Andy’s Neural Works

Preface

With this article, I am starting a new series on a personal project I am working on. The data being used are in the study of theology. I will not be going into theological concepts. My focus is to produce an analytical system that can assist in analyzing religious texts. The process being followed should stand as an example of what can be done for other data projects.

Introduction

It is important for humanity to always be searching for truth. This can be accomplished through philosophical, theological, as well as scientific analysis. More often than not, facts, figures, and measures (aka data) are used to make a point during debate. This can be thought of as a form of data driven decision making. That is a common concept in the field of analytics.

A very important aspect of life’s continual search for truth is also in faith. The above mentioned efforts utilize the many religious texts from around the world. Of importance to me is the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)¹.

Generally speaking, a catechism is a set of texts holding religious teachings. The CCC dates back to the late 20th Century. It can be thought of as the summarization of the Faith from many sources in Christianity². It is also immediately noticeable that there are many references to other documents. Study of these texts can be a lifelong devotion. 

Here is where I see a good project to work on. The CCC is a type of reference book that is a strong summary and pointer to other texts. Merely reading at that level is as easy as opening up a PDF Reader or web browser using available files³. The more difficult part is in diving deeper with the references. What would happen if any interested person wants to ask questions like the following:

• How can every part of CCC relay to Jesus?
• Can social networking analysis be applied to Christianity? What would a useful visualization look like?
• Can that view be dimensionally increased by time to show growth and change?

Those are some sample questions. There are infinitely more questions that others can ask. The tools for research across the multiple texts are limited. The fruit of this project will be to fill in those gaps.

It is my hope that this project provides a good method for CCC research. I think of this project similar to pulling together directions for traveling roadways. Each text is like a road and there are many of them. Each of these roads somehow connects with other roads. They provide the same destination, who is Jesus. I call this the “All Roads” Project since all roads can (and should) lead us to God.

Project Goals

For the initial effort, here are the goals I want to accomplish:

1. A data store for texts (see caveats). Initially, this will focus on the CCC and the Bible. Over time this will grow to include as many sources as possible. I expect this to be an ongoing effort.
2. Provide a simple search based on titles, topics, pages, and paragraphs.
3. Be able to build a lineage of texts starting with CCC. For example, find topics on “Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture,” which  list references from paragraph 70 to the DV (Dei Verbum) text which then references the Bible.
4. Display links to online resources.
5. Visualization methods of lineage.

Caveats

Caution will be given about using any copyrighted material. For local storage, this is not an issue. If this project is successfully released via a public-facing interface, proper disclaimers will be displayed. An example of this is that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has a page for such use of the CCC⁴.

Project Implementation Steps

A good number of data projects follow the CRISP-DM. This one will be no different. Here is a list of the specific steps I want to follow:

1. Datasource Identification/Collection
2. Database Engine Selection
3. Database Design
4. Data Prep
5. Data Load
6. Modeling and Analysis
7. Front End
8. Possible Cloud Implementation
9. Continue adding data sources

If there ends up being an issue, I will post about those results too. As always, we learn from our successes and failures. Never ignore results as a method of learning what to do next.

Next Steps

My hope is to have more frequent, smaller updates to this project rather than large articles. The next part of this series will review the CCC and Bible Data Sources. I will do a high level of analysis of the layout of each along with the results from the data collections steps.

Thank you

References

[1] Vatican. Catechism of the Catholic Church. Retrieved from: https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

[2] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. FAQ about Catechism. Retrieved from https://www.usccb.org/committees/subcommittee-catechism/faq-about-catechism#tab–_-what-is-a-brief-history-of-the-catechism

[3] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Catechism of the Catholic Church. Retrieved from: https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church

[4] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Use of the Catechism. Retrieved from: https://www.usccb.org/committees/catechism/use-catechism-catholic-church