How our image of God helps form our behaviours...
Thursday, 26th April 2007

Dear friends,

I have to confess I find life just one enormous joy at the moment. In the last couple of days I've been working virtually around the clock on two projects that are totally absorbing to the point that I find myself literally "working until I drop from almost total exhaustion". One of the jobs has been with the new programming for Catholica. I find computer programming one of the most fascinating areas of human endeavour. Computers are, in essence, very, very simple and "dumb" devices. They can essentially only do one thing at their base level: they can tell if a switch is in one of two positions, on or off. What complexity there is in a computer technically only comes from the need to perform that 0-1 (zero or one) recognition more and more swiftly and, if possible, to be processing hundreds, thousands or even millions and zillions of these recognitions simultaneously. What is so staggering about life at the moment in this new age of computer technology is how mindblowingly brilliant it is that almost all human endeavours can, in some way, be broken down into this "binary logic". Almost everything in life, and every process, can be boiled down to a long string of defining zeros and ones.

The major challenge for me in the last couple of days has been with a new mailing list program that will help up grow our subscription base. The base software I am using is what is called "Open Source software". It has been developed by the collaborative efforts of literally thousands of individuals around the world and the development of the software continues even as it is being implemented in tens of thousands of websites around the world. My work in recent days adapting it to the particular needs we have here at Catholica in a small way helps contribute to that development. It is exciting, I find, working with this diverse and largely unseen "community" spread literally right around the globe and basically the genius of it all, in the final analysis, comes down to the thrill of learning to speak in the exceedingly simple language that can tell the impassive hardware in a computer how to navigate some complex problem. At the core, as I said, what a computer does is exceedingly simple. The complexity of computers, and in programming, comes from having to think in an ultra-rational way — the slightest mistake with just one grammatical error, such as semicolon or colon left out, or inserted in the wrong place, can bring the most complex of programs crashing down to worthlessness. What also intrigues me though, again and again, is how literally obedient all computers are. If we can get all those commands in the correct rational sequence we can literally change a pin prick dot of light on millions of screens around the world down to a precision of position in excess of one seventy-second part in each inch. If computers did not have that precision they simply could not work to bring us intelligible and sharp pictures or text. All we would see on our screens would be a blurred jumble of chaos.

As a break from all of that programming I haven't been leaving my computer. Instead it has been turned in an instant into a recording studio and the last two nights I've been recording the final demo track of a new song my wife Amanda has been commissioned to write for the forthcoming Bicentennial of the Patrician Brothers. This very same piece of hardware that had been working it's little heart out for the earlier part of the day processing code and helping us find a better way to send out the emails to subscribers of Catholica, now becomes a precision instrument for recording and dissemminating beautiful music. Tomorrow Amanda and I will be travelling up the coast a little way to allow leaders of the Order and principals of their schools to hear the first fruits of this song which has been in development for about twelve months and will have it's premiere at Olympic Park in Sydney next year.

I was saying to Amanda last night, back in the early 1970s when I had just completed my national service, I worked as the recording engineer at the then best little recording studio in Perth. None of the technology I used in those days — and it was the best one could purchase at the time — comes within a bull's roar of the quality that can be achieved today on the most average computer that one can buy at any Dick Smith or Harvey Normal shop. What is achieved today is basically no longer achieved with hardware though. It is all achieved through programming language — ultra-rational language that tells all the zeros and ones how to behave themselves in ultra-fast time and with ultra-precision.

If only "getting to heaven" were as simple as all that.

And that brings me to the essential two points I wanted to make in today's email commentary: firstly, and less importantly, there will not be an email commentary tomorrow because I expect to be travellling. Secondly, I wanted to draw attention to a fascinating post Ian Elmer has written in the string begun by Rayner which asked us to share our images of God. It's almost not a commentary on what we think of God but a "to the bone" critical analysis of ourselves and the ways in which human beings have thought about God down through the centuries. I really do find it fascinating reading the different accounts that people write which help reflect their view of God and what all this religion and spirituality stuff is about. I found it fascinating reflecting on my own views of God (I'd published a comment earlier in the string) through the new prism or window which Ian's commentary opened up. [more]

Best wishes for a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life, and in our world,

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher
Catholica Australia