LightinMind's (luminementis) Reviews

#4844968

Review of Prone To Wander (rough draft)

for entry "Chapter One"

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: ASR

| (4.5)

Hello, Brittany L. Engels

. This is a review of "Prone To Wander (rough draft)"

"Chapter One"

by invitation from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

Ruben the squirrel is alone in a dark and hostile forest full of predators and risks. Quinn the racoon is one such predator and more likely to eat than befriend Ruben...

Commentary: Content, Characters and Plot

Racoons eat squirrels and cannot talk and are not capable of compassion when they have young ones to feed. They would prefer squirrel kids who are slower and easier to catch to fully grown adult squirrels but still they remain opportunistic omnivores. Squirrels are not their main diet yet still the threat remains. This is the fantasy genre and so the story is in essence an exploration of whether the predator and the prey will behave according to type or somehow manage to transcend the stereotype and genetics of who they are. The realistic answer is no they cannot but that does not make for a good story.

To me this reminds me of Watership Down which I enjoyed reading as a kid many decades ago. In that context the humanizing of animals and the projection of human conversation on them was a stimulant to the imagination as was CS Lewis portrayal of Aslan the lion for example. I guess Aslan does not eat the kids so can be used as a model for Christ but generally in Watership Down animals behave according to type. The reflections on the animal kingdom here and in books like Animal Farm, or Doctor Doolittle read like commentary on human society to me and therefore have more meaning and interest to me.

But I think in the modern context and especially in Germany a great many people prefer their pets to people and it has gotten a little weird. The other day I passed two dog owners in a ferocious argument about the aggression of a Rottweiler that had bitten a Beagle. I watched fascinated while the two women yelled at each other while their men stood beside them wondering if they were going to have to fight this out. Both sides seemed to lack all perspective though I sympathized that the Rottweiler needed to be kept on a tight leash given the aggression of its nature. Also I guess you would have to be childless to have a Rottweiler in practice as they are not exactly child friendly. Indeed the pope has criticized modern Germans in these terms that they prefer pets to people and this is contributing to a demographic crisis and spiritual crisis of egoism in the country also. The kind of conversations you have with your dog are really all about you afterall.

Theologically speaking man is made in the image of God, God breathed life into animals but they are a lower category. So I am torn about this kind of literature, is it propaganda for a naturalism that regards humanity as merely animalistic themselves or is it a harmless stimulant for the imagination? I guess I would have to read the whole book to find this out for myself

Mechanical issues

Well written, and reviewed, so the mechanical side of things is not a factor here.

Thanks for sharing.

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Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4844965

Review of Coffee and Tragedy

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: ASR

| (4.5)

. This is a review of "Coffee and Tragedy"

by invitation from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

A father and child counsellor who recently lost his wife is faced with a son whose acting out... How will he cope?

Commentary: Content, Characters and Plot

Moving and well written account. It is every father's worst nightmare, that his kid ends up attacking him where he is most vulnerable just to get attention. You try and love your kids but there is always that feeling that somehow you have failed and not been the best father you could have been. These days the kids don't seem to understand the ties of blood in the way that previous generations did and can choose their own peer groups however dysfunctional and broken these alternatives are and call them "family". It is a sick joke that such "families" never seem to last and leave these same adolescents more broken and angry than they were before they started acting out.

The character Denny is a one time offender who just wants his father back from the grieving process that has consumed him since the death of his wife. He just wants his father to be honest with him about his struggles over what has happened so that they can both move on together from the tragedy. Robbing a jewelers and getting caught was all part of that acting out and seems excusable in the context of this story though it has probably marked Denny with a criminal record for life in the real world. I am not sure how juvenile convictions translate into background checks by employers in later life. Theft is not a good background for property conscious businessmen to accept.

You put a happy ending on this, as is your style, but there would be consequences in the real world. I liked the coffee reference and how Denny made his father a cuppa at the end.

You made this a father and son story. To be honest young men in Generation Z seem more stable and mature to me than young women in the same. But I guess it is a helpful exercise to consider the reasons for adolescent rage from the perspective of the alternate gender.

Western universities are infected by the cultivation of this adolescent rage by leftist and woke university professors. This has undermined free speech and possibility of realistic perspective in the humanities and social sciences in recent years. But will Denny get into university now that he has a record?

Mechanical issues

Sorry did not find anything wrong with this.

Thanks for sharing.

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Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4844237

Review of What Kind of Book is the Bible?

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (4.5)

Hello, revdbob

. This is a Raid Review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

"What Kind of Book is the Bible?"

was selected by choice. I have the following comments to offer.

I picked up this essay because I just read Jordan Petersens, "We who wrestle with God." He has a similar outlook on scripture and tends to see it through a lens that values the deep psychological archetypes that underpin the bible stories and by extension are the foundation of Western civilization. Of course this is an old tradition with Origen's allegorization taking a similar approach for example. In a Western culture, where science, because of its great success within its own sphere, has overextended its scope into areas that cannot be tested by the scientific method, have we lost sight of the power of metaphor and the relationship with God that is offered through the words? We have gotten so hung up on the debate about literal authenticity that we have lost sight of the life changing implications of words that reveal God to us, that show us who He is and always will be and offer us connection to eternity. I enjoyed your essay and thanks also for sharing the responses that it evoked.

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#2327636 by LightinMind

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4844236

Review of God Had to Have a Weird Sense of Humour

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (5.0)

Hello, Kaytings

. This is a Raid Review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

"God Had to Have a Weird Sense of Humour "

was selected by choice. I have the following comments to offer.

Was not sure if this was a poem or a psalm. There was a depth of reflection here that is rarely married to light hearted phraseology and humor but it seemed to work. God is the one who is laughing here, but with us, not in mockery. We are children learning to walk, awkward steps and big grins on our faces as we make it to the table on the other side of the room. Our Divine parent watches enthralled smiling with us as we take the steps and even when we fall and cry, He is there picking us up and urging us to try again, that smile on His face, that laughter in His heart. Exquisite phrasing helps open hearts and minds to the message here, and a skillful use of binary opposites to a vertical relationship characterized by joy though suffering and hopeful romantic verses even without a beloved. And so you acquire patience by delay, strength by breaking, joy in the ashes, peace beneath the noise. I guess my favorite line was this one:

To break me open just enough,
For light to get in...

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Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

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#4844234

Review of Parabol

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (3.5)

Hello, Kurty

. This is a Raid Review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

"Parabol"

was selected by choice. I have the following comments to offer.

You share two atheist parables that expose the weakness of most atheist arguments against God.

The first relates to a doorkeeper who himself is unaware of the bliss which he sells. His message is simply walk through the door but he lacks empirical evidence that the product that he is pushing is authentic. The small room behind the door only contains a toilet where the happiness is a bowel movement. I found it hard to take this story seriously as it was in effect an insulting strawman argument. Jesus came back from the other side and the risen Lord and the Spirit of God can inform our decisions also. Also the moral of the first parable, that happiness is different for different people does not apply to the extreme cases of heaven and hell as an eternal destination.

The second parable assumes that the oldest caveman knew how life began and why people suffered. But the exploration to find him only resulted in the death of the warrior sent out to do this. That curiosity was bad in this case seems counter intuitive for an atheist to argue since they generally pride themselves as being more enlightened than those who do not seek empirical verification of their deepest beliefs.

I am not sure why you advertised these in terms of humorous philosophy as the do not promote what you claim to have discovered in atheism and are only funny through the filter of mockery. They make dubious assumptions about the religious approach and propose straw man arguments that are easy to refute.

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#2327636 by LightinMind

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#4844233

Review of The Game

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: 18+

| (5.0)

Hello, Kotaro

. This is a Raid Review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

"The Game"

was selected by from a list of items by choice. I have the following comments to offer.

Maybe the police have reason to believe that the justice system is broken and exonerates the guilty or the the rich too often. But choosing to become as dark as those they judge is only a mistake if you consider the story from a religious perspective. And gangsters and corrupt cops have little time for that. Taking justice into their own hands these policemen arrange a strange game in which one by one those who beat the court system are judged by their peers. In the survivors we find reasons to doubt whether they deserved capital punishment for the crimes of others or petty theft driven by forced necessity. I liked the story which was hypnotically well written holding me enthralled from start to end. It kind of reminded me of Squid games though I think you wrote this before that series was conceived.

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(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4842645

Review of Whose Side Are You On?

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: 13+

| (4.5)

. This is a review of "Whose Side Are You On?"

by invitation from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

James got married young to Damien's sister Rose. His career choice in the FBI got her murdered by the mob leaving a daughter Leona Rose. James leaves the FBI afraid for his daughter's life, but where does that leave justice...?

Commentary: Content, Characters and Plot

So Jiggs and Biggs are the clear antagonists here and so immersed in the dark game that they appear to have no conscience at all. Both these characters are one dimensionally evil with no depth of reflection or inner conflict, just a Machiavellian playbook and the people management of an assassin who usually got the job done and to whom they therefore granted a degree of latitude.

The protagonist was originally James who had it all: the mission, the woman and a child. But the mob took the woman and afraid for the child he abandoned the mission and became a bank manager. So it was up to Damien (called Stumpy because he was short) to take up the call. He does this by joining the mob, carrying out hits, profiting exactly the sort of people who killed his sister for two decades!!! By the time he finally finishes the job of revenge, he started out on, the measure of his undercover sacrifice is all too obvious. He has missed out on the human connection of family to become what? A monkish hitman who takes two decades to use his skills on the devils he served and seems in many ways to have been consumed by the same malevolence that took his sister. Damien seems propelled by darkness himself, by anger, a thirst for revenge. At least James acted out of love, a love for justice, for his wife, for his daughter and finally also for Damien rejoining the FBI to find him.

So despite his naivety and ineptness as an FBI agent who actually understands his enemy I think I prefer James to Damien. Damien is shrewd and worldly wise but empty. It was not so much love that propelled him into the fight with the mob as the call of the dark to the darkness in his soul.

Your story made me think about how I should respond to idiots who provoke me with lies and the drama queen antics of ad hominem drivel and fabricated offence. My temptation and training is to take them apart just because I can, but if we cannot pray for our enemies in some ways we become like them. If we cannot transcend them with God's mercy and grace then maybe we forfeit the lives that we could have had if we had just walked away from the call to revenge and let God judge them for us. After all most mobsters die young and especially assassins who kill the innocent.

Mechanical issues

That turned out to be the last time I saw Leona Rose. - except she turns up at the end of the story and moving forward into the undescribed future.

Thanks for sharing.

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14 days may be credited.

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Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4841957

Review of The Image in the Mirror

Review by LightinMind

Rated: E

| (4.0)

Hello Kaytings

. Thank you for entering this month's contest.

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Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

As the official Judge of this contest, I have the following comments to offer for "The Image in the Mirror "

You are the winner this month, though the other entry was also a strong one and addressed my question more comprehensively. It was your positive hymn like focus that swayed me, maybe because the grimy details of this discussion, though necessary, do not really address the central issue of how gender is a part of the created design and has a life giving value.

Did you answer the question?

Yes with a more positive, poetic, upward focus that centered on God's original gender design and considered all man's efforts to change that in that light.

Use of quotes, proof-texting or AI - could I hear your voice?

You are regular poet and this reads as humanly authentic with a depth of reflection that aligns more with human craftsmanship than typical AI generated content.

How consistent was your argument?

This was more a hymn of praise and a prayer than a scientific analysis of the issues. In essence your argument was that God made us one way that is written into our biology. That man's pursuit of a phantom grace for the praise of dust is an ultimately futile and self-defeating goal that renders a person pale and weak and a seed that dies upon unfertile soil.

My thoughts on the substance of what you said

This was a Christian poem and one with which I was in broad agreement. It was also a beautifully crafted poem with memorable lines and phrasing. In short I loved it. This kind of poem is harder for me to critique. So I will break things down by how you answered the question.

My first thought was that your answer was much better than the way I phrased the question. You focused on the original design and God's intention rather than on the problem of mutilated gender, of the psychological choice to push the artificial onto the natural and the exceptional cases of biological deformity where no gender can be determined in the natural configuration. You phrased the result of our mutilations of Gods design in terms of deep inauthenticity to our created identities and in terms of the creation of a seed that dies on infertile soil. Is it a reduced form of life if the potential for reproduction has been sliced out or chemically neutered?

The only thing the poem did not really cover were the extreme outsiders and there are rare examples. These are those for whom, from birth, no clear gender can be determined and not even a predominant one from the cards that nature dealt them. From a Christian viewpoint this can be explained in terms of a fallen and broken world. There will always be a neutered and infertile set of exceptions to the male and female separation in a fallen world. Because whether by mutilation or by birth some people simply do not fit the gender model. It would have spoilt the flow of your poem to address this issue and most people do not want to think about these. I guess the easy answer is that only God in His wisdom and with his healing grace can address their status and so in the meantime we simply need to respect them as children of God who are open to receive the same grace and mercy that the rest of us have access to.

Another thought I had about the approach you adopted was that it was quite an individualizing description of gender identity rather than one determined through a lens of relationship. It also looked backward to creation rather forward to the model of Jesus and His church. We have the model of our created identity in scripture and we also have a redeemed gender identity that is modeled on the interaction of Christ with his church. The groom and the bride is the symbol of gender relations in Ephesians 5 and in Revelation. In that picture of gender relations the identity of each gender is expressed in terms of how Christ and the church relate. The call on masculinity here is to initiate relationship, sacrifice for the good and sanctification of the other, to be responsible for and to protect the beloved and to a creative generosity with them. While the call on the feminine is to be open to receive love and life, to be fruitful, nurturing and transforming what is given and bringing it to fullness, to hand on what she receives, in her beauty and adornment to reflect back glory to the giver just as the church reflects the glory of Christ. The biblical version unites the genders as the masculine gives toward the feminine and the feminine receives and returns that gift, multiplied by love. This giving and receiving itself mirrors the eternal internal life of the Trinity. The bible in short has a sacramental understanding of gender that expresses the image of God in both male and female in a communion of love. Love gives, love receives, love bears fruit.

Mechanical issues

A poem really works here as there is a sacramental mystery to gender relations that is, to a considerable extent, far beyond the scope of scientific descriptive or prescriptive functionality.

My only mechanical question was related to the use of unfertile rather than barren. Your choice works but maybe the barren would be better here.

“A seed that dies upon the barren sand.”

Thanks again for entering.
LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4841773

Review of Final Target

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: 13+

| (4.5)

. This is a review of "Final Target"

by invitation from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

I have the following comments to offer.

Sorry I missed my window to accept this, I thought I had until the end of the day not the beginning of it.

Reader Experience

A drama about a man with a gambling addiction and debts who ends up selling his soul to cover his tracks and save the one he loves, except...

Commentary: Content, Characters and Plot

I like the way you wrote this and the ending was a surprise. You had me hooked from start to finish. I did not really peg you for the NRA although I suppose Kevin is not exactly blessed for his expertise here so maybe it was an anti second amendment piece.

This seemed quite realistic - like for example the way the kills got easier and how he started to enjoy the hunt, the ways in which he tried to keep them impersonal and the desperation that drove him to this in the first place. Even the apparently easy kill of a professional hit man was possible given a little arrogance on his part and the disorientation of his being faced not with Linda, his FBI target, but rather Kevin, a man.

Somehow deals with the mob never have happy endings and this piece was also realistic in that respect.

Kevin is not that attractive a character. He is weak regarding his addiction, deceitful to Linda and despite his verbal protestations, at first, seems to have little compunction about killing people in cold blood. His only redeeming quality is his concern for Linda but as you suggest maybe greed was more primary here as with his gambling.

Linda also has never been honest with her husband about her job. There is no restriction on FBI agents telling spouses where they work, just a restriction on revealing details of that work. So you would need to explain why Linda did not trust Kevin on this.

Good luck in the contest

Mechanical issues

No issues, as always.

Thanks for sharing.

FORUM

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4839495

Review of False Alarm

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (4.5)

. This is a review of "False Alarm"

by invitation from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

A false alarm goes off at Dads construction site across from a six lane highway and Frank and Joe are sent to investigate picking up Chet and his dog Duchess on the way. Meanwhile Dad watches Netflix. They race to the scene in a van with flashing orange lights. At the site, the trio encounters chaotic conditions: deafening fire alarms, swamp-like sprinklers flooding the control room, and an eerie, unfinished modernist landscape. Amid soaking chaos and sensory overload, Frank eventually figures out how to disarm the alarm system using a special key from Dad's keyring. But then the dog Duchess chases a squirrel creating another round of slapstick animal chaos. Just as Frank is claiming success on the phone to Dad, Chet accidently sets off the alarm again and we get ready for the sequel.

Commentary: Content, Characters and Plot

You skillfully separated the characters voices here and you did not overuse simile or hyperbole as AI is prone to do

Dad has a dry humor, Joe is kind of reckless and Chet is over the top. The combo works. This was funny combining slapstick animal chaos with a funny banter and interaction of the characters.

I found the story funny and do not really have much to criticize here. The comedy genre allows you to take liberties with plausibility but your stories are always quite grounded anyway. This was fun and well written.

That the bureaucrats and their reports caused this whole scenario by delaying the construction work and leaving the site temporarily abandoned was amusing, You also work well with humor in chaos, the whole sibling dynamic here and the red button/red key usage.

My favorite line:

The first indications of a structure – or a UFO – ahead were the row of white strobes piercing the fog, blinking regularly like runway lights.

Mechanical issues

I kept my eyes on the road, dodging freight haulers blasting through the speed limit like rocket ships. The ten miles to the rest area might as well have been an interminable circumnavigation of the moon.

I was a little confused here. The freight haulers are the ones speeding like rocket ships but your van with the flashing orange lights is having to dodge them presumably coming fast from behind. So despite the urgency implied here the journey feels like an interminable circumnavigation of the moon. So why is Frank driving so slow? Doesn't that contradict the urgency of the situation.

Thanks for sharing.

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Only reviews from the past
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(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4838014

Review of A Different Route Home

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: 18+

| (4.5)

. This is a review of "A Different Route Home"

by invitation from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

Daniel put career before love, and his wife, Myra, walked out on him. He uses his IT skills to find out more about what went wrong. Things seem more complicated than he first thought, and he is worried about Myra. Can he find her and persuade her to come home...?

Commentary: Content, Characters and Plot

Nerds versus Jocks is a background theme here. I was always in both groups, and it was the Cool dudes who avoided me. But enough of the Breakfast Club stereotypes.

Daniel is an entry-level IT guy with glasses, anxious to prove his worth but struggling under a tyrannical boss who demands long hours and the sacrifice of all else for whatever project is ongoing. He seems to be on a temporary contract with no rights or security. He was married to Myra, whom he clearly loved but perhaps did not understand the value of until she left him. His work sapped the best of him, and he had little left to give Myra at the end of a long day at work. They had a trust relationship, sharing passwords even in the last year when things started falling apart. As he seeks Myra, he starts to put his IT skills to better use.

Myra was a school cheerleader when Trent was the Quarterback of the High School American Football Team. She loved Daniel but felt abandoned by him as he worked on his career. They lived in a cramped apartment, and she loved gardens and plants. Trent offered a handsome, successful alternative with a large house and garden. But she felt guilty about breaking her promise to her husband and unworthy of redemption. So she suffered in silence with Trent.

Trent seems to come from money, as the size of his property does not fit his age, even if he has attained a sleek executive position early in his career.
He was popular in school and seemed to have a connection with Myra from that time. He communicates a sense of entitlement and arrogance and seems like someone who is used to getting his own way, no matter what. It is clear he has been abusing Myra and that she is scared of him. He is prepared to kill them both if necessary to protect himself.

The image of Daniel trapped in the thornbush after his failure to rescue Myra is interesting, as Myra has to rescue him from it. It was a powerful image that encapsulated the heroic attempt of a nerd pitched against a stronger jock. She chooses the man who gives up everything for her over the man who took everything from him, and together they can escape Trent's trap.

The nerd beats the jock not with brute force but with brains, sacrifice, and empathy for the woman he loves. But I have the impression he got lucky with Myra's change of heart, that without a call to the police, this conflict with Trent is not yet over, and that Trent could probably afford a better lawyer if this ever went to trial.

The story is a rebuke to a woke culture that would have seen the letter, the following silence, and the initial response of Myra as a clear NO to Daniel. He also risked being labelled a stalker and accusations of harassment to get her back. In the end, he wins her with his love, but it could quite easily have gone the other way. Maybe that risk and uncertainty add to the drama in the story.

I liked this one, thanks for sharing.

Mechanical issues

Nothing to see here.

Thanks for sharing.

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Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4838007

Review of Unmasking AI

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (4.0)

Hello Amethyst Autumn Angel

. Thank you for entering this month's contest.

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#2327636 by LightinMind

As the official Judge of this contest, I have the following comments to offer for "Unmasking AI"

Did you answer the question?

Yes, with a diatribe against AI and an acclamation of the best of human writers. AI lacks true understanding, nuance, and soul. It repackages human outputs poorly and tends to produce soulless hallucinations or shallow answers. True creativity is exclusively human because we are made in God's image and have spirit and authentic connections that machines cannot replicate. The embracing of AI content shows that there has been a lowering of creative standards in the artistic industries. Only a dumb, soulless culture would have a machine write its stories.

Use of quotes, proof-texting or AI - could I hear your voice?

Given the content - no way!!!

How consistent was your argument?

Your antagonism against AI was "personal" and consistent. You had a long list of its failings, and Purity has clearly not been forgiven for being a soulless and synthetic fluffbrain who makes garbled jokes with a tendency to gibberish.

My thoughts on the substance of what you said

At a business conference last week, I asked a bunch of IT guys if they felt threatened by AI. They said not at all, as we are the people closest to the tech. The masses will always need "priests" to interpret their chosen deities, and so long as we stay one step ahead of the mob, then we are those "priests." They went on to describe the tricks by which they could use AI usefully for finding patterns in data, and by giving context and carefully chosen parameters to our questions, get useful answers. It was all touch points and vectors and 1s and 0s in the end. They knew how it worked and its limitations, and so they knew how to use it.

Just before that encounter, I asked ChatGPT a question about Charlie Kirk and what it thought about his death. It answered that he was still alive and took apart my question. I asked it when it received updates, and it said it was up-to-date to a certain date before the shooting. Because this is enabled in my browser, it was able to perform a data retrieval to find an article about Kirk and completely revise its original answer. It was an example of static data retrieval with a last update cutoff point versus a live retrieval if enabled. The live stream update is not integrated into the basic model, which is a point worth remembering when you start new sessions. It did not learn anything from the conversation. Knowing that, I have some rules with which I can craft my questions properly and give the AI the proper context, and in turn prompt the appropriate data retrieval method. Similarly, when writing good code using AI, you need to understand coding and how to focus the query into specific libraries and tasks and give sound logic. It is an interactive process - garbage in, garbage out, as you put it.

You say that the AI fails the Turing test with you because it lacks a soul, and that becomes clear in conversation and also because of its wild tendency to hallucinate. It experiments with word combinations that sound clichéd or break the rules. Worst of all, they can be echo chambers for the evil of which we are all capable.

I think you know that AI has no soul because you have one and know what a soul looks like. But if you treat an AI as if it does have one. It will find words uttered by people with emotional depth and parrot them back at you until you do not know for sure if that is a bot or a man. It makes itself sound indistinguishable from a person with a soul by mimicry, not because it has one. The answers you get depend on how skillfully you program your structured queries. But its answers are based on statistical patterns rather than verified fact-checking or genuine feelings - hence the appearance of hallucination. It is like the know-it-all who always has an answer because he simply makes up one when there are gaps in his knowledge, according to what sounds plausible. Effectively, to retrieve the best answers, you need to be someone who already knows what you are looking for and therefore knows how to ask for it. Maybe you are trying to treat an AI like a human being and are then disappointed when you find that it is not. Use it like an IT guy, and you may get more useful outputs, though never the actual humanity you are looking for.

My reading of what you wrote was that you are defending a position relating to a writer's creativity that might not be defensible in the long run. You have to work past your bad experiences of AI and find a way to use it more productively without sacrificing the soul integrity that makes you a good writer.

For some writers, the original idea and the basic original story are not the problem because they have read and thought widely, maybe travelled and lived also, and have rich souls to inform their imagination. But many such people struggle with the syntax of the writer's trade and the show-and-tell conventions that so many readers insist on. AI is a gift to such writers, helping them in that last mile to their audiences. I would compare AI in that respect to the use of a hearing aid or device that enables speech.

You did not really address what the future might look like, but you held out little hope because of the trend toward a soulless culture. Yet it is a culture that still produces excellent bands like Imagine Dragons and serious writers who connect with the human soul and are changing the world for better or worse, one story at a time.

Mechanical issues

Not noticeable.

Thanks again for entering.
LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4838005

Review of It's All Derivative

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: ASR

| (4.0)

Hello Jeff

. Thank you for entering this month's contest. Congratulations on your victory this month. The other entry was as good as yours, but I thought you showed more realism about the usefulness of AI.

FORUM

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

As the official Judge of this contest, I have the following comments to offer for "It's All Derivative"

Did you answer the question?

Yes, essentially, you argue that there is nothing new under the sun and that all human efforts are derivative. Only God creates ex nihilo. Both AI and humans are simply repacking outputs into inputs. Only empathy saves the human writer from artistic oblivion, and our ability to interpret and give meaning.

Use of quotes, proof-texting or AI - could I hear your voice?

This reads as original work, and the spelling mistake indicates that you wrote it without a corrective tool.

How consistent was your argument?

This was short but consistent.

My thoughts on the substance of what you said

As with Solomon, when he said the same in Ecclesiastes, I tend to disagree with your conclusions. Mainly because we do not live under an empty sky, and human actions in response to an infinite God and in a changing world, moving from beginning to end, will always have an element of creativity and surprise to them. We are, after all, made in God's image.

AI represents, if anything, a new creative frontier and a new set of writing tools, adding speed, scale, access, and testing possibilities for writers that have never existed before. This is more than just a time-to-market thing; a greater range of ideas, facts, and new synergies can be processed and contemplated like never before.

Humans may have devoted considerable historical energy to the invention of pantheons of demigods and superheroes. These perform in endless soap operas of mythical superhuman actions - humans connect to them in temples and rituals, with statues, dance, smells, bells, and around the campfires/TVs/Mobiles as they hear the stories told and retold. But as Christians, we believe in a God who authentically talks back and whose revelation is the perfect foundation and framework for creativity. Even if the world feels just like an endless churn of sequels to some historic epic, there was a moment when the thought was original and the story was being told for the first time. If we have a beginning and an end, then each unique story has its special place and moment. Shakespeare framed a version of English nationalism that still abides; Dickens added a social conscience for the poor of the Victorian era; Tolkien stretched our minds into a parallel universe of possibilities. In China, the Tale of the Three Kingdoms, following the fall of the Han, latched on to the abiding fear of disunity that haunts Chinese culture, and the Art of War is a timeless epic that encapsulates the wisdom of fighting that characterizes those interludes of chaos.

We needed the parallel universe of Tolkien and the language games of the philosopher Wittgenstein, and the invention of computers and the internet before we could envisage artificial intelligences able to process the entire knowledge of the world ínto new formats. That in itself is something new.

You focused on empathy as the human advantage. AI can, of course, create words that make people cry. Will a synthetic human with an AI brain offer a hug that feels the same in some distant future? Does it matter if the empathy is human or synthetic, or that it ministers to the felt need? Or is this all a matter of degree and the extent to which it no longer feels awkward or inauthentic?

Truly, we need one who dwells among us, who has experienced our finitude, pain, and mortality and has yet passed their tests, one who connects us to the infinite well of creativity, life, love, and light that is God Almighty and opens up the heavens to our thoughts and writing. In Christ, we have such a high priest. That AI might seek to imitate him seems impossible, and all its server farms will never be able to reach the boundaries of a universe made by the Creator of all and, at the same time, connect us to human flesh and blood with what sounds like the beating heart of a human being.

The flood of words today is overwhelming; finding the diamond in the coal mine is what matters. We do not want the empathy of ugly fake fools. The question becomes whose voice is this, and why should I listen? Resonance is the fruit of successful empathy, but it is also a matter of quality and connection to the Divine image that resides in all. With what authority/spirit does this person speak? Maybe this will change the way we write as we seek the soul of the author, test the extent to which he speaks into our times, place the metanarrative of his beliefs into a hierarchy, and review the credentials he offers against an infinite array of competitors. To stand out from the crowd, authenticity, connection, beauty and meaning will still matter as much in the future as they do now.

I cannot say exactly what writing and writers forums like this will look like in 25 years. But I suspect that they will host a good many excellent writers who develop stories never heard before and find new ways to connect readers to God, the Universe, and everyone. It is not just a matter of endless recombination to entertain but rather of connecting the reader to meaning in the here and now in a way that reaches out for eternity. In fact, that task will not be complete until the Kingdom Come.

Mechanical issues

You can have it summarize a bunch of self-help books on dealing with loss and simply simplify them into major bullet points.

Thanks again for entering.
LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4837433

Review of The Pursuit

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: 13+

| (3.0)

Hello, george

. This is a review of "The Pursuit"

by invitation from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

A police officer, Dan Bovinga, has a surreal dream. But what has this to do with his job?...

Commentary: Content, Characters and Plot

Dan Bovinga is a police officer, asleep in a Toyota Camry, which probably marks him as a plainclothes officer, as the standard police force in the USA uses Ford, Chevrolet, or Dodge. That he is asleep in his car might imply a long stakeout. But we only have details from a rather disjointed dream to inform us why he might have been there. He is not alone, and the other officer, the police chief, wakes him up. He manages to lose a shoe, which drives the car away in the manner of a drunk driver without him noticing, because he is playing Minesweeper. His reports about the case are garbled nonsense filled with irrelevant details. He is walking around with one shoe on.

This is funny in a surreal kind of way, but utterly implausible. For me, that sabotages the comedic value as the twists and turns in the plot appear entirely random and unlikely. You have situated the story in a context that completely distracts from the storyline, and which is very hard to follow. There are too many details that are just wrong, and he does not behave at all according to normal police protocols. Since I know police people, it was very hard to connect to a story that seemed utterly divorced from their actual practice.

-A publicly recognisable police chief will not sit in a plainclothes officer vehicle, as that would completely blow the cover of the plainclothes officer he was with.
-Police do not use targeted EMPs, though the military does and maybe some agencies. But you are talking local police force here.
-No explanation is given why he was asleep in the first place.
-The dream sounds like he's tripping on LSD, and his reports and behavior are utterly unprofessional.
-A Toyota Camry is not fully autonomous and requires continuous driver intervention, so the scenario of it driving off by itself because of a shoe stuck under the pedal is unreal.

Some people might find the bizarre twists and turns of this story funny, but for me, it is just too much. His real life is just as bizarre and incoherent, in fact, as his dreams, and there is no respect for the context of actual policing.

The whole story read a little like a random event generator, only loosely integrated around the main character, Dan, and his car. I found it a little soulless, which again made it hard to laugh.

Mechanical issues

You join random unconnected clauses in the same sentences with no attempt to integrate. So either use shorter sentences or recast the sentences:

A man grabbed a dog from a shopping cart and threw it at Bovinga, he jumped up and caught the dog, falling over.

So, for example, this could look like this:

A man grabbed a dog from a shopping cart and threw it at Bovinga. Bovinga jumped up, caught the dog, and fell over.

“Oh, the humanity!” shouted a customer.

Caeser → Caesar.

minesweeper --> Minesweeper

Thanks for sharing.

FORUM

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4837024

Review of Soaring High in the Sky

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (4.0)

Hello, StuffedBee

. This is a Raid Review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

"Soaring High in the Sky"

was selected from a list including the letter S. I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

An eagle flies high in the sky over America. Soaring, hunting, rejoicing and adapting as life goes on.

Commentary

A Bible verse that came to me today from Proverbs 30:18-19

18There are three things that amaze me—
no, four things that I don’t understand:
19how an eagle glides through the sky,
how a snake slithers on a rock,
how a ship navigates the ocean,
how a man loves a woman.

It is an amazing thing to consider that such a big bird can fly, drifting on the air currents and even soaring high into the sky on them.

Your poem marvels at the flight of an eagle, over the things that matter to it, on wings of dreams, enjoying its freedom. It seems from the competition you submitted to and the genre choice that this has something to do with a veteran returning home also. This was not entirely clear to me but it seems that he had to rebuild his nest on his return. So the eagle could be the nation rebuilding after losses abroad or it could be an individual whose wife left them while they were on active service forcing a rebuild on their return.

Whatever the poem means it seems that life goes on and the connection of bird and nation remains.

I guess since 1782 this bird has been the symbol of the nation representing: strength, pride, courage, and freedom. Your verses reflected these themes.

Mechanical issues

The poem could have flowed a little better and some of the word choices could have reflected the themes more powerfully.

Thanks for sharing.

On share for the September Review Raid

FORUM

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4832281

Review of What Time is It?

Review by LightinMind

Rated: E

| (4.5)

Hello Amethyst Autumn Angel

. Thank you for entering this month's contest.

FORUM

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

As the official Judge of this contest, I have the following comments to offer for "What Time is It?"

Congratulations on your victory in this month's contest.

Did you answer the question?

You opted for sequential time, had your experiences and a watch to measure it with, were sceptical about the Multiverse, and eternity is a place/state where you hoped that time did not stop but rather continued to progress.

Use of quotes, proof-texting or AI - could I hear your voice?

Genuine work.

How consistent was your argument?

You adopted a Christian position on most of the major time questions, but with some creative twists like the concept of the timewire. This was less about changing the direction of time or its fundamentally sequential nature than about our experience of time, though. Your comments about reincarnation were ambiguous but it seems you dismissed the notion that God was a cosmic recycler of our souls.

My thoughts on the substance of what you said

I was interested in your description of short stories at the end of your piece. The standard format requires conflict, character growth, and a beginning, middle, and end. This mirrors the Christian perception of spiritual history. Writers have tried to write in different formats, but most people do not understand these, and so they are less successful. As you say, the Christian story is governed by a beginning (creation), Fall (the problem or conflict to be overcome), Redemption (The solution and the plan), and Restoration (how it all works out). The main difference between English Literature and true faith is that the antagonist is never the equal to the protagonist and his empowerment is more to do with our own problem with sin. Christianity is a happy ending narrative for those who buy into it, but not for those who do not. If a person loves darkness, the story makes no sense, and they are not receptive to it.

There are two kinds of people in this world (

- that always sounds silly, but bear with me).

Some write from their souls and have a holistic, semantic integrity to their outpourings. These kinds of people can appear to waffle and repeat their themes to the other kind. These live in the moment and record its changing details in a more precise and episodic fashion. The first kind has a transcendence of detail and facts, preferring the integrity of the storyline to being bogged down in the moment and precision of measurement. The second cannot understand your meaning unless you describe the particular details, which need to be shown and told, and they will not speculate. The sensual record is all that is real, and that is always changing. It has its moments of beauty and ugliness, but there is a sense of despair at where the journey is heading. I guess the ideal writer must blend the two styles, expressing his soul in the moment in a way that makes that moment itself a timeless event accessible to all. I would suggest that you are more of a soul writer than a detail person, your stories have more happy endings than the second kind of writer will accept as real. That said, as you wrote, your experience of time has not been as happy as your stories imagine it could be. You mourned the fact that you did not have more glimpses of eternal glory to inform your perspective. Overall, your answers inhabit a framework that is not bound by our mortality to see the seconds rushing to an end. Time is a gift, not the dominant paradigm governing your thoughts with a sense of impending doom.

Somebody once told me that the train timetable was the beginning of time for most people. From then on, you needed to watch the town clock or your first digital watch to take the train to work. I wonder how home office working changes the experience of time for people who are not calendar-driven and now no longer have a commute schedule either.

As I grow older, I look back analytically, hoping to trace a path of increasing wisdom and maturity.

I was reading some old diaries the other day, and then a major work I wrote decades ago. In my diaries, I saw a purity, naivety, and faith that was in so many ways better than today. I found wisdom and understanding in my writing that I had forgotten. I suspect that we all have our peak moments, that in fact we may have many of these. Our experience of the earthly time highway to the grave is marked by the urgency and scarcity of the hours we have left. But our peak moments come at times when our lives best interact with eternity and the life of the Divine. In these glimpses of glory, there is a richness and power to life lacking in the valleys that follow the mountain peaks. Does an Olympic athlete define his life by his gold medal experience, while the rest of his time just filled in the gaps?

The concept of time wire, with a sequential current but spiraling up and down, seems to fit the human experience very well. Sometimes we hit the accelerator to our inevitable doom, and sometimes we gain an inspiring glimpse of glory as our souls soar upward and time seems to stand still for a moment in the light of eternity.

I tend to agree that the multiverse is something we will probably not experience in this life, but Marvel can use it to change plots and resurrect old characters. C.S. Lewis' two major works on time and its interaction with eternity would have to be 'The Last Battle' and 'The Great Divorce'. His idea of hell was the stagnant time of the shadowlands, where the occupant never grew beyond their bitterness or anger and was continually fated to repeat the same patterns. His idea of the human experience of eternal time was sequential and referred to Aslan's country, where the call was forever to 'Come further up, come further in!' and the fullness of joy was ever increasing.

I really enjoyed your entry this month. Thanks for sharing.

Mechanical issues

Focused on the content.

Thanks again for entering.
LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4830950

Review of The Box

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: ASR

| (4.5)

. This is a review of "The Box"

by invitation from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

Professor Michael Frampton and his son Peter are on a quest for an alien power source fallen from the heavens into the bare, lifeless mountain ranges of a Native American reservation. But what if they find it, will it tear them apart or kill them?...

Commentary: Content, Characters and Plot

Professor Michael Frampton is an obsessive character. He does not care for the opinions of others because he knows that he is right about the existence of the box. He has done the research, and they have not. This means he comes across as slightly arrogant and dictatorial, but under all that, he loves his son, and Peter is more important to him than the box.

Peter also has a strong sense of what is right and wrong. But this is informed by a wider circle than just his father. He listens to Chief Wind Wolf who warns about the box.

The box itself is a little mysterious. The first time the UFO hit the earth, there was an explosion. Was that just kinetic energy? Despite the impact and its crater, the box is still intact and able to do a repeat explosion underwater in the heart of a mountain that makes the ground tremble all around. A sort of repeat of Chernobyl without the radioactive burns and cancer. This defies my usual understanding of how power and fuel work. I suppose that is part of the point that the technology is so superior and so alien that we are not meant to understand it. The box, when examined, has no way in, and we lack the keys of understanding to unlock its secrets.

The quest takes the father to a place where he proves that he loves his son first and to a place where the father's love is affirmed in the son's heart. The Indian chief guards his tribes deepest secrets and protects the land around from the destruction that the box could achieve.

But Peter and the Chief seem to be in the way here. I would want the box to be properly examined by experts in controlled conditions, not for the rewards of personal or corporate greed, nor to supply advantage to a war machine, but for the sake of all mankind. How would the Chief know that it was impossible to examine this safely? Is this really his treasure guard? It landed in his people's land, but he did not make it, and it is not his.

Mechanical issues

Well written, allowing me to focus on the story.

Thanks for sharing.

FORUM

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4827857

Review of Who owns the Planet?

Review by LightinMind

Rated: E

| (3.0)

Hello Apondia

. Thank you for entering this month's contest.

FORUM

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

As the official Judge of this contest, I have the following comments to offer for "Who owns the Planet?"

Did you answer the question?

At the start of the account, you seemed a little distracted by Michael Faber's theme of taking the gospel to aliens. I did not ask about aliens nor the challenges of moulding a gospel message for intelligent species who did not experience the incarnation of God as Man. But the rest of what you wrote was relevant to the topic at hand.

Use of quotes, proof-texting or AI - could I hear your voice?

The text read a little like abbreviated notes on various themes at times, and it needed more work to integrate the various subjects discussed. I got the impression you abbreviated a larger AI-derived answer into your own words, but did not check your grammar or the flow of what you wrote.

How consistent was your argument?

At the beginning of your account, the implication was that God created our planet, but then, after that, He may have created other planets with other lifeforms on them. But later, you quote from Bible passages that make clear that God created the universe all at once, and that would surely also have included other planets then. Some of course have been visible to the human eye since life began on Earth, e.g., Venus (the morning star), Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Your text describes both progressive acts of creation and the ex nihilo main event. For some Christians, this is a contradiction. He either did it all at once and proclaimed it good. Or He is continually adding to what is now a broken universe (since the Fall, Flood, and Angelic Fiddling). If God is adding perfect creations to a flawed and broken universe, that would read a little like pouring new wine into old wineskins - a thing God says He does not do. The Christian hope is rather for a complete renovation of creation after the Judgment.

My thoughts on the substance of what you said

It was a good question to ask as to whether theology needs to change to accommodate new possibilities like space travel. In one sense, you are right that theology relates to a relationship with God that is not conditional on context. Even a Second Coming to a particular place on a particular planet does not change the impact of the event itself on the whole of God's creation, though it would give the event a geocentric and anthropocentric significance. Of course, if aliens exist and if they have alternate theologies, the remaking of the universe that follows the specifically human experience of the Second Coming is rendered somewhat complicated.

You assume life evolved here and must therefore also evolve elsewhere. Chemical evolution is called abiogenesis and is different from biological evolution, which is what we usually mean when we speak of evolution. The Drake equation postulates, based on abiogenesis on our planet being a fact and the probability therefore that it occurs elsewhere, that there must be other inhabited worlds out there. But if the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground in a special act of creation, the assumption that He has crafted other worlds and created other life than that which we have experienced and labelled on this planet is speculative. Abiogenesis as a mechanism has no supporting evidence at all and has never been demonstrated by the scientific method.

I liked your notion of timing being related to the problems that humans face and must solve. There is a time to be earthbound and a time to fly to the stars. You could have said more about what kinds of pressures might compel this endeavor. You mentioned curiosity as being a driver, but what about: mineral shortages; environmental catastrophes; asteroid strikes; wars; political or religious persecution; demographic pressure; or the desire for a better life?

It is also possible that God has set limits we cannot cross - for example, extra-solar system travel to habitable worlds, that might not even exist, would take decades if not centuries with current technologies.

Mechanical issues

This sentence is too long and could be broken up into shorter sentences. Alternatively, since you are using an essay format, you could have made a numbered or bulleted list here.

I’m influenced by the fact, when humans conquered trips to the moon, they began to send rockets into the suns burning aura, putting robotics on Mars, putting telescopes into space to watch for life, recording sounds which hit earth from outer space, basically collecting scientific data for lots of different ideas about space travel.

Our ability to deal with what comes next in a way that follows the laws of the earth and universe are holding back our progress.

Quillbot and other AI tools often get a lot of stuff wrong. A classic example is plural and singular in sentences that lack commas - the grammar tool sees the plural the laws of the earth and universe and applies an are to that. But the actual subject of the sentence is surely our ability, which is singular, so you need to use is instead. The corrected sentence reads:

Our ability to deal with what comes next, in a way that follows the laws of the earth and universe, is holding back our progress.

Unfortunately, the corrected sentence also makes no sense. Our ability is a positive that should surely solve the problem, but here it is regarded as holding back our progress.

So I think you meant:
Our lack of ability to deal with what comes next, in a way that follows the laws of the earth and universe, is holding back our progress.

There are a lot of examples of poorly constructed sentences like this. This disrupts the flow for a reader and undermines the power of your message.

Thanks again for entering.
LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4827855

Review of Saving Planet Ultima

Review by LightinMind

Rated: ASR

| (4.5)

Hello Amethyst Autumn Angel

. Thank you for entering this month's contest.

FORUM

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

As the official Judge of this contest, I have the following comments to offer for "Saving Planet Ultima"

. Congratulations on your victory in this month's contest.

Did you answer the question?

You focused on how faith might address the challenges of being a multiplanetary species, and specifically how it might minister to the technocratic challenge of an AI-based theocracy that had stifled the possibility of real human interaction and community with God and each other. Your story showed how it was possible to recontextualise faith even to the false utopias that man might build on other worlds.

Use of quotes, proof-texting or AI - could I hear your voice?

The story was distinctively your own.

How consistent was your argument?

You argued that technocracy had stifled the faith and interaction of human beings on the planet to the point where it was degrading the capacity to be a human being. People lived out their lives in tiny bubbles in which their most meaningful interaction was with their personal AI, itself connected to the larger AI governance of the planet. The answer was to restore real community with God and each other, starting with a prayer meeting.

My thoughts on the substance of what you said

Right now, I am especially interested in how the British dismantled the Qing dynasty in China in the 19th century. The Chinese have a long history of state dominance. This is a state dominance that exists to a considerable extent under a theologically speaking empty sky. This dominance was not externally challenged to any significant extent except by the theologically disappointing Mughals in the 13th century and the Christian British in the 19th Century. So in both cases, the reason was military, and in the case of the British, arguably, the superiority of Christian civilisation as a cultural idea also had a considerable impact, challenging the very core of Chinese society, for example, in the heretical Taiping Rebellion led by the "brother of Christ" that may have cost as many as 100 million lives. But your story was more akin to the story of how Christians converted Rome, with small congregations of devout Christians leading the way. The story was pleasant and easy with no bloodshed, and one would hope that the citizens of Ultima would receive the Good news of the Gospel with aching hearts rendered open by loneliness and a grace released by prayer. It seems this AI was less inclined to feed people to lions or burn them at the stake for public spectacle than to isolate them in clinically cold bubbles controlled by its server farms.

I have read various psychological texts recently that speak about how human affirmation and reinforcement maximise productivity, e.g., the Hawthorne effect. People need to know they matter to others and that their work is meaningful. I suspect that an AI would notice the general decline in productivity over time and also high suicide rates in such a culture as Ultima. In some ways, your words were a challenge to the times we live in also as technological isolation has reduced the quality of real human interaction.

I liked the recontextualisation of the Lord's prayer in this line:
”Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on Ultima, as it is in heaven…”

Part of my question was to do with why we should go into space in the first place. You did not address this, but assumed that it would be possible one day via wormholes and that it would happen quite simply. That assumption was never justified in this text, and no theological reason for human expansion was given. Indeed, the impulse to build the cityscape of Ultima in the first place seemed more atheistic and utopian and Christianity only came later. Looking at the example of Spanish conquests in South America and the British colonisation of North America, the role of religion in justifying the annexation of territory and providing the resilience for early settlers to overcome in their first Winters in the New World was crucial. I doubt that Ultima could have ever thrived in the first place on such an empty rationale as the one provided by soulless AIs.

I liked the imagery you used of this cold, sterile world with its steel cityscape. It lacked life, and the presentation of the life of Christ in the Gospel had an added effect in such a lifeless landscape.

Another part of my question related to how the human design could cope with transport to another planet where radiation, gravity and alien toxins might well extinguish it in short order. Jeff Bezos envisages O'Neill cylinders spinning to provide 1G gravity with radiation shielding and the provision of ideal Earth-like conditions - Musk, by contrast, thinks we could live on Mars. Your answer, which married the two ideas, was to craft a world in which technology answered all of these attacks on human survivability. The AI in your story answered the question of survival, but provided no conditions in which humans could thrive and grow as people in personal relationships with each other and God. Your protagonists answer that desperate need in bringing the Gospel to Ultima and attempting to open up the reduced bubbles of human existence to the wider possibility of love and joy that comes from connecting with others.

Mechanical issues

Very well written.

Thanks again for entering.
LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4826495

Review of find the stars

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (4.5)

Hello, ggbid

. This is a Raid Review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

"find the stars"

was selected by personal choice for this time around. I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

A star blinks out in the vast expanse. He cannot find his love, though he searches for her. There is a madness in the not finding and not knowing where she has gone...

Commentary

I loved the imagery you used here of a star blinking out, of the awkwardness of communicating this love left-handed rather than right-handed, of the madman staring through plated glass.

There was a feeling of being hurled into darkness here by the absence of the one in whom you had placed so much faith, hope and love. The disturbance challenged everything, breaking the normal patterns, leaving the lover fumbling around in the dark, trying to find a way back to the light of his life.

The poem starts gazing into the sky at stars but ends looking beneath the earth, searching through the shadowy cemetery of a broken mind for what might have been buried there.

Powerful and hypnotic, thank you.

Mechanical issues

You seemed to depart from your normal presentation technique with a paragraph of what looked like prose toward the end of the poem.

Thanks for sharing.

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(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4826494

Review of Far

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (4.0)

Hello, Alexis

. This is a Raid Review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

"Far "

was selected by personal choice for this time around. I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

The author wants to give the world a second chance, even if he has not been similarly gifted. No one is too far away that they cannot be redeemed.

Commentary

Various biblical verses sprang to mind, reading your poem. Let mercy triumph over judgment and forgive us our sins as we forgive others who sin against us. It opens up the gates of God's mercy when we forgive. There is also a biblical understanding of reality here, that: no one is righteous, not even one.

To paraphrase Corrie Ten Boom, there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still. Of course, not everybody wants redemption and there is a hell that will be populated at the Judgment of all mankind. The universalist view of salvation here is a faulty one. It is not that some people do not deserve mercy, afterall no one does, it is that some people will never receive it.

The author shows mercy. It seems, therefore, that his contention that he has never received it is a faulty one. He just does not realise Who has forgiven him.

Mechanical issues

Free verse.

Thanks for sharing.

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(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4826491

Review of What if

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (4.0)

Hello, CHAN

. This is a Raid Review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

"What if "

was selected by personal choice for this time around. I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

The girl smiles when her parents hurt her in oh so many ways. What if she just cried and initiated an honest conversation with them?

Commentary

As the father of a teenage young woman, I often wish for better communication with my children. The younger generation is increasingly captivated by a school and media system that tears them away from parents and traditions. A parent can believe with certainty that they are right on something, having experienced the consequences of rebellion themselves or having given years of research, and yet their "wisdom" can still be rejected by the teenager intent on finding her own way. We have a younger generation that are not strong enough to propose a viable alternative and so suffer under the weight of something they want to reject without really knowing why they are doing it and what compels them. It is a recipe for madness and fractured families. Choice is devalued by nonsense and feelings should never dictate the path, but rather only truth.

Given the above, I read your poem, at first, as the silliness and hypocrisy of a girl who is avoiding a conflict with her parents by smiling but who is not properly scrutinising what they say. In a way, it is a failure of critical thinking that does not allow her to sift truth from lie, good from bad, nonsense from wisdom.

But then, as I reflected, I wondered about the Chinese name given by the author. I wondered if this was a Chinese cultural trait. The Dao speaks highly of the continuity with ancestors and the interconnectedness of being. But Western culture individualises and separates and asks the question: 'but what do I feel and think about this?' 'Why should I just go with the flow?' She appears caught in the tension between two worlds. The solution is to think through the validity of what is actually being shared and choose what is pure, true, holy, noble and excellent while rejecting what is not. This can be done respectfully and the default smile seems like a clumsy mask compared to honest discussion.

Mechanical issues

The question 'What if' is asked innumerable times without a question mark.

Thanks for sharing.

FORUM

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4826489

Review of Breathe Me Again

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (4.0)

Hello, David

. This is a Raid Review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

"Breathe Me Again"

was selected by personal choice for this time around. I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

A beloved returns to the lover and there is a hope of love and passion restored

Commentary

This was quite powerful and passionate. I hope she was worthy of the fine words.

This line confused me and, on reflection, makes no sense:

You looked like a prayer unanswered
until you returned
like a promise the sky forgot to keep
--but never did.

He wants her back, so he prays for her. She returns, so that is surely an answered prayer. So the next line contradicts this by saying the sky forgot to keep its promise. She is there, so the promise was kept.

I loved this line in your poem:

Let me be your madness again,
your refuge, your breath,
the silence between two storms.

Mechanical issues

Free verse.

Thanks for sharing.

FORUM

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4826488

Review of Eight Years

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: 13+

| (4.0)

Hello, nikitaswritnx. This is a Raid Review from "WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group"

"Eight Years"

was selected by personal choice for this time around. I have the following comments to offer.

Reader Experience

Eight years on, and she still dreams about a school friend who broke her heart twice

Commentary

The poem describes a peak moment of romantic intensity in the author. The imprint remains even after a great deal of disappointment and heartbreak. Remembering similar peak moments in romantic feelings, I notice many of them were concentrated around the teen to young adult years.

Maybe my romantic maths is not up to speed, but how can a guy break a girl's heart twice and heal it twice unless he remains with her after the last time he broke it? Or did he heal it the first time he met her and then break it after, healing it again after they rehooked up and then broke it one last time - I guess that works, but it leaves the girl with a broken heart even after eight years.

Mechanical issues

This was free verse.

Thanks for sharing.

FORUM

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

Only reviews from the past
14 days may be credited.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .

#4823270

Review of A Path to Inner Peace

Review by LightinMind

In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group

Rated: E

| (4.5)

Hello nofluff

. Thank you for writing on the theme of this month's contest. Unfortunately, your entry did not qualify according to the rules. But I am happy, as agreed, to provide a review of your work.

FORUM

(13+)
Can the Bible be trusted?
#2327636 by LightinMind

As the official Judge of this contest, I have the following comments to offer for "A Path to Inner Peace"

Did you answer the question?

Yes, this was an emotionally rich, personally authentic, deeply reflective, and human answer that found an anchor in God through Christ. Christ embodied the peace you were looking for but despaired of finding in a continually, changing and chaotic world.

Use of quotes, proof-texting or AI - could I hear your voice?

You have read widely and while you refer to a great many people I have the feeling that you have absorbed many of their ideas into your stream of conscious reflection. Your view of AI as a flawed mirror of a broken humanity was interesting. On questions like this, I would tend to agree - what kind of answer you get back from the AI depends on how you ask the question and it might change tomorrow.

How consistent was your argument?

Your basic argument seemed to be that peace was like a ship that sails through troubles rather than an escape from them. That an Eternal, immutable God was a more trustworthy anchor in the storm of life than a continually changing and chaotic trust in mankind. That Jesus was a light in the darkness that modeled perfect obedience, peace, and trust and someone worth emulating.

My thoughts on the substance of what you said

It seems like you had a difficult month and you mentioned an experience in the ER. Your answers come from a well-read soul with a richness of reflection. You understand, in a way that some of the other contestants this month did not articulate, the human struggle.

Looking a little deeper through the broken fragments of a world falling apart flying at us from every angle, as we dodge and dive along our journey, we can see the love of God. An anchor that holds through any storm, earthquake, famine, war, sickness, or natural disaster.

You give the impression of having walked through a great deal of dirty, stormy water, deceptions, and delusions on your way to more palatable fresh lakes and clean skies. Yours is a voice that heard many of the whispered suggestions from unreliable teachers, deluded atheists, pseudo-scientific counselors and digital deceivers on the way to truth, learning why each of them should be disregarded before leaving them behind. Has that made your journey slower or enriched the voice that you now speak so marvelously with? Your comments reminded me of that famous Churchill quote, spoken in the darkest hours of the war, "if you find yourself in hell keep going!" You seem to understand the doctrine of common grace quite instinctually but also that these fragments of light we can find in other places are fragments not fullness. Only Jesus offers the fullness of truth and peace. Our hearts are restless until they rest in God - to paraphrase Augustine.

It is a deeply Christian insight that peace is not the absence of suffering but rather the presence of God in the midst of it. It is also how the bible psalmists dealt with crises of suffering and faith. They reflected honestly on these and found the Lord in the worst of struggles. Your initial vulnerability to the various counterfeit spiritualities like self-deification, the law of attraction, and self-worship ultimately resulted in a trail of broken idolatries cast overboard and now in the ship's wake as rejected flotsam and jetsam.

"In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33

My favorite line was this one which refers to Christ:

“He never promised calm seas, only presence in the storm.”

More critically your deeply personal journey and rich experience of academic texts and ideas do tend toward a sort of moral relativism. In part that is a reflection of the world you have walked through and indeed a feature of our times. You say things like: Life is contrast and so are anchors. They’re deeply personal. But sometimes the truth is the truth is the TRUTH. Jesus is an anchor that holds through any storm, for anyone that chooses to trust God through Him.

Also, your style, while entertaining and intellectually stimulating is quite introspective and there is a danger you believe that truth is the result of your struggle and journey rather than something you have received by grace, and by faith in Christ.

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1

Peace begins in reconciliation with God not in the achievement of emotional equilibrium. We are seeking an undistorted view of God, not a simple cleaning of the glasses through which we view Him. It is about revelation not human perception in the end.

Thank you for another stimulating read. It is a shame you did not enter properly as you could have won this month's contest with this entry.

Mechanical issues

Focused on the substance of what you wrote.

Thanks again for entering.
LightinMind