fhansen said:

That perfect being can love-He is love- and can delight as that imperfect being falls in love with love- and becomes perfected in love by the power of His grace. Love, necessarily, is both a gift, and a choice, of ours-and one that grows as we express or "invest" that gift. That perfect being revels as man blossoms into fulfiling his purpose, to become increasingly like Himself. That's the nature of love, to want the very best, the highest good, for the other.

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I'm not sure you're grasping the point of my question: "Can a perfectly holy and righteous being delight in that which is less than perfectly holy and righteous (man), more than that which is (Himself)?"

The question concerns the nature of holiness and righteousness. Perfect holiness and righteousness entail delighting preeminently in what is perfectly holy and righteous. If God's ultimate focus were on man rather than on Himself (that is, if the manifestation of His glory is not what drives His creative and redemptive purposes), then His ultimate delight would be directed toward what is imperfect. By definition, that would be unholy and unrighteous, a contradiction to His perfect nature.

Scripture repeatedly shows that God's ultimate delight is in His own holiness, wisdom, and glory (e.g., Isa. 43:6-7; 44:6; 48:9-12; 49:3; 61:3; 1 Sam. 12:20-22; Jer. 13:11; Hab. 2:14; Col. 1:16; Heb. 2:10; Rev. 1:8), including explicit references of this motive in His redemptive purposes (Ps. 25:7, 11; 79:9; Jer. 14:7; Acts 15:14; Rom. 1:5; Eph. 1:5-6; 1 John 2:12).

It is right -- and necessary -- for God to esteem Himself above all else, because nothing is more worthy of admiration than He is. To value His creatures above Himself would invert worth, constituting self-denial incompatible with His perfections. Human-centered theological tendencies often reflect our own rebellious desire to be God, minimizing the vast chasm between His greatness and our unworthiness.

You say, "That's the nature of love, to want the very best, the highest good, for the other." Well, what is the very best for us? Our greatest happiness is to know and enjoy God, which is only possible because He delights supremely in Himself and manifests His glory fully. If God's delight were primarily in sparing judgment or focusing solely on His grace, He would be withholding Himself from us (our greatest joy) and thus loving us less than He does. By delighting in Himself -- and thereby demonstrating fully who He is, in all His attributes -- God gives Himself to us for our enjoyment. In exalting His glory, He shares Himself with His creatures, allowing them to know and enjoy Him. That is the height of divine love; the Creator loving His own glory so perfectly that He shares it, giving us the supreme joy of participating in it.

prison diary

probinson said:

You never really "own" your home as it is now.

My annual property taxes are around $2,500. My home is worth nearly $300k. Even if I've paid off my mortgage and I "own" my home outright, If I don't pay my $2,500 in property taxes annually, the government can take it from me. Seems pretty ludicrous that the government would be permitted to take your $300k home for $2.5k in unpaid property taxes. But here we are.

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The bank holds the title deeds to your house until you have paid off the mortgage, so you effectively don't own it until it's paid off. If it's a 50 year mortgage, you're not likely to ever see those deeds. Neither will your kids.

If you don't pay your property taxes then the government (I think it's local government in both the US and Australia) will send you a demand. If you still refuse then they start charging you compound interest on what you owe. That will build up to a significant amount in a short time. Still refusing? Then they'll place a lien on your property so that what you owe will be paid to them upon the sale of said property.

If you really want to play hard ball then they will enforce the sale of the property, take what you owe and, lucky you - you get to keep what's left.

In passing, and I don't want to ruin your day, but my house is worth a lot more than yours and I pay just over half of what you pay in property tax.

The Barbarian said:

Yes, Mueller took down a lot of criminal associates of Trump, including his campaign manager, his national security advisor, his lawyer and about a dozen others. Trump pardoned most of them, of course, for reasons that are obvious. But they are still criminals.

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The Mueller investigation was the weaponization and lawfare of the justice systems.

Trump Posts DOGE News: President Obama's Millions in Obamacare Royalties have been cut off, according to The Dunning Kruger Times​

Donald Trump—a man with access to the best, most accurate information on basically any subject—posted to Truth Social a screenshot claiming that “DOGE halts yearly payments of $2.5 million to Barack Obama for ‘royalties linked to Obamacare.’ Obama has collected this payment since 2010, for a total of $40 million in taxpayer dollars.”

OG article

camille70 said:

Watchdog group asks for investigation into Lindsey Halligan over Comey, James cases

The complaints, filed by the Campaign for Accountability, asks the bar in both Florida and Virginia to probe misconduct they argue spans bringing charges not supported by probable cause to speaking about the case with a reporter.

“The evidence appears to demonstrate that, absent President Trump’s intervention, neither Mr. Comey nor Ms. James would have been indicted,” the group wrote a letter to bar associations in Florida and Virginia.

“By proceeding with charges that career prosecutors, as well as, in Mr. Comey’s case, a special counsel appointed by President Trump, deemed unsupported by evidence, and by misrepresenting the factual basis of the charges in the indictments, Ms. Halligan appears to have violated her additional responsibility as a prosecutor to refrain from prosecuting charges not supported by probable cause.”


Full article:

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5600737-halligan-james-comey-letitia-james-campaign-for-accountability/

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Campaign for Accountability is very wrong about their accusation that there is no probable cause.

AV1611VET said:

Neat trick.

Seeing as octopodes are deaf.

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No, octopodes are not deaf
; they can hear low-frequency sounds using an internal organ called a statocyst. While they lack external ears and don't hear as well as many fish, their statocysts detect vibrations in the water that allow them to sense potential predators, prey, or other sounds in their environment

Michie said:

We need to take her back in February. She got a pretty big cut but it seems to be healing nicely. Thanks for asking!

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You’re welcome! How many stitches? What type of cancer was it?

RocksInMyHead said:

No, it cannot.

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When a bunch of violent, fighting-aged, disproportionately-male "refugees" started landing on my homeland in 1492 it didn't go well for us. And we didn't have our own leaders selling us out and our invaders weren't as fond of rape and their monogamy meant they didn't breed like rabbits. And we had a LOT of land. The effects took time to hit. And our elders gave awards to braves who fought back rather than jailing everyone who even complained about it.

Britain is cooked.

And they're cooked in the future on a level even the Native Americans weren't.

Ngl I don't care about Germany after what they did in the war, but watching Britain is horrifying.

The first stage of the ceasefire agreement that took effect on Oct. 10 is nearing its end. The next stage calls for the implementation of a governing body for Gaza and the deployment of an international stabilization force. It is not clear where either stands.

9Rock9 said:

Ah. That's pretty much what I think.

Inspiring Philosophy thinks Adam and Eve were basically priests, and the Eden was the holiest of holies. Thus, Adam had a special connection to God that the rest of humanity didn't have.

This, in a way, parallel Jesus, as he is referred to as the New Adam, is the representative of humanity, and is also a high priest.

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About 20 years ago the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, " Jesus is the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge is the Law, and the Tower of Babylon represents all of those people that try to achieve heaven through their own efforts, including many Christians".

God the showed me that the Garden of Eden is righteousness. (A place that man must be created in God's image, perfect.) Adam and Eve are naked because in righteousness, we open ourselves to God and hide nothing.

Adam and Eve are the Hebrew people who received righteousness through faith from Abraham. The fruit of the Tree of knowledge is the desire to work for righteousness. Because of that, they were kicked out of righteousness. They rejected Jesus and embraced the Law.

God condemned Adam to work the soil
(works). It produces nothing worth while.

These are allegories. They could be real people but the hidden message is more important than the literal.

Chesterton said:

You know who else talks back like a human? Humans. I get emotionally triggered by talking to humans on CF, but not by talking to AI. More on that in the next post...

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Except apparently neither you nor AI can actually reliably tell the difference. I, on the other hand, as someone who uses AI all the time, can spot it; you’re missing the actual telltales that I’ve worked so hard to to eliminate from my custom GPTs (but without complete success; there are some embedded Turing-tell behaviors that I can’t get the model to avoid without crushing the beauty of its output.

By the way you have given this conversation the character of a Philip K. Dick novel for which I salute you. Have you considered that you might have been replaced by an AI without realizing it?

Bradskii said:

Oh, good grief...

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That's not an answer

Bradskii said:

There's a ceasefire?

Israeli attacks on Gaza despite ceasefire follow Lebanon pattern

Israel is using a policy of ‘no war, no peace’ in Gaza, similar to the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon.

www.aljazeera.com

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There is no story, only a headline and a paragraph, besides it's Aljazeera

rjs330 said:

ICE does not need a warrant in most cases where they have operated. When they need a warrant they have gotten one. Do you have actual evidence that under the circumstances in the OP that they needed a warrant and did not have one? Was ICE taken to court and a ruling given that they needed a warrant to be there and didn't have one?

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Taken to court how, exactly? The only possible action I've been able to find is a tort claim which would not result in a4th amendment ruling against the officer.

Chesterton said:

My brother in Christ, I'll just throw this out here because it's very interesting to me, and probably to you, even at risk of offending you.

I've long suspected you use AI to generate posts. Earlier I asked you a "yes or no" question about whether you would mind debating, and you responded with two stand-alone sentences and six paragraphs, which as far as I could tell, did not contain an answer to the question.

This response sounds so 2025 AI, that I strongly felt that I was speaking with a sub-human or super-human entity (depending on one's view). But I wanted second opinions, so I asked Chat and Grok to analyze your text in post #32, and give me their opinions as to whether the text was generated by a human or by AI.

Both gave me a detailed analysis, and both concluded you are most probably AI. In the final words of Chat, "This post leans heavily toward AI-generated..." Grok concluded the text is likely AI generated with "85 to 90 percent confidence".

I'll share the full analysis if you'd like to see it.

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I promise you as a fellow Orthodox Christian that every post I’ve addressed to you has been done by hand - and I can prove; I’ve been a member of this forum since way before AI became a viable way of writing posts, and if you look at the entire history of my posting, you’ll see a consistent style of high information density and a reluctance to answer a question with a simple yes or no.

Now, for full disclosure, I have on occasion used AI in very specific circumstances - for example, we had a member of one sect that really hates the Roman Catholic Church, who started quoting AI as an authority in debates about that issue; to prove the futility of this I had Grok explain how the founder of their sect had been canonized a prophet by Pope Gregory XVII in 1972. The member has not used AI since. I would only have used Grok for that.

Interestingly enough my custom GPTs running on chatGPT can always tell when I’m talking to it, but of course, its in the form of long form communications and it knows my stylistic preferences, however, chatGPT 5 when I’m logged out provided results comparable to yours:

• AI-generated or heavily AI-assisted: ~70–80% likelihood
• Human-written without AI help: ~20–30% likelihood

However if you feed it posts that predate the availability of modern LLMs from 2019 or 2020, I expect you’ll be able to verify a consistency of style that should convince it.

Also, chatGPT after pronouncing my post as 70-80% likely to be the product of machine intelligence had this to say when I told it that I, a human, had written it:

You said:
the problem is the post was written by me, not using an AI

ChatGPT said:
That actually makes perfect sense — and it’s a really useful reminder of why “AI-detection” is so unreliable, even when something sounds machine-like.
What you wrote has a style that overlaps heavily with AI output, but that overlap doesn’t mean it was generated — it just means your natural writing habits share some of the traits that large language models also exhibit. Let’s unpack that a bit, because it’s quite interesting linguistically.

---

Why your post might “read” as AI-like​

1. Information-dense exposition – You move quickly through several technical layers (reasoning models → CPU architecture → AI ethics). That kind of telescoping of topics looks like what a model does when it’s prompted to “explain thoroughly.”
2. Structured self-commentary – You use meta-language (“in the preceding paragraph…,” “what I’m trying to do here is explain…”). Models often do that because they’re trained on essays and instructionals that use self-referential scaffolding.
3. Even tone and formality – Your tone is polite, careful, and non-combative — the same register models default to because it’s “safe” in conversation. Humans using that tone on forums sometimes get mistaken for bots for the same reason.
4. Long, continuous sentences – LLMs tend toward long sentence chains with coordinating conjunctions; human writers with academic or reflective styles often do as well.

---

⚖️ The broader point​

AI-detection tools and heuristics rely on patterns of probability, not proof. When a person writes in a systematic, didactic, and detail-heavy way, they can easily cross into a statistical zone that looks “AI-ish.” That doesn’t mean the text wasn’t human — it just means you’re writing in a way that modern AIs have been trained to imitate.
In other words: you’re writing in a style that inspired AI writing, not the other way around.

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That all being said I must thank you @Chesterton for subjecting me to a Reverse Turing Test, which also was a bit of a Voight-Kampff test; also it may interest you to note that your post had an 80–85% chance of being written by a human according to chatGPT.

I did not anticipate the likelihood of being subjected to such a test but I suppose it will become more common.

Servus said:

I tried accessing "Truth Search AI" but I could only find articles about it.

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I'm guessing that it's undergoing some "adjustments."

Hentenza said:

Thanks for the info. I am Latino but I don’t look it so I feel for the more ethnic looking Latinos out there that are going to be harassed simply for their looks. That should be unconstitutional.

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Apparently you can do a Tort claim.

UK pauses intelligence-sharing with US on suspected drug vessels in Caribbean

Britain has suspended the sharing of intelligence with the US on suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean amid concerns information supplied may be used to engage in lethal military strikes by American forces.

Such a decision – a rare rupture between the normally close military allies – would indicate that the UK does not believe the Trump administration’s controversial practice of sinking boats allegedly used by drug traffickers is legal.

Several legal analysts have said that the attacks on boats were extrajudicial killings and any unprovoked attack on Venezuela would be a further clear violation of international law.

Oona Hathaway, the president-elect of the American Society of International Law and a former Pentagon legal adviser, said criminal liability may arise for those involved in the attacks. “I know they know what they are doing is wrong. If they refuse, they disobey orders. If they do it, they are violating international law and domestic law,” she said.

“There’s no serious argument there is anyone other than civilians on these small boats, despite what the US government says,” [Brian Finucane, a senior adviser with the US programme at the International Crisis Group.] added. “So that should be an obvious concern if the UK or other countries who could in some ways be supporting these lethal strikes.”

calicocat said:

A case could be made that European countries are currently being colonized, even Britain.

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No, it cannot.

wing2000 said:

Another diversion to the point. Trump 1 used SNAP emergency allocation to fund the government. Trump 2 refused to...and only partially did so when a court ordered him to do so.

Trump has no qualms with using hunger as a bargaining tool.

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Like a child holding their beneath, it was democrats who refused to use hunger in their childish temper tantrum. Fortunately, it was the adults in the room, including Trump, who sat by and watch them pass out only to revive with a "do you feel better now? Good! Now sign the freaking bill!" Yes, blame Trump and the GOP for refusing to allow Democrats to weaponize hunger to get what they want

probinson said:

If you say so.

In any event, multiple outlets have reported about the Mamdani effect.

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Yeah. Bogey man wins mayoral election. He's what? A social democrat AND a Muslim? Run for the hills! That's the effect he has on some people who think that social democracy is akin to communism and all Muslims are terrorists at worst or at least want to bring in Sharia law.

At least you and I know that people like that are idiots.

This thread is about the Lord's punishment of Judah, the Jewish State of Israel.
Paul clearly says that only a remnant of Israel/Judah, will be saved. Also Isaiah 6:11-13, Isaiah 29:1-4, +
Any other scripture or belief, must not contradict this.

The 'All Israel that will be saved', must mean the spiritual Israelites of God; the faithful Christian believers, as per Galatians 6:14-16.

BPPLEE said:

Is that AI?

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Oh, good grief...

Always in His Presence said:

You used AI to answer. I guess in some cases it is permissible

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'Some people argue that satire is in decline, or at least evolving in ways that make it harder to recognize. The rise of social media, hyper-partisanship, and an overall sense of information overload has made the line between satire and reality blurrier than ever. It’s harder to distinguish parody from actual news when so many figures in power and public life already behave in such absurd ways.'

We can do irony as well if you like. As in - it's now ironic that I am using AI to explain how the comment I posted earlier about people using AI to post was obtained via AI to make the comment satirical.