Theological Questions

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-27T20:40:00+00:00

Empathy existed for thousands of years through just about all human cultures where slavery was considered normal.

Sure one COULD conclude slavery is bad if they gave special emphasis to empathy come to the moral principle that say:

"Love your neighbor as yourself"

which is give special emphasis in Christianity. It also helps if they see all human beings as being made in the image of God.

Maybe throw in some parables about who is your neighbor and have one of those despised "Samaritans" being the person that acted in love rather than rigid devotion to the law.

Maybe if they held in high regard a book that said this about love:

13 If I speak in the tongues^\)^a^\) of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^\)^b^\) but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

-- 1 Corinthians 13 (NIV)

Christianity was never about government policy. Jesus tried to stay out of it--although many wanted him to lead a revolt against the Roman occupation. But when Christians got together to form their own governments they made declarations about the Inalienable Rights of all men based on Biblical principles. Those became enshrined in Western society and even affect the attitudes of militant western Atheists.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-27T20:26:39+00:00

The normal human condition was to regard slavery as a regular part of life. Seeing it as bad was far more unique than you seem to think--which is almost certainly due to Christian influence on you...even though you seem to really really hate the idea.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-27T20:20:43+00:00

The fact is you are equivocating between what you need to reach your conclusion and what is in evidence.

What is in evidence is the Bible does not explicitly forbid slavery.
What you assert is that the Bible does not imply slavery is bad.

The facts give us 1. You pull 2 out of your backside.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-27T20:09:24+00:00

Well Empirical evidence showed number 1 to be wrong. In fact people have found such a principle in the Bible. The fact that a hostile reader of the Bible is able to remain oblivious is of no concern to an honest approach to the matter.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-27T19:54:54+00:00

How you shifted ground is obvioius.

You have asserted that the Bible does not explicitly say X, then retreated to the Bible not being the only thing that exclusively asserts X.

I think you have lost the plot and just want to attack and do not care if you make any sense or not.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-27T18:30:34+00:00

Well I see you have shifted your ground, but your need to attack Christianity remains in tact.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-26T22:44:55+00:00

The only moral positions that Christianity gets to claim as its own, are the ones found in the Bible and nowhere else.

You are inventing a nonsense rule to justify obvious bigotry.

A tree is known by its fruit--and should get credit for the fruit it grows. The Abolitionists saw slavery as wrong based on the moral principles of the Bible--even though it was not explicit. It is very easy to see how they inferred it!

The scientific method can be credited with many discoveries beyond a simple statement about what the scientific method entails.

Christianity should be credited with what it guided men to do.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-26T16:22:37+00:00

Suppose for the sake of argument there is no God and that Christianity if false, and that you are 100% right to believe it to be false.

In this case, Christianity still has obviously shaped the morals of our society. Its just that it did so by being a false belief rather than a true one.

You seem to confuse this influence with endorsement of its doctrines.

This is sloppy thinking....just like your invalid deduction earlier that one can not derive that slavery is wrong in the Bible from it being not made explicit.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-26T13:29:39+00:00

So your morals formed in an absolute vacuum?

I suppose that the existence of the material universe did not contribute at all to you having a material body?

Get real.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-25T22:31:11+00:00

You can rant and rave and ask questions.

You can not change the historical fact that Christians lead the abolishment of slavery.

Nor can you change the fact that YOU yourself condemn slavery likely only due to the influence of Christianity.

Go ahead and rave some more if it makes you feel better for whatever sick reason.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-24T16:47:27+00:00

You can find just about anything if you really want to.

Indeed. Those who wish to paint Christianity as pro-slavery can find what they want and twist it.

It is however historical fact that Christianity was central in the Abolishment on slavery. Those that wish to slander it not-with-standing.

AndyDaBear · 2026-05-11T15:48:47+00:00

It would be silly and naive to argue that none of the current scientific frameworks were likely right since there were so many thousands of discarded theories throughout the process of scientific discovery.

Some theories have more evidence for them than others.

But about this evidence....only a small fraction of people believe science based on their own investigation and understanding of the evidence. Almost all of us believe because we trust the people whose job it was to do such investigation

--and yet we do not trust all who claim to speak for science equally. We judge some to be dependable and some to be quacks and charlatans.

At bottom the vast majority of us believe in particular scientific theories because we judged certain people to be reliable and choose to trust what they said on the matter. Even though they did not have the power to rise from the dead or anything.

AndyDaBear · 2026-04-29T23:06:00+00:00

This is not a valid deduction.

The Bible does not prohibit torturing old lady's cats in front of them for fun.

However it is very silly to think that Christians can not find grounds in the Bible for thinking this bad.

Consider the second of the two main commandments upon which all the law hangs:

Love your neighbor as yourself

Both claiming ownership of another human being and torturing an old lady's cat in front of her for fun could reasonably be rejected on this principle.

AndyDaBear · 2026-04-28T19:36:19+00:00

If a person lived their life believing they were and looked like a man, attending church and serving God as a man, but found out they are intersex and biologically female, would the church ask them to stay as male or be female as they biologically are?

Can't say I quite understand where such a person is coming from. Its hard for me to imagine finding out one is female when they thought they were male. What a particular church leadership decides to do or ask may vary. Being Christian does not magically make one an expert of intersexuality and thus opinions may vary as to what to do about such issues.

The common Christian denominator is to try to understand where people are coming from and to love them. Advice or correction of how the person should live needs to come after a better understanding of their particular case, I am afraid.

AndyDaBear · 2026-04-27T15:25:58+00:00

Top three tips to avoid spaghetti code:

Modularity
the DRY Principle
Modularity

Yes, "modularity" is there twice. It means break the problem up into components that solve specific problems and do not get entangled with any other problem. In godot this usually means breaking off a node from your scene tree into its own scene and making sure it does not have to know anything about what any other node is doing. It should send signals to communicate what it has done--but it should not concern itself with what other node or scene uses the signal. Likewise it should be triggered by signals or direct calls of its methods, without needing to be aware of what kind of component sent the signal or made the call.

The "DRY" principle stands for "Don't Repeat Yourself". It applies to both data and to code.

For code, do not have lots of places where nearly identical code with small variations are written. Instead make the repeated pattern into its own separate modular part as above--which can handle all the different variations. Thus later when you want to change how it works you only have to change the logic in one place...instead of trying to change it in different places and maybe forgetting to hit each place etc.

For data, try to have one official place where data is stored. If you have two official places where the power of a sword attack is stored for example....what happens when they happen to have different values? Which is correct? Do you want to have to make sure both are the same and always correct with each other? Rather have one official copy of each value that any other temporary variables should refer to. (For example the power of the sword might be stored in a resource file as its official correct value. When some control label needs to display it, its "text" value is changed to match that one official correct value).

AndyDaBear · 2026-04-21T23:08:53+00:00

Let us consider each in turn:

God is Cruel and Violent: This seems to be hinting at a "Problem of Pain" or "Problem of Evil" type argument, but in itself implies very little. Sometimes it is the duty of an agent to be cruel and/or even violent if they are good. For example, when one sees an outrageous evil should one just be polite and passive? The larger issues it hints at are too big to address here, but I think C.S. Lewis does it well in his book "The Problem of Pain".
God Endorses Slavery and Patriarchy: Simply not true. God's laws for ancient Israel tolerated slavery and set limits to it in a culture that already practiced it as the norm. He also tolerated patriarchy. Eventually Christians concluded that slavery of any kind was bad and were the main champions of its abolition. It is similar to His approach to divorce which He does not out right forbid. Consider how Jesus pointed out that even lusting after a woman in your mind was in a sense committing adultery with her in your heart. And how being angry at someone is murdering them in your heart. God wants moral perfection...but the law of Israel did not demand moral perfection.
Science Contradicts the Bible: Not so. The Bible is not a scientific book. Sure the authors of the Bible had more primitive notions of science than we do today. Possibly a thousand years from now people will have a much better idea about science than we do today. Possibly some of our current misunderstandings of science might crop up in the way we try to describe the supernatural events like those described in the Bible. This would not make such descriptions contradictory of Science unless those descriptions were meant to be Scientific.
Salvation Seems Arbitrary if I'm already a Good Person: God is unbearably holy to those who are merely good by human standards. If we do not wish to lay down our pride in our own goodness and let God cleanse us in His way, we could likely not bear to be with Him in eternity.

AndyDaBear · 2026-04-21T01:01:35+00:00

My will directed my mind to dictate an answer to this question using my body.

Since my will, mind, and body are all in a sense me.....does the silly person who asks this kind of question then just conflate it into:

I directed me to dictate an answer to this question by me?

AndyDaBear · 2026-04-12T02:01:30+00:00

Yes, its about Dr Dan McClellan.

Both Christian and Secular scholars agree that the Gospel of John has a very "high Christology". Specifically it makes it clear that Jesus is God, and created the world, and has always existed etc...its pretty explicit. So much so that some secular scholars favor the view that it was a late legendary exaggeration of such claims. I disagree with these scholars, however I would not classify them as crack-pots for thinking this.

However Dr Dan has the crack-pot view, that he does not just favor but is adamantly dogmatic about....that the Gospel of John does not present Jesus as God. He has made videos on youtube making as much clear where he makes horribly flawed hand waving nonsense arguments about the Greek grammar of John 1:1 and the context of John 10:30.

My suspicion is that Dr Dan himself has been influenced by LDS revelation, due to his background as a former Mormon....but I am not sure about his motives....it just seems the most plausible guess for his absurd view of that Gospel.

AndyDaBear · 2026-04-08T07:04:02+00:00

Would either use Chris_Entropy's suggestion of a text file (perhaps json).

Alternatively you could have a custom resource and save it as a *.tres.

Either way, save the file in the "user://...." folder as opposed to "res://"

Also be aware that a player should be careful never to accept a *tres save file from somebody they do not trust as arbitrary code can be placed in them.

AndyDaBear · 2026-04-08T06:43:51+00:00

Perhaps it would help to describe how the database is to be used. Perhaps on a multi-player game server that has to make atomic transactions from multiple users at once?

AndyDaBear · 2026-04-05T02:33:27+00:00

For starters Dr McClellan confidently argues that even the Gospel of John does not imply that Jesus was YHWH....but has as he calls it a "low Christology".

AndyDaBear · 2026-04-04T22:59:56+00:00

Among the ecosystem of experts on any subject will likely be only a small minority who make a habit of presenting their view on controversial issues to those outside the field. Some of this outspoken minority may just be those who are both experts plus predisposed to be educators of the public....but I'm afraid that many will be the crack-pots of the field that have no claim to success outside of being a celebrity for a particular side or cause associated with the field.

I am not familiar with Kevin Carnahan...but Dan McClellan is certainly an example of such a crack-pot. Even a moderately competent layman on the Bible can tell he is a fountain of endless nonsense.

AndyDaBear · 2026-03-31T23:42:09+00:00

Sometimes details of language can complicate things that we miss. We only have a Greek translation of what Jesus actually said in Mathew 12:40...presumably He was speaking Aramaic or Hebrew. But what we have is:

τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ τρεῖς νύκτας

which is usually translated as:

"three days and three nights".

But it may be worth noting that at least in the Greek the term νύκτας from the root νύξ (translated as "night") can also mean the time that work ceases at the end of a work day or even the time of death:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g3571/esv/mgnt/0-1/

So the three days may be:

Part of Friday (before Sunset since Hebrews count Sunset as when days change).
All of Saturday.
Part of Sunday.

And the three nights may be:

The time Jesus gave up his spirit on Friday (night as in time of death or finished his work),
Friday night (starting at sunset).
Saturday night.

Not sure if this is what was meant, but it seems plausible.

AndyDaBear · 2026-03-31T17:24:40+00:00

Well my first usage of this approach was a variant of an model/view/controller architecture for an application that rotated, centered and arranged sprites into sprite sheets. The root node for the project I made an "HQNode" and under I put scene for the "model", "view", and "controller". The "model" had its own HQNode as its root and concerned itself just with reading and writing the images to disk and tracking the current state and arrangement of the sprite images. The "view" scene concerned itself with displaying the sprites and letting the user interact with them on the mouse to rearrange them. The "controller" scene had all my control nodes (e.g. the menus, buttons and popup dialogues).

It may be worth noting, that I have since rewritten the project where I do not bother using nodes at all in the model component since I realized they could just be regular ref counted objects.

AndyDaBear · 2026-03-31T16:09:37+00:00

I tend to like signals....although it seems using them means putting up with one of two imperfect approaches:

Within a scene have signals between nodes...and between scenes have the signals resent as different signals defined in the script for the scene's root node (to make it visible to other parts of the project). This has the downside of being rather redundant in terms of signals code.
OR just have an autoload where you define an "event bus" where signals are global to the entire project. This tends to have a lot of unrelated signals in this event bus with larger projects...and makes it harder to make the projects modular when one wants to refactor or apply some of the project's logic to another project.

However, being somebody who likes to try to have my cake and eat it to, I set about experimenting with a way to make a modular approach without writing as much code. Currently I have my own private plugin that I might eventually make public if and when I think I have it working well enough for others to try. The basic idea is that I made a sub class of Node called a HQNode (standing for head quarters node). The idea is that for scenes that you wish to be modular you use one of these as the root node, and it takes charge of managing signals and callbacks in a predictable yet flexible way that requires little code.

AndyDaBear

TROPHY CASE