the singularity of being and nothingness
existdissolve
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Posts by existdissolve
The Emergence of Divine Knowledge
Mar 15th
Throughout the history of Christian theological thought, a key tenet of orthodox belief has been that of divine omniscience-that God knows (infinitely) all that can be known. Notwithstanding the various caveats that need to be assigned in order to properly qualify such a statement, there are several logical and theological challenges that must be balanced in order to properly maintain not only the internal coherence of such a assertion, but also the meaningfulness of it to theological belief.
One of the challenges is related to the necessary distinction that must be maintained between the eternal nature and being of God and the ontology of that which God has created. After all, if a “strong” theory of omniscience is established that concomitantly breaks down this necessary distinction, the preservation of the doctrine of omniscience leads to, IMO, a much worse end than would otherwise be had.
So let’s start with an apparently simple statement:
“God knows that X will happen in the future.”
From a “strong” doctrine of omniscience, the answer to such a statement is an easy yes. After all, since the future is assumed to be “something” that can be known (especially in re: prophecy, et al), God must “know” the future in More >
Ext JS Screenshot Fun
Mar 2nd
Quick (ok, not really) video about some screenshot croppin' goodness with Ext.
Check it out, and become my Facebook friend while you're at it!
ColdFusion and ORM…Yummy!
Mar 2nd
The other day, I was flipping through the ColdFusion docs (yeah, super exciting!) and came across the section about ColdFusion's support of ORM. If you're not familiar with it (I wasn't really until a few days ago), ORM stands for "object-relational mapping." While it sounds a bit overly technical, ORM is basically a way to interface objects in code to relational databases that levels the playing field, allowing your code to be more or less agnostic about what kind (or kinds) of databases that it's connecting to.
At first, I was unimpressed, but then I took a few moments to think about it. How often have I had to switch between database systems? Plenty. And how fun was it to have to go back and rework my code to account for the differences in typing and syntax? It wasn't. With ORM, however, alot of these headaches are removed because you can create an abstraction layer in your application using ORM to not really have to worry about what datasource you might be connecting to.
Now obviously, the subject of ORM is much more complex than my admittedly weak description. However, after a lot of reading I feel like I have a decent More >
A Quick Thought About the "Penalty" of Human Sinfulness
Feb 28th
The consequence of sinfulnesss-being cut off from the life and goodness of God-is so perpetually annihilating in and of itself that no additional “penalty” needs to be imagined in order to increase the disaster of sinfulness. If God does nothing in regard to sinfulness, the consequence to the sinner is just as terrible as if God somehow actively brings about the same end.
Why, then, do we conceive of the consequences of sin within the framework of penalty? It’s simple: because at the core we are sinful, vindictive creatures that desire a vision of God wherein God reacts along the lines that we, as sinful creatures, would act. We want God to respond with violence and hatred because these are what fundamentally characterize the neurosis of sin. If our God behaves in similar ways, we have-in a very small and neurotic way-legitimized the categories of our behavior, and God is simply the biggest and most violent one in the end.
Fortunately, the truth is that God does not pile “penalty” upon our heads, but quite to the contrary invades our sinfulness in the person of Christ to rescue us from the fear of death and dissolution (Hebrews 2:14-15) so that we might More >
Ext to ColdFusion…Nice!
Feb 21st
So I know a lot of the posts I’ve been writing recently have been about stuff that’s been around a while-Ext helper functions, CFScript, etc. Nonetheless, I post them because some of the answers to questions I’ve found in developing solutions have been less-than-easy to find, so perhaps repeating some of the same things again will help Google find it a bit easier for someone else someday.
On with redundancy!
Obviously, JSON-related technologies have been around for a while, and with ColdFusion 8, a lot of native JSON handling was added for the creation of some sweet AJAX-y goodness. While I’ve dabbled with these, I’ve never really had a need for them…until now.
I recently developed a remote CFC function that required about 12 different arguments. On the client side, I also developed a quick EXT Ajax.request() method to pass these arguments into the CFC function.
Now with Ext, it’s incredibly simple to pass arguments to server-side functions, as this example illustrates:
Ext.Ajax.request({
url: 'com/functions.cfc',
success: successMethod,
failure: errorMethod,
headers: {"Content-Type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8"},
params: {method:'setupLife',argument1:arg1,argument2:arg2}
});
I like this alot, because it allows me to treat each argument as its own “thing,” rather than stringing together a bunch of “&argument1=arg1″ in the query string.
But what if More >
30 Seconds with Ext
Feb 11th
Ok, so this is not earth-shattering, but I came across a pretty cool feature in Ext's DomHelper class the other day.
But first, a little context. Don't you just HATE creating new HTML elements with JavaScript? If you go the route of explicitly pasting them together, your code ends up looking like spaghetti…and I hope you're good at tracking down escaping errors
And what about wrangling with createELement, appendChild, and the ilk with their corresponding unpredictable behavior across browsers?
It's a gigantic pain in the butt, but as I found out recently, Ext makes it SUPER simple. Using the DomHelper class, you can easily leverage Ext to confidently generate any number of elements without having to worry about escaping characters or remembering the nuances of creating elements for each browser.
Let's say I just want to make a new table:
Ext.DomHelper.append('cart-details', {tag:'table', id:'detail-table'});
In this super simple example, I'm adding a new table element to an existing div with an id of "cart-details." To add the table, I simply invoke the append() method from the DomHelper, and 40 characters later I'm all set.
But what is even cooler is that the DomHelper class allows you to create NESTED elements as well! Check this out:
Ext.DomHelper.append('detail-table', { tag: More >
Turning to the Darkside…of <cfscript>
Jan 22nd
During a lull at work the other day, I was reading about the extended capabilities that have been added to <cfscript> in ColdFusion 9, like being able to create queries and entire components…
Honestly, until recently I've not really used a whole lot of . I'm not really sure why…just not something that interested me a whole lot. You think it would: I like JavaScript syntax a lot, and translating these skills to <cfscript> is pretty straightforward. Still, not a whole lot of experience.
Honestly, I think a lot of it is that there's something comforting about the tag syntax. It's easy to see a balance in your code, and even easier-depending on your IDE-to see where you've completely borked something, left out a tag…whatever. Some of it, out of necessity, is that not every tag has a equivalent, although efforts are underway to remedy this…Whatever the reasons might be, it's super-simple to get used to the tags and then feel quite lost in <cfscript>.
The revelation for me was kind of interesting. For starters, outside of the very specific tags like, say, <cfexecute>, what are the majority of the tags that you use in a regular swatch of code? For me, it's a More >
Converting ColdFusion Queries for Ext
Jan 21st
At my new job, we use Ext fairly regularly to get some pretty cool AJAXiness up in the mix of things. To familiarize myself with Ext (I’ve not really used it until now), I recently downloaded the newest version and have been playing around with it quite a bit.
One of the elements I like quite a bit is the data grid. Like most other things, Ext makes it pretty simple to pull off a slick sortable, pageable data grid with very little work.
Of course, given that I use ColdFusion alot, I decided to hook up a grid to a remote CFC call. While the call itself is easy enough to do, there is one issue: the JSON that CF returns is in a format that Ext cannot quite understand.
Now there are a bunch of pre-built converters out there, some more robust than others (and a few I couldn’t quite get to work).
So in the spirit of trying to figure it out for myself, I wrote up a simple function in ColdFusion that will take a regular query and convert it into happy JSON that Ext can deal with.
First, here’s our function to create our generic query:
<cffunction name="getPosts" access="remote" returnformat="json" output="false" hint="Gets list/detail More >
Getting Web Site Screenshots with ColdFusion…and a Little Help
Jan 17th
For those of you who don't know, I am the owner and occassional operator (!) of CSS {Imagine}, a simple, but relatively well-visited web design gallery. One of the requirements I had for this site when I built it was that I did NOT want to have to do any work of manually grabbing screenshots and cropping thumbnails for the sites that are submitted to the site. So using a combination of a third-party screen-capture service and CF8's super-awesome image editing tools, I've built an entirely automated process for handling of all this less-than-fun work. Heck, all I have to do to kick off the process is to click a link in a notification e-mail…:)
One of the downsides to using the third-party service is that the results are VERY inconsistent. Some of the images are garbled, while others simply fail. However, the biggest issue I have is that the service has-reasonably enough-a finite amount of servers to process all the request. Therefore, there are several occassions (daily) that I have to wait to kick off the process until the screen shot service has reached my requests in the queue. I know, I know, not a huge deal. However, it would More >
Rethinking Divine Forgiveness: Postscript
Jan 15th
Based on what I outlined previously, I can imagine that a few objections might be raised to my conclusions (as unofficial as they might be…).
First, we might follow this logic:
- If God has already forgiven humanity for its sinfulness;
- and, in fact, the very coming of Christ is the great revelation of this reality;
- why, then, would we be concerned with the notion of asking for forgiveness?
That is, if our notions of “penalty” were really just confounded all along and we are not actually under any impending punishment for our sins, why the biblical injunctions to “confess” our sins?
I think this is a good question, but I also think it’s imminently answer-able within the structure I have suggested. As before, however, it requires getting beyond the notions of “penalty” and “requirement” that have plagued our thinking about forgiveness and atonement. But first, let’s take a look at what’s deficient in the other model.
In these old paradigms, the act of “asking” for forgiveness is, in actuality, a request that the presumed “laws” of justice be put on hold. After all, transgression-within a penal model-necessitates satisfaction, whether in act or consequence. Therefore, the plea for forgiveness is a hope against hope that just maybe “this More >