A Christian is someone who believes in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, and lives in light of the implications of that event.” Raised With Christ, Page 20 I wrote this broad definition of a Christian back in 2009. It is inspired by a phrase in one of the Apostle Paul’s letters: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)... Read more
Easter Saturday, also known as Holy Saturday or the Great Sabbath, is a day filled with mixed emotions for Christians around the world. It is a day that falls between Good Friday, which commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and Easter Sunday, which celebrates His resurrection. As we reflect on the events of that first Easter weekend, we find ourselves in the quiet space between despair and hope, mourning and joy. Easter Saturday reflects the situation we find ourselves in... Read more
I’ve been exploring the way ChatGPT can be used in a faith context. This time I asked it to write a sermon on the Holy Spirit in the style of a Southern Baptist preacher who loves Donald Trump. Sadly the result is once again all to believable. Certainly this system seems to have a good grasp of the way different groups of people think and talk. This kind of preaching is not to be commended in my mind but sadly... Read more
Usually I spend some time at the end of December each year summarising and reviewing my blog articles of the year. I found myself feeling too weary to do so. So being lazy I just thought why not outsource this rather belated task to my new writing assistant? The result is remarkable and I will share it today as a break in my series of ChatGPT generated sermons. More of those are coming by the way and tomorow is when it... Read more
Todays BOT sermon on the Holy Spirit comes in the style of a progressive Christian. It’s remarkable how the artificial intelligence is able to tailor both the style and the content of this output to match such a broad range of different communities. And I have several more to come! This is actually quite a helpful tool to gain some perspective of the emphases other groups than your own might put on familiar subjects. Could it be that we could... Read more
One of the remarkable features of the ChatGPT AI Bot interface is you can carry out a conversation with it almost as though it was a human being. I have been demonstrating in this series of posts that it knows lot about the subtle differences in both style and content of belief in different groups of believers, and can adapt its output accordingly. Today I experimented by not repeating the whole command but interacting with it like I might a... Read more
In the last post we looked at a sermon generated by the latest hot property in the artificial intelligence arena, ChatGPT. It successfully impersonated a pentecostal preacher, except, as more than one reader pointed out, the sermon was too short! Today we look at the remarkable way the conversation engine is able to change tack and produce similar content from a different perspective. I simply followed up my previous question as follows “Now give me a sermon on the Holy... Read more
There’s a lot of excitement about ChatGPT at the moment in lots of fields. I thought I would see how this artificial intelligence social communication generator would cope as a preacher. And I used an AI image generator to make the attached picture. So here is what I asked the interface: “Write me a sermon in the style of a Pentecostal preacher on the subject of the Holy Spirit” ChatGPT’s sermon Praise the Lord! Can I get an Amen from... Read more
When Harry Met Sally is clearly not a film that’s based on Scripture, and does not teach a correct view of relationships between men and women. However, Billy Graham’s rule, which stipulates that men and women should not meet alone with each other are unless they are married is more consistent with that movie than with the Bible. It leads to segregation between men and women, and has had major negative repercussions for many women; especially in the workplace and... Read more
For more years than I care to remember I’ve lived near this statue of Winston Churchill in two difffernt homes. I’ve always has a lot of respect for the man who led us safely through WW2, despite his many failings and some terrible other things he did Once he towered over the world stage Now all that’s left is some aging statuses. Our lives, even the greatest, are so fleeting. Amazing to think our late queen had him as... Read more
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