On the nature of God

Having read countless debates on who created God, whether God created us, and so on, I have decided to revive my long forgotten blog, and throw in a word or two on my take on the nature of God. First things first, I am what people would call a believer in God, but I am not a particularly religious person. Although I do subscribe to a certain religion, I believe it is irrelevant in this case. This post is not intended to answer any of the questions mentioned above. Instead, it is merely a reflection that could perhaps point those who ask such questions to where they could find the answers.

Before I begin, a bit of a background… In a nutshell, the scientifically-oriented atheists or agnostics want a physical, or at least a logical proof of God’s existence. All they get from “believers” is the assertion that God exists, and that one needs faith to accept this. As expected, this response won’t cut it for the first group, and one doesn’t have to be a genius to understand why. As ardent as the debate is, there is a strong likelihood that neither side is “scientifically correct.” The scientific method implies that a theory can only be considered correct if it is testable, that is if predictions based on it can be verified through observation. I will leave to the reader to decide whether either of the viewpoints can be tested and proved using the scientific method.

The universe is a clockwork that we know next to nothing about. Scientists keep coming up with cosmologies to explain the creation and the existence of universe, yet none of the cosmologies can be used to explain any of it in its entirety. Reviewing different cosmologies is beyond the scope of this post. I will only say that if we go back to the scientific method then no current cosmology can be regarded as true and complete. Things don’t look any better in the faith department. As a matter of fact, scientific method does not even seem to be applicable in this case. Before I proceed, I will say that I am a scientific person in nature who happens to believe in God. Two juxtaposed concepts that yield an entire world of difference.

What is, then, the nature of God? The universe, in all its complexity, has to be at least initiated with a set of rules that keep the clockwork working. If we look around us, processes that we have control over have to be started and stopped. We often fall into a trap of assuming that processes that we have no control over are either not directed at all or directed by nature. If the latter was true, the nature itself would be a process. Who directs nature then? Another process? Or God? Is God a process too? Obviously, the quest for God is bound to be a journey filled with self-deprecating questions. But it is the self-deprecation that implies an extremely important conclusion. Our logic and rational apparatus, in general, are very likely to be lacking in necessary tools to discover a viable and rationally plausible representation of either universe or God. In other words, our reasoning is self-deprecating. We are likely incapable of discovering the fabric of scientific truth simply because we do not seem to have the necessary software to make conclusions that would yield an answer to the question posed at the beginning of this paragraph. Nor are we (still) able to define a cosmology that would render the conception of God redundant.

Genetic engineering from a programmer’s standpoint (Part 1 of X)

The idea of modifying or completely altering genes in search for cures for diseases and physical/mental improvement is certainly compelling. There’s a whole movement in support of this idea when it comes to humans. Let’s sit back and explore the idea of genetic engineering. I will show why I think genetic engineering is dangerous and virtually impossible to master.

Why do I believe in God? (Part 3 of X)

It is remarkable how much I screwed up my life, missed all trains and was sleeping on the subway bench like a hopeless bum. Well not literally but you get the metaphor, right? And I was still able to stand up and fight my way through memories that dragged me down, lost chances, lack of hope, devastating pessimism and all other lollipops my life stuck in my cheek. Like a bad movie line, darkness hits people once in a while unless one is incredibly lucky. Some are swallowed in, others feel like at home. But me — total hibernation. That went on for years. Actually 4 years… Total de-socialization, life-o-phobia, unrepairable cynicism. Yes, that was part of my recent history. I am now experiencing a major lag which I can probably even blame on celestial misalignment, but it all breaks down to me. “Me” is the fellow I should ask about what happened.

Sunday, a day when even God decided to rest

Do you ever have a Sunday when you want to do so many things you can’t do on other days? Today’s one of my countless Sundays which I look forward to all week and yet when they come I just don’t have energy and will to make anything out of it. I would like to do this and that and hate to see hours going away as Monday comes in. Tomorrow’s going to be the same old beginning of the working week. I frankly hate it. But it becomes sort of a tastless routine that you just have to live.

As weird as it sounds I wanted to spend this day preparing for the next working week. I have quite complex project to work on this week, involving too many pre-reqs which I wanted to cover today. Yet, I felt too down to work on it. It would be great if I could make myself do something more interesting and reenergize. I couldn’t do that either. I pretty much spent the day skyping my cousins. They do seem to have an interesting life. At least that’s what they say, but would they really spend the day skyping if they had?

I will probably end a day watching some Korean movie. I watched so many and all I am left with is mediocrity. It’s a “gimme what you got” situation. I have nothing better to do anyway.

If anybody here uses Skype or anything and have nothing better to do, let me know.

I apologize for this pointless post today but it reflects my boredom and mood anyway. Feel free to leave comments. That is if this post will even provoke any kind of response.

Why do I believe in God? (Part 2 of X)

Having talked in Part 1 about my views on implications of quantity on simplicity and complexity, I will now concentrate on the concept of existence in general. Normally, people can’t imagine God as just another tangible entity. We all do have our own representations of Him based on widely accepted social perceptions, religious interpretations, personal imaginings etc. With doubt in His existence come agnosticism and atheism. But how can one be sure that He exists? Should one base beliefs on sacred texts? Or legends? Science maybe?

Haven’t posted in a while

Even though I’ve got no visits to my blog, I will continue adding my thoughts here. Who knows, someday this blog may be in the news for X reason. The truth is that lately I am so busy with work and everything that I am getting fed up with it. I have virtually no life and all I think about is how to secure my future. So many trains I missed in my life, I stopped for a moment and thought if it really is too late for anything. But the truth is that it is never too late as long as we are alive. Even though I am not a truly religious person (I seldom go to church), God has helped me in every way to fix what I messed up earlier. As I’ll never convert this blog to whining over my personal life, I will stop here with that, for my and everybody’s sake.

Electronic scene sterile in this decade

Who would say that this decade, with all software advances in music creation, an excellent start and the overall adoption of electronic music as a mean of artistic expression, would get into a slump screaming for some fresh air and chocking in convulsion.

I mean, think about it. When is the last time you heard something at least evolutionary be it techno, trance, house or any other sub-genre for that matter? You’ll have trouble remembering, I guess. My most recent memories date back to 2005 and Benassi. But he is currently in sort of hibernation, and frankly with all respect to his work, the whole feel was overdone simply by the number of tracks that sounded almost the same. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing but it did spread out artistic value of few core tracks to many soul-less spin-offs. And there’s this audience-factor where an artist tries to mingle with all age groups and can’t get away from cheesy tracks that just ruin their reputation. And it’s not just Benassi. It’s the whole scene I am talking about. Nobody got away from being labeled only because they try so hard to please the infantile club scene. And frankly I don’t blame them. Bread is becoming a commodity lately.

A new Desktop era with KDE 4.1

While the release of KDE 4.0 earlier this year is still kind of a Technology Preview rather than a full-blown release (considering lack of native applications, bugs, glitches and performance issues), it seems that KDE 4.1 will finally be not only a Desktop but an exciting all-in-one platform. A full-scale development environment will mean more than just the API. It will ensure consistency and stability of the system. What more, KDE expansion plans which include Windows may once for all sync the two worlds. Gnome had a similar attempt with GTK but it never went beyond porting GIMP and X-Chat to Windows.

Why do I believe in God? (Part 1 of X)

Frankly, this question is what made me to start this blog up in the first place. A simple question like this is doomed to no simple answer. On the other hand, it really depends on your understanding of the difference between simplicity and complexity you probably carry from your kindergarten days. I won’t try to shake your world on that one. But, in my humble(st) opinion, simplicity is a main building block of what this world is all about. What more, complexity is but a superset of simplicity and subject to interactions as such. To make it more clear, we constitute nuclei of what we know as a “society”. Therefore we are simple, but the system we form with other humans and interactions we make is what makes it complex. If we apply the same scale to ourselves we open up another level of both physical and mental complexity. Ultimately, we can break it down to protons, electrons and neutrons – the indivisible unique entities we are made of. It is safe to assume that quantity is, in part, responsible for the existence of complexity as a concept. But, isn’t this derivation just another interaction, now at the conceptual level, employing a concept on concepts? How is this even possible? An equivalent in engineering would be using a tool as a building block of a machine rather than using a tool to build a building block of a machine.

I’ll end this post here. It will all fit nicely when I get to Part X.

Stay tuned!

Hello world!

Hello everybody.

As just another human but with mild ADD, I have all the thoughts of this world wander in my head and waiting to be stored somewhere. Instead of hoping to enlighten a wider audience with my mental ramblings, I merely want to get rid of them as they are now using too much space in a functional portion of my brain (~5%).  I promise I will stay away from writing about soap operas, politics and show business. My interests are rather philosophical, and by philosophy I mean all other things but those I named previously.

And as a final act of false modesty, I am more than sure you will like what you read. Feel free to post comments even if you can’t stand me.

I think I exist!