Time Compression

Today's another reading day. I spent time on Zero to Sold, while finishing the last bits of the Persona 5 speedrun. I also watched the latest episode IRyS' memetastic Pokémon Brilliant Diamond run (go go KusaKameRyS!), and followed it up with a Minecraft random seedless any% 1.16+ run, before ending with the latest episode of Ina's Pokémon Shining Pearl run.

``MT, that's 16+2/3+5+5 2/3=27 1/3 hours. How does that work out?!''

Well, firstly it was more like 4+2/3+5+5 2/3=15 1/3 hours, since I watched about 12+ hours of the Persona 5 speedrun yesterday already.

Second, I watch at a minimum of 2× speed, so it's closer to 7 2/3 hours. The Pokémon runs could be comfortably watched at around 2.2× to 2.5× pace depending on how fast the VTuber speaks. Actually most of the livestreams can be watched at a minimum speed up of 1.5×, with rates of up to 2.5× for some people for some games. Thus realistically, it is possible to consume about 15 hours of videos within a ``standard'' 8-hour-ish day.

Watching videos at that pace taxes the 'net speed quite drastically. That is why I cache the videos locally using yt-dlp at 480p resolution. I think I might have mentioned why the 480p resolution, but I will say so again: I tend to run the video in my side vertical screen while working on my main screen, and that has a horizontal span of 1080 px. This means that even the 1280 px width from a 720p video has too many pixels that need to be downsampled, let alone the 1080p one. If there was a 1080 px horizontal resolution setting, I would go for that, but alas, the closest is the 854 px from 480p resolution videos. The visual quality isn't too terrible, and everything works well.

Having the local cached version also means that I can use a different video player that can bring in higher (and more fine-tuned) multipliers of speed into play that the original source player cannot support. I also don't have to worry about taxing the 'net continuously---the caching process can be done with a lower priority batch-like process in the background.

It's a good enough system for me.

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Earlier in the day, I was thinking a bit about the apparent conflict between science and religion (specifically, Christianity). I think the entirety of the most recent iteration of the argument boils down to this: is Genesis meant to be read as a historical work, or a metaphorical one?

I don't think it is meant to be metaphorical the way Psalms was. It is meant to be historical. But here is the gotcha that stumbles many people: ``historical'' writing needs to have a defined purpose as opposed to a rudderless record of daily events that way a journal might work.

In this case, what is the purpose of the historical writing that is in Genesis? To me, it seems that the purpose of Genesis is to introduce God, and to prepare the setting for Man, like Man's relationship to God, the Fall of Man due to disobedience to God, and how, despite the disobedience, God did not abandon His creation, before eventually bringing in the notion of His chosen people.

More time was spent on defining genealogies than explaining the details of the creation of our universe and earth. Just let that sink in for the moment.

The focus of Genesis then can be succinctly summarised as focusing on the relationship between Man and God, and not between God and the rest of nature that He has created.

``But MT, you've gotta take the Bible literally!''

Yes, yes I am. It is literal. Things got created. Genesis recorded it.

``So you agree that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh?''

Yes. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh---that was what was written. It was the best that could be done in the language and understanding of the times---who's to say that the inspiration as put into the author(s) by God was incorrect? Again, the point here isn't about the mechanics of the creation, it is about the relationship between God and everything else.

God as Creator is an important point, and the different aspects in which He is responsible for creating are expounded in detail in Genesis 1---that's the relationship between God and the natural world as we know it, of which includes the fundamental forcs of nature, matter and energy, as well as space-time. It also establishes Man's role in the world that God created---that's the relationship between Man and the natural world. It also establishes how Man is related to God (``in His image'', disobedient, yet God does not completely abandon (see Abram/Abraham)).

What I am trying to say here is that Genesis establishes the ground rules of reality by stating the relationships between the major actors; it does not attempt to establish the ground rules of reality from the reductionist perspective of defining inductive rules upon the axioms the way the laws that scientific endeavours tend to end up with. It's the Bible, not NaNoWriMo where we pad words like crazy. Writing stuff down back in the day is hard---no one wants to write more than what is necessary. What is recorded and has been passed down is deemed to be whatever's essential in understanding the cosmic order---don't ascribe more meaning than what was conveyed.

The word that stumbles is the word ``create''. To me, ``create'' defines the intent, the prime motive force; there is no necessity for it to mean ``completeness'' in the sense that anti-evolutionists argue (or their predecessors, the anti-extinctionists (``because God does not kill off His creations'')). Yes, I'm aware that it says in Genesis that God created every living creature that moves and so on---I do not disagree. All things are created by God, but it is not necessarily the case that all created things by God need to come by supernatural means.

The only supernatural means for things to come into creation is the initial motion of the universe, the exact part where science breaks down because there is no experiment that can be created to test it.

``MT, aren't you just playing with words here? You know what I mean...''

No, no I'm not. I'm taking things literally as requested. I never claimed that the Bible is wrong---I claimed that some of the interpretations that people have supplied are not quite correct because they injected too much of their own bias and put words into God's mouth.

The Bible is literally correct. It makes few testable claims about the natural world, but makes many statements about the relationships that people have with God (both good and bad, both the righteous and the unrighteous, both the chosen people of God and the Gentiles). Harping on the few testable claims about the natural world but completely ignoring the greater theme of Man's relationship with God is cherry-picking.

We don't do that here.

The focus of the Bible has always been on God, and Man's relationship with God. Everything else is about setting up and reinforcing this point. Trying to read the Bible otherwise is missing the whole point.

Revelation is experiential and personal---we should not coerce anyone to think the way we think, no matter how good the news is. We can make it accessible, and be welcoming of the curious to learn of it, but we should not use the pooled resources of the public to advance our cause, because the public resources are made up of contributions from both believers and non-believers. If we use the resources of the non-believers to advance the Kingdom, we are guilty of robbing them of their possessions for our agenda; that's not righteous behaviour, is it?

Science is third-party verifiable, reductive, and impersonal---perfect for establishing consensus about how the natural world works. Anyone who disagrees are welcome to come up with their own experiments to disprove established scientific dogma---``repeatability'' is one of the core maxims of scientific pursuits, as is ``falsifiability''. It has nothing to do with any individual; there is no judgement of values or morals here either.

It also says nothing about the supernatural, because it has no ways of dealing with it. Saying nothing does not mean disagreeing---it means it literally cannot make a meaningful statement of any sort, positive/negative/neutral.

To me, science and religion has no conflict. They have their purposes, and those purposes are not antagonistic. They may be used by some people in antagonistic ways, but are really talking about different things on their own, and should be understood as such.

That's about it for today. Till the next update.