Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. That is not welcome here.

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

Edit: please stop posting flamebait generally. You've been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account regardless of its views.

The university in question is Southampton. Hardly a Christian fundamentalist stronghold. Meanwhile, there is a tradition of using the Bible for new printing media, including one of the first printed works, the Gutenberg bible.

Absolutely!

Oh for Pete's* sake you're unnecessarily debasing the discussion. The real issue here is that these works are probably the best known in the 'The Western Canon' and of course you'd naturally use them as benchmark examples as they've rightly done here.

To not use such well known examples on the grounds of a form of political correctness is both absurd and it also denies us our culture and heritage.

I do not believe in the literal truth of the Bible as such, but I certainly do not deny its importance in Western Culture. Moreover, the King James Edition of 1611 is one of the most remarkable texts ever written [perhaps you should read a few bits of it some time], especially so given that it was written by a committee—committees usually produce Lowest Common Denominators but that certainly wasn't so for the KJE!

There is nothing inconsistent with what I have said here.

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* I was nearly going to say "for Heaven's sake" but I thought better of it. ;-)

What’s wrong with the Christian bible?

What is it telling me about the researchers!

Absolutely nothing. The only theory I can come up with is that GP is a snobby atheist who associates Bibles with morons.

Using the Bible could be interpreted as ‘this is one of humanitys most important works so let’s preserve that first’ Yet the majority of people on planet earth are not Christian. I’ll go with the Gutenberg homage though

The Tanakh also has the distinction of being one of the few works of literature that has survived for 3000 years largely intact, and I think it's considerably longer than the older parts of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Way more than that many people couldn't care less about Gutenberg though. Point being the bible is the most read book in the world.

Since Christianity is not the largest religion, I find that claim needs additional proof.

Really? It's a google search away https://www.businessinsider.com/the-top-10-most-read-books-i... And it's in the Guinness book of world records.

Also, Christianity is the largest religion... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations

The first reference quite explicitly says "number of copies each book sold over the last 50 years."

Sales is an approximation for readership. The second source also claims "figures may incorporate populations of secular/nominal adherents".

So, while I agree that populations that identify with Christianity may be larger, it's pretty obvious a lot of those do not observe the rituals the religions they identify with specify.

To get a better readership proxy, perhaps, one could use the share in sales of religious texts across the different demographics.

Then we need to also define what "read" means. Does it mean the book was read cover to cover or does it mean the book is read from occasionally? Religious texts are used in very different ways than other forms of literature, to the point comparison borders the questionable.

No doubt that is true. I was referring to the scientists motivation to ‘engrave’ the Bible

Or the KJ bible is considered by the English their most important literary work, and the university is English!

If researchers at KAUST had decided to etch the Quran as a sign of devotion and humility before the unknown, what would have been the problem?

None!

For the decision of who to honor is solely of the creator(s) and not of some political commissar

A large number of people know roughly how big The Bible is. I think they picture was more about "look, this big book fits on this little thing", and less about some perceived proselytizing.

The image is misleading anyways. The whole Bible fits in 1Mb uncompressed. That image would be billions of Bibles if it is using this new technique.

That image is probably close to a decade old, if I'm recalling correctly the first time I saw it, so it's definitely not the new technique. The image just looks good for a headline, especially since any actual picture of the new technique would likely look like unremarkable frosted glass at a macro scale.

They also claim it will last 13.8 Billion Years and this is the problem you have with it?

Press releases. Whatta-ya-gonna-do?

The 13.8Gy claim is made by estimating, calculating and then confirming by experiment how quickly wear and tear works (the primary mechanism is nanograting, and the primary contributing physical quantity is temperature). It then specifically grabs 13.8Gy as an example data point because that's the age of the Universe, but they could've picked any other point on a time/temperature scale, like, say, "room temperature".

Are you suggesting they pulled this out of their backside? The research very much supports that number.

No, 4MB.

So the fact that the demonstration disc they chose to use in a photo for the article happens to be the Bible (the first book ever printed and most printed) tells you "everything you need" about "them"?

No wonder public discourse is so terrible nowadays, when people are willing to dismiss entire institutions based on an arbitrary image in a press release. But, I guess that's just a step or two removed from asking someone to be fired because one time they interviewed or were seen with someone else who's opinions you don't agree with.

I wish I could automatically append your comment to each similar statement people tend to make nowadays.