Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bible API

bible-api.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 308 posts

Re: Bible API

#261

Post by keithnz »

memling wrote: post #233
goto11 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of Christians reject the virgin birth. You can say they are not "real Christians", but they could say the same about you.

this sounds as plausible as saying that a lot of atheists believe in god. maybe it's a thing? but it's hard to imagine dropping someone in nicea in 380 and suggesting this. words mean things: Christians believe in more than the virgin birth but certainly not less.

why not less? I think many see the "facts" as different. Their approaches to the texts are different, but "Christians" align themselves in someway with a entity called "Jesus". Different sects of Christianity tend to have their own definitions of what they think being a "christian" means and there are commonalities from sect to sect, and even some groups of sects have lots of strong commonalties, but there are still many ways they have incompatible beliefs as well. wikipedia has a reasonable list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denomination... and I'm pretty sure some "christians" in one of the sects would go "They aren't christians!" when it comes to other sects in that list.

Re: Bible API

#263

Post by hprotagonist »

rsynnott wrote: post #251
hprotagonist wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“it is my sincerely held religious belief that no translations in fact happened...”

While there are sects that consider certain translations to be special, or even divinely inspired, it’s usually pretty old ones which are out of copyright anyway.

that was my point, but i should have made it more explicitly.

Re: Bible API

#264

Post by sjwright »

dang wrote: post #244
sjwright wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologise as I can see how “you” could be misread as referring to the individual I was replying to, rather than a colloquial rejoinder to the use of “we”—but I would have thought that was self evident given that the Enlightenment was 250 years ago. More broadly I don’t regret anything I have said in this thread. And honestly I find it difficult to take this form of criticism seriously; offering challenge to concept…

You posted cheap religious slurs. That's insulting in the same way that slurring someone's country would be (a thing we've in fact had to warn you about in the past on HN). We ban accounts that do these things, so please don't do them any more.

From your response I get the feeling that you might have mistaken jacquesm's contributions as mine? Or perhaps that me continuing down his path constituted tacit appropriation of his/her choice of language—which I assure you I do not.

It's noteworthy that the Hacker News community never shows concern for slurring religious ideas when the context is Scientology or the Westboro Baptist Church—to give two clear but by no means exhaustive examples. These topics do occasionally come up and the community is given free reign to slur these groups in ways that would make any of my contributions here look decidedly tame.

While I do appreciate the perspective you are bringing, from my perspective I fail to see how criticism of ideas can ever be inappropriate. I consider societal deference to the most tenacious of ideas to be unhealthy and intellectually unbecoming.

Nonetheless I shall endeavour to restrain myself to the HN guidelines in future.

Re: Bible API

#265

Post by sjwright »

sjwright wrote: post #171
jariel wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What he 'missed' was the real opportunity to enact justice as part of the 'Judean People's Front'. For that alone he deserved what he got. Edit: Meant to say 'People's Front of Judea'. Edit 2: Sorry - 'Popular Front of Judea'. I guess I really need a tool to help me sort that out, like an 'API' of some kind.

He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.

For anyone who is unaware, the above post is a direct quote from the 1979 comedy film Life Of Brian, which is the context from which "Judean People's Front" is derived. The quote is speaking about someone whose name is Brian and is not a reference to any actual religious figures.

Re: Bible API

#266

Post by sjwright »

sjwright wrote: post #161
jariel wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, reference for us when Jesus did those things.

The character of Jesus is far worse, he said he’ll offer you vicarious redemption by way of human sacrifice. Gross. (And worst of all he didn’t even stay dead. What sort of sacrifice is that anyway? He missed out on a weekend to save the world from the rules he created in the first place.)

In case I am misunderstood, the above represented literary criticism of the broader narrative and story arc of the Old and New Testaments. To anyone who feels personally offended by this criticism, I unreservedly apologise.

Re: Bible API

#267

Post by jtbayly »

seemslegit wrote: post #219
jtbayly wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the first verse in one chapter in Job is “he said”. However, it is generally not separated out. Instead one and two are typically combined together and the next number is 3, or something like that.

There are several chapters in Job with the first verse being roughly "And X replied, saying" with the rest of the chapter being their reply. Still very much a full sentence that identifies the speaker.

I was thinking of Job 3:2, which, in some modern English translations is simply rendered “He said:”. But the Hebrew is more complete.

Re: Bible API

#268

Post by sjwright »

brightball wrote: post #181
sjwright wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is disingenuous framing. One does not need to “believe” that the Bible is false, only lack a belief that the Bible is anything other than another book written by humans. Besides, there are hundreds of religions with their own holy books. Why should I take yours any more seriously than the Bibliotheca or Dianetics?

Excellent question. What do you think?

To answer, I think there are an utterly astounding number of books in this world and no intellectually satisfying reason to isolate exactly one specific book as having special authorship.

Re: Bible API

#269

Post by battery423 »

flatfilefan wrote: post #242
biolurker1 wrote: post #227

How can a programmer believe in god is beyond me.

How cannot he when the “logos kyrie o teos” is mentioned e.g. in Iesekiel as the self -description of the divine, meaning roughly “the master of putting thoughts into words”. Doesn’t this sound like a very description of a programmer to you?

You talk about a book.

A book written by people 2000 years ago.

There is not a single proof in existence, that this book is not more then a story equivalent to Harry Potter or any other Fairy tale.

And then the issues just start...

A omnipotent she/he/it who thought 'yeah going to earth 2000 years ago is the perfect and only timing i will ever go to earth', then creates humans (which are much older than that and we know that well enough) and then never comes back and helps us?

Whats that for a shitty leader?

Re: Bible API

#270

Post by dwaltrip »

Damorian wrote: post #105
millerm wrote: post #47

Would be nice if The Skeptic's Annotated Bible could be added to the API. Doubt that though. http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

Oof, just started reading through and this is pretty cringeworthy. It seems the author has a made a few blog posts of your typical, infantile criticisms of religion that they simply link to throughout the text, which is deliberately taken out of context at every possible point and mocked inline. "Advice about avoiding prostitutes? That's anti-woman, sexist absurdity! Why doesn't it mention male prostitutes?" If you'r…

I just browsed for a good 15 minutes. It isn't a collection of the strongest critiques I've ever seen, but what I saw was certainly of higher quality than the quote you've provided.
Post reply on HN