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Файл:Цифровизация общества и будущее христианства к вопросу о трансформации ценностно-нормативной системы общества. Материалы VII Между народной научной ко
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Йеп-Мэй Ло. Теологическая теория чисел Патона и цифровое сознание...
membering belong to the soul [6, p. 331]; and ‘the science of mensuration is the science of moving well’ [6, p. 175] in that numbers are a means
by which the unity and consistency of creation, such as the order of the
planetary spheres and the progression of celestial hierarchies, can be discovered and comprehended. So the movement of the cosmos, which occurs according to number, results in an inaudible ‘numerosiora’ [6, p. 331]
[harmonious] symphonia that Plotinus interprets as the soul’s ascent to
and union with the Beauty (kalon) [25, pp. 1–25], and that Augustine
describes as being ‘in harmonious succession for a poem of the universe’
[6, p. 355]. Such a harmonious succession, in other words, is order (Ordnung), which will lead us to God if we pursue it [12, s.53; 13, s. 65]. Accordingly, the discussion of numbers is aimed at the understanding of
ascent from the corporeal things to that of the incorporeal ones in virtue
of music [2, p. 251], viz. from the sensory to the spiritual.
Here the Latin term ‘numerosiora’ signifi es ‘melodious’, ‘numerous’
and ‘rhythmical’. In other words, the English term ‘harmonious’, which
is originally derived from the Greek term ‘harmonios’, betokens ‘melodious’, ‘fi tting’ or ‘orderly’. Augustine holds that we are able to understand
this harmonious symphony by means of number (numerus) and measure (mensio or mensura) and calls the former rhythm and the latter meter
[6, pp. 207–209]. For Augustine, the term ‘numerus’ can either refer to
‘number’ and ‘rhythm’. In brief, harmony is beautiful, pleasing, agreeable and consistent. And numbers are essential and fundamental for us to
understand God, since all things are composed of numbers; they are the
very language of God, which is implanted in our memory (memoria), i.e.
our mind/soul.
II
Where is our power of memory (vis memoriae)? Augustine avers that
it must be within the mind [4, p. 187], and ‘I, myself’ is the mind [4,
pp. 184, 193; 19, p. 78]. He describes our mind as a vast and profound
storehouse, where the great capacity of our memories is likened to recondite receptacles, to where our recollections are brought through senseperception; consequently, when we want to retrieve some of our memories, certain things immediately come out from our mind through memories by means of sense-perception [4, pp. 185, 192], i.e. recollections
mean that our mind brings memories together through sense-perception;
and things are brought up from the memories insomuch that ‘whatever is
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Цифровизация религии
in the memory is in the mind’ [4, p. 194], so ‘I, myself’ is my memory.
Thus the power of the mind, which is endowed by God, is as great as if it
is an infi nite profundity [4, p. 187]. And the mind is in the soul.
What are memories? Augustine divides them into two kinds: one is
the memories of sense-perception, for instance, the fi ve senses of tasting, touching, seeing and hearing; the other is abstract things, such as
mathematics, which Augustine calls the ‘memory of memory’ [5, p. 109;
19, p. 79]. Augustine claims that memory is an incorporeal inner man
(homo interior), which knows that God made man by means of sense-
perception of his body and in terms of his mind, and which can see the invisible things of God, is his memory [5, pp. 89–91] and ‘ego, ego animus’
[5, p. 91]. Hence man possesses two kinds of knowledge — the knowledge
of sense-perception and of intellect. The former embraces the knowledge
of sensation and aff ections, the latter is comprised of speculation and reason.
Only images of things are perceived by senses and embeded in memories, in preference to the things themselves that enter memories, and that
no physical senses can reach, so whenever thoughts recollect them, the
images will arise from our memory. For example, when one sees red, the
image of red is drawn out from one’s memory; and the soul/the mind is
also able to distinguish red from white, [5, pp. 97, 101–103] insomuch
that soul/mind possesses not only voluminous remembrance, but also the
unmeasurable capability of judgement. Furthermore, memory is as if it is
the stomach of the soul/mind (memoria quasi venter est animi) [5, p. 113;
19, pp. 80–81], which digests and absorbs the images of all aff ections —
desires, joy, fear and sorrow, then collects them into the warehouse, i.e.
the memory. When one experiences the aff ection of joy, which then passes away, leaving only its image in the memory; every time he recalls it, the
associated aff ection of joy arises too, since joyfulness is in the memory [5,
p. 113; 19, pp. 90–91]. So memory is like the stomach of the soul/ mind.
When memory recalls something, such as joyfulness, although it is absent
now, the memory is not joyful per se, but the mind itself, the power of
memory, is feeling the past joy, because the image of joyfulness is in it.
In brief, memory is simply a stomach. As for the feelings of aff ection and
sensation, they are felt by the soul — the power of memory —, which
causes the images of memory from potentiality to actuality. It is the soul
that feels glad or sad, but memory itself is only the agent to vent the soul.
Put another way, memory is solely a computer database.
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Йеп-Мэй Ло. Теологическая теория чисел Патона и цифровое сознание...
The same is applied to forgetfulness, of which images are preserved
and imprinted in the memory. If a person forgets certain things, he himself remembers that something is forgotten by him[5, p. 99]. When he
recalls he forgets, it is the image that is presented, not the forgetfulness
itself, in his mind. If it were not so, then he is not able to remember that
he forgets, but he does really forget[5, p. 121]. So the power of memory
(vis memoriae) regains the image of forgetfulness from the memory. It is
the mind, i.e. ‘I, myself’ [5, p. 121]. He can say that ‘ego sum, qui menini,
ego animus’ [5, p. 119]. In this way, it is proved that he exists, since he
remembers; id est, the soul/the mind, being on all fours with remembrance, is the key factor of self-existence, otherwise man is nothing. In
such a way the mind or the soul is not far from being an invisible information-processing device at all, which processes and retrieves all data
from memories.
III
In the 21st century we are in the age of the technological and digital
mind, which controls and commands our way of thinking and our life-style.
In other words, technological innovations, being cognitive revolutions,
change our lifestyle habits, particularly in the spreading of religious faith.
In the 17th century the mathematician, theologian and philosopher
René Descartes (1596–1650) held that our thought is our existence or
life, so he said ‘cogito, ergo sum’, which nowadays has been replaced by
‘I browse or Google, therefore I am’. That shows that we are connected
with each other by the Web through internet access, and that the digital
mind, which is fashioned according to the image of the human mind by
means of numbers, becomes our mind. In other words, the digital mind,
which can be read as a resemblance of the human mind, i.e. man-like
mind, partakes of the mind of the human being with the aid of the technē
of scientists and researchers. This refl ects that the development of the
history of humanity has reached a new milestone, which is from the divine century towards the technological one, i.e. from the theo-centric/
divine centric through the anthropocentric towards the digito-centric/
tech-centric.
However, there are two comparisons between the human and his innovation. It is possible that technological innovations will evolutionally
cause a decrease in human brain size through under-stimulation if man
is constantly and extensively manipulated by computer. And the advance
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Цифровизация религии
of technology has to innovate more and more sophistication to obtain
competitive expediency. As for the fi rst case, philosophical inquiry has to
be supported by medical and biological proof and other related subjects
of evidence to expose whether or not the human mind will be limited and
manipulated by the digital, though the human mind both with free will
and conscience is more profound than it; and philosophical investigation
will be more essential and abstruse than other subjects. With regards to
the latter, it is clear that innovation and competition between technologies have constantly been introduced to outpace the current development
of computing technology. So it cannot be imagined where the development of technology will lead us to in the future.
The term ‘technology’ is a very ancient one. If this term is divided
into two, it is shown that it is derived from two Greek terms: technē and
logos. The former refers to the Greek term ‘technē’, which literarily means
‘craft’ or ‘art’
1
, and historically Homer referred to it as a ‘concept for science’ (Wissen) [1, s. 342], so that it practically connotes a defi ned specialized science, which is subject to general rules, and by means of which we
can learn a special craft, such as the technē of medicine, of architecture
or of music [16, pp. 132–133; 18, pp. 132–135]. And whereas the term
‘logos’ in the dictionary has lots of meanings, here it is terminologically
applied to ‘word’, ‘inward thought’ and ‘calculation’. Hence the term
technology means a special craft with scientifi c approach or the method
of calculation or computation, and it is subject to general rules. In brief,
the concept of the digital mind or digital computer is the man-made art of
computation, which is founded upon numbers, i.e. algorithms.
2
To sum
up, algorithms that are composed of numbers are the essence of the digital mind and the language of the digital computer. So for the digital mind
in the beginning there are numbers.
1
The English term ‘art’ is derived from Latin term ‘ars’, which not only means
‘skill’, but also gives rise to the adjective term, ‘artifi cial’, which signifi es ‘man-made’,
‘false’ or ‘misleading’. So artifi cial technology can be interpreted as a skill of computation, which can mislead us if we do not use it appropriately and properly. And artifi cial
intelligence means a man-made digital mind, which resembles the human mind. So
artifi cial intelligence as the human-like intelligence is the image of the image of God
2
According to Melissa E. O’Neill, ‘the speed of Eratosthenes’s algorithm depends
on the number of (unique) primes that are’. See ‘The Genuine Sieve of Eratosthenes’
Journal of Functional Programming, (Cambridge University Press, 9 October
in the
2008), p. 3, published on line:
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Йеп-Мэй Ло. Теологическая теория чисел Патона и цифровое сознание...
A digital mind such as a database, which is like the human mind, has
the core task of computing and stores all types of information, such as
numbers, text, images and sounds; it manipulates data in binary digits
and processes them [20, p. 38]. It can be called an information-processing device or the thought of computer, which is as deep as an infi nite and
vast sea. In there, all data, which is accessible at will, is classifi ed in an
orderly fashion, devoid of chaos. All digital memories or minds, are like
Augustine’s metaphor for human memories, built of logic gates and transistors [20, pp. 38, 44]. He says that all things are distinctly and generally
preserved in the storehouse of memories, according to the several gates
through which each notion entered [4, p. 99]. Hence when we need to
recover information, we input certain commands to the computer, and
retrieve our information immediately without subject to geographical restrictions. To take Oliverira’s nand gate as an example, a nand gate (there
are many types of logic gates) has two inputs and one output. Its output is
0 if and only if both outputs are 1 [20, pp. 38–39].
The digital mind is not only more quickly able than us to analyse our
emotions but is also more intelligent in facial recognition, and ever more
approaches Augustine’s description (of our mind), in that it is like ‘a large
and infi nite profundity and its faculty is so excessive great’ [4, p. 99]
1
.
Though man imitates God’s work in numbers to innovate the digital
mind, it simply resembles the mind of man and cannot replicate the roles
of a human being, which is made by the Creator. The digital mind is only a
copy of God’s creation, its function is purely to ‘mimic the behavior of human intelligence’ [20, p. 88], to serve man’s needs. God has allowed man
to exert his potentiality to know Him through the innovation of the digital
mind, and which itself is the means for man to understand the profundity
of His creation. But how to manage it and not abuse it? God gives man
free will to manage and control himself properly lest he becomes trapped
in the maze of digitocentricity. The centricities of God, man and the digital
1
Here I do not apply the term ‘power’ (dunamis), but ‘faculty’, for the digital
mind, because ‘power’ has the potential for actuality. For example, the seed of a pine
tree has the potential to become a pine tree, a foetus has the potential to become an
infant, then a child. So ‘power’ has the potential to actualize the achievement. Man has
infi nite power to fulfi ll his potentiality. It is infi nite and immeasurable. While ‘faculty’
is a function, such as the faculty of the eye is seeing, that of the ear is hearing. And the
faculty of digital memories is computing data that is stored by an engineer, then outputting that data when it receives the command.
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Цифровизация религии
should complement each other and not singly dominate the person. Creation is God’s work; and innovation belongs to the human being, while the
digital mind is subject to his command. So it is improper to hold that man’s
ideas are evolved, not innovated, such as Arlindo Oliverira proposes in his
book [20, pp. 87–116].
Innovation is the resemblance to God’s work, not God’s work itself.
Man’s technē can be technologically evolved by simulation, but man’s
ideas are potentially innovated by emulating God’s creation. Briefl y,
man’s technē is digitally evolved, while man’s ideas are spiritually innovated. We cannot confuse the outcome of simulation with the achievement
of emulation. The former is digital technology, the latter is creative innovation.
IV
It is inevitable that digital technological innovation and creativity in
all aspects of industry and art, including culture and religion, lead to major changes in social organization and accelerate the speed of economic
growth of the global world. For example, with the aid of computer technology, the internet both fosters global communities and breaks through
constraints of spatial distance, so that friends across the ocean can be
closer than neighbours across the street [10, p. 479], and which further
allows the art of technology to shape a novel social religious phenomenon or culture, which can strengthen religious faith and deepen the unity
of religious communities. Put another way, social support and religious
faith are inseparable, because religion is a social phenomenon or culture
[7, p. 45].
Digital technology is not only turning the pages of human history, but
also changing all aspects of daily life, such as revolutionising preaching in
the church on the one hand, and speeding up the spread of religious faith
on the other. The reason being that with the aid of a networking society
through the internet, long distance evangelism reaching all communities,
and every idyllic village, becomes easier and closer, thereby computing
technology becomes a tool for religion to enlarge and fl ourish which permeates the medium. In this way the ‘e-church’ or the ‘cyberchurch/internet church’ is becoming less an alien concept and more and more a part
of the worshipper’s life
1
. Hence it is likely that the ‘e-church’ will be the
1
Cf. Yip Mei Loh. ‘The Allegory of Pistis and Eikasia in Plato’s Divided Line and
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Йеп-Мэй Ло. Теологическая теория чисел Патона и цифровое сознание...
trend of the future, since the internet with a cheap and fi xed cost of access to the computer, not only makes it easy to disseminate both the Word
and associated material, but also facilitates the crossing of boundaries,
and networking with local and global communities. And the e-church
can also be called ‘new evangelization’ to fulfi ll the church’s mission by
means of computer telecommunications, [26, p. 63] so that the concept
of ‘virtual community’ already becomes an idiomatic usage in religious
groups.
The e-church forms a virtual community in cyberspace, gathering
believers from diff erent areas regardless of the distance, for example disabled people at home, or patients in hospital, to engage in religious activities in real time, online. This emerging form of evangelism brings together
believers from all over the world to worship God through the internet at
the same time. It keeps people in touch with each other whether near or
far and is also able to provide them with all-day contact with a considerable number of inexpensive services if they have urgent needs. So the virtual community endows us with a convenient path to share our religious
faith with believers. In such a way the e-church can reduce the ‘stigma of
engaging in a deviant religious lifestyle’ [9, pp. 37–40] and provide a new
and safer way to know and to worship God, thereby religious faith and
practices tend to reinforce each other and to harmonize [7, p. 45].
Also, nowadays people are enlightened by the technē of digitalization.
We can download and read the Bible in any language we choose, at the
click of a mouse — a phenomenon unimaginable to Martin Luther, as he
laboured to produce the fi rst German translation. Televangelism is not
new to the dissemination of religion, there being broadcasts fi rst by radio
in 1919 and by television in 1940 [7, p. 154]. However, sermons given
over the internet (‘podcasts’) can help ‘congregations’ in diff erent ways:
people who are house-bound and unable to travel to their church can
hear at home; or listeners of the Catholic denomination, say, can hear
the preaching of an Orthodox priest, or vice versa. Pope Benedict XVI
encouraged monks to use the internet as a new medium for evangelization [15, p. 102]. That is, the Pope held that if we manage the internet
properly, it can be a religious place to bring people together. In another
Social Media Bespoke Groups as Virtual “Ekklesia” in Taiwan’, in the Цифровизация
общества и будущее христианства: Материалы V Международной научной конференции (24.01.2019). P. 44.
227
Цифровизация религии
example, the clergy can post about religious activities and events onto
social media such as Facebook to encourage their congregations to participate in the religious events of their churches. Thus, we are facilitated
not only in hearing the Word of God and in receiving diff erent interpretations but also in contacting religious people to highlight religious events.
But whether it can be a sacred place where believers perform rituals is
another issue.
Furthermore, digital humanities have been extant since Italian Jesuit
Roberto Busa began his project, Index Thomisticus, a scholarly research
resource facility which went online in 2005 and it remains an active website to this day [8, p. 4]. So the advent of digitalization of Christian texts,
which we call hypertext, is extremely important for classical theological
scholars, since it facilitates the citation of sources. We can quickly search
for the sources of materials that we want by simply entering the relevant
keywords. It is undeniable that digitalization greatly impacts upon scholarship, since it enhances the way that scholars can analyze material, particularly benefi tting classical scholars [8, p. 5]. Hence the artifi cial world,
which is created by human beings, can display the truth of the phenomenal world as long as we employ our technē with a positive aspect, that
Plato calls the technē of perception knowledge, of which innovation resembles the truth itself.
The deleterious and negative impacts of digitization on human life
are innumerable. For example, although social media is a useful tool for
the dissemination of religion and good causes, it is also a convenient tool
for scammers, predators and cyber-bullies to harass and groom at will
[3, p. 61]
1
. Furthermore, some scammers are cheating their victims of
money, even sometimes with threat to life. Researches have shown that
sexual abuse and cyberbullying, which causes mental health problems
and trauma, is prevalent among adolescents using pcs and smartphones
[11, p. 624], and the relation between such sexual abuse and cyberbullying
is that twice as many sexually abused girls experienced cyberbullying [11,
p. 627]. The main reason for cyber violence is shown in the imbalance of
power between the harasser and the harassed, viz. the anonymity of the
former and the possible technological naivety of the latter [3, p. 64]. This
1
Online sexual harassment is an act of cyber violence, which is defi ned as ‘sexual
harassment that primarily occurs over the internet’, and can happen by means of various media, such as Facebook and chat rooms.
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Йеп-Мэй Ло. Теологическая теория чисел Патона и цифровое сознание...
is what Plato means by the shadowy world, where man treats that which is
fake as true on the basis of illusive knowledge exempt from rational knowledge, i.e. to think of the illusive world as real. Thus the digital world has
brought great infl uences over our lives and also our thoughts. So in the face
of an ever-changing world and an unpredictable future we must be cautious
and alive to the potential dangers of digital technology.
The e-church may present other hidden dangers. Peer-to-peer chatrooms encourage intimate disclosures regarding family and friends, at the
manipulation of satanic worshippers and occultists whom the innocent
Christian may never meet or know [26, p. 63]. Studies also show that the
increasing use of the internet may pose a potential danger to the reclusive life of monks and nuns if its use is not controlled [15, pp. 102–104].
Recently, Patriarch Kirill, the Head of the Orthodox Church in Russia,
warned of the dangers of modern smartphone technology being so great
as to involve the Antichrist, likening him to one who knows where you
are, what your interests are and what you are afraid of, according to the
BBC on 8 January 2019 [28].
The Patriarch’s warning is all the more telling in respect of a highprofi le event in the UK, where the media company Instagram is embroiled
in a legal case over its involvement in the tragic suicide of a young girl.
The app’s algorithms direct the user to ever more results from the initial
search — even where the search related to suicide images and content; and
the company is being pressed both to admit this as a factor, and change it. It
has been suggested that up to 200 young deaths occur in the UK each year
from similar causes; once again, from BBC News on 22
nd
Jan 2019 [30].
To encourage suicide is illegal in the UK, but obviously something is
happening to push these young people to kill themselves. It is a challenge
for the Church to try to intervene and protect, and the challenge comes in
many guises. Initially, it must become relevant. Most young people alone
in their desperate fi ght against depression will not think about the Church.
In a modern secular society where atheism is not just ‘cool’, it is the default
position, the Church comes across as antiquated, weak and out of touch.
Put simply, it is the last thing most teenagers on the brink would turn to as
a saviour.
Despite the unimaginable benefi ts and conveniences of modern technology we should not ignore the threats to the freedoms of liberty and
thought on account of the manipulation of ideology wrought by the spreading of fake news. Hence if we wish to avoid manipulation and control,
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Цифровизация религии
i.e. the Platonic ‘shadowy world’, we have to possess knowledge and the
wisdom to employ it eff ectively; It is said that ‘knowledge is power (duna-
mis)’ that is knowledge enables us to distinguish true from false. To cut to
the chase this means a good education, embracing the sciences and the
liberal arts.
V
Today digital technology has an all-round infl uence on human life,
including manipulation of thought. Even the scientist cannot predict
what kinds of impact it will bring us. The above-mentioned journey can
be likened to that from the creation of God to the innovation of the human being, from the eikōn of God to that of the human.
God gives us the potentiality of innovation, thereby man can imitate
His creation to compose his works and to devise his instrument, by means
of which man is able to have deeper insight into the design of His great
architecture.
The digitization of the church, which is an unavoidable stage of the
innovation of human technology, is one of the media of evangelism in the
future. The question is how we appropriately and properly employ this
new technē to proclaim the gospel, thereby enabling the discernment of
the true gospel from the false. Plato already provided us with two kinds
of world within the visible world: the phenomenal and the shadowy. The
former is the world wherein God manifests his power, while the latter is
the artifi cial world, where man imitates either God’s creations or shadows
and refl ected images. If man’s innovation is similar to and closer to the
world of phenomena, then it can expose the truth of phenomena, whereas
if man’s imitation adheres tightly to the shadowy shapes, then it will affi rm falsifi cation. Furthermore, in the employment of technology man
cannot exceed God’s boundaries to replace His role, and avoids becoming the slave of artifi cial intelligence. This is the issue of humanity, i.e. the
issue of ethics. Only if man’s problems are solved can the problems that
technology brings him be solved also. Otherwise, man will be trapped
in the eternally rotating wheel, constantly revolving from the end to the
beginning.
Keywords: computer, digitization, digital mind, God, number.
Ключевые слова: компьютер, цифровизация, цифровое сознание,
Бог, число.
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