IF you want to make mega-bucks, sinply turn the Bible or the Koran into an application for the iPhone, and watch the green and crinklies magically fly from the pockets of the faithful into your bank account.
There are dozens of these apps already in existence. Go to the iTunes store and check out titles like Cute Bible Stories, the Mantis KJVS Bible (which comes in at a whopping £11.99), My Bible Plan, the iQuiz Bible, Scripture of the Day (yuck!), and, intriguingly, A Bird’s Eye View of the Bible, which asserts that:
The Bible is a lamp to our and a light to our pathway … The Bible is a rock … the Bible is the true water of life …
Then you have The Daily Koran, the Koran with Qiblah Compass, the Holy Koran in English, the Religion of the Koran …
You get the picture – the iTunes store is awash with religious bilge.
But hey, there’s good news – of sorts – for atheists. Its an app called BibleThumper, and is described thus:
This is the perfect Atheist Bible companion! Next time one of those Bible thumpers start proselytizing, you will be able to answer in kind with the juiciest quotes straight from the holy Bible. Included are (sic) a selection of the most funny, irrational and strange quotes from the Bible.
Bizarrely, iTunes insists that you have to be “at least 17 years old to download this application”.
That’s because the app is judged to have, among other bad stuff:
Frequent/intense realistic violence; sexual content or nudity, and horror/fear themes.
Of course it does – and kids as young as five, of not younger, are exposed to the Bible in their millions every day, so why the hell is iTunes getting itself all of a lather over an app that simply throws up random stuff infants in religious homes are suckled on?
Out of curiosity, I bought for BibleThumper for 59p – and found it a major disappointment.
If it were laid out, for example, like The Bible Handbook, which details ALL the contradictions, absurdities, atrocities, unfulfilled prophesies and immoralities contained in the Bible, and if it possessed an index, and had searchable text, the app would be immensely useful, and could sell for a great deal more than a mere 59p.
To read the overly-fancy script is a real challenge, I found, and to change the quotes you have to shake the phone really hard.
A far better way of dealing with proselytizing Christians is to shake THEM really hard!
HAT TIP: Maotai
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
November 1st, 2009 at 10:20 pm
huh interesting. go figure they would have a app for the bible and stuff. They have apps for everything else.
November 1st, 2009 at 11:54 pm
We need to get the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible/Koran/Book of Mormon for the iPhone!
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:27 am
Amen to that!
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:00 am
Hi,
I’m the developer of BibleThumper & I’m glad you enjoyed it! I couldn’t help giggling all the time while I was developing it. I spent a lot of time going over the ‘best’ bible quotes and selected about 100 juicy ones for the app! Tell all you friends about it! & if you’ve got some spare change, buy a copy
Cheers – Francis
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I can tell James and others, from personal experience, that while The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible may provide you with hours of fun, it will make absolutely no impression on “Bible Believers”! The reason for this is that fundamentalist Christians spend hour upon hour at Bible Study/Bible Readings where every single verse of the Bible – including even the most obscure books – is analyzed and expounded at great length. No one is going to come up with a question to which they don’t have a ready-prepared answer! (And even if they can’t fend off atack with the usual arguments that “this is a mistranslation”, or “these words were not in the original”, they can always fall back on “we’ll understand what this means when we get to Heaven”!!) The answer is to think “outside the box” and go for questions to which they do NOT have an answer. Science, naturally, provides some of these. And rather than using the scatter-gun approach, I feel it is more effective to latch on to ONE fact that, if true, destroys their simplistic beliefs. For instance – it is now generally accepted that Nazareth, as a settlement, did not exist in the First Century (Doh!!!). Never mind all the other “contradictions” in the Gospels – how on earth do you get over THAT one? If you challenge them on something like the Exodus, their stock answer is: “Ah, well, the evidence hasn’t been found yet”; but where Nazareth is concerned the evidence HAS been found, and it says that there were only scattered dwellings there in “Jesus” day. As Dr Harwood has pointed out just recently, the idea developed that “Nazirite” or “Nazorean” meant that Jesus was from Nazareth, and that is how that “fact” became incorporated into the Gospel narratives. Such a fundamental error as this blows out of the water completely the idea that the New Testament is “divinely inspired”!!
November 5th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Hi,
Francis again, developer of BibleThumper. Here’s a promo code (unfortunately only works in US App Store) for the first reader to grab it: TRP74MTHH496
Now, as for really using the app to ward off biblethumpers, I agree with barriejohn that this might not work. Haven’t had the chance to try it out since (fortunately) these people are in short supply over here in Switzerland.
I wrote the app with the guy in mind who started going all biblethumper on me while I was taking a leak in a public restroom in the US a while back. Ever since then proselytizing has disgusted me.
Cheers – Francis