My Religious Philosophy
Tonight Samantha asked me about what I believed, along with a few Catholicism details. This topic has been coming up a lot recently, so here goes:
When I was in 10th grade biology, I gave an introductory presentation on chaos theory. Specifically, the infinite complexity of natural borders, such as shore lines. (Did you know that the distance around a lake is dependent on the resolution of your measurements? If you took infinitely fine measurements, the lake would have an infinite circumference.) I also talked about the unpredictable nature of the series y' = a*y*(1-y), when a approaches 4. Well, after I was done giving the talk (and was quite proud of myself), my friend Matt, a highly religious type, said "That's plain dogma." I didn't know what dogma was, so he explained: It's something that you are just told and have to believe. There is no basis in fact. Ever since then, I always gave the word dogma a bad connotation.
This semester, I'm taking Religion 105: Introduction to World Religions. My teacher, who happens to be the head of the religious studies department at Iowa State (and also works at the VRAC!) often uses terms like Christian dogma or Christian mythology. (Replace Christian with Judaic or Islamic, if you wish.) Hearing Christian paired with dogma or mythology set me on edge a little. It just didn't sound right. So far, we've learned about Hinduism and Buddhism. Buddhism is very cool. (DISCLAIMER: I'm a newbie when it comes to Buddhism. Take the following with a grain of salt. Or a tablespoon.) One aspect that I am quite fond of is that the Buddha was very much about self-discovery. He did not say that X and Y and Z facts are true, and expect his followers to believe him. He would rather that his followers discover the truth on their own, through their own meditation.
Now back to dogma. I get the impression that the most basic form of Buddhism is much less dependent on dogma than Christianity is. That appeals to me. I would rather discover things on my own than have the state of affairs be dictated to me. And that's pretty much how my religious philosophy has evolved over time. I don't necessarily believe that Jesus is/was the incarnation of God. Nor do I necessarily believe that Hindu gods have an unmediated tie to our Earth. But all of these religions have common threads: they promote economic stability, societal stability, peace, and compassion (sometimes). Having a belief in some external force or higher power also reduces fear and unease.
My preferred higher power could be named "physics", "mathematics", or simply, "system". This isn't arbitrary: many great philosophers were also mathematicians and physicists. In fact, at one point, philosophy contained the subfields of physics, mathematics, and biology. Douglas Hofstadter, author of Godel, Escher, Bach, could easily be considered a modern philosopher, and he's a physicist, a mathematician, and a computer scientist. His views of the nature of existence are just as compelling as any other religious ideology. That I've heard of, at least.
Now, I'm not strictly Christian, and I often disagree with priests or preachers. But if you look beyond superficial disagreements, I still see value in church. It's a great place to meditate, relax, and grok. And so is the shower. (This spiel is primarily the result of a 45-minute shower. Time flies when you're thinking!) To each our own. My beliefs are mine, but they happily coexist with Christianity. I feel I could get along with anyone's beliefs, and not desire to convert others.
Closing note: These ideas have been evolving in my head at least since I was 13. I expect them to change even more as I get older. But that's okay.
Questions and comments are welcome from all...
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Impressive. I didn't know you gave the subject any thought.
Now we need to hear your thoughts on the subject! :)
I should write an intellectual rant like this.
I'm quite the wacky theology nut when I get going. Oh, and when I get going...!
But, but. Too lazy. Quite the procrastinator, I am. We'll see!
No you don't know me, i just have you on my reading list because it's interesting to read the LJ of someone from ISU too :p Everyone else on my LJ reading list is from outside and i was just curious what another student in ISU writes about.
A friend of mine once told me he was annoyed with our mutual Christian friend because she used "abstract terms as absolutes". What he meant was, the Church teaches its followers that abstracts are absolutes, eg: "I know how he feels" and they mean it because they are thought it's absolute.
Whereas, a true abstract of "I know how he feels", is not actually meant because there is no way you can possibly KNOW what that person feels (you can think you know but, how can you really know)
In his words, it creates a "divide in semantics where logical arguments are impossible", and the religious will assume their assumption is corrent and argue against logic to assert it. I thought it was kind of an interesting view about Christianity and its rather "our truth is absolute, you obeeeeeyy!" stance.
Personally, according to an online test my stance is "Unitarian Universalist", which my friend describes as "We believe everything is OKAY!" I don't want to choose a religion because i can't accept how "you have to do this this that to get to avoid punishiment", but what if someone is never taught those and they end up being punished even though they are perfectly fine people. ( like say, Muslim baby will end up in hell coz Chrisitianity says they will ) I just think that people can't be judged like that. Can people be really evil, or did they just have a traumatic childhood, or are they just mentally defected ? Things like that.
I took a look at your web page, and there is some very nice artwork on there. I'm quite impressed.
Ever consider making art for a game? :)
Do you remember the URL for that online test? I took it once, and I'd like to take it again.
I'm an ex-president of the ISU gamedev club and of its founders, so I'm always trying to make ties with artists on campus. (It's very hard to keep artists and programmers together!) But I found the following on your web site, so please accept my apologies!
[HTML_REMOVED]Do u do requests ?[HTML_REMOVED] [HTML_REMOVED]Will u help me illustrate my game/my RPG/this-that?[HTML_REMOVED] I am honored you think so highly of me , but i am sorry to say i do not do requests. College eats up most of my time , i barely have time to draw my own ideas , i hope you can understand this !
hehe thanks for your kind comment. I'm sorry to say this but actually i'm trying to move away from 2d now and do more programming and 3d art. Taking 3 comp sci courses and one Math doesn't leave me with much free time either, right now i'm already dragging my feet doing this one commission because i've been so swamped with homework ._.
the quiz i believe is this one : http://selectsmart.com/RELIGION/
Hope you can find an artist! I'll tell you if i know of anyone~
hahaha it's okay! it's one of those things that's part of being an artist! (the other part being getting strange requests, like "draw me a naked girl covered in glue!" )
i've been to Gamedev before but im not really interested in game engines so i stopped going( and being the only chick is like so intimidating anyway ). I remember once Adrian Sannier was going like "we need to find some Art & Design people coz none of us programmers in this room can draw !" and all i could do was just silently laugh at the irony.
What kind of 3D art? 3ds max / maya type stuff?
What classes are you taking? (CS major + artist = neato)
right now im more into Maya coz Max has like shitty documentation ( can never find what i'm looking for, i don't know how people learnt the DOS version on their own ). I can kind of get around in Max though, but it's just the little things like "how the hell do i change it to World mode transformation " that gets me.
Maya has AWESOME documentation, i love it, it's so easy to read and easy to find stuff. Polygon control really sucks though, so i've been mostly experimenting with SubD and NURBS. Another bad thing is half the things i find on the net seem to document Max "way" of doing things.
Right now im taking MATH 317, CS 362, CS 321 , CS330, CS203. I guess you're at about the 400 level?
everyone keeps saying CS + art is good but it's such an uphill thing sometimes;i can't focus myself , like everyone else is writing geeky little programs and paddling full speed ahead to be good at one thing, but im like...spreading my attention to two things. People hiring CS majors generally just want someone to do monkey-coding, and they don't care if you can Photoshop better than an Art major. It's a pretty specialized world out there :/
Yeah, every now and then a few females show up, but they never come back. ;_;
Running the gamedev club is nearly impossible. On the one hand, you have a whole ton of freshman newbies who can barely program (but who have tons of free time!). On the other, all of the gamedev officers work at the VRAC, so we know a bunch of really smart people who are interested in games. But how do you keep BOTH interested? Plus, VRAC people don't have any time to do games. And the issue of keeping artists interested is on top of this...
It's easier to keep people together through projects than the club in general. But then a single project doesn't make everyone happy.
Adrian's a great guy, and he's not afraid to make sweeping generalizations to get his point across.
hahahahha "they never come back". Even in the actual industry, you can literally count them on your fingers, and they're mostly artists.
most of the girls i met around here that are interested in the entertainment industry seem to be more into movies ( Pixar...every man and their dog either wants to be in Pixar, ILM or Blizzard haha ). Most of them just seem to be interested because "it's cool". (but then again, that can be said of 99% of the noobies out there who have no idea what the industry really is) They go like "I want to be a Computer Animator !" without knowing what it really means to be a animator , they just say that coz it's something that's supposed to be cool :p
In my experience as an artist, collaborations are really hard to manage. Mostly because people do their submissions last minute, and you end up delaying the deadline otherwise you have nothing to show in your collab. Right now we all just do our collaborations among our own friends, people we know we can count on to produce quality work when we say "okay! we're going to do 5 pages of illos for this anthology book by end of october!". Too many people are "oohhh Collab SO COOL!" but don't follow through on their actions.
I tried asking about jobs at VRAC but Dr.Carolina is like mad busy and hasn't replied (either that or she hates me haha ). I don't think i'm good enough to program fancy stuff for VRAC anyway, so i'll just uh....study the Red Book on my own or something until i'm ready. Do you know who i should contact to ask about art related work at VRAC like texturing or something ?
That's funny. I picked up Max just like that. We got Maya installed at the VRAC recently, and I can't figure it out at all. :) But Maya is what the real heavy hitters use... (Nintendo, Square, et al)
That sounds like a SUCKY semester!! Even though CS 321, CS 362, and Math 317 are all awesome classes, taking five classes in your major sounds like suicide. I should know, I did it once, and my wrists have never recovered. :P I'm graduating in December, but I've been taking several graduate classes to get ahead a little bit. Gonna do graduate school in HCI starting in the spring.
"People hiring CS majors generally just want someone to do monkey-coding, and they don't care if you can Photoshop better than an Art major. It's a pretty specialized world out there :/" That's only true if you accept whatever job comes your way. There are PLENTY of good jobs for people who have an artistic sense and can write code too, especially in the game and movie industries. Just gotta know where to look. :)
Do you do much programming with computer graphics? OpenGL? Shaders? Gonna take ME 519?
Modelers and texturers are ALWAYS needed at the VRAC, even more so if they can write code. I recommend talking to Jim Oliver (oliver@) or Adrian Sannier (sannier@). Make sure you mention that I referred and recommend you. Carolina is very busy, and Ace's team is much more fun anyway. :)
wooo ! Thanks for the recommendation, i'll go spam sannier and oliver =D
nah man , im like...really new and sucky at all this computer graphics stuff. I got about as far as making a spinning triangle in OpenGL and a snowman field thing from some Glut tutorial online, then i dropped all that programming and started learning Maya. (it's really hard to split attention between two disciplines) I generally want to do more art than programming when i'm working, so i just wanna dabble in it and write say...a silly Raytracer or something just to prove "I CAN CODE HAHA okay bye".
I'm going to take ME519 in spring, i hope i don't fail haha. Coz i be taking something like 311 and 342 that semester too (coz Leavens is teaching 342 then )
321 was only awesome under Prabhu, now we have MITRA so you know what that means! My wrists are okay, i just have no life hahaha. I can't help taking so many though , i finished all my humanities already TT
Maybe it's a guy thing hahahaha...I was talking to a friend who works at Maxis now and she said she couldn't understand Max either.I have another male friend who learnt Max when it was under DOS and within a week he was doing Macross animation, wtf!
Maya's a little hard to accept if you're used to 3dmax i guess...my Max friend keeps saying things like "Why can't i turn the edge ! In Max i just blah blah blah but in Maya i can't !" or "Why do they call it the Hypergraph ! Such a stupid name! In Max we just call it so-and-so" But maybe it's the version you guys are using ? Older Maya before 4.5 had like SHITASSSS controls. ( you can still see some of that terrible controlling in things like Hypershade )
Sometime last year, I realised i was too interested in art to be in the normal computer industry so i decided to aim for the entertainment industry. The catch is, you have to be good at BOTH code and art to secure a job...othrewise you're just a package of 2 bad things!
My god! Taking all of that programming at one time, TWO semesters in a row! You're too young to die. ;_;
I actually took 321 before Prabhu... The old guy with the long white beard... I can't remember his name, but it started with an H. He was super cool. He would randomly bring various CPUs to class and talk about them. MIPS assembly is cool anyway. Plus, it's actually useful! The PlayStation, PS2, and SGI machines use it! (N64 too, but that's not too useful anymore)
We have Maya 5 and Max 5 at VRAC.
Did you sleep through physics class? I don't really know because I never showed up for lecture. [HTML_REMOVED][HTML_REMOVED] But anyway, I'm pretty sure there is a 'maximum' resolution you can measure things at, If you tried to measure the size of a lake smaller you would change the size of the lake in the process. [HTML_REMOVED][HTML_REMOVED] Simply put, things are not 'infinitely measurable'.
I don't really think there is any ultimately low quantum level. Below that, there are smaller variations... That's the whole chaos theory thing anyway. And do you really trust Physics 222 more than any other "dogma"? :)