Fr. Jeremiah Caughran

Heiser's greatest contribution lies not in that he invented anything new, but in that he popularized and synthesized a number of scholarly insights (many of which had existed in specialist scholarship for decades) into a coherent framework accessible to pastors and lay readers.

1/ It was a little over 30 years ago that I flipped on TBN and there was some big evangelism event happening on the Capitol Grounds in DC and this was the first song (also the first time I had even heard of Eric Champion) I heard in the music portion that was going on.

When I enjoy a piece of art, or a film, or a book, or a song, or a game, it’s extremely important to me that it is a carefully crafted, coherent design, made by a human with whom I can emotionally relate, and with whom I share the common elements of the human condition. If any of these things are purely AI generated—yes, even if superficially you cannot immediately tell—it immediately sours the experience, because I feel manipulated, not communicated with. There is no relatable higher purpose behind a scene in a painting, there is no truth in any lyrics in a song, there is no carefully designed experience intended for me by playing a game—it becomes equivalent to a slot machine, and I become the drunk zombie boomer in Vegas repeatedly pulling the lever. I don’t think this is an uncommon feeling at all, and because the economy is the cumulative effects downstream of human desire, I think there is far less demand for such things than—for instance—psychopaths in Silicon Valley would like investors to believe.

Growing up in a hymns church and thinking it’s “let angels prostate fall” and then getting older and realizing why adults were snickering