I was in a coffee shop one day. I saw this man in his 50s. His look aged. His hair grey and thinning. One thought flashed though my mind. I saw my son Tat Chee aged like him.

Mind you my son, now two months old, is the cutest baby in the world. He just starts to sleep through the night. He cries a lot but also smiles sometimes. He can babble and we are expecting to hear his first legible word. Then there is child care and school in our mind. Nobody would have associated old age with a baby. I should really concerned about myself with all these middle age issues like hair loss striking close.

But then... one day... Tat Chee would indeed become an aged man. Surely. Inevitably.

O impermanence.

2006.04.21 [personal, philosophy] - comments (0)

US federal judge rules against teaching 'Intelligent Design' in classroom yestarday. Good for the kids now that the idiots are not allowed to stuff non-sense into their curriculum.

I don't plan to spend time debating creationism itself. Instead this led me contemplate the appeal of creationism and the concept of anthropomorphism. There are plenty of world origin myth. What about the world is originate from four elements and such and such. Few would consider them as valid theory. Why does creationism seems to be more plausible and have more credential in comparison? I really like to challenge fundamental assumptions. Great insight would often come after.

First of all many of us are already indoctrinated with Christian theory since young. But besides that the logic of creationism appeals to anthropomorphism - the attribution of human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena. We love to perceive the world according to human behavior. It is easy to think of things coming from a designer similar to ourselves. In contrast other theories like Big bang, heaven and earth or four elements don't have this kind of appeal.

Turns out I am not the first one to think of this. Philosophers have been thinking about anthropomorphism for a long time. Just too abstract for most people to grasp probably.

2005.12.21 [philosophy] - comments (0)