The Meaning Of Believing

Yeah! It's a friday! I'm sure everyone else welcomes the weekend like I do. Can't relax too much because my programming assignment is due next week. Crap. So I'm just relaxing in the library right now.

This morning I was running late for class because of an assignment and I needed all the time I could get. Of all the buses that I could get, I got the super slow moving one. You know the kind where the driver(always an ah pek) drives so slow and leisurely that even you could outrun the bus. The crappy thing was that I could do nothing but just sit there reading my philosophy book. (yeah, for some reason I'm into philosphy nowadays.) It was a good thing I was only 20 minutes late and I think the teacher didn't mark me absent.

-This part onwards is one my usual philosophical entries, so if you wanna know about it, read on. =)

Talking about Philosphy, I reading this guy called Rene Descartes. He was a mathematician as well, the one who founded Analytic Geometry and the Cartesian Co-Ordinate System as well. You can blame him for having to draw all the lines for Quadratic Equations during class. Haha.

Anyway, he had this philosophic theory that I found really interesting and logical. I quote from the book, Philosophy: The Classics, "He thought it sensible to rid himself of all his former beliefs in one go and then consider one by one prospective replacements for them rather than to attempt a piecemeal repair of his belief structure." This is called the Cartesian Doubt.

Another way of looking at is through this analogy : if you are worried about rotten apples in a barrel it would be smarter to throw out all the apples and then examine them one by one whether it is rotten or not. Only if you are absolutely sure that the apple is fine and sound then should you put it back into the barrel for one rotten apple would contaminate the others.

So it's saying, throw out all your beliefs, examine them one by one and only believe in something if you are absolutely certain that is true.

Sounds logical doesn't it? Believe in something if you are absolutely certain that it is true. And it applies in Christianity, any religion, or in anything that you believe in. It's alright to question what you believe in.

The Truth is absolute, meaning it is faultess and perfect, so what you believe to be the truth must make sense, both in your heart and in your mind.

Wait, let me digress just for a moment. The girl sitting to my left is kinda cute. WAHAHA! Ok, back to the topic.

For me as a Christian, I feel that you shouldn't just blindly believe whatever the pastor or anyone tells you. Why do you believe it? Does it make sense? It's no point believing in something if it doesn't make sense to you. So if you don't know, ask. I myself have asked lots of question ranging from the complex (e.g questions about the Trinity), to the simple sounding ones like,"Where did Cain get his wife from?" Even the bible asks us to meditate on the Word everyday.

To truly belive in something means that you believe it with both your heart and and your mind.

But I sense a question coming up.

"But Christianity calls for belief in certain things that do not rest on logical proof and go beyond reason. That's where Faith comes in. But to do that means to believe in something that doesn't make sense in your head. How can that be? Isn't that a contradiction?"

Ah, my answer to that question.. will be posted up later!! Haha. I don't have enough time to answer it now because well, I've got other things to do. So in the meantime, Why don't you think about it too? :)