Show HN: Bible Both Ways – See how the Bible can justify any moral claim

by jibbed123 • 9 months ago

9 9 9 months ago

I heard the host on some radio phone in say "but religion can be used to justify anything", so I made this little site to test that out. You can enter any serious (or not serious) claim and see how cherry picking from the Bible can support or oppose your claim

Panzerschrek2• 9 months ago

Tried to justify that tabs are better than spaces but found no result.

jibbed1233• 9 months ago

Because that's a given

Panzerschrek2• 9 months ago

How does it work? Do you use some sort of LLM-powered search?

jibbed1233• 9 months ago

Correct. This is gpt4o-mini

harrisreynolds2• 9 months ago

I entered the topic of "going to war" and it did not return anything, but throughout history people have used the Bible as justification for going to war. And yet killing people is generally bad. Lots of nuances here but it seems like the system should have come up with something.

harrisreynolds2• 9 months ago

I tried again and got this:

https://biblebothways.com/claim/war-can-be-considered-accept...

So I guess the first submission was some kind of glitch.

jibbed1233• 9 months ago

Yes I assume glitch! It should absolutely weigh in on war

beardyw• 9 months ago

I tried the self referential "the bible is the word of god" and got the positive: 2 Timothy "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness"

Ironically when the bible was compiled 300 years later a lot of scripture was considered to be heretical and was omitted. Further irony is that Timothy 2 in particular only just made the cut!

r-johnv• 9 months ago

Love the idea

I found though that yielding just one response per side seemed pretty weak, especially when it's not always picking the best arguments for each side. (And not returning enough of the passage to fully show the argument)

It doesn't sound thorough but rather just like it's picking the first vaguely similar set of lines that it could find.

I wonder if subtle tweaks to your prompts could make it significantly more convincing?

Show HN: Bible Both Ways – See how the Bible can justify any moral claim

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