The general view of creation we are taught is that the world was called into being by God as "Let there be light." However, our interpretations of this tend to read the text as "Light be." The verbal construction of "let X do Y" presupposes that God is giving the command to party Z to allow X to do what it is already set to do. Modern readings of the text simply don't reflect what the text actually *says* on that point.
We read it this way, because we divide the world up into living and unliving matter. It is a machine for which God has set in place rules to make it operate. This mechanistic view of the world is actually rather late. I'm not pretending to give an early view here. What I'm doing is raising questions. There have been people who have looked at this and have answered them wrongly.
This ties into a teaching called synergy. For instance, we cooperate with God to bring about our salvation and rebirth. However, in every aspect of our creation, the creature cooperates with the Creator. God is not some simple despot; he has given us, and the world at large, a degree of self-determination.
I'm not covering everything, because it's a broad topic. That's why I'm sketching it broadly to raise the question.
The Bible is often called the "Church's Book" or the "Good Book." It is a special class to itself. It's not enough to consider the Bible in its original context or in light of its material history. We have to consider it in light of its inspiration, so here I discuss what inspiration is.
I found three good children's books on Gilgamesh. They sanitize the tale in several places like Shamhat's profession. However, they don't turn it to a G-rating. There is still death and danger. The art is good, and most of the changes make sense for the context. It can certainly be good to teach what biblical giants are (Gilgamesh and Enkidu are giants).
[Gilgamesh the King](https://bookshop.org/books/gilgamesh-the-king/9780887764370)
[The Revenge of Ishtar](https://bookshop.org/books/the-revenge-of-ishtar/9780887764363)
[The Last Quest of Gilgamesh](https://bookshop.org/books/the-last-quest-of-gilgamesh/9780887763809)
I've been in Linux since the late 90s. I took about a three or four year hiatus and was reminded of how much I dislike the closed source world. One of the reasons, though, is I believe FOSS is fundamentally compatible with Christian teaching. More strongly, if we were to take Jesus' teachings and create an approach to digital information, it would look like FOSS.
I don't mean a Christian must use FOSS. That would be ridiculous. However, if a Christian wants to order their software and digital world (including intellectual property), then FOSS is pretty much the only model that does it. There are several vantages from which we may see this, and this video covers one of them.
And this is the time to make the argument. It's still not possible to use all the tools serious Bible study requires on Linux, but it's closer than it's ever been, and if progress keeps up, it **will** be able to keep up with Windows. Excepting the cultural momentum that demnads M$ Word, there is very little that hinders adoption of Linux (and even Word can be offset by using PDFs to compose or using LibreOffice).
[Getmail](https://getmail6.org/) is a mail retrieval system. It descends from the old fechmail system, and that was my favorite mail retrieval system of all time. I haven't liked OfflineImap because, well, imap syncing annoys me.
I focus on how to set up POP retrieval in the video, because I like POP. If you have to use IMAP and wish to follow the instructions just change the SimplePOP3SSLRetriever over to SimpleIMAPRetriever. If you want to avoid any syncing features and don't mind having your email on one device (I prefer this), set the option delete=true under Options in your RC, and it will delete remote copies. Your email will then still download in seconds even if it's imap. I have to do this with my protonmail accounts.
I do not cover mail readers at all. After I'm moved into my new house and settled, I may make a video on how to configure mutt to access maildir.
In this video I show how to convert a Greek file to an ASCII file that can be read by Babel in LaTeX and how to encode an overline for nomina sacra.
I overstate how hard it is to set in macrons as well: it is possible to combine macrons and accents for long vowels. It's just most interfaces do not support it.
After the capitol riot and the Mozilla announcement, people seem to be looking for *anything* to replace their social media and browser. I'm not too worried about Mozilla; they really aren't in a position to do anything. However, it is a good moment to propose a change to browsing habits.
The best and safest replacement for browsers is to use a modular setup. You use a different program for each step. Keep your bookmarks independent, keep the programs simple. In this video I'm using Vimb because it's under-appreciated. I show how to chain a tabbing program, an external bookmark manager, a browser, and an external ad blocker together. This way any one part of it can be replaced. Want something different than Vimb since it's a bit rough around the edges, drop in Qutebrowser or Brave. Everything is simple and small.
I've been working on trying to get a fediverse hub for my family to get them off of FB, but I haven't gotten that done for the same reason I can't make many videos. It takes time, and life happens. That's the solution to social media, and I'm sure other people will cover it.
Software:
[Tabbed](http://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/)
[Vimb](https://fanglingsu.github.io/vimb/)
[Buku](https://github.com/jarun/Buku)
[Hosts file](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts)
Some of these may be gotten from you package manager.