NaClhv

Theology, philosophy, math, science, and random other things
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
2015-04-06
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"Simon, son of John, do you love me?"

I'm trying my hand at a Bible fanfic. This story is based on John 21. In that chapter, Jesus thrice asks Peter whether Peter loves him. The subtleties of this conversations are lost in translation, as the Greek words "agape" and "phileo" are both translated as "love". You can read more about the possible meaning of […]
2015-02-16
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Christianity and falsifiability

Falsifiability has a troubled history, but fundamentally it's not a bad idea. Put simply, an idea is falsifiable if it is capable of being disproven. It is considered a desirable quality in meaningful statements, especially in the sciences. Some have even used it as the essential property of scientific statements that separates science from non-science. […]
2015-02-09
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Sherlock Bayes, logical detective: a murder mystery game

You may next want to read:Basic Bayesian reasoning: a better way to think (Part 1)What is "evidence"? What counts as evidence for a certain position?How to make a fractalAnother post, from the table of contents
2015-01-26
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A common mistake in Bayesian reasoning

You and your friend are investigating a murder, and you have following conversation: You: Alice is obviously the culprit. The knife has her fingerprints on it.  Your friend: Why are you ruling out Bob? It could have been Carol or Dan, too. Or anyone else, for that matter.  You: Um... because of the knife with […]
2015-01-19
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Questions from seekers - short answers to common questions (Part 3)

This is a continuation of my previous post. The same caveats mentioned there apply. Q: What happens to people who never hear about God? A: This is essentially asking what happens to those who are not given enough knowledge to be held accountable. Quite honestly, I'm not sure. But there are some guidelines that we can […]
2015-01-12
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Questions from seekers - short answers to common questions (Part 2)

This is a continuation of my previous post. The same caveats mentioned there apply. Q: What happens to Christians when they don't pray for forgiveness of their sins? (whether they know it's wrong or not) does God forgive? Forget? A: To answer this question, it is useful to remember that God is a friend. In […]
2015-01-05
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Questions from seekers - short answers to common questions (Part 1)

I once ran a college small group for new Christians and non-Christians. Here are some questions I got from this group, and my answers to these questions. They've been edited slightly for clarity and minor changes in my views, but they're otherwise presented as they were presented to the students. Enjoy! Two things to keep […]
2014-12-22
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Merry Christmas! And happy one year anniversary for this blog!

Jesus asked his disciples, "what about you? Who do you say I am?" The following is a selection of the things I've said about Jesus in various posts, in the year since I started this blog. This is who I say he is. Merry Christmas! What does it mean that Christ created the world? It […]
2014-12-15
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Basic Bayesian reasoning: a better way to think (Part 4)

Have you read the last several posts? In those posts we began the tale of Alice and Bob, a pair of murder suspects who recently started dating one another. Through their sordid tale, we'll examine Bayesian reasoning, the scientific method, and the so-called fallacy of "affirming the consequent". Alice and Bob are going through a […]
2014-12-08
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Basic Bayesian reasoning: a better way to think (Part 3)

In my last post, I introduced Bayes' theorem: P(hypothesis|observation) = P(observation|hypothesis)/P(observation) * P(hypothesis) Now, this is a powerful equation that tells us how to use observed evidence to update our beliefs about a hypothesis. But as I mentioned, it has two difficulties with its use: first, the probability prior to the observation - P(hypothesis) - […]
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