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Comment by TomMarius | Hacker News Reader

Meh. I would really love to see the day when religion stops being more than a fantasy fictional story. The project is nice, but I dislike its promotion of religion, and christianity in particular. This story has caused way too much suffering already. I wonder who will first use this project for children indoctrination.

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Religious flamewar is not allowed here. It's tedious, nasty, and predictable. You didn't only start this flamewar, you perpetuated it. Not cool—no more of this please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

OK, but why is promotion of religion allowed then? I don't think it's OK to talk about religion without mentioning the wrongs it caused and continues to cause.

What if this was about Scientology API - would you react the same?

I think this book should be required reading along side the bible: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17568801-zealot

Jesus was an incredible person. The bible taken out of context as it is in corporate christianity, really truly doesn't do Jesus justice.

If you love Jesus, read that book - it will only make you love him more.

If you are an atheist - read that book, it will give you a historical basis on which you can critique modern day Christianity.

Not to sound too snarky, but I would suggest reading some more respected sources before saying "Reza Aslan" and "historical basis" in the same breath.

Jesus is dead for some time and I don't care about him at all. I care about the people that are damned by their peers just because they had sex with their mate; I care about the children that are taught literal bullshit instead of science; I care about the families that fell into dysfunction just because someone told them a perfectly OK thing (such as homosexuality, science, some kinds of biology/medicine, etc) is wrong; I care about the women that are taught that patriarchy is what God wants, and so on. I don't need context of Jesus to recognize the behavior of Christians as seriously messed up.

I agree it's good to care, and I think you're being downvoted because of your association fallacy. There are Christians that teach science, that believe in evolution, that aren't sexist, etc. There are also athiests that are sexist, are anti-vaccination, and homophobic. It would be just as wrong to say athiests have no moral standing.

If you want a future where people treat each other right, then don't demean them, else you're just continuing the cycle.

Atheism has no holy book nor organizations promoting such behavior, and there is nothing to indoctrinate anyone with. Christians behave like decent beings in spite of the Bible and the Church, mostly due to existing in a modern secular society that does not allow atrocities they did when they were in power. I fully recognize that there are many decent religious people, but that does not mean the religion is not promoting and causing said behavior in many many others. And I am specifically not demeaning the people as I see them as victims, but religion (as in the general concept, not just Christianity/Catholicism).

"In the new reconstruction [atheism], we do not see the promised greatness or harmony. Instead we are trapped in a world of violence, discord, emptiness, alienation, and racial hatred... The infrastructure of our society has become mindless and senseless because the foundation upon which we have built cannot support any other kind of structure. Ah, but it is at this point that we have played a game with words and lied to ourselves a thousandfold. Let me say forthrightly that what we have actually done is smuggle in foundational strengths of Christian thought, buried far below the surface to maintain some stability, while above the ground we see humanism's bizarre experiments growing unchecked. If we truly put into place the same principles below the ground that we flaunt above the ground, we would completely self-destruct. And though in the classroom we have tried to dignify what we have done, the songwriters and artists have called our bluff."

- Ravi Zacharias (1946-2020), from Can Man Live Without God

I live in a very dominantly atheist country, and this whole paragraph seems completely made up if I compare it with my experience and statistics. Here is way less violence than in any country with more religious people - and we're speaking about the country that inspired the protestant movement and was the target of two crusades.

It's definitely fine to disagree, but it'll take more than something you read on a reddit thread; such glib articulations are probably better served on Twitter.

The API is pretty sweet, it's surprising we don't have a kind of standardised API for the entire Western Cannon and then some.

http://bible-api.com/ecclesiastes%203:7

I am sure both of us risk getting our accounts flagged or banned for having an opinion, but perhaps you could use the API to display what concerns you. I can say pretty much all of it concerns me. I don't believe in cherry picking "the good stuff" while avoiding all the atrocities that in there. It's amazing how most don't read their "most important book". They just wait for others to tell them the pretty verses they found. It's sort of like modern day social media. People don't actually read the content, they wait for others to comment on the headline only.

But, a reminder to all the mods and down-vote hungry people, if someone can post a link to a religion's website and tools, we should allowed to comment on how we'd like to use it.

You’re 100% right about people not reading. I actually teach an adult Sunday School class in my spare time because it’s really fascinating to read and get into the history.

My slogan for the class is “You cannot be misled if you’ve read.”

We spend a lot of time talking about man made traditions that aren’t biblically supported as well as the cherry picking without context that often happens.

Christianity can withstand plenty of scrutiny and it does. It’s the man made rules that claim to be based on it that don’t hold up.

You also get to see major themes in the Bible when you read the entire thing. Themes are reiterated over and over. That type of context is very important when you realize how much people may latch onto something mentioned once.

Christianity is also man made.

Christians, in particular, would believe Christianity man made. After all, God became incarnate and fully human!

That would depend upon a belief in the doctrine of the trinity, which while mainstream is far from universal. As a Christadelphian I refute the doctrine of the trinity: it simply doesn’t appear in the Bible; it was developed over the course of time in roughly 100–325 AD. (Even apart from that I doubt that trinitarians would go along with your interpretation, but the whole thing of the trinity is confusing and depends upon a peculiar form of logic that is widely called a mystery, so I can’t simulate how they collectively would actually respond.)

Extremely insightful observation. How do you feel about Acts 2:38? Do you feel it is pivotal to understanding salvation?

That repentance and baptism are called for upon realising our depth of sin and need for salvation, certainly. (Notwithstanding this, per Ephesians 2:4–10 salvation is by God’s grace, not by works. Yet baptism is commanded, here and elsewhere.)

Given the context in this thread I suspect you may be seeking remark upon “the gift of the Holy Spirit”. Of that I would say that in the sense of what might commonly be known as the Holy Spirit Gifts (healing, tongues, and the like) Peter was speaking to those that were there at that time, and that it is not applicable to us. Apart from cases of intervention by the Lord, the Spirit in this sense was given only by the laying on of the Apostles’ hands (Acts 8:14–17, and refer to all other documented cases of receiving the Spirit for further support of this allegation; note that Paul is included in the number of the Apostles, despite his not being one of the Twelve; he was specially ordained as such by Jesus). As the Apostles died out, so did these Holy Spirit Gifts, as there was no one further to bestow them. Instead, by this time we had the New Testament, and so had no further need for those obviously miraculous gifts (1 Corinthians 14:22–25 is slightly related to this idea, though I find it difficult to clearly explain how, in part because Paul writes verse 22 in a way that feels kinda back to front).

All that, I say, when referring to the commonly-perceived Holy Spirit Gifts. But please do not take me to be saying that we do not have God’s Holy Spirit with us today; God is with us and sustains us with his power daily (for that is what the Holy Spirit is: the power of God, nothing more, nothing less), including in less obvious abilities we are given. If you look through the list in 1 Corinthians 12:8–10, only a few are obviously supernatural. We all have our own abilities given us by God.

If you or anyone else happen to be interested in discussing these or any other things further, email me at bible@chrismorgan.info. I am always glad to talk about the Bible!

There is a good reason why scammers always filter out for religious affiliation first before spending a lot of of time on their victims. Gullibility is a desirable property in marks.

Can you expand on the claim and warrant you're making there?

Sure:

https://marginalie.hypotheses.org/181

It's been discussed on HN a couple of times as well (though not that particular link as far as I know).

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 would like to know where this master database of email addresses that have information like religious affiliation so that I can perform queries against such a a thing.

Only if you believe the entire Bible is false. And that is certainly a choice that anyone has the right to make.

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.

I think it's comparable to Harry Potter. Actually, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid and Dumbledore set way better example than any person in the bible, while not requiring anyone to believe the world of Hogwarts to be true.

And I do. What are the chances of multiple male authors creating a book that confirms their worldview and lays down the law for everybody else to follow putting them at a very hard to dispute real life advantage vs it being handed down by an omnipotent being?

Let's just say I would be highly surprised if anything related to the spiritual world and related to miracles or the origins of the universe as related in the bible came out to be true in a way that does not agree with hard science.

As a former atheist / agnostic, I completely understand your perspective.

> It's amazing how most don't read their "most important book". They just wait for others to tell them the pretty verses they found. It's sort of like modern day social media. People don't actually read the content, they wait for others to comment on the headline only.

This is the case for every major religion out there. I live in the middle east. I've known hundreds of people personally in my life. How many have actually read the Quran cover to cover? Only a few. IMO especially the most religious avoid it at all costs in fear of actually learning some truth that might make them question the book. So APIs and presenting multiple translations is really important. Word by word translation helps a lot. Make it so ubiquitous that people have no chance but to know what is actually written inside instead of acting like they know by reciting a few things they have heard and cherry-picked. I have done my own compilation to help people in the past [1]. Payment is actually optional, free sample already has full content.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Omar_Haroon_Terc...

Well, In Somalia we do read the Quran. In fact, virtually every child memorizes it from cover to cover before starting school. But if you mean understanding what it says, then you have a point.

> But if you mean understanding what it says, then you have a point.

This is exactly what I meant. Reading without understanding is awarded with sevab points. That is the reason I created a word by word translation so that no meaning is hidden behind clerical authority.

So tell us about Jesus' 'atrocities'.

If you're reference them, surely you be able to at least give us some examples?

You seriously want examples of atrocities from the Bible? How about the law that homosexuals should be stoned to death? Or that rape victims should be either killed or forced to marry the rapist? The command that slaves should obey their masters?

Yes, reference for us when Jesus did those things.

The grandparent just talked about atrocities in the Bible not specifically about Jesus. Jesus just condoned these things, but didn't kill anybody personally. (Unless you believe Jesus = God.)

The worst thing Jesus did was saying you didn't have to wash your hands before eating, which have probably killed millions of innocent people due to diseases and infections. But I'm sure he did this only out of ignorance and not malice.

"The worst thing Jesus did was saying you didn't have to wash your hands before eating, which have probably killed millions of innocent people due to diseases and infections."

This is really deep insight into cause and effect.

When we think 'Jesus, History, Spirituality, Theology, Sociology' .... the thing that really should come to mind is the hand-washing, you know, and the millions dead.

Inadvertently of course!

I never thought to consider that Gandhi, by asking a nation to expend their resources on making 'homespun' clothing instead of wearing that which was very cheaply made on textile machines, was inadvertently causing mass poverty. Probably millions dead. So tragic. Now that's the thing we need to remember when thinking about this guy.

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.)

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.

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.

There are some nice talks from Jordan Peterson about the significance of the Bible and it's stories. It has a lot of positive reactions even from atheists.

Maybe you also can appreciate them.

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