Leo Jweda

Thoughts on YFC

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Jweda) — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 03:45:00 +0000

So, ever since I became an atheist this has been bothering me a lot and I just can't take it anymore, I have to say something.

I feel terrible for all the things I taught when I was a YFC Chapter Head. I feel so bad it's torturing me.

YFC tries to use religion to control way too much in its members' lives. Seriously, let's take a look at the 100% free.

Smoke Free
0% Alcohol
Zero Drugs
PorNO
No to Masturbation
100% Pure Man/Woman
True Love Waits
Virgin & Proud
Pro-life
Pure Inside and Out

Let's look at them one by one:

Smoke free: Smoking is bad, yes, but God said nothing about smoking. I'm pretty sure smoking was around when the bible was written. If God wanted to bad smoking he would've mentioned it.

0% Alcohol: Drinking is fine! Why did we preach against that!? Even Noah drank and laid naked in his tent and Jesus made wine. It's ok to drink in moderation. Why are we preaching against drinking at all!?

Zero Drugs: Same as smoking.

PorNO: Let's not talk about this, shall we?

No to Masturbation: WRONG! I quote American Pie when I say that masturbation is a "perfectly natural thing". People masturbate, even animals masturbate. Can we stop making people feel bad about doing something that's perfectly OK?

100% Pure Man/Woman: I feel so bad for this it's unbelievable! Who are you to tell people how they should act? People have the right to act however they want. You as a person can choose to be heterosexual but you have no right at all to make others feel bad about who they are and try to change them.

True Love Waits: Yes but what if you meet your soulmate when you're a teenager and you pass on them because you're "too young"? I think enough is said.

Virgin & Proud: There's nothing wrong with being a virgin but it's not something to be proud of. Heck, it's not even a thing. Virginity is not a thing! It's just not! What IS virginity? People talk of losing their virginity.. THERE'S NOTHING TO LOSE!

Pro-life: I hate myself for ever preaching this. I am pro-choice because a person should have the right to choose. You can keep your child but you have no right forcing others to keep theirs too. Besides, it's not killing if it's not alive yet.

Pure inside and out: I can't remember what this is.

Final words: I had some of the best years of my life when I was a YFC member and then a Chapter Head but I hate all the things I preached. I was wrong and I hope one day you'll realize you're wrong too. I will be more than happy to discuss any of this with any of you in detail.

Believing in Jesus

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Jweda) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 04:50:00 +0000

So, I was browsing Redding when I found this and it got me thinking. I can't believe an argument as simple as that can be that persuasive.

Image from VanillaWarrior

This Rage Comic brings up so many points against faith I'm not sure I can list them all but I'll try.

How do you choose what to believe?

Here's the problem: faith requires you to believe in something without any evidence, once there are evidence it's not faith anymore; it's a conclusion or a deduction.

So for you to believe in something there can't be any proof of that thing being true. There are many things one can believe in: religion, unicorns, Santa, etc... And even when it comes to religion, there are many religions, how can one choose which religion to believe in if there is no proof for any of them?

Most religions ask you to believe in something there's no proof for and most religions are not compatible so how do you choose which religion to believe? Most people just stay with the religion they were born with because that's what they were raised to believe.

How do you know who the real Jesus is?

I know Matthew 24:23-30 gives a description of what happens before Jesus comes but, come on, most people will say that at least some parts of the bible are meant to be metaphors and you have to accept that because if you don't you'll be stuck with cruel punishments, sexism, incest, and weird gross stories that no Christian would want to admit exist in the bible. To name a few: 2 Kings 2:23-25, 1 Corinthians 14:34-36, Genesis 19:30-38, and Ezekiel 4.

So, now that we've established that at least verses in the bible are meant to be taken metaphorically, how do we know which ones to take literally and which ones to take metaphorically? This is an issue by itself but I'll leave it till another time and focus on the main issue here: if this is meant to be taken symbolically, and the real Jesus comes, he won't do anything to prove it's him because, well, he wants you to believe, he'll say "but I am the real Jesus, those verses weren't meant to be taken literally, this is me", how do we know to believe him?

How do we know a random person on the street isn't Jesus? I mean, you don't expect him to come down wearing robes, do you? And even that isn't a telling sign, what if you see a random person on the street wearing a robe, will you believe it's jesus? Also, we don't really know what Jesus looks like, how will we recognize him?

Proof vs Belief

So, I guess you'll insist that Jesus does something to prove that he is Jesus because why would you believe in him without proof? Well, why do you believe the bible is true without asking for any proof for it? What makes the bible so true? Why do you believe in the bible but not in any other fiction book out there? What makes the bible any different from, say, Spiderman? Why don't you believe Spiderman exists? What if I told you that Spiderman will kill all those that don't let a spider bite them on May 2nd, 2012, will you let a spider bite you? Why not? If you said you will then please take pictures and send them to me.

Free Will

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Jweda) — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:14:00 +0000

People take free will for granted but should they? I think they should not and I will discuss why in this post.

Image from Wikipedia.

What is Free Will?

If you ask people what free will is the most common answer you will get is that they can deliberate their actions and choose accordingly what the best action to take is. While that definition certainly is acceptable, there are other definitions out there such as being able to make an action based solely on what you want with no restraints whatsoever. While that sure sounds like free will I would not say it is true free will. Free will to me is that you are able to make a decision free from your biological needs and tendencies.

Simple Decisions

Let us take a simple decision, what dish you will order in a restaurant. There are many factors that come into play in this situation. First of all is what items you notice, you will not read the entire menu, that is for sure, so you will only consider the items that you do see. What determines which items you see and which ones you do not? Well, your biology and your past experience (nature and nurture). Your eyes and your reading ability are likely to be determined by your genes and not by your environment, what you focus your attention on is probably based on past experience (what worked for you in the past). We do not put conscious effort into choosing which items to notice, that does not make any sense.

The next thing to do is to choose between the different dishes that you noticed. There will be dishes that you eliminate right away, there will be others that you will consider for a while, and there will be 2 or 3 others that you will debate about for a long time. What determines which one you choose? That's right! Nature and nurture! What you find flavourful is probably determined by your genes (whether you are a super taster or not certainly is), and what you liked in other restaurants, what you liked in this restaurant, and what you feel like eating now all come into play when you make such a decision.

Real-life Scenarios

Let us take a real-life scenario that happened to me: Getting my job. I will start with how I got the job and work backwards to see if I really had any part in it or not. The secretary of the computer department sent an announcement for a job posting to 3rd and 4th year computer courses. I was in my first year but I was taking a 3rd year Web Application Development. It had the database course as a prerequisite which itself was a 3rd year course and I had not taken it. I managed to get in the Web App. Development course because I talked to the prof. who was teaching our intro computer course (which was taught by 5 professors from the computer department). I told her that I have an idea for a web app., I can create web applications, I just need a deadline to force me to complete it and she agreed. I got the prof's permission and joined the course. Did I have to say that? Yes! I had that idea for a while, I was in love with that idea and wanted to get it done. When I heard she teaches such a course, I had to ask her about that because I was so passionate about my idea. What factors went into the decision to ask her if I could take the course? A lot: how shy I was, how I was feeling at that moment, how comfortable I felt with the prof., and, of course, the fact that I knew how to create web applications which allowed me to take that course which, in itself, has many factors that go into it such as my love for programming, choosing to learn how to program over playing a game, parents' support, etc... As you can see, it really is not up to me, I simply had to take the course. And as soon as I saw the ad I knew I was perfect for the job so I had to apply.

Conclusion

We are like pieces of domino arranged to fall one after the other. We have no say in what will happen, what will determine whether we fall or not is what happens to the dominos before us and those are determined by the ones before them and so on, once the first domino is pushed there is no turning back.

You might think that a murderer chose to kill the victim but that is not the case, he simply had to, because of how he was raised and because of his genes it was inevitable.

Look at the people around you and think of the decisions they made, do you think they have a choice?

Finally, people may not be able to get help by choice even though it is available for them. Someone who is predetermined to push through things will not get help even if they need it, or they may not know that help is available simply because they are not aware of it or because of stigma. Who knows, maybe this post (which I did not choose to write) will help someone realize they need to seek help.

God is not Omnipotent

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Jweda) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 02:55:00 +0000

Recently I have been having doubts about religion, so I sought the help of Dr. Robin Lathangue, principal of Otonabee College who has two PhDs in theology. Unfortunately, he was not available for almost a week so he suggested I talk to Rev. Glenn Empey who is the Chaplain in Trent University.

Image from Uncyclopedia

I prepared a few questions I had about religion and went to talk to Rev. Glenn yesterday and I got very interesting answers. I talked to Dr. Robin today and asked him some of the questions I asked yesterday and I am amazed that both of them agree on this unusual answer to one of my questions. Having got that interesting answer from a reverend and an academic with two PhDs in theology, I thought I would share the reasoning I used to come up to those conclusions.

My argument starts with Psalm 139:16 NIV which says "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

If you decide to take it literally then you must accept the following: God plans every person's life before they are even born, he plans every single detail in a person's life including their decision and actions which means that he plans atheists and murderers then he punishes them for their sins which makes him evil. Wanna change your mind and not take it literally? Good!

Now, if God does not have a say in your decisions and he cannot force you to make a certain decision or take a certain action then he cannot predict the future because he cannot know what we decide until we have made the decision, it also means that he cannot be sure he will grant you what you ask for in every prayer because he could be planning something when a person's actions interfere with what he was planning, it means that his plans could fail because he does not know the future, and lastly, it means that he may or may not be victorious in the end because all he has are plans, I am not saying it will but for all we know, Satan could win in the end and not God. Because of all that, one can say that God is not omnipotent.

I was surprised to know that Dr. Robin always thought that God is not omnipotent and that he actually needs our help.

As a bonus, read this: Does God Play Dice? by Stephen Hawking.

Creative Calendar

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Jweda) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:28:00 +0000

I woke up today with a creative idea for a calendar so I created it and I called it Jweda Calendar.

The Jweda Calendar looks like one month's calendar, inside each day there are 12 squares, and each square has the name of a day.

If you want to know what day is the 15th of May is, you go to day 15 on the calendar, you look at the 5th square which is easy to find because they are arranged in 4 rows of 3 and that day is Sunday.

There is no text on the 31st day of certain months.

There's also a compact version of the Jweda Calendar which is where its full strengths becomes apparent:

The Compact Jweda Calendar has only 7 days and it does exactly the same thing, except you have to do (very) simple math in your head.

If you haven't noticed, the days on each row of the Jweda Calendar are the same on every row, the only thing that's different is the day numbers.

Say you want to know what day the 26th of March is, you find the highest multiple of 7 that's lower than the day you're looking at, and subtract it from that day, in this case it's 21 so that's 26 - 21 = 5 so you look at day 5 (for those of you who know a bit of programming, I'm talking about modulus(7) here), we're looking at March here so that's the 3rd square which tells us it's Saturday.

The Compact Jweda Calendar has the months that don't have 31 days faded on the 3rd day.

I like to push things a little so here's the Super Compact Jweda Calendar:

You do the same as you do with the Compact Jweda Calendar but you have to count the days after the day you find. Say we want to know what day Christmas is going to be on this year, so that's 25 - 21 = 4. You're looking at the last square which says Thursday, which is day 1, day 2 is Friday, day 3 is Saturday, and day 4 is Sunday. Just like the Compact Jweda Calendar, the Super Compact Jweda Calendar has the months that don't have 31 days in gray.

Jweda Calendar on Google Docs

Published as a Web Page

Design Psychology

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Jweda) — Thu, 05 May 2011 20:43:00 +0000

After a year of university the way I see the design of everyday things changed completely, here's an example of that.

Trent University requires first year students to take first year courses that allow them to go into many majors, as a consequence, I ended up taking courses in business, economics, psychology, computer, and math. The result of that? A major change in how I perceive things.

Just today, I was putting the cover back on what looked like a square box and it just won't fit, I turned it 90 degrees and it fit. Sure enough, it wasn't square, it was rectangular but the difference between its width and height was so subtle it was hard to notice. I remembered from my psychology book that the difference between two lines needs to be 0.1 of the shorter one for humans to notice the difference, that's known as difference threshold, there's a difference threshold for each of our senses.

I grabbed the box, I went to my room and measured its dimensions: 13.5 cm x 14.2 cm. The difference is 0.7 cm while 0.1 * 13.5 = 1.35 cm.

What gives? The designers of that box don't know a thing about human psychology.

Surviving Regoczei

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Jweda) — Thu, 05 May 2011 19:48:00 +0000

So, you're taking Stephen Regoczei's class, you just got 2/10 on your first assignment and you're wondering if you'll pass the course. I got 92 and I will tell you how.

Image from STEPHEN REGOCZEI X ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

Here's what you need to know about Prof. Regoczei:

The first thing you need to know about Regoczei is that he will give you the mark that he thinks you deserve, not the mark that you earn through your assignments and your exams. He will say this in the class "You don't earn your mark, you deserve it".
Take everything he says seriously. If he tells you to check out some chairs he has in front of the class you check out those chairs, if you go to his office and he asks you to sit down you sit down, and if he tells you to start the computer and play a game of Go you start the computer and play a game of Go.
Prof. Regoczei likes Go.
He also likes Macs.

Now that you know how to act around Regoczei, Here's what you need to do to get a good grade:

Go to his office hours a few times. There are about 80 students in each of Prof. Regoczei's classes, he will notice only those that are active. Going to his office hours will give you the edge; it'll get him to notice you.
Go to the lectures even if you don't want to, you have to do this! By the end of the course very few people will be going to the lectures so it'll be easy to be noticed.
Submit at least one great assignment that impresses him. Go to office hour and ask him what he's looking for. If you're in Multimedia and Design you need to submit a good-looking assignment, Photoshop your assignment. If you're in his History and Impact of Computing class, create one with a timeline with the most significant things he mentions.
Any other things that will get you noticed.

Be creative! The challenge of the course was more trying to figure Prof. Regoczei out than it was trying to fulfil the course requirements.

The University Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Jweda) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 22:50:00 +0000

In this post, I will talk about the university experience, what education in university is like, and what I am getting from it.

Image from Panoramio

Besides education, the university experience was one of the main reasons why I wanted to get into university so badly. After a term and a half, I am happy to say that I've been doing well getting the most of the university experience.

Here are a few of the aspects of the university experience and what I got from them:

Living on my own: Living on my own is something I wanted to do for so long. I'm not sure if it's just me of it's a natural human thing, I just don't like being told what to do so living on my own seemed like the natural thing to do. It wasn't hard at all to control myself and get my homework done, manage my time, or make the right decisions. It just felt right.
Time management: A big time of the university experience is time management. When you're in university there are many things to do: go to lectures, do homework, hang out with friends, watch TV, eat, sleep, play, etc. The challenge is to manage your time well so you can balance all of these activities and get to do them enough for you to get good grades without getting bored.
Passionate people: Everyone I know in university are passionate about what they are doing: students, professors, TAs, etc.
Hectic: That's right! I love it when things get hectic and you can barely manage to do the things you need done.
Access to resources: That includes the huge e-library of journals and research articles, the great professors who are more than willing to answer your questions and help you with questions in their fields even outside class (thank you Dr. Brian G. Patrick and Dr. Carlyle Smith).
Open-mindedness: I am not sure if this is specific to Trent University or if it is general to all universities, but I learned to be open to many things that I used to think are wrong (probably because of my culture).
Parties?: I am not big on those and everyone knows that but I made sure I tried things at least for the sake of trying them.
Great people: At Trent I met some of the greatest people in my life, most notably Dr. Robin Lathangue who has been a great help for me and many other students.

That is all I can think of right now. I will probably make another post at the end of the school year with whatever new aspects of the university experience I come across.