Writing

For a while now I have been thinking it and now I have made my decision. I'm going to write a book! Basically more and more I am seeing how the words 'faith', 'religion/religious' etc, are just completely taken out of meaning or given new meanings which are completely untrue for the context they represent. I'm going to attempt to write a philosophical styled book on the 'Concept of Faith' and try to show how some of our societies ideas are wrong or misunderstood about Christianity. To be honest the book may just end up to be a very large essay but its worth a try!

Christian at School

Being a Christian at school has never bothered me. To be honest I don’t think my beliefs really bothered any non-Christians in my earlier school life, or at least that was my experience. That may have been down to me going to a Catholic school and so religion was an accepted part of school life but now in the sixth form many boys seem to have found their own individual independence and with this comes their own ideas and interpretations.

The general view of Christianity in my sixth form would be best described as ‘Crazy’. Earlier today I was talking to a boy I don’t particularly know very well about music and he showed me a band he was currently addicted to. The conversation went on and he found out I was a Christian that had a girl friend. Instantly his question was “Have you had Sex?!” and my response was “No, not before marriage”. By the look on his face you would have thought that he had just seen a flying pig from outside the window behind me! With that same look of shock he laughed and then hastily retreated towards his close group of friends.

Later on in the day I was talking to a friend about a Paris trip he had been on and how he had went to see ‘Moulin Rouge’. As soon as I took an interest into the performance he simply replied with “Well you won’t like it, you’re religious”. I then replied “I’m no more religious than you”.

It seems that Christians are heavily stereotyped at school. In the case of myself I hate being stereotyped into a religious context. Yes I believe in God but why does that make me religious? What does religious even mean? Surely if we mean ‘religious’ on the basis of ethics then that makes us all religious? At some point during my life I’ll write a book on ‘Religious’.

Even though I don’t like being classed as that ‘religious person’ it doesn’t shake my faith or confidence one bit. People are all entitled to their own opinions but something this has shown me today is the problems Christians may have in other schools regarding their beliefs.

Weekend at Worcester

After having seen Surrey, Gloucester and Reading university I seem to be fast approaching a gyro knowledge of university's! This weekend was spent visiting Worcester university and it wasn't that bad! Since the open day was early Sunday morning it would have been ridiculous to try and attempt the 3 hour car journey there and back again in one day. For this reason the weekend gave an opportunity to once again stay over at a friends house in Worcestershire.


The Saturday evening was spent playing guitars, watching funny videos and drinking. Well when I say drinking it was my Dad who seemed to do most of that after having woken up the following morning with a mild hangover! At first he seemed surprised by this but after having conferred with my mum about the bottle of wine and crate of bear he had the surprised look upon his face soon vanished!


After having arrived at the university we were greeted by a protester against vivisection (animal testing) . It seems Worcester University does animal testing on some of its courses. Instantly I knew this university was definitely an option for me.


Although the course wasn't quite what I was looking for the uni would definitely be a good 4th or 5th choice on my UCAS application. The most interesting thing about Worcester university is the accommodation. The most expensive rooms available offer 'hotel like' services with everyday room cleaning and clean sheets provided. £87 a week may sound expensive, but its worth it!

Shrinking Cisco

Right from the beginning of the year my Cisco networking class has been shrinking. What originally started out as a class of 10 students has now dropped to a class of 5. The two latest drop outs were Josh and Simon which have actually wanted to give up the course ages ago because they weren't enjoying it and also seemed to be struggling.

During the year we also lost one of our teachers since he wanted to move back to Australia which put the school under a lot of pressure to continue the course. That was all sorted once Steve O'Neil was hired to be a part time Cisco instructor. However our future instructor for year 13 today has decided to pull out at the last minute which has once again put myself and everyone else taking the course in a state of uncertainty.

All of these problems isn't really the school's fault at all, just a bit of bad luck but I fear I am loosing passion for the subject. At the beginning of the year I seemed to have a real urge to learn Cisco and to work the best I could, now when I work I worry about what all my hard spent time is going to buy me. Ah well, all I can do is wait and spend my time programming those routers!

English Annoyances

Back at school for real now and year 13 looks to be a good year but for some unknown reason we still have to take the subjects we are going to drop!

I'm dropping English... fast!

It has been my worst subject for year 12 and it isn't getting better. I have now done my English exam and have completed all the year 12 work and now the class is moving onto year 13 work. However none of the students are not able to drop their subjects until the end of year 12. Its stupid!

Concept of Faith

During many of the philosophical or theological discussions I seem to have every day of my life the concept of faith always seems to be raised. This is usually done in one of two ways. Either I am told I have very little faith or I say to someone else “you only have faith”. The concept of faith is a very important around Christianity. Some regard faith as ‘blind believing’, a mere psychological condition a person has. Surprisingly many adopt this view within our own western society without any backing to it. Characters such as Richard Dawkins seem to view faith in this way and repeatedly mock Christians because of it. Here I shall attempt to explain my philosophy of faith and what it means to me.

Definition of faith = Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence

Faith is a word often associated with religion. However I rarely hear faith being used with other situations. Firstly we need to understand that the word ‘faith’ is not religion specific. It is a word within its own right from which the definition can be seen above. Faith is a personal word; I have faith the chair I sit on now will hold my weight, I have faith my parents won’t lie to me, I have faith that my teachers at school will help me towards getting the best possible grades. This rules out any misinterpretation of ‘faith’ being stereotyped into a religious context. However for the purpose of this article I shall be using faith in just that context.

As mentioned earlier faith can and in my opinion very often take the form of ‘blind’ believing. However this time I put the word blind in comers simply because blind faith doesn’t exist. Since faith is a personal response to a given question (in this case the existence of God) it is impossible for blind faith to exist. Blind faith suggests no proof of belief. As God is a personal question this requires a personal response so therefore blind faith couldn’t exist simply because it would require personal proof. This personal proof acts as fact for the individual which makes their faith very much real to them. In more simple terms it is the individual’s experience which shows them that a God exists. It is this form of faith which from now on I shall call “Personal Faith”. It is this type of faith from which we all start our Christian lives at and it is this type of faith from which all our emotion and doubts derive from. It is also this form of faith which is impossible to show to others since it is personal evidence. However I shall go into more detail with this later.

However the faith we can show to others is “Knowledgeable Faith”. Knowledgeable Faith is built from the foundation of Personal Faith. For example knowledgeable faith maybe knowledge of theology or philosophy. It is this of which we can show others why we believe in God.

So basically:

Personal Faith is.... I believe in God

Knowledgeable Faith is... I believe in God because Jesus rose from the dead

The two above examples really show the difference between forms of faith. Now that we have distinguished between these faith types we can delve more deeply into the world of faith.

It’s a well known fact that Theist’s have faith. However rarely do you hear of an atheistic faith. Now the combination of atheist and faith does sound ridiculous but it definitely exists. In the same way Personal Faith acts as the foundations for a theist it also does for an atheist. For example an individual may choose to become an atheist due to violent parents, unhappy school life or other personal reason. These feelings then act as the foundations for building their knowledgeable faith. The personal faith an atheist has is the same as the theist personal faith in the way that it cannot be proven/recognized by others and is the foundations for which knowledge is build upon. An example of this knowledge for an atheist is typically science and history. However this doesn’t mean that Theists don’t also use this as a form of evidence. It is from this that we can learn how to argue for or against the existence of God following the personal and knowledgeable faith principle.

Imagine a large room and at one end of the room is standing an Atheist and at the other a Christian. Both individuals both believe firmly that they are correct with their beliefs and have been asked to participate in a typical debate around the existence of God. The Atheist has knowledge of science whereas the Christian has knowledge of history and theology. Any debate that revolves around the existence of God always is based around knowledgeable faith. It’s this form of faith which can be show to others and discussed and although its evidence for belief for the individual it is not crucial as personal faith acts as the foundations for belief. When the atheist and Christian start debating it’s very much the same as a tennis match, both individuals are firing their questions at each other and then respond. By the end of the discussions although there seems to be a clear winner of the debate it’s also clear that the existence of God was merely questioned rather than answered. Why is this? This is down to both individuals only using their knowledgeable faith to throw arguments at each other. The person who seemed to have clearly won the argument was the individual that managed to shake the personal faith foundation of the opposing individual.

Now all that typed above may seem pointless however this article does serve a small purpose! When the foundations of the individual’s personal faith were shaken this is the time that they use their knowledgeable faith to piece back together their personal faith. In other words by having their beliefs challenged they found a chance to grow or change. For example an argument raised by the Christian over evolution may have caused the atheist to read back over his material and see flaws and through this was shown that a God must exist. For the Christian this may have meant that they managed to find a new ways to grow in God and through that their personal relationship with him was enhanced.

Now I am aware this last paragraph seems to put me into some kind of arrogant spotlight but it shows an important point. The majority of people I see around don’t usually challenge their personal beliefs enough in my opinion. It’s always good reading Christian material but what’s wrong with reading atheist material? When I bought ‘The God Delusion’ many people thought it was stupid and I was maybe going to start questioning things about my beliefs. All I can say to this is good! I want to be challenged with my beliefs. The person who is most likely to leave Christianity is the person who stays in their comfort zone and regards anything apart from Christianity to be evil. Having atheist beliefs is not evil and I jump at the chance to question why others have different beliefs compared to me. I am not saying we should all live by the world since I’m against that but what is stopping us from looking deeper into atheism or other religions? Is it the fear that we may get ‘converted’ or maybe we just don’t find it interesting? Either way I say to everyone who believes in God to enhance their knowledgeable faith in some shape or form. It is that which helps build up the armour of God around us so that we may live our lives according to God rather than the world.

Journalism

This week at school we have had something called a 'UCAS Week'. This is an opportunity for all the students to research the courses and universities which are open to them. For me this has been a very difficult decision because my ideal career would be journalism. Apart from this field of work being very competative it is also one of those few jobs which you get to purely by your experiances (apart from the more specialised Journalism fields). For this reason I have started to pursue as much journalism experiance as possible. For instance I have managed to get permission to write an article for the school magazine. I also hope to get some of my writing published by the local guardian or Surry Comet however I still need to work on that.

If any anybody reading this blog knows of any journalism contacts that maybe useful for me or has any useful advice then please leave the appropriate comment. Thanks!

My thoughts of David Cameron

Since I turn 18 next January obviously that means I’ll be able to vote. This it seems poses a problem for me since I don’t really know all that much about politics. As you may have noticed I have added a new section to this blog to include Politics and through this I hope to share to you my thoughts on current political affairs.

“David Cameron” is the name I’ll most commonly hear from people when I ask them who they would vote for. It seems that Cameron’s urge to join the political scene through appealing to youngsters is working to some extent. Many people are now seeing that Labour have spent far too long screwing the country around and that Liberal Democrats don’t actually have a clue what’s going on so the logical next step seems to be the thoughts that the Conservative’s are the new winners. After David Cameron was elected Charles Kennedy stepped down after pressure from his piers that he might not be able to handle the new onslaught from opposing parties. At this announcement Charles Kennedy also admitted his long term problems with alcoholism, perhaps this was why he didn’t know his own party policies when grilled about them on ‘Question Time’ during 2005? All of this activity within other parties makes David Cameron really look like the Top Gun. David Cameron doesn’t fool me.

David Cameron studied at Eton secondary school. This is possibly the most famous school in the world and is the home of all those “upper class folk”. You actually only get into the school if your daddy is rich, has a thin wife and is well known. In fact all the schools which Cameron studied at were for the posh and ‘intelligent’ people. For his primary school he went to Heatherdown Preparatory School, went to Oxford University has a young adult and for a gap year worked with his God Father doing research and attended house of commons debates. This is all very well but something is missing from his experience. If you look closely he has never had experience of what it’s like in the real world. Much of his learning experience has been involved around his family and in posh schools.

I don’t doubt David Cameron isn’t an intelligent guy, he must be fairly intelligent to get into Oxford. The fact is I would never vote for him. He has never experienced the lives that all we normal people lead so how is he able to relate to us? I don’t think he can, especially with the older generations within this country. If you visit the Conservative website you will see the delights of ‘Cameron Cam’ which gives an insight into the life of this “great leader” and throughout the short videos you can see him for the twat he clearly is.

Throughout all of his new party policies it’s clear that he isn’t acting on his own beliefs at all. For instance in Health, Education and Environment policies he promises to make big changes. For instance he was caught cycling to work and then his documents were delivered by car from his house. He cycles to give the impression of “I am green” but his car carrying the documents gave out all the pollution secretly.

In conclusion Cameron won’t be getting my vote because he doesn’t think for himself but rather plays on public opinions. I would much rather have a leader which is able to speak his mind than sucks up to the idiots of this country. He also hasn’t had any real life experience which I think is critical for the role of Prime Minister.

Exeter School Prank

Last year when I was about to finish year 11 at school there were all sorts of rumors going around about terrible school pranks. For example setting off stink bombs in the corridors or playing around with the staff parking area. It seems that a school in Exeter which prides itself with having “creative students” has suffered possibly the best practical joke when students let out 4,000 live crickets during a parents buffet evening. I found this hilarious and to whichever students carried out this incredible deed has possibly achieved the best ever prank ever witnessed in our great little country. This school charges parents £3000 a term so close your eyes and imagine the type of parents at this evening. If I were to take a wild guess I would say very smartly dressed with the majority driving BMWs. Classic!

In the Ubuntu Spirit!

A while ago I saw an advertisement by Ubuntu Linux for free operating systems to be sent straight to your home. Now me being one of these geeky type of guys certainly had to try this out and I am proud to say that it worked! This morning 3 operating systems turned up at my door, 2x 32bit installations and one 64bit version. Ubuntu also went that little bit further and included free stickers! With the prospect of McDonalds work for most of the day this certainly is today’s highlight... well of course until I see Helen later on!

Is it your mind?

After having gone to Sutton and seen the amount of advertising in shops a thought suddenly occurred to me. Does all this advertising about music, films, books affect me as an individual? Since I was asking myself the question I’m sure to some extend it does. Maybe that is why so many young people these days wish to have their own bands or dress in such wacky fashions. However these types of things don’t bother me, it’s the normal process of growing up having childhood idols. But have we ever tried to think like someone else? This might be like trying to be controversial like Jeremy Clarkson or Terry Wogan, being pessimistic and judgemental like Simon Cowell or maybe copying the mind set of somebody else you know. This is something which I have increasingly become aware of and maybe this is a problem with our society. Is the mind inside of you yours?

Freud who was a philosopher explained his theories using psychology had the theory that the mind was set into three parts. These three parts were called the id, superego and ego. The id is who we are, the superego is who we show and the ego is our true personality that is hidden. People choose the balance between how much of the ego they show and this is then how their personality is discovered. How many of us choose to be like somebody else?

In my opinion I think fear is the biggest factor effecting people these days. With the countries threat level still over moderate for terrorist attacks always adds to the suspense when travelling in public. There is an increasingly huge amount of programmes on television with such titles as ‘How to look good naked’ and ’10 years younger’ so we subconsciously all become aware of how good we look. There is always possible threats of new super diseases wiping us all out like the BIRD FLU which has turned out to be false. Finally the most recent fear driving pledge is global warming which I have covered earlier in my blog. With a nation in so much subconscious fear is it surprising that we hide our true selves?

The Philosophy of Philosophy

I like Philosophy. I think it’s a great subject that does get people thinking outside the boxes of their little lives. Tomorrow I have my philosophy exam and so for the last few weeks I have been revising all the philosophical arguments put forward by various philosophers over time such as Plato, Aristotle, Tomas Aquinas, Augustine. But how essential is Philosophy to our lives? In my opinion, very! When I’m out and about these days the majority of people I see are listening to music, watching videos, browsing the internet, texting on mobiles or talking on mobiles. Its seems that our society is turning into a nation of people that only believe in things they watch or hear on the electronic waves which take up so much of our lives. I have only come to see how much time I waste just slowly aging in front of computers and televisions or how deluded to the world I am when listening to my mp3 player in public. Real world events such as poverty and war have become desensitised by our televisions. In the eyes of our community the fear of climate change (which is still only theory) seems to be a bigger concern compared to children dying of HIV in Africa.

What has happened to us all? How is it possible for us to fall so short?

What are we all waiting for? Maybe we are waiting for the famine to pass in other countries, maybe we are waiting for somebody else to step in first to sort the problems out or perhaps we are waiting for that brand new mobile to come out on the market. Only 4 more months till it is released, in other countries that maybe over 10,000 family’s dead of famine, war, disease or poverty. Why are we all so desensitised by it all?

When I think of all these things suddenly my heart is filled with sorrow and the aspect of my 3 hour philosophy exam tomorrow doesn’t seem that important. Perhaps I could become an IT technician, teacher, network engineer but what good would that be? Still right this very second people are dying, crying out for help and I’m not going to ignore them. After all how can we ignore them? A few thousand miles away the reality of surrey is smashed when a mother is holding her dead baby in her arms. On television this maybe regarded as ‘news’ however I regard this as ‘our fall’.

A Goat to Revision

Revision is boring, infact it is more than boring. The best way to compare revision is to that of a rotting carcass of a goat in your back garden; it smells and you dont want to go anywhere near it but at some point its going to need moving otherwise you'll have a maggot problem which would be even more work! Revision seems to not get done, build up and then finally screw you over. In my case I just forget about 60% of the stuff I learned all year and so revision means im going over totally new stuff. This really is a bugger when I have 1 week to learn 6 months worth of work! The secret is to not let revision get the most of you. Okay, your future maybe at stake but who cares? Im sure ill end up fine whatever I do so Im quite happy giving God my future and my stress whilst I struggle on with revision. Seems to be working for me!

Farewell Fishy

Sadly the biggest fish inside of my fish tank will have to go this weekend. Its now grown to 14.5 inches and is a complete pest inside the tank. There is also a faint possibility of me purchasing a brand new fish tank soon which will be slightly smaller than my current tank which is about 140 litres.

The scientific name for the fish I will have to get rid of is called a Plecostomus. A picture of it can be seen below.

Giving Glory to God

I have always wondered how this is achieved. How am I meant to 'give glory to God'? God is fairly big and just powerful, so how am I meant to give glory to God? Surely anything I do is nothing in comparison is tiny, smaller than a grain of sand? I guess I could try and read the bible everyday, give money to a charity, always act nice around people but somehow all of these things still seem to be falling short. Giving glory must be something more than this, afterall God is big so surely I should do something big in return. How about giving my life to God? But what does this mean? Does that mean I put up my hands in worship and then shout to God ill follow you? I don't think it does. I have always done those things and although I have felt changed, I have never been changed. I have gone around my daily life still acting the same way with the thought in the back of my mind that God is supporting me.

The challenge I have come to see is a challenge many of us struggle with. My life was created by God so surely it should be all about God? Now how do I do this, how do we do this? Firstly I am not going to give up anything, thats stupid, why give up the stuff which God has provided me with? Nothing I own will ever be mine since they are God's so logically that must mean they go behind me. They are Gods gifts to me, they were given because God loves me and so they should go behind me. In response to this I must put God in front of me. This means following the teachings laid out in the bible. Of course there is only one main teaching which applies which is 'Love your neighbour', easier said than done but the word 'love' does sum up what my life should be about. My life should be all about love. Love is not jealous, is kind, caring, thoughtful, forgiving and so all of these attributes (and more!) should be apart of me. This should change my lifestyle dramatically but I don't care. I don't want to be in the everyday work cycle of the world, I don't want the mechanical mind of a scientist or the belief of an atheist. There must be a meaning to this universe otherwise there would be no purpose to it.