LoadWB's Journal: Bible for idiots?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/07/sms_bible/
http://www.biblesociety.com.au/smsbible/

Christ. So, the Bible has been converted into text which can easily be sent to a mobile phone and conforms to the limitations (160 chars) of SMS messages.

So, just like at the site itself, you can see verses like

"4 God so luvd da world"

So we can breed a new generation of idiots? What is so difficult about multiple messages with the full, English-conformant text? Ever since I've been invovled in on-line chat (1985, Q-Link, to present) I have had my intelligence bombarded by stupid replacements like "U" instead of "you," "R" instead of "are," and the like. I'll admit that I used shorter phrases of things, like "prolly" instead of "probably," but even that seems to skirt the proficiency barrier.

To me, such short cuts lead to the barbaric assault on our language, such as "your" instead of "you're," the use of "of" instead of "have," and the various misuses of "their," "there," and "they're."

ON THE OTHER HAND

Does the use of such semi-cryptic short cuts help keep our minds fresh? Having to constantly translate text into our native language may work to help lead us into larger, more complex puzzles. 1337-speak is one of those things that I could never get into. I have distanced myself from even close friends who have chosen to partake in such text conventions. What makes me feel even more ashamed is that my love of complex puzzles lead me to develop my own language based on the use of pronounciations of numbers -- that is, I did not use numbers which looked like letters, such as "4" for "A," "1" for "L" or "I," etc. -- I used numbers for their sounds: "4" for "4ever," "3" in certain circumstances (yes, this system has rules) such as "tr3" (tree,) and so on.

Sometimes my dislike of the SMS/IM language perversions, and the whole "1337-5p34" thing clouds my judgement.

So, should the SMS Bible be an insult to our intelligence, or does it work to enhance our intelligence?

Oh, and just for the record, words like "pwned," "teh," "haxor," and the like ARE just plain stupid.