Global Christianity and the Rise of the Cellphone 559
Hugh Pickens writes "Alan Jacobs writes in the Atlantic about Every Tribe Every Nation, an organization whose mission is to produce and disseminate Bibles in readable mobile-ready texts for hundreds of languages including Norsk, Potawatomie, Bahasa Indonesia, and Hawai'i Pidgin as the old missionary impulse is being turned towards some extremely difficult technical challenges. The Bible is a large, complicated text containing three quarters of a million words and the typesetting is quite complex because of the wide range of literature types found in scripture and the need for several types of note. 'For all the issues that are still to be solved, ETEN is trying to do things that the world's biggest tech companies haven't cracked yet, such as rendering minority languages correctly on mobile devices,' says Mark Howe. 'There's a unity among Bible translators and publishers that stands in stark contrast to the fractured, fratricidal smartphone industry.' But once these technical challenges are met, it won't be only Bibles only that people can get on their mobile devices, but whole new textual worlds."
Leading the way (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, yes. but I do not think that is actually a good thing, all things considered. For example, the crusades required a lot of drive but are among the most evil human undertakings ever.
Bible translation is already a big help (Score:5, Insightful)
Bible translation is usually the one taking the big step of documenting a new language and defining a character set for it. So really, this isn't new.
Re:Leading the way (Score:5, Insightful)
Like being a sex education substitute, in cultures which are skittish about sex?
Re:3/4 million words. tl;dr (Score:1, Insightful)
The whole bible translaes to: treat other people the way you'd like them to treat you.
Re:3/4 million words. tl;dr (Score:5, Insightful)
With the occasional interludes into: but if they don't fit your world view throw rocks at them till they're dead.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
Blah. Even though there is no god, etc., the Bible is still one of the most important texts if you want to understand Western culture and philosophy. Refusing to learn about ideas because they are wrong is simply a more vain and self-glorifying form of anti-intellectualism.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
putting a book into the local language and sending an army to kill people - quite a comparison.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to the Muslims who conquered Palestine, North Africa, Iberia, Persia, Mesopotamia and southeastern Europe?
Re:Use LaTeX (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, yes, Christian unity (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a unity among Bible translators and publishers that stands in stark contrast to the fractured, fratricidal smartphone industry.
Also, alas, in stark contrast to the fractured and occasionally literally fratricidal world of their theological paymasters.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
so anything with religious motivation is bad no matter what they do?
that seems as narrow and short sighted as the other way of taking it.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:2, Insightful)
You would thing that people would be able do away with these historic and completely ridiculous ideas by now. Instead they are still stuck in the dark ages, but now with shiny new technology. Really sad.
What's sad is that Christians have something you will never have. Christians have something to look forward to. They do not fear death and instead, welcome it. They know what life is all about and never spend a moment wondering what is next or what the point is. Their only concern is how to be the best human being possible to ensure a pleasureable eternity after death. They look forward to meeting friends and family and feel their presense throughout life. Their only fear is that they may not be good enough to enter paradise so they spend their lives trying to do good things for their fellow man and being honorable, honest people throughout their life. Material possessions mean nothing more than what they can be used for to better the lives of others, although the Bible is full of stories about people who did great things with nothing.
On the other hand no matter how much money you make how successful you are in life, you will die and that will be the end of it for you. You will go through life wondering what the point of it all is and why it's all worth it. When you lose loved ones, they are gone forever and you know that you will never be able to spend time with them again. No matter how hard you work, how many possessions you acquire, or accomplishments you achieve, you will end up being a bloated, rotting carcus, just like everyone else, and nothing more. The final chapter of your life involves is about compost.
Even if Christians are wrong, so what? Sure, they'll end up as worm food just like you, but in the mean time, they achieve an inner peace that you will never know and spend their lives trying to better humanity. What's the harm in that? Even after reading an article about Christians pushing tech that will benefit everyone, all you can do is insult them.
The sad part is not only that you will never know these things, but also that you are bitter against those that do.
(Of course, I'm talking about true Christians here, not the negative stereotype you've formed in your head from that one TV preacher you saw on Sunday morning saw after an all night bender, or the horrible stories you heard the news. I'm talking about people like Tim Tebow's parents who give their lives to serve others.)
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
What a sad life you must lead if you truly believe that a man cannot find his own purpose and happiness.
Which bible will be translated? (Score:3, Insightful)
The King James? The Eastern Orthodox? The Coptic? Hebrew? Syriac? Which apocrypha will be in or out? Will they charge extra for those? Get back to me on that, willya?
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
In a sense, yes. If you are logically minded, you know that from false premises, one can prove anything. Someone who is driven to do stuff for bad reasons can do good an evil.
But you have no guarantee. So in some sense, it would be better if there were no drive: that way, you needn't worry that next time, instead of typesetting, it'll be bombs.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:3, Insightful)
No excuses from me; just counteracting the mass fallacy that only the Crusaders were Teh Evil and that the Muslims were a bunch of Little Miss Innocents.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, religion also flourishes in parts of the developed world -- I'm looking at you USA. It is a bug in the human brain. Fortunately, brains are plastic, and it can be cured.
But the point is that although despair is a substrate on which religion can flourish, it is not necessary. Nor is religion necessary to have comfort and empathy. It is a mental illness, and should be treated as such.
The bible... (Score:2, Insightful)
...A nice piece of fiction, but I wouldn't want to live my life by it.
Re:3/4 million words. tl;dr (Score:3, Insightful)
So for some reason I want to be raped, killed with the skull of an animal wielded like a club, and then turned into a pillar of salt?
That's the Old Testement. Chrisitianity is based of the New Testament. It's where Christ tought the church leaders to not be stupid when it comes to religion. For example, they brought a man with a crippled hand before Christ on a Saturday. See, it was illegal to work on a Saturday, and healing this guy would be against the law. Here is what followed:
"Is it right to heal anyone on the Sabbath day?" they asked him - hoping to bring a charge against him.
"If any of you had a sheep which fell into a ditch on the Sabbath day, would he not take hold of it and pull it out?" replied Jesus. "How much more valuable is a man than a sheep? You see, it is right to do good on the Sabbath day."
Then Jesus said to the man, "Stretch out your hand!" He did stretch it out, and it was restored as sound as the other.
--Matthew 12:9-14
The point is for you know the difference between the Old and New Testaments and which ones various groups follow. For example, your point may have made sense if this were an article about religion. But since it was an article about Christianity specifically, you just showed your ignorance. You don't have to believe the story I just quoted above, but you should understand that Christianity is not about what you seem to think it is. It's called the NEW Testament for a reason.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
I always find this particular statement perplexing. Apparently it's the Atheists who fear death, yet it's the Christian (amongst others) who need to make up stories about an ever lasting afterlife to make themselves feel better about the fact that people die. Why would you pretend that people "live on" if you're not afraid of death?
No. Why do you believe that I would? Why do you even think that I spend any significant life pondering such philosophical questions? There is no point to life. Life just is. Now that's a concept that Christians do find scary!
Yes, and? Fairy tales about them living up in the clouds might make you feel better, but it doesn't change anything: people die.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:3, Insightful)
What's sad is that Christians have something you will never have. Christians have something to look forward to. They do not fear death and instead, welcome it. They know what life is all about and never spend a moment wondering what is next or what the point is. Their only concern is how to be the best human being possible to ensure a pleasureable eternity after death. They look forward to meeting friends and family and feel their presense throughout life. Their only fear is that they may not be good enough to enter paradise so they spend their lives trying to do good things for their fellow man and being honorable, honest people throughout their life. Material possessions mean nothing more than what they can be used for to better the lives of others, although the Bible is full of stories about people who did great things with nothing.
Oh come on! That's what it says in the marketing material, but in truth most Christians do fear death. They live lives full of guilt, uncertainty and self-hatred and direct that outwardly in an effort to make everybody else feel as shitty as they do.
On the other hand no matter how much money you make how successful you are in life, you will die and that will be the end of it for you. You will go through life wondering what the point of it all is and why it's all worth it. When you lose loved ones, they are gone forever and you know that you will never be able to spend time with them again. No matter how hard you work, how many possessions you acquire, or accomplishments you achieve, you will end up being a bloated, rotting carcus, just like everyone else, and nothing more. The final chapter of your life involves is about compost.
Again, a load of evangelical crap. As an enlightened rational actor in society, you realise that your legacy is what you do with your time, so you try to make the world a better place for the next generation. Yeah, when you are die that's it, but at least you can die happy knowing you did your best, unafraid of the judgement of Gods.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
- it is insulting that you think (against evidence, I might add) that atheists cannot have peace of mind. After all, Buddhism is an atheist philosophy, and peace of mind is their trademark.
- It is insulting that you think people do good things just because they are afraid of the great CCTV in the sky. People do good things for their own sake.
- It is insulting that you believe one cannot have any other hope in life than the afterlife. I am a scientist, and my research will live after me, so will my memory in my friends' minds. A writer's books will survive him. And artist's works. The good you do while alive. If you need materially motivated pretexts to do good, there it is.
You should live your life to the fullest, in awe of the universe, precisely because you will return to dust and nothingness. But knowing, because of the immense privilege we have of living now, that we exist because a generation of stars formed, aged and went nova so we could exist as carbon-based lifeforms. We exist because every single one of our ancestors, for four billion years, did no fail to reproduce. We stand half-way to the death of our star, and the beings which will see it die will be as far from us that we are from the first unicellular organism.
You, on the other hand revel in bronze age mythology.
I'll spare you comments about the "no true Scotsman" fallacy you committed in your last paragraph.
Re:3/4 million words. tl;dr (Score:5, Insightful)
God created intentionally created humans ignorant. God then commands humans not to become less ignorant. As humans were created ignorant by asshole God, they obviously can't know any better, so they eat the fruit and progress beyond their woefully subservient roots. God then condemns ALL OF HUMANKIND TO ETERNAL TORMENT BECAUSE TWO PEOPLE ATE A FUCKING APPLE.
Then, God decides that women need a little bit of extra punishment, because fuck women, that's why.
Shortly thereafter, this omnipotent, omniscient God KILLS EVERYTHING ON THE PLANET because, apparently, not even being all-powerful can keep you from cocking things up now and again.
Once humanity gets back on its feet, God sends his chosen people on a mission to ETHNICALLY CLEANSE the promised land, raping, pillaging, murdering, and basically committing every war crime we have on the book for a few hundred pages.
God then decides that the best way to save humanity is somehow to send himself down to Earth to be horrifically executed in public. He couldn't just, you, know, forgive us. Imagine if your dad decided that he was going to forgive you for crashing his car, but first you had to watch him brand himself with a hot poker, just for you. Pretty fucked up, right?
Even after all of this, the prime directive is still to worship the divine asshole dictator in the sky; you can spend your whole life treating everyone around you BETTER than you treat yourself, and you will still be cast into a lake of fire for not believing.
When you boil the Bible down to its basic essence, it is every bit as vile as Mein Kampf, if not more so. While there are some nice, happy little sayings in there, they do little to redeem the overwhelming monstrosity of the rest of the text.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:3, Insightful)
They do not fear death and instead, welcome it.
On the contrary, they're scared as hell (pun intended). They fear death so much that they invented heaven.
You will go through life wondering what the point of it all is
Nope, why wonder about such a question? Why should there be a point? And more importantly, why would you rather believe an invented one than accepting it's about as silly as wondering about the smell of an inch?
Even after reading an article about Christians pushing tech that will benefit everyone, all you can do is insult them.
The reason xians are being mocked and insulted here is that they're not doing it for the benefit of everyone, but to shove their propaganda down our throats.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean the same Crusades where a group of people tried to regain access to the Holy Land after it was cut off? What do you think the Muslims would do if Israel cut off access to the "Dome of the Rock"? Would you blame them? When they attack Israel, would you call it "among the most evil human undertakings ever"?
Shit like this is just adding weight to the argument that religion is bad. Fighting over something with mumbo-jumbo significance is crazy.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly - wow, another radicalised agnostic! I thought I was the only one!
You can't prove it either way. You've just got to wait until the ride stops, and see what happens.
Re:3/4 million words. tl;dr (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the definition of "people" isn't clear. On the text, some humans are people, while others are not.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
Or more like a belief in a slightly different superstition. You can spot the people who really believe in atheism and want to evangelise it as much as possible.
No, atheism isn't a a belief, it's the lack of one. And atheists who spend time trying to convince others are few and far between. Most are just not concerned with what others believe at all. Of all the atheists I know, and that's quite a lot, I'm the one most likely to join in an argument about it. But that's more that I like an argument. There are no group meetings. There's nothing to join.
Those with religion like to imagine atheism is just another religion. I'm not sure whether it's a desire to drag everyone down to their own level, or because they habitually make tenuous connections, and something ending in "ism" sounds like it might be a religion.
Here's a great way to troll atheists - get them to try to prove that Richard Dawkins exists.
You've never trolled an atheist with that in your life. It doesn't even start to have the makings of a workable troll theme.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:3, Insightful)
The problems come when some Christians decide that the 'souls' of people are more important then their 'worldly' well being. And it strangely very rarely applies to their own personal well being.
For example the Church in my country is very active in collecting donations from the faithful. After every mass a person will go among the people with a collection plate, while the priest preaches about the importance of charity or something similar. Many poor people, that can barely survive on what they have still give money, since NOT giving is seen as a sin (at least by the priests). Meanwhile the Church has enough money that their leaders live in castles and mansions.
Another example is Africa and AIDS. There is nothing wrong with preaching abstinence. What is wrong is preaching that condoms are wrong, even in cases where one person is infected. But why bother with people's health? If they die, they'll go to heaven. Why try to make their earthly lives better or longer?
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
But I prefer to call myself an atheist. Because I lead my life as though no gods existed, as opposed to leading my life as though they might exist. So from the point of view of an external observer, I am not affected by the existence of gods, and therefore I am not and indication of their existence, nor of belief in their existence.
The idea is that to me, something exists if it is observed to have an effect on the universe. Since the effects beliefs in deities cannot be observed from my actions, I am, for the observer, an atheist. Does it make sense?
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:3, Insightful)
Humans are nothing more than a species of animal. Many animals are territorial, and those that are fight their own species for those territories. And those that are also social, fight together for their territories.
This isn't anything to do with a tendency for humans to pervert anything. It's just a behaviour strategy that's brought success to particular genes in DNA.
Nation states, racial differences, religion and sports, provide the human species with groups to identify with in order to pursue these instinctive territorial battles.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never been approached by Christians pushing religion, but I encounter anti-thiests pushing bigotry and anti-religion on a weekly basis on the internet (between facebook and this/other sites).
If you are from the USA, you are heavily sheltered. They come to my house. They bother my children in public. They infest the local schools. If you haven't had SOMEONE pushing Christianity on you, then you are either a Christian who is already in the club, or you are part of a vanishingly small group of people.
Re:3/4 million words. tl;dr (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you think the Muslims would do if Israel cut off access to the "Dome of the Rock"? Would you blame them? When they attack Israel, would you call it "among the most evil human undertakings ever"?
Yes, I'd blame them. That's a perfect example of the harmful influence of religion. If it weren't for ridiculous superstitions that scrap of desert would be as worthless as any other scrap of desert. If you're willing to kill people because of ancient mythology, then absolutely I'm willing to call it evil. Most evil ever? Depends on the scale of the atrocity.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:2, Insightful)
No, atheists don't have to prove anything and don't have to rely on faith. Atheism isn't a religion, it is the absence of religion. Religion is the absence of reason.
Unlike the faithful, atheists are generally open-minded people. If someone shows up and proves they are God (however they would manage that) the atheists will turn religious.
Both reason and faith have made huge contributions to human history, both good and bad, however, only reason has proven itself to be a way to get things done.
Prayer has proven itself to be a crappy way to get anything done, yet the faithful continue to try to use it. One popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (the only thing that has ever demonstrated different results to me after doing the same thing over and over is the Windows operating system). Isn't that what the "faithful" do when they pray?
Science and engineering have proven themselves to be very reliable ways of getting things done. If something else comes along and proves itself better, here I feel safe in speaking for most atheists, we'll change teams in an instant.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
So if you take the false premise that God does not exist, you can prove anything?
Bear in mind that the theists are just as strong in their beliefs as the atheists, but neither can prove their belief either way and must rely on faith.
The idea that atheists have some sort of "faith" or "belief" that there is no God is a divide by zero function.
What is that with so many fundamentalists? A lack of belief in something does not mean belief in something. Who gets down on their knees every day and prays to "no god" that they profess to not believe in? Who builds a house of worship where people go to have a ceremony every week to something that they believe that they don't believe in?
Imagine someone standing on a street corner, handing out pamphlets that say that there is no God. So they convince someone that there isn't. So the convertor now asks the convert to pray with him.......... to what?
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So Ashamed of Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Hang in there, there are more than a few slashers that are fully versed in science, and fully faithful to God. Slashdot is a little like a freeway; Everyone has a horn. A few of the posters are more thoughtful and well-reasoned than some, but the questions about faith are here because they are relevant to slashers, and some of the most vitriolic posts are by folks who need a thoughtful response the most.
Remember that Christ was crucified. We who follow him can expect the same.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:5, Insightful)
You talk like to blind person stating that since the colour red cannot be seen, it has no meaning.
You can demonstrate to a blind person that a certain wavelength of light, measurable by scientific equipment, can be filtered and that it has different effects upon both manmade and biological sensors. Thus even a blind person can understand and verify the existence of the color red, even if they may not understand the ramifications of how it is perceived by others.
Re:Bible translation is already a big help (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:4, Insightful)
If the Christian who believes in God and tries to live a moral life acting in kindness towards his neighbours is wrong, when he dies he finds he goes nowhere after death but has lived a good moral life while here on earth.
And if he's spent a large proportion of his life trying to convert people? Or if he's lived a less moral life due to his religion, for example by participating in a holy war, or by helping spread AIDS by preaching against the use of condoms in Africa?
If the atheist is wrong, though he may have lived a moral life, he will still have to stand before God and explain his unbelief.
And this belief is entirely possible to justify rationally. If God does exist and is not capable of being swayed by rational argument, then you're fucked anyway. If God doesn't exist, then it doesn't matter. If God does exist and is rational, then he will accept that atheism is a rational position. You act as if the only two choices Christianity and atheism. This is the flaw in Pascal's wager. There are at more than two religions that say that you will go to some form of hell if you don't belong to them. Each one has exactly the same amount of verifiable evidence for them (i.e. none). If one is true and you believe the wrong one, you go to hell. If one is true and you don't believe either, you still go to hell. You maybe gain slightly on the odds, but some religions (including the abrahamic religions) regard worshiping a false god as being worse than worshiping no god, so even that's a bit of a stretch.
If a Christian dies and discovers that the Valkyries come to take dead people off to feast with Odin, do you really think that the fact that he believed in an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient deity will be something the Valkyrie will care about?
As for proof... look around at nature. Can you honestly believe it was all an accident? A random chance due to some atoms rattling around until they got in the right order?
The only kind of person who can't believe this is someone who has absolutely no concept of how big the universe is and how long it took. It took billions of years for life to form on this planet. This galaxy contains about 300 billion stars, of which several billion (extrapolating from our current observations) are likely to have planets sufficiently like ours that conditions similar to those where life arose here will occur. There are about 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe (probably more outside of this sphere), and it's entirely possible that there are other universes. Do you really think it unlikely that given about 10 billion years on around a quintillion stars, it is unlikely for complex life to evolve even once? Keep in mind the anthropic principle (in summary, emergent life will always observe its surroundings to be suitable for life because otherwise life would not have emerged). If there is a 0.000000000000000001 probability of life like ours (i.e. DNA based) emerging on a planet like ours somewhere in the universe each year, then you'd expect it to be happening on a very regular basis.
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, but to an atheist, you can show him a mainliner opium addict being cured of his addiction, but it makes no difference. You can show him a person who was cured of one leg being shorter than another, but he remains blind. You can show him a person who was healed of rage, but the atheist denies it.
It takes faith to be an atheist.
My father was an agnostic physicist, until one of his friends' leg was cured (2nd case above), and the wife of another departmental physicist was healed of MS paralysis. After that, he had to pick between "agnostic" and "agnostic, but believes). He documented everything, but in the end became "agnostic but believes." After 50-odd years of mostly being agnostic-atheist, he's now a Christian, praise God. We'd been praying for him.
His atheist friends ignored it.
That's the difference between an atheist and an agnostic. For the atheist, it is an article of faith that there must be no other god, for the atheist himself wants to be that god, and in the end, all that denies him is a threat to his existence.
That is, until perchance he recognizes that fact, repents his illogical stance, and realizes that there *is* a God, and comes to know that God.
Thank you, I actually think I'd prefer the dark ages to a Nazi prison, a Hutu-Tutsi extermination campaign, a UN-enforced peace with all the weapons reduction on one side, Leninist/Stalinist communist rule, and whatever our own atheists want to force us into here and now, today.
Re:In which the question becomes imperative (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no purpose to you or I being here. None at all. No higher being doing it for a reason. No reason at all. Biologically, life just is. Why do you find that so scary?
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but to an atheist, you can show him a mainliner opium addict being cured of his addiction, but it makes no difference. You can show him a person who was cured of one leg being shorter than another, but he remains blind. You can show him a person who was healed of rage, but the atheist denies it.
Maybe you misunderstand my example. I showed that even a blind person can perceive a wavelength of light using equipment, and observe effects of that wavelength of light, experimenting to perceive differences of that wavelength from others.
What you've mentioned is observing results, which one can tie through experimentation, perhaps, to belief, but not to that actual existence of any god. Can you, through experimentation show that belief in a particular god (as opposed to one of many religions) has positive effects? Can you demonstrate that the god of that religion exists? Can you show scientifically that the effects are derived from the god through hypothesis and experimentation?
It takes faith to be an atheist.
Not really. The null hypothesis cannot be proved. A scientist or logical person does not just believe everything by default. Do you believe there are tiny goblins in your ears that hide if anyone looks? Do you not believe that because you have faith, or do you have another reason?
That's the difference between an atheist and an agnostic. For the atheist, it is an article of faith that there must be no other god, for the atheist himself wants to be that god, and in the end, all that denies him is a threat to his existence.
I could just as easily redefine a christian as, "someone who has an article of faith that not only is there a god, but his name is 'Jeebus' and he will give us dinosaurs some day". Thus you are not a christian. If you insist on redefining generic words it is impossible to have a rational discourse. An atheist is a person who has no belief in a god. That is all.
Until someone documents scientific evidence of a god, belief in a god is not rational. That's fine and we all believe irrational things, but don't deceive yourself about it or try to paint others with a desperate equivocation. And before you try to cite anecdotes as evidence, I mean real, scientific experimentation that would disprove the hypothesis, and is repeatable and stands up to methodological and logical scrutiny. Please apply some logical rigor here.
Use advancement made possible by (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:New technology, old mindsets (Score:4, Insightful)