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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Me, when my complete lack of planning manages to work out and I once again fail to learn the lesson that I need to be more prepared.
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Baxter Williams@baxterwilliams.bsky.social |
46 followers 90 following 434 posts
Discussing Christianity, philosophy, and science on the internet. Raised Lutheran, currently agnostic. Promoting Pandeism.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Me, when my complete lack of planning manages to work out and I once again fail to learn the lesson that I need to be more prepared.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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very interesting passage in Luke 18 where Jesus promises rewards for his followers *not only* in the eternal life to come, but also "in this age".
So not only a promised reward after death, but also before death.
#bible #christianity
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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It's my plan to write 4 documents. 1) My epistemology 2) My preferred ontology 3) My reasons for not accepting Christianity 4) My non-Christian explanation of Christianity. I've got 2 down. 2 to go.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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There were people who believed Jesus risen before Paul converted so someone besides Paul probably also had something of a vision experience. My main point is that belief in an inerrant scripture should not be the basis that many Christians treat it as.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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I can get behind this description lol
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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If I am not ultimately responsible, then unending punishment is nonsensical. If Christianity is true, then unending punishment is probably true. Therefore, Christianity is probably false.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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If it's not fully explainable in terms of me, then I am not fully responsible. If it is fully explainable in terms of me, then it is necessitated by me. If it is necessitated by me, and I didn't create me, then I am responsible, but not ultimately responsible
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Which would you choose: (1) a guaranteed 'light beating' followed by eternal happiness, love and joy (2) a small chance at avoiding beatings altogether ("narrow is the path"), but the alternative is eternal destruction
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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It seems that "swept and in order" implies that the person DID have good habits replace the bad one. And the demon punished them for it by inviting friends over
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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My current position on Christianity.
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Where is the room for a "light beating" in standard #Christian eschatology? Basically only in universalism, right?
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Pharisee: "Hey, why don't you wash your dishes, Jesus?" Jesus: "You're a bunch of greedy scumbags" Pharisee: "...that didn't really answer me..."
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Wait, what is the point of this story? If you get rid of a demon, then you will get 7 more? Or it is saying don't clean your house after you cast out a demon? So strange.
#bible #Christianity #philRel
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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#pandeism says there was once a maximally-powerful, omnipresent consciousness which could not love or learn as it was all there was.
It knew giving partial reign to chaos for a time would bring pain, suffering, and unfairness. But it was the only other option. It chose to fragment
#philrel #philsky
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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The question for me is: how can we disagree with someone and somehow minimize triggering that reflex we all feel to double down when critiqued. It definitely has something to do with wanting ourselves to have been reasonable in our past decisions.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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I don't think people try to consume content that reinforces their already-held-views just willy nilly. I happens specifically when they feel they are being critiqued, being attacked, or feeling doubt.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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I have to say, as someone who was first exposed to Bayesian statistics in the public health space, the use of it in #philosophy circles to update "apriori likelihoods" seems like nothing more than an abuse of mathematical language.
#philsky
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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"As surprising as it is that many people came to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead, the initial plausibility of the testimony is far outweighed by the implausibility and incomprehensibility of those things a resurrection would entail."
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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I'm working on a summary document of my current position on Christianity. The concluding sentence: "..at this time I’m not able to trust Christianity because it has less hope than other theisms, more confusion than other theisms, and probably entails empirical things which are probably incorrect."
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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You don't trust a person flat out. You trust an aspect of a person within a limited domain.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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I think trusting (i.e. having 'faith' in) the gospel authors is primarily a question of their honesty (not exaggerating things) and diligence (properly vetting stories they didn't personally experience)
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Where is your preferred source of news?
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Categories of trust: - trust in someone's skill - trust in someone's intentions - trust in someone's honesty - trust in someone's knowledge - trust in someone's diligence Am I missing any?
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Even the most intelligent, trustworthy friends of mine with great memory abilities still exaggerate their experiences and spread rumor uncritically. The general trustworthiness of the gospel authors likewise does not mean they are immune to these general features of human psychology.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Really enjoyed Turtles All the Way Down, even if the self-destructive behavior was tough to read at times.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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And do you imagine the NYT calling for Trump to step down to actually increase chances of him stepping out of the race?
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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No, the NYT editorial board is doing something that might actually affect something instead.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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I just want to go to the "discover" tab of this site without being swamped by furry art... how many times do I have to tag things with "show me less of this" and mute accounts in order to convince the algorithms of this...?
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Like, 10 extra years of life is cool and all, but what if 5 of them are spent wasting away in a nursing home while slowly draining any resources you could have given your children to inherit? Just makes me sad to think about.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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I'm in a medical device business whose majority of customers are likely >70 yrs old. Our devices save them from dying of heart disease at 75 so they can instead die of cancer or dementia at 85. Honestly, weighing 10 extra years of elderly life vs dying via cancer / dementia would be a tough choice
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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It just seems like emotional necesity to me. People are horrified to even consider the idea that God left them with imperfect and insufficient guidance. (Even though they already think most of history was like that)
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Jordan Peterson said that he believes that Jesus walked out of his grave, but that he doesn't think anyone knows for sure what that means. I can actually sympathize with that take. I have not found the reasoning for why Paul and other church fathers can't err to be convincing.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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The implications of prayer fundamentally changing the outcomes of medical progressions are horrifying for me. "Oh you don't have anyone else to pray for you? Sorry that means you have a 30% less chance of survival."
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Finally enjoying reading novels again. Sucks though that Christianity in the back of my mind will keep telling me that everyone is a waste of time besides trying to convince myself Christianity is somehow true.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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I mean, don't get me wrong, basically every Christian would think me a heretic with this idea, but it's the most plausible idea to me. Why would random acquaintences and no others get the "power of inerrant authorship"? Always felt weird to me, even assuming Jesus resurrected.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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My main point is that in my process of trying to find the most probable version of Christianity, I realized that I couldn't actually figure out how they got from "He rose from the dead" to "these specific books are inerrant". The logic seems flawed to me, even if he did rise from the dead.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Surely you don't mean "why do humans try to write biographies of religious leaders" or "why do people write letters to others about how to 'correctly' think about something"? That's not mystifying to me if it's not from God, and my point it why would Christianity require they are from God?
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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This is entirely new territory for me. What if Christianity is true, but these are still all just average errant books? What if someone rose from the dead, but all we had was standard historical method to figure out what that entails?
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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The reason I bring up this seemingly obvious fact, is that I had never considered Christianity without 66-book inerrancy before. I was raised with 66-book inerrancy as a given. But it comes way after "Christianity is true" and I now think it's not even entailed.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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They may seem silly and obvious, but you are supposed to believe in the resurrection first, and THEN come to believe in inerrancy of scripture later. I swear some people do this backwards.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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I have a really hard time imagining a future where I will embrace "screw your sense of what is moral. This man obviously rose from the grave." but I guess you never know
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Yet it must be attempted. I refuse to believe that I simply cannot communicate effectively about this subject. (Or at least I hope strongly that is not the case)
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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We need another religious leader to claim widely that there is a resurrection immediately on the horizon and then to die and have his body go missing. I want to see how likely it is that followers claim him risen after that.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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How naive this was
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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I think I've finallly managed to write down everything I want to about my current stance in Christianity. Now to organize it all into something readable and shareable
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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If you think that universalism is the most probable form of theism, then you should favor anything with 'moksha' over anything with 'final judgment', as universalism is much more likely under the former than the latter.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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To be clear, this belief would be held extremely weakly. Basically, as soon as we come up with any coherent physics framework which indicates robustly that the singularity didn't happen, but something cyclical instead, then I would be atheist.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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So basially, if I say intention started the first spatial dilution, then intention is continuing the spatial dilution acceleration. If I called the first intention deism, then I would have to admit a still active intention.. theism. Well, panentheism to be specific.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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But then spatial expansion is accelerating. So whatever my motivations are to attribute the initial spatial dilution to mind and intention would at the same time lead me to attribute it to accelerating expansion today.
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Baxter Williams
@baxterwilliams.bsky.social
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Spatial expansion is the weird thing for me. I just don't understand what could stop our past from being space of infinite energy density that just stopped being infinitely dense one day. That's deism.
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