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The Fountainhead. It's not only that Rand and her philosophy suck, she's a terrible writer too.
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Mar 12, 2020 09:27
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not sure why anyone would ever read one of her doorstops when you can glean what you need of her "philosophy" from Anthem, which is blissfully short
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Mar 12, 2020 15:21
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Fun fact: Ayn Rand was the main influence for Andrew Ryan from the popular video game Bioshock hence the name similarity. Use this to impress at parties. Also, I can’t get through the Bible but I’ve heard it’s a downer ending
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Mar 12, 2020 19:49
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oldpainless posted:Also, I can’t get through the Bible but I’ve heard it’s a downer ending For some of you, sure.
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Mar 13, 2020 00:47
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oldpainless posted:Fun fact: Ayn Rand was the main influence for Andrew Ryan from the popular video game Bioshock hence the name similarity. wow thats crazY. hot take from 2007 quote:bible i literally cannot imagine pretending to be an educated person without having read the bible
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Mar 13, 2020 04:45
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chernobyl kinsman posted:
lol if you actually read the bible instead of reading summaries. those genealogies and lists sure are meaningful 
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Mar 13, 2020 12:36
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Not only are they meaningful, they are an infinitesimal proportion of the text. Do you pride yourself on reading CliffsNotes generally or only for the big bad church book?
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Mar 13, 2020 14:34
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Is this line of conversation supposed to be some "lol non-christians are illiterate savages" crap?
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Mar 13, 2020 15:42
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xcheopis posted:Is this line of conversation supposed to be some "lol non-christians are illiterate savages" crap? That seems like a very rarely seen take on the internet in 2020
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Mar 13, 2020 15:49
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Ras Het posted:That seems like a very rarely seen take on the internet in 2020 A lot of people haven't read the bible because they aren't Christians. That doesn't mean they aren't educated and implying otherwise is pretty loving rude.
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Mar 13, 2020 16:01
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There are huge swaths of the bible that are just really repetitive. Leviticus has long lists of rules about what kinds of sacrifices to make in what situations, what kinds of incest are and aren't acceptable, etc. If you can read Leviticus without wanting to kill yourself, I'd be amazed. Then there's psalms and proverbs, which are just big ol' lists, too. More interesting than lists of sacrifice rules, but still fairly repetitive. Some of the proverbs are interesting but once you read your hundredth proverb they start to blur together into meaninglessness. Then there's the various books of the prophets in the old testament that are all basically exactly the same: oh no the babylonian exile is happening! it's because the hebrews have hosed up. here's a prophet who is going to teach them how to gently caress up less. no one listens to him/her and the exile continues. repeat like fifteen times. this is about half the length of the bible. And then there's the gospels, which don't all have the exact same bits in them, but most of the stories are repeated at least two or three times. All in all, it's an incredibly boring book to read cover to cover. Better, in my opinion, to read the more influential parts piecemeal. Fact is, most Christians haven't read very much of the bible, and very few have read it it cover to cover, and I don't really understand why anyone would expect every single "educated person" to have done so.
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Mar 13, 2020 16:02
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i literally cannot imagine pretending to be an educated person without having read the bible lol
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Mar 13, 2020 16:07
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Not only are they meaningful, they are an infinitesimal proportion of the text. it's an ancient text that glues together various ancient books of varying importance, amongst them, the iron age versions of the Domesday book. Yes, I find it far more valuable to my time to read interpretations and scholarly discussions, like the Talmud, then the original. I am not a biblical scholar, and do not have the knowledge to really get my times worth out if it.
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Mar 13, 2020 23:48
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The Talmud rules just for having a story where some Rabbis out rules-lawyer YHWH, who finds it hysterical.
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Mar 14, 2020 00:17
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What a bunch of Goddamned philistines.
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Mar 14, 2020 03:15
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xcheopis posted:A lot of people haven't read the bible because they aren't Christians. That doesn't mean they aren't educated and implying otherwise is pretty loving rude. It's not posting about other posters if you just take something someone said and say "all people who do that are morons". for example, people who think those who haven't read the Bible are uneducated are consistently total poo poo heads and should shut the gently caress up.
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Mar 14, 2020 19:14
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I recommend everyone at least attempt to read the Bible if only to appreciate how nice it is to live in the 21st century compared to ye olden times.
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Mar 15, 2020 01:42
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xcheopis posted:A lot of people haven't read the bible because they aren't Christians. That doesn't mean they aren't educated and implying otherwise is pretty loving rude. whether you're Jewish christian or neither, knowledge of the Bible is an essential step for an educated person, and particularly for someone who's at all interested in Western literature, history, or religion. there are certain areas of knowledge you can't do without, and the Bible is the biggest of them. i'm sorry that this upsets you, but it's reality. i cannot imagine the kind of half-literate idiocy it would take to label the psalms as "big ol' lists", nor can I imagine collapsing Jeremiah and Isaiah as "all the same" or whatever. no one said you had to memorize Leviticus, but pretending to be educated without having read at least part of the most important book in Western history is self-delusion. you don't need to believe in Zeus to recognize that a decent knowledge of the greco-roman pantheon is essential to understanding the subsequent ~2500 years of literary and artistic history Famethrowa posted:it's an ancient text that glues together various ancient books of varying importance, amongst them, the iron age versions of the Domesday book. god, you poor idiots. imagine trying to read the Talmud without having read the text on which it's an extended mediation, lmao. im assuming you also read the scholiast commentaries instead of Aristotle and Plato. e: lol'ing at the thought that by "The Talmud" you mean the, like, Penguin Classics sparknotes version and not the actual Talmud, which is a collection of disparate texts by different authors in different languages, and which taken together is much, much, much longer than even the Christian Bible, even with the Apocrypha. i understand that a lot of you are mad at your parents and have unresolved emotional issues related to your religious upbringing, but please recognize that this does not give you a pass on not having read the most important book in history (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 15, 2020 07:29
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If you haven't just read Ezekiel or Revelation for the sheer insanity Its how I kept sane actually during the mind numbing sermons
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Mar 15, 2020 07:48
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imagining a type of dude who thinks his opinion on modern Arab literature, history, art, and religion is well-informed but hasn't read the Quran
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Mar 15, 2020 07:51
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which is it, "knowledge of" or "having read"?
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Mar 15, 2020 08:26
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This discussion is skirting the limits of the rules. Please remember to post about books rather than other posters, thanks. Incidentally, there's an A/T thread about reading the Tanakh, which might be interesting to Famethowa in particular: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3916138
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Mar 15, 2020 09:22
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I finished the The Oxford Annotated Bible and I feel better for it. I'm not going to think you're a dummy for not having read it. It's helped me find books that I decided to give up reading because they were crap, so I feel that this bad post is within the rules of the thread. I had a friend ask me about why the Bible was important recently, and they didn't get it until I said the Matrix was a Jesus story (yes, this does happen). So, in the same way as Toni Morrison wrote her Master's thesis on Faulker, and Faulker read Melville, and Melville read the dang Bible, maybe we should also read the Bible...and if we're not careful, we just may learn something.
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Mar 15, 2020 10:43
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i am a book
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Mar 15, 2020 10:44
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and so are You
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Mar 15, 2020 10:44
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hallelujah posted:i am a book We should read the danged books.
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Mar 15, 2020 10:47
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Content: I tried to read Sapiens since my wife’s book club had that as a piece. She has since quit the book club. If you want to know whether or not a general history is okay, flip to something you know. His piece on Marx was completely backwards, and said that anti-Capitalists believe that there is a conspiracy at the top, when Marx makes it clear that there isn’t a conspiracy, but instead an evolutionary pressure that makes this process happen.
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Mar 15, 2020 10:54
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The North Tower posted:Content: I tried to read Sapiens since my wife’s book club had that as a piece. She has since quit the book club. If you want to know whether or not a general history is okay, flip to something you know. His piece on Marx was completely backwards, and said that anti-Capitalists believe that there is a conspiracy at the top, when Marx makes it clear that there isn’t a conspiracy, but instead an evolutionary pressure that makes this process happen. Everyone keeps pushing me to read Sapians and it sounds like its oversimplied poo poo. Someone recomended me it on the basis thaf "he shows everything like society and politics is just a religion." Absolute nuclear hot take. Am I being too critical?
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Mar 15, 2020 17:40
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chernobyl kinsman posted:god, you poor idiots. imagine trying to read the Talmud without having read the text on which it's an extended mediation, lmao. im assuming you also read the scholiast commentaries instead of Aristotle and Plato. lol you alright buddy? I read pages of the Talmud in discussions in a religious class because I'm interested in my history as a jew. I'm pretty well versed in the bible because I've studied it a lot, but reading it cover to cover would waste my time unless I was trying to flex. A summary of leviticus and its prohibitions, unless I was a biblical scholar whose life goal was to understand its every line intimately, serves just fine. The bible is not nearly as meaningful read in this way as reading primary source Plato or Aristotle translations are, because again, many portions of the bible are essentially ancient ledgers. Interesting, because it gives an interesting look at Levantine daily life, but not meaningful. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 15, 2020 20:45
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Famethrowa posted:lol you alright buddy? chernobyl kinsman never mentally recovered from botl's perma also he's in education so i imagine he's under a bit of stress, what with the plague and all (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 15, 2020 20:46
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The North Tower posted:I had a friend ask me about why the Bible was important recently, and they didn't get it until I said the Matrix was a Jesus story (yes, this does happen). So, in the same way as Toni Morrison wrote her Master's thesis on Faulker, and Faulker read Melville, and Melville read the dang Bible, maybe we should also read the Bible...and if we're not careful, we just may learn something. As content, Moby Dick was the classic book that I bounced off of a long time ago, and it wasn't until I read Bartleby that I "got" Melville. I want to return to it really bad once I'm out of school.
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Mar 15, 2020 23:25
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it is literally impossible to be even marginally literate in Western Culture without having read the bible
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Mar 16, 2020 19:54
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Mel Mudkiper posted:it is literally impossible to be even marginally literate in Western Culture without having read the bible Honestly I feel like anyone who wants to consider themselves well-read in Western lit needs to have read at least the “greatest hits” of The Bible, the works of William Shakespeare, and Classical mythology. If you don’t have at least a working familiarity with those things, a metric fuckton of allusions are going to go completely over your head, and not just in literary fiction. This stuff is in practically everything.
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Mar 17, 2020 04:36
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Mel Mudkiper posted:it is literally impossible to be even marginally literate in Western Culture without having read the bible What are the things in Western Culture that you just don't get if you haven't literally read the Bible start to finish? In fact same to the above with Shakespeare. Show me some of these allusions that mean you're illiterate without having done so. Most people have a pretty broad working knowledge of both the Bible and Shakespeare's greatest hits. (and yes I have read the Bible, as well as seen, read, and in fact performed in many of, Shakespeare's works)
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Mar 17, 2020 09:59
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You're missing the point Its not about recognizing "allusions" like some kind of goddamn game of literary hide and seek Its about the fact that you cannot meaningfully engage with the cultural conversation that defines pretty much the entirety of the Western narrative tradition with understanding the primary formative texts behind it. You cannot understand why our culture and traditions are how they are without understanding what created them I mean, the very core of our system of ethics is inescapably biblical and it comes into a greater focus when you read say, texts from cultures that might have a non-abrahamic religious history Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Mar 17, 2020 |
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Mar 17, 2020 18:01
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yes but you can be literate without having read the bible from start to finish
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Mar 17, 2020 18:39
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Mel Mudkiper posted:You're missing the point So by "Marginally literate" it sounds like you actually mean "A literary scholar."
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Mar 17, 2020 20:24
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Someone upthread pointed out that they had to explain to a friend that The Matrix is a Jesus story. That's the kind of fundamental cultural literacy you're missing if you don't read the Bible.
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Mar 17, 2020 20:51
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HIJK posted:Someone upthread pointed out that they had to explain to a friend that The Matrix is a Jesus story. That's the kind of fundamental cultural literacy you're missing if you don't read the Bible. That was me. You wouldn't believe what they thought about the Hamlet - Lion King connection!
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Mar 17, 2020 20:54
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HIJK posted:Someone upthread pointed out that they had to explain to a friend that The Matrix is a Jesus story. That's the kind of fundamental cultural literacy you're missing if you don't read the Bible. This I can agree with, but it hardly requires reading the Bible end to end to make that connection.
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Mar 17, 2020 20:58
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