Theology, Philosophy, and Publishing.

Years back, when I was first baptized and confirmed as a Catholic Christian, I knew very little or my faith coming out of the RCIA program. But I was sort of zealous of my faith and studied some of the things I ought to study as a good Catholic. I sort of gave up eventually due to school work, this and that, all sorts of excuses. And I think during this period, I also started getting into online arguments with people I do not even know about matters of faith. And after a lot of run-ins and time wasting in explaining stuff over and over again, just to see the other side ignoring them altogether, I sort of just gave up.

I decided that if anyone is going to talk to me about matters of faith, they are going to have to do it in person. And I promptly deletes all "spam" looking religious posts on my blogs and xanga. And for a while, I transfered my energy to sharing what I've learned about my faith. And that didn't turn out so well -- on my part -- for the lack of material and sometimes I may not get things right, and that becomes hard for me to having to go back and retract what I said. So that sort of passed.

As an aside, I still remember though, that one place I go for information is a good friend's site on AOL: http://members.aol.com/ahansolo23/index1.html, yes, it was on AOL, this is how old the stuff was...surprisingly it still works! And I remember visiting a link to Summa: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm about the existence of God.

Anyways, I think it just wasn't the right time and age for me to be actually evangelizing, least of all by words and publications. And I think even to this day, I'm still not in the business of doing that. All I would like to do is to share my experience and my lessons of life and if these be spiritual moments, I would love to share it. Well, being an engineering student in college really precluded me from much further contemplation or really spending the time to organize my thoughts and publishing them. But I sort of gave up trying to use words and publication as a means of living my faith and sharing the Good News of the Lord. I think I realized that I gotta live the faith before I even start to write up pamphlets about it.

Then about a few years ago, I glossed over an xanga entry by one of my little cousins, on matters of faith. I really wanted to comment something about the post, and I think I might have said something or wrote something about it...I couldn't recall. But in the end, I kind of just pushed the save draft button and left it in there to rot. Why? Well, a faith lived is testimony enough methinks. And it is also during this time I stopped trying to quote the exact verses of the Bible when I talked about matters of faith. I wanted to use my own words and also let the Holy Spirit guide me as He wills. I did not want to be constricted to Bible quote slamming, in fact, "sola scriptura" is actually not scriptural (nowhere in the Bible did it mention only the Bible alone, in fact, it even reference to books not in the Bible). And I believed that I should not be sharing about stuff that I have not experienced.

I remember vagued about saying a prayer to God about gaining wisdom or something to that degree -- as opposed to just intellectual advancements. I desired wisdom.

At that point, I stopped reading and started to listen. Of course, I still loved to read but I think my interest in actually acquiring knowledge of wisdom waned, since wisdom is sometimes best learned lived. I think in a way, I went from one extreme to another, from studying of God and wisdom to trying to "live the life". And I think this contributed highly to my coming to Austin to study. I wanted to have an environment that I can live and learn through more than just reading and studying. And I think this has been a long lesson for me that I am still trying to unwrap as my college years comes to a close.

The thing is, I did not send out that letter to my cousin, because I really wanted that discussion to be one from the heart and not something that she jogged down in her notes from conferences or retreats. Quotes are fine, but I believed that they have to be substantiated with our own personal convictions and believes digested with reason and logics. I wanted move the level of the discussion above the level of "I believe..." and "You believe...". I wanted the discussion to move away from believing for the sake of believing. Reason and Faith works together to bring us closer to God and closer to understanding of our own purposes on this earth. Without reason, faith blinded is easily influenced. Frank Sheed put it this way,

"Truth is light too. Not to see it is to be in the darkness, to see it wrong is to be in double darkness. The greater part of reality can be known if God tells us. Doctrine is what he tells; lacking it, we lack light. To be stumbling along in the dark, happy in the knowledge that our guides can see, is not at all the same thing as walking in the light. It is immeasurably better than stumbling through the dark with blind guides but it is poverty all the same" (Theology for Beginners, F. J. Sheed).

I couldn't have put it another way. "To be stumbling along in the dark, happy in the knowledge that our guides can see, is not at all the same thing as walking in the light." That really speaks my point. I wanted to know that my discussions will be constructive and actually serving an end other than, "I'm right, you're wrong" or the such.

There is two things in action here: young people on the Internet with lots of energy and passion about their believes, usually coming out of conferences and retreats, or of new-convert experiences; and seeing wisdom, living it, and sharing about it. These two things need not be exclusive of each other, but there is a proper and appropriate level of involvement of the two. Too much and unsubstantiated fusion of the two creates not only meaningless bandwidth wastage, but also gets the Christian community a bad rap on- and off-line. And well, I guess sometimes there is not too little, living the faith is acceptable -- only use words when necessary!

I think the bottom line of this is that I sort of stopped reading for the sake of discourse or arguments. That added with college work, I actually stopped reading philosophy and theology altogether, which I regret I should have continued -- for the reason of gaining wisdom. I guess one can never experience all aspects of wisdom living through life -- there is just not enough time. And the fact of the matter is that sometimes to live life, you need some wisdom to jump start it...hence studying philosophy and theology helps.

I write this article because I find myself once again distracted by people posting on my xanga about "religious" stuff that I felt like I would not make much dent even if I replied in defense of my faith. Unsubstantiated and uneducated claims fueled by passions of blind faith can only get you so far. And further arguments won't even make sense...I guess I write this article to remind myself about the purpose of philosophy and theology. And of course, to share my experience and ranting on this matter...

TMH

Experiencing the Infinite.

[Originally proposed in Oct, 2006, but was not successful in articulating it, so here's a second try]

Have you ever thought of the experiences that we live through everyday, how that they are so infinitesimally small comparing to the idea of infinity? How small we are and are limited we are in comparing to infinite?

A question was raised in my linguistic class about whether or not machine will ever be able to comprehend and produce the "infinite set" of human languages either for the purpose of translation and/or communication. And many holds the view that it is not possible to to represent the gigantic amounts of information that our brain processes. And harder yet, the creativity that humans have in communication and translation. Many holds that even with large and smart storage of information on top of stochastic learning process given corpora of a language cannot even get close to the human experience.

My question is, human beings are not all powerful and all knowing: what makes us better creature to produce "infinite set" of linguistic stuff than the machines? Of course we have to consider the fact that we humans are sentient beings that seeks to understand ourselves and each other whilst machines don't unless they're told to.

In this light I would like to consider the argument that even as creative sentient beings ourselves, we humans, still do not possess the infinite: in fact it is the sum of all humanity's creative product that may surmount to something close to the infinite. And I would like to argue that as individuals, we each are a slice of the infinity. An analogy would be the whole humanity as a cake and each individual as a tiny piece of it: significant but not the only thing, no one person can represent the entirety. And I would like to argue that even though we're not infinite beings, it is possible to experience a ginormously amount of stuff but just not all at once, and that by estimating the big stuff from pieces of small stuff, we seem to have a higher sentient status than the machines that we make. But given the right setup of equipments, I believe we can make smart machines that can talk and understand some basic human interactions. Notice I used the word smart, not wise; smartness on the machine doesn't make it wise and able to contemplate existential questions...at least there's nothing in my technical understanding of what existential/sentient contemplation actually is... and for many of us, this contemplation is only meaningful in respect to God, whom is beyond space and time, only He is able to perceive and understand what we're looking at as infinity. And only through God whom infinity is, can we come to understanding of ourselves and the world around us. So in that respect, it may be a vain effort in trying to assess the infinity; but as a comparison, we humans are exactly all that powerful machines that could create the infinite... because there's always more when you've made up 7 gozillian different sentences using all kinds of cool grammar devices.

We can only experience the infinite through our finite senses. And that is not to say we will be able to grasp the whole reality of infinite. We may take many cracks at it, but that doesn't make us closer to the truth...not a guarantee anyway: but that is how we work, from small finite things we piece together bigger things, and that is how we're making our machines nowadays.

Just a thought. I had a hard time trying to articulate this stuff in class, so I thought I should write it down someday and think about it.

Post Scriptum: even the ordinarily repetitive things sometimes can give us different experiences...well, that's another closely-related story...