281–290 of 308 posts
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So, it seems like you're claiming that some scammers believe that some religious people are gullible. That's certainly true, if not particularly interesting! Are you aiming at a broader argument or more expansive claim?
You get one leading question per subject.
I don't understand the utility of an API for this beyond APIs generally being fun to build. All of the work is in formatting the data to be machine readable, and each bible is <5mb. If you needed this, you could also just download the open source bibles it uses and crawl it yourself which is surely superior in 99% of use cases.
I think this is more akin to the old silly services of the web and not something that would be evaluated as commercially meaningful.
One of the most interesting things to happen to the scriptures is their balkanization into verses. We generally don't atomize other writings that way, and when folks read the scriptures as a series of disconnected logical propositions all sorts of wackiness ensues. What would it look like to have an API for the collected works of Jane Austen that returned snippets (some of which are not even complete sentences)? How…
It probably began as a reference scheme for scholars, by scholars. The same thing has happened to other ancient texts, like the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Homer. You can refer to The Republic 327a1, or Book 1 line 230 of The Odyssey , and people who study ancient Greek texts will immediately figure out which line you're talking about. Those references aren't complete sentences, either. Apparently it didn't matter…
At this point, I don't think it's necessary to split them up for making copies. That said, a lot of churches have integrated chapter/verse look ups as part of their service/sermons/bible studies, so it would be very difficult to remove them now.
One of the most interesting things to happen to the scriptures is their balkanization into verses. We generally don't atomize other writings that way, and when folks read the scriptures as a series of disconnected logical propositions all sorts of wackiness ensues. What would it look like to have an API for the collected works of Jane Austen that returned snippets (some of which are not even complete sentences)? How…
Most people reading the bible don't do this. This would be very very odd.
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The Bible was not written as single work the way novels like Persuasion are though. It is really a collection of books of very different origins and genre. Some books are laws where individual rules can be examined and there are collections of proverbs. But there are also parts which are longer narratives.
I think my point, though, that the unit of thought in the scriptures is not the atomic verse, still stands. If you'd like to emend "collected works of Jane Austen" to "collected works of 19th century authors", feel free.
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> If the question is did morality and ethics come from religion or preceded it then I would bet on morality and ethics coming first and religion growing out of those a precursor to a legal system. Note that a lot of religious morality and ethics is framed as 'law'. I guess there's also something about this connection that's bugging me, and I don't know exactly what; sorry for the response that's indulging my question…
Well, let's take those stone tablets that Mozes brought down from the mountain. What do you think are the chances they would have made it as far as they did if he said: "look guys, here is some stuff I chiseled into a bunch of tablets while I was up on the mountain" vs "this is the word of god"? It's an appeal to authority if there ever was one and by placing the authority in a spot where it can not be directly queri…
Yeah, that's one of those obvious examples I was thinking of before, but upon reflection I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to view this as a link in the evolution of ethics and morality into religion. No one is going to follow a ceremonial law as intricate as the one in the Torah unless they already believe in a god or gods.[1]
The utility of religion for control goes almost without saying, but this is a different matter than explaining the religious impulse: control is asserted from the outside, but faith happens from the inside. If it were purely a matter of covering civil laws with a patina of divine approval, the ceremonial aspects of the Torah make little sense. Hammurabi, for example, doesn't bother with them, despite claiming divine authority for handing down his rules.
[1] As an aside, the Old Testament can be read as a failed experiment in establishing monotheistic worship to Israel. If Moses intended to consolidate his authority, or his family's authority, by identifying their ancient god with Yahweh, it's hard to argue that he succeeded.
A decade ago (!) I worked on parsing bible searches. https://www.davidwparker.com/2010/03/04/parsing-bible-search... It was a neat little project at the time, but due to copyrights, I didn't get as far as I would have liked... I had planned on making a `diff` tool for bible verses between versions.
Most people read KJV, which version are you trying to use where copyrights exist?
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Well, this is the reason there are so many versions. Copyright on the best seller book of all time.
Copyrights didn’t exist when most were written (not many people use NIV versions) so what are you on about?
[citation needed]
NIV is always on the list of most popular bible versions, and is in heavy usage. KJV is by far the most popular, but NIV is still very popular.
I don't understand the utility of an API for this beyond APIs generally being fun to build. All of the work is in formatting the data to be machine readable, and each bible is <5mb. If you needed this, you could also just download the open source bibles it uses and crawl it yourself which is surely superior in 99% of use cases.
I wondered the same thing. Surely a useful API is for data that changes, and the recipient doesn't want to manage the content themselves? An API for searching static data seems only useful as a learning exercise.
Or if that data is copyrighted, but allows free usage of small selections.