Armando Alemán's Blog

Religion

2009-10-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

Religion is like money; it's everywhere and people like to fight about it. What I find funny is that everybody is stuck arguing so fiercely and yet going absolutely nowhere. Even funnier is that intelligent people continue to argue despite the fact that they know they are going nowhere.

Religious debate is somewhat commonplace in our generation, with doubt running rampant, along with the need to rebel, or the desire to seek answers. Among the religious faithful and the atheist crowds, I choose to be agnostic (I neither believe in or deny the existence of God). What I find funny, however, is that I'm the only person I know of who doesn't subscribe to a religion, and yet respects it. That is not to say that I hold some doubt in my position and thus harbor feelings towards both sides (I firmly believe that it is impossible to prove or refute the existence of God); that is to say that I understand the value of religion and what it really stands for.

I understand the natural human curiosity, the tendency to ask questions that are too profound for a human answer. And to that end I understand why people feel the need to prove or disprove religious questions. However, I think that the true purpose of religion is not to be a be-all-end-all source of answers to the universe, but instead be a source of wholesome moral values and structure from which we can learn to lead better lives. Both ends of the spectrum have taken religion and used it for the wrong purposes, have stretched and skewed the goals of religion to fit their own ideas and agendas. What we all need to understand is that religion is something from which we learn to live, not something that hands down the answers that transcend life itself.

It makes me smile when a pious mother or a local Rabbi steps in and endows common moral sense on a situation, taking away the toxic complexity of modern life. There is also a certain satisfaction when an overzealous pastor who uses religion as a tool for hate is shot down by those who know not to take it so far. I think what we all need to do is just back away from each others' throats, and realize that what we should really be doing is being happy.

A Small little application

2009-06-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Just a small program to demonstrate the lessons learned in Lesson 5 of Microsoft's beginning developer course; demonstrating use of Branching, Recursion, and Arrays.

It's pretty self explanatory, so play with it a little.

The Application itself (.exe)

SOURCE CODE (Visual C# Solution):

Determinism

2009-06-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

Determinism is the belief that all actions in our universe and in all existent are determined by unwavering and inherently mechanical laws. Essentially, this means that every single action in the universe at any time could be predicted if we somehow knew the exact conditions of the entire universe. The belief seems sound enough; our universe is governed by fundamental principles, if we assume that there is no such thing as true randomness (true randomness being an arbitrary outcome independent of outside influence), then we can infer that any outcome would repeat itself with the same starting conditions.

(The flaw in this is obviously the existence of true randomness, which as far as I know has not been proven. I would love to see if the Brain was actually capable of randomness, and not bound to physics, in which case we'd actually have free will.)

Essentially, Determinism is the scientific explanation of fate, or destiny. A very scary thought indeed, that we don't truly have as much control over our actions that we believe...

There is however one small flaw with determinism. It rests not within the definition of the notion itself, but instead within the practical limits of our universe; Determinism is impossible to prove. To prove that the same outcome will result with the same starting conditions requires that the starting conditions be duplicated. It be impossible for us to take everything into account (imagine having to carefully place each molecule of air in the proper position with the right velocity), and obviously the entire condition of the universe will never naturally repeat itself (or at least, the probability of such a thing happening is the most infinitesimally small number imaginable). The only possible solution that comes to mind is time travel, which would also affect the conditions of the universe if there were any plan to re-observe an event.

So ultimately, not only is determinism not provable, but the question is ultimately irrelevant. Does it truly matter if there is variation in the course of events of the universe? Does it truly matter whether or not our decisions are ours or if they are sequences of predictable interactions of brain fluids? Time only passes once so its only true purpose is to provide food for thought, nothing more.