Conversation with M.Sc. Ing. Aníbal Sánchez Numa on Christianity, the Bible, the Gifted, the God of the Christians, Prayer, and Life Possibilities: Member, World Genius Directory (3)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2021/01/08

Abstract

Born on February 27th, 1985 in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba, Aníbal Sánchez Numa graduated as Computer Engineer in 2012 and as Master in Computer Science in 2014. Having a PhD in Computational Mechanics since 2018, he belongs to the World Genius Directory and Catholiq High IQ Society. He discusses: the ways in which How man became a giant and The magic of numbers talk mathematics; Social Sciences under the Soviet Union; the areas of “some faith”; the hypocritical status of ‘most Christians’; the intellectual and emotional feeling of this ‘breaking free’; choir; Protestant Christian outings; the forms of being tied up as a Christian; other interests neglected as a result of being a Christian; the sense of respect in a community of peers; areas of study were more neglected in formal schooling; oscillation between achievement of near perfection and then collapse of self; geniuses; IQExams or IQNavi.net; the core of intelligence; the victories in the mathematical competitions; matters of life; the full realization as a gifted person; a necessary ingredient for genius; a pure Imaginarium; personalities or personal characteristics; kinds of “web and mobile applications”; advice for those who wish to get into the industry; a sense of the compulsive thinking in the gifted; rejection of all forms of religion; a blind faith, a faith, and, as William Lane Craig stipulates, a “reasonable faith”; rejecting the God of the Bible; an atheist with respect to the God of the Christians; the god of Pantheism; ‘If there is a God, then he’s a Devil’; the heritable status of intelligence; the agnostic position regarding the existence of a god; the prayers to experience; the form of healing induced via the prayer; the differences between men and women based on the evidence; the failures in the educational system; profoundly gifted individuals; and a range of great possibilities in life.

Keywords: Aníbal Sánchez Numa, atheist, Bible, Christianity, Christians, Devil, genius, God, prayer, Protestant Christians, World Genius Directory.

Conversation with M.Sc. Ing. Aníbal Sánchez Numa on Christianity, the Bible, the Gifted, the God of the Christians, Prayer, and Life Possibilities: Member, World Genius Directory (3)

*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What were some of the ways in which How man became a giant and The magic of numbers talk mathematics?

M.Sc. Ing. Aníbal Sánchez Numa[1],[2]*: The first one is not about mathematics but about how the man developed himself since ancient times to be able to do all things he can do nowadays. The second one is about the history of Mathematics. It relates its history through fun and interesting anecdotes and it was very important in my love for Mathematics. It was through that book that I discovered Archimedes, Euclides, Pythagoras and similar characters of history.

Jacobsen: What were Social Sciences under the Soviet Union?

Numa: My father says that it studies the political basements of society, particularly of capitalism and socialism.

Jacobsen: What are the areas of “some faith” for your mother in spite of never attending church anymore?

Numa: She stills believes in God, and believes that God can respond to praying.

Jacobsen: Why the hypocritical status of ‘most Christians’ as an implication of “Christians talk a lot about what Jesus said what we should do, but almost none of them do”?

Numa: Being fair, to do everything Jesus said Christians should do is quite difficult, but I wouldn’t call myself a true Christian if I was constantly talking about what me as a Christian should do according to his teachings and I didn’t actually do it. It is to me like “do what I say to do, but not what I do”. It produced me a sense of falseness.

Jacobsen: What was the intellectual and emotional feeling of this ‘breaking free’? Those in certain strains would probably consider that moment as a capture by demonic forces for the Devil Himself.

Numa: Yes, they said that too, but the fact is I was very relieved. I felt that I had lost control of my life and needed to get it back.

Jacobsen: What songs did you sing in choir?

Numa: Christian songs. I had never heard of them, some of the singers I remember are Marcela Gándara and Jesús Adrián Romero.

Jacobsen: What kinds of Protestant Christian outings were part of the group of young people?

Numa: Nothing special, just walking through the city, having a pizza or ice-cream, things like that, just social encounters.

Jacobsen: What were the forms of being tied up as a Christian?

Numa: I felt a strong impulse to go to the church very often as in every day. And sometimes I didn’t really want to go and at the same time I did want to go. It was weird. I felt that I couldn’t resist the impulse to go, like an addiction.

Jacobsen: What were other interests neglected as a result of being a Christian at the time?

Numa: I didn’t listen to any other music than Christian, I didn’t study or read anything unrelated to Christianism. At the same time, I felt my goals in life had been put behind.

Jacobsen: What is the sense of respect in a community of peers? How is this hindered in times of adolescence with others not taking this principle as seriously as a certain young gifted adolescent male of the past?

Numa: I was more respected in general, but anyway I didn’t like the way my peers treated each other, not only me. It’s hard to tell why I was so different but I think that maybe it had to do with my parents’ education and home environment in general as well. Anyway, I think I also had some personality issues back then.

Jacobsen: What areas of study were more neglected in formal schooling for you? Why those? No one is a master of all.

Numa: I loved mostly sciences like Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. In general, I didn’t like Literature, or art class. In Literature I got very good grades but I really didn’t like it, and I was really bad in art class (Musical Education, for instance). I remember that I didn’t like History either, even though I got good grades, but I limited myself to the content received in the classroom.

Jacobsen: Is this oscillation between achievement of near perfection and then collapse of self when not achieving it a common theme amongst the gifted?

Numa: In gifted forums I have read a lot of members claiming that perfectionism is a burden for them for the same reason. In general, a lot of gifted people have low self-esteem because of it, according to what I have read on those sites. Perfectionism can be so intense that if you are not quite sure you will do it great then you stop yourself from doing it. It’s also common to have a big fear of failure for this same reason.

Jacobsen: Could an exaggerated form of this be seen in geniuses? While, with geniuses, they, in fact, proceed to succeed in the proverbial ‘perfection’ without the associated twang back to a lower sense of self because of succeeding rather than failing.

Numa: I would say that it makes sense, yes.

Jacobsen: With IQExams or IQNavi.net, what were some of the interesting numerical tests there?

Numa: I really liked Numix, DeepSpeed and Numeriq32, which are timed tests and also found interesting Bakers Prime, which is untimed.

Jacobsen: What seems like the core of intelligence?

Numa: I have seen a lot of specialists in the subject saying nobody really knows. However, I would say that intelligence is made of some basic capacities like: memory, attention, focus and pattern recognition, and other more elaborated capacities like: problem solving and adaptation.

Jacobsen: Were the victories in the mathematical competitions helpful in the development of a sense of self and an acceptance of giftedness?

Numa: At the time that I participated in those contests the results were much more important for my family and my teachers than for myself. I loved the Math contests mainly for the challenge they represented but didn’t have a good picture of that meaning I was very smart because of it. Actually I thought back then that any person who loved Math could achieve the same, never thought I was gifted back then. However, when I began suspecting I was gifted I realized that maybe those contests were a good supporting clue.

Jacobsen: How were you “very clumsy in matters of life in general”?

Numa: I basically didn’t understand well social interactions and structure. I was very naïve also, and I would say that I had like some form of development delay like if I was much younger concerning all kind of skills normally adults and even children have.

Jacobsen: What was the feeling when you ‘stopped feeling weird’ with the full realization as a gifted person, in general, with a talent for mathematics, in particular?

Numa: It was one of the greatest feeling I have ever had. In gifted forums we see very often people arrive with the same doubts and I and other members try to tell them our experiences. The sensation is hard to describe, it begins with a suspicion, then you continue collecting more evidences and when you finally accept it, it’s very satisfying. It’s like now you understand your whole life so far, and it feels pretty much the same for nearly every gifted people who is identified in adulthood. Some years later I saw the movie “Gifted”, about a gifted girl and I was crying during several moments of the film.

Jacobsen: In the “very high intelligence” as a necessary ingredient for genius, how high, or how rare?

Numa: It’s difficult to tell. I think that maybe an IQ of 145 could be a good threshold as it’s the beginning of “high” giftedness. In general, 94% of all gifted people lie in the “moderated” zone, so I think that maybe having high giftedness could be a threshold. However, in high IQ societies and community it’s common to tell that the threshold for genius should be 160.

Jacobsen: Who are examples of people with profound intelligence while pursuing what they think is “how the Universe works” while, in fact, pursuing the infinite array of the magical, as if a pure Imaginarium of the unreal, i.e., a life and profound intelligence wasted?

Numa: Technically 1 of each 3.5 million people are profoundly gifted and so we could estimate that there are roughly 2000 of such people in the world right now. I have met as I know only 2 or 3 profoundly gifted people and they are very very brilliant but I am not aware that they are researching or doing anything especial. One of these people I have met has photographic memory, she can memorize entire books by looking at them and she is having two different degrees in college at the same time. I think that is the kind of intelligence that can in fact make great advancements if she had a great creativity (I don’t know if she has it) and enough opportunities.

Jacobsen: What personalities or personal characteristics feed into genius as well?

Numa: Strong motivation for reaching their goals, and a very strong will. There have been geniuses who put apart their social lives to focus only in their research in isolation. I guess they should have also a firm trust in their talent.

Jacobsen: What kinds of “web and mobile applications” do you develop?

Numa: Basically management systems, online shopping systems too. In the case of mobiles applications, I commonly make them as a complement for the web application, so it has the same functionality than the web version but for being used more easily.

Jacobsen: Any advice for those who wish to get into the industry?

Numa: Software development requires continuous study. I have met several people who want to become developers because it is a very well paid job, but the truth is that if you don’t feel a real attraction for it it’s unlikely that you succeed because you won’t have the will to keep studying and studying to be updated.

Jacobsen: Is there a sense of the compulsive thinking in the gifted?

Numa: It’s common knowledge that a high intelligence implies that your mind is never idle. I used to become exhausted of so much thinking some years ago. It’s common too to have problems to sleep because of it. Yes, I could say it’s compulsive, in the sense that many gifted people can’t really control it voluntarily.

Jacobsen: What of those who claim ‘rejection of all forms of religion as no belief whatsoever’ is, in and of itself, a “belief”?

Numa: Yes, I am aware of that, but I disagree. I see not having any belief more like a personality issue. I think that that claiming is more an attempt of those people to put atheists in the same position that they are. Some people think that a person claims to be atheist like saying that he/she is smarter than the rest, but that is not true. If you are a person who believes that facts and you don’t know any fact that could lead to have a belief, then you don’t have it.

Jacobsen: What differentiates a blind faith, a faith, and, as William Lane Craig stipulates, a “reasonable faith”?

Numa: Blind faith means that you show the person a contradiction in what he/she claims and he/she simply denies it, he/she chooses to believe no matter what you said to him/her. Reasonable faith seems to me that you could have some faith but you have reasonable doubts and you accept contradictions on it, so you try to not to be too fanatic.

Jacobsen: Why primarily rejecting the God of the Bible?

Numa: I think the God of the Bible is created with an anthropocentric view of the world. I mean, man believes he is the center of everything and so he creates a God that made him “to his image and similarity”. It is more like a personal God, and he puts in him his own sense of justice and morality.

Jacobsen: With the rejection of the God of the Bible, as in an atheist with respect to the God of the Christians, where does this place you in the historical moment of the ascendance of the Christian faith with over 2,000,000,000 people adhering to its faith tenets in various degrees and ways?

Numa: I am a factual person. I try to be as much objective as I can. I think that many people prefer to believe in something if that makes them happy, but it’s not my case. I think that most people are not interested in knowing if there is a God or not, they choose to believe simply to have faith in a better life. I seek the truth, even though it’s relative. But if I have some evidence of something I accept it no matter how hard it is or what it implies. At least I try to be like that. Of course we humans all have flaws and weaknesses and there must be some things I choose to believe no matter what too, but I would say they are not many.

Jacobsen: What makes the god of Pantheism reasonable to you? In turn, what forms of pantheism make sense to you? How would these differ from Pandeism and Panendeism, or Panentheism?

Numa: Of course I don’t have any evidence of that either. It just seems like a possibility to me, like there are other possibilities like parallels universes, or the fact that we could be just microorganisms in a world of giant beings. My thinking of Pantheism is like a point of view that everything is possible because our minds are very limited and the knowledge we have is always limited too. It could be said that it is a reasonable faith and an open door to the possibility that there is a God in some way.

Jacobsen: Why is the God of the Bible such a brutal, sadistic, and warmongery figure? As Noam Chomsky echoed Thomas Paine, he stated, ‘If there is a God, then he’s a Devil.’

Numa: I think it shows that Bible was written according to the time standards, which were that brutal. I think it’s in somehow an evidence that it was not inspired by any God but only for normal people of that time, in which barbarism was pretty common.

Jacobsen: With the heritable status of intelligence comes researchers, dead and alive, who make arguments for race and intelligence as a racial hierarchy based on a ranking of a “heritable” quality from high (intelligence) to low (intelligence) races, any more extensive thoughts on these arguments and individuals who make the arguments?

Numa: That interpretation is wrong in my opinion. The hierarchical part. No human characteristic should define a hierarchy among people. Skin color used to do that, which is obviously wrong. I think it’s part of the problem of intelligence being considered by society as some kind of superior characteristic. There are for instance differences in how some diseases affect to different races, but almost nobody cares about that and nobody would make a hierarchy based on that.

Jacobsen: Are these probabilities on the agnostic position regarding the existence of a god more qualitative or based on some metrics? If some variables comprising such a metric, even both parts of the question so as to make a variable-based qualitative metric, what are the variables to consider for you?

Numa: It’s more qualitative. But I would say that is more like an intuition. I base it on none scientific evidences found in favor of God existence and also in the way I think that humanity behaves. I think for instance, that is very convenient to have a very benevolent God who punish the bad people, and it is also very convenient to believe that your soul will remain alive once you are dead. It seems to me a human invention because of that, because it’s like a solution to the problems humanity can’t handle. Let’s say in 5000 years humanity manages to make it possible eternal life for every person, if that was the case the belief in God’s paradise would vanish eventually.

Jacobsen: What were the prayers to experience the “prayer-induced altered states of consciousness”?

Numa: It were some words being repeated and with a given tone of voice.

Jacobsen: What was the form of healing induced via the prayer?

Numa: Sometimes it was only putting his hand on your afflicted organ, sometimes it was a pray itself, they can heal a pain, for instance. There are some testimonies of people who claim that they had important diseases (like cancer) but I have only seen that on videos not in my presence.

Jacobsen: What seem like the differences between men and women based on the evidence?

Numa: I have read studies that find differences, for instance, in mechanical aptitude between men and women. I have also read studies about differences in IQ between both genders which conclude that there are more men on both extremes of the bell curve and more women on the mean.

Jacobsen: What can ameliorate the failures in the educational system?

Numa: About two weeks ago my mom presented a problem to me. She had a hair product with a 60% concentration and she wanted to know how much water she had to add to it to degrade it to 20%. Instantly I thought: A good example to tell people how math taught at school can be useful in daily life.

When I was in school I remember that I had at home the same textbooks from previous years and they had much more complex content than the ones I was receiving in school. Nowadays textbooks are likewise simpler than the ones I had back then. I don’t know the reason for this phenomena, but there is an obvious tendency to teach simpler content to students in school. We were never given a math problem with five possible solutions so that we marked the right one, in all problems we had to develop the full solution. Nowadays these multiple choice problems are in textbooks. I think it should be the opposite. With the Internet is quite easy to search any explanation online, so… why make things easier for the students? I even read a study that says that this generation is the first one with a lower IQ than their parents, and I think it makes sense. So I think that we need to increase the difficulty of the subjects and also to teach the students how all the science they are being taught is present in their lives. I saw an interview of the great mathematician Terence Tao in which he says that a lot of people hate Math because they think it’s useless for them and that that is a challenge for education. On the other hand, nobody likes something that he/she doesn’t understand so obviously we need also good teachers that can explain the subjects in an easy and fun way.

Jacobsen: Why do even profoundly gifted individuals expound, construct, or believe in, conspiracy theories?

Numa: It’s hard to tell. Some people have read and witnessed different things. I don’t believe in those because I don’t have the evidences for doing so, I am almost sure that I have them I would believe in them too. But in every discussion I see on the internet of such theories all I see is suspicion and distrust with no evidences, and very often it’s also a lack of scientifically knowledge of the people making the claiming. I see for instance a photograph of Earth taken from the International Space Station and such people see some flaws in the photograph and they say it’s false for some given reasons, but a person who actually knows about photography can realize that their claims make no sense.

Jacobsen: With “around 150” (S.D. 15), what does this set a cap on in life? What does this set as a range of great possibilities in life?

Numa: I have been told by many friends that I could have many achievements in life. This feeling is also common among gifted people. I think it’s part of the myths about giftedness and even a cause of so many people not accepting they are gifted. Intelligence is associated with success and success for many people can be for instance have a great job in which you earn a lot of money, it’s quite common. The expectations that people put in you depends also in how much they know about giftedness and how smart they think you are. I have friends who tell me that I could score over 170 or 180 and that I could make a great invention and things like that. I think that achievements require intelligence, yes, but also many other characteristics like motivation or social skills. On the other hand, psychologists declare four “levels” of giftedness: moderated, high, exceptional and profound. Many people don’t know that, they think that if you are gifted then you are among the smartest in the world automatically. So, putting high expectations on a gifted person is quite common, and I was not the exception. However, it’s quite clear to me at the moment that being gifted can indeed help me in my job and my career in general but it doesn’t necessarily mean I would have great achievements like some of my friends think. I am not actually a very perseverant person. I got used in school to get things fast and easily and it’s hard for me to make a great effort for learning or accomplishing something. All things that I have learned I have done it because it’s easier for me than the usual, some people tell me “if I had your intelligence” and I could reply “If I had your big perseverance”. This is also common among many gifted people according to what I have read.

Appendix I: Footnotes

[1] Member, World Genius Directory.

[2] Individual Publication Date: January 8, 2021: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sanchez-3; Full Issue Publication Date: May 1, 2021: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.

*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.

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