RE: The Fragileness of Faith

In reply to Tim's latest post.

Telling somebody that you have lost faith could mean a million things. Perhaps you've lost faith in the American dollar, or in your favorite basketball team, or in your chances of winning the lottery, or in getting that girl to go out with you. Could be just about anything.

But when all you say is "I've lost my faith," then it's implied that you mean religiously. Or at least philosophically.
And that is, for the most part, just what Tim's post covers.

The biggest issue arises with definition. What exactly does "having" faith even mean? Well, for the purposes of this post--a more in-depth discussion may come up in another post--I'll give a simple meaning. With the presence of faith comes a belief in some form of higher power. Whether that power be the Judeo-Christian God, the many gods of Shinto, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't matter. Whatever cream-cheeses your bagel, really.

Anyway, I think Tim made a great point: faith is of great importance to humans. Nearly a necessity across the board. He approaches this from his struggle with losing a friend and, quite importantly, from a Christian background. And that last part makes a big difference. From what I can tell, he seems a devout believer and so the period of doubt he went through must have shaken him greatly. But, as he mentions, he was able to move past this doubt with the help of friends. And so his struggle for faith was, like most, troubling at the time. For him, luckily it was brief.

For me, however, things didn't go so smoothly.

It was over the span of three months that I lost my faith. For good. All of it beginning with a book titled Ishmael, which we read in my English class junior year of high school.

Actually, no, it began earlier. In the period leading up to reading Ishmael. Since I was born I had been raised a Christian. And for more than seven years my family and I had been attending a Baptist church. It was around this point, after all those years, that I had a great revelation: God was the most important thing in life. His being meant all who believed would go to heaven and live eternally. So I would devote my life to spreading the word and to trying to convert those who would listen. However, things never got to that state. I procrastinated and felt guilty. Adding to the already existent guilt of being a sinner, never living up to the standards that my church preached. Trying harder seemed to do nothing, and after failing in "converting" a friend, I was left disheartened.

And that brings us to Ishmael.

For those of you too lazy to read yet another valuable Wikipedia article, I shall give a quick synopsis (mmm, fun word). A man sees a newspaper ad of a teacher seeking a pupil with "an earnest desire to save the world." From here, the man is lectured to by a telepathic gorilla--Ishmael. And that's about it. The important part, though, is the subjects the lecture covers, things from society to God to many things we take for granted of civilization. While it may not be the most groundbreaking book ever--and while I doubt most would agree with its statements--it is highly thought-provoking. If you know me in the slightest, thought-provoking books are my favorite. So from there I went on to read My Ishmael and The Story of B.

It was Story of B that really got me thinking. The last book of the series that I read--though technically the second in the series--was the one that undid everything I had believed as a child. A character in the book, named B, speaks with our protagonist, Jared Osborne, bringing up simple doubts of the Christian faith. And by the time I finished, laying on the top bunk of one of the bunk beds in my family's cramped cabin on a Norwegian Cruise Line cruise, all I could do was think (actually, I had a lot of time to lay around and think on that vacation). Think and evaluate my faith.

The next couple of months I struggled with myself back and forth. Previously, I had been trying to become a "better" Christian, yet now I found myself questioning even being a Christian. Questioning God's existence, similar to how Tim did. But unlike him, I did not turn back.

This was the most difficult step. Whereas before, I used to pray and talk to God every night while I lay in bed, then I could only say, "What's the point?" And it was troubling. There was that feeling, that need, to look up and know that something was staring back down, watching over everything. I had to know that there was more to life after death. That the good would prevail in the end, the evil punished. That things in life--tumbleweed and déjà vu and goldfish and duct tape and toilet revelations and lightning and love and limericks and packing peanuts--had a meaning. That my existence had a meaning.

And that all of it fit snugly into some sort of grand plan.

This need, this feeling of requirement, slowly subsided in those months. Afterwards I was able to truly take in The Story of B. My way of thinking on the topics of God and religion changed drastically. No longer was God a concrete being whom I prayed to and talked to and knew I would meet after my physical death. No longer were religions--namely Christianity--these infallible bodies of knowledge and authority. Instead, god was an idea. Instead, religions were to be used as guidelines for one's philosophy and theology, readily questioned when conflicts arose.

What remained after all this was me. Slightly jaded yet with a long path of possibility set ahead of me. Not exactly a blank slate, but close enough. And from that state, I happily--but much more importantly, willingly--thought about religion. What it meant to me, not what I was told it was supposed to mean.

I learned god is not required to: be a good person; have hope in life; find happiness. And so, at that time, I became an atheist.

Lost my faith.

Honestly, that's not the end of the story. Probably in some later posts I'll cover the rest, including what I believe now and how I got to do so. But, for now, I've covered the points I wanted to make.

April Fool's

The day of Poisson d'Avril. Or so my mechanics teacher says. The Japanese one that I'm quite sure speaks better French than he does English. But yeah.

Not a bad day. Hell, it's a rather good week so far. Little work in comparison to the last few weeks in addition to numerous amusements. This morning, in between the aforementioned Intermediate Mechanics class and the ever-loathed Public Speaking class, I got to witness the VT Flash Mob's latest event. Walking to class afterwards, the small group of newspaper-wielding students scurrying off in the distance, I could only smile.

Public Speaking was spent paying little attention to people's speeches whilst slipping in and out of daydreams. And from there I had my usual lunch break of sorts, lasting just under two hours. I spent the first half checking out a technology showcase being held in Squires (our student center) and got to see and play with lots of muchly nifty gadgets. For one, the MacBook Air, in all its thin multi-touch goodness. For two, a Dell tablet computer which not only supported pens but could be used as a touch screen! What I expected for the first, surprisingly cool for the second. Also, John's parent company, Sun Microsystems (get it? 'cause his dad works for them), was next to the Microsoft booth--highly disappointing, as one would think--so I got chat with the guys there. Didn't really learn much, but still, always good to meet new people.

Lazy day from there on. A seemingly short class (data structures, so easy stuff) and then the rest of the afternoon was spent in Tim's room. Mainly watching John and him switch off on Call of Duty 4, which is actually as good as everyone says. If you are in any way a video game fan do yourself a favor and buy it. Seriously. Even I think it's good, and I'm rather picky about games.

*phew* right, with that endorsement behind us, let's continue.

So in my free time--hah! so much of that this week--I've been reading Ender's Shadow* and finishing up that long blog post I said I was doing. After nearly two weeks of writing I finished the post, though some editing remains (do watch for it in the coming days), whereas after three days I'm a little over one hundred pages from the end of Ender's Shadow. And boy, I'd almost forgotten just how much I absolutely adore that book. It's been years since I last read it and that time has definitely made it a better read. Going through I can really appreciate the logic and psychology and "battles of wit" that go on constantly. Very much my kind of book.

That's all for now. Actually, I shall leave you with one last thing: penguins take flight!

*Part of the Ender series, including Ender's Game which, if you haven't read, go out right now and kindly do so.

Putting Things Off

You know, I have this huge Physics exam tomorrow morning. I've yet to study. Hmm, *twiddles thumbs* so...

A few minutes ago I was headed downstairs--taking them two at a time, as usual--to toss my trash in the dumpster (I'm good people like that). Moments later, the outside door slamming behind me, I realized that it was definitely not t-shirt weather. Also, that short walk becomes a lot longer when you're skin's begging for a little heat. But no matter, my attention was promptly stolen with an, "Ooooh, stars.." seeping from my mouth.

On the topic of random stories, earlier today I passed by the mail room to check if we'd gotten anything. And we did in fact get something. Actually, I got something. A magazine titled US Weekly. Addressed to me and everything. Which raises the question (since never in my life would I get a subscription to such a "great" piece of literature), "..who payed money for this??"

I was utterly confused.

So yeah, random rants aside, I actually had something useful* to say. In the afternoon I had a meeting with my partner for the Hausdorff dimension presentation (the one we're doing for honors credit). The two of us have a pretty good understanding of things--it took so long to take it all in but its finally paying off--and therefore we decided to sit down and start preparing. Afterwards we had a sheet full of lots of writing, a little over half of it solely equations. From here I volunteered to type it up and was introduced to an interesting, um, program(?) called LaTeX (wiki it). The best way to describe it would be a word processor like Word that doesn't have formatting. Instead you type something like tags which do this. Really, the biggest reason it's used is for scientific writing (especially math), since using word processors for that is just a pain.

And..hmmm. Nothing else for today. I'm gonna go get started on that studying. Do wish me luck, I wouldn't mind getting above a fifty (out of one hundred) on my test.


*If anything you at least got an easy way to cheat at Minesweeper.

Paying for Life

And it's taken an arm and a leg.

So, I've been busy. Like really busy. Spring break ended and I was thrown back into the fray, much more brutally than I actually expected. Thus, as it has been more than two weeks since you all last had a chance to read my witty rantings, I feel an update is in store.

My math homework (calculus of several variables, fun no?) sits in front of me, nearly complete, what with my messy scrawl and equations and symbols shoved into any open whitespace. My computer science project (data structures and algorithms, second semester) is on my laptop with a teensy bug yet to be fixed. My computer science homework (computer organization, building virtual circuits, mmm) I took one look at and just gave up. It was around eleven last night when I realized I'd done at least ten hours worth of work on a Saturday...On a Saturday!! *indignant* Anyway, that's when my pencil went down, my laptop turned off, and Lullaby was pulled out to be read.

I've been taking it pretty easy since then. Smash Bros. Brawl with Alex (roommate version) and reading and now writing--which I've been dying to do. Hmm, actually, Alex and I played a lot of Smash this weekend. But it's such fun, and ever so easy to just say, "One more round..."

Other than that--and homework--I've had lots of club meetings and hanging out with certain friends that I seem to never see. Oh, that and there's this huge talk that is being sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) here. And talking to a professor about research for next semester (more on that eventually) and talking to a VT dropout, who has some of the most interesting ideas I've ever heard, about a job. Just, so much. I've always wondered how people can become "workaholics" and am starting to understand it. But I really don't wanna be one of those!!

Also, sorta behind the scenes of everything, I have been trying to write a response to a post Tim wrote about faith. I found it interesting and, after a number* (that number is one plus one, or two (yay for MATHS!)) of conversations online on the topic, decided to reply. So yeah, watch for that.


*I really really wanted to use the word bevy there..'til I realized that it just didn't fit *grumbles*

Out of It

You know how when you're sick and have something simple like the cold or the flu and you sit around and don't do much?
Yeah, that's me right now. I've got a nice little headache that's kept me in bed nearly four hours longer than I wanted to be.

Have a good number of posts in mind to write, just been out of it (hah, see, the title!) for the last week or so. Classes begin once more next Monday so they might take me a bit to post, just bear with me.

Spring Break-ing

*sigh* I always get sick when I come home. It's a bad habit that I really need to outgrow.
..as if I have any say in it.

It's spring break for Tech, UVA, and William & Mary (I think). Has been for a few days now, though the technical start was Monday. Still, with a decently long list of things that I want/need to do in this week, I haven't done much. Gotta work on that.

For starters there's "I'll just get ahead on schoolwork!" which I always say when some form of break--usually the much-needed type--comes along. Another bad habit. Ideally, I would just stop saying this altogether because, as those who know me would probably expect, I never go through with it. I'm lazy and sleep too much on breaks and in general get sidetracked pretty easily. Which, after typing that last sentence I went off for ten minutes and looked at a few websites...for example. Er, that and I've read seventy-six chapters of Death Note this week (I'm so bad! But it's so good!).

In other matters, like I've told everyone that's asked me if I have an internship for this summer, I will say that I am half-assedly looking for something. Possibly work. Possibly research. I honestly don't know yet. Preferably not a full-time job like last year at AOL. Not that it was bad--in fact I loved it--I'm just not thrilled about the whole nine to five aspect.

What I would really like to do is work on a project for the Google Summer of Code (SoC for short). Tim did it last summer so I've been pestering him for information and help. Unfortunately the SoC requires a good chunk of work, though if anything happens I'll keep you guys up to date.

Other than that I've a few other things to keep me busy. For my math class--which I am trying to get honors credit for--I have to learn what a Hausdorff dimension is. Too bad wiki pages don't always give the simplest of explanations. Also, John, Tim, and I were thinking of working on a programming contest which MIT is hosting. It's called BattleCode and deals primarily with artificial intelligence--a field none of us have any experience with--specifically programming a player for a neat real-time strategy game they've made. Not too sure how far we'll get into it this year.

Last, but never least, is the latest writing assignment. Alina gives these out every once in a while, although it's been a couple of months since the last one. This one calls for a story two to four pages long and using the words "defenestrate" and "akimbo" (neither of which, in my opinion, gets ample usage). As always--as usual really, I don't always finish..--you can check my piece out over at my deviantART page. There's a link over on the right, click it now anyways. It has writings, and you should really comment on them.
Please comment. *whimper*

Hmm, that's all this attention-deprived artist has for now. Later~

Memoirs of One Seeking Life: Preface

It has been a year since I was last in the blogging spirit (hm, someone should trademark that). And you can just imagine how much has happened. If not, check my old blog, the last post to be precise. It alludes to it somewhat.

The biggest reason that I restarted blogging on a new blog page is that--apart from the year-long hiatus--I feel like a different person. I've gone through so much. My thoughts have changed, my view on life has changed, the way I talk and write and probably walk have all changed. Perhaps if you look closely you might notice the little differences.

I have a point. Namely that there was much learned and much to comment on. So since I can't really blog on everything all at once I plan to break it up by subjects. What subjects? *shrugs* I don't really know yet, though I have a few in mind.

So, I feel kinda silly leaving the post at this, but there's nothing more to say.
'til next time!