New Program for Fun

Programming the android platform has its ups and downs.  Unfortunately the first three apps I did are there forever now despite the fact that I cannot find the certificate for them.  Oh well :)  The next app will be an ecclesiastical latin training app for declensions conjugations and other things.

Current State of the Latin Program

I have been working on this program to aid in the memorizing of Latin prayers and have been enjoying working on it.  Lately I have been a little occupied so I have not been working on it quite as much but intend to eventually have all of the common prayers from the Liturgy of the Hours (benedictus, nunc dimittis and magnificat for example).  Perhaps I shall do all of the psalms as well. 

Another Argument Against Sola Scriptura

This morning I noticed something I hadn't caught before in the exchange between Satan and Christ during his temptation in the desert.  For the most part it is a sparing between Satan and Christ about various things where both use quotations from the Scripture to argue their points.  However, one part is very interesting apologetically.


Luke 4:2-13

2 For the space of forty days; and was tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry. 3 And the devil said to him: If thou be the Son of God, say to this stone that it be made bread. 4 And Jesus answered him: It is written, that Man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word of God. 5 And the devil led him into a high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; 6 And he said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them. 7 If thou therefore wilt adore before me, all shall be thine. 8 And Jesus answering said to him: It is written: Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. 9 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and he said to him: If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself from hence. 10 For it is written, that He hath given his angels charge over thee, that they keep thee. 11 And that in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest perhaps thou dash thy foot against a stone. 12 And Jesus answering, said to him: It is said: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 13 And all the temptation being ended, the devil departed from him for a time.

This can be tied to Deuteronomy 6:18 and does seem to be a quote from there but Our Lord did not say IT IS WRITTEN he said IT IS SAID.  The most interesting thing to me is that when he made mention of this one the discussion ended.

Chris

The State of Devotion Today

One of the things that has been bothering me for some time is that devotion in the Church has been sliding since before I became Catholic.   Gum chewing at Mass, wearing tank tops and shorts (I am guilty of jeans and I admit I am not the best dresser but shorts???).  Additionally I have seen men wearing ball caps at Mass.  That is the highest sort of disrespect.  There are barely any women wearing head coverings.

Some of the lack of devotion seems to be coming from the American bishops which is especially distressing.  Despite the pope saying that we should kneel and receive communion on the tongue (right here!!! http://www.tldm.org/News12/PopePrefersCommunionOnTongueSaysVaticanLiturgist.htm)  yet the American bishops have forbidden people to kneel while receiving communion (http://www.tldm.org/news5/kneeling.htm).  Some priests even refuse to give communion to people who prefer to receive on the tongue. http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=365483. 

So who to follow the local bishops or the Pope in this regard?

Musings on The Nature of Truth

Truth is something that everyone values.  Almost everyone wants to know and believe the  truth.  The real disagreement comes in when people begin arguing about what the truth is.  For me it is an absolute property, but when it comes to various people truth tends to be in the eyes of the beholder.

One example would be the Catholic Faith itself.   All who positively believe in the church believes in it because they believe that it is true.  G.K. Chesterton said "The trouble with giving a reason for why one believes in the Catholic Faith is that there are 10,000 reasons, all of the amounting to the same thing...because it is true." (more of a paraphrase I didn't look it up)  But when you look at fundamentalists or atheists they tend to hold to what they believe out of the same motivation.

But how can we know what the truth is?  Science can lead us into some truth, but it can also lead us into error.  Also science leads us into truths about material reality.  The most important things to us are hardly material at all.  What would we do without love, ambition, imagination, and especially faith?  None of these things are material but it can be argued that they are that which makes truth important to begin with. 

Chapel Veils

One of the traditions that I encountered later in my Catholic Life was that of chapel veils.  Most Catholics in most parts of the world who are women wear veils to Mass.  It is a beautiful tradition and I find it a real shame I didn't even know about it until about three years ago.  How did we come to the place where a universal Christian tradition is nearly extinct in our Church?

The Saint Michael Chaplet in Latin and English

Here a while back I translated the Saint Michael Chaplet into Latin because I liked the prayer and wanted to pray it in Latin.  It isn't really fair for me to say I translated it alone the folks at fisheaters helped out a bunch by making suggestions and critiquing the translation.

If you have a Kindle, Android Phone, or i-Phone you can get this translation easily enough here:

http://www.amazon.com/Chaplet-Saint-Michael-English-ebook/dp/B001ECQJUI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1298355122&sr=8-2-spell

Memorizing Latin Prayers

I think it was about 6 years ago that I first saw Pope Benedict saying that we should be memorizing our basic prayers in Latin.  Of course we have heard very little about that since then.   But I think it is a good idea, it provides  a way for people who are from different cultures to pray together in a way that is hallowed by tradition.  It is also just very cool in my opinion.  Ecclesiastical Latin is quite beautiful, far prettier than the Classical Latin that it is directly derived from. 

Android App

I just wrote my first Android App and put it up on the Android App store (yay!!).  It is a simpler version of the Latin Prayer Memorizer that I have previously described written for Linux and Windows in Python.  The prayer is just the Our Father in Latin and English.  I figure the next one I will put out will be in Esperanto.   The purpose of the program is to memorize the prayer rather than just to read it.

Sola Scriptura is Untenable

First of all I suppose I should define the title of the blog.  "Sola" only "Scriptura" scripture is "untenable" unbelievable.  This is the foundational doctrine of Protestantism so I would expect that there is about a 50% chance that if anyone reads this they will disagree with my statement. 

First off the Catholic church permits the teaching that Scripture is "materially sufficient" but forbids the teaching that Scripture is "formally sufficient".  By permitting a teaching that does not mean that the Church actively teaches it.  Over the past few weeks I have come to believe that the Scripture is not even materially sufficient. 

The reason I believe this is that the New Testament Scriptures were not written on the direct command of Christ (with the exception of the Apocalypse) and instead were written through the derivative authority of the Church. 

And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.
(Mat 28:18-20 DRB)

And he said to them: Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall he condemned.
(Mar 16:15-16 DRB)

Self Awareness

Yesterday I was wandering through the lab spaces at work (doing a partial safety compliance audit) and I began conversing with someone at work about this idea that most things are not that hard to comprehend in a natural sense but the existence of sentience is quite surprising and unnecessary. 

The thought is that it is quite possible to explain in a cogent way that all life evolved from something (although how we end up with sexes just doesn't make sense to me) common, but how is it we are sitting around wondering about things to begin with?

The latest concept in cosmology is that the reason that the universe appears to be designed for life is that all possible universes exist and we would not be here to wonder about it if one of them were not capable of producing life (however unlikely it might be).  This concept is based on the fact that there are many different quantum states that simultaneously exist and that when all of those states are taken into account one ends up with multiple universes. 

It also occurred to me that it isn't a stretch to say that if it is possible for super intelligent beings to exist then they exist somewhere.   It is doubtful that we are the most intelligent beings in the multiverse and it is without doubt that there are many more intelligent species out there.  If self awareness is possible for us in particular as an emergent property out of matter (that is the materialist view) then isn't it possible that the multiverse itself has an emergent property of self awareness? 

Although this is not God in the classical sense (God is pre-existent) it should be close enough to give atheists some real pause.  Beings far surpassing us in abilities, intelligence, and power almost certainly exist if the multiverse concept is true (probably true even if it isn't).  Since it would require infinite knowledge to conclusively say that there is no kind of deity, it is fundamentally untenable as a proposition simultaneously with the concept of an infinite multiverse. 

Anyway, just musings....again probably non-sense but it entertains me.

An unknown Theorem???

I know this seems like a strange place to post this but I can't really find anything on it anywhere, that is conclusive.   I would like to propose a theorem which is...

For any given n-space arbitrary ordered polynomial, all of the coefficients for a particular order averaged together and reconstructed into the same functional polynomial, will yield the same values as the individual polynomials results when those are averaged together (via an arithmetic mean). 


I don't have a proof for it, but it seems correct for every example I can come up with.  I don't have the mathematical skill to prove it rigorously.

The Hoplessness of Atheism

During the course of my life I have gone from being Pentacostal, Agnostic, Atheist (just barely but did), then finally settled on the Catholic Church.  Contrary to what many Atheists would like to believe it was science that moved me towards the Catholic faith.  For me evolution did not come close to demonstrating that there was no need to believe in God.  The real proof for the existence of God as far as I am concerned is the existence of self awareness. 

Self awareness is a curious thing.  Fundamentally it cannot really be proven in another being it can only be proven for oneself and whether or not we are self aware is self evident. 

Evolution can explain a great many things, but why should any species be self aware?  Self awareness is not necessary.  The most successful species from an evolutionary stand point do not seem to have an self awareness (for example bacteria). 

Esperanto instead of Latin

I saw just recently an online justification for using Esperanto instead of Latin in the Church.  To my mind it would make a considerable amount of sense as learning Latin takes MANY years and Esperanto is learnable in a few months.  It is not reasonable to tie people up for many many years learning a language when they just cannot get proficient at it. 

A reasonable compromise would simply be to use Esperanto for all activities that require dynamic interchange but retain Latin for use in the liturgy.  It is FAR easier to learn enough Latin to understand it than it is to learn enough Latin to actively use it.  Learning Esperanto would actually give most people sufficient vocabulary to understand most Latin prayers. 

I think the Church MUST deal with the language problem if it is to survive.  It has for all intents and purposes abandoned the use of Latin as a Lingua Franca and NOTHING has really replaced it.  Esperanto makes a great replacement for this.  I would still argue for liturgy being in Latin.