Not familiar, but from what I just read online it looks pretty similar yeah. I believe the idea behind DCC was recreating exactly that simpler old school fantasy.
My dad used to play red box D&D (which I believe was the first edition ever released). Still has some manuals, which I got the chance to read.
Not only it was encouraged to play humans, it was assumed! You didn't get to pick a race, only a class. And while the classes of "elf" (think like 5e's ranger) and "dwarf" (5e's barbarian, sort of) were a thing, all of the other classes assumed for the player to be a human. You couldn't play an elf wizard: you either are an elf OR a wizard. Wild stuff, compared to some of the crazy stuff we get to do in modern D&D.
Correct, but that review process won't have any votes on it, meaning it also won't be possible for Hungary (or anyone else) to veto it. Doesn't seem like that great of an accomplishment on Hungary's side.
Possible. I'd love it if they actually went through with the article 7 threats, but until then using said threat to have Orban sit down is the next best thing.
News outlet are being extremely vague about Orban's motives, but it's clear that no funds have been unfrozen. By the looks of it, it seems Hungary received no grants at all and just changed its mind out of the goodness of her heart, which is weird.
From DW
"From what we are hearing from our sources, they made it very clear to Viktor Orban that he is standing all alone in the EU, blocking this essential aid for Ukraine," she said, adding that following the message it became clear Orban would finally say yes and so the EU leaders sat together to finalize the deal.
This makes me wonder if anything went on behind those closed doors. We know that yesterday Orban met with Meloni, who according to euronews
[Meloni] has fashioned herself as the most dexterous mediator between Budapest and Brussels. Meloni and Orbán held bilateral talks on Wednesday evening in anticipation of the high-stakes meeting.
All that's left to hope is that Meloni and other EU leaders succesfully managed to scare off Hungary and that no backroom deals went on.
I can agree with that. Something that looked particularly bad was von der Leyen openly supporting Israel, in contrast with what had been decided by the rest of the EU institutions. Basically she took initiative and used her position to support her own agenda rather than the one agreed upon by the institution she was representing. (source, albeit soft paywalled)
A more direct approach in foreign policy is sorely needed for our continent, but I think we are still going to have to wait a few years before we can see it.
Quickly? By EU standards, I suppose, but this is the furthest thing from "quick" in the real world. We are about a month late compared to the UK and the USA.
but they can’t do the minimum decent thing and say “we condemn Israel’s atrocities” in the UN
The EU is a permanent observer in the UN and as such doesn't have any voting rights. The common foreign policy is decided by the Council and requires unanimity so every member state has veto power. As such it's practically impossible to come to a conclusive decision on divisive matters such as the current Gaza conflict.
So apparently in Germany both the far left and the far right simp for Russia? I guess they could make a coalition of extremists, they seem like they would get along nicely together.
Exciting stuff! In particual I really like how neatly organized the project roadmap is, with a quick glance at the project GitHub page I can tell what you guys are working on and how development is proceding.
Also, props for using a widely established language like Java. I know Rust has lots of advantages and is all in all an awesome language, but having to learn a new language just to be able to contribute and submit PRs to your favourite open source project kinda kills the hype (and takes away a bunch of time).
Ok so first off, thank you for typing out a well thought argument.
I posted a summed up version of the five ways, rather than the full text, and now I realize that probably was a mistake. I just wanted to make sure people would have read it, most would have ignored a wall of text. Instead, I will directly quote the full text in my answers here.
Here is a TL;DR, cause this will be long:
Thus beginning a long standing religious tradition of using scientific rhetoric where its helpful and attempting to shoehorn philosophy in where it contradicts or fails to uphold.
I don't think he tried to use scientific rethoric at all, nor that any philosophical shoehorning has happened. Rather, it's entirely philosophy. Doesn't mean it's perfect or necessarily correct, but we gotta call it the way it is. I also think you might be trying a bit too hard to interpret it as science, while that's not really what the Summa was meant to be. Some of your conclusions were drawn from the summary I posted not being accurate (sorry about that, btw) and I adressed them by quoting the full text.
Starting from the fourth way:
Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
You correctly criticized his mistake in using fire as the source of maximum heat and mixing in scientifical evidence with philosophy, but the full text tells a more nuanced story.
Fire here is more of an example, rather than pure scientifical evidence. It's also not the basis of the point he is adressing here. That would instead be more abstract (and wouldn't you know it, philosophical) concepts like "good" and "true". So while your discussion on splitting natural sciences and philosophy makes a lot of sense, I don't think it applies here.
Onto the fifth way:
The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
In truth, I think this is the most beautiful of the five ways and the one that, to me,makes the most sense from a scientific perspective. I remained of the opinion that Aquinas wasn't trying to bring in natural sciences into this one, but since you brought up "modern scientifical understanding" I will do my best to make some sense of it, according to modern science.
The message here is not as easy as water flowing because of gravity. It's also not as easy as "what was before the Big Bang?", because that would be, like you said, vulnerable to the "God of the gaps" counter argument.
Rather, starting from the universal constants such as the Boltzmann constant which regulates all of thermodinamycs; the speed of light in a vacuum, which regulates all existing radiation or the gravitational constant, which regulates how all matter and time interact; through science we get a very clear picture of how many pieces needed to fall into place for reality as we know it to come together, let alone life to be possible. According to this modern interpretation, the fifth way states that in order for the universe to exist as we know it, defined according to these specific constants, it must have happened through a higher being, a creator.
Here, actually, is the only place where I see a possible mistake, because on a logical level he doesn't prove definitively that the existence of God is the only solution to the problem, the hypothesis of a coincidence remains on the table. However I personally think, when put in this perspective, the religious hypothesis remains the more believable one.
On your last point, I don't see how the fifth way would violate what he has established from the first way. The fifth claims that motion of inanimate objects happens naturally and repeatedly because of "some intelligent being [...] [whom] we call God". The first instead says that God was the first who put everything in motion, and that because of that things have been kept in motion ever since the universe began. I think these two point go hand in hand, rather than being opposed:
God first created the universe, by putting things in motion. God also defined the patters according to which things should have moved after his initial "push". This makes perfect sense to me.
Quite funny really
I know, right? Like I said it was mostly a semantics issue, I wasn't sure what OP meant. When they kindly clarified their question I gave them my answer, coming from a different perspective from most of the commenters.
Then in you came, and started slandering my religion. Like you might have guessed it didn't quite sit right with me. Assuming you are an Atheist, it's like I came at you saying that "Atheists have no morals" or "Atheists are nothing but hedonists". I don't think you would have liked it. So I tried my best to provide sensible answers to your remarks. I guess that makes me too an apologist; I don't really have a problem with that label.
Everything before your last sentence presupposes your personal interpretation of your god.
No, it is the interpretation of the Catholic Church, which is the church followed by most Christians on this planet.
I'm not looking for philosophical evidence [...]
Alright, you do you then. It seems to me that you are trying to explain God through science, and I'm not sure whether that is possible. Science, from a Christian perspective, is the study of God's creation. Inferring knowledge about the creator from His creation seems like an arduous task to me. I think using reasoning and philosophy would be a more reasonable option.
Clearly this is the Christian god of the Bible and definitely not any other god humans have believed in [...]
One step at a time. Once we are both on the same page that a higher being exist and the universe and life aren't just the product of mere coincidence we can discuss why I think the "Christian God", like you called him, is the right interpretation. But first you would need to accept religion(s) in general.
I am no expert either, but I once trained and ran an AI chat bot of my own. With a decently powerful Nvidia GPU it could output a message every 20-ish seconds (which is still too slow if you want to keep the conversation at a decent pace). I also tried it without a GPU, just running on my CPU (on a PC that had an AMD GPU which is about the same as not having one for ML applications) and it was of course noticeably slower. About 3 minutes per message, give or take.
And bear in mind, this was with an old and comparatively tiny model, something like Pi would be much more demanding, the replies my model produced hardly made any sense most of the times.