Anonymous Witnesses

Morning SESIG with John, Jim, Will, and Tom. Call with Ian and Emma about UK trip takeaways and ponzi-scheme economics in private equity and AI. Lunch with Christopher and Aolani—Christopher awaiting test results. Photo processing, first print. Beer with Tim at Treebeard's hearing seafaring tales. Minecraft progress on Home Depot. Yoga. Greatest Controversies revealed gospel anonymity—attributed authors likely illiterate in their own languages, texts based on distant oral accounts by unknown Greek-speaking authors decades later, four gospels chosen for poetic symmetry. Early Christian tradition lacks credible foundation. Faith/fact separation creates ongoing problems.

Foundations Built on Sand

October 22, 2025

SESIG this morning—John, Jim, Will, and Tom were there. Familiar faces and a few less regular attendees. The conversation ranged across medical topics, motorcycle fuel tanks, AI developments. These Tuesday morning gatherings serve as informal knowledge exchange, people sharing expertise across domains, learning from each other's specialized knowledge. The medical discussions are always interesting, not just the technical details but the systems thinking about healthcare delivery, treatment decisions, institutional constraints.

Talked to Ian and Emma later. I need to make more progress on my takeaways from the UK trip. The experience generated insights I haven't fully processed yet—connections between industrial history and contemporary patterns, observations about how societies preserve or obscure their past, parallels between Victorian-era technological transformation and current AI development.

We also discussed how trillions of dollars in the world economy rest on very fragile ponzi schemes. Private equity and AI investing are clear examples. There was speculation about what happens when they collapse and when that might occur. The pattern isn't new—capital chasing returns, valuations disconnected from fundamentals, everyone assuming they'll exit before the crash. The scale is what's different now.

Lunch with Christopher and Aolani at Swan Dive. Christopher has a health challenge right now—further testing today. Hopefully everything goes well. There's not much to say in these moments beyond showing up, being present, offering whatever support makes sense. The uncertainty is difficult, the waiting uncomfortable. You hope for good news while preparing yourself that news might not be good.

Spent the afternoon processing photos. Created a print today—it looks good but dialing in the screen calibration and ICC profiles would be helpful. There's a learning curve to printing, understanding how digital images translate to physical output, how color management works across devices, how paper characteristics affect final results. The print demonstrates progress while revealing what still needs refinement. That's how skill development works: each accomplishment shows you the next level of competence you haven't reached yet.

After photo work, I went for a beer with Tim at Treebeard's. He regaled me with tales of his seafaring days. They sound like good times—the kind of stories that only get better with distance and retelling.

Came home and played Minecraft a bit. Making further progress on Home Depot but I keep uncovering new issues. Each solution reveals another problem, typical of complex building projects whether virtual or real.

Mushrooms from Cathy's backyard.
Poisonous!

Went to yoga. Painful but helpful. The physical practice forces presence, demands attention to body rather than mind, stretches muscles that spend too much time in the same position. The discomfort is part of the benefit—pushing against limitation, discovering flexibility isn't fixed, learning that capability improves with consistent practice even when progress feels slow.

Greatest Controversies tonight focused on gospel authorship. The gospels are all anonymous. They couldn't have been written by their purported authors—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those associations were made much later, seemingly with little basis beyond tradition and theological convenience. The attributed authors were likely illiterate in their own languages, let alone capable of writing sophisticated Greek texts. Matthew, Mark, and John couldn't read and write; the idea they composed detailed Greek narratives is implausible. The gospels are based on oral accounts very distant from the events they supposedly document, written decades later by educated Greek-speaking authors unknown to us.

Even the fact that there are four gospels reflects poetic symmetry with "the four corners of the earth" rather than historical necessity or documentary completeness. Many other gospels existed; these four were selected and canonized.

Unsurprisingly, there is little to believe in early Christian tradition. Not "little to be trusted"—little that holds up under examination. The texts show later theological development, not eyewitness accounts. The selection process was political and theological, not historical or evidential. The foundation texts of Christianity weren't written by the people tradition claims wrote them, weren't contemporary accounts, and were chosen from competing texts based on theological preferences rather than historical reliability.

This connects directly to yesterday's observation about Jesus and Paul teaching different religions. If the gospels themselves are later compositions by unknown authors reflecting developed theology rather than historical record, then what we think we know about Jesus's actual teaching becomes even more uncertain. We're reading theological documents created decades after events by communities with particular beliefs, not historical accounts by people who were there.

The separation of faith and fact creates enormous problems. When religious tradition requires belief in claims that don't hold up to examination, it forces people into false choices: abandon critical thinking or abandon faith. It creates permission to ignore evidence, to value belief over truth, to treat questioning as disloyalty rather than honest inquiry. This has consequences beyond theology—it trains people that authority matters more than evidence, that tradition trumps investigation, that loyalty to group belief is more important than discovering what's actually true.

The faith/fact separation allows people to maintain beliefs while acknowledging those beliefs have no factual basis, treating this as virtue rather than problem. "Faith" becomes defined as believing despite evidence or without evidence, rather than trust based on reliable patterns. This training—that believing without evidence is praiseworthy—doesn't stay confined to religion. It spreads into politics, into health decisions, into how people evaluate information generally.

Looking closely at gospel authorship isn't about destroying faith. It's about understanding what the texts actually are: later theological documents by unknown authors reflecting community beliefs, not contemporary historical records by eyewitnesses. That's not devastating unless your faith requires pretending they're something they're not. The problem isn't the historical reality; it's the institutional insistence on maintaining claims that don't survive examination while teaching people that questioning those claims represents moral failure rather than intellectual honesty.

Christopher's health situation, the UK trip insights waiting to be fully processed, the print that's good but needs refinement, the yoga that's painful but helpful—all involve facing reality rather than preferred narratives. The gospel authorship question is the same category: looking at what actually is rather than what tradition claims. That practice—examining rather than accepting, questioning rather than defending, prioritizing truth over comfort—remains uncommon enough to feel almost transgressive. It shouldn't be.