Dikaioumenoi said:

I'm really not interested in the rhetoric. If my exegesis is wrong, show it from the passage. If you can't do so, then let's give someone else the opportunity.

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Anyone can have at it all they want. I simply summarized some truths of Christianity, digested from years of study. I have no desire to argue the points now. Maybe later.

Always in His Presence said:

The first American President to be awarded the countries highest honor and all you can do is try to minimize it?

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Well, yeah, when the claim is that an honor is especially high, it's perfectly valid to look at the conditions under which it's bestowed. It looks like it's handed out to each new SK president and then to various other heads of state whenever the SK president feels like it.

SabbathBlessings said:

I guess we will find out soon enough if the God of Love could personally write and unloving law that is His Testimony that He keeps in the Most Holy of His Temple, who He tells us who He shows mercy to Exo20:6 even when the death penalty is deserved.

To me, it shows a misunderstanding of the character of God which His law is a reflection of. Psa19:7 Rom7:12

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When Moses was with God and the Israelites were performing debauchery, was it love that God had for them when He told Moses He was going to destroy them?

God had a reason why He formulated the Ten Commandments about duty, and it is not for us to try to change what they meant. They certainly were not portraying love.

Belk said:

Oh, the whole thing is horrific I grant you. That is part of why I think we should change our tactics to something that reduces the difficulties of addiction rather then increase it.

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Like reducing supply by blowing up narco-terrorist drug boats on open water?

Bradskii said:

And this is what used to happen under Obama: U.S. Navy Grabs Suspected Pirates
ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos

​

'All of the captured suspects are middle-aged Somali men and all are now in the brig. Their fishing boat, weapons and other tools are being held as evidence.

The men were given food, medical attention and a quick shower as they were processed in the hull of the ship. Their torn clothes were replaced with orange jumpsuits as they began what will be a several-week stay with the U.S. Navy. From there, they will face trial on shore, most likely by Kenya, an African country that signed an agreement with the United States to prosecute suspected pirates.'

Do you follow? They weren't summarily killed. They were captured, evidence collected, they were processed and put on trial. That's what civilised countries do.

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I do not think you follow. What part of drug cartels being designated as international terrorists while we are fighting a Global War on Terror do you not understand? They are no different than as if a boat full of ISIS fighters were on a boat full of explosives. Your defense of drug thugs, gangsters, and cartel members is why the democratic party is politically doomed.

Always in His Presence said:

and yet - - - you are still missing proof -

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Nope. I've seen the proof. I'm just not sharing it with you.

Chesterton said:

Seriously? That's excellent. Nice work.

I thought they are all programmed to "do no harm" so to speak. Are you talking about some kind of private AI's or something?

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The AI/LLM being used for illegal activity is likely private and/or hacked AI/LLM. I can only speak for what I have seen it used for. It can be used to create "virtual" child sexual abuse material (CSAM). How? The perpetrator takes a perfectly innocent image from social media and with AI/LLM they can create disgusting and disturbing images and videos. It is traded via the dark web primarily. Some jurisdictions have already created laws to specifically address the issue of "virtual" CSAM.

Strong in Him said:

The verse that you quoted - presumably to prove David wrong - does not have the word "firmament" but the word "sky".
So that's the first thing. The second is that it does not say that the sky/firmament IS molten glass.

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The historical-grammatical meaning of raqiya' in Gen. 1:6–8 is very clearly a literally solid firmament.

President Trump says he'll cut tariffs on China after meeting with Xi Jinping​

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he reached an agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping on soybean purchases, fentanyl precursors, and rare earth exports, paving the way for a finalized trade deal to be signed "pretty soon" that he said would last for at least a year and result in an immediate reduction in tariffs.

China will immediately begin purchasing "tremendous amounts" of soybeans and other agricultural products from the United States, the president told reporters flying with him on Air Force One.

A deal, Trump said, was also reached to keep China's proposed export controls on rare earth minerals from taking effect. "That roadblock is gone now. There's no roadblock at all on rare earth," he explained

Yarddog said:

That sounds exactly like how a MAGAist would actually believe.

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and yet - - - you are still missing proof -

fhansen said:

I've done it many times. What you need to do is follow the advice I added to the end of my last post,. Then we'll have something substantive to talk about.

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I'm really not interested in the rhetoric. If my exegesis is wrong, show it from the passage. If you can't do so, then let's give someone else the opportunity.

Bradskii said:

I guess we're at the same point as I got to above. You've now reached the point where the extra judicial killing of someone just because Trump says he can is acceptable. Shoot people on the street? If Trump says it's OK, then sure. Blow up a house because drug dealers use it? If Trump says it's OK, then sure. Take out a few people without having to produce any evidence? If Trump says it's OK, then sure.

Remember when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Ave. And suffer no consequences? Now you're agreeing that he can.

Hard to do that when they've been blown up.

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Emotional hyperbole because you discovered that you did not know where and when Miranda rights apply?

Sif said:

Then in another situation myself and several coworkers used an LLM to help identify an image that lead to the rescue of a kidnapped child.

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Seriously? That's excellent. Nice work.

Sif said:

I have seen the use of AI/LLMs to do some very criminal and very disturbing things.

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I thought they are all programmed to "do no harm" so to speak. Are you talking about some kind of private AI's or something?

linux.poet said:

I think C will work, but perhaps Python and C# are better choices to save on development time? This application needs to handle text, images, and PDF files.

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Don’t use C for that. C is not good at handling text. C is good for writing device drivers and kernel modules where memory has to be managed manually, and occasional assembler is needed to send specific bits of code to the hardware to handle device interrupts. In fact, C is notoriously unpleasant for handling text, except compared to languages that predated it, but C strings are buggy and often lead to memory leaks, buffer overflows and other problems, since any string of characters your program accepts from a file or user input, you have to allocate memory for it, and then remember to de-allocate that memory when you’re done (or else your program has a memory leak) and you also have to control the input the user makes or they can do a buffer overflow attack and use your program to hack the computer its running on, or such overflows can happen accidentally, crashing your program.

Python and C# (and Java, which you indicated you knew) are infinitely better for what you’re talking about. Python also has a very large array of image processing libraries (but Java, C# and the various Javascript platforms like Node.JS, and also Ruby, are fairly competitive).

Dikaioumenoi said:

The only thing I'm interested in is whether you can engage the exegesis and provide a rebuttal.

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I've done it many times. What you need to do is follow the advice I added to the end of my last post,. Then we'll have something substantive to talk about.

David Lamb said:

I would add that molten glass is liquid, not solid anyway.

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Good point, I missed that.

fhansen said:

Unfortunately, it won't.

For myself, your post is one more in a litany of pseudo or semi-scholarly skewings of the Christian faith using quasi-plausible arguments to undermine the historical understanding of passages, changing the faith that hasn’t changed in over 2 millennia simply because it didn't need to, in an effort to support a novel and deficient albeit now popular theology. Christianity received all it needed at the beginning and required no additional man-based help on the basics.

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The only thing I'm interested in is whether you can engage the exegesis and provide a rebuttal.

AI (or as I prefer to call it, LLM) can be an excellent tool. However, it has flaws and can be misused like many tools. I have identified several times an LLM did not process data correctly and provided inaccurate results. Then in another situation myself and several coworkers used an LLM to help identify an image that lead to the rescue of a kidnapped child. Without the use of an LLM the task would have been exponentially more difficult and longer, and that's assuming it could have even been done without the use of an LLM.

I have seen the use of AI/LLMs to do some very criminal and very disturbing things. AI/LLM is a tool and nothing more. It can be used for some pretty good things, some mundane and fun things, and for some very insidious things. Ultimately it is the human behind the AI/LLM that is the benefit or threat.

linux.poet said:

I have a pipe dream program to make that I want to be cross-platform. However, if I can develop it, it will save me thousands of hours of labor and is probably worth at least a million bucks. I need a language that will run into an exe and/or linux repo.

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How computationally intensive is the program going to be? Do you have any idea about that?

Also if you don’t want people reading your source code, you probably want a compiled language, at least at the bytecode level like Java or C#, or perhaps a full compiled language. There are several very user friendly languages that are fully memory managed and produce fast binaries; D is my favorite, but Rust and Go are also very popular, especially Rust. D I particularly like, and a friend of mine is one of the leaders of the D community and wrote several libraries for it; its almost infinitely easier than writing C++ code, and also easier than writing C code, which I have to do * a lot * for my job, developing embedded systems, many of which are running on real time operating systems (in some cases I have to use assembler, or assembler in C, but in all cases careful manual memory management is required). When I don’t have to do manual memory management, I rejoice.

However, if you don’t need the performance, or the obfuscation of your code, that a compiled language provides (and of course, compiled applications like C++, Rust, D, Objective C, Java, C# and so on, can be decompiled), if I were you, I would use Python or one of the Javascript client side options like Node.JS since you already know that.

But if you’re good at Java, you should probably just do that frankly; its probably fast enough for your program, it runs on Linux and Windows and many other platforms, its GUI output has been fully modernized and is now superb, and also, you can use other languages on the Java VM, like on the .NET VM, such as Python, Scala and Clojure, which if you learn them can speed things up. Although I should say the Java implementation of Python is not guaranteed to be compatible with the vast array of libraries people have written for Python, which are the other major reason for using Python - it has a fabulous array of boutique libraries for doing absolutely everything.

However Python programs are scripts, so unless you take special measures, people would find it easier to steal your intellectual property, but they’re going to do that anyway if your software is as good an idea as you think, which it might well be.

Another thing you should consider by the way is that these days, it is increasingly important for Windows for software to be available via Microsoft’s Windows Store, their App Store rip off. It seems probable that Windows will eventually stop allowing users to easily install software not published in that way; I believe this is already the case on some platforms, just as Apple forces you to either jailbreak your iPad and iPhone or run only software from their App Store (and even the Google based Android phone is locked down, the open source Linux kernel notwithstanding).

By the way - you should also consider whether your application could be delivered via the web, because doing that solves the problem of portability to different operating systems altogether. Its also the only way to completely block people from being able to steal your backend code - if your web server is properly secured, since the backend code on a web application is hidden from users, so unless you encode your core application logic in the front end, which obviously one should not do in your case, it would work very well.

Dikaioumenoi said:

Well that settles it, folks!

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Unfortunately, it won't.

For myself, your post is one more in a litany of pseudo or semi-scholarly skewings of the Christian faith using quasi-plausible arguments to undermine the historical understanding of passages, changing the faith that hasn’t changed in over 2 millennia simply because it didn't need to, in an effort to support a novel and deficient albeit now popular theology. Christianity received all it needed at the beginning and required no additional man-based help on the basics.

Study more. Find out what and why the early Christians thought as they did. Go back and read the patristics, the earlier theologians, the early councils, the early church histories and catechisms

Hentenza said:

I agree but I think that the drug problem is a bit more problematic than you suggest. I know of several people in my family and families of my friends that have either died because of drugs or have drugs destroyed their lives so I don’t particularly have much compassion for those involved in the drug trade.

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Oh, the whole thing is horrific I grant you. That is part of why I think we should change our tactics to something that reduces the difficulties of addiction rather then increase it.

Strong in Him said:

That says "sky" not "dome".
It also says it is AS molten glass - "as" and "like" are similes; comparisons.

That verse does not say "the sky IS a molten looking glass.".

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I would add that molten glass is liquid, not solid anyway.

NewLifeInChristJesus said:

You are arguing for a reality that we do not experience. It is clear (or at least it should be) that receiving Jesus (believing in Him) is what gives us the right to become children of God (Jn 1:12) and that God giving birth to us is what makes us His offspring (Jn 1:13). And it is clear (or at least it should be clear) that God giving birth to us is what translates out of the kingdom of the devil into His kingdom (Jn 3:5). Metaphysical reasoning is not needed to understand this.

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This reply is dismissive and rhetorically overconfident. You continue to make a category confusion without acknowledging what I've repeatedly pointed out. The ordo salutis concerns what is logically prior, not what is empirically perceptible. We do not "experience" election, calling, or regeneration as discrete sensations, yet their effects manifest in faith and repentance. The lack of direct experience does not make them unreal; it simply marks them as divine acts beneath consciousness.

John 1:12-13 actually supports this. Verse 12 describes the human side ("receiving" Christ and believing in His name), while verse 13 explains the cause of that response: "who were born... of God." The verb "who were born" (ἐγεννήθησαν) is aorist passive, locating the birth as a completed divine action antecedent to and causative of the believing response. The "right to become" children of God (ἐξουσίαν γενέσθαι) is consequent upon faith, but the birth that makes one a child is God's act alone. You have reversed the logic of the text.

John 3:3-5 teaches the same: apart from new birth, one cannot even see the kingdom, let alone enter it. That is not a post-faith event; it is what enables faith itself. Nicodemus' problem was not disbelief in data but incapacity for spiritual perception.

So this isn't "metaphysical reasoning"; it's exegesis. You have not directly engaged hardly any of the argumentation I have made from Scripture, including the grammatical argument of the OP.

I have been following this discussion, but many urgent things are going on that limit my posting. The responses to Sabbathblessings have not been in Christian love. God gave the 10 Commandments, so we can assume that they are good. They do convict us of sin, but they are also good for humanity. This is even evident from civil law supporting most of them even in non-Christian and non-Jewish religions and countries. However, the fourth commandment is older than the rest and not actually Hebrew, since the Hebrews didn’t exist when it was first given. Nobody would argue that murder is justified because we are not under the law. So arguing that keeping the Sabbath is not justified for the same reason is not logical. The early church essentially moved the Sabbath to Sunday, and those who are members of congregations that agree have submitted to the authority of those churches. It is their choice, and God will judge as He wills. Since they are not actually trying to break the fourth commandment in actions and keep the Lord’s Day holy, the responsibility seems to be on those in authority in the churches rather than individuals. Then we have Paul’s writings that would indicate that Gentiles are not required to keep the Jewish law. However, keeping the Jewish law while understanding that Christ fulfilled the law and that we live by faith through love does not mean that somebody shouldn’t keep the law if they see it as an expression of love toward God. I don’t cheat on my wife because I’m under the law, but I don’t do it because I love God and my wife and believe God gave good instruction. Nobody would tell me that it is okay to cheat on my wife because I’m not under the law. Maybe, some people think that people who keep the Sabbath are weak, and maybe they are, but Paul made it clear how to deal with it in Romans 14. Choosing to keep the law is far from justification. I get no points for not having killed anybody. I get no points for keeping the Sabbath, except that I find it is good for my closeness to God. My cane helps me walk, but I wouldn’t throw it away because it shows my weakness.