Baxter Williams

@trustbelieveknow.com

520 Followers 258 Following

Ex-Christian pandeist. Still exploring Christianity out of fear of Jesus’s threat of eternal punishment and empathy for family agonized by the idea of me there.

page 40 of institutes of metaphysic by Janes Ferrier 1854. Complaining about the lack of clarity in Plato, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Hegel.
Institutes of Metaphysics by James Ferrier. Page 106 page header.
a chart showing a red line representing credence level in Christianity going up and down with various life events, but generally trending downward. Biggest drop is after learning about infinity in math class, and after finding hope outside of Christianity. Line goes back up a little bit after reading CS Lewis and reading Dale Allison Jr.
my drawing of a stick figure talking to a network of nodes
Doctor etymology, showing the word originally meant a learned theologian.
Accordingly in human government also, those who are in authority, rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain greater evils be incurred: thus Augustine says (De Ordine ii, 4): "If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust." Hence, though unbelievers sin in their rites, they may be tolerated, either on account of some good that ensues therefrom, or because of some evil avoided.
Thus the same is not possible to a child as to a full-grown man: for which reason the law for children is not the same as for adults, since many things are permitted to children, which in an adult are punished by law or at any rate are open to blame. In like manner many things are permissible to men not perfect in virtue, which would be intolerable in a virtuous man. Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and such like.
We think that the Lord’s Prayer asks that God won’t lead us into temptation or will deliver us from evil or give us just our daily bread, whereas what the original Greek is saying is something much more radical. “Forgive us our trespasses” — there’s no word “trespasses” in the Greek. The word is opheilēmata and it literally means debts, and not moral debts. It’s during a debt crisis, and Jesus is saying pray to me that your debtors will relieve you so that you can’t be taken by the bailiff and put in prison because you’ve been dragged into a court, dragged into trial, not “led into temptation,” and reduced perhaps to slavery. We’ve turned all that into very anodyne and rather nebulous moral councils that a rich person can recite without feeling the irony. But that’s not what the Greek says. And having to translate that word-for-word-for-word made me aware with an acuteness that until then, I hadn’t felt just what was actually going on here.
Wideness of the Sea by Randal Rauser Subtitle: How to be Evangelical and Gay Affirming
A screen shot of Edward Feser, a prominent Catholic and philosopher, quoting Daniel 15:36-37 in his post while also quoting a post that shares the image Trump posted of himself as Jesus.
Pope Leo tells priests to stop using AI to write sermons
Acts 10:44-48
Galatians 4:12-15
series of videos on "How We Got the Bible" on the EltonDP YouTube channel
1 Corinthians 15:29 NRSVUE [29] Otherwise, what will those people do who receive baptism on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? https://bible.com/bible/3523/1co.15.29.NRSVUE
tweet about canceled Netflix and the kid saying it was okay because KPDH will be available in heaven
Romans 9:10‐20
test page for my website withe logo and a statement that says "this website is under construction"
series of tweets describing Dale Allison Jr theory. Tweets by Baxter Williams. 1st tweet : "I guell I'll add one point of intrigue for you. Right now, the strongest case for Christianity for me is one given by Dale Allison Jr." 2nd tweet : "The impression I had of his theory is that the entire history of God in scripture is him making threats of punishment that he doesn't entirely follow through with because his mercy wins." 3rd tweet : "Just as stoning was a divinely commanded punishment, but Jesus negated it, so too perhaps is eternal punishment the divine command that will be negated. But the threat did ultimately make us better people." 4th tweet : "there was a quote something like, 'are we to believe that the one who commanded to forgive 70 * 7 will draw the line at 491?'"
daily posts from Jaz stats showing the initial exodus, continuous falling, and then an increase in the last week
Second, while I think it is true that scientific study can show that the condition of being aroused by the same sex is an instinctual one not chosen by us, that doesn’t address the concerns of Paul, who – by citing Leviticus – is more concerned with action than thought. So it is my current belief that science and scripture are not talking on the same subject in this regard. I also don’t think that science says anything about what is “good” or “moral”, BUT it can help us to understand who is harmed if we already believe harming others to be immoral generally. So science is not useless in discussion of morality, and it can show us that consenting adults taking the appropriate precautions are not harmed if they are permitted to act on their homosexual urges, at least in this life.
If I had never deconverted I don’t know if I would have ever considered the possibility of the hopeful eternal atheism of JME McTaggart, or the “Psychological Aether Thoery” of Paul Draper, or the Deism of the founding fathers of America, or the philosophical classical theism of the academy, but I have considered them now, and the choices are not the same as before. It’s true that over time my studies have made Christianity less confusing and scary in parts, but it has also made other elements even more confusing and scary, especially in comparison to alternatives that I was not aware of until I deconverted. When I say “the cats out of the bag” I don’t mean that I’m done with God and never going back, but that I’ve found beauty and hope and, yes, maybe even God in the alternatives. So a reconversion isn’t in order just yet.
a likely bot account with 1k following but only 5 followers whose only activity is reposting t-shirt saying "fuck ice"
not manually retyping this. Sorry for those vision impaired that follow me.
As tends to be the case with social media platforms, posts mocking the issue tended to consistently outperform those providing a longer, more systemic analysis.
The format section of the HCSB wiki page : "The HCSB is available in electronic form for WORDsearch and Bible Explorer software.[5] An HCSB Study Bible became available in October 2010.[6] The HCSB is available online.[7] It has a version specifically for the Microsoft Xbox 360 called Bible Navigator X.[8]"
a chart showing that daily posters h as ve continuously fallen over the last 3 months on bsky
a picture of a table of contents with the title "My Assessment of Christianity in 2025" Some pages noted are "what does it mean to be a Christian", "Are Arians Christians? Donatists?", "The First Christians", "Christianity as a trust ladder"
The Answer Up Front There are difficult things to explain if Christianity is false and difficult things to explain if Christianity is true. Despite what some skeptics may say, I do not see Christianity as logically impossible. Yet I also don't find the evidence for Christianity compelling either. To me Christianity a story that is possible to trust (have faith in) or not. You are not an irrational idiot if you believe it, nor are you an irrational idiot if you don’t believe it. While some think that Christianity is empirically falsifiable via prayer, I find the evidence and personal experience with the matter very weak. I don’t dismiss Christianity because prayer doesn’t have any significant statistical effect like some skeptics do though. In a field of possibilities without any reliable method of empirical confirmation, all that is left to inform our beliefs / trust / faith regarding the matter are hopes, fears, and the morality of trust itself. I think that trust is implicitly a good thing to do, all things equal, especially in the absence of reasons to doubt or sufficient concerns / fears. But I do have significant concerns, namely that if Christianity is true then divine love is a foreign, inscrutable thing, my life and ultimate end is known prior to my birth from my perspective, and
1. To rise with Christ, we must die with Christ: we must “be away from the body and at home with the Lord”. With the Instruction Piam et Constantem of 5 July 1963, the then Holy Office established that “all necessary measures must be taken to preserve the practice of reverently burying the faithful departed”, adding however that cremation is not “opposed per se to the Christian religion” and that no longer should the sacraments and funeral rites be denied to those who have asked that they be cremated, under the condition that this choice has not been made through “a denial of Christian dogmas, the animosity of a secret society, or hatred of the Catholic religion and the Church”. Later this change in ecclesiastical discipline was incorporated into the Code of Canon Law (1983) and the Code of Canons of Oriental Churches (1990).
In contrast to power-hungry computers, brains have evolved to be energy-efficient. It is estimated that a human brain uses roughly 20 Watts to work – that is equivalent to the energy consumption of your computer monitor alone, in sleep mode. On this shoe-string budget, 80–100 billion neurons are capable of performing trillions of operations that would require the power of a small hydroelectric plant if they were done artificially.
screenshot of porkbun for trustbelieveknow.blog
facebook thread on a public video where people are commenting on the basketball in the video and then one person amongst the comments says "turn to Christ people before it's to [sic] late"
Matthew 19:23-26 NRSVUE [23] Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. [24] Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” [25] When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, “Then who can be saved?” [26] But Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” https://bible.com/bible/3523/mat.19.23-26.NRSVUE
Documents from the Council of Nicaea This is a collection of English translations on this Christian church council, which was the first "Church-wide" council held after the practice of Christianity was made legal in the Roman Empire by the emperor Constantine I. These are from the "Council of Nicaea (AD 325)" web page, which is part of the Fourth Century Christianity site created by Wisconsin Lutheran College. You may use any of the primary source documents from this site that are linked below. Constantine’s Summons to the Council Creed (Greek/English) Eusebius’ Letter to his Congregation Canons (Greek and Latin/English) The Council’s Letter to the Church in Egypt Constantine’s Letter to the Church of Alexandria Constantine’s Letter concerning the Date of Easter
image of clouds generated from shipping lines
From the letter by Pope Leo: "Saint Athanasius explains that the Son of God became man so that man might be deified. [5] This enlightening understanding of divine revelation was prepared by Saint Irenaeus of Lyon and Origen, and then further developed with great richness in Eastern spirituality. Divinization in no way implies the self-deification of man. On the contrary, divinization protects us from the primordial temptation to want to be like God (cf. Gen 3:5). What Christ is by nature, we become by grace. Through the work of redemption, God not only restored our human dignity as his image, but the One who created us in a wondrous way, has now made us partakers in his divine nature in an even more wondrous way (cf. 2 Pet 1:4). Divinization, then, is true humanization (becoming fully human)"
A U.S. Department of Education study found that about 6 percent of public schoolteachers had credible or substantiated claims of sexual abuse of minor children under their charge (Shakeshaft, 2004a, 2004b) during the same time frame as the Catholic clerical data was obtained. Furthermore, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) report that approximately 3 to 5 percent of men meet the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia. These numbers increase significantly if you include men who sexually violate postpubescent teenagers, which is illegal in most jurisdictions, but not a diagnosable psychiatric disorder according to the DSM-5. In other words, there simply is no evidence that Catholic priests sexually abuse children or teens at rates higher than other groups of men, in or outside of religious communities; they may actually abuse at rates lower than the general population of men and of public schoolteachers during similar time periods.
Screenshot from a reddit post that quoted Penn Jillette as saying: "The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don’t want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don’t want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you. You know what I mean?"
screenshot of stats by Jaz. Showing that daily posts were continuously falling from May to August, had a slight uptick in september, and renewed falling in October and November.
The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
a screenshot of the settings page in BlueSky where it shows that I have muted the word "epsteim" for 7 days.
image from Instagram from an account called "thesimplecatholic" posting a meme from the office. Above the image it says "Priests preaching on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity who accidentally commit heresy be like:" and then the caption of Michael Scott says "sometimes I'll start a sentence and I don't even know where it is going"
A separation of goods—“quoad bona”—legally separated the household, including goods and income, but retained a requirement for payment of the conjugal debt upon request. In other words, both husband and wife had a duty to perform sexually at the request of their spouse. This less strict separation was the most common in Paris and included all of the separations the court granted due to saevitia. For example, Jeanne and Girard Vane, mentioned above, were granted a separa- tion of goods due to Girard’s cruelty.3
1 Corinthians 7:2-6 NRSVUE [2] But because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. [3] The husband should give to his wife what is due her and likewise the wife to her husband. [4] For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. [5] Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. [6] This I say by way of concession, not of command. https://bible.com/bible/3523/1co.7.2-6.NRSVUE
Matthew 25:44-46 NRSVUE [44] Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ [45] Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ [46] And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.” https://bible.com/bible/3523/mat.25.44-46.NRSVUE
Acts 6:1-4 NRSVUE [1] Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. [2] And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables. [3] Therefore, brothers and sisters, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task, [4] while we, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word.” https://bible.com/bible/3523/act.6.1-4.NRSVUE
Acts 4:32-35 NRSVUE [32] Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. [33] With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. [34] There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. [35] They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. https://bible.com/bible/3523/act.4.32-35.NRSVUE
Revelation 21:7-8 NRSVUE [7] Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God, and they will be my children. [8] But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
a screenshot of matrices in Google Sheets with "Monopoly Go" as the sheet title and "Markov" as the highlighted tab.
markov chain chapter 10 on Libre Texts
screenshot of the controversial podcast episode where two conservative women complain about women culture.
30% of Christians believe in reincarnation
post here asking a question with no engagement allowed.
folder 1
If materialism is true, then only physical substances and properties exist. If only physical substances and properties exist, then all facts (including moral facts) must be identical with or reducible to physical facts. Therefore, if materialism is true, then all facts (including the moral fact of Hitler’s evil) must be identical with or reducible to physical facts. But moral qualities (goodness, evil, etc.) are not the kinds of things that can have physical properties like mass, temperature, or chemical composition. Therefore, materialism is false. Call this argument the “morality-to-molecules argument.” Premise 2 is false. https://secularoutpost.substack.com/p/does-atheism-mean-that-hitler-just?r=1qlyci&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
BlueSky post that says "I encourage people to actually read the Bible - alongside critical commentaries -- rather than taking other people's word for what it says".
passage from The Screwtape Letters where Lewis, speaking through Screwtape, remarks on the curiosity that the devils are only allowed to tempt those who survive infancy, a minority by most measures.
God rolls some dice and is horrified at the outcome. But the only real alternative was to create nothing.