daniel bigham.ca

I was thinking recently and decided I wanted to add a section to my website to blog about issues of church and faith. It's interesting to consider what role the Internet might have in the lives of today's and tomorrow's young people -- could it be a catalyst for encouraging kids to explore and share their faith?

Multi-dimensional relationship
October 19, 2009

Have you ever been to a marriage workshop? Our church held one this past spring and we talked about marriage in light of three dimensions... let's see if I can remember them: Passion, Commitment, and Intimacy. The book we used drew from a triangle developed by Robert Sternberg at Yale. Within the class we talked about how this triangle changes at various times in a relationship. Sometimes relationships become more passionate, or committed, or intimate, and sometimes one dimension will grow much larger than the others. But completely lacking any of these dimensions, a relationship is lacking.

I was thinking how an analogy could be drawn from this as we consider our relationship with God. Perhaps our relationship with God is even more dimensional than this... sometimes we delight in theology, in heady concepts. Along the same lines, sometimes we marvel at the rich history of God's work on Earth and in man described by the Bible. Sometimes our hearts burst with passion, an almost sensual experience of God. Likewise, commitment. No wonder God painted the picture of the bridge and bridegroom for us.

With all of these dimensions of our relationship with God changing shape over the years, no wonder we are often thirsty -- we yearn for aspects of God that we haven't tasted like we did in years past.

Lifesaver Bottle
August 27, 2009

I recently watched this video about Michael Pritchard's Lifesaver bottle. Wow, wow, wow.

I checked out the company's website, but there was no reference at all to using the bottle for humanitarian uses. Confused, I sent an email to info@lifesaversystems.com:

Hi there,

I just watched Michael Pritchard's TED talk about the Lifesaver bottle, and to say I'm excited is an understatement. I resonate with Michael that this bottle could make a mind-blowingly significant difference to people living in third-world countries.

I visited the Lifesaver website hoping that there would be more information about things like:

Lobbying governments to support an initiative of distributing bottles to third world countries.

Ways that individuals can raise money to donate bottles to third world countries (ex. A charity that is able to give tax receipts, etc.)

Discounts for the bottles when used for humanitarian reasons.

News about people's efforts using the bottle for humanitarian causes.

Forums to help connect people on this cause.

etc.

... but all I found were pictures of military people using the bottle, which was a little depressing.

So what's the deal?

Thanks,
Daniel

We'll see what they have to say.

UPDATE: It has been a couple of weeks and I haven't gotten a response... oh well.

On the experience of consciousness
May 24, 2009

Here's my reply to a recent Slashdot article:

When I read stories like this, I have two reactions.

The first is to be encouraged that people are investigating the experience of consciousness (qualia), because in my opinion it is probably the most bizarre/amazing thing in the universe, and yet almost completely not understood. (And not studied very much given how amazing it is)

My other reaction is, gosh, we just don't seem to get it. It seems so obvious to me that the experience of consciousness cannot be a result of "software", nor "hardware" -- it cannot be the result of atoms, molecules, and electrons. Isn't that obvious to anyone else? And I'm not even talking about religion, I'm just talking about common sense. But science is so set on explaining everything based on physical observation that it seems to conclude that the experience of consciousness MUST be due to atoms and molecules and electrons, end of story. Again, I'm not advocating for the "spirit" here, I'm just saying that I find it dumbfounding that we're still convinced that something as completely bizarre/unique as this can be due to the physics that we know.

I guess that's why people are interested in exploring any possible connections with quantum mechanics, because if it's not due to classical physics, which it simply cannot be, then it must be due to something else, and quantum mechanics is the only "other" thing under the physics umbrella.

The only physical analogy that makes sense to me, personally, is dimensionality... that in addition to the classic dimensions we're familiar with, there must be additional dimensionality to our reality that allows for the experience of consciousness. That makes some sense, because there is obviously an extremely strong spatial and temporal correlation between our brain and whatever it is that allows us to experience consciousness -- any distance in time or space space completely interrupts consciousness, and that's something that we can observe.

So if there is additional dimensionality that allows us to experience consciousness, is there any way to "observe" that other than the usual way, which is simply to be alive and experience life? I guess to interact with something in a dimension, you need something else that is at the same coordinates in that dimension. For example, to affect something at a current XYZ coordinate in the universe, typically you need something else at that XYZ coordinate. Or to affect something directly at a certain time in history, you need to be at that same time in history. Perhaps this is similar with additional dimensionality to the universe: To observe it or affect it, you need to be at the same "coordinates" in that dimension -- and as far as I know, we don't have any scientific sense of anything in the universe that can observe or affect that dimensionality other than our own brains. So humph, a mystery.

But yeah, I wish people would talk about this more and I wish that our society and government would spend more effort encouraging the study of what, seriously, is the most mysterious, amazing, observable phenomenon in the universe!

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