popocatepetl
I'm the guy who edits every comment I write at least four times. Sorry.
User ID: 215
popocatepetl
3d ago
Well, it's more than a nothingburger. At minimum, public education will be forever changed by LLMs doing assignments for kids. At the same time, I disagree with the projections coming from the AI enthusiast/AI doomer camps. I don't expect to see anytime soon:
- an AI-generated serial hitting the Top 500 views on Royal Road
- an AI-generated humor Youtube channel cracking 50k subscribers
- an AI-generated Op-Ed or political essay trending on X
What I mean by these choices is that I don't expect AI to do even very low-brow creative work within a decade. (Except by technicality, wherein the popularity comes from "Look what an AI did", or a human has directed the creative process behind the scenes.) Let alone the sort of self-improving singularity bootstrap AI fans/blackpillers are expecting.
popocatepetl
5d ago
I feel most people past 28 or so who still play complex games are going back to the well of The One they started a decade ago: Dota, WoW, Counterstrike, TF2, EU4, Football Manager. Pick your poison.
I don't think changing times factor in at all, because I vaguely perceive young people forming similar attachments to games with names like "PubG" or "Genshin Impact".
I tend to think Jesus believed 'works' were a lot more essential to salvation than most Protestants (even most Catholics) would like.
Grace leads to good works because grace remakes men morally. "Grace without good works" is incoherent; if you are not doing good works, you have not accepted grace. The dispute between protestants and catholics lies in the catholic church's offer of a bargain by which a favor from God could be purchased: that you could do a good work to "buy" grace.
They didn't. Jesus told them to go buy some swords earlier that same week, explicitly so that he could fulfill the prophecy
As told in Luke, they already had two on hand.
There's not a single place in the New Testament where violence against one's enemies is encouraged or even sanctioned.
There is no occurrence where violence would be appropriate, save for crucifixion, which was Christ's intention to suffer. A centurion approaches Jesus in Matthew and Jesus praises him and says that he will enter God's kingdom with no stipulation that he give up his army gig.
What is forbidden by Christ is retribution or vengeance. That a Christian cannot take up a sword in hatred or for his own personal ends is beyond question.
I would say the pacifism of the early Christians is inexplicable without the apparently ubiquitous belief that Jesus was going to come back very soon to establish the kingdom and destroy Rome and the nations; in other words, earthly Christians didn't need to do any killing because God was about to do it for them. When this didn't pan out naturally doctrine had to evolve.
It depends on what you mean. The actions of the apostles recorded in scripture are strong evidence for any Christian that believes in biblical inerrancy — which I believe is all of them. They certainly acted as if they could not use violence to defend their own persons against persecution. However, this does not track 1:1 with the question of whether a Christian can be a soldier, police officer, defend their family against a rapist, etc: that is, commit violence not on one's own behalf. The apostles did not address that question or find themselves in that situation.
(EDIT: I see Romans 13 gets cited a lot in defense of Christian police officers, despite the main focus being Christians obeying the police. Looks cut and dry on that one.)
As for the behavior of Christians in the 2nd century, one is perfectly entitled to think individuals from that time period might be wrong about doctrine, same as one might think for the 6th century, 11th century, 15th century, or (now) 21st century.
If that's the case, he wasted a lot of time delivering ethical teaching.
His ethical teaching falls into the camps "you think you're doing enough, but you're nowhere near adequate by God's standards" or "you're hewing to the letter of the law rather than reaching the spirit of the law, which is what you know is right". Both those points are to a purpose. He avoids giving straightforward list of instructions, and he teaches in questions and riddles, because being a moral person does not mean lawyering your way around a contract of clear-cut rules as the Jews had been trying for several hundred years.
Absolutely. He did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them. The novelty of Jesus's teaching is entirely in the nature of Grace, not specific ethical teachings.
I was of this opinion once, from most of my childhood as a protestant and most of my adulthood as an atheist, but I've changed my mind — the text of scripture does seem to have fruit beyond the autistic literal definition of the words. A lot of protestants (or atheists who were protestants) are lead astray by things like "Sheathe thy sword, for all who take the sword shall perish with the sword" and don't step back to think: Wait a second, why do twelve disciples have swords three years into Jesus's ministry if Jesus actually teaches unconditional pacifism like the literal words suggest?
The steelman for your views is in the book of Acts, where the early Christians after Pentecost form what appears to be a commune. (There is also an incident right after this where a wealthy couple hold back some of their wealth, lie about it, and the Holy Spirit executes them on the spot.) I would encourage anyone to read these early chapters of Acts, because ostensibly the early Christians invested supernaturally with the Holy Spirit would be authorities on what Jesus actually meant. But again I would say there is a deeper meaning that goes beyond sanewashing cope.
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