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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • they appear to presuppose a humanized God, who follows a similar thought process which is expected to be understandable to us

    The core of the argument arises from the hellenistic idea of god being a perfect being. Perfection requires omnipotence, omniscience omnibenevolence (and some other characteristics that we can ignore right now). Philosophers could demonstrate that these ideas are in contradiction of what we see in our world. All of this was well known before Christianity developed which is why they bear the name of the greek philosopher Epicurus.

    Christianity arose in Israel and the hellenistic near east in both philosophical traditions. For example Paul who was of Jewish ancestry, grew up in a Roman city and spoke Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew. He had both a formal Jewish and Greek education and was clearly understood Stoic philosophy. Later, the church fathers shaped christian doctrine with their knowledge of philosophy, in particular St Augustine introduced many neo-Platonist ideas in which the idea of god is ‘perfect’.

    The idea of perfection immediately leads to the omni-powers discussed above. It also leads god to existing outside time (for if you are in time, you change. If you change you must either become better (i.e. you were not perfect) or worse (i.e. you are now not perfect)). It also allows god to be the prime mover or original cause of the universe recapitulating well rehearsed Greek philosophy of the previous centuries.

    Again, all these arguments are pure logic exploring what perfect knowledge, perfect power and perfect goodness mean, and comparing this to the state of the world and how the world was brought into being. They don’t require anything of god except to be perfect.





  • You see those fin-like bones that rise up from the skull? All of that is filled with the muscle that closes the jaw - technically the purpose of these bones is for the muscle to attach to. One bite will slice and crush anything of you that is in his mouth.

    Oh, and humans lack a type of fast-twitch muscle fibre that gorillas (and pretty much all non-human mammals) have. This makes their muscles a lot more powerful than ours, no matter what training you do. They will tire faster, but thats probably only during the stomp-on-your-bloody-remains part of the fight.

    Oh, and their reaction speed is also faster.

    Basically, you have zero chance going mano a mano with a gorilla.












  • It was a surprisingly good drama, but I felt the ending was a bit formulaic.

    The Catholic/Papal setting is technically central to the film, and provides amazing visuals, but, like many good films, the movie is centred on interesting characters and their personal struggles. The movie could be rewritten to place it in any organisation and it would still be great. I say this not to downplay the religious angle, but to highlight that you don’t have to be Catholic to enjoy it.

    Having said that, the lead actors’ performances are amazing and work wonderfully together.