A Christian Response To PinkDot

In Singapore, we have an annual event where those with alternative sexual orientation congregate at a park wearing pink clothes. Their purpose is to gain acceptance for their nature. Of course, not everyone is happy about it.

One Muslim group initiated a “wear white” campaign to protest the pink folks. They were supported by a coalition of Christian churches. I find this a miracle itself that extreme Christians and Muslims can work together in harmony if they have a common target to hate.

How should a Christian respond to this scenario? There are a few issues I would like to address right now.

Sodom and Gemorrah
This is a favourite quote from the haters. Their message here is simple. God has murdered the inhabitants in those cities because they are homosexuals. If you don’t want the same to happen here, join our hate campaign.

My answer: Even if we assume the event has literally happened, it was a one off event. It has never happened ever since. Today we have homosexuals all over the world but where are the fire and brimstones? It seems to be long overdue.

Let us suppose that they are right. Fire and brimstone are coming if there are homosexuals around. What can we do? Will joining the hate group helps? Even if we wear white and condemn the gays every day, they will still be around. That will not prevent the fire and brimstones coming our way.

Worst still, we have no way to run because there are gays everywhere.

There is no middle ground. Either you are for God or against him.
This means anyone who do not join their anti-gay movement must be a pro-gay. That is sin. They do not accept anything in between.

My answer: I am not in the middle. I simply don’t care. For example, I do not condemn vegetarians. That does not mean I am one. In the real world, all of us can understand that not actively hating something does not mean we must love them. I guess this is something that the crackpots can never understand.

The Bible states very clearly homosexuality is a sin.
These folks are using the Bible to justify their perversion.

My answer: The Bible also listed many things as sin. For example, all males must be circumcised, no work on Sabbath (which is Saturday), not allowed to eat pork and other strange stuff. I do not believe any Christian is able to obey every one of them.

Yet we do not have people campaigning against those who eat pork or work on Sabbath. Why single out this one? Easier to bully?

Your kids will grow up to be one of them.
Somehow they invented this law that says if you do not condemn certain type of people then your children will grow up into one of them.

My answer: If I don’t want my son to grow up becoming a toilet cleaner, should I start a hate campaign against all toilet cleaners. This is simple logic that can be clouded by irrational hatred.

Conclusion
In this article, I am not going to even take sides on whether the homosexual tendency is inborn or acquired lifestyle. All I want to say is, you cannot get rid of them and make them disappear by participating in any form of hate campaign.

Yes, the Bible says it is a sin but there are also many other sins. Why is there no hate movements on other sins? Because they are more popular? Or is it because you commit them, then they are not serious. Only sins that you do not commit are serious.

Therefore, whatever this hate campaign is doing, it will not reduce the population of the target but it will rather make the Gospel repulsive to the moderates.

Apostle Peter – The Great Apostate

I am putting up this title not because I have an axe to grind with Apostle Peter. No he does not owe me money. My purpose is to expose the lie of the heretics who seek to twist the Scriptures to put believers into bondage. How does the above title relevant? I will show you later.

Let me start with revealing a new heretical movement that seeks to remove grace from the Gospel. When we trust in God’s grace, they will accuse us of “hyper-grace”. Why? They want us to be ashamed of grace. They want to make “grace” a dirty word in the church so that we are too ashamed to mention it. They tried to achieve this by 2 means:

1. Scripture twisting.

2. Repackaging of sin.

Scripture twisting.

What is that? To put it simply, it means twisting the words of assurance and encouragement in the Bible into new condition of salvation. One example is 1 John 1:8. As explained in my previous post, this is a good verse, seeking to provide the assurance of the forgiveness of sins. Yet the heretics seek to pervert it into an additional condition for salvation.

So the amended “Gospel” now says you must believe in Jesus plus confess all your sins to be saved. Is that true? If it is, then Apostle Peter is in hell right now. (I will explain this later.)

Repackaging Of Sin

The heretics know that the Bible is filled with verses on the forgiveness of sins. So sin is not scary enough for them to put believers in bondage. What did they do? Repackage it into something more scary like apostasy. What is apostasy? It means you are not a Christians anymore. That means you are no longer able to access to God’s forgiveness and you will go straight to hell.

You may wonder. How can one commit this sin? It is even looser than sins. Here are the rubbish I have heard:

1. If you bowed to pressure and worship an idol you are no longer a Christian.

2. If you believe in evolution you are no longer a Christian. (That’s me.)

3. If you listen to rock music you are no longer a Christian.

I did not make this up. I heard this from a Sunday service from a church. Is apostasy that scary? I am going to resolve this by quoting from the Bible a dude who did that.

25 Meanwhile, Simon Peter was still standing there warming himself. So they asked him, “You aren’t one of his disciples too, are you?” He denied it, saying, “I am not.”

John 18:25 (NIV)

Peter who is also the Apostle Peter committed apostasy 3 times. After Jesus rose from the dead, he managed to meet Jesus again. What did he say?

15 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.

John 21:15-17(NIV)

Do you notice something? Peter has neither asked for forgiveness nor confessed his sins. This alone can throw out the scam that one must confess one’s sins in order to be forgiven down the drain. Jesus did not wait for Peter to go through the ceremony of confessing sins before he reached out to Peter. This is the Jesus of the Bible. Have you committed apostasy? Even if you do, it is still not too late. There is hope in the grace of God.

No wonder grace is so dangerous to the devil.

Is The Confession Of Sin Really Necessary?

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9 (NIV)

This must be among the famous and also most abused verse in the Bible. Somehow in the hands of some very creative folks it makes the confession of sins the ultimate condition for their forgiveness. Yet when you read the whole passage, it does not say that at all.

So, what does it really mean? To understand further, let us look at its context from the verse before and after it.

8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
1 John 1:8-10 (NIV)

What does the whole passage means?

Here is a simple version:
Verse 8: Look there is no such thing as anyone having no sin. Everyone sins.
Verse 9: But don’t worry over it. Just bring your sins to God and he will deal with it.
Verse 10: If you still insist on no sin then you are calling God a liar and you are not truly on God’s side.

I hope this is obvious enough to show that this “confession of sin” thing is specifically to the above context only. It is not meant to be a condition of salvation. Never allow anyone to deceive you with the lie that if you do not confess your sins, you will go to hell. Jesus’ works at the Cross is finished and he does not need your help.

If that is still not enough, let me give you another verse from the same book.

I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
1 John 2: 12 (NIV)

In the above verse, “dear children” refers to new believers. The moment you believed in Jesus, your sins have been forgiven. There is no mention on “confession” there. This is the non-negotiable foundation of the Christian faith. Christ alone is enough for the forgiveness of sins. It is never faith plus confession.

The Greed Foundation: The Final Revelation

Dear colleagues and friends,

 

As you could have noticed, I regard you are colleagues and friends, not employees because you are working for the survival and prosperity of the human race, not me. I am only they guy who started this foundation and I need all of you to make it work. I need you. The future of the entire humanity needs you.

 

I would like to start by thanking all your hard work in preparing this foundation for the eventual takeover of the planet when governments collapse. That is no longer a speculation but a clear path based on our prediction model.

 

I am especially amazed with our colleagues in the Engineering Unit. Do you remember I shared on the computer system that I built to predict the market movement? Well, I passed it to the engineers and 2 years later I see a more powerful and robust system with accuracy improved by a thousand times. Of course, it will not be possible without the contribution of the mathematicians who created a new field of mathematics for this purpose. Through this improved system, we can be fairly certain that the collapse will start within 3 months.

 

The other unit worth mentioning is the Political Unit. Seems that you guys have managed to infiltrate every major governments, military and establishments all over the world. Should the collapse happen, or should I say “when” it happens we will have a greater control over the transition.

 

We may have our armed units ready but to secure peace throughout the world, we still need the established organisations despite their fallen state to coordinate and restore the human civilisation because our numbers are still too small.

 

So, I want everyone to get ready. Once the world falls into chaos, we will be their last hope to restore order. How history will judge us (supposing there is still people recording it) will depend solely on how we rule the world.

 

There is one more secret that I want to reveal to you now. When I set up this foundation, I want to solve the problem of civilisation collapse predicted by my order. As you can see from the reports, we can be quite certain of its occurrence and we are almost ready to take our step in lending our species a helping hand.

 

However, if you have lived long enough on this planet, you will realise that not all problems can be predicted like a mega earthquake, mega solar flare, worldwide plagues etc. What can we do then? The answer is we can’t. To be exact this foundation is not equipped for that.

 

One year after I set up this foundation, I set up another one which I call the “Seed Foundation”. It has bases hidden all over the world. Some deep underground, on seabeds, high up in the mountains all other places which could maximise their survival. The Seed Foundation is equipped with everything needed to restore humanity should we be so unfortunate that we are thrown into the Stone Age by a really big disaster. This includes all the knowledge, tools, medicines and even genetic materials.

 

Please remember that this is a top secret.

 

Should anything that bad happens and some of you managed to survive, I want you to activate this system shown here. The Seed Foundation will do its best to send assistance for you to continue with your mission. I have to tell you this because I may not be alive when it happens.

 

The bottom line is, let us proceed according to plan. If the unexpected bad things really happen, do not be disheartened. We still have a sister foundation to rely on.

 

That all for now. Good luck and God bless.

The Greed Foundation.

Welcome ladies and gentlemen for being selected to join the inner ranks of the Greed Foundation. You will find truths about this foundation that are not visible to the public.

 

Here is a brief introduction.

 

I like to compare this foundation to an iceberg floating in the sea. The outside world can only see the parts above the water but of the contents are below it. The Greed Foundation that you know until now are only the visible part. As you are now being inducted into the inner ranks, you will get to know the real mechanism of the whole foundation, its purpose and basically what it is all about.

 

The visible part, as you know is no different from any other charitable foundations. We operate orphanages, set up farming cooperatives, provide clean water, education, training, healthcare and other necessities to the poor around the world but that are only the superficials. Yes, the rumours are true. We have an insidious motive.

 

Here is how we got started. I was trained as an engineer but I made my windfall from taking advantage of the weaknesses of the world’s financial system. After that, my greed has driven me to find more weaknesses in order to exploit them.

 

Part of my plan is to set up a system to predict the future. So, I spared no expenses to get the best minds and machineries to create a model to predict the direction of the world. My investments have paid off very well. I made even more money because I knew of the booms and bursts before they occur. The more money I made, the more I invest to improve the system.

 

Then, as the model gets more sophisticated, it produced something I never expected. To make it short, the model predicted that the human civilisation that we of will end in 30 years with the error of 5 years. By the way we have already passed 5 years.

 

It came as a shock and I decided that I have to do something about it. Thus the Greed Foundation. Its purpose is as follow:

1. Eliminate or at least reduce the severity of the causes identified by the model.
2. Should the collapse is inevitable, I seek to delay it in order to make preparations for it.
3. When it finally happens, I need a strong organisation to hold humanity until a new civilisation is involved.

 

The first objective is executed through our charity works. We seek to set up self-sufficient communities around the world. Those who can live with minimal contact with the rest of the world are the ones most likely to survive the civilisation collapse. So, far we believe that we can only make lesser people suffer but unable to prevent the collapse itself.

 

The 2^nd objective is related to the 1^st. It is covered by the seemingly charity works we do.

 

The 3^rd is the reason you are here. Once governments collapse, there will be anarchy. Humanity might be driven back to the Stone Age. At this time, I hope that this foundation will be in position to organise humanity to sustain all the achievements we have attained.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to be the emperor of the world. I prefer to run things behind the scenes and let someone else be the front man. However, should the situation turns out really bad, the Greed Foundation will have to come forth to save humanity.

 

Now, let us talk about you. As long as you are here, I can assure you that you will not be in want. Nothing you desire will be denied from you. I am referring to thing money can buy, of course. Your families will never starve again.

 

Later, you will be sent to our flagship “Unbridled Greed” for the full introduction of the foundation before you are assigned based on your expertise.

 

Finally, I just want to remind you that you are not serving me. You are serving humanity from destruction.

 

Goodbye and good luck.

Sin Is Good

8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.

1 John 1:8-10 (NLT)

 

I have this message in my mind for weeks and I think it is time to let it out.

 

What is your response to sin? By “sin”, I am referring to your own sin, not others. Basically, there are 2 extreme ways people deal with it, which I call:

1. Paranoid way
2. Ignore way

 

The first is the type where people behave like they are crazy each time they sin. They will behave like they are going to hell and beg God for forgiveness as though Jesus never died for their sins at the Cross. These folks really believed that a believer must never sin. They forget that according to the above verses, even if they managed to achieve such a “sinless” state, they still commit the sin of lying. So, people like that can’t really live for long.

 

The second type is comparatively better. Each time they sin, they do not make a big deal over it because they believe all their sins have been paid for. However, the problem is they do not make any effort to make corrections. As a result, the sin stays.

 

What is the right way to deal with our sins? The answer is, we should not be paranoid over it but neither should we ignore it. In order to understand it, we need to know its nature. Why is a sin, a sin? Is it because God is trying to pull rank? No, a sin is a sin because it is bad for us.

 

Let me put it another way. Sin hinders our prosperity on earth. Prosperity is more than just having a lot of money. It also covers our ability to enjoy it. Sin is the thing that blocks it.

 

Let me give you an example. Suppose you are addicted to smoking. What is happening to you now? I can guess the following: You are spending quite a lot of money in cigarettes and healthcare.

 

Both items cost money. If you can overcome this addiction, it will be like having an additional sum of money appearing in your bank account.

 

The other one is gambling addiction. If you really have this problem, you will never be rich. Even if you have a mountain of gold, you will still be poor because you will gamble them away. So, the only solution is for you to get rid of this sin in order for you to have a shot of becoming rich.

 

The last example I am giving you is adultery. It cost money and damage families. Having a lot of money will not result in much joy if your family is broken.

 

The above are just some examples I bring up to show that sin is something we need to work on if we are truly serious on living a prosperous life.

 

Why then do I choose the title that says “Sin is good.” The answer is, it points out the area we need to improve on. It is only when we realise we have sin in certain areas, then we know the direction we should go to fix it.

 

This is also the meaning to the above verses. We need to confess our sins. The term “confess” does not mean begging God for forgiveness. All our sins have been forgiven –past, present and future. The only thing left is to deal with it for reasons I stated above. If you can do it, good for you. If not, there is a God to seek help from. The above verses give us the guaranteed assurance that God has committed to help us to deal with our sins. All that is left is our willingness to work with him.

 

The final truth I want to share now is God’s position on sin. God is always on our side against our sins. He will never be against us for our sins. No matter what sins you have, God is on your side working with you to overcome it.

 

This is the truth I am sharing.

Clash Of Clans

This happens to be the latest game that I have been playing. It is both a strategy and role playing game. It is played from my iPhone. So I can keep track of it during my breaks.

The player owns a village. The role is to protect it, develop it and plunder the neighbours for resources.  The neighbours happen to be other players.

Resources

There are 3 different resources here:

1. Gold
2. Elixir
3. Gems.

All of them have different roles and not interchangeable. The exception is the gems where it can be bought with real money. In the beginning of the game, the player is given a few hundred gems. These are useful to speed things up. After they have been used up they are gone unless the player is willing to pay for it. The other way is to clear obstructions where there could be gems under them.

Gold can be used for building most structures and to upgrade them. There are 2 ways to get them: build gold mines and plunder neighbours. It can be stored in gold storage. The Town Hall, which is the headquarters of the village can store up to 1,000 pieces of gold.

The catch here is there is a limit of gold one can accumulate. Once the storage is full, you cannot get more even if you continue to collect from mines or plunder your neighbours. You will have to upgrade the storage capacity or buy more storage units. To do that, you need to use a builder and spend elixir for it.

Elixir is used in training new soldiers, research, upgrade and build certain buildings. Like gold, it can be mined from the ground with extractors or plunder from neighbours. The additional source is the grave of invaders.  When you were attacked, you will inevitably killed some of the enemy’s soldiers. The points that they die on will be marked with grave stones. A single tap on one of them will transfer their elixir into the storage. As gold, the accumulation of elixir is limited by the available storage capacity. In order to store more, you will have to upgrade the storage capacity or buy more storage units. To do that, you need to use a builder and spend gold for it.

One renewable resource is builders. You will be given 2, you are willing to use real money to buy more.  Every act of buying new structures or upgrading requires a builder to execute it and it takes time, from seconds to days. Therefore the player must plan all upgrades and new purchases very carefully.

Town Hall

This is the most important building in this game. Whoever loses his/her Town Hall loses the battle. The amount and type of buildings and weapons available to the player is depended the level of the Town Hall. This means one must upgrade the Town Hall periodically in order to have all the advanced features available. The challenge here is it costs a lot of gold and can take days to complete the upgrade. During this period, one builder is tied up.

Barracks

There are to train soldiers. At the most basic level, it can only trains barbarians. Barbarians are cheap and fast to train. They are good for storming and overwhelming the enemy’s defences. The problem is, once they are released, they will only attack the nearest enemy structures.

Once it is upgraded to higher levels, different soldiers are available. The next stage is archers. They can attack at a distance but less destructive power than the barbarians. Their main strength is their ability to attack structures that are protected by walls.

Next stage, giants. They are more destructive and can sustain more attacks. They have a clear preference to attack weapons. This is good because I like to take out my target’s defensive weapons first so that I can plunder them at leisure. They are good at attracting fire from the enemy. The only drawback is they are very slow. By the time they reach the enemy’s weapons, they would have received quite a number of shots.

There are more but I only reach the next stage, which is wall breakers. These are suicide bombers who bring bombs to the enemy’s wall to blow it up with themselves along. They are good for breaking a hole at the enemy’s fortification but so far I find little use for them. I will explain more later.

Laboratory

This is for improving the ability of the soldiers. It costs a lot of elixir but the good point is, it does not need builders.

Defensive weapons.

When a village is under attack, none of the soldiers can help. You have to depend on walls and weapons. There are a lot of weapons available at different levels of Town Hall but I will only describe the ones I have with me. They are:

1. Cannons
2. Archery towers.
3. Mortar
4. Air Defence

Cannons are the most basic. They can shoot one at a time and only ground targets. Through upgrades, they can have higher resistance and greater fire power. Archery towers work the same way except they can also shoot at air targets.

Mortar is limited to ground targets but it can damage multiple units at the same time through a system called “area splash”.  This is the weapon of mass destruction.

Meanwhile Air Defence is basically an surface to air rockets firing system.

Walls are a crucial part of my defence system. They are both limited and upgradable. I use them carefully to create the best defence to my weapons, Town Hall and storages. When I decide on which village to plunder, I based my decision on how they use their walls because I hate breaking through them.

Attacks

There are 2 modes for attacks, Single Player and Multi Player. The former is just villages in the programme. They are boring and do not have much to plunder. I go for the latter, which consists of villages built by other players. I look for their weakness and will only attack those with lousy defence which I list down as below:

1. No walls.
2. Walls not enclosed.
3. Enclosed walls with unoccupied space.
4. Walls enclosing buildings other than weapons.

Case 1 and 2 are basically the same. Having walls with gaps is as good as having none. So, I basically launch my attacks nearest to their main weapons like Mortar and plunder them.

Case 3 is quite special. The game allows the attacker to launch attacks at any area that are not occupied by the defender. Some players surround a huge area with their walls which include some unoccupied areas. This means I can launch my attacks from inside the enclosure. So, their walls don’t matter to me.

As for Case 4, one needs to understand that not everything needs to be enclosed with walls. In my case, I put my Town Hall, storages and weapons behind walls. The others are expendables because even if they are destroyed, they will be restored by the time I switch on the game.

Some players put their Town Hall and storages behind walls but left their weapons unprotected. So, what I will do is to attack their weapons first. Once the weapons are destroyed, I can take my time to jack through the walls and plunder.

My Ideal Life Revision 1

I always start my day with exercise. At my current state of wealth, there is nothing I fear more than overindulgence in food. So, exercising is always my top priority in the morning and evening. I start with some stretching and jogging. Despite the fact that I have a fully equipped gym, my favourite workout has always been martial arts. Basically I just repeat the routines that I was thought by the best fighters that I have hired. These routines give me great satisfaction and excitement although I don’t think I will ever get the opportunity to use it.

Here is my martial arts programme. Every month my assistant will approach a top fighter across various disciplines and fly in my private jet to my mansion. Of course, they were paid in an amount which they can never refuse. This is why they are willing to come to teach me. Their job is to spend 2 hours in the evening with me to teach me everything they knew in their arts. So far, I have learned the fighting skills from almost every part of the world. Revising the setups is a complete workout by itself.

After the workout, I take a shower and join my family for breakfast. I would like to highlight here that just because I can afford any food money can buy, I do not go for the most expensive because the most expensive food does not always good for health. I value health above all when it comes to food. Most of the food in my meals comes from plants planted organically around my mansion.

Despite my achievements, I still live a humble life. I only have one mansion that occupies the area of only 2 football fields, less than 10 stories high and located in the middle of a small garden which is only as large as 10 football fields.  One of the criteria I set for my architect for this mansion is it must be well ventilated to reduce maintenance cost and has lots of plants. The plants are all food producing types. Why is that so? Since, I am having plants, I might as well have plants that produce useful things like food.

After breakfast, I meet my team for work. At my wealth, I can do anything I want without having to work but without work, I will be directionless and purposeless. This is the curse that has ruined the lives of many of my counterparts. When they were poor, they climbed their way up to be rich. Once they got rich, they spent their lives indulging in leisure. However, when they became immune to it, they became lost. They ended up destroying themselves, their families and everything they worked for.

I am not going to follow their path. I still have my greed in me. I have set a purpose for myself and it is not about making money. Speaking of money, I have stopped trying to manage it. My wealth has grown to such a level than I suspect if I am to find out how rich I am, I will go crazy due to brain overload. Suffice to say, I can afford anything money can buy. As for managing them, I have one battalion of accountants in each continent to handle them. This means I can dedicate my life for the purpose I created for myself.

Here is my purpose: To be the Hari Seldon in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series. Here is a brief explanation. In the story, Hari Seldon lives in a human controlled galactic empire. He was able to predict that the empire will collapse and humanity will live in the dark age until the next empire forms again. In order to reduce the duration of this dark age, he sets up 2 foundations situated at the opposite end of the galaxy. The purpose of these foundations is to guide humanity into a new civilisation after the galactic empire has collapsed.

I am doing the same to guide the human species to reach greater height in civilisation. The first foundation I set up is called the “Greed Foundation”. Its purpose is to help humanity to progress. This involves humanitarian aids in many poor countries. I have sent experts to help poor farmers to increase their harvests, set up schools, build hospitals, dig wells and even create industries to give the poor people a chance to live their lives in greed.

I went to a few of the villages myself and witnessed the transformation there. Millions of people are no longer suffering from hunger and malnutrition. Children get to go to schools to learn English, mathematics and science. I may not be able to remove the superstition from the current generation but I want to use education to create a scientific literate generation.  I believe science is what the species need to progress to the next level.

Overall, the achievements of the Greed Foundation have been obvious. Through this foundation, many lives have been saved from starvation, malnutrition and disease. However, there are still people out there who really hate me for what I have done.  I categorise them into 2 groups:

1. Anti-prosperity fanatics.
2. Religious fanatics.

These people hated me because I am rich and not ashamed to admit that I am still greedy. The first group are against me for the word “greed”. To them greed means evil despite the fact that I have shown very clearly that greed can also leads to kindness and love to others. I guess they are angry because I defied their definition.

The second group is more creative.  One preacher told his congregation that God revealed to him that I was sent by the devil to mislead people from the true Faith. The humanitarian works done by my Greed Foundation is to blind people’s eyes to the great evil I am supposed to bring to them.

However, the more popular accusation is I am the Antichrist. As I think of it, there is one similarity. I own significant shares in all the major companies dealing in world trade. Other than that, I am not interested in fulfilling the Bible prophecies for the Antichrist. The only prophecy I want to fulfil is my own.

I want to see humanity to reach for the stars. I want my species to be a star faring race. I want human beings to build settlements all over the galaxy. I know I will not live long enough to see it. I just contend to be the one who helped to start it.

This is what my first foundation is doing. I still have a second one which I call the “Seed Foundation”.  It is a backup in case the earth faces a global disaster that wipes out the civilisation that we know of. Let me explain. We have disasters at various places and times. Until now, these disasters are shortlived and localised. For example, if one place has a big earthquake, people from unaffected areas will send aids to help the victims. Meanwhile, other parts of the world continue to progress.

My problem is, what if we have a really big disaster like a mega earthquake, meteor strike, plague or any unexpected event that wipes out 99% of our population? Will the remaining 1% survivors be able to restore our civilisation or will they be sent back into Stone Age until the whole species extinct?

The Seed Foundation is set up for this purpose. While the Greed Foundation does its works openly, the Seed Foundation operates behind the scenes. I have set up secret bases throughout the world stocked with food supplies, technology and information to restore the civilisation in the event we really need it. This is a really big challenge because I don’t know what the big disaster could be. I do not even know I am still alive when it happens. It may happen tomorrow, next year, next decade or even a few hundred years later. Whatever the case, it is good to be prepared.

If there is no global disaster, the Greed Foundation will propel humanity to the stars but if something really deadly happens, I have the Seed Foundation to serve as a beacon of light guiding humanity to its way of progress.

These 2 foundations have giving me a purpose for living. I will cherish every moment of my life living it.

The Magic Of Mathematics

Mathematics! What a demonic word is this? Mathematics means different things for different people.

To some people, it is something to be avoided at all cost. It means pain, suffering, confusion and pure torment. Maybe they think that hell is a place where its inhabitants are forced to solve mathematics problem every day for eternity where heaven is the place where all traces of mathematics is banned forever.

Many others treat is as a necessity of life. They may need it in their jobs or to pass their examinations. They treated in with “professional” respect, learn what they can with the intention to use it to advance their career to the next level.

A small minority like myself see it as pure magic. It begins from nothing. You draw some lines, curves and numbers. Put them into equations, move the components around and a whole new universe is created. This is what I called “magic”. In this article, I shall elaborate more on this phenomena call “mathematics”.

Mathematics begin when people learned how to count. I don’t know much about tribes but based on what I have learned, some tribes do not have words for numbers above a certain limit. For example, they may have words for number 1, 2 and 3 only. Number 4 onwards are classified as “many”. Based on this limited vocabulary, one can deduce that such tribe could not have planned far. As far as they have the word for the largest number.

They could not have done much engineering and will be disadvantaged at war. Imagine this, when you organise an attack on them, what you have to do is to send in say 50 soldiers to set up a camp. The next day, hide 20 of them and order the remaining 30 men to leave. The tribesmen would have interpreted it as many people came and many left. They could not tell the difference between 50 and 30. Neither could they work out that there are 20 men still hiding.

No civilisation could have existed without the knowledge of basic mathematics which involves counting and arithmetic. If any of them really existed, they would have been replaced by the process of natural selection in mathematics.

In short, any civilisation that managed to exist knows the value of mathematics. Many of them developed it independently and yet it is consistent regardless of the culture it comes from. This means that regardless of which part of the world you are from, the rules of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are all the same.

Mathematics is therefore absolute and independent of one’s culture, geography and history. This is the opposite of religion. All civilisations also created their religions which tell them how their world was created, what can or cannot be eaten, how to live their lives, fight their wars, what type of structures they have to build for their gods etc. However, all religions differ from one another and are dependent on the culture, geography and history that created them. Therefore, unlike mathematics, all religions are relative and non-absolutes.

What this means is mathematics is the anchor of stability in the midst of a changing universe. Through mathematics, we can be assured that there are absolutes in this universe that will not be changed and independent from changes in discoveries, technology breakthroughs and trends. In mathematics, we have the rights and wrongs clearly proven and defined. What was proven right will be right forever. It is the island of stability in the midst of chaos.

One may ask, “How about other branches of science?” The difference between mathematics and other sciences like physics, chemistry and biology is mathematics consists only of deduction and the manipulations of numbers. It does not depend on experiments or observations at natural processes. This means new discoveries have no impact on the established mathematical laws.

The above phenomenon is also a drawback for mathematics itself. Since it is independent from the natural processes in the world around us, it is useless by itself. All the equations and laws created from it are useless unless we can put meanings behind those variables. The only way to do it is to conduct experiments, observations and followed by precise measurements to produce raw data. Feed it in the equations and we will have working mathematics.

Then again, how accurate are those measurements from experiments and observations? This is where the problem lies. Whatever discovery we made based on the observations today may be proved false tomorrow because tomorrow we may have better instruments or new events. Science is in constant flux. What is true today may not be so tomorrow due to new discoveries.

However, I need to stress here is that the changing portion is in the raw data that comes from observations and not from the mathematical process. The mathematical laws, once proven true are true forever.

So much for the consistency.

What I find so fascinating about mathematics is, it is purely the product of the brain. It was conceived in our brains. The sketches and equations we see on papers and boards are merely the representations of it. When I study this subject, I don’t see numbers flying around. Instead I see the thought processes that transform one state to another in a series of logical steps. You don’t even need expensive equipment like particle colliders for that. Just a pencil and a few pieces of papers , the rest is up to your brain to create your own miracle.

Mathematics had brought me much joy when I was in my pre-university days. I was fascinated by it. When I saw my teacher transforming equations on the black boards, I was mesmerised. After the final answer was out, I wanted to stand up, clap and shout in joy but I never did that because I was afraid others might think I am crazy or something. When I repeat the same process on paper and successful in completing the steps, I felt like a wizard. I have created my own magic spell. Doing mathematical exercises is like practising my magic. I felt like I was god.

Unfortunately, my priority then was to secure a place in the university, not to appreciate any subject. When the time came, I got into engineering. In case you are wondering on why not mathematics, the answer is, it is purely out of practicality. How much can an mathematics and physics graduate earn compared to an engineer?

I was not born in a rich family. So money is a high priority to me. As I think back, I wonder what would have happened if I opted for physics and mathematics instead? I don’t know.

Another quality of mathematics is it is universal and consistent even among species.

Suppose we encounter an alien civilisation. How do we deal with the first contact? We cannot assume their norm as the same as ours. We think of oxygen and water as the necessities of life but it might be toxic to their biology. We can see lights within a certain band of wavelengths but they might see it in a separate band. Then we can see what they cannot and vice versa.

The only common ground we can establish is through mathematics. The fact that these aliens can create a civilisation shows that they know some mathematics. They should have the same laws on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They should have the same value for pi and natural number e. They should know the meaning of prime numbers. All these can be used as the common ground to establish the first contact.

Enough of aliens. As we move forward, I believe we can progress at a faster rate if we can have a mathematician in every research team. The reason is because no other non mathematical faculties or departments in institutions of higher learning can teach all the mathematical topics to their students. They are bound to leave out certain topics that they think as irrelevant. Those irrelevant could become relevant in specific cases. It takes fully qualified mathematicians to identify that.

In having an in-house mathematicians we can have a higher chance of constructing mathematical models to analyse and confirm new discoveries. In fact, software companies and hedge funds have already begun to appreciate the importance of mathematicians in their teams. It is my hope that the rest of the economic sectors can do the same.

If you are a mathematics graduate or undergraduate reading this, I want to tell you that I am envious for being in the studies that I truly desire. However, I am not so envious of your economic prospects compared to your engineering counterparts. My wish is for the society at large to have better appreciation on our talents.

The Process Of Science

In the previous post, I have given a brief introduction of science. I have checked the meaning itself from the dictionary and find the definition of science to be totally appalling. Somehow, they have the idea that science is just organised knowledge. The truth is science is more than that. Just because someone can organise some kind of knowledge, it does not make it “science”. For example, it is possible to organise the knowledge of astrology but it is still not science.

The question here is what makes science, science? The answer lies in the process. In this article, I am going to explain this scientific process that separates science from superstition.

Here we go. The process of science can be divided into the following steps:

1. Identify a field/ phenomena to study and understand.
2. Deduce or guess possible hypothesis to it.
3. Conduct experiments and tests to verify the above hypothesis.
4. The hypothesis that is able to pass the test will be taken as the true explanation until proven otherwise from the above process.

The above is very brief and therefore I will explain further.

 

Identify a field/ phenomena to study and understand.

There is no limit on what science can study. It is up to personal preference or the necessity of the time. Here are some examples:

 

• Ancient civilisations devote resources to study hydrology and botany because they want to increase food production. As food productivity increased, they can support larger population, which in turn created more soldiers, artists, scientists and engineers which in turn make the civilisation stronger.

 

• During the early stage of the Industrial Revolution, a lot of accidents happened due to explosion of boilers. Efforts were made to study these phenomena which gave rise to the creation of thermodynamics.

 

• The study of medicine has always been important in all civilisations because no one likes to suffer from illness.

 

Apart from the above necessities, science was pursued out of pure interest. The most obvious example is astronomy. People have been staring at the night sky for generations wondering that is up there. It was only after some time that they conduct scientific study on it.

In short, there is no area of knowledge that we cannot apply scientific knowledge on it. This includes areas like astrology or God. How to do it? Let me show you some possible way.

In order to verify whether astrology can affect one’s luck, all you have to do is to gather the birthdates of all the lottery winners, tabulate them according to constellation at those dates and see if there is any “lucky” constellation.

If a believer is to argue that the luck component is month specific, then all we need to do is to group the winnings into various months. If the result of the study can show that there is a huge uneven proportion of winners in a certain month that were born under a certain constellation, then astrology is true.

The same can be done to the study on the affect of God. Gather a group of people with terminal illnesses and divide them into various subgroups. Each subgroup is to pray to a specific God. One of the subgroup is not to pray to anyone in order to serve as a control. If the result shows that a single subgroup has an excessive high rate of healing, then it is proof that the God it prays to is the true God or at least the most productive.

So, there is no area that science cannot be conducted on. The challenge is to determine the methods.

 

Deduce or guess possible hypothesis to it.

There are 2 ways to this:

1. Deduce the most logical and simple hypothesis.
2. Guesswork.

It is obvious that the first option is the preferred one. Everything else being equal, the hypothesis that is the most logical and simple will be preferred as the answer. It is only when the above does not work, will we result to guesswork and test it.

This is why the God Hypothesis will never be considered as an acceptable answer. In science, we use the known to explain the unknown. We do not use the greater unknown to explain the relatively lesser unknowns. The God Hypothesis is the greatest unknown ever existed in human history.  This means it is unfit to be use as an explanation.

This is something that religious fanatics cannot understand. In their minds “God did it” is the only answer. If all of us think the same, then there is no science because “God did it” can be literally used to explain everything.

We do acknowledge that there are many things that science cannot answer. Some of them might never be answered at all. However, that does not mean we must adopt the God Hypothesis for all the questions that we cannot answer. That is foolish, irresponsible, lazy and disrespectful to God. This is like telling God, “God I am putting you as the solution because I don’t know the real answer. After I find out what the real answer is, I will throw you out.” The God Hypothesis is pure blasphemy to both God and science.

Let me move on to guesswork. There is nothing wrong with guessing in science. In fact, many scientific breakthrough happen because there were scientists who guessed the answers which later found to be true. This is where the creative part comes it. Being creative and the ability to think out of the box are a part of the qualities to be scientists but this does not exclude vigorous testing.

 

Conduct experiments and tests to verify the above hypothesis.

This is the hard work part of science. Just because one can cook up an explanation, it must not be taken as true until tested. There are ways to test hypothesis. The best is through experiments where we create setups for the phenomena and measure the results. If experiments are not possible, then we will need to gather data and do statistical study.

The above studies will tell us one of the following:

1. The hypothesis is completely true.
2. The hypothesis is completely false.
3. The hypothesis is true if conducted only under specific circumstances.
4. Only a portion of hypothesis is true.

The first 2 possibilities are clear cut. It is either true or false. The next 2 are the ones that makes science interesting. When to do experiments and study the statistics, we will not only get the true or false result, we gather new information which can help us to enhance our understanding and thus add to our initial hypothesis. Not only that we can create new field of knowledge out of it. The Theory Of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics were discovered this way. These 2 fields are what I call “common sense unfriendly”. They were discovered from experiments that did not yield the expected results.

Experiments and statistical studies can add to our knowledge.

The main weakness to this step is, we may not have access to the complete data. As I explained earlier, we humans were never fully equipped to be scientists. Our senses are pitifully limited compared to what is available in the universe around us. As our technology improves we will gather more data that we could not get before. Some of these new data may even prove that the answers we got in the past as false. When it happens, we will have to revise those theories and form new ones.

Being a scientist demands the ability to reject earlier “proven” theories if the current data proves otherwise. This is the characteristic that separates science and religion. Science is not ashamed of changing minds and beliefs. In science, being a heretic and blaspheme against earlier proven theories are healthy practices as long as one can produce sufficient evidence to support this heresy. No religion can do this.

This tells us that science and religion are at the opposite end of the logic spectrum. Does it mean no one can do both? The answer is, many have done both and the way to do it is adopt the discipline to separate both.  When you are in your religious mode, you are free to believe in the things in it like making the world in 6 days, talking snake, dinosaurs in Noah’s Ark, walking on water and other miracles but when you are out of in and step into the real world where science is the way of progress.

 

The hypothesis that is able to pass the test will be taken as the true explanation until proven otherwise from the above process.

This is the part where the scientists publish the results to be verified by their peers. If the results are significant enough, the results may even in incorporated into textbooks.

As explained earlier, just because a certain theory is verified as true, it does not mean that it will always be true. Future data may prove otherwise. Science is a dynamic process. It exalts us from mere surviving into progress, teaches us to be open minded and most importantly makes us truly civilised.