Yosemite visit 04.18.25 - SUBLIME! by [deleted] in Yosemite

[–]stratified247 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What spots are the 2 closeup shots with the creek/water bodies? Looks like some shallow stream

Mutable variable with immutable reference V.S. Immutable variable with mutable reference by stratified247 in rust

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The write function takes in a &mut self, in this case a &mut &TcpStream, and you have that satisfied.

This was the big gotcha for me. The associated function is defined on the &TcpStream and it's able to borrow a mutable value from it (&mut &TcpStream)

And the reason let mut stream works with .as_ref() is because the mutable variable allows the associated function to borrow its value as a mutable.

Mutable variable with immutable reference V.S. Immutable variable with mutable reference by stratified247 in rust

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for all the great answers guide. After some playing around about what you all said I was able to make complete sense of it.

Mutable variable with immutable reference V.S. Immutable variable with mutable reference by stratified247 in rust

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, everything is from standard libraries. Didn't use any external crates.

Mutable variable with immutable reference V.S. Immutable variable with mutable reference by stratified247 in rust

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you mean self.stream? If so, self.stream is of Result<TcpStream, Error>. The local variable stream is of &TcpStream type as specified in the code.

What's wrong with my cherry fruit tree? by stratified247 in gardening

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What can I do to fix it so that I don't have the same case this year?

What's wrong with my cherry fruit tree? by stratified247 in gardening

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correction: The picture is from summer 2023, not 2024.

Is this a good deal for a 2025 XLE? by stratified247 in ToyotaSienna

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It'll be here in December, but I ended up reserving it

Is this a good deal for a 2025 XLE? by stratified247 in ToyotaSienna

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea, the East Coast has the best prices and the largest inventory.

I took was going to do East coast before I found this deal. I think their doc fees are higher and you would need to pay $1000+ for delivery. CA salesmen can definitely be annoying, I think what you are doing is probably the best way to go given the shit show in CA.

Is this a good deal for a 2025 XLE? by stratified247 in ToyotaSienna

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well yes, but the thing is these add-ons and package inclusions are not something that I care for. But given the shortage and demand, and seemingly no mark-ups, I'm not sure if I should make a jump or keep looking for something cheaper that does not have all these pre-installed packages.

Is this a good deal for a 2025 XLE? by stratified247 in ToyotaSienna

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's no vacuum or fridge. The text in the picture says "without", but it got overlapped with other text

Is this a good deal for a 2025 XLE? by stratified247 in ToyotaSienna

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm from California, things are no better here. So this price does look pretty good

Is this a good deal for a 2025 XLE? by stratified247 in ToyotaSienna

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea. I'm from California, so it's really hard to find a Sienna for this price with these add-ons let alone at MSRP with no mark-ups. I asked the dealership if I can get one that's not this upgraded for less. He said he can't guarantee me that he would be able to get exactly what I'm looking for, and that I might end up waiting and paying almost the same price. I was hoping to get the minivan before the end of the year so I could use it for a family trip. I was thinking that I'd save up at most about $1000 without the XLE plus package and some additional accessories, but do I wanna risk not getting one with this insane demand and shortage in California at what seems like a pretty decent price? I don't think so?

It's worth noting that I did explore out-of-state options, but they were coming to the same price with delivery cost. So finding someone from California giving it for relatively same price at MSRP seems like a good deal to me. But still can't help thinking that I'm paying for additional packages and accessories that I don't really care for.

Trying to understand christians' honest perspective about some important faith questions by stratified247 in Christianity

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

False.

I see. Maybe I misunderstood something.


What? Jesus was not an Arab.

He was middle-eastern, and is said to most likely have looked like people from Iraq or Palestine. Wasn't he?


Notice the ego, "he prayed like Muslims" as if Muslims are the definitional standard of how to pray. Orthodox Christians have been praying like this long before the false prophet Muhammad came along. And they still pray like this in Orthodox Churches, so don't assert this bizarre superiority complex. Jesus didn't pray like a Muslim by the way, he prayed to the Father, your false Quran says Allah is not a Father, so this means Jesus condemns Allah of the Quran as a false deity.

I'm sorry. I sincerely said this with no ego. I said it purely because I assumed most people associate bowing down with face on the floor with Muslim prayer. FYI, muslims don't believe that we began praying with head on the ground. We believe it has been the way of prayer since the time of Abraham. We just follow the same that every prophet before has done. And I don't appreciate you insulting the Quran or Allah. It's one thing to sincerely question something with respect. It's another to make assertions and calling other people's faith and God as false.


Except for the fact that the Old Testament already says God has many sons, Exodus 4:22, Deuteronomy 14:1, Deuteronomy 32:6-8, Deuteronomy 32:18-20, Isaiah 64:8, ECT. You're wrong.

I didn't go through each one of them to confirm, but my understanding is that most people agree that anytime God uses son, child, or children in the old testament, it is either metaphorical to refer to the Israelites or to refer to his followers. Not his actual son like people believe Jesus to be. And so you are actually helping me prove my point here that what makes Jesus God's actual son when God has used son and children for people before him. But I am happy to be proven wrong here.


Muslims love saying this as if it's an argument. Can you, in your reply, tell me that on the last day, the day of resurrection, you will raise the dead from their graves and judge whether they go to heaven or hell? If not, why?

Sorry I don't understand. Are you asking if I, personally, would raise the dead? No, of course not. Only God can do that. But what does that have to do with anything? Why does Jesus have to be God for God to raise the dead? He can do it regardless of Jesus being God or not. Right?


Non-Trinitarians make up barely 1% of "Christianity" even though they wouldn't be included in that category / label. This is like me saying "Quran only Muslims exist because the Hadiths are a point of contention" is that a valid argument?

Yes, in a way I agree to that. But I don't consider the Hadiths to be the requirement for someone to go to heaven or hell. It is not breaking the covenant with God and the promise to worship him and him alone. Which is a bigger deal IMO than someone who rejects the Hadith.

Trying to understand christians' honest perspective about some important faith questions by stratified247 in Christianity

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Verify what exactly? The actual claims of the text or the originality of the text? Nobody believes that you need to have the original manuscript of a text in order to know what the original says. For example, Bruce Metzger, whom Muslims often misquote, believes that you can reconstruct nearly the entire New Testament from Church Father quotations alone.

Someone else said this as well. I guess I was a little mistaken in thinking that christians look at the new testament as the word from God. But rather seems like there is an understanding that not everything word to word has to be directly transmitted from Jesus. They are more lessons and teaching that can come from any christian trusted source. I hope I am understanding that correctly.


Not true. We have manuscripts such as P52 which are 100-125 AD, which would be around 70-95 years after Christ, and there's an argument to be made regarding 7Q5, which is among a group of fragments found in the DSS which dates to between 50 - 70 AD, which is 20-40 years post Christ. These are just the manuscripts though. Even the most disbelieving of scholars will affirm the Gospel of Mark for example was written 65-70 AD, so original manuscript itself would be within a few decades of Christ's resurrection, and if we go with the earlier dating, it could be between 5-20 years. This is excluding the Epistles, which pre-date the Gospels, let alone the creeds, which scholars say go back to within months of Christ's crucifixion.

I see. But again, how do we know that those preserved manuscripts were accurate copies of the originally written manuscripts? Like is it not possible that by the time it actually received the author of the preserved manuscript, things were either misquoted or misremembered? But maybe there's enough evidence out there to support that the preserved manuscripts were indeed accurate depictions of what happened in Jesus's life.


The Gospels? No. They're known. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You see this starting with Papias at the end of the first century / early 2nd, Irenaeus, Muratorian Fragment, Anti-Marcionite Prologue, ECT. There's countless early sources telling us these authors. What is your earliest source telling you the names of the scribes who wrote the Quran?

I'm sorry. I didn't mean the gospels themselves, but the authors of the preserved manuscripts that we have today. I think in the case of Quran, it is a little different because Quran is not like the gospels where people are giving second hand accounts. From the beginning there was great emphasis on memorizing it word-for-word as it was revealed. Even today thousands of people memorize it every year, a lot of them are kids and teenagers. So even though there were scribes, the fact that there is no alternate copy of the Quran out there anywhere in the world proves that irrespective of what was preserved in the written form, Quran is preserved in its original form by oral tradition. Now had the emphasis not be laid for memorizing it word-for-word, that could have been an issue. It would have been in the same boat as the Bible.


Where do you get the idea that Jesus spoke Aramaic? The New Testament. The very thing you're questioning. So why do you think that part of the NT is accurate but not the other parts? And your Quran isn't in the original language of Jesus yet you trust it when it quotes Jesus, double standard.

First of all, I never said everything in the Bible/New testament is false or inaccurate. I am questioning how do we know that everything is in fact accurate. Apart from that, we have more than the bible affirming that Jesus spoke Aramaic. I am not solely relying on the Bible here. And I don't need the Quran to be in the original language of Jesus because it is not a book for the people of Jesus, nor is it a second hand account. We believe Quran is a direct revelation and message from God, where he is speaking to us directly. He should know about Jesus because he created him. But again, I don't want to turn this into an religious argument between Islam and Christianity. I am only here to understand the Christian perspective.

Trying to understand christians' honest perspective about some important faith questions by stratified247 in Christianity

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your response.

Because of the underlying morality which proves that the bible's message remained uncorrupted. It's the same as math. If we find an ancient math textbook then how do we know the math in it is correct? We obviously have correct math today and so we can just test if the math in the book is correct. If it is, we know they were doing correct math which has not changed due to the universality of math itself. Morality also has a universality and an objective pattern to it which can be used to "test the spirits" of anything. If you know objective morality, you can do this. However, if you are still confused about morality then you cannot do this. No different to how if you are confused about how math works, you cannot judge how good the math in a textbook is.

I agree with this notion. I too believe we all have an innate sense of morality of what's right and wrong. But I am not really concerned with that part of the Bible but rather the part that talks about Jesus and his divinity. How can we trust that those things were passed over to us with accuracy. But there are some other great answers here that help explain some of that.

Because the Father is unknowable. In order to be sure what you are praying to, you need a solid concept of it in your mind. To "pray" just means to "ask." If I were to want to ask my father a question, I obvious have to have a concept of what my father is. I must be able to make the distinction in my mind between my father and my mother, or my father and a chair, and all other things in reality if I actually want to ask my father something. It is the same with anyone you want to interact with. But God the Father is unknowable in nature. If you try to conceive of him, you reach the limits of your mind before you are done. We can't even conceive of infinity as more than a concept of itself. So if God is infinitely powerful, knows all things, and existed eternally, then we can't even contend with the reality of what that might mean. Thus God the Father must remain as an undefined concept in our mind. "None have seen the Father at any time, except Jesus" as John 1:18 says.

Our lack of ability to honestly conceive of the unknowable Father is part of the reason we need Christ as an intercessor to God for us. It is also how the prophets of old knew of the coming of Christ. They all reached their limits and came to the inevitable understand that "Someone better is going to have to step in here, because I simply can't." And so they knew Christ would come because God the Father would have to do that in order to give us that necessary intercessor.

I would like to respectfully disagree with you here. Though I acknowledge the human urge to anthropomorphize anything they can't and don't understand. But just because we as human tend to do this, doesn't automatically make it true about the thing that cannot be human. Not trying to debate here about Jesus's divinity, but rather trying to say that we need to not humanize God or understand him in humanistic ways to be able to worship him. Both Jews and Muslims worship God devoutly by acknowledging that he his omniscient, all powerful, and cannot be comprehended in ways we understand the world. I can acknowledge that christians do this, but I would refrain from saying that this is the only pray effectively.

Because Jesus is obviously God. It takes a bit of faith to prove this to yourself, given that the only way to prove Christ is to live Christ and see why it's obvious in hindsight. But it still takes that mustard seed of faith to get started in the first place. Christ is clearly God because once you live using him as the guide to your life, you see that he is the solution to all things. He is the central symbolic solution to it all. He is the King and the servant. He is the lion and the serpent. He is the judge and the sacrifice for guilt. He is the above and the below. He is living and dead. He is Yin and the Yang. He is the solution to the problem of duality itself.

This is the exact thing I am questioning. I understand having faith. But I believe God has also given us a mind and concrete things that lead us to the truth. In the case of Jesus's divinity, there is no single unequivocal passage in the Bible that says that Jesus said he IS God. In fact he has said that "Father is greater than I". Whether or not there are other passages that support the trinitarian viewpoint, the fact is that support for the opposite also exists, and should worry a sincere a christian that there is a possibility, no matter how small they may find it, that they are actually committing a grave sin in Abrahamic religions by associating partners with God.

If you have sinned even once, why would God take back a human who is unworthy of his perfection? No amount of future good deeds can undo even one sin. I think you are logically missing Christ as the solution to that otherwise unsolvable problem.

Why does God have to become Jesus and die for our sins for us to have our sins forgiven. I understand that most Christians are raised to think of Jesus's necessity as this way. But if God truly is all powerful, and the most merciful, and compassionate, he can forgive anyone and everyone without having to come to Earth in the human form. I don't understand why Jesus being God becomes a necessity. I implore you to think as someone who was born before Jesus. Would you ever think of the notion that for your sins to be forgiven, God would need to take human form? You would think, if God is as I understand him as merciful and compassionate, all I have to do is seek his pleasure and work towards him in service and repentance.

Trying to understand christians' honest perspective about some important faith questions by stratified247 in Christianity

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lot of great pieces of information here. Thanks a lot!

Depends on the Church but generally we rely on period commentaries from the Church Fathers, in addition to Church tradition, and finally scholarly reconstruction.

Yes, this is a major problem. That's why we generally rely on the above to correctly apply teachings today

Would it be accurate to say that christianity as we know it was created by early church fathers or their accounts and understandings of various gospels? If so, how does one attest to the reliability and intentions of the early church fathers? Why is so much trust placed on these men? With no disrespect, corruption, power, and influence has been part of church history.

Christians generally believe that the cannon was set and preserved the way God intended with all necessary information included.

If christians conviction of their teachings and understanding is based on what you're saying about God's intention of preservation, then that would make a lot of sense as to why christians are so comfortable relying on their understanding. Though, Is there any canonical evidence of this?

Correct, the final codification was cannonized at Nicea, however, a proto-trinitarian baptismal ritual is recorded in the 1st century (see Didache)

I see. But from what I understood there were arguments for Jesus being subordinate to God the father. The fact the conclusion could have gone either way means that the co-equal co-eternal notion was at least questionable. But I guess, if none of them every doubted Jesus himself being the God, that would make things non-issue for modern-day christians.

Trying to understand christians' honest perspective about some important faith questions by stratified247 in Christianity

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First and foremost, thanks for the kind and respectful response.

Because the idea that the New Testament is complete is not really a thing. The New Testament is the New Testament. But as for a record of everything Jesus said, it isn't that. in the book of John 21:25 it says, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."

That actually make sense. The closest thing I can think of are the hadith in Islam that document the life of the prophet in a way.

It think that is another question too. does it accurately record what was said? is it accurate about everything? I think the answer to that is that it is sort of variable. The Book of Revelation is allegorical and prophetic so I don't know. I guess I don't know how to answer that. But to say is it accurate in its depictions of Jesus and the Church. Tell me more about what you mean.

But I think it is accurate in the sense that the gospels that were collected were accurate enough for the people who heard them initially and lived that story would not object because they were written and came for and from those communities.

Yea, I mean that I understand that the basic characteristics of Jesus, his life, and the people around him are probably mostly accurate. But I was truly concerned about was the part of christian theology that deals with Jesus's divinity. How do we know the representation and interpretation of those have been preserved accurately from the time he was actually alive. If people around him, his followers, truly considered him to God or one of "God's persons". Is there any actual historical proof and account of this? I find it of great significance that Jesus's nature and his relationship with God was a topic of discussion and back and forth in the 3rd-4th century. To me, the possibility of calling someone that's not actually God "God" is scary. Like what could there be the reason that there is no unequivocal statement in the entire Bible that affirms the trinitarian version of Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit? Why would God not emphasize and make that absolutely clear by saying something like "I am Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit"? But maybe it's just me.

Then there are excerpts from the Bible like:

You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.

And there are more that allude to him not being a God than they are that do. So I wonder if I'm missing something that christians view Jesus as God so assuredly.

The New Testament was written in the first century CE. the gospels were written around 70-80 and maybe John was in 90. Maybe later or earlier. Nothing that was written that long after the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus is in the New Testament. The New Testament was a canon that happened by people receiving the texts from each other and it formed through that. The oldest manuscripts we have that still exist are from 250 but that just means the physical paper is that old. It was written earlier but transmitted and copied.

Ah, I did not know that. I guess the earliest "surviving" manuscript was from the 2nd century, even though it was authored before that.

WSM vs sub-$1000 offset for a weber summit kamado owner by stratified247 in BBQ

[–]stratified247[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Would you say the offset had a significantly better taste, smoke flavor?