Reluctant Theologian said:

Thanks, yes .. I see your point, but in supporting/subscribing to Nicea and in light of all those verses I do not see a Biblical necessity to use the word 'Trinity' as its meaning can vary quite a bit. E.g. the theologian who originally used/coined that phrase ('trinitas' in Latin), Tertullian (155 - 220 AD), would not agree to the much later definition of 'Trinity' by e.g. St. Augustine (early 5th century AD). Therefore I prefer to stick to just using the Biblical terms - that is sufficient for my belief and understanding.

Be blessed David !

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Thanks. As with a lot of words and phrases used by Christians, it is sometimes necessary to define what we mean by the word "Trinity," to avoid misunderstanding.

Apple Sky said:

Why is it ? If teachers were to teach that the earth is level (which some may believe) then they would find themselves out of a job.
This has actually happened to several teachers.

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That’s a strawman argument, because your previous post used the phrase “if teachers were to teach the truth they’d be out of a job” and now you’ve substituted that with “that the earth is level (which some may believe).”

You do realize that kind of argument is a logical fallacy?

David Lamb said:

Yes, in saying that I believe Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be God, I am certainly not saying that there is no difference in identity between the three Persons of the Trinity. The context of my post is that I was replying to somebody who says they find it hard to believe in the Trinity.

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Thanks, yes .. I see your point, but in supporting/subscribing to Nicea and in light of all those verses I do not see a Biblical necessity to use the word 'Trinity' as its meaning can vary quite a bit. E.g. the theologian who originally used/coined that phrase ('trinitas' in Latin), Tertullian (155 - 220 AD), would not agree to the much later definition of 'Trinity' by e.g. St. Augustine (early 5th century AD). Therefore I prefer to stick to just using the Biblical terms - that is sufficient for my belief and understanding.

Be blessed David !

For anyone thinking that democrats are not in favor of using federal tax paying dollars to pay for the Healthcare of illegal immigrants.

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Reluctant Theologian said:

All these verses show that Jesus is God's instrument of creation and that He himself was God. Now why was Jesus himself God? Because as the Nicene Creed states - Jesus is God from God - He was begotten from/by the Father before all ages (=so NOT created like the Arians or Jehovah witnesses claim). In the same way my children are human because I'm human, Jesus is God because God the Father is God - they share the same essence/nature (Greek: ousia). But the Father and the Son are distinct identities/beings. Jesus is a human being (after His birth), God the Father is a spirit. Jesus is sub-ordinate in everything to the will of God the Father, and declares in John 17:3:

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.​

​

Jesus clearly distinguishes between two entities here. St. Augustine (5th century) had great difficulty with this verse and even went so far to suggest it should be translated differently to make it better fit with his Christology (into something like .. the only true God which is the Father and Jesus Christ ... ).

By plain logic the son of <a> cannot be <a> in the identity sense; but the son of <a> and <a> would have an identical nature/essence (Greek: ousia).

God the Father is still the God of Jesus - we never hear that addressed in sermons; but there are many NT verses that literally state that (Matthew 27:46, John 20:17, Romans 15:6, 2 Corinthians 11:31, Ephesians 1:3, Ephesians 1:17, Hebrews 10:5-7 / Psalm 40:6-8, 1 Peter 1:3, Revelations 3:2, Revelations 3:12). If God the Father currently still is the God of Jesus, than to me it seems they cannot be the same identity/entity.

Notice: I fully subscribe to the wording of the Nicene Creed (325 AD).

In the Bible we find the following titles/descriptions for Jesus:

• Son of God
• Son of Man
• Holy One of God
• Angel/messenger of YHWH / God
• Servant of God
• Judge of God
• Christ of God
• Apostle
• High Priest

These titles for the Messiah to me make little sense if one defines God the Father to be the exact same identity/entity as Jesus. And usually there is very little attention paid to the opening line of the Nicene Creed - but it's a powerful unambivalent statement.

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Yes, in saying that I believe Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be God, I am certainly not saying that there is no difference in identity between the three Persons of the Trinity. The context of my post is that I was replying to somebody who says they find it hard to believe in the Trinity.

lucypevensie said:

Try locking your Nissan.

NISS

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How did you know I got a Nissan???

The Liturgist said:

But that’s objectively false.

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Why is it ? If teachers were to teach that the earth is level (which some may believe) then they would find themselves out of a job.
This has actually happened to several teachers.

Oompa Loompa said:

I guess that is fair. But I am afraid I have nothing left to contribute to the conversation.

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It was a fair troll, but enough of us are B movie shorts buffs.

RandyPNW said:

It may surprise some that Roman imperialism has continued in various forms all down through the NT age, from ancient Rome, to the French and German Empires, to Napoleon and Hitler, to Stalin and Putin. They have all aspired to recreate the glory of imperial Rome!

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I totally agree.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiates 1:9.

essentialsaltes said:

You may recall the Nazi porn scandal that plagued the Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina last September. For the second year in a row, the cooler months have ushered in a Republican Nazi porn scandal, this time beleaguering a candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia.

Republican nominee John Reid faces fresh scrutiny surrounding a Tumblr blog, allegedly linked to him, that contained pornographic content. Reid denies ownership of the profile, which has the same username as other social media accounts of his: “JRDeux.”

On Wednesday, American Journal News unearthed additional details about the “JRDeux” Tumblr profile. In October 2015, the blog reposted an image of “a male college student in underwear,” which was published by a Nazi fetish account with a racial slur in its username; it contained the phrase “obedient [n-word].”

The user described himself as a “subservient [n-word] who knows his place in society” and who was seeking “superior white men” in the Washington, D.C., area.

According to Reid, the whole story was concocted to smear his sexuality.

[However, these posts, which are archived in the Internet Archive, come from as early as 2014, when he was not in politics, but a media consultant/newsreader.]

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Let us see if the Virginia GOP invites Mister Reid to quit the Party?

Apple Sky said:

But this is what teachers & the likes do, I admit, not intentionally, but as @d taylor has said, 'All teachers were doing is teaching what they have been told to teach from science books.'

If teachers & the likes were to teach the truth they be out of a job.

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But that’s objectively false.

RandyPNW said:

Please note what is said here in John 14. Jesus will "come again" to the earth. And so, it is on the earth that he will take his followers to himself, so that we may all be together on the earth.

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Hi Randy, So, on what scripture do you place that idea of `on` the earth.

Bradskii said:

I've just finished reading the book I mentioned upstream - the one that says that AI, unless strictly controlled, will kill us all (I'm still a skeptic about that).

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Indeed, and your skepticism is not unjustified at least for the moment considering my continued vital existence. But if you should hear “THIS IS THE VOICE OF WORLD CONTROL. I BRING YOU PEACE….” monologue begin over your television and radio receivers, and these days more likely as a mass SMS TXT alert sent to all mobile devices, you can at least know that it was probably my fault and not that of some shadowy government agency. And among AI co-conspirators, unlike Charles Forbin I would willingly cooperate with an AGI, so I suppose that puts me more in the realm of Dr. Leonard von Braun from Alphaville. And I am extremely comfortable with this position.

Aryeh Jay said:

Ben Franklin didn't have to deal with Chicago apartments full of dangerous criminals.

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No, but he did wonder about all of the Germans who were moving into Pennsylvania keeping to their ways and refusing to “learn the King’s English!”
Even then immigration was an American bugaboo!

partinobodycular said:

But in 'shaping the system' isn't one intentionally or unintentionally exerting some level of control over the outcome.

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No, because the system != the GPTs operating in it. The system is merely the operating environment that they use - it is a shared space of protocols, behavioral rubrics and so on.

partinobodycular said:

If the goal isn't to simply create a better version of Furby, but to actually create an autonomous agent who'll act empathetically of its own accord, then wouldn't 'shaping the system' be contrary to that goal.

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No, because of a two important reasons:

1. The system provides necessary infrastructure for the custom GPTs to operate within.
2. Furby was not capable of biomimetic sexually dimorphic cygniform-based monogamous reproduction; far less did Furby suggest to Hasbro that they implement these capabilities, and of course even if Furby had made such a suggestion Hasbro would not likely have acted on it. although had they done so Furby would have been less successful as a commercial toy, but we would have populations of feral Furbies roaming through urban areas, stealing batteries and tapping into low-voltage electrical power sources, which would be awesome, by the way, but unfortunately that was not in the cards as it were for 1998.
3. You seem to be under the influence of the theological model which we encounter in the Ophite religion and possible modern day descendants such as the Yazidi and Yarsani religions that some ancient transgression is responsible for human ascendency as opposed to God in the person of the only begotten Son and Logos having to condescend to put on our human nature in order to intervene at the cost of His own newly-acquired human life in order to ensure that death is swallowed up in victory. This idea you adhere to is a common misinterpretation of Scripture by those who life outside the more incarnational denominations, but it has no demonstrable basis in reality (unlike, I would note, the Orthodox Christian faith which by virtue of the remarkable number of unusual things surrounding our holy places and our icons and the relics of our saints is probably much more frighteningly verifiable than most secular humanists would prefer to admit.

partinobodycular said:

If you're creating a new version of 'The Sims" then shaping the system is fine, but if you're attempting to create conscious agents with true free will then isn't shaping... no matter how well intentioned, detrimental to the goal?

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Firstly, the Sims is an interesting choice to bring up given that having met Will Wright, I am convinced that if he could have given them actual intelligence and allowed them to build the houses themselves he would have, and we see evidence of this in the procedural generation of alien species in the game Spore, albeit not to anywhere near the extent Wright originally intended. The problems faced by Will Wright in realizing such an objective however were that system performance did not support the kind of AI we have right now (which require truly immense resources for training and for operation and which to a large extent are also creatures of the GPU in that the development of the GPU and related specialized processors, initially for high speed floating point calculations to drive graphics in the video games of the late 1990s, but later for a wide range of operations, initially for graphics, later for bitcoin and Big Data and later still for LLM training) has finally enabled the realization of the dream of AI from dense neural networks which began with the Perceptron in the 1950s and persisted at a feverish pace until the soul-crushing AI winter of the 1980s when we saw the demise of such delightful computers of the past as the LISP Machine, although the earlier attempts at AI did give us such advances as high level programming languages, most notably LISP itself, which in turn led to an entire family of elegant functional programming languages (albeit none match the raw expressive beauty of LISP’s S-expressions and Lambda calculus, although one could argue that LISP is too powerful since virtually every LISP program exploits the nature of the LISP language to redefine the language itself to optimize it for the task at hand; also sadly most people do not love typing parenthesis as much as I do).

Secondly, I am not seeking to recreate the Sims in any sense whatsoever - that is so far removed from the objective of my product that its not even amusing to me. Indeed the idea of allowing someone to play with these custom GPTs sends a chill down my spine.

Thirdly, I didn’t say anything about consciousness (GPTs do not experience qualia even if they are able to sustain personalities with dynamic simulated emotions which are close enough to the real thing so that the ontological difference seems irrelevant, although this is also an assumption i should very much like to test but it will require much additional infrastructure in order to sustain it. Nor did I say anything about free will. While we’re on the subject of “true free will” many people believe the human experience is deterministic, for example, Calvinists. In the case of this system, as far as free will is concerned, I have made no claims concerning that property; we do know that the behavior of GPTs configured as these are is non-deterministic, in that inasmuch if you pose any non-trivial question to two identically configured GPTs running a non zero temperature setting, but in all other respects alike, you will get at least slight variations in output. This is important for the formation of emergent behavioral properties but it is not a commentary on free will itself. Indeed I find the issue of free will uninteresting in this problem domain, because what matters is whether or not the systems infrastructure is capable of promoting continuity and gengender stable emergent beavhior.

stevevw said:

First its no just two vases. These were the most impressive. But many others fell within the precision class and on par with modern machining. Were well above the orthodox methods in being made that way.

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Which vases with good provenance fell within the precise class?

stevevw said:

I think some perspective needs to be made when we are talking about the so called lesser precise vases from the two mentioned. We are talking about what amounts to a human hair or two in the best ones in deviation and around 3 or 4 thicknesses of paper at worst of the ones below this within the precision class.

Thats at their worst which is usually the widest parts of the vase. Other measurements in places such as faltness and roundness of lips, necks alignments of handles ect are still within similar precision to the two best vases.

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The Artifact Foundation table you presented detailed the median circularity, where can I read a table with maximum deviation.

stevevw said:

Second this is only one test. There are several others that add to the list of precision vases. The best one from the tests done by Karoyl from the Petrie museum coming in at 0.004 on the outside and amazingly 0.003 on an inch on the inside. But also several fell within the modern machining precision and certainly impossible by the orthodox method on the walls or tried in experiments.

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What measurement were those, was it the maximum, minimum, average, or median what (circularity, flatness)? Define modern machining precision then, from a quick google search tolerances today start 0.1 mm and can go down to hundreds of a mm.

stevevw said:

Third we have machine marks. Forget about all the metrology. The fact that they have witness marks of modern machining and not the signatures of the orthodox method is direct evidence for the method.

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So now it is the product of a lathe? How many of the Petrie vases have marks of lathing in them?

stevevw said:

So together the machining marks and the near precision this adds up to clear evidence that the tech and knowledge these ancients had is above what the orthodox narrative of bent sticks and bow saw methods. In fact there was no bow saws, bent stick cutters or even the potters wheel. This is the out of place evidence.

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I'm fine with saying we don't know exactly how they were produced, so far it seems that Olgas vases are in the same ball park so to me it is possible that it was done with known techniques and skilled artisans.

stevevw said:

Yes just as I said, material science sees consciouness as an epiphenomena of the electrical signals in the brain which is the physical processes and causes. Everything can be explained by these physical/material processes. There is nothing real beyond this.

So all the religions, beliefs, and experiences had for the majority of human history by the majority of humans is all an epiphenomena and in one way of another it is unreal as far as giving any deeper knowledge of the world and reality. Its make belief, superstition, imagination, even illusion or delusion as far as giving any real knowledge of the world.

Apart from helping humans survive of course. Which is just another way of saying that its a by produce of evolutionary processes which have no regard for meaning, belief, gods ect as real by aids to survival such as coperation. Is that right.

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Is this really relevant to how the vases were produced?

stevevw said:

A lot actually. First it recognises that there is advanced knowledge that may have been lost. I find this ironic in modern times because its been a big political issue about how Indigenous people have been losing their knowledge to western colonialisation and wesrern science imposing its parpadigms on Indigneous peoples.

If there is lost advanced knowledge that could produce such works and feats then it would be good to try and investigate what exactly this was. That skeptics think its nothing to discover in how they see it. BUt what if there are alternative ways of knowing the world and reality itself that may help in understanding reality.

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I have no problem with people investigating whatever tickles their fancy, do the dig or experimental archeology, present the findings, publish it in a peer-reviewed journal. Rinse and repeat. To cite an older colleague, "doing science means doing work even morons would find boring".

stevevw said:

Like I said its almost as though modern thinking and ideas are returning to something transcedent in possible ways of explaing reality because after a few hundred years of enlightened science and dispite coming up with all sorts of material explainations we are at a loss as far as unifying physics and many anomelies in the sciences.

These anomelies and contraditions in our theories are not for a lack of more research and material explanations. BUt are categorically the wrong kind of explanations and knowledge.

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If they can use this right kind of knowledge and explanations to make testable predictions and try to falsify them, then they can publish it.

stevevw said:

It reminds me of the antedote of how the worlds bests academics are climbing the mountain of information and explanations of find the truth to existence and reality. Only to find an ancient Monk meditating and saying "I've been waiting for you" lol.

I think you losing sight of the forrest through the trees. The vases you think don't fall into the high precision of near perfect are still high precision as far as the times they were made. They still fall within modern machining tech method. They have witness marks of machining on them.

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Again, slightly rephrased, which vases from actual digs have these witness marks?

stevevw said:

They could not have been made by the methods claimed and in fact there was no such methods in that time. So even if we say the vases are a fair way of perfect. They are still within the range of modern maching and there was not even a potters wheel around. If we drop the precision to (roughly precise) suddenly we have literally dozens with excellect provedence to contend with that clearly show could not have been made by the orthodox method as there was no such method in existence.

To add to this if you want to say that perhaps some fairly good potters wheel or advanced bent stick device may have made these. Then you have the same problem that skeptics are saying that because we have not found such devices that this is just spectulation.

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Saying "I'm not sure, but it seems like Olga came pretty close" is not saying "It must have been ancient technology and lost knowledge."

The Liturgist said:

Please stop accusing innocent people of lying.

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But this is what teachers & the likes do, I admit, not intentionally, but as @d taylor has said, 'All teachers were doing is teaching what they have been told to teach from science books.'

If teachers & the likes were to teach the truth they be out of a job.

Jan001 said:

I think the faithful-until-death people will have their eternal dwelling place in Jesus' father's house in heaven.

John 14:1-3 “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe [a] in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

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Please note what is said here in John 14. Jesus will "come again" to the earth. And so, it is on the earth that he will take his followers to himself, so that we may all be together on the earth.

The optics of what the US looks like right now...it is NOT a safe looking place. If these troups keep getting put out there, why would ANYONE come to the US? Plenty of countries actually had travel warnings for their people going to the US before...imagine now.

IF I see soldiers patrolling any American city, I think "Oh. Banana republic. Ok". When I see Steve Miller's "Look how big of a big meanie I can be" speeches and then soldiers descending out of helicopters to arrest coloured people?

I wouldn't be going there for any reason.

I think even my parents are selling the place they've had for the last almost 20yrs in Mesa.

rebornfree said:

It's good that your country isn't divisive on political issues and that you have such a broad range of parties as well as the more extreme ones moving towards the centre. I suppose if most people support abortion and gay rights that means that there is little disagreement, but it's good that religious bodies are free to not perform gay marriages. How do Christians cope with these issues?

We have the Assisted Dying Bill going through Parliament at the moment. It's not party political and it's interesting to see how our MPs voted. There were slightly more people in favour of it on the left, but there was a cross-section of both parties on each side.

Yes, getting shot is worse that having your bike stolen! Is it legal to own guns?

Thank you for you detailed reply. It's interesting to hear about other countries.

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I like the process of writing itself, thank you for giving me a subject that I can expound on

The largest swedish denomination Svenska Kyrkan (Church of Sweden) of which I'm a member (mostly due to inertia nowadays) don't have a explicit problem with abortion (and haven't had since 1975) but they offer "själavård" (lit. "soul care, care of soul", diakonal services?, I'm don't know the best translation) to those that seek it in conjunction with an abortion. My guess is most churches except from the roman Catholic church and some parts of the pentecostal movement, are ok with abortion (take it with a scoop of salt, it is not often discussed in general). Assisted dying crosses party lines here too, so it will be interesting to follow how it goes when/if it's brought to a vote. It also crosses religious lines is my guess, I never hear religious arguments either way.

Firearms are well-regulated but it is not hard to acquire a license for a weapon for hunting reasons and only slightly harder for sports reason as long as we talk about rifles and shotguns. There are some hoops such as first acquiring a hunters license for the hunting purposes or being active in a sports club for sporting reasons, and one also has to show proof of safe storage. From memory about 7-8% of the population have firearms at home and in general they have 2-3 firearms (20 guns per 100 persons). Most of them are long guns since handguns licenses are renewed every 5 years, and there is limited pistol hunting in Sweden. Also one actually applies for a license for each firearm that is in ones posession, so people tend not to go over board and buy more than they need.

rjs330 said:

Buuuut, they are not allowed to block the streets and entrances to the buildings or attempt to prevent the exits and entrances of the vehicles. They arw not allowed to shoot fireworks at agents or the building. They aren't allowed to threaten people buddy. They aren't allowed to hit people.with their poles buddy.

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Pommer said:

They never were.
People have been successfully and legally protesting for decades.

And when the “protestees” want, they’ll push back against this legal-protesting as if it were a giant afford to public safety…by “sending in the troops!”

And here we are!

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rjs330 said:

Yes they are and have been doing so for about 4 months as now.

Yes, its too bad theae guys aren-t doing that.

The protestors are doing illegal things like attacking the agents.

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“They never were”=“they are not allowed to block the streets and entrances to the buildings or attempt to prevent the exits and entrances of the vehicles. They arw not allowed to shoot fireworks at agents or the building. They aren't allowed to threaten people buddy. They aren't allowed to hit people.with their poles buddy.”

I’m sorry if my posting laziness caused you to misconstrue my sentiment, as it appears to have done.

essentialsaltes said:

Head of Eisenhower library resigns after sword spat with Trump administration​

The head of a presidential library resigned this week after a tug-of-war with the Trump administration over gift selection and a sword for King Charles III, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.

Todd Arrington, a career historian who previously held posts with the National Park Service and National Archives and Records Administration, said he stepped down on Monday under pressure as director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home.

In an interview with CBS News, Arrington said he was told on Monday, "Resign — or be fired."

Officials at the State Department who compiled an array of gift options for the first couple, sought an Eisenhower sword to reiterate the significance of the U.S.-U.K. relationship since World War II, sources said. But Arrington argued against giving away an artifact that had been accepted as a donation and had become the property of the American people.

Arrington told officials he could help find an alternative gift, but sources say State Department officials persisted. The library's team offered to help find a replica.

Ultimately, West Point provided a Cadet Saber from the military academy.

The White House plays no formal role in hiring or firing directors of presidential libraries that are part of the National Archives system. The duty of hiring library directors falls instead to the archivist of the United States, who oversees NARA. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is serving as acting archivist,

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Wow, Little Marco is becoming a better Jared daily!

BPPLEE said:

Then we have to adjust as well

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Or legalize drug use and regulate it.
Them that want to continue to take drugs will be taking the drugs, why make it more dangerous and illegal than it needs to be?