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We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

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Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

#71

Post by dang »

Anointmous wrote: post #22

Another article I see where a bunch of non-Americans are going to comment on an article which was obviously written for an American perspective (and afterwards a western one), all the while pretending to be Americans. I don't mind disagreement. However, I have come to loath the anonymous nature of most of the internet, while the in thing is to comment on someone elses life anonymously while claiming to be in it. Most…

Please don't post flamewar comments to Hacker News.

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

Note this guideline also: "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."

Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

#72

Post by dragonwriter »

throwawaw wrote: post #4

> The same people who tout the virtues of being well-read skip right past the Bible, the most popular book in human history. Who's doing that? You wouldn't be able to understand half of what you read. Did the author just make up someone to score points on?

> Did the author just make up someone to score points on?

That pretty much describes the entire content of the article, which is filled with mythology with no basis in fact (and I’m not referring to actual Christian doctrine, but all the post-Biblical “history” in the piece), including completely fictional contents attributed to the Constitution.

Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

#73

Post by truth_ »

selimthegrim wrote: post #49
truth_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Buddhism does recognize human rights. I was just reading some days ago how Buddhist emperor Ashoka the Great abolished discriminating policy of a Brahmin never being punished to death irrespective of the nature and severity of the crime while it was allowed for other castes. Buddhism is one of the rare religion that does not recognize divine rights of kings. In Buddhist mythology a king is like everyone else who…

Isn’t this because killing Brahmin (even in death penalty) is for Hindus mortal sin?

When rules are made by the Brahmins, what do you expect?

Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

#74

Post by dragonwriter »

nottorp wrote: post #3

> But at the same time, they believe in human rights, which can be justified only by the very God they don’t believe in. Why?

It’s a very common belief in some Christian circles that universality of morality is impossible without resort to a personal deity, it's at least a source of cosmic punishment of morality is violated.

This is, of course, completely bogus; universality works just as well as a standalone a priori moral axiom as it does as a consequence of the Cosmic Punisher.

Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

#75

Post by Daishiman »

dang wrote: post #66
Daishiman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A curious conversation would come if the author made an argument with more substance. This doesn't have the merit to any response besides the ones that point out how incredibly flawed the original argument is. It's hard to assume an intention of honest debate.

None of that makes it ok to break the site guidelines. Bad articles don't excuse bad comments. From a quick look at the article, I don't think you're doing it justice—and from what little I know of Holland, he's a serious writer on this topic. However, that's all beside the point. Even if the article is as bad and provocative as you say, it's not ok to fulminate about it on HN. Rather, the thing to do is (a) not post…

If you see multiple "offenders" in the same thread, it's because the implicit critique is pointed at the same place in the folly of the author's main point, which is ironically due to the lack of curiosity of the research behind the ideas of the Enlightenment.

I have found it to be a fairly common issue among defenders of certain faiths where they take a popular philosophical stance that was delevoped through Enlightenment thinking or other philosophical countercurrents and ascribe a religious source.

You're not gonna find a lot of fans for honestly discussing this as a worthy point because it is simply ahistorical and goes counter to the principles of the very same authors of said ideas. It's really doesn't take much research to debunk this.

Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

#76

Post by dang »

scotty79 wrote: post #70
dang wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar, nor generic tangents. Neither of those things makes for good HN threads. Especially not religious flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry. I thought this was either religious post, so mentioning religion in the comment is ok or that religion in this post was irrelevant and we are talking about culture and humanity so it's fine talking about them in similar way in the comment. And since it's a discussion forum I thought taking contrarian position was fine. I stand corrected that religion is a special topic on HN as nearly everywhere else that can…

It's not about the topic—it's about the quality of the responses. If your post had been thoughtful and curious, rather than religious flamewar, that would of course have been fine.

I realize that when it's a topic you have strong pre-existing feelings and opinions about, the tendency to rush into the forum and vent them is very strong. It's not just you—we all have it. In order for HN to be the kind of forum we all want—something with the potential to remain interesting over time—we all need to find other ways to process those reactions in ourselves. Then the forum can be free for new exchanges, not just ranty repetition.

One thing to watch out for is whether you're responding to something specific and interesting in the article, or whether you're just taking its appearance as an opportunity to post generically what you think or feel about a large adjacent thing. As I've tried to explain many times here (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), discussion tends to get much less interesting—and also angrier—as it gets more generic, especially on divisive topics.

Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

#77

Post by thinkingemote »

dang wrote: post #64
thinkingemote wrote: post #35

Has the title been changed?

Yes, we changed it in a feeble attempt not to have a tedious religious flamewar. (From the site guidelines: " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Btw, when we do these edits we nearly always use some representative phrase from the article itself. I'm pretty sure that was the case here.)

I hope the attempt worked. I was trying to find how the new title related to the original one and was skimming the article in the process. It didn't seem that, well...peaceful?

Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

#78

Post by mgh2 »

_r0fz wrote: post #53
throwawaw wrote: post #4

> The same people who tout the virtues of being well-read skip right past the Bible, the most popular book in human history. Who's doing that? You wouldn't be able to understand half of what you read. Did the author just make up someone to score points on?

At least in my (I think typical?) big city tech worker circle the bible as literature has been received with disdain the couple times I've seen it come up. I also had a (atheist) friend once tell me he bought copies of the bhagavad gita and quran to put next to his bible so he would look well read instead of christian if anyone looked at his book shelf.

This is so prevalent that it has become a joke in Silicon Valley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWoRVaGlFRc

Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

#79

Post by dang »

thinkingemote wrote: post #77
dang wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we changed it in a feeble attempt not to have a tedious religious flamewar. (From the site guidelines: " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Btw, when we do these edits we nearly always use some representative phrase from the article itself. I'm pretty sure that was the case here.)

I hope the attempt worked. I was trying to find how the new title related to the original one and was skimming the article in the process. It didn't seem that, well...peaceful?

It didn't work. I originally wrote "feeble and doomed" but then felt embarrassed for using 4 adjectives in 1 sentence.

Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought

#80

Post by dang »

Daishiman wrote: post #75
dang wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that makes it ok to break the site guidelines. Bad articles don't excuse bad comments. From a quick look at the article, I don't think you're doing it justice—and from what little I know of Holland, he's a serious writer on this topic. However, that's all beside the point. Even if the article is as bad and provocative as you say, it's not ok to fulminate about it on HN. Rather, the thing to do is (a) not post…

If you see multiple "offenders" in the same thread, it's because the implicit critique is pointed at the same place in the folly of the author's main point, which is ironically due to the lack of curiosity of the research behind the ideas of the Enlightenment. I have found it to be a fairly common issue among defenders of certain faiths where they take a popular philosophical stance that was delevoped through Enlight…

If you want to make a case about something being "ahistorical", you should post thoughtful, substantive, informative comments, not flamewar rants. That would have the nice side effect of making this place better instead of worse.

> If you see multiple "offenders" in the same thread

This is the internet; that's the default. We're trying for something other than internet default here. That takes energy—we have to spend energy asking commenters to do better, and commenters have to spend energy doing better and resisting their default instincts. Please do better.

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