Interesting…

An Atheist Professor of Philosophy was speaking to his Class on the problem Science has with GOD, the ALMIGHTY. He askdd one of his new Christian students to stand and…

Professor : You are a Christian, aren’t you, son?
Student : Yes, sir.
Professor : So, you believe in GOD?
Student : Absolutely, sir.
Professor : Is GOD good?
Student : Sure.
Professor : Is GOD ALL – POWERFUL?
Student : Yes.
Professor : My Brother died of cancer even though he prayed to GOD to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But GOD didn’t. How is this GOD good then? Hmm?

(Student was silent)

Professor : You can’t answer, can you? Let’s start again, young fella.

Professor : Is GOD Good?
Student : Yes.
Professor : Is Satan good?
Student : No.
Professor : Where does Satan come from?
Student : From…GOD.. .
Professor : That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this World?
Student : Yes.
Professor : Evil is everywhere, isn’t it? And GOD did make everything. Correct?
Student : Yes.
Professor : So who created evil?

(Student did not answer)

Professor : Is there Sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness?
All these terrible things exist in the World, don’t they?
Student : Yes, sir.
Professor : So, who created them?

(Student had no answer)

Professor : Science says you have 5 Senses you use to Identify and Observe
the World around you. Tell me, son…have you ever seen GOD?
Student : No, sir.
Professor : Tell us if you have ever heard your GOD?
Student : No, sir.
Professor : Have you ever Felt your GOD, Tasted your GOD, Smelt your
GOD? Have you ever had any Sensory Perception of GOD for that matter?
Student : No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t.
Professor : Yet you still believe in HIM?
Student : Yes.
Professor : According to Empirical, Testable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says your GOD doesn’t exist. What do you say to that, son?

Student : Nothing. I only have my Faith.
Professor : Yes, Faith. And that is the problem Science has.

Student : Professor, is there such a thing as Heat?
Professor : Yes.
Student : And is there such a thing as Cold?
Professor : Yes.
Student : No, sir. There isn’t…

(The Lecture Theatre became very quiet with this turn of events)

Student : Sir, you can have Lots of Heat, even More Heat, Superheat, Mega Heat, White Heat, a Little Heat or No Heat.
But we don’t have anything called Cold. We can hit 458 Degrees below Zero
which is No Heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as Cold. Cold is only a Word we use to describe the Absence of Heat. We cannot Measure Cold. Heat is Energy. Cold is Not the Opposite of Heat, sir, just the Absence of it.

(There was pin-drop dilence in the Lecture Theatre)

Student : What about Darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as Darkness?
Professor : Yes. What is Night if there isn’t Darkness?
Student : You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is the Absence of Something.

You can have Low Light, Normal Light, Bright Light, Flashing Light… But if you have No Light constantly, you have nothing and its called Darkness, isn’t it? In reality, Darkness isn’t. If it is, you would be able to make Darkness Darker, wouldn’t you?

Professor : So what is the point you are making, young man?
Student : Sir, my point is, your Philosophical Premise is flawed.
Professor : Flawed? Can you explain how?

Student : Sir, you are working on the Premise of Duality. You argue there is Life and then there is Death, a Good GOD and a Bad GOD. You are viewing the Concept of GOD as something finite, something we can measure.

Sir, Science can’t even explain a Thought. It uses Electricity and Magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view Death as the Opposite of Life is to be ignorant of the fact that Death cannot exist as a Substantive Thing. Death is Not the Opposite of Life: just the Absence of it. Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your students that they evolved from a Monkey?

Professor : If you are referring to the Natural Evolutionary Process, yes, of course, I do.
Student : Have you ever observed Evolution with your own eyes, sir?

(The Professor shook his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument was going)

Student : Since no one has ever observed the Process of Evolution at work and Cannot even prove that this Process is an On-Going Endeavor.

Are you not teaching your Opinion, sir?

Are you not a Scientist but a Preacher?

(The Class was in uproar)

Student : Is there anyone in the Class who has ever seen the Professor’s brain?

(The Class broke out into laughter)

Student : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor’s brain, felt it, touched or smelt it?…

No one appears to have done so.
So, according to the Established Rules of Empirical, Stable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says that you have No Brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?

(The Room was silent. The Professor stared at the student, his face unfathomable)

Professor : I guess you’ll have to take them on Faith, son.
Student : That is it sir…Exactly!
The Link between Man & GOD is FAITH.
That is all that Keeps Things Alive and Moving.

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polsci14

I was still in my early high school years when I decided to consider taking Political Science just because the course would give you an immaterial and intangible prestige once you mention that it is what you’re taking up for your college degree. Whenever people inquire about my college details, I really feel an intense sense of superiority–I feel like I am on top of a pedestal while the others, of course, are on the floor looking up at me. Sounds arrogant and downright self-serving but oh well, that’s how I see things with these lenses that I wear.

Speaking of lenses, I am starting to wonder, what kind of lenses people nowadays use that all they see and say when they hear the word politics is–politics will always be equated to pejorative acts. Whether it be falsifying of public documents, bribery, forgery, plunder, invasion of privacy–name it and for sure, people will deliberately find a way to somehow associate politics with it. But I think, it’s not the lenses that we use that dictate out point of view of politics–I’m going to make a wild assumption that the manufacturers of the lenses are the ones resposible for these very derogatory and disturbing images that we have on politics.

There are several factors that influence our view of politics, and I dare say that these factors played a big part in shaping our political perspective. But I won’t really deal on these factors, instead, I’d rather deal with one specific factor that I find more powerful than the government itself–the media.

Everyday of our lives we are exposed to the different forms of media. Newspapers, televisions, radios, computers, cellular phones–all these are, in a way, mediums of information. I am not bothered by the fact that your little cellular phone can spread information in just minutes, what bothers me is the information these mediums give out and spread globally, defying continents and across oceans. I am bothered by the big possibility that journalists who took responsible journalism seminars and what not are being bribed just to curtail delicate information that is essential to the whole news story. I am bothered by the thought that journalists tend to exaggerate news just so that people will find them interesting, catchy, amusing and entertaining.

Politics is never meant to be a malign concept. I’d like to say and argue that it is a rather benign idea but I’m pretty much sure that out of the 92 million population of our country, almost 80 percent of them would stick to the notion that politics is such a bad thing, the remaining 20 percent divided between the apathetic and optimistic who still believes that politics is not a bad thing after all. And I dare say that the proportion of the apathetic ones is larger than those of the optimists. Sometimes, I am bound to blame the media for such preconceptions that people have about politics. I always thought that exposure, since this is what media’s all about, is a good thing but now, when you zoom things in a bit, exposure becomes a rather questionable deed capable of tilting our verdicts of politics to the opposite. Instead of clarifying, media makes things even vaguer.

I can’t be sorrier for the kids of the next generations, perhaps, the positive perspective of politics will only exist in their history and what would linger in their present is the negative, derogatory and pejorative political perspective. They will never get to see the ideal society that Artistotle dreams of. Though there is no such thing as the ideal, but since approximation is attainable, approximations are good enough to keep the spirits of achieving the perfect society up. I’m not saying that politics is clean–it may be and may be not. But I can’t stand the fact that, the way I see it, it’s the media that starts to govern the country and we are unconscious about it and not the leaders whom we voted for. Even just a tiny glimmer, I still see hope in our leaders.

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How Should I Name You?

I am eighteen.

I want to become so many things.

I have never been in love.

Eighteen years of living and never fallen in love. I resent the idea of falling in love—much more with actually falling in love—used to. I always thought that falling in love is one crazy fad that would soon get out of style. Falling in love was like a slice of extremely delicious, mouth-watering, unforgettable, feels-like-heaven-with-every-bite cake that everybody wants to eat. Let me rephrase that. Everybody, and I mean everybody, anticipates for and sometimes desperately wants to devour. Falling in love is crazy. Love is crazier. Someone offers you a drink and you down the martini you’re holding and accept the offer. Comes in some flirting. Exchanging e-mails, landline numbers, mobile numbers, office numbers, and the hell. Then there’s interceding office sex. An unexpected pregnancy. A shotgun wedding and a life of bliss. What more can be crazier than love? I mean, you’re a smart and decent person until you fall in love. Love is practically something people must avoid. Somebody comes into your life and changes everything in it. All of a sudden that somebody leaves you alone, in pain, heart-wrecked, heart-broken, heart-shattered-into-a-million-pieces, heart-half-dead-and-numb, vulnerable—all the suite of defenses that you’ve been building since your first day in your mom’s uterus completely devastated. How can people, everyone from all walks of life, be interested in and signing up for love?

Well, according to my research, love is the best feeling in the entire universe. It makes you happy, over-the-top happy and yeah, happy. You can practically hear your heart beat triple time at the sight of the one you love. Your eyes would sparkle like the tiny diamonds that embellished Cinderella’s perfect dress when in contact with your love’s eyes. You experience this tingling in your toes and butterflies in your tummy feeling—a feeling capable of calling the paramedics for you. You can stay up all day and all night thinking of the one you love and always wanting to be awake because you believe that what’s happening is better than just dreaming. The person you love becomes all that you think about; you think about him/her twenty-four-seven. You think about your love at work, in the mall, everywhere! You think about him/her all the time that sometimes it becomes annoying and blatantly distracting, you know, the I-can’t-remember-if-I-washed-my-hair feeling so chances are you end up washing your hair twice. For the past years that you have been living your life, you listen to all the advices that you can get but you never give absolute importance to any of those advices but in a snap, all that matters now is the opinion of the one you love. Your love’s voice becomes the voice in your head that you can’t seem to drown, actually, you don’t want to drown, that’s unknowingly manipulating you—turning you into the person you weren’t before. Love… what a crazy four-lettered word. Despite its craziness, love becomes the vertex of all the six billion souls roaming the Earth. It becomes the link to each and everyone of us. It is our defining feature—plants can’t love; animals can’t. We realize in a sudden that love is the principal force behind human existence. Love is the soul’s recognition of its counterpart in another, thus you look for that one person who can make you hurt like hell and who can make you laugh like there’s no tomorrow. Love is the thing that keeps us going. Love truly makes the world go ‘round.

Cynicism, in love, has always been a part of me; in fact, it has been me for the last 18 wonderful years. Probably that’s the reason why I haven’t been head-over-heels in love. I’m a simple girl who wants a simple guy—someone with a big smile, a ridiculously handsome face, arrogant-sarcastic-but-changeable-to-romantic wits. I just want somebody to sweep me off my feet. Someone who can scare the crap out of me. Someone who can make me cry but chooses not to. Someone who can’t bring me the moon and the stars and the giant cuddly panda bears but would try to bring me those. I want someone who has the guts to negate everything that I say—someone who can make me speechless. Am I reaching for the stars here? No. N-o. No. Then where the hell is he? What’s taking him so long? Did he die or somethin’? In as much as I would like to rush things here, it would take a load of fate not to, I won’t cram on falling in love. I’m just goin’ to be patient and wait. I will learn the things that I am destined to learn. I will meet him—someday. But for now, it’s waiting time…

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A Christmas To Remember

The Philippines is one of the two predominant Catholic countries in Asia, the other being East Timor , therefore it has been a huge and long-living tradition for the Filipinos to celebrate the Christmas season. The Filipino Christmas has been the longest Christmas commemoration, beginning as early as September and ending on the Epiphany, and the most incomparable—children caroling, people attending the nine-day dawn masses traditionally called Misa de Gallo in Spanish or simply Simbang Gabi in my mother tongue with puto bombom being sold in the churches’ premises, embellishing the Noche Buena with queso de bola, tsokolate and jamon, the various versions of the Belen in almost all corners of the country and most importantly the happy Filipinos welcoming Jesus Christ in their cozy hearts. What an arresting way to acknowledge the Christmas season! But with poverty engraved all over the country, thousands of hungry stomachs waiting to be fed, thousands of dying humans aspiring to live longer, thousands of our Muslim brothers sensing death at their doorsteps, can Christmas 2008 still be one of the most arresting Christmases in our history? Or would it just be another one of those empty days pretending to be full?

I was walking along the longevity of Roxas Blvd. on a warm December day with the sun partly hidden behind the clouds and I couldn’t help but notice this little boy dressed in dirty and old clothes with dirty hands, feet, body—yes, he was dirty, probably he’s just one of the thousands who sleep directly under the sky. He was chasing everyone he comes across with. His hands trembling, maybe because of hunger, he was asking for some money to suffice for his lunch. Finally when somebody, a good somebody, passed and gave him Php20.00, the boy ran towards a group of people sitting on the hard and hot ground—a woman carrying a baby, one little girl younger than the boy I saw, two boys older than the boy I saw and one man eager to see what the little boy was about to hand. He handed the Php20.00 to this man I assume to be his father. I felt my stomach somersault at this site—it was like another scene filmed by an award-wining director in an award-wining soap opera portrayed by award-wining actors. I felt this huge lump take over my throat—it was like I tried to swallow a whole jaw-breaker. I felt awful and miserable in an instant. Php20.00 for an entire family who will be having their lunch? What can that buy for an entire family? My eyes wandered to divert my surrendering thoughts but it didn’t help, I saw another kid asking for money, begging for money—only this time it’s a girl.

I went home late in the afternoon and my mind still kept replaying the horrendous scene I witnessed. I tried to imagine how there Christmas would be like but there’s no need, I already saw it—right before my eyes, I can even smell the morbidity of poverty right under my nose. Their Christmas would be directly under the sky with Christmas trees, lanterns and lights embedded on the streets with nothing—no queso de bola, no tsokolate, no jamon on  their table—in fact they might not even have tables.

Gone were the days when Christmas was celebrated by almost everyone. Gone were the happy Filipinos anticipating for Christ’s birth. Gone were the angelic voices caroling every night. Gone were the days when Christmas in the Philippines was at its best. What I see now is just an ordinary day trying to be made especial by gigantic Christmas trees. I want to see the happy faces again. I want to hear the lovely voices again. I want to smell the aroma of Christmas again. I want to feel the Christmas, the arresting Christmas again, but til then.

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By Jaeyoun Kim

Filipinos always complain about the corruption in the Philippines.
Do you really think the corruption is the problem of the Philippines? I
do not think so. I strongly believe that the problem is the lack of
love for the Philippines.

Let me first talk about my country, Korea. It might help you understand my point. After the Korean War, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. Koreans
had to start from scratch because entire country was destroyed after
the Korean War, and we had no natural resources. Koreans used to talk
about the Philippines, for Filipinos were very rich in Asia. We envy
Filipinos. Koreans really wanted to be well off like Filipinos. Many
Koreans died of famine. My father & brother also died because of
famine. Korean government was very corrupt and is still very corrupt
beyond your imagination, but Korea was able to develop dramatically
because Koreans really did their best for the common good with their
heart burning with patriotism.

Koreans did not work just for themselves but also for their neighborhood and country. Education inspired young men with the spirit of patriotism.
40 years ago, President Park took over the government to reform Korea.
He tried to borrow money from other countries, but it was not possible
to get a loan and attract a foreign investment because the economic
situation of South Korea was so bad. Korea had only three factories.
So, President Park sent many mine workers and nurses to Germany so
that they could send money to Korea to build a factory. They had to go through horrible experience.

In 1964, President Park visited Germany to borrow money. Hundred of
Koreans in Germany came to the airport to welcome him and cried there
as they saw the President Park. They asked to him, “President, when can
we be well off?” That was the only question everyone asked to him.
President Park cried with them and promised them that Korea would be
well off if everyone works hard for Korea, and the President of Germany
got the strong impression on them and lent money to Korea. So,
President Park was able to build many factories in Korea. He always
asked Koreans to love their country from their heart. Many Korean
scientists and engineers in the USA came back to Korea to help
developing country because they wanted their country to be well off.
Though they received very small salary, they did their best for Korea.
They always hoped that their children would live in well off country.
My parents always brought me to the places where poor and physically
handicapped people live. They wanted me to understand their life and
help them. I also worked for Catholic Church when I was in the army.
The only thing I learned from Catholic Church was that we have to love
our neighborhood. And, I have loved my neighborhood. Have you cried for
the Philippines? I have cried for my country several times. I also
cried for the Philippines because of so many poor people. I have been
to the New Bilibid prison. What made me sad in the prison were the
prisoners who do not have any love for their country. They go to mass
and work for Church. They pray everyday. However, they do not love the
Philippines. I talked to two prisoners at the maximum-security
compound, and both of them said that they would leave the Philippines.

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