> Show me the evidence > Sure, that's a reasonable request. Here are the eyewitness testimonies to Jesus's life, death, and Resurection > That's not evidence > Ok, how about the myriad of archeological findings that support the historical Biblical account? > That's not evidence > Alright, let's use science. The Big Bang and Fine tuning show that a Creator is more likely than not > That's not evidence > Ok, perhaps a philosophical argument will do the trick. Contingency, MOA, Moral argument, and the Kalam. > That's not evidence > Ok, it's hard to see what you'll accept as evidence at this point. I'm starting to think you don't actually want the evidence.

The Law of Noncontradiction and the Principle of Sufficient Reason are more similar than they first appear. They are not conclusions we reach, but the ground we stand on to reach anything at all. First, try to deny the Law of Noncontradiction, that nothing can both be and not be in the same respect at the same time, and you discover you cannot say anything that means something. You swept your own legs. Knowledge does not survive the attempt. Now try to deny the Principle of Sufficient Reason, that there is a reason why things are so, and an equally total collapse follows. Your experiences which are the data you take as evidence and the inferences you draw… all of these could now be uncaused, unexplained, and still look exactly the same. Nothing in the content of experience can rule that out. You lose the ability to know that you know anything about the world. You have embraced radical skepticism and you cannot even calculate a probability. The parallel is striking. In both cases the denial is not refuted by a higher premise, it is refuted by the fact that the denier is still trying to know something. The principles are not proved. They are what remains when the alternative has made proof, and knowledge, impossible. That is why both have always been treated as first principles rather than theorems. You do not establish them the way you establish other truths. You show that without them there are no other truths to establish. They are properly basic axioms of thought. Now that you know how foundational both principles are, what does the PSR specifically suggest about the existence of God?

“ 1 From whence this fear and unbelief? Hast thou, O Father, put to grief Thy spotless Son for me? And will the righteous Judge of men Condemn me for that debt of sin Which, Lord, was charged on thee? 2 Complete atonement thou hast made, And to the utmost farthing paid Whate’er thy people owed; How then can wrath on me take place, If sheltered in thy righteousness, And sprinkled with thy blood? 3 If thou hast my discharge procured, And freely in my room endured The whole of wrath divine, Payment God cannot twice demand, First at my bleeding Surety’s hand, And then again at mine. 4 Turn, then, my soul, unto thy rest; The merits of thy great High Priest Speak peace and liberty; Trust in his efficacious blood, Nor fear thy banishment from God, Since Jesus died for thee. “ - Augustus Toplady

A rhetorical question that God asked Job, and which He asks to all of us Do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with a mane? Do you make him leap like the locust? His majestic snorting is terrifying. He paws in the valley and exults in his strength; he goes out to meet the weapons. He laughs at fear and is not dismayed; he does not turn back from the sword. Upon him rattle the quiver, the flashing spear, and the javelin. With fierceness and rage he swallows the ground; he cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet. When the trumpet sounds, he says ‘Aha!’ He smells the battle from afar, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. — Job 39:19-25

My wife and I were having an ongoing argument that was discouraging to both of us and I felt the Lord give me wisdom for how to gently and lovingly resolve the issue. It happened just in time before my wife went to meet up with an atheist friend of hers who is going through a painful divorce and has basically no support. It was clear that God didn't just make a way for my wife and I to reconcile, but to remove blockers for my wife's ministry to her friend. I saw clearly how the Lord doesn't just deal in first order effects but also in second and third order in His wisdom, and never with a view that the blessing be hoarded.

It's fitting for a religion that appeals to men's carnal appetites to be gorging themselves daily at the worst time and slap the label "fasting" on it

The kind of statement you make when you don't think you'll be held liable for your actions.

"Creedal Christian" is the "cisgender" of religion. It invents a label for the historical default so the novelty can present itself as an equally legitimate category rather than a departure from it.

Such a wild time to be alive - AI is on its way to taking over everything - Energy and water scarcity are being solved - We have flying cars like Back to the Future - We're on the brink of or are already in WWIII - The investment and real estate markets will probably start nose diving very soon - We're due for a mega quake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone (37% chance that a megathrust earthquake of 7.1+ magnitude in this fault zone will occur in the next 50 years) - The El Nino we are experiencing is the worst ever on record, and will likely cause tremendous suffering next year - EVERYTHING is accelerating The question is, what is your trajectory? If you don't already know Jesus, now is the time to get right with Him. If you do know Him but are compromising, repent and ask the Lord to restore the joy of your salvation. In either case, repentance is the best posture. We are in the End Times, and you won't be prepared for what's coming outside of a vibrant relationship with God, which He invites you into freely and joyfully even now.

How do you spend time with God everyday? For me, it’s usually a smaller time of prayer in the morning before work followed by some extended afternoon/evening time before dinner where I have more runway. Also, do you take a sabbath’s rest?

The biggest reasoning mistake I see is mistaking the data for the explanation. Many such cases.

My wife and I were at Passion City church in Atlanta one Sunday morning years ago, and the guest preacher Chad Veach closed his opening prayer with a joke about a sports team. There was such a lack of reverence for God, it was incredible. The Lord called us out of that church shortly after. He made a mockery of prayer and God in front of hundreds, with a smirk on his face.

A common failure pattern I see using AI to build code based systems is that it often fails to reuse existing code to the fullest extent possible. For example, I asked AI to comb over a backend codebase and look for "code smells", which is an idea taken from the book 'Refactoring'. Code smells are patterns that make the code harder to work with over time, with well known solutions in each case. The AI identified a sync vs async mismatch that needed fixing, but instead of using existing functions that were perfectly capable of closing the gap, it suggested to write a new one, violating Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY), which would introduce a new code smell even as it fixed another. I'd argue that most devs wouldn't make this mistake, but the AI did and does so often enough that I have to remind it to reuse things intentionally, or it won't happen as often as I want. Reuse, like Occam's Razor (simplicity), is a higher order concept, even though it appears simple and lower order at first glance. Reuse requires a simple, yet higher order thought process to robustly apply in new situations...and that process is prioritization, which corresponds to the "Evaluate" rung in Bloom's Taxonomy. Since we understand that LLM based AI does not engage in higher order reasoning, and when it does it is only mimicking the reasoning traces of people's thinking it's seen a billion examples of, it cannot apply this principle robustly in new situations. When the AI does advocate for reuse, it's because it is using "apply" to copy what it has seen before, people reusing things, but it's not making a value judgement (prioritization) that code reuse is better for maintainability than implementing something new. Understand three things from first principles, and you'll understand how to get as much from AI as you can. - Supervised learning (and its application in Neural Networks) - Pearl's Causality - Bloom's Taxonomy

It's possible that the Mark of the Beast is irreversible because it will consume your will. Think Neuralink style chip in your forehead or hand that not only allows you to buy and sell, but interfaces with your mind in a way where you completely lose your ability to make independent decisions. The Mark may simply prevent you from repenting, even if you wanted to.

It's hard to see how the next 3 years won't be some of the most difficult that we've experienced economically.

Claiming the Trinity is just a 4th century creedal invention is like claiming gravity didn’t exist until Newton. The formal statement came later, but the reality and the scriptural data did not.

Concerning trend of believers saying their relationship with God has never been better while they refuse to obey His commands. Usually dealing with church attendance. "God and I are doing great and I haven't been going to church" If you are living in willful disobedience to God, your relationship with God has not "never been better." It's more likely that you need to repent, though God only knows your heart. He will welcome you back freely. “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?" - Luke 6:46 "Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment." - Proverbs 18:1

Conversely if a church says you're not saved because you do speak in tongues, don't listen to them. The point being, don't treat secondary issues as primary.

Posting that someone blocked you almost always reveals that it actually got under your skin. That undercuts the usual reason people announce it, to look unbothered, superior, or like the other person is the petty one. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t need to tell anyone. When in doubt, don’t post about it...silence looks stronger. It's no different to people going out of their way to tell you how much they don't care. You immediately understand just how much they care.