Christian "Thiology" in Singapore Parliament

Thio Li Ann

I do not follow Singapore politics much as political discussions here are pretty dull and bland, focusing mainly on bread and butter issues. The PAP government is very effective in economic matters and providing for its citizens the lower level "deficiency needs" (as defined by Abraham Maslow) , but in return, curtails too much on creativity matters by enforcing excessive security and caution in these areas to ever fully provide the higher level "growth needs" required by Singapore to advance to the next level.

As such, I was not even aware that parliament had inducted into its chambers the vitriolic and dangerous Thio Li Ann until I read about her extremely vindictive and hate-filled speech on the S377A repeal recently.

It doesn't take much to quickly discern from her malevolent speech that Thio is a fundamentalist Christian who is hell bent to import into Singapore the same kind of fundamentalistic right-wing Christianity from the US that currently infects much American politics. Fortunately, Thio's rants have been countered in some excellent rebuttals like Janadas Devan's commentary in the Straits Times and articles in the blogosphere like this.

Personally, I have many issues with this kind of myopic thought processes contaminating our government, and to me, it all comes from a global onslaught by fundamentalist Christianity against secularism. Fundamentalist Christians are out to promote an agenda of proselytisation as vehemently as they claim homosexuals are promoting the "gay agenda". To fundamentalist Christians, their version of morality is God-ordained, and thus, the "true" morality that every human being "must" follow. Top of this list is the requirement (nay, commandment) that everyone "must" accept the Christian god as the one true God, failure of which is eternal damnation in a hell of fire and brimstones. Hence, the fanatical opposition to evolution, stem cell research, condoms and contraceptions, secularist thought, or heaven forbid, homosexuality! simply because they contravene writings in the Christian bible, which is accepted blindly as the gospel truth.

As a person of science living in the 21st century, I absolutely refuse to accept anything without questioning its veracity by testing it against science and reason. However, reason and rationality seems to be in short supply in the Singapore parliament as I read in the Straits Times that Thio's malicious speech was received by loud and boisterous thumpings of approvals from many of the other parliamentarians. (I am very glad to read that our PM, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, is not one of these "thumpers".)

To prevent the malicious beliefs of Thio and her ilk from acceptance by the general public, it is necessary to dismantle fundamentalist Christian thinking by tearing it down with science and reason, and to bring science and reason to the public.

1. Science and evidence

Fundamentalist Christians are guilty of first concluding that Yahweh (the Christian god) created the Earth 6000 years ago, and then going about looking for and showing only the evidence confirming Creationism, and loudly proclaim that science has proven Creationism to be true. In the process, they completely discard all the other (and overwhelming) evidences that show the Earth is much older than 6000 years old. This is because fundamentalist Christians always make their conclusion first ("God did it"), and then go about finding the proofs to confirm their previously formed opinion. Facts that do not confirm their pre-formed conclusion are jettisoned and ignored.

True scientists do not do this. Scientists first observe how nature behaves, make a hypothesis on how they think nature operates, and then look for more evidence to test if their hypothesis holds true or not. If any evidence is found that negates the hypothesis, the hypothesis is rejected, and a new hypothesis is made to accommodate the negative findings. The whole investigative cycle is then repeated. Scientific conclusions are thus always based on all evidences and facts found. Negative and contrarian evidence is never discarded, but is always used to hone and fine-tune the theory that is finally established.

I bring this up because Thio and her ilk claims that homosexuality is not natural, and that it is not in-born.

This is absolutely not true, and is against a mountain of scientific evidence that homosexuality is rampant in the animal kingdom. Thanks to YouTube, you can even view the homosexual behaviour of animals your self:

Gay penguins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UibmZXbiI3Y

Gay dogs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DXl_zW6OJc

Gay lions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl8VLG8hwJQ

Gay bucks (male deers): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dOvGC8t5mw

Gay pigs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plcM6rqHobQ

In fact, gay behaviour has been observed in 1500 species of animals and well documented by scientists (see Wikipedia and New Scientist). If this is "not natural", then, pray tell me, what is?

Personally, I have both effeminate male friends as well as very butch female friends, and they are all extremely nice people. I can see they are born this way (as they already exhibit such behaviour when young). Their sexual orientation are as natural as it comes, and in no way do I see them as "evil" or "immoral" people just because of their sexual orientation. And it is a fact one doesn't have to be an effeminate male or a butch female to be homosexual. Very masculine males and feminine females can also be sexually oriented to their own sex, such as these folks:

- Ian McKellen (Gandalf in "Lord of the Rings", Magneto in "X Men")

- Richard Hatch (Reality show winner in "Survivor")

- Ellen DeGeneres (TV comedian/host)

- Angelina Jolie (Angelina is bisexual)

The problem with faithheads like Thio is that she cannot see these people beyond their sexual orientation. Blinded by her faith, she sees all homosexual people as evil and immoral people, when in reality, sexual orientation has absolutely nothing to do with whether a person is evil or immoral. Straight men and women also cheat on their spouses, breaking up families and damaging children in the process. Are straight adulterers no less evil and immoral by Thio's religious standards?

2. Christian Hypocrisy

Because of ignorance and fear by the general public, homosexual people are frowned upon and looked down by society at large. To progress in society and live their lives safely, many must hide their sexual orientation and lead double lives. Many homosexual men and women marry and have children, but because their sexual orientation is in-born and innate, they cannot eradicate it, and many a time succumb to the craving to have sex with someone of their own gender.

However, because of fundamentalist Christian's abhorrence of homosexuality, gay people who are born in such environments often have to become hypocrites to loudly condemn homosexuality, when they are themselves born to such a bent.

The most famous of these hypocrites is Pastor Ted Haggard of the New Life Church. Haggard condemns all homosexuals as "sinners" and teaches that believing in Jesus Christ will cure them of their sins. Too bad he was gay and could not resist the temptation of having sex with Mike Jones, a male prostitute, who outed Haggard to the world.

The Roman Catholic Church is likewise tainted with its admission that many of its male priests had been sexually abusing boys in the 2006 court case that was splashed in all the news media. The Roman Catholic church is always condemning homosexuals, but in the end, they are uncovered as the true hypocrites that they are. Perhaps they should reflect more on Jesus exhortation that "he who is without sin can cast the first stone" (John 8:7)

It is also extremely ironic that Thio's invective was spewing with hatred of homosexuals when Christianity is supposed to be a religion of peace and love. Jesus may ask his followers to "love their enemies, turn the other cheek" etc (Luke 6:27 to 36). For Thio, I don't see much "love" in the hate-filled diatribe she gave in parliament. This is an aspect she shares with Haggard.

3. The Perfect God

If God is real and is all powerful, why must he create gay humans and animals?

Science is still trying to understand the reason why homosexuality exists in humans and animals. What is the evolutionary benefit of homosexuality? Generally, homosexuals who are not attracted to the opposite sex will not procreate, and hence will not propagate their lineage. Over hundreds and thousands of years, homosexuality should ought to have died out. Yet, it is still prevalent in the human and animal kingdoms.

If you are a Christian, and you believe that Yahweh created everything, then you must accede that Yahweh made homosexuals that way. But why would a "perfect" god make such people in the first place if he is going to condemn them in his bible? Homosexuals are shunned, looked down upon, and ill treated by society at large. Why would a "perfect" god make homosexuals, and then sanctify people like Thio and her ilk to carry out their condemnations of homosexuals and to mete out punishments on god's behalf? Can't a "perfect" god simply not make homosexuals in the first place?

As a rationalist, there is a very simple answer to the above. God is imaginary, and is created in men's image. The early humans cannot understand why homosexuals exist in their midst, so they mark them as imperfect beings and evil. They later ascribe their abhorrence of homosexuals to come from god. Unfortunately, they subsequently use the god reason to condemn homosexuals in general, advancing yet another aspect of circular reasoning (circular reasoning is prevalent in many of the reasons offered by Christians about why they believe their god is the "true" god).

4. Tyranny of the Masses

One of the edicts promoted by Thio and her "thumping" colleagues is that anal sex between a male and a female is not a crime, but anal sex between 2 males is. This is outright discrimination. If anal sex is a crime when practised by 2 males, it should also be a crime if it is committed by a male and a female!

Singapore law has been made to be an ass!

To be fair and equal, the Singapore government should have also kept S377 (anal sex between male and female) in the books and not repeal it and leaving only S377A. This way, the Singapore government can simply say anal sex is a crime, and we do not discriminate against criminals who perpetrate such activities regardless of whether they are man or woman.

However, by repealing S377 but not S377A, the Singapore government is now saying specifically that this is a crime only when committed by homosexual males.

There are many analogies (pun intended) of such discriminations against humanity in history:

a) women are second class people (as they still are in Saudi Arabia and many Muslim countries). Because Eve caused the fall of Man from the Garden of Eden (the Original Sin), women are also badly vilified in the Christian bible.

b) slaves are treated like goods that can be traded or purchased. Slavery is sanctioned by the Christian bible.

c) minority races are treated as second class people by the majority race

The Singapore government has always spoken out against discrimination of the minority, and has set about many rules and regulations to prevent the majority Chinese to compel their practices and beliefs on the minority Malays and Indians. Similarly, the government enshrines secularism so that no one religion is "holier than thou" against another religion. These actions are to be applauded.

However, the government has failed in this case to prevent the discrimination of an entire group of people simply because of their sexual orientation, and has allowed Christain Thiology (pun intended) to influence its thinking.

Thio and her ilk justifies this discrimination by claiming that the majority are against homosexuality, and therefore majority rules.

However, this makes for very bad laws.

Singapore is a very small country (minority) against much bigger countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and the US (majority). However, we have had political confrontations with all these countries, and in all cases, Singapore stood by United Nation laws that do not side with one country simply because that country has a much larger population than Singapore. A law should be based on reason, and not because it is the preference of a majority .

Just because the majority thinks one way does not mean that the majority is right. What is right should be the truth.

For example, for thousands of years, the majority believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth, and that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. Minorities like Galileo Galilei who said that the Earth revolved around the Sun was condemned for blasphemy by the Catholic Church and incarcerated. Yet today, we know that Galileo was speaking the truth, and that the majority was wrong!

Thio's advocates that because the majority thinks that homosexuality is a sin, therefore Singapore law should follow majority thinking and make homosexuality a crime. This is basically advocating tyranny of the masses, and I am extremely concerned that the Singapore government has allowed its carefully crafted principles of equality and non-discrimination to be compromised by Thio and her ilk.

What To Do?

There is no "gay mafia" agenda as Thio would like Singaporeans to believe. The support for repealing S377A is simply because preserving S377A is flat out discriminatory.

This discrimination is due to fundamentalist Christianity thinking striking a hold in Singapore, and worse of all, in the high echelons of the Singapore government.

Thio will push Singapore society into a polarisation between fundamentalist Christians like herself and everyone else. Thio will divide people with her religious influenced rhetoric. Her "holier than thou" approach succeeds because there are many fundamentalist Christians who are biased with the same beliefs as hers.

It is vital that we open the eyes of people to the evidence in nature, and teach them to use science and reason to question such irrational beliefs. How can homosexuality be unnatural if even animals are homosexual? How can we conclude that homosexuality is unnatural, evil and immoral, and discard the overwhelming evidence that it isn't? Shouldn't the scientific way be adopted to study all the evidence first, not ignore negative evidence, before forming any conclusions about whether a person can be judged as evil and immoral because of his or her sexual orientation?

Using god to justify laws is just plain bad. What about people who don't believe in your version of god, or who don't believe in the supernatural? Why should they be subjected to laws by your god? Secularism is a proven model in governing Singapore. It must be protected, and must not be compromised by fundamentalist Christians as is happening now.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Europe underwent a philosophical transformation with a period known as the Age of Enlightenment. Although it is now the 21st century, I think we still need to go through this again to stamp out the resurfacing of irrationality, superstition, and tyranny. History does truly repeats itself.

At the barbershop

I can't believe that I had a religious discussion with the barber today. It started innocently enough with his asking me about my line of work. I told him I write computer applications for a living. He mentioned that god had blessed me with a good brain to be a computer programmer. I told him that I don't believe in the existence of gods. And so it went. I was his last customer for the day. Although he finished with me at 8pm, he was very ardent in continuing our religious discussion, so I obliged him and chatted with him until 9pm (closing time). It was a very strange experience.

The barber is a Buddhist, which happens to be one of the more favourable religions that I like. I like the Buddhist philosophy of living life with moderation (the Middle Path), the 4 Noble Truths about life and suffering, the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, Karma, and the practice of meditation. I always felt that if you want to believe in religion, Buddhism is the most intelligent of the lot that one can possibly profess to. However, I don't subscribe to the ideas of Reincarnation and Rebirth. Notwithstanding the Dalai Lama and how Tibetan Lamas are selected, I just don't believe that people who have died can be re-born with their memories and thinking intact and transferred to a new baby born into this world (the transference of souls). I don't think the evidence for Reincarnation is compelling at all. Other than my vex for the more mystical aspects of Buddhism, I have no qualms with Buddhism at all, and am personally quite partial to this religion as compared to Christianity, Hinduism, other religions etc, and Islamism.

I single out Islam last specifically because I think that today, Islam is the worst religion in the world. What with all the suicide bombings, beheadings of innocents, kidnapping of civilians, the ugly demonstrations and the spewing of hatred for non-Muslims, the barbaric treatment of women, the senseless violence etc. Islam has completely failed to live up as a "religion of peace" that it always profess itself to be. But words must be accompanied by deeds, and all the ugliness of Islam I read everyday in the newspaper tells me otherwise.

Personally, I think Islam needs to undergo an Age of Enlightenment like what Christianity and Western society underwent. Without reforms to eradicate the violence, there is no way Islam can ever restore its prestige or its respect in the eyes of others.

I learnt that my barber friend believes in the Chinese school of Buddhism, which is a variant of the Buddhism heavily influenced by Chinese deity mythology. The barber believes that deities like the Jade Emperor, God of Hell etc are real. I told him that I only treat these characters as myths as they simply cannot be true (where is the compelling evidence?). I found his belief in the deities to be very jarring. I always felt that the philosophical aspects of Buddhism are appealing enough as it is, and often wondered why Buddhists would also need to believe in the stories of deities that are obviously supernatural in origin.

I told the barber that I am a person of science, and that I do not believe that humans have been ordained with special gifts by the divinity. The presence of humans on Earth are due to an accident of circumstances, and not because a "god" made us so. Humans (ie. in the form of homo sapiens) have been walking the Earth for only the past 100,000 years. In contrast, dinosaurs ruled the planet for at least 160 million years (although they were suddenly wiped out 65 million years ago). The story of humans have not even covered 10% of 1 million years, so why should we think we are special, or that we will last forever? Indeed, if we are not careful, human beings may just go the way of the dinosaurs.

Evolution has given humans incredibly powerful brains, which allows humans to contemplate. It is because of the contemplative nature of our brain that we want to find a solution to every mystery. Humans crave solutions so desperately (as is the craving for sex) that we must have an answer to every question, regardless of whether the answer is right, wrong, or incomplete.

Our ancient ancestors, with their limited knowledge base, have tried to find answers (to the questions of life) that marries with what they knew back in their time. However, we are now living in the 21st century, and our knowledge of science is millions of times more advanced than what our ancestors knew. Surely we should re-look at these answers, and perhaps attempt to answer the same questions but with the viewpoint and understanding of a modern scientific person? Why must we blindly accept unsatisfying answers from antiquity when new, refreshing, and more rational answers can be provided?

God is not a satisfying answer to the mysteries of life. For every question that theists answer with an attribution to god, I can provide a more compelling answer using purely reason and science, and that has no need to resort to an imaginary god. God doesn't exist. Answers involving imaginary beings are never as convincing as answers that are based on physical realities.

Treatment of Women in Islam

Seriously, this is what some Arabic sheik believes is the difference between Man and Woman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5KmIXZM-V8

I don't understand why more Muslim women do not protest against the sexism that is advocated in the Quran. The Muslim holy books were written way back in the 7th century, and surely the religious norms and practices that are observed then are no longer relevant today. However, because these holy books are accepted as inerrant even in the 21st century, they allow Muslim clerics to condemn women as "Deficient in Intelligence":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MylrCU3u6V8

And here is a Muslim lawyer (a doctor no less) who describes how the wife should be beaten by the husband as instructed in the Quran:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nUI3TUdFCk

Indeed, the sorry treatment of women in a fundamentalist Muslim society is still thriving today because all these chauvinistic conduct against women rights are actually endorsed by the Quran! In the 7th century, the status of women is pretty low (practically non-existent) - and women are often compared to property or livestock. Even Prophet Muhammad himself had 11 wives, and his last wife, Aisha, is a mere 6 years old when betrothed to Muhammad. Although Muhammad "only consummated" this marriage when Aisha turned 9, we would call a person having sex with a 9 year old child a paedophile in the 21st century! Today, these Quran writings are being held up and used to perpetuate such abhorrent practices!

Luckily, there are some brave women who are speaking out against the barbarism of fundamentalist Islam (at great danger to their lives, no doubt, as fanatical Muslims are prone to violence against anything they don't like):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wPglHZQf-0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPioGIjS4vc

Libra

I discovered this gem of a utility yesterday night. It is something I have been looking out for in quite a while, and I am simply astonished that this particular version I found can be so full featured - and FREE!

If you have a considerable collection of books (as I do), and you have been thinking of cataloguing them inside a personal electronic database, but you never got around to doing it because you simply don't have the time to input all those information into the computer, then Libra could just be the program you have been waiting for.

The "smarts" of the Libra program is that instead of entering all the voluminous book details of each book (book title, author, synopsis etc), you enter just the ISBN number (a 10 digit or 13 digit number that uniquely identifies every publication) into the program. Libra uses the ISBN number to cull all the nitty-gritty details of the book from the Amazon.com database, and transfers this information into your own personal database! Because Libra will also pull the book jacket image from Amazon, your book collection is presented in a very pleasing fashion as the following screen capture will attest:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/njwong88/Libra/photo#5111727272205672498

As you can see from the image, Libra can also catalogue music CDs (the 3 titles on the bottom shelf). Libra can also catalogue video DVDs. (The titles in the screen capture are some books/music in my personal collection. You can click the "View largest photo" link to see the book/CD titles more clearly if you want to know what I have been reading during the past few months )

The program is dirt easy to use and requires no tutorial. And despite its already outstanding feature set, the author has even included a feature which allows you to use your webcam to "scan" the ISBN barcode instead of typing in the 10-digit (or 13-digit) number manually. However, I couldn't test this capability as I don't own a webcam (currently).

Amazingly, this program is developed by a Singaporean company (CodeJam Pte Ltd at Noel Building in Playfair Road). It is sad that instead of reading about this amazing-amazing software from this local company from our veritable Straits Times, I have to learn about it from an American

You can download Libra (and read a much better sales pitch of it) from here:

http://www.getlibra.com/

Remember to click the "About Us" link to read the authors' humorous description about themselves...

Mormonism

There are many branches of Christianity, each having a slightly different tenet from the other. For example:

• Catholicism
• Protestant
• Presbyterianism
• Anglicanism
• Methodist
• Baptist
• Pentecostalism
• Charismatics
• Quakers
• Sunday Adventists

This is just a few of the denominations with churches in Singapore. According to the Wikipedia, there may be as many 300 Christian denominations in the world [link].

However, one of the strangest is that of Mormonism (also called the Latter Day Saints). Mormonism was only established in the United States in 1830, but has a very controversial history because its founder, Joseph Smith, claims to be a latter day prophet who had spoken personally to both the Christian God as well as his son Jesus Christ, and that they had told him to establish a new religion because none of the churches then were practising Christianity correctly. The story of the creation of the Mormon's sacred text, The Book of Mormon, is also one laced with incredulity.

South Park has a segment that accurately portrays how the Mormon religion was founded. As you watch it, you will understand why I find it absolutely amazing that intelligent people today can believe this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTeMEGG4U98

For example, one of the US presidential candidates for 2008 is Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon. Another famous Mormon is the best selling science fiction author Orson Scott Card.

If you are interested, you can read more about Mormonism from this Wikipedia entries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith,_Jr.