Coming Home

So, we now have approximately fourteen hours until we fly out of Korea! I am so excited! Most of the day will be spent in preparation to leave tonight. We will go to church this morning, then when we come back to the apartment, we'll do some last minute preparations and then we'll depart for the airport at about 4:30pm (it's about an hour and a half drive to the airport, but with weekend traffic, probably longer). We will take the 'airport limousine' bus to the airport and we'll arrive about 2-3 hours before our flight, hopefully with plenty of time to get all the check-in etc... done.

Yesterday, our last full day in Korea we actually did very little. We went out for breakfast in the morning, then Scott had to go to work for his final day (he had to work until 1pm). While Scott was at work, I did some last minute packing and then went for my final trip to the gym here... working out very hard in an attempt to make my body tired enough to have no choice but to sleep on the airplane. After the gym, I cleaned up and went upstairs to the school to meet Scott, we ended up staying for the staff meeting at 1pm. We then went home and I went out to do a little grocery shopping, just for some snacks and a bit of food for the next day. At 6pm we had a school farewell dinner for us and our roommate Wasseem, who is leaving to teach at a public school. When we came home at about 8:30pm, I finished packing and went to bed. So, overall it was a pretty uneventful day, but oh so relaxing.

Last night I had a terrible sleep probably partially from excitement and partially from the food I had eaten at the staff dinner (galbi always does a number on my digestive system after I've eaten it). It was actually a good thing to have a bad sleep though because it gave me the opportunity to hear Scott talking in his sleep once more. At about 3am, I looked at Scott to see him having some kind of spasm with his hands in the air (he must have been dreaming... about what, I have no idea)... anyway, I asked him "What on earth are you doing?" and he replied "We have to get ready to start the conversation class, we're going to start the conversation". Thinking that I could amuse myself by actually having the conversation with him while he was asleep, I said "okay, what do you want to talk about?", unfortunately he partially woke up at that moment and said "oh nothing". So, I didn't get the conversation I had hoped for, but it was still pretty funny.

I can't wait to get home and see everyone! Unfortunately I have a long flight ahead of me and I don't like being in the air that long, but if it's the only way to get home, so be it.

We sang a duet at worship

Here is a link to our performance. You must watch it in Internet Explorer. We sang Psalm 111 from our new hymn book, Cantus Christi.

Spinoza

I guess July 27th was the 350th anniversary of Baruch Spinoza's excommunication from his Jewish community. Spinoza is a giant among philosophers. Funnily enough, although I majored in philosophy, I don't think I ever learned about Spinoza or read his works. I know vaguely that he was a pantheist, but Rebecca Newberger Goldstein claims that he gave us modernity. Modernity is basically summed up in the title one of Kant's books, Religion within the Bounds of Reason. According to Goldstein,

Spinoza's faith in reason as our only hope and redemption is the core of his system, and its consequences reach out in many directions, including the political. Each of us has been endowed with reason, and it is our right, as well as our responsibility, to exercise it. Ceding this faculty to others, to the authorities of either the church or the state, is neither a rational nor an ethical option.

Our religion should thus be tamed by our reason, and reason should build the foundation of our religion. All revelation is disallowed. We need not be contacted from the outside, but only sit in our room with a paper and a pencil and pull our ethics and beliefs from within us.

But when we sit in our rooms, we all start from different places, and we take different paths. So it's no surprise that we end up in different places. There are plenty of ethical systems, and though many are similar in letter, they are very different at heart. Utilitarian and emotivism and categorical imperatives and divine command theory, and darwinian survival-of-the-fittest, and so on and so on. Reason will not unite us.

Reason is not our redeemer; Christ is. From the beginning, reason is compromised (cf. Rom 1:19-21). God can be known, is known in fact, by everybody. They who don't believe in him are merely "suppressing the truth" by unrighteousness (vs. 18). We see, then, that righteousness is neccessary to have proper reason; obedience is key to getting things right. We must be regenerated, given new hearts, before we can depend on our reason at all.

Even then, however, a man is likely to suppress the truth. A man's decisions always look good to himself, but he will often believe things simply because they suit him. So, he must, contrary to the quote above, submit his reason to other authorities, secondarily to the church, and primarily to the Word who speaks in the scriptures. Where a man's thinking differs from these he must obey them, even when he doesn't see the reason. I'm pretty sure he'll understand it eventually: "I believe that I may understand," goes an old saying.

A better book title for Christians is Reason within the Bounds of Religion (there is such a book, by Nicholas Wolterstorff). But in school we were all taught to think like Kant, and sometimes it's quite hard work to begin to think like Wolterstorff. But keep trying, because it's Christ working in you for His good purpose.

Science and Logic

Michael Shermer notes, in his essay for Scientific American entitled "Folk Science," that our intuition of causes is often wrong. "To discriminate true causal inferences from false," he writes, "real science trumps folk science." As an example, he mentions intercessory prayer, and how many attribute their convalescence to it. He claims that the following experiment refutes this. 1802 patients were having coronary bypass surgery and two thirds of them were being prayed for by some churches. Half of those being prayed for were told so, and the other half were told that they might be prayed for. In the end, there was no significant difference in recovery. Prayer had no effect: "case closed," pronounces the Sherminator: the god of the christians is impotent.

That's it? Hold on a second, Mr. Shermer. Let's lay it out. The experiment is set up thus: if there is a statistical increase in the recuperation of prayed for patients, then intercessory prayer works. Straight up conditional. But the statistics were the same. Therefore...the statistics were the same. That's it. That's what we get. The falsity of the antecedant doesn't affect the truth of the consequent. If A, then B: not A: therefore, not A. This argument, which seemed to speak so loudly and which he thought strong enough to close the case, doesn't actually say anything. Teach your kids logic, folks. It'll serve them well in the fight.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!

This past Saturday we went to the Seoul Zoo and though I do not have much time to talk about it now, it was awesome! It was such a big zoo and had so many cool different types of animals. Unfortunately I couldn't get pictures of them all... all of the primates were inside for the day, so the gorillas and chimps and orangutans were behind frosted glass and I couldn't get a good picture of any of them. It was a really great time though and we had great weather, so if you'd like to see them there are some really cool pictures of animals that we took, they are posted on our photo page. There are also some pictures of when we visited a palace, but when we arrived, it was closed for the day, so there are only a few pictures of the outside.

Lasts

So.. we now have only fifteen more days to wait until we fly home to Canada! It's really exciting! However, with the recent terrorist actions.. I have had to check the websites for Korean air and for Air Canada to check on recent changes in baggage allowances. The only changes are that we cannot have any liquids or gels in our carry-on, which really isn't that big of a deal I guess since neither of us uses hair gel or spray. Having no toothpaste and handcream will be kind of a drag (On a fifteen hour flight... hello bad breath), but like I said, not a big deal. Actually I think I recall that there was toothpaste in the plane bathrooms on Korean air when we came.

It's fun to think of the last things we are doing here and when the last of each will be. For example: My last choir practice... Sunday Aug 13th, my last choir performance... sunday August 20th, our last time teaching specific classes, our last time teaching all classes... Friday August 25th. Anyway, you get the idea. I'm really excited to get home and spend time with family and to see our new place.... just fifteen more days!

My favourite people

I just wanted to show everyone who doesn't know them, who some of our favourite people are... our nephews and nieces. They are all here in at least one of these pictures... all but one, Liam... My brother Shawn and his wife Heather's baby, was not in any of the pictures (I stole these off of the Dixon family website.. sorry guys, hope they're not copyrighted :) ) The names of our nephews and nieces by family are:

The Robert and Carolyn MacDonalds: Alley and Daniel
The Shawn and Heather MacDonalds: Liam
The Dixons: Caleb, Katie and Reuban
The Morris': Jaime (soon to be joined by another in December)

So anyway, wanted to show them off because they're so cute and because we miss them so much and can't wait to see them soon!

Love you

Can't beat the heat!

It sure has been unbearably hot here lately! Everyday this week it has been at least 33 degrees or more and the humidity has been between 86 and 100%! The good news is that rainy season is over, the bad news... it's only going to get hotter. I've been trying not to complain too much because it seems that no matter what the weather is like, everyone finds something to complain about, and I complained enough about the rain last month, so I should be rejoicing that it has been sunny all week. It is difficult to feel good about clothes sticking to you and constant sweatyness and heat rash, but we're trying to hang in there.

Things we've been doing to try and survive in the heat and humidity: -drinking lots of water and water popsicles -keeping the lights off and blinds shut during the day -keeping the fans on all day even when we're not home -putting buckets of ice in front of the fan facing our bed at night to make it bearable enough to sleep.

It's all very strange... I'm not used to the extreme humidity here, it's weird to get to sleep and wake up twenty minutes later all sweaty.

Oh yeah, another thing we've been doing is to take cold showers... this however is not by choice... our apartment building has shut off the hot water in the building for the entire month. Why? We have no idea, but I have to boil water to wash the dishes etc.. and we have to take cold showers.. a lot of times I shower at the gym though, to avoid the icy water, Scott also showers at the gym sometimes because he thinks his cold is partially due to the cold showers.. who knows, maybe?

Time here is winding down... we have only 23 days left until we fly out.. It's very exciting! I can't wait to see everyone again and to have hot water and having our own place finally is going to be awesome! I am very excited, I started packing some of the stuff we won't be using, but once I started I wanted to pack everything, so I had to give up on that, I'll have to resume closer to our departure date.