The world is in a tumult. It appears as if tolerance among people is becoming less, and that there is less of a willingness to dialogue and understand or engage with others. As the world has become polarised, Christians have not been immune. Read more …

“I'm glad I learned about parallelograms in high school math instead of how to do my taxes. It comes in so handy during parallelogram season.”

This is one of many variations of a clever jab at the education system and how it does not equip children with the necessary life skills needed after school. I have lamented this myself, thinking that it is unfair to expect a person (who has just been recognised as an adult) to live in a country with complex laws without preparing them to do so. For example, when we install software, then when we agree to a software EULA, we are engaging with a complex legal document—possibly across legal jurisdictions—which is beyond the comprehension of many ordinary people1. It seems like discontent towards the current schooling system is increasing. Yet I have been finding myself now increasingly defending the traditional schooling subjects. In this article, I want to explore and explain these thoughts, and how they relate to the Christian life. Read more …

Society today values it for one to be “true to yourself”, meaning to express your beliefs and desires without being repressed or directed by others. At the same time, many people have commented on how the world seems more divided today than ever before. People have certainly been divided in deep ways before (and not too long ago either): one nation versus another; one race of people against another; communists versus capitalists. But today—seemingly more than ever before—people truly are polarised. On the left-right or liberal-conservative spectra, more people find themselves at extreme opposites, and those in the middle are derided for not holding to an extreme.

People find themselves at these extremes because they perceive a real danger and threat in the opposing viewpoint, and are either unwilling or unable to see or reason about a particular point from another perspective. Read more …

Jews and Muslims have for a long time accused Christians of being polytheists. Christians have always denied this. But as an insider to Christianity myself, in this exposé I am going to reveal that Christians may in due time become polytheists and worship idols.

While Christians are often wrongly thought to worship three gods by Jews and Muslims, this polytheist pantheon to which some Christians are drawn is actually legion in its number of deities. It is more akin to the Hindu pantheon, where not all gods are worshipped equally everywhere and some may appear in different forms based on location. I shall be highlighting on a few of the most common gods which can be readily found. Read more …

For thousands of years, philosophers struggled with a particularly abstract, but very important, problem: how can we know what we know? This is called epistemology. Most of us probably don't think about this, but rather take it as obvious or self-evident. But spending a little bit of time on this question quickly reveals its significance. While there were sceptics before him, this kind of thinking led Descartes to a methodological scepticism until he reached a point where he felt that he could not know anything. Descartes resolved this problem for himself with his famous "I think, therefore I am", but even today people struggle with what they know, how they can know, and what they can know. Read more …

If I were to say the title "Cheaper by the Dozen", most people will likely think of the 2003 movie featuring Steve Martin: a comedy about the chaos of a family with twelve children. Few people may know, though, that the story is (very!) loosely based on a 1948 book about a real family of twelve children and their parents, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. Far from the slapstick of the 2003 film1, it was a warm hearted memoir of an interesting and sometimes eccentric family, with genuine humorous anecdotes. Read more …

The Internet represents all of the interests of mankind. From the sweet to the unsavoury; from the intelligent to the unintelligible; from truth to vivid imagination; from humour to incredible tragedy. A blog on knitting is but a few clicks away from a video about skinning an animal, and a digitised cuneiform tablet from a live stream of a political debate. Every person's hobby and vocation is represented. So it should not be surprising that there are blogs, message boards, and "memes" about nihilism and existentialism. Read more …