I asked Claude for references to some ideas the ai had output earlier about a 16th century cardinal (Sadoleto). It's response was, Let me analyze the letter, and then this:

async function searchForSadoletoLetter() {
  try {
    const files = ['sadoleto_letter.txt', 'sadoleto.txt', 'sadoleto_to_geneva.txt', 'letter_to_geneva.txt'];
    
    for (const filename of files) {
      try {
        const content = await window.fs.readFile(filename, { encoding: 'utf8' });
        console.log(`Found file: ${filename}`);
        console.log("First 500 characters:");
        console.log(content.substring(0, 500));
        return content;
      } catch (err) {
        // File not found, try the next one
      }
    }
    console.log("Could not find any files containing Sadoleto's letter");
    return null;
  } catch (err) {
    console.error("Error searching for files:", err);
    return null;
  }
}

const content = await searchForSadoletoLetter();

// Since we don't have the letter available as a file, let's search for published versions online
console.log("The letter isn't available as a file. We would need to rely on scholarly knowledge about Sadoleto's letter to Geneva (1539).");
console.log("Sadoleto's letter was published in 'A Reformation Debate: Sadoleto's Letter to the Genevans and Calvin's Reply' (ed. John C. Olin).");

This strikes me as odd? Did Claude write a script to generate its own response? Have coders put something like this in as a gaurdrail?

edit: details about earlier convo

Ukraine: new Orthodox church gains independence from Moscow

This is a follow-up to this previous article: Ukraine announced the leader of a new national church on Saturday, marking an historic split from Russia which its leaders see as vital to the country’s security and independence. It seems it wasn't sufficient for the Ukraine Orthodox Church to choose its own leader; its independence (or autocephaly) had to be formally decreed by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Original article in 'The Telegraph': Western Christianity isn't dying out from natural causes. It's dying of suicide.

Same article syndicated in 'The Age': Why Western Christianity has a death wish. (in case the paywall on the Telegraph article blocks you)

Let's debate religion. I don't think I've seen this topic on Tildes yet and it might be interesting.

My country has practically no visible religion - about 10-15% of our population is religious (mostly seniors) - and just a fraction of them does those religious thing like going to church. Religion basically doesn't exist here. We have a lot of nice churches, but they mostly aren't used.

The thing that I think caused this big amount of atheists (agnostics, ...) is that almost noone is raised to believe in God - in our culture, we don't teach religion at all. Kids are taught that religions exist, but they are not pressed to believe in it such as in other parts of world. They choose what to believe. And God isn't the thing people choose for most of the time.

Whenever I see anything about USA (discussion, film, serial), I frequently see religion there. When I saw it for the first time when I was young, I thought something like "They still have religion there? I thought USA is developed country". I don't think it anymore, I understand better why are people religious, but still - I'd like to know more about more religious cultures and what effect religion have in other countries.