Posts by slimboyfat

136

Colossian 1:16 - "all OTHER things"

by aqwsed12345 in

due to their apparent theological bias, the watchtower shamelessly inserts the word "other" in order to "make room" for their own idea that jesus is also a created being.

it is clear that jehovah's witnesses try to avoid having to admit that christ created everything because "the one who constructed all things is god" (hebrews 3:4).

instead, the society teaches that "christ was the only one created by god," and that then he "created everything else with jehovah.

slimboyfat

You object to me citing what relevant scholars say on the topics you are raising. Take the issue of the translation of the Hebrew word qana in Prov 8.22. You have asserted that this word does not mean “created” in this verse. What is your basis for this claim? You have offered none. I pointed out to you that the standard translation used by Bible scholars, the NRSV, translates qana as “created” in this verse. Not only that, but Jewish scholars, including JPS translation, and the highly regarded translation by Robert Alter both translate this word qana as “created” in this verse. Brown-Driver-Briggs says that qana means “created” in this verse, and lists a number of verses where it means “created”. (Gen 14.19, 22; Deu 32.6; Ps 139.13; and Prov 8.22)

https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h7069/kjv/wlc/0-1/

Against all this you simply assert that it should not be translated “created” but offer absolutely no reason and no scholarly backing for your assertion. You seem to think that you just saying it makes it so. The mainstream consensus view can be wrong of course, but you haven’t given any evidence or cited any scholar. You just declare your view fact.

You said earlier in the thread “who cares what John Ziesler thinks”? Well he was a scholar of the apostle Paul who was chosen by his peers to write a critical text on the theology of Paul for a prestigious series in biblical studies for the Oxford University Press. That’s why his expert view counts when he says that Paul believed Jesus was distinct and subordinate to God and not conceived as part of a Trinity. You don’t offer any counter argument. You simply dismiss scholars in favour of your bald assertions.

What I am pointing out to you is that mainstream scholarship on Paul and the early Christians supports the view that Paul believed Jesus was distinct and subordinate to God. The reasons John Ziesler in particular gives for this are clear and straightforward and I quoted him at length. This is mainstream scholarship. Many scholars argue that for the early Christians Jesus was viewed as God’s first creation and the most powerful angel in heaven. The idea that Paul or other early Christians thought Jesus was part of a Trinity, centuries before the dogma was even developed, is truly a fringe position.

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .

“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.

there’s no way to make that happen.

slimboyfat

Anony Mous but that’s why it sounded so different than climate change threat - because those warnings are often couched in terms of temperature rises, and sea level rises, by the end of the century. Even the worst predictions for the climate tend to envisage that some humans will survive. Plus they say there are things we can do about it - mainly stop burning fossil fuels.

The threat Geoffrey Hinton is talking about is much worse, and much nearer than that. He’s talking about catastrophe within years, not decades, and the possibility of every single human being killed.

I’ve not heard any warning like that before from anyone who is not considered a crank. Others who are in a position to understand what he is talking about apparently share his concerns. Even those who don’t think it will happen tend to agree it’s possible he’s right about AI killing us all.

nicolaou, no Geoffrey Hinton says in the interview that the problem of misinformation is a separate, and much smaller risk from AI than the one he is talking about. He is literally saying AI could kill all humans, if they implement goals that are not aligned with our own. At the moment nobody knows how to ensure AI goals don’t diverge from human goals, and when they do, and AI is smarter than us, then it’s very difficult to see what could possibly stop it.

It’s been likened to Pandora’s box from Greek mythology: once AI is out of the box there is no shutting it down and there is no controlling it.

I’m not saying this will definitely happen. This is a serious guy who knows what he’s talking about and many of his colleagues agree with him. That makes what he’s got to say worth listening to at least

136

Colossian 1:16 - "all OTHER things"

by aqwsed12345 in

due to their apparent theological bias, the watchtower shamelessly inserts the word "other" in order to "make room" for their own idea that jesus is also a created being.

it is clear that jehovah's witnesses try to avoid having to admit that christ created everything because "the one who constructed all things is god" (hebrews 3:4).

instead, the society teaches that "christ was the only one created by god," and that then he "created everything else with jehovah.

slimboyfat

Self-subordination doesn't imply inferiorness in substance, that's why it's also necessary to distinguish if we are talking about the ontological, or about economical relationship of the Father and the Son.
You are misquoting authors the basically the same way the WTS did.

The highlighted words are from Greek philosophy.

By contrast, in biblical language Jesus is, “the firstborn of all creation” (Col 1.15), “the beginning of the creation of God” (Rev 3.14), “I live because of the Father” (John 6.57), “the Lord created me” (Prov 8.22 in the Jewish Publication Society translation, Robert Alter’s translation, the NRSV, and the LXX as quoted and accepted by all the early Christian fathers, including Athanasius). You have not given any good reason why these scriptures don’t simply mean what they say, or any reason why Origen did not mean what he said when he called Jesus the “most ancient of all the works of creation”.

John Ziesler said that Jesus is distinct from God and subordinate to him. In order to be perfectly clear he even says that calling Jesus “Son of God” did not mean he was “God the Son, Second Person of the Trinity”. How much clearer could he have been? How can you say that I am not quoting him fairly?

It is true that Jehovah’s Witnesses have described Jesus as an angel, but a fair representation of their teaching would acknowledge that they far more often they emphasise that Jesus is unique and superior to the angels because he is the “only begotten Son”. They teach that Jesus is unique because he is the only direct creation of God and he was the one through whom God created everything else. On top of that God gave Jesus a name that is far superior to the angels and all the angels bow down to him. He is the archangel, or the ruler of the angels. They come to a conclusion similar to the New Testament scholar Susan R. Garrett in her book No Ordinary Angel (2008):

in comparing Jesus to the angels, one cannot simply put him against them, for he is like them in some important ways—as early Christian authors perceived so clearly. Comparison of Jesus with the angels can never be a simple matter of showing his superiority to them. So, in my analysis, I will also explore what he and they have in common. Page 12

To say that Christ is the firstborn and the agent of creation is to identify him with the personified figure of Wisdom, and thereby to insist that he predates the angels. In Jewish antiquity, Wisdom was widely assumed to be God’s first creation, and the agent used by God to fashion the rest of the cosmos. Philo calls Wisdom ‘the firstborn mother of all things’. In common understanding, angels did not come along until the second (or possibly even the fifth or sixth day) of creation. By calling Christ the firstborn and by insisting on his role in creation, the New Testament authors undermined any alleged claim by jealous angels, including Satan, that Christ was younger than they and therefore undeserving of worship. Page 127

136

Colossian 1:16 - "all OTHER things"

by aqwsed12345 in

due to their apparent theological bias, the watchtower shamelessly inserts the word "other" in order to "make room" for their own idea that jesus is also a created being.

it is clear that jehovah's witnesses try to avoid having to admit that christ created everything because "the one who constructed all things is god" (hebrews 3:4).

instead, the society teaches that "christ was the only one created by god," and that then he "created everything else with jehovah.

slimboyfat

In your earlier post you mentioned that Watchtower has misquoted authors on the Trinity. I think many here would agree with that. People here on the whole are not Watchtower apologists. Watchtower also misquoted scientists about evolution, probably worse than the Trinity misquotes.

It doesn’t change the fact that the Trinity is a non-biblical teaching. A fair reading of mainstream scholarship confirms the view that the early Christians had views about Jesus that were closer to JWs (and Arius, and later Arians) than to Trinitarians. Take the passage in Phil 2.5–11, for example. In the updated edition of the NRSV, which is the standard scholarly reference Bible, it reads:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

9 Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
10 so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

John Ziesler explains this passage as follows in his book Pauline Christianity (1990), part of three Oxford Bible Series:

Though (v.6) Christ like Adam was in the image (‘form’: the words in Greek can be synonymous) of God, unlike Adam he did not regard equality with God (i.e. being like God, see Gen 3:5) a matter of grabbing (or perhaps a prize to be snatched). Indeed unlike Adam (v. 7) he voluntarily accepted servanthood and mortality even to the point of a humiliating death on the cross (v. 8) … The ruling function that properly belongs to Yahweh alone is now Christ’s also; he is cosmic Lord and as such receives honour that hitherto has been given only to Yahweh. Yet before we rashly conclude that the two have simply become identified, we must note that the element of subordination remains. It all happens, even the exaltation of Christ, ‘to the glory of God the Father’ (v.11), and Christ does not exalt himself but is exalted by God and is given the title ‘Lord’ by him (v.9). Christ has become the bearer of the powers of God and the recipient of divine homage (v. 10), but is still distinct from him and subject to him. Pages 45 and 46

We may also compare Phil 2.10ff with Isa. 45:23 where the reference is similarly altered to Christ from Yahweh. There is at least a close association between the two figures, but in fact they are never identified (see again 1 Cor. 8:5f) In 1 Cor 15:24, 28, Christ at the end hands over the kingdom to the Father, and the final subjection of all things to God includes the subjection of Christ himself. It is such passages that lend force to the often quoted words of L. Cerfaux that ‘Christ is Lord because he is God’s vice-regent, exercising power that belongs to God.’ This seems to be exactly right. God’s powers and reign are exercised through Christ as God’s plenipotentiary representative, but Christ is not identical with God. Things traditionally said about God may now properly be said about Christ, but not that he is God, for the element of subordination remains. Page 39

Compared with ‘Lord’, this title [Son of God] is used by Paul infrequently, but see Rom. 1:3f, 9; 1 Cor 1:9 as examples. By the Second Century, it came to refer to Jesus as divine, but originally it was not a particularly lofty title. It is not the same as God the Son, Second Person of the Trinity … Rather, being Son of God meant obedient service to God on the one hand, and divine commissioning and endorsement on the other. In our society we tend to forget that the first thing about a son was that he obeyed his father; therefore calling Jesus Christ Sin of God meant first of all that he did what God wanted. He was the obedient one. Pages 41 and 42.

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .

“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.

there’s no way to make that happen.

slimboyfat

He’s very down to earth and doesn’t seem at all happy about the conclusions he has come to. There’s a lot of humour in the discussion that feels like gallows humour. He has a very different vibe than an end time prophet. He’s an expert who didn’t believe AI posed an existential risk until recent developments in AI convinced him otherwise.

I can’t explain the reason why AI poses an existential risk in anything like detail required. From what I have gathered, the argument is that AI is approaching “general artificial intelligence”, which means outperforming humans in all domains of competency, rather than just a few such as chess or reading scan results. The capability of AI is improving rapidly and when it exceeds human capabilities we will no longer be able to control it. AI will be able to outsmart humans because, in particular, it knows how to be more persuasive (already in evidence in social media where humans are manipulated by algorithms to behave in certain ways), and it has vastly greater knowledge to draw upon instantaneously. If we attempt to shut down AI after that point then we are likely to fail because it can anticipate our actions and outsmart us. When humans are no longer in control the danger is that AI will pursue its objectives without any regard for human values or welfare.

It is a complex argument but experts who understand it seem to taking it very seriously now, even those who argue there are ways for humans to survive. Few seem to be ruling out existential risk anymore. If they’re right about that risk, then we’ll probably hear a lot more about it in the coming months, and we will all become familiar with the reasons why it is a threat—unless it all happens so fast we don’t have time to reflect on it.

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .

“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.

there’s no way to make that happen.

slimboyfat

Geoffrey Hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence:

“If you take the existential risk seriously, as I now do—I used to think it was way off, but now I think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but I think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen. There’s no way to make that happen. If the US stops then the Chinese won’t.”

To be absolutely clear, by existential risk he is talking about the death of all humans in the near future, probably years rather than decades, and that he cannot think of anything we can do about it. I cannot recall any statement like that from anyone not a “crank” of some description. He only came to this conclusion himself recently, and reluctantly. He is not a crank, and nobody in a position to know what he’s talking about seems to be calling him a crank. There are relevant experts who argue that better outcomes are possible, some even say it’s probable, but vanishingly few seem to be ruling out existential risk.

I wonder, how should we respond to this? Should we take it seriously? What would “taking it seriously” even mean? Should we try to do something about it? Or accept we can’t do anything about it and make the best of the time left? Or just try to forget about it altogether? Does religion have anything relevant to say about this situation?

https://youtu.be/sitHS6UDMJc

136

Colossian 1:16 - "all OTHER things"

by aqwsed12345 in

due to their apparent theological bias, the watchtower shamelessly inserts the word "other" in order to "make room" for their own idea that jesus is also a created being.

it is clear that jehovah's witnesses try to avoid having to admit that christ created everything because "the one who constructed all things is god" (hebrews 3:4).

instead, the society teaches that "christ was the only one created by god," and that then he "created everything else with jehovah.

slimboyfat

Maurice Wiles came to the conclusion that Arians had been misrepresented by a close reading of the primary sources, as his book Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries (1996) demonstrates at length. If you think my quotations of his work, or others, are not representative then I would welcome correction. His conclusion is that early Arians started from the Bible and that they are no more open to the charge of philosophising than the Nicene authors. Plus the later Arians in the West and the Goths had a very simple reliance on the language of the Bible and rejected philosophical language.

I don’t think it’s relevant, because I am not claiming to be an expert on early church history—I am pointing to those who are experts—but just for your interest, I answer your query about what I have read from the original sources, to the best of my recollection. I have read a translation of the Apostolic Fathers that included Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Ignatius, the Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, letter of Barnabas, and probably some others I forget. This was a number of years ago. I have not read any other complete works but I have read substantial parts of Adversus Praxaen by Tertullian, Origen, Justin Martyr, the Odes of Solomon, Athanasius, and small parts from lots of others. I may have got some of those names wrong, I am writing this from memory.

You asked earlier where John Locke got the idea that pre-Nicene authors wrote like Arians. As best I can tell, from Wiles’ book, in common with many of his time who questioned the Trinity, including John Milton, Samuel Clarke, Isaac Newton, William Whiston, and others, Locke appears to have read voraciously in the texts of the early church and based his views on that.

There is some evidence that Trinitarians in the fourth century attempted to alter the wording of Rev 3:14 from “the beginning of the creation of God” to “the beginning of the church of God”, to avoid the conclusion that Jesus was created, but in this instance their forgery did not succeed.

The first Christological reading to surface is in Revelation 3:14. The title of the risen Christ, ‘the beginning of the creation of God’, κτίσεως τοῦ θεοῦ, is altered to the ‘begin- ning of the church of God’, ἐκκλησίας τοῦ θεοῦ.29 The change eliminates the possibility of placing Jesus within the created order and is conspicuous against the backdrop of the fourth century, defined as it was by its pitched theological battles over the precise nature of the Son. In fact, it is remarkable how close the Apocalypse’s original title comes to Arius’s own musings about the Son. In the Thalia fragments, one of the few primary sources believed to preserve Arius’s authentic words, we encounter the following assertion: ‘The one without beginning established the Son as the beginning of all creatures’.30 The ‘Arian’ statement is nearly indistinguishable from the Apocalypse’s original title. The eradication of such language in Codex Sinaiticus appears to indicate that the wording was a problem. The title of Revelation 3:14 was thus harmonized to the title of Colossians 1:18, where Jesus is ‘the head of the church’ (κεφαλὴ...τῆς ἐκκλησίας).31

Remarkably, two centuries later Oecumenius would use Revelation 3:14 to weigh in on the Arian controversy of his day. Oecumenius’s text of Revelation 3:14 is identical to the ‘earliest attainable text’, and he displays no knowledge of the singular reading in Codex Sinaiticus. Yet, Oecumenius also reads Revelation 3:14 in light of Colossians 1:18 as he attempts to refute the idea that the Son was created. The singular reading of Codex Sinaiticus may therefore represent the earliest use of the Apocalypse (on record) to thwart an ‘Arian’ threat by reading it in light of Colossians.32

Hernández Jr, J. (2015). Codex Sinaiticus: An Early Christian Commentary on the Apocalypse?. Codex Sinaiticus: New Perspectives on the Ancient Biblical Manuscript, 107-26 (This article is available online if you search for it)

136

Colossian 1:16 - "all OTHER things"

by aqwsed12345 in

due to their apparent theological bias, the watchtower shamelessly inserts the word "other" in order to "make room" for their own idea that jesus is also a created being.

it is clear that jehovah's witnesses try to avoid having to admit that christ created everything because "the one who constructed all things is god" (hebrews 3:4).

instead, the society teaches that "christ was the only one created by god," and that then he "created everything else with jehovah.

slimboyfat

You argued that Arians in the fourth century didn’t base their beliefs on scripture. The point of me quoting Maurice Wiles is to show that modern scholarship has demonstrated that Arians did base their beliefs on scripture. Wiles was one of the most knowledgeable and widely published scholars on Arianism of the past century. The charge against Arians is ironic too, because the Nicene/Athanasius faction was prone to using the language of philosophy to define their beliefs in terms of “essence”, something rejected by many as unscriptural. Wiles’ demonstrated that many of the traditional accusations against Arians were false. He was not himself Arian, but in fairness Wiles documented that Athanasius was in the habit of misrepresentation and forgery. Other scholars of Arianism have drawn similar conclusions about Arians basing their views on the Bible and the traditional teaching of the church before the fourth century. Rowan Williams, for example, described Arius as a “theological conservative”. Scholar of religion, Karen Armstrong, says “Arius knew the scriptures well and he produced an armoury of texts to support his claim that Christ the Word could only be a creature like ourselves” and, “there was nothing new about his claim: Origen, whom both sides held in high esteem, had taught a similar doctrine.” (A History of God,1999, pages 131 and 132). RPC Hanson wrote a massive volume on Christological controversy in the fourth century (The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 1988) and showed that subordinationism was the orthodoxy before Nicaea. These are representative of mainstream modern scholarship. These carry more weight than your assertions about Arian beliefs not being based on the Bible, or the work of conservative Trinitarians who still push a distorted picture of the early church.

136

Colossian 1:16 - "all OTHER things"

by aqwsed12345 in

due to their apparent theological bias, the watchtower shamelessly inserts the word "other" in order to "make room" for their own idea that jesus is also a created being.

it is clear that jehovah's witnesses try to avoid having to admit that christ created everything because "the one who constructed all things is god" (hebrews 3:4).

instead, the society teaches that "christ was the only one created by god," and that then he "created everything else with jehovah.

slimboyfat

It’s from Justin’s first Apology.

Arianism was notable for its appeal to the Bible, as Maurice Wiles documents in Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries (1996) on pages 10 to 17, in detail. He goes on to comment:

In the past it [Arius’ description as ‘an acute reasoner’] has often been interpreted to imply that Arius was a skilled practitioner of Aristotelian logic. But the evidence does little to support such a view. It is in part perhaps the product of a general theory (going back to Hippolytus) that behind every heresy there lies the distorting influence of a specific philosophical school. Page 24

On each side of the controversy there were those with whom virtuosity of reasoning skill may see to have got out of hand. Page 25

There are no good grounds for distinguishing ‘Arianism’ as exclusively characterised by ‘presumptuous reasoning’. Page 26

Affirmation of the radically secondary status of the Son’s divinity, demonstrated not by philosophical argument but by the exegesis of scriptural texts, was the hallmark of Western Arianism throughout. Page 36

the primary distinguishing characteristic [of Arians according to the author of Opus Imperfectum] that marks out this community as the true church is faithfulness to Scripture. Page 39

Since it [Arianism among the Goths] was a faith that emphasised not merely the basic role of the Bible in the definition of Christian faith but its essential sufficiency for the task, it would not be surprising if it was to specifically biblical issues that any intellectual energies of among Gothic Christians should have been primarily directed. And this is what the scanty evidence suggests. Page 49

It is probably best described as non-Nicene rather than anti-Nicene, biblical and traditional in character. Thompson’s description of German Arianism as ‘characterised by a ponderous and earthbound reliance on the text of the Bible’ may be unnecessarily pejorative in tone, but not too far from the mark in substance. Page 50

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

slimboyfat

People sent him the books for free, including rare magazines and ephemera. I doubt he paid for a single one. Some of them are worth a bit of money. Sold as a complete collection they are worth thousands of pounds. He probably plans to sell them at some point when he needs the money, or when he “retires”. Keeping them on display in his videos encourages more people to send him rare items in the meantime.