Non-Christian exploring Christianity out of fear of Jesus’s threat of eternal punishment and empathy for immediate family who are agonized by the thought
Minnesota, USA
Joined August 2021
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This is some really entertaining and insightful investigative journalism.
A mental health professional (who is also Catholic) investigates the identity of one of America's most infamous exorcists who was hitherto anonymous.
I've been using Gemini to help in my study of the historical development of "Hell", and even when I'm only using it as a search tool it gets things wrong all the time.
Everything has to be double checked.
Here is an example: 1/🧵
Translation collapse of "Hades" and "Gehenna" into a single word only occurred in the Germanic language tree (German, English, Norse), and even then it only occurred after 800 AD, as earlier Gothic translation (also a Germanic language) had no such collapse.
It's clear that Hades and Sheol were treated as basically interchangeable by the readers of the 1st Century, so I think it's not wrong to translate both those terms with a single word.
I'm leaning towards "underworld" as most appropriate.
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Reminder that there is no divinely given right to liberty or pursuit of happiness in the Bible.
Presidential Message on Reformation Day:
From the earliest days of our Republic, prayer and faith in Almighty God have stood as the foundation of our strength, the source of our unity, and the fount of our greatness. This Reformation Day, I send my best wishes to the countless Christians across our country commemorating the Protestant Reformation and its enduring message of salvation by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
Five hundred years ago, William Tyndale — inspired by the work of Martin Luther — advanced the Protestant Reformation’s devotion to Holy Scripture through the publication of the first New Testament printed in English, shaping the language of the Bibles that would fortify the faith and resolve of America’s founding generation.
The Sacred Scriptures helped form the religious convictions that formed our young Nation’s founding ideals of God-given rights and individual liberty, a spiritual inheritance we honor as we continue to reflect on 250 glorious years of American Independence. The Bible remains a cornerstone of our Nation’s character and upholds our steadfast devotion to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Guided by an unwavering faith in Jesus Christ, my Administration is working to restore the moral and religious foundations that have sustained our Republic for generations. As President, I will always support citizens of faith and defend their place in the public square, honoring the enduring role of our churches in strengthening families, serving communities, and preserving the core values that have anchored us across the centuries.
As Christians across our country unite in faith and fellowship this Reformation Day, I send my heartfelt prayers for a meaningful celebration and encourage each of you to draw renewed strength from God’s Word as we carry forward the blessings of faith and freedom throughout our beloved Nation.
whitehouse.gov/briefings-sta…
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Being able to read primary sources with no publicly available english translation has been a super nice benefit of LLMs, I gotta say.
I've been reading up on the history of "homosexuality" as a concept, and today I was reading letters and pamphlets from Karl Maria Kertbeny, and it is really interesting to see where the arguments are same as today and where they are different.
The first ever statistical population survey on homosexuality and bisexuality from Germany in 1904 has very comparable numbers to modern Gallup polls in 2025.
What you trust is the foundation for what you believe. What you believe is the foundation for what you "know".
The only possible exception is the immediate awareness (possibly describable as a "belief") that you exist.
Do you trust your intuitions? Your reasoning? Your senses?
Stories of the bodhisattvas made David Bentley Heart "anxious that Christians were in danger of being outdone in the love and mercy department".
Full quote from That All Shall Be Saved below. Might need to click to see the full screenshot
So Tyndale is apparently the origin of sometimes translating "Sheol" as "grave" instead of "hell".
I've decided to officially commit myself to a deep dive critical analysis on the topic of "Hell".
Here's another one of the spreadsheets I'm making for the research phase.
It's going to be a major theme of my posts for the next few months.
teapawt.net/BaxterWilliams_/status…
I've had this theory since grad school, but I believe that much of our brain is, in modern terms, an "aritificial intelligence" (an unconscious neural net) that the conscious part trains through childhood so that it can take care of tasks without us paying full attention. 1/
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I've decided to officially commit myself to a deep dive critical analysis on the topic of "Hell".
Here's another one of the spreadsheets I'm making for the research phase.
It's going to be a major theme of my posts for the next few months.
teapawt.net/BaxterWilliams_/status…
Wow. Genuinely happy to hear this update. But I found it to be kind of funny how they couldn't resist the urge to drop their latest numbers in the press release.
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If you make a parallel reading of all the times Jesus says "Hades" or "Gehenna", you will see that he says Hades in 3 traditions, and he says Gehenna in 5 traditions, but interestingly none of them are triple tradition.
In "Mary's Room", Mary is a vision scientist with sight who has just not seen red.
Why does this need to be a thought experiment? Many of us have senses we haven't exhausted the range of. Explain vantablack in excrutiating scientific detail to someone, and then show it to them.
"Zero revival" is completely disingenuous and unserious.
Any discourse on "consent" today is all about sexual restraint.
Not being a slave to instints. Seeing your partners as more than sex toys. Etc.
Insane to suggest that no "post-Christian" philosphers think this.
It’s true that Judeo-Christian morality is uniquely demanding on the topic of sex.
But it’s not like non-Christian cultures had no moral norms on the issue.
The Romans had sexual morality, even though they had no notion of sin or that gods cared much about anybody’s sexual life.
Something which they strongly believed was that sexual restraint was good because it exercised man’s ability to restrain himself from all unproductive urges.
Basically they believed that sexual restraint boosted self-control.
This seems to me like a very commonsensical argument that at least merits attention and reflection.
And yet it’s had zero revival of interest among post-Christian moral philosophers.
Funny that.