The Bible only seems like Babble if you’re used to works that are full of sentences that can be interpreted in a straightforward and obvious way independent of context, and presuppose that it’s supposed to be a single, fully-worked-out instruction manual for life. It really, really obviously is not, and if you insist on reading it that way, of course it won’t make sense. People lie about the Bible and say it’s things that it’s not, but people lie about fucking everything, there’s no especially strong reason to believe the people who built a religion around a thing, when they tell you what the thing is. If you pay close attention to the structure of the story it’s pretty clear what it’s saying—excepting maybe the account of the chariot, since I actually don’t understand what that part means and it’s famously obscure—and I am pretty sure that I’d be able to tell a book of the Bible I hadn’t read from a made-up one, even in English.
I’m trying to parse this, and I think we’re saying the same thing and you’re just using the word Babble differently. I’ve roughly defined Babble as “pseudo-randomly generated proto-thoughts”, and good Babble as “insight-rich input from which Prune can find insight.” Help?
I’m saying that the Bible has content, and this content is understandable, but it takes some active work to understand because unlike most modern writing it is not spoon-feeding you everything.
The Bible only seems like Babble if you’re used to works that are full of sentences that can be interpreted in a straightforward and obvious way independent of context, and presuppose that it’s supposed to be a single, fully-worked-out instruction manual for life. It really, really obviously is not, and if you insist on reading it that way, of course it won’t make sense. People lie about the Bible and say it’s things that it’s not, but people lie about fucking everything, there’s no especially strong reason to believe the people who built a religion around a thing, when they tell you what the thing is. If you pay close attention to the structure of the story it’s pretty clear what it’s saying—excepting maybe the account of the chariot, since I actually don’t understand what that part means and it’s famously obscure—and I am pretty sure that I’d be able to tell a book of the Bible I hadn’t read from a made-up one, even in English.
I’m trying to parse this, and I think we’re saying the same thing and you’re just using the word Babble differently. I’ve roughly defined Babble as “pseudo-randomly generated proto-thoughts”, and good Babble as “insight-rich input from which Prune can find insight.” Help?
I’m saying that the Bible has content, and this content is understandable, but it takes some active work to understand because unlike most modern writing it is not spoon-feeding you everything.