education, infrastructure, healthcare) which could have stimulated higher economic growth and the uncertainty arising from the war which causes the oil price hike earlier on.

When Clinton stepped down, he left over a modest government budget surplus, and after 8 years of Bush administration, these surpluses turned into trillions of deficits. You can see how bad his economic policy can be, and McCain could be continuing his foreign policy of meddling in Iraq had he been elected, as stated during the debate. Luckily, Obama promised to end the Iraq war, or at least set a timeline for the US troops' withdrawal.

I'm against Obama's....

1. Foreign policy on Afghanistan
I always think that military forces should always be the last resort. Many conflicts can be resolved by using other tools such as economic sanction, embargo, global isolation if he really wants to punish a country because of the government's brutality. Obama had proposed to move the Iraq's troops to Afghanistan, because he thought that Osama bin Laden is hiding somewhere there. Seems like they just cannot get over with Osama bin Laden. I think a better thing to do would be to enhance their defence system, take a defensive approach instead of invasive approach and moving their troops around the world invading other countries, causing great displeasure and miseries to the innocent people.

2. International trade policy
Now it comes to economic policy which I love to talk about. Obama is a great opponent of free trade. He said it causes job losses to foreign countries. Well, maybe he never had any economic education (since he studied law), or he just simply wanted to win the votes by taking a popular position, but not necessarily beneficial to the US economic growth. I talk about the importance of competition in my previous post, any policy that violates the spirit of competition will hurt the nation herself.

Free trade is not only about having more competition, it also enables consumers to benefit from cheaper prices, more variety of products and services; firms can also expand their market shares, maximize their profits, thus create more jobs for the people. Of course, some low-end, labour-intensive manufacturing industry will lose out in the competition to the cheaper nations, such as China, India, Vietnam through free trade but more business opportunities will be created and the materials that are imported for US manufacturing industry can be much cheaper and thus, more jobs and higher salary can be given to the workers. That's why US should embrace free trade and globalization, not work against the tide.

3. Tax policy
Obama wants to increase taxes for the rich and give tax cut for the middle and low-income group. People who do not have economic education will say it is ok to impose higher taxes on the rich and lower taxes on the others.

But when you come to think about it, what actually determines your income? It's your education, hardwork, wise investment or financial management, experience, talent and productivity that really determine what your get, I shall call all these factors human capital. The higher the human capital you possess, the higher pay you'll get. So when you impose higher taxes on the rich, you're punishing people who are more hardworking, investing more in education, working to gain more experience and etc. Higher taxes on the rich is a punishment to possessing higher human capital. A sound economic policy should reward hardwork, encourage more investment in education etc, in short, a pro-growth tax policy should not be punishing people who possess or want to possess higher human capital but to provide incentive for people who work towards it.

Secondly, rich people often have the ability to employ the best accountants to help them get away with all those taxes. With the world becomes increasingly globalized, with just a press of button, people can transfer their wealth or assets to another country with much lower taxes, company can relocate its operation to another country with much lower taxes, this runs counter with the objective of the tax policy which aims at getting more from the rich and distributing them to the poor. In fact, as more assets and companies' operations are transferred out of the country as a result of higher taxes, more jobs are lost, less resources are left in the country and less development and investment activities within the country, the net result is, government will collect much less tax revenues. This runs exactly contrary to the intention of the policy.

Nevertheless, Obama managed to assemble a very brilliant and impressive team of economic advisors, including Paul Volcker, the former FED chairman, Warren Buffet, the great investment guru and a few famous Harvard and Chicago economists. Hopefully, he can implement a much better policies than Bush administration and save US economy from the fallen grace. It concerns me because US is the growth engine of the world, if US tumbles, the rest will not stay safe too.

Updates from these few days

2008-11-06T00:40:00.000-08:00

Last Monday was my final lesson in my entire university undergraduate education. Two weeks from now will be my final exams. I have been busily preparing for it these few days, that's why I haven't updated my blog for a few days. I'm so tempted to write something, so I finally take off some moments to write a few words about the US election which was just over on Tuesday.

I must really say again, and again, US is really the most AMAZING country on Earth! It stands for individual liberty, freedom, democracy and equality in opportunity. It is a land that rewards hardwork, a country that promises plenty of opportunities as long as one is willing to work towards them and a nation that allows people to pursue and realise their dreams.

These promises and hopes are not just a political slogan made by politicians, but they are actually written into the US Constitutions. Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of US had this famous quote in the US Declaration of Independence in 1776:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happyness."

The night when Obama was elected, his victory speech echoed the American values, and it was really a very moving, touching and great speech:

"If there is anyone out there, who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders, if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions, the power of our democracy; tonight is your answer..."

"It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches, in numbers this nation has never seen....because they believe that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference. It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, native American, gay, straight, disabled and not-disabled Americans who send a message to the world, that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states (Republican) and blue states (Democrat), we are and always will be the United States of America."

His becoming the 44th President of United States has a few significance in US history:

1. US has had a long history of discrimination against different minority groups, despite its promise of "equality" in the Constitutions. Women were only allowed to vote since 1920. Blacks and other racial minority groups had only fully secured their voting rights at 1965. Poor was once barred from voting until 1964 after the Constitution prohibited the imposition of poll tax in Federal elections. Native Americans (like Red Indian) were only allowed to vote after 1924 and young people aged 18-21 were only allowed to vote since 1971. Nevertheless, they have finally overcome all these barriers of discriminations based on gender, races, income levels, age groups and come together to contribute to their wonderful nation. And the amazing thing is that, it was only 43 years since blacks in US were given the rights to vote, that a black President was elected to be the President of their country. The progress of social values is truly astounding!

2. Obama is a person who has no prior political experience except for being a US Senator since 2004. Prior to that, he was a law professor at University of Chicago Law School. Despite his lack of experience, he is a guy who dares to dream big and has big vision for his country. He announced his Presidential bid in 2007, just 3 years after he was elected as Senator. And again, despite his lack of experience and the fact that he is black, the people of US had chosen him to be their President. This clearly shows that as long as one has the will and capability and works vigorously towards it, one will be rewarded, regardless of one's race, gender or age in US . I doubt that will be the case in any other places in the world.

Of course, there is still a long way to go for US to be fully freed from the society's deeply entrenched discrimination, such as discrimination based on sexual orientation and religions. Nevertheless, it is still a big step for Americans to move beyond the racial barrier. I wish this historical Presidential election can set an example to the rest of the world to put down their bias & discrimination against people from different races, different age group, different gender and different nationality.

Income vs Revenue

2008-11-01T09:49:00.001-07:00

For people who are not exposed to any accounting or financial management knowledge, they may view revenue and income as the same thing when in fact there is a huge difference between these two terms. It is important to recognize the differences between the two because by doing so, we know what to focus on in our personal financial management.

In terms of a company, the relationship between income and revenue is as follows:

Net income= Revenue- Expenses- Taxes

Income is often also known as profit for a company. When we want to evaluate the financial performance of a company, we care more about its profit than its revenue, because the revenue of a company only tells you part of the story, to have a complete picture of the company's performance, we must also look at its expenses. We say a company is operating efficiently if it has very low expenses relative to its revenue. This means that the company can use less resources and lower costs to generate higher revenues, thus translating into higher profits. We will not say a company performs well if it has very high revenues and high expenses as well, which results in very low profit. That's why it is very important to distinguish between the two.

However, when it comes to individual, people are often confused between income and revenue. In fact, for individual earnings, people do not often talk about "revenue", instead, people refer to a person's salary as his "income". Even though it is a norm to do so, but I think in terms of mindset, we should recognise it (our earnings) as a "revenue" rather than an "income".

I often find it quite amusing that people usually care more about their "revenue" rather than their "income". In fact, it should be the other way round. You see, many western countries may offer very high salary or "revenue" for certain occupations, say a restaurant waiter, but the living expenses and taxes there are very high as well, this effectively reduces one's "income". So what actually matters is your "income", not "revenue", because you may receive very high "revenue" but you have to afford very high living expenses as well, which ends up having very little "income".

The amount of taxes payable is especially significant in countries that promote welfarism, such as providing very generous unemployment benefits, free healthcare, free public transport, generous pension funds etc. You should not be too happy if you happen to be living in one of these countries (mostly western countries or European countries), receiving high "revenues", because a significant portion of your "revenues" will be taxed by the government and your "income" will be significantly reduced.

I remember when I read the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T.Kiyosaki" a few years ago, he talked about people being trapped in the rat race. Even high salary earners such as doctors, lawyers etc could be trapped in the rat race as a result of their lavish lifestyle, which eventually leave them with very little or no "income". The reason that people may have very high "revenue" but very little "income" is due to their failure to distinguish between "revenue" and "income".

In my previous post on life accounting, I mentioned about applying the accounting concept to create your own "Life Balance Sheet", this is another instance which accounting concept can be applied to enhance your own personal financial management. Since revenues and income appear in "income statement", I shall call this a "Personal Income Statement". I shall also start the practice of creating my own "Personal Income Statement" when I start working to manage my "revenue" and "expenses".

Additional benefits on ETF

2008-11-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

Today I just attended a series of talks on ETF organized by Singapore Stock Exchange. It was really a very informative session as I got to know more about this investment product which I am also quite new to it and interested about.

In addition to the benefits I mentioned in my previous post, there are some other good points about ETF that I would like to share here.

1. Constant rebalancing of the portfolio
The components of an ETF are rebalanced constantly to reflect closely the index which is being tracked. For eg: STI index is formed by a basket of companies' shares that can reflect or approximate the performance of the stock market of Singapore, therefore, a company that underperforms for a certain period of time will be dropped out of the index. This means that the ETF tracking STI Index will also drop out the company from its portfolio. This ensures that the ETF will not underperform the STI Index and might even outperform the index.

2. ETF will not go bust since it is formulated to track an index and is not a company by itself. Company which might go bust would have been excluded from the index, thereby eliminates the risk of losing money as a result of company's insolvency.

3. ETF pays dividends just like stocks do. You will not be able to enjoy the dividend returns if you buy unit trust. The reason for favouring dividend return is that companies that pay high dividends usually can impose more discipline on the management to achieve the targeted financial result. Another important point to note is that nowadays many companies can cook up their financial statement by using various "creative accounting" techniques, therefore, an average investors without insider information might be misled to believe that the company has good earnings but in fact it hasn't. By distributing away part of the earnings in the form of dividends, it gives investors assurance that the company does have solid earnings and not as a result of cooking up their accounting books.

4. Just by opening one stock brokerage account, one will be able to trade all the ETFs available on the stock exchange that track indices from different parts of the world such as India, China, HK, Taiwan, M'sia, Australia, Asia-Pacific etc. This eliminates many hassles such as exchange rate conversion, different settlement time, different market opening time etc.

Ok, these are the points which I think are worth taking note of when deciding whether to invest in ETFs.

Being a student

2008-10-28T23:54:00.000-07:00

Today, I went to sign a contract to sell my time after graduation to my future employer, Monetary Authority of Singapore. I wouldn't say how much was the offer price, even though I had told some of my friends already, for the time being, I would just say I'm satisfied with the offer price and goodies associated with the transaction. This transaction will bring me to another phase of my life. It meant a lot to me and it made me think about what student life actually means.

What does being a student mean?

I have two perspectives, both of which are rather unconventional. One is that student is like a parasite of the society. We feed on the nutritions (food, money from parents, knowledge from prof etc) provided by other society members but hardly contribute anything meaningful to the society (when we are still student). That's what makes me feel quite bad being a student, because I feel myself quite useless. But I manage to find ways to rationalize it. (That's what human usually does, always trying to find reason to rationalize things that make one feels uncomfortable.)

Another view is to see ourselves as bonds invested by parents. I guess this view should be more accurate, since it takes into account future value of our education. Even though the return on education is not immediate, it comes after we graduate from school or more specifically, after we start working and earning our own paycheck.

Investment in bond usually requires long term financial commitment and there is often a period specified for the bond to mature, for eg: 10-year Treasury bond, 15-year Treasury bond etc, after which, we can get back our returns in a lump sum of what we had invested plus interest.
Similarities:
1. Investing in bonds usually do not entail very significant risks because bond's prices are not as volatile as stocks do. The risks involved in bond investment are usually solvency/bankruptcy risk and inflation risk. This is just like our parents (as investors) investing education in us (we being the bonds), since investment in education will not usually entail great risks, the only risk is that we may turn bad (just like companies turn insolvent) and abandon our study, which wasted the education invested earlier on.

2. There are usually grading system for bonds, for eg: Bonds with grade A mean safe bonds (usually govt bond) and investor can almost be certain to get their investment back with a lower and stable return, bonds with grade B mean average performer with average return and bonds with grade C mean bond with the worst credit rating, or so-called junk bond, investors who buy the bond will have to bear very high risk but might have very high returns, if available (if the company doesnt go bankrupt).
Isn't this very similar to a student? An "A" student (meaning getting very excellent result, good attitude and tactful in handling people) will almost be able to safely get a job and get a stable source of income (although not necessarily low). A "B" student means an average student who can survive the examination but just getting an average pay. A "C" student might usually mean student who is a troublemaker in school and often gets very poor academic results. However, that doesn't mean he does not have any chance of rebounce. There are plenty of examples of poor students turn out to be successful entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple is a very good example. And usually if a "C" student is successful, he can often earn much more than an "A" student, which is rather similar to grade C bond.

3. Of course, the rating agencies, like Standard & Poor, Moody's and Fitch might also commit errors in their bond rating, just like before the recent subprime crisis, the mortgage-backed securities which were actually very risky, were given "A" rating. Same can be said about students. While bonds are rated by rating agencies, students are rated by educators and educators might often make mistakes too. As educators might be focused on only certain areas of a student, especially in terms of academic performance, students who perform well academically are often viewed as "A" students while those who perform poor academically as "C" students, effectively ignoring other aspects of students such as sports, people skill, team spirit etc.

The single most significant difference is that, as student gains more knowledge about oneself over time, one will be better able to rate oneself as either "A", "B" or "C" student without the educators' possible "bias" perception, but bonds still need rating agencies to perform the task. Therefore, I think it's time we should ask ourselves, what kinds of bonds are we? Are we "A" bonds which can give a stable and reasonable return to the investors (parents & society) from the education that we have received over so many years? Or are we "C" bonds that often underperform our peers in every or some aspects of our lives and thus unable to give a good return to the investors?

Luckily there is still one similarity between bonds and students, that is student who is considered as "C" grade will not stuck at "C" grade forever, he can still upgrade himself if he wants to, just like bonds. Bond's grades can be upgraded if they entail less risks through improving the government or company financial standing.

Investment tips for lazybones

2008-10-25T04:38:00.000-07:00

Please don't be offended if I call you lazybones, coz I myself would be lazy too if there's an easy way out for something to be done. Everyone likes doing things the easy way, and wishes to get the most out of the least effort. Here I would introduce an investment concept which I think is really very useful for those who are lazy but wish to earn a higher than average return (as compared to buying risk-free government bonds or fixed deposit return) which is at the same time also relatively safe, but it works only in the long run, say 5 to 8 years, of course the longer the time frame, the better the return.

To introduce this investment concept, allow me to illustrate the theory behind the concept first. This investment concept is based on the theory of "Efficient Market Hypothesis" by a brilliant guy called Eugene Fama who said that

1. Individual investors cannot expect to achieve above-average profits without taking higher risks
2. Diversification will increase returns and reduce risk
3. The markets are relatively efficient, that is, the short term changes in stock prices are virtually unpredictable, that makes individual investors very hard, if not impossible to consistently beat the market and earn higher than normal profits.

This theory does not mean that it is impossible to beat the market, but the keyword here is "consistently" beat the market. Why, if a stock market is relatively efficient, that individual investors will not be able to consistently beat the market? In order to consistently beat the market, an individual investor has to consistently be able to get superior information which is not available to the rest of the investors, but under normal circumstances when there are thousands of stock analysts and fund managers out there also mining for the necessary information that is available to everyone, the price of the stock would have already incorporated the value of the information.

For eg: If there is an announcement that a company is having an increase in earnings by 20% for this year, then everyone will start buying the company's stocks and the outcome will be: the stock would have increased in value and incorporated that information. Therefore, unless you're the first mover, unless you have superior information, you will not be able to beat the market. Of course, there are still ways which you can get superior information and beat the market, that usually happens among the company's top executives who know their company better than any outsiders, that's what we called insider trading. But in developed markets, there have been many measures to avoid these people from profiting from this kind of superior information. Remember the Chen Sui Bian's wife and son-in-law's case, that was an example of insider trading, which is illegal in many developed markets.

What is the implication of this theory?

In 1973, a guy called Burton Malkiel written a book called " A Random Walk Down Wall Street" had an interesting insight with respect to the application of this theory in investment.

" A blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper's financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by the experts"-- A Random Walk Down Wall Street

That illustrates a point which I mentioned just now, which is, for an average investor without superior information, the efforts he puts in will not give him an advantage over others no matter how carefully he selects the stocks to invest in.

There's a saying that " if you can't beat your competitors, join them". The investment concept here is exactly the same. This is an ingenious and simple solution, and it is also called passive investment strategy. The difference between passive and active investment is that passive investment means investing in stocks and holding them for long term before you sell, while active investment involves very active trading, ie intraday trading of stocks. For an average investor who doesn't have the resources to get superior information, passive investment is the best investment strategy with lower risk.
1. The reason is, as mentioned, an average investor who doesn't have superior information can hardly beat the market consistently. You may beat the market today, but you may lose again tomorrow, the end result is 0% profit. So, spare the time and energy.
2. There are transaction costs, ie: commissions for every transaction done. So unless you're buying and selling in a large quantity, not only you'll earn 0% profit, you'll even suffer losses paying for commissions by trading actively.

How to go about becoming a passive investor in the market?

1. You buy a large portfolio of stocks and hold them for the long term (5-8 years) to achieve diversification effects in terms of companies and time horizon. This strategy can work if you have a lot of money to begin with, because there are minimum thresholds which you must meet in order to buy a company's stocks (for eg: the minimum could be 1000 lots per transaction). Also, you might not know which are the best-performing stocks-- lack of information.

2. Buy unit trusts. The idea of unit trusts comes from this theory--"since you can't beat the markets, join them". There are 3 types of unit trust-- unit trust that consists of only stocks, unit trust that consists of only bonds and unit trust that consists both. In terms of volatility or risk, the ranking is Unit trust (stocks)> Unit trust (both)> Unit trust (bonds). Besides, unit trust can also be classified by countries, industries, small companies (small companies usually have higher potential to increase in value but more risky as well), blue-chip stocks (stable increase, low risk), regions (ASEAN, Asian, EU, Latin America) etc. Which unit trust to invest in really depends on your risk appetite, but if you hold it for long term, the risks can be diversified by longer time horizon, therefore, the risk can be lowered while gaining higher return. But that does not apply in the short run (ie: <1 year). Stock prices can always be very volatile in the short run, but in the long run (5-8 years), the average annual return for stocks are about 8-10% (conservative estimate). The long run return for S&P 500 is about 12% annually. Nevertheless, there are a few downsides to investing in unit trust:
i. One of the downsides is the high expense charges, such as management charges (1-2%) and commission charges (2-5%) which are rather significant. Therefore, you should beware of these charges because ultimately it will hurt your return.
ii. There are also minimum threshold which you have to meet in order to invest in unit trust. In sg, the minimum threshold is S$1000 for an initial investment and S$100 or S$500 subsequently.
iii. Sales and purchases cash settlement. You have to pay cash upfront in order to buy the unit trust. When you want to sell unit trust, you cannot settle it immediately, you probably have to wait for a few days before it can be fully settled.

3. Another attractive alternative is Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). The idea of ETF is to track the performance of the indices of certain asset classes, for eg: stock index or gold price index, specifically, there are Strait Times Index (Sg), S&P 500 (US), Hang Seng Index (HK), MSCI Taiwan, KLSE (M'sia), oil price index etc. Through investing in ETF, you'll also be able to enjoy diversification effects since these indices reflects the performance of the whole markets. ETF is superior to unit trust in several aspects:
i. Lower management charges (<1%) and commission charges (0.3%--buy through stockbroker)ii. Price transparency. It is listed on the stock exchange and you can observe the price movement, therefore, you'll be better able to track its performance and buy or sell it when you think it reaches the optimal price.
iii. In terms of sales and purchases cash settlement, you pay cash 3 days after you buy ETF. It's like the stock exchange lends you money for 3 days before you're required to pay back. When you want to sell ETF, you can do so immediately at the price that you think is optimal.

Ok, I think that's all for this time. Will talk more about it in my future posts. I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce a very good website if you want to learn more about managing your personal finance: http://www.tankinlian.com/faq/

Dear lazybones, wish you can benefit from the tips given above!

Response to my previous post's comments

2008-10-23T21:57:00.000-07:00

Actually I intended to just post one random article expressing my view about religion, or Christianity in particular(to digress a bit from my usual economics post), but I think the "one" article has stirred up a pool of controversies. Haha! Seems like my friends are more interested in religion than in economics (or government policies). Even though it's good to stir up discussion and debates, for me personally, I don't think so much about religious issues (which I used to think a lot) because there will always be never-ending arguments and counter-arguments (没完没了）。And I don't derive any meaningful outcome from such never-ending arguments about religion. Winning a religious argument does not get me to be closer to the truth, neither does it improve my life in whatsoever manner.

Notwithstanding that, I think we must still ask ourselves: Why do religions always stir so much controversies and debates, and why do these controversies never got solved even after thousands of years? If there is really only one religion that preaches the truth, nothing else but the truth, why would there be never-ending arguments? For eg: we know that Newton's law of motion is a proven truth, the existence of dinosaur is a proven truth, the earth evolves around the sun is also a proven truth, there will be no argument about these matters, why? Because they are proven to be the universal truths. But why, if there is one religion that claims they are the truth, cannot end the controversies and arguments just like any other "truths" do?

In fact, more often than not, religions not only do not preach the truth, they make things up or try to conceal or deny the truths. I think I can give a well-known example. In 15th century, Copernicus proved that earth evolves around the sun but did not published his book until 13 years after his death for fear of church condemnation. In 16th century, Galileo embraced the theory by Copernicus and was barred from advocating his view by the Catholic Church, which was (and still is) an empirical truth. He was suspected of heresy and spent the last of his years before his death under house arrest and restricted actions by the Pope. Of course, you can say that was the ancient history, let's see the incident that happened in the recent decades. In 19th century, bible was used to justify human slavery in US before slavery was completely banned in 1865, and another thing worth mentioning is that even the Pope (who claimed to be the representative of God on Earth) involved in the purchases and sales of slaves (Of course, to be fair, the churches had also contributed a lot to anti-slavery movement, but much of the conflicts were actually due to the interpretation of the bible). And the current conflicts and wars between Palestinians and Israelis arise from the historical promise that Jews would be granted the land of Jerusalem by God in the Old Testament even though the Palestinians have been living there for centuries.

My point here is not to condemn the church or religion, I'm just merely providing examples by stating the historical facts. I think when we talk about God, it is different from religions. I may believe in God, but I may not believe in some of the religious preachings or even the entire religion. Religion is a bureaucracy created by human, and the religious preachings are also done by human, and no doubt, the Bible was also written by human (of course, you may say, it was inspired by God 2 Timothy 3:16 , ok, but it was still written by human, and human are fallible). Therefore, I never doubt that Bible could sometimes be wrong, due to the cultural or time constraint, for eg: it was perfectly alright for the ancient people to keep slaves, for them, there was nothing morally wrong about slavery. By saying this, I know I would stir up another pool of controversies. You may not agree with me on that issue, but that is what I think, and since neither you nor me can really prove anything, I think I shall just spare the time and argument.

Of course, like what uncle louis said, I never doubt that having a religion can be a pleasant experience or be spiritually fruitful. I never doubt that. It is perfectly alright if you are taking religion as something spiritual, but to claim that it is the "truth"-- as in the truth in scientific sense, then I have problems with that. Of course, life can be much happier and simpler if I just accept the easy way out-- either accept everything that the leader says or just stop thinking about the matters and adopt the attitude "live and let live". The former requires you to abandon your critical and independent thinking ability, since it is always very easy and relaxing to be spoon-fed, most people would choose that and be happy with what they believe. If you want to do that to make yourself happy, I'm absolutely fine with that, anyway, that's your choice.

But I think for me, as a human, curiosity and wonder is what spurs human to progress and to question the once supposed "truth", which is what actually differentiates human from other living things. Nevertheless, I choose another way out, which is to stop thinking about the issues. That is not what I will normally do, but like what I said earlier, since there is no meaningful outcome of which I can derive from thinking about the matters and since it does not concern my life, why would I want to be caught up by them and live in distress?

On the issue of "sharing the gospel", I have no problem with people "sharing good things with friends", but I have problems with people who are so eagerly trying to prove other's religion wrong and converting people in that matter. I always like the Golden rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Luke 6:13", since Christians do not like people to try to prove them wrong and convert them, they should not try to do that to others too. Probably I didn't make myself clear enough, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Oh, and the last point about uncle louis speculating that someone could have pissed me off and led me to have "not-so-good" view about Christianity, I can assure you that that is absolutely not the case. I always pride myself as a rational person, I don't think I will be pissed off that easily, making myself distressed and angry will cost me tremendously in terms of my health and you can be assured that I will not make this kind of "unwise decision". Probably I sound resentful towards religion in my post, but actually I'm not (probably my language problem). I'm just merely and plainly express my likes and dislikes about something, which is the human nature, I guess. Don't read too much into what I say, ok?

Some questions for thought

2008-10-21T23:09:00.001-07:00

Someone has complained about me writing too technical stuff, haha, ok, I shall refrain from talking about economics for the time being.

I'm a person who likes to ask questions. I find that I'm filled with curiosity, of course, I'm not interested in very hardcore philosophical questions, but I'm interested especially about things that affect my life, eg: happiness, human attitude & behaviour, poverty, government policies etc. I was once very curious about religious stuff, that was during my teenage years, more specifically, during my secondary education in Bintulu. I was very determined to understand the bible and many aspects of how it affects human behaviour. I asked questions which people (even my Sunday school teacher) usually failed to give a satisfactory answer.
And the most successful tactic (which they think is successful, but not to me) people usually employ to get away with it is to give a standard answer: " We are just human beings, we will not be able to fully comprehend God's will. We should just have complete faith in God and should not question God's will."

Ok, having said that I'm a person with many questions, I'm also a person who knows when to stop asking questions. Usually if people give this kind of "irresponsible" (you may not agree, but it is an irresponsible reply to me) answer, I will stop asking. I know well enough that that is a tactic to mute people from probing further and exposing more "truths" (if there is any), that it is a ploy to put a brake on the intellectual discussion about "the truths", that it is a maneuvre to stop people from questioning his/her authority on the biblical interpretation. And so, I was encouraged to just have complete and absolute faith, to stop questioning about "God's will", to stop acting like a problem kid with so many "irrelevant" questions and to just walk the easy path "normal people" are walking-- that is to believe blindly what the bible (or the person interpreting the bible, such as pastor, church leader etc) has to tell you.

From then onwards, I had stopped thinking about religious questions, because I found that alternative views (that people deemed to be "ungodly" or "unholy") are often frowned upon in a church discussion setting. And I didn't like the feeling to be outcast, to be seen as a freak (even though I behave like one, sometimes, haha), to throw out questions that other people in the group discussion do not, or will not even think about. More often than not, the more questions I threw out, the more questions were hovering in my mind from the person's reply (because the reply was illogical to me). And I stopped asking questions about religions.

It is of little wonder to me that why some people view people who are obsessed with religion (so-called religion fanatics or fundamentalist) to be irrational, unscientific and closed-minded. When somebody is obssessed with religion, he/she will not be open to alternative views, the more you throw questions at the person, the more you're viewed to be "unholy" (because he/she thinks that you question the God's authority). It is futile to try to have an open and frank discussion with somebody whose mind is possessed by all the religious doctrines and preachings.

Examples of the questions are:

1. If God only spent 6 days to create the universe, how about dinosaurs? They existed several thousand years before human even existed (scientifically proven). (That was one of the questions asked by Matt Damon to Sarah Palin, VP candidate of US presidential election)

2. If God is almighty and omnipotent and cares so much about human's sufferings and miseries, why doesn't God defeat the devil and eliminate the evils and stop all the sufferings now instead of waiting for XXX (don't know how many) years to do it? Is it a kind of a game that God is playing, to try to play "hard-to-get"? --> this is an example of question that "some people" might find offensive, because it questions God's will and authority.

3. Why God created human if he knew that human beings are going to be "sinful creatures"? If he didn't create human, he would have saved the trouble of sending his only begotten son to Earth, let alone all the sufferings and hardships that his son went through to save these "sinful creatures"? If you think about it, don't you find it weird? That if you have known the result of your action to be disappointing, why would you still wanna carry out the action? For eg: Given that you have known you're going to have a child who would be extremely unfilial and disobedient to you , would you, as a rational person, still want to give birth to that child ? (I'm not advocating you to abort the child, what I'm saying is you know this fact well before you even have the embryo in your uterus) Or God just doesn't think the way human beings think?

4. If believing in God can change people's behaviour, why some pastors, priests or other clergymen failed to change their behaviour? Why would some of them commit crimes that are so obviously wrong that even normal people like you and me wouldn't even think about doing it? ( To know about more of these horrendous cases, see here, I will not list them out to avoid being offensive)
--> of course, some people might say these people did not truly believe in God and did not fully understand bible and God, but hey, I'm talking about pastors and priests here, not an average Joe. Who else would be more qualified in interpreting God's will, who else would know more about bible other than these people?
--> I attempt to answer this question using the economics concepts I learnt and find it more acceptable and logical. You can see my previous posts if you want to know how to apply the principles.

I have stopped thinking about these questions for many years, not because my curiosity has died down, but because there is no point to discuss about these questions since

1. It doesn't affect my life

2. People might be offended

3. There might be no acceptable or logical answer at all to these questions

The reason these questions occur to me again recently is because I have been following US presidential election. And in one of the talk shows, the host, Bill Maher, a very prominent political comedian, gave his views about religions. And he was actually involved in making a movie called "Religulous". I'm currently downloading the movie but have not watched yet. It's about having doubts with what you hear, what you believe and don't lose your independent thinking even when it comes to religion.

For people who attempt to answer the above questions, you may do so, but don't be offended if I throw back more questions at you or if I rebut your answer.

What's in the toolbox of an economist?

2008-10-17T23:01:00.000-07:00

The main aim of this blog is to spread the economics knowledge to my friends who have little or no exposure to economics education. I believe acquiring economic knowledge is the way to help one to see and think about issues in one's life with more clarity and depth, as well as improve one's decision making on various matters in life such as investing (time and money), spending (time and money) and making use of whatever resources that one has in the "pursuit of happyness".

I have been thinking about ways to introduce economics concepts more systematically. Recently I read about a book "Econopower by Mark Skousen" which provides me exactly the kind of materials I need. The book has consolidated the fundamental and basic economics concepts which are essentially the tools used by economist in problem-solving, ie: reducing crime rate, improving investment decision, improving government policy, enhancing consumer and social welfare etc.

Following are the basic principles or concepts in economics which can help one to make better decision and devise better policy:

1. Accountability- accountability is the core of capitalism. Accountability means one has to bear the total responsibility for one's doing or behaviour, ie: if you work hard, you'll be handsomely rewarded, otherwise, you'll have to bear the consequences of poverty due to your laziness. Why accountability is so important in a society is because this concept is in line with the human nature of being self-interested (which I had elaborated in my last post). You only pursue what you're interested in, and you should be solely responsible for the fruits of your own action or behaviour. To quote a chinese saying, it means “种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆”. Only when one is made accountable for his/her own action, one will have the incentive to maximize the utilization of the resources to achieve the most desirable outcome. In other words, accountability ensures the most efficient allocation of resources.

2. Economizing and cost-benefit analysis- In a world of scarcity of resources, every individual, family, state or country must be able to economize their resources to achieve highest level of happiness. As individual's demand is ever-expanding, if one is able to make a good utilization of one's resources, one will be able to fulfill as much demand as one is able to subject to the contraints to achieve the highest level of happiness. Cost-benefit analysis is an important tool for anyone who wants to make the best use of his/her resources. While talking about this concept, I would like to introduce something called "opportunity cost".

Let me illustrate with an example. Whenever you make up a decision to spend your money on clothes, you'll have to give up on food and other entertainment, the cost of the food and other entertainment that you have given up is what called "opportunity cost". That means the cost of an alternative decision. Of course, opportunity cost covers not only money, but time as well. For eg: you decide to spend your 3-4 years to do your tertiary education, your opportunity cost of that decision is the 3-4 years of time which could have otherwise be spent on working and earning money. Therefore, while you're making your decision to further your study, remember the costs of your further study are not only the tuition fees and living expenses, but also include the amount of time that you could have spent doing other things like earning money.

Why including opportunity cost in our cost-benefit analysis is important? By doing so, you are aware of and is able to compare the costs of different actions, hence you can optimize your resources (time and money) and spend them on the least costly decision that gives you the highest level of satisfaction.

Of course, when we talk about cost-benefit analysis, we should not forget to talk about benefit too. A very important concept here is "future benefit". Benefits may materialize immediately when you take certain actions, but some benefits will only occur after a certain period of time and that should be taken into consideration in your cost-benefit analysis too.

For eg: let's say you could have otherwise earned $2000 per month for the 3-4 yrs if you don't further your study. Since by studying, you don't get any of those income, why do you still choose to further study? The reason is you recognize that by spending 3-4 yrs to further your study, your future income will be much more higher. Therefore, the benefits outweigh the costs and that's why you choose to further study. Hope this simple example can help you fully understand the concept of cost-benefit analysis, which is a very important tool to make good decision.

3. Saving and investment--Saving and investment is an important principle for every individual and country in order to be successful in the long term. The investment here not only refers to investment in cash, but also in the form of life-long learning and skills (investment in education) as well as investment in human relationships (eg: spend more time to make more friends). Saving here not only refers to saving money, but also saving in time. Through saving and investment, you're able to generate more resources from the current ones that you have.

4. Incentives-- Incentive is a great tool for economist in influencing human behaviour. I think I shall skip this since I have elaborated quite extensively on this topic previously. Every individual, company or country that intends to improve must devise an incentive plan which is compatible with human nature of being self-interested. There are different kinds of incentive plans in place these days in a company so that the employees' interest can be aligned with the company's shareholders' interest. The most general incentive system that a society can adopt is meritocratic system (as opposed to nepotism and cronyism), which is an essential, if not most important element in the so-called "Singapore dream" (or American dream).

5. Competition and choice-- If you're not aware or taken for granted the great improvement arising from competition, you can try to go to a live in a communist country (North Korea is the only communist country left) for a month to experience that. Competition is the reason why China is flourishing over the recent years, it is the reason why Singapore can climb out from the 3rd world slum into the 1st world heaven, it is the reason why you can now fly back and forth from one place to another cheaply and safely. I think I don't have to say too much on this, but one thing I would like to point out is that the competition does not only reduce prices, but also increase the variety of choices we can choose from, the higher standard of customer service and the higher level of safety. I think anyone who has little or some common sense would know about the benefits of competition, but somehow, some (stupid) countries like Mxxxxxxa is still embracing protection and anti-competition policy, which is of no common sense at all.

To quote what my professor said, "To violate these basic principles of economics in our decision making is as if to violate the Newton's law of gravity in building aircraft." You can observe that the higher the degree of violation of these principles, the worse the individual or the country will be doing. An example which I mentioned just now was communist country.

Why has communism failed miserably?
1. Individual is not held directly accountable for his/her own action. The effort that an individual puts in is not directly linked to the reward given. (violation of the "incentive" and "accountability" principles)
2. Absence of clearly defined individual property rights, ie: all properties belong to the state/government, therefore, individual will not have the incentive to save and invest (violation of "incentive" and "saving & investment" principles)
3. No jobs competition and products competition since everyone is employed and there is no unemployment. Also, due to lack of competition, individual has no incentive to improve/work harder. (violation of "competition" & "incentive" & "accountability")
4. Because government needs to plan everything, therefore, a great deal and detailed information is needed, but every level of government bureaucracy has the incentive to provide only information that benefits them, so there is information failure. (violation of "incentive" & "cost-benefit analysis" principle)

The more strictly a country or individual adheres to these principles, the more well-off the individual or the country will be. Just see the examples of the government policies in Singapore and Hong Kong and there will be little or no wonder why they can do so well.

Why do these principles work so well? It is because it is in line with the basic human nature or human instinct. With these tools in mind, I'm thinking to do a series of posts about (cash) investment decision and apply the tools to explain the investment strategy. Look out for my next post la.

Announcement

2008-10-17T03:12:00.001-07:00

I've confirmed my trip to Australia this December. I've bought the ticket to Perth on 7th December, which costs me S$260. I was amazed by Jetstar which managed to offer airfare at half the rate other airlines are charging (I checked, Qantas airticket at least S$500++), the effect of competition is amazing! But the airticket from Perth to Melbourne and return ticket from Melbourne to Singapore are not bought yet. My trip will be from 7th Dec till 21/22 Dec --2 weeks. Hopefully I can make up my final decision and settle it next week.

Tragedy of the anticommons-- Some opinions about the future of Malaysian politics

2008-10-15T04:06:00.000-07:00

When you see the title of the post, you might be taken aback a bit by the economic jargon "tragedy of the anticommon" and wonder about its relevance with politics. As I promised to talk about politics in my blog, I think I shall now spice up my blog by giving some opinions on the current political situation in Malaysia. Of course, I aim to talk about it intellectually by applying some of the economics concepts that I've learnt and not merely talk about it like what people do in "kopitiam".

Previously, I learnt about "tragedy of the commons" in my 1st year economics, but I only heard about "tragedy of the anticommons" in this semester in the module "Political Economy of Southeast Asia". I was very fascinated by this concept and as the prof was explaining the concept, I immediately thought about the current political situation in Malaysia. In this post, I will only focus on "tragedy of the anticommons", while leaving another concept to my future post.

Before I could apply this to explain the political situation in M'sia, I would just like to briefly explain "tragedy of the anticommons". What actually is the tragedy? And how does it arise? The tragedy here means the failure of the involved parties to achieve the most beneficial or desirable outcome. This happens when too many parties have a say or have ownership over a single property which eventually results in the property being underutilized. To give a simple analogy, imagine a door of a room that needs several keys to be plugged in simultaneously in order to open it. The absence of one of the keys will render the door unable to be opened. As you can see, the more number of people holding on to the keys, the harder to get the door to open. This will then result in the underutilized of the room. This idea was discovered and discussed extensively in the book The Gridlock Economy by Michael Heler.

Now, having understood the concept, how could this be applied to explain Malaysian future political situation? Those who have been following the Malaysian news after 308 election would know that Anwar had been repeatedly claiming that he could topple the government at 916, especially after he won the Permatang Pauh by-election. This has not been materialised so far and some people might still be banking their hope on Anwar to topple the government and wish that Anwar government would bring about reforms that could better the country's economic performance.

Despite the optimism and the hype over the topple of the current government and the promised new reforms by Anwar government, I would like to tell my friends: "Don't expect too much, neither current government nor the new government will be able to bring much reforms as you wish to see." Why do I say so?

1. Even if Anwar successfully topples the current government, don't forget about the compositions of the Barisan Alternatives (BA)-- DAP, Keadilan and PAS. As you might be aware, PAS has always been holding firmly to its Islamic fundamentalist stand since it came into full power in the Kelantan state. In other states that it is currently holding power to, it does not insist on the implementation of Islamic law because it is still too weak as compared to its grip on Kelantan. Should BA come into power and form a coalition government, PAS, even though may not obtain the majority seats in Parliament, will probably show its "political muscle" and demand for more, for eg: implementing some Islamic policies that it has always intended to.

But, you may ask :" Since PAS does not have the majority seats in the Parliament, how could it be able to do that?" Now, the concept of "tragedy of the anticommons" comes into the picture. Whenever a government is formed through a coalition, if neither of the parties have absolute majority over others, they will be facing the consequence of "tragedy of the anticommons" since any of the party can threaten to leave the coalition to form another new government if their demand is not fulfilled. That means every party in the coalition will have the VETO POWER, and that effectively gives every party a key to open the door of betrayal should any serious dispute or disagreement over public policy arise.

This is not a remote possibility if you consider the news that Abdullah himself admitted that PAS did have some private talks with UMNO after the election and the fact that some radical leaders within PAS were enthusiastic on the implementation of Islamic policies once they have the chance to hold power to federal government. Besides, if you think that Anwar is able to persuade BN members to defect, what makes you think that BN wouldn't do the same too? If that really happens, you will observe what happened in Thailand a few years back where many small parties which initially agreed to form a coalition government, later left the coalition and formed another new government. As a result, the Thailand Prime Minister had been changing frequently and had not been able to stay in the office long enough to bring about any economic development policy until Thaksin came into power.

So, the conclusion for the 1st scenario--if Anwar is able to topple the current government and form a new one, is that PAS will likely to make use of its veto power and render the reform process unable to be carried out. Besides, BN will also try to resist the reform since it still has significant number of seats in the Parliament and will be able to frustrate any attempt to pass any development policy that is not to their interest, even though it may be good for the nation. The result will be even slower development and more political instability.

2. If Anwar is not able to topple the government, BN will continue to be the government. And I believe you can see by yourself the track record of the present government and its development policy. If there is anything that I would like to highlight, it would be the government's financial situation. I have painstakingly gone to the Malaysia Ministry of Finance website to get the data on government fiscal balance. The result is as follows:

As you can see, since the year 2000, Malaysian govt has been having fiscal deficit till recently. This means that the govt is SPENDING TOO MUCH than it is supposed to, and what is the implication of persistent budget deficit? Well, remember my last post about government financing? There are a few ways that a government can finance its expenditure, of which one that is the most common source is through taxation. Since there is NO FREE LUNCH, the debt the government incurred in the past and now must ultimately be repaid in the future. So fellow friends in Malaysia, be prepared to pay higher taxes if you wanna go back to work in Malaysia upon graduation. And what always makes me reluctant and angry about paying taxes to M'sian govt is the inefficiency, red tape and corruption that plagues the govt bureaucracy. Are you willing to pay higher taxes (which is your hard-earned money) to fund them if you decide to go back to work in M'sia in the future? I think you should ask yourself that question.

Here, I just give you a snapshot of the personal income tax rates in different countries-- HK, M'sia, Sg & Tw. See who gives you the best offer, haha!

I think it's time to stop now. I've always been pessimistic about Malaysian future. Apart from the persistent fiscal deficit problem which I raised in this post, of course there are other problems on the current economic policies which I might talk about in my future post. So, what reason is there for me not to be pessimistic about Malaysian future? Sorry for painting a gloomy picture, I'm just being objective and let the figures tell the story. You may not believe me or my analysis, but you still have to face with the cold, and cruel facts. Hope this post provides you with some ideas about the future of Malaysian politics.

Can a government go bankrupt?

2008-10-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

This morning, I was chatting with my friend about his job on my way to church. He told me about his current job in an optic firm, which mainly supplied military equipments to US military. I asked him whether his firm's business was affected by the recent US financial turmoil. He said military expenditure would always be there, it will hardly be cut due to crisis. Then, I half-jokingly said, "Well, you know, government can bankrupt too." He was a bit surprised by this unexpected reply.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of people can hardly imagine or believe that a government can run into bankruptcy or insolvency. After all, government can always run budget deficit and incur public debt to be repaid in the future. Now, before I delve more into the topic, let's understand how a government finances its expenditure. In general, government finances its expenditure through earning revenues and incurring debt. Following are the few ways a government can finance its expenditure:

1. Taxation- Taxation is probably the most common and well-known source of revenue for the government. Taxation can be in various forms, these include direct taxation- personal income tax & corporate income tax & indirect taxation- consumption tax (or known as sales tax), road tax, transaction tax...etc. In most of the countries, taxation is the single largest source of revenue for the government and it's a more stable source of revenue. Therefore, government's finance budget is usually based on the forecast of next year's taxation revenues.

2. Sales of property- This source of government revenue is not very common, but it is an important source of government revenue for HK govt. In HK, govt owns a large portion of the land (about 80%) and through selling of the land, govt earns significant amount of money to finance its activities.

3. Investment income- This is an important source of revenue for resource-rich countries' govt. Countries like Brunei, Saudi Arab, Norway, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi etc which are petroleum exporters earn a large portion of their income through investing their petrodollars (through the country's sovereign wealth fund) as well as owning stakes in energy companies that extract oil from their countries. Apart from the sale of resources, govt can also earn investment income through investing in some of the nation's utilities & services companies, such as telecommunication, electric, water, airline, banking...etc. Of course, the companies must be competitive enough to generate significant profits for the government to earn revenues from them. This source of financing has also become increasingly important for Sg following the extensive government ownerships in many profitable private companies (known as Government-linked Corporation) and large external investment through Government Investment Corporation (GIC).

4. Debt financing-Government can also finance its expenditure through borrowing from private sectors (by issuing government bonds) or foreign borrowings. Government that incurs large foreign debt will suffer if its exchange rate depreciates significantly against foreign currency. This happened during Asian Financial Crisis, in which Thailand, Indonesia & South Korea were force to apply for International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan assistance. If the government of the country is not able to obtain any loan assistance, then it will face the danger of insolvency, this means that the country will default on any foreign debt that it incurs. This will mean that the country will not be able to export or import any goods with the rest of the world until it has repaid its debt.

5. Printing money to finance its expenditure-- This happens in country where the central bank is not independent from the government and often needs to yield to political pressure and resort to printing money to finance government expenditure. Government that introduces populist policy such as food subsidy, fuel subsidy, exchange rate manipulation will incur large expenditure, without adequate revenues from taxation, government will have to resort to printing money. The consequence of that is of course, disastrous, as the saying goes " there is no free-lunch". Printing money will result in high inflation. High inflation will render the value of the money to depreciate, therefore, government will have to print even more money to repay the debt it has incurred and thus resulting in hyperinflation-- a vicious cycle. If you think this is just a textbook theory, see what's happening in Zimbabwe.

To answer the question: Can a governent go bankrupt? Yes, of course.

- In 1998, Russia defaulted on its government bond due to its inability to repay the loan. This was mainly due to the drop in commodity prices, specifically oil price, which Russia is heavily dependent on.

- Recently, another country that gains the spotlight is Iceland. Due to the recent financial turmoil, 3 Iceland national largest banks fell into big trouble due to the huge foreign debt they incurred. To give you a sense of how big the foreign debt is:
Foreign debt/ Iceland GDP= 9553 billion Icelandic Kronur/ 1279 billion Icelandic Kronur
> 7 times
As the country's currency kept depreciating against foreign currency, foreign debt began ballooning and the commercial banks ran into trouble. Due to the recent global financial crisis, Icelandic banks were forced to turn to Iceland central bank as the lender of last resort but to no avail since their debt was too huge. As matters grew worse, Iceland government decided to stop honouring their foreign obligations, which was effectively defaulting on their debts. Nevertheless, to date, it has manage to receive some loan assistance from Russia, Sweden and form alliances with other Nordic countries.

To sum it up, I just want to make the point that government is at risk of failing too. Countries that are largely dependent on natural resources as the main source of revenues are particularly susceptible to world commodity prices fluctuation. Countries that incur large foreign debts as a result of imprudent macroeconomic policies are also at risk of facing insolvency if the situation turns against them unexpectedly.

I believe there will be more casualties in this global financial crisis. Now, the casualties are not only limited to companies, but even countries are not shielded.

Life Accounting-- A Powerful Equation

2008-10-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

Having studied business and economics subjects in university, I find there are many concepts and theories that can add tremendous value to one's life if applied consistently. I will first start off with accounting concepts. Probably in the future will talk more about other subjects like economics, marketing and etc in their applications to the improvement of one's life.

I'll briefly explain what accounting is about. At the start of the course, I remember profoundly when the lecturer asked us, "why does business exist?" Answer: to create values for the society. A business can only survive if it can meet the demand of individuals in the society (that is the meaning of creating value for the society). The function of accounting knowledge is to summarise and organise the values that the business creates in a certain format so that the business owner can easily assess the values that his/her own business creates over time. This will enable the owner to diagnose his business strategy and improvise it to be in a better position to meet the future demand of the market as well as to do budgeting and inventory planning ahead of time.

Similarly, the same can be said about an individual. We should constantly ask ourselves: "Why do we exist in this world?" There could be a variety of reasons or answers, but I guess an encompassing answer would be: to create VALUE. The "value" here means contribution to the mankind or society. It is only when one's skill or knowledge can make a contribution to the society (ie: to meet the demand of the society) that one will be compensated (receive income) by the members of the society and continue surviving or living with dignity in this world. In this respect, an individual is really not much different from a business. Therefore, the accounting knowledge and concepts, which originally applied to businesses, are thus very relevant in managing our daily lives too-- which I call Life Accounting.

Now, I would like to introduce a very fundamental accounting concept and also a powerful equation:

Asset= Liability + Owner's Equity

This is really a powerful, yet simple equation in accounting. When I first learnt accounting in my 1st year of university, I was really amazed by how concise and succinct this equation could be to describe a business and give you a sense of how the current state of the business is.

This equation helps us to identify the characteristics of different elements in our lives. From this equation, we can create a balance sheet, an income statement and a profit and loss statement. Today, I'll just talk about Life Balance Sheet. Without further ado, I'll show you how to create a Life Balance Sheet.

Haha, sorry, I'm still not that skilled in posting things other than words. The table image is a bit blur but hope you manage to read the content. These are the sort of the things which you can classify under each category. Then, you can assign your own numerical values to each of the elements in your life to create a Balance Sheet which will give you an idea of how much you as an individual is worth in the society, just like it gives business owner an idea of how much the business is worth.

Of course, you might not agree with some of my classifications. A few points to take note here:

1. Car is a negative equity-- This is because in my opinion, car needs constant maintenance and that takes away your worth (remember your income is part of your equity), not only that, car consumes fuel every now and then, and there are other car-related expenses, such as car insurance (which is compulsory), parking fees, road tolls etc. Therefore, it depreciates your value and doesnt help to increase your value. (of course, also depends on how you use it, if you use it to earn more income, then it can be a positive equity)

2. House & car is a liability when you have not yet fully repaid the housing & car mortgage-- Remember you borrow money/loan from the bank to buy a house, the house or car effectively belongs to the bank, not you. And you're just "renting" it from the bank. When you can't afford to pay the "rental" (mortgage), the bank will take "your house/car" (which actually is not yours) away and sell it to others. Therefore, be careful to distinguish these subtle features of the elements in your life.

3. How to distinguish between equity and liability? Equity is something that you actually own. Positive equity helps you to generate values (creates wealth) while negative equity decreases your values (or depreciate your values). This is a bit different from the business accounting, because there is no negative equity under normal circumstances (unless the business/company is at the brink of bankruptcy). Liability in general sense means something that puts one at a disadvantage, but in accounting sense, it means something that belongs to others which is lent to you and you're obliged to pay something in return for using his/her belongings to generate values.

4. This is definitely not a comprehensive or exhaustive list. There are a lot of other elements which one can still add into the list. The items on the list are also in general terms, one can always state in more specific terms (for eg: Good personality like what? Bad personality like what?) and assign numerical values to each of the item to distinguish the importance of role of each item plays in your life.

5. At the end of the day, both sides of the equation must be balance. The values (or assets) that you have will be either from liability or equity.

6. In order to increase your wealth/values, you must learn to increase your positive equity and reduce your negative equity. Incurring debt/liability can also help to leverage your ability to generate more values, but just bear in mind that it is riskier to incur more debt. As the saying goes, "high risk high return". So it all depends on how you manage your risk, do not always assume that incurring debt is not good, if it can help you reach your goal/dream faster at manageable costs/risk, why not?

By constantly reviewing the list of items in our lives, we will know what to improve and what to eliminate. This helps us to constantly enhance our values over time and also helps to plan our future better.

Another side of the world

2008-10-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

I seriously think that I, though not staying in the western countries enjoying the high standard of living both materially and spiritually, am damn lucky to be born in this part of the world--East Asia region, the region which has witnessed miraculous economic metarmorphosis since 1950s.

Thanks to Japan, who was able to be the growth engine for this region during the 1950s. It recorded an average annual GDP growth rates of over 10% during 1950s-1960s, much like the growth China is experiencing now, and that started the growth momentum in this region. That superlative growth later spread to the 4 NIEs(Newly Industrialised Economies)-- Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong & South Korea in the 1970s. Thereafter, the next 4 New NIEs emerged-- Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand in the 1980s. This whole chain of the spread of prosperity across the region, was termed by World Bank as "EAST ASIAN MIRACLE". Many people who are born in this region don't realise how lucky they are. Neither did it come across my mind too, until I learnt about how another part of the world, which experienced the same history of imperialism, paled in comparison to what this region has achieved during the post-war period.

I'm recently reading a book -- The White Man's Burden by William Easterly, these figures strike me. Now, let's turn our eyes to look at some figures.

"Almost three billion people live on less than 2 dollars a day, adjusted for purchasing power.

Eight hundred and forty million people in the world don't have enough to eat.

Ten million children die every year from easily preventable diseases.

AIDS is killing three million people a year and is still spreading.

One billion people in the world lack access to clean water.

Two billion lack access to sanitation.

One billion adults are illiterate.

About a quarter of children in the poor countries do not finish primary school."
(Adapted from The White Man's Burden by William Easterly)

Figures are dry, but suffering and miseries are real. Never take things for granted, my dear friends. When you want to start grumbling about how your life sucks, think again.

Never lose hope

2008-10-10T03:04:00.000-07:00

I would very much like to quote this story from one the books that I read-- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Some of you might be familiar with this story or the character of the story.

In the nineteenth century, a young man in London aspired to be a writer. But everything seemed to be against him. He had never been to attend school for more than 4 years. His father had been flung in jail because he couldn't pay his debts, and this young man often knew the pangs of hunger. Finally, he got a job pasting labels on bottles in a rat-infested warehouse, and he slept at night in a dismal attic room with two other boys--guttersnipes from the slums of London. He had so little confidence in his ability to write that he sneaked out and mailed his first manuscript in the dead of night so nobody would laugh at him. Story after story was rejected. Finally, the great day came when one was accepted. True, he wasn't paid a shilling for it, but one editor had praised him. One editor had given him recognition. He was so thrilled that he wandered aimlessly around the streets with tears rolling down his cheeks.

The praise, the recognition, that he received through getting one story in print, changed his whole life, for if it hadn't been for that encouragement, he might have spent his entire life working in the rat-infested factories. You may have heard of that boy. His name was Charles Dickens.

(Adapted from How to Win Friends and Influence People-- Dale Carnegie)

Human behaviour and Christianity

2008-10-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

This blog is to respond to one of ks' posts. She mentioned that she was confused about her fellow Christian friend who is a team leader that demonstrated contradicting behaviour with his religious belief.

Well, actually I'm not surprised about that since I have been a Christian for 2 decades. I think first of all, I would like to make it clear that I'm not "anti-Christian" nor am I an atheist. I still believe that there is God and He is the one who creates this wonderful, complicated and diverse universe that mankind is still tirelessly & endlessly discovering.

My views and understanding on human behaviour are greatly influenced, or say improved, after taking a number of economics modules. Let me briefly introduce what economics is about first. Economics is basically a study of the principle of making choices subject to the scarce resources that every human being owns. In short, studying economics enables you to be aware of some of the realities & constraints that you might have ignored in many of your decision making in the past.

So what has it got to do with human behaviour? The central assumption in many economics study is that a rational individual is one that aims to pursue and maximize his/her self-interest. Now, you may want to challenge this assumption by saying: " Look, there are many (good/generous/kind...) people out there who go all the way doing great things for the benefit of others. So this assumption of self-interest is not valid." In fact, the assumption that people are concerned about their self-interest does not contradict with doing good for others. Pursuing self-interest simply means that you're pursuing what you think that gives you the highest level of happiness (or utility in economic terms). You may decide that helping others (for eg: Mother Teresa) will give you the greatest happiness or the most meaningful things in your life, others may decide that working hard and earn a great deal of money gives them the highest level of satisfaction. The important point is that, they are all pursuing their own self-interest. The self-interest here is not a synonym for "selfish" or "stingy" like what the chinese translation “自私”implies. In a simple definition, it simply means pursuing things that you're most interested in.

After realising that human beings are self-interested "creatures", I can now apply this assumption to explain a great deal of human behaviour regardless of race (whether he is Caucasian, Chinese, Indian, Malay....), religion (whether he is Christian, Buddhist, Muslim...), gender (male/ female), nationality (Malaysian, Singaporean, Australian, Taiwanese...) & etc. In fact, when you realise that human beings behave in a self-interested fashion, you will come to realise that human beings respond to incentives. If you want a person to change his behaviour, the best way to do it is to provide him with the incentives to do so. It really doesn't matter whether or not you're Christian, it's a basic human nature or natural instinct to respond to incentives, or in other words, to do cost-benefit analysis.

When talking about incentives, we can generally break them down into 3 types of incentives, namely financial incentives, moral incentives & social incentives (from "Freakonomics" by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt). For eg: when government wants people to quit smoking, it can provide all the three incentives together to achieve the best outcome. In terms of financial incentives, government can heavily tax the cigarettes or other tobacco products in order to discourage the production (supply) of those products as well as increase the financial burden on smokers. In terms of moral incentives, government can spread the information about the serious health hazards that smoking bring not only to the smoker himself, but also to the people around him, such as family members and friends. In terms of social incentives, singapore govt sets up many barriers to discourage smokers from smoking, for eg: setting up of free smoking zone (like hospitals, schools, restaurants, public transports & recently in bars and clubs) and the disgusting portrayal of smokers' images on the cigarette packets (I'm thinking whether I should upload one of those pictures coz they are freaking disgusting & horrible, I really don't know how can those smokers bear with it).

Now, enough of the theory about economics, coming back to answer the question that ks asked. As mentioned, human behaviour has really little or no link to religious belief. This conclusion comes as no surprise since in real life, you can't really tell what religion people belong to by solely looking at their behaviour. I remember when I came to singapore, I hardly disclosed to any of my friends in singapore about my religion. And people were surprised when I told them I'm Christian (of course, an "unholy" one, some might say), some of them even thought I'm Buddhist. Now, what actually makes you look like a Christian, and what differentiates you from other religious beliefs? I welcome you to give any of your view, but I don't think there will be a consensus on the answer. In my point of view, as abovementioned, I think that people are just responding to incentives, and this is regardless of your religious view or belief. As to why some people behave in such a "HYPOCRISY" manner, I have a few explanations here:

1. They enjoy the benefits of preaching others (social incentives- the benefit of making oneself important by telling others what to do, or so-called "self-ego") but the costs of carrying out what they preach outweigh the benefits (probably they just consider them as "rules" and not an integral part of their lives, and constantly adhering to these "strict rules" is tiring, you know).

2. These people are just too myopic or short-sighted. In the short term, they may be enjoying the benefits of criticising others, backstabbing, or slandering (because that makes them feel better and saves their face) but they miss the costs of doing so in their calculations (the degradation in one's self-image and personality, losing friends, losing credibility etc) because the costs usually come at a later stage or over the medium and long term.

3. Somehow, they are just persuasive enough and probably manipulative enough to give legitimate reasons in rallying others to believe that they are right. Since they have this kind of ability, it doesn't cost them anything to behave in such a way, while the benefits of doing so are abundant. One of the most extreme cases or should I say human in the history is Hitler. He was able to persuade and rally majority of the Germans to elect him to lead the country, as well as justified his atrocity, cruelty and inhumanity in such a persuasive and manipulative fashion that he was able to carry out his Holocaust plan with the support from the people.

I think these are the reasons that I can think of so far. Probably you could offer other more fantastic reasons, you're welcome to do so. Well, as far as ks' question is concerned, I think I have done my job of answering the question. I realise I have written such a lengthy post and it's time for me to end now. Thanks for your patience to bear with me and finish reading this lengthy post, haha!