Book Review: God's Forgotten Truth

I'm reading a book about God at the moment. No, its not the Bible. No, I haven't been converted yet. I was asked to read it by a friend of mine who is Christian. We kind of agree to disagree, and he's not really that intent to try and convert me, but does try to make me understand his point of view. So, knowing that I've got an IT background and that I've got issues with the existence of God, he bought me a book about it. The fact that he actually bought the book and gave it to me kind of gives me the obligation to read it.

At first I was quite open to the idea. It helps me understand better what I'm currently rejecting and gives me yet another perspective on the whole idea of Christianity. Also, it was touting itself as being written from an ITIL perspective, which I guess is something I'm more familiar with.

But then I read the first chapter and got very frustrated. Then I read the second chapter, and got even more frustrated. From each chapter from there, I almost dreaded picking the book up and reading it. The author attempts to debunk the theory of evolution by basically saying its a lie. Oh theres a few good arguments like how its completely feasible for the world to be at the current population level within 4000 years of growth given the history of growth in the US or how theres no human bones next to dinosaurs. But then he doesn't realise that these have perfectly plausible scientific explanations (i.e. the US within the last 200 years is not indicative of the world between 2000 B.C. and now and that dinosaurs did not live at the same time as humans). I remember he explained that science is compatible with miracles like the parting of the Red Sea. If you blow hard enough, water will part, so God made a big wind come up and part the sea. He forgot to mention that if it was blowing hard enough to part the sea, it would make it quite hard to walk.

I got to about chapter six, where it talks about the Book of Revelations, where I laughed out loud while reading it on public transport. As you all probably know, the Book covers a lot of things about demons, the end of the world and judgement day. I don't think I can explain it properly, so i'm going to copy out a bit of the book and let it explain itself:

"In Revelation 9:7-11, he describes the locusts: "The shape of the lucsts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like wmen's hair, and their teeth were like lions' teeth. And they had breastplates like breatplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of charios with many hores running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings on their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months. And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in hebrew is Abaddon (= the destoyer) but in Greek he has the name Apollyon."

It then goes on to show a picture of a Cobra and an Apache helicopter like so:

"The locusts describe by John in his days."

Yes, with that caption.

It then goes on to say something similar about steel horeses with fire coming out of them for tanks. At least this makes some more sense. The helicopter one didn't even say they were flying!

Thats about as far in the book as I think I'm willing to go. I'm not sure if I can take it anymore. It is shaking my faith in humanity.

Oh well

As usual, its been a while. Also as usual, I'm lacking inspiration to write anything. I'd really like to write something inspirational, but I really can't come up with much =(

That damn question

This was originally part of the previous post, but I thought I'd separate it since it probably deserves a post of its own. It detracted too much from the point, and has a point of its own.

This is probably more for the guys. I'm probably alienating the huge proportion of females who read this blog, but oh well! (btw I'm just joking, I don't even have webstats set up on this blog, and I think I'm the only one who reads it. Also if you hadn't noticed, this whole blog is a joke.)

Anyway, without further preamble, here we go.

Heres the classic situation:

"Whats wrong honey?"
"Nothing."
Sometimes followed by: "Just go away, I don't want to see you right now."

Now, does she mean:
a) Nothing
b) Something
c) You
d) All of the above

As contrary as it may seem, the answer actually increases in likelyhood as you go down the list. I shall now attempt to prove this using feminist logic.

A is actually easy to prove wrong. Lets start with the axiom that we want things to be perfect. Women seem to want to change things all the time. This implies that they are currently imperfect. Therefore, something must be wrong - the opposite of nothing. See above for proof of option B.

Now for C to be more correct than option B, you must be subject to more change from women than 'something'. Using emperical evidence, I've NEVER seen a woman want to change a lawn mower, yet women always seem to want me to change things like my clothes, or my hair, or the way my arse seems to take up the whole chair. Assuming that my life experience is a realtively good sample size and leaves a pretty good confidence level, I'd say thats pretty good.

Option D is the weird one. It includes both 'nothing' and 'something'. However, as stated previously, you will find that this option is usually the true meaning of 'nothing'. For option D to be true, the following must be true:

• You must be equal to nothing;


• You must be equal to something;


• Something must be wrong with you

We've already established that something must be wrong with you, otherwise you'd be a lawnmower and wouldn't be able to read this. Though I'm guessing I'll be proven wrong in a few years. In addition, you're also something, even if you're a lawnmower. The problem is connecting you with 'nothing'.

If we can combine the fact that women don't lie about serious things like this, and also that you're being changed by being told to go away (and thereby also being wrong), and also that 'nothing' is wrong, nothing must be something and something must be you, and therefore you must be nothing. Voila! Proof by feminist logic.

Don't try this at home kids.

Elephant in the room

I just emerged from a domestic. Thankfully it wasn't my domestic, otherwise some people might get the wrong idea. Like as if I was seeing someone, or somehow family moved over to Singapore too. Actually it was a domestic of a friends'. Notice how the apostrophe is behind the s? Yeah. Well I guess in a country where you don't have any family, friends are the only family you've got, and somehow you get dragged into it.

The harsh part of me just wants to tell people to take their drama back into their own corner of the world. Its not my business and I shouldn't have to deal with it. But then the realistic part of me knows that these kind of things aren't always the ones you can bottle up, and nobody can stay in theor own little corner of the world for very long without going insane. They have to share their misery. I guess its inevitable.

As uncomfortable as being in the middle of a domestic is when you're there in the middle of the day, I think its probably worse when its about 3am in the morning and you haven't slept in a while. Add on a few more points when you're playing Scrabble, theres only four people and the guy who normally talks a lot isn't talking very much. Did anyone say awkward silence? I think we made it worse for ourselves because we actually said we wanted to play. Not that we knew it was a domestic in the first place though. That only came out during the ride back...

I was actually quite lucky. If I'd gotten the letters to make 'domestic' or 'lovers tiff' or maybe 'awkward silence', I wouldn't have been able to think of any anagrams afterwards. The good news would have been that I would get the extra 50 points for using all 7 of my letters - well, for some of them anyway.

Now that I look back on it, its funny that nobody actually said anything about it. Everyone kind of tip toeing around the subject like it doesn't exist. The elephant in the room scenario. Reminds me a bit of work, where we have those meetings where we get told some people are being laid off, but management puts a positive spin on it even though everyone knows they're just talking crap. The ones who've gone through it before just yawn and move on - its the same old stuff over again. The newbies just kinda sit there and listen. The brighter ones read between the lines, the not so bright ask stupid questions.

Theres also the possibility that I'm reading into it a bit too much. Maybe everyone was just a bit too tired. Maybe my perceptions of social interation were off that night. Maybe we were concentrating on Scrabble a lot more than we have previously.

Though to tell you the truth, sometimes its nice to have a bit of drama in your life. I guess that all the drama I got away from when I left Australia isn't just there. People are more or less the same the world over. We all have things to deal with, and people we don't always get along with. Its nice to know we're all still human even we do speak with a little different.