Category: Religion
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A list of skimmable chapters of the Bible (by ChatGPT-4, as edited by me)
I am constantly amazed by, and testing or playing with, ChatGPT-4. It is, believe it or not, a dab hand at Bible commentary, not that I recommend using it for that purpose. The point, however, is that its familiarity with the Bible is vast and encyclopedic. So I asked it what bits of the Bible…
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How to Read the Bible All the Way Through for the First Time
About four years ago, I read the Bible cover-to-cover for the first time. I explained how I did it. It took me 100 days, and yes, as a result, I became a Christian. Since then, I have not stopped reading it. I read it again three more times, and I am now on a fifth…
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Several Bible Study Tools and Tricks
There are a lot of great free Bible study resources online. Since I am about to start a new two-year (but in-depth) Bible study on April 2, I thought I would give you some ideas. If you are a Bible student yourself, I hope you’ll consider joining us on Telegram for the study (20 signed…
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An idea for theological self-education
I almost wrote: “a crazy idea for theological self-education” Let me describe what I am doing, and how I might want to go on doing it in the future. This description has two parts: (1) the method I propose to use for studying the Bible, and (2) the method I propose to use for getting…
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Idea: A Bible Question-and-Answer App
“I had an idea.” Will I ever stop saying that? Probably not. I think we—whoever is excited by this idea—need to get together to make the world’s first nonprofit, open source/open content Bible question-and-answer app/website. Think of it as “The Bible meets Wikipedia and Quora, but with responsible editors.” Interested? Read on. Background. In five…
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“Being understood by the things that are made”
… Even more remarkable is the claim that the unbelievers and pagans “are without excuse” because they “knew God” who is “understood by the things that are made.” …
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An Explanation of Divine Sacrifice
At the heart of Christianity is a set of doctrines that appear to be deep and compelling for over a billion souls on earth. But divorced from their context, the same doctrines can sound primitive, ridiculous, unfair, and even insane to the modern mind. In this essay, I want to see if I can do…
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How to Choose a (Bible) Translation
Choosing a Bible translation is not easy or straightforward. While readability or comprehensibility are important, accuracy reigns supreme, for the simple reason that inaccuracies may be defined as failures of translation. A failed translation is an invention of the translator rather than a representation of the intent of the original author. The author’s thoughts must…
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On the Soul
Discourse about the soul is ancient, continues to this very day online and in academia, and spans many languages and traditions, with research spanning multiple disciplines and, all told, literally thousands of relevant books. I cannot hope to do all of that justice in this essay, so I will not try. My aim is much…
