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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 1h

science works in mysterious ways

Reposted by Baxter Williams

Dr. Chance Bonar @chancebonar.bsky.social · 8h

God, Slavery, and Early Christianity is out in the real world with @universitypress.cambridge.org!

I have some extra, so retweet this by the end of Oct. 19 if you’re interested in receiving a copy!

Book info here: www.cambridge.org/core/books/g...

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 3h

Have you read my take? I can't remember.
baxterwilliams.wordpress.com/2025/07/24/a...

A Non-Christian Accounting of Christianity

Josh and Sean McDowell call it the “evidence that demands a verdict”. C. S. Lewis famously gave people three options to account for the man of Jesus: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord. G. K. Chest…

baxterwilliams.wordpress.com

Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 3h

I feel like the oral tradition is most of it. I've been to small rural communities in 3rd world countries. They believe in miracle workers readily in my experience. The stories exaggerate quickly, on the order of days. Then they stabilize.

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 3h

The rejection of the pope part? The rejection of a messiah king? The rejection of a divine ruler in any sense?

Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 3h

wow!

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 8h

Thought this was a dig at digital artist lol

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 8h

This is a major piece of my belief that all souls are ultimately the same but embedded within brains that drastically shape their abilities and urges, even if *fundamentally* they all want the same thing: harmony.

Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 8h

Reminder that we train neurons in a petri dish with random noise for the stick and sine waves for the carrot.

If this correlates to larger brains, then we are all just after sine waves and avoiding noise, but at the mercy of our brain structure as to what cause this for us.

figure 4 from https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)00806-6?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0896627322008066%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

random vector for missing pong ball, predictable sine wave for good behavior

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 8h

look at this fluffy little thing, trying to find refuge from the cold and the predators on top of the ps3.

He/she just wants to eat, sleep, and have sex. And the world just seems designed for his/her torment.

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 9h

then I got sad, and kind of stopped believing in God for a few seconds.

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 9h

But anyway, idk, I don't think their is much risk flipping for people who believe this stuff.

Everything is indistinguishable, but flipping is like going from everything is black to everything is white. Not an easy flip.

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 9h

My cat caught a mouse yesterday but is fed, so all she did was play with it and wait for it to run before catching it again.

My wife was upset as I tossed the mouse out into the cold rain, but I said "there is no place for a mouse to be happy in this world, really"

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 9h

but God likes the smell

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 9h

why can't I get an algorithm that shows me posts like this, which are from people I follow, and obviously related to my interests.

I swear that still to this day the best way for me to find posts is manually clicking on follows and going through their recent stuff. It's a pain.

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 9h

Not according to Jaz's stat page.

followers by day. Dropping precipitously

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 9h

The study bibles I own so rarely address the questions I have.

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 9h

Did you all coordinate to each post a portion of this thread???

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 9h

I would love to do a write up on this one day and compare it to the Thomists and Natural Law theorems.

The mix of thinking this is a command but also feeling the urge to rationalize what God does.

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 9h

Another super interesting part of this portion of Paul's letter is the idea of providing a command of God, but then also rationalizing it.

Paul spends a lot of time explaining *why* people should be orderly, as if being a command of the Lord wasn't enough.

Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 10h

I was unable to find a study of this nature online so I've spent the last week trying to figure out whether 1 Cor 14:37 was a claim to a historical Jesus quote, and if not then what it was claiming.
baxterwilliams.wordpress.com/2025/10/15/i...

Is 1 Corinthians 14:37 claiming Jesus said this while alive?

Here are three different translations of 1 Corinthians 14:37-38 in English. Anyone who claims to be a prophet or spiritual must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. A…

baxterwilliams.wordpress.com

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 10h

I was unable to find a study of this nature online so I've spent the last week trying to figure out whether 1 Cor 14:37 was a claim to a historical Jesus quote, and if not then what it was claiming.
baxterwilliams.wordpress.com/2025/10/15/i...

Is 1 Corinthians 14:37 claiming Jesus said this while alive?

Here are three different translations of 1 Corinthians 14:37-38 in English. Anyone who claims to be a prophet or spiritual must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. A…

baxterwilliams.wordpress.com

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 10h

I think this has been primarily because 1 Cor 7:10 also appears in the Gospels while 1 Cor 14:37 doesn't. But just because it doesn't appear in the Gospels doesn't mean that Paul didn't think Jesus said it.

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 10h

Both 1 Cor 7:10 (against divorce and remarriage) and 1 Cor 14:37 (strive to prophesy) both use the phrase "command of the Lord".

1 Cor 7:10 is considered to be an early quotation of Jesus prior to his death, but 1 Cor 14:37 isn't, generally.

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 13h

I'm assuming the more common solution is "God is Love (in some sense)" or "Love keeps no record of wrong (in some sense)" and then just use different senses of talking about things to harmonize it.

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Baxter Williams @baxterwilliams.bsky.social · 13h

A curious thing to ponder in a Christian worldview.

1. God is Love (1 John 4:16)
2. Love keeps no record of wrong (1 Corinthians 13:4-5)
3. Christ keeps record of wrongs (2 Corinthians 5:10, Revelation 20:12)

If Christ is not God there is no confusion here though.

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