Slashdot Mirror
Global Christianity and the Rise of the Cellphone
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."
True but at least it gives them the drive to solve a knotty problem.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I wonder how short a religious text could theoretically be, while still sustainably self-replicating between hosts. (i.e. religious believers). Much of the bible is akin to junk DNA.
Like many slashdotters, you're completely dismissing the amount of benifical influence on Western civilization brought about by pornography.
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.
Like being a sex education substitute, in cultures which are skittish about sex?
At least Porn is a reality......
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Crowd: OMG 4000 dudes 7 loaves 2 fish
Jesus: Lotsa food now LOL
Crowd: WTFBBQ!
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.
putting a book into the local language and sending an army to kill people - quite a comparison.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Karen Armstrong in one of her TED talks put forth an idea that all religions should concentrate on the Golden Rule - the rule that Confucius created 3,000 years ago. Compassion. Orthopraxy as opposed to orthodoxy.
We should all act like a compassionate person instead of worrying about how others believe and if they believe "correctly" - which is lost on pretty much every practitioner of the religions of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
We all know LaTeX allows you to focus on the content and magically comes up with beautiful layouts. I mean the single best page layouts are always in the looks-the-same LaTeX format! And it's so intuitive to use!
Looks-the-same format? Wha...? =)
Also, funnily enough (and relevant to the article), one of the groups who is trying to improve (La)TeX's suitability for modern font technologies and supporting obscure languages is SIL, a group that does, among other things, Bible translations. (The end result is XeTeX, one of the best TeX versions out there right now if you want good PDF output and TrueType/OpenType support out of the box.)
To be honest, for technical writing LaTeX+BibTeX is a hell of lot easier to deal with than any word processing software (LyX being the "exception"), at least in my opinion. There are a few non-technical reasons for this, like the fact that most of the relevant conferences and journals in my field publish LaTeX style definitions and that BibTeX citations are available everywhere (and I do not have to procure additional software just for biblioigraphy management).
Palm trees and 8
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
At least Porn is a reality......
I used to be a pizza delivery driver, and let me tell you porn is NOT reality!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
What a sad life you must lead if you truly believe that a man cannot find his own purpose and happiness.
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.
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.
Bible translators have also given us XeTeX, which is now an important part of the TeX ecosystem. And a bunch of useful (and good looking!) fonts: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=FontDownloads
- 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.
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.
What's sad is that Christians have something you will never have.
No, what's sad is Christians who are so deluded by their faith that they cannot imagine what life would be like without it, and so they make up stories about how horrible life must be in order to convince themselves that they made the right choice.
The truth is that I know I have to treasure what I have right now, because eventually I won't be here any more. I have to do my best to leave the world a better place than when I entered it, and I will (hopefully) live on by being fondly remembered for the impact I had on the world and people around me. I don't have to fear not being good enough to enter any "paradise" because I know that's just a fable, and I can do more than my life than spend it trying to appease some invisible omnipotent friend.
I'm not bitter at the ideal, "true" Christian who acts like you described. They sound like nice people. I'm bitter at the real kinds of Christians who actually exist -- the ones who use technology to spread their doctrine of fear and ignorance, tell nonbelievers how horrible they are, and try to use the government to enforce laws that are solely based on their ancient religious texts.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
The existence of gods is undecidable. Therefore using it to justify anything is dodgy. Note that using the non-existence of gods is just as dodgy.
You should justify your actions by some reason wholly outside the realm of theogonies. And therefore religion is useless to guide human actions.
I further claim it is harmful. Because it uses an undecidable (and unlikely) premise which is not necessarily shared by all the recipients of the actions.
For example, the crusades required a lot of drive but are among the most evil human undertakings ever.
You must be smoking some serious stuff. The Crusades? That amateurish, badly organized and to a significant degree self-destructive (Constantinople, 1204) movement that in 200 years managed to pull of a few years total of violent fighting (if at all) and a few conquered cities (many of them just bought off rather then won by siege)?
After learning a bit about crusades, I came to the conclusion that the only dark spot in the crusading movement was the sack of Jerusalem with the concomitant bloodshed; the rest of the crusading event being little more than a farce.
Now, had you mentioned the Muslim conquest of India, that would have been a different thing. With a single expedition, Mahmoud of Ghazni enclaved half a million Indians, leaving tens of thousands dead. That was just a single incident during the centuries of the conflict at the western borders of India. As far as I know, the total death toll during the 1400 years of Muslims attacking Hindus from the west is not far from reaching the insane mark of 100,000,000 deaths. And you talk about the Crusades? Wow. Just...wow.
"Among the most evil undertakings?" No, not even close. Regarding the number of lives destroyed, the crusades pale in comparison even when compared to such seemingly mundane things as car accidents caused by drunks, lenient subprime mortgage policies and IRS tax forms.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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?
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The crusades were in their own way an example of the "good" in Christianity. A thousand years prior, Roman culture would have just plundered the Middle East for mercantilist gain, and felt no real need for an excuse. Christians felt like they needed an excuse, because Latin Christianity in the person of St. Augustine had stated very clear rules for when a Christian could morally participate in a war (the so-called "Just War Theory") and "plunder" wasn't on the list. Also, you seem to be proceeding on the assumption that Islam posed no real threat to Europe, and that a "flanking campaign" was illegitimate. The reality, if you go back and read the writings of people like Bernard of Clairvaux, is that they (a) felt that by attacking the Byzantines, the Muslims had attacked them (b) were acutely conscious of the fact that Byzantium might fall and that they would then have no buffer from the Saracens and (c) they were scared to death of Muslim aggression because Muslims had already conquered chunks of formerly "Christian" territory (i.e. Spain.)
The whole crusades as a criticism of Christianity thing simply doesn't hold up to much scrutiny, but that doesn't stop devotees by proxy of Bertrand Russell from repeating it to the point of nausea. What I wish such people would do is actually learn some real history and stop flapping their gums until they do.
Sources: Ph.D. in New Testament and early Christianity, active interest in subsequent church history.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
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?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
SIL, a group that does, among other things, Bible translations.
Offtopic, but they also send people out to very remote areas -- one of their missionaries lived with and studied an Amazon tribe and learned some things that challenged some very fundamental western assumptions about universals in human language.