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Religious Discrimination at Google

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31–40 of 320 posts

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#31
post #23

Quoting the most concrete example he gives: > If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as sma…

You are at a meeting with colleagues, one colleague suddenly starts to insist that Santa Claus is real. Do you take them seriously? Sure it’s freedom of speech but there will be some kind of drop in respect.

I mean I get that you believe that one book trumps all of human science because you were raised that way but when you grow up your critical thinking skills should kick in. If they don’t, it’s very difficult to keep taking an adult that believes in all kinds of unprovable stuff serious, because where does that end?

When is weird weird enough to be allowed to be publicly rejected every time it’s brought up, according to you?

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#32
post #16

But what if you really are crazy? Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Which is literally what the author (proudly) claims to be, no? Are we supposed to take such beliefs seriously? Being unable to tell people they're full of shit, in a respectful manner, is much more of a serious problem here. You want to hold…

> Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Isn't that.. all religions?

My Invisible Underground Unicorn (rainbow poop be beneath her) disagrees.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#33
post #16

But what if you really are crazy? Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Which is literally what the author (proudly) claims to be, no? Are we supposed to take such beliefs seriously? Being unable to tell people they're full of shit, in a respectful manner, is much more of a serious problem here. You want to hold…

> Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Isn't that.. all religions?

Doesnt't that... make the situation all the more ridiculous?

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#34
post #16

But what if you really are crazy? Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Which is literally what the author (proudly) claims to be, no? Are we supposed to take such beliefs seriously? Being unable to tell people they're full of shit, in a respectful manner, is much more of a serious problem here. You want to hold…

History will also show you that it is religion that has formed the moral and social framework for today's values to be opposed to oppression. You might think they, human rights, good morals, fundamental truths, are innate and fundamental but then look at geography and history together and you will see that it's religion that is the origin for these beliefs. The twentieth century featured many deaths caused by 2 diffe…

The notion that humanity would be morally lost without the guidance of religious belief is laughable. For sake of gaining some perspective and widening one's thoughts I'd suggest reading the works of any of the number of major philosophers.

And if you need to read in some book that oppression is bad, that murdering people is bad, that basic human rights are a good idea, etc. - if you need to read that in a book and have these concepts crystalized for you as capital T True by dogma fed to you by a church of some kind... then, my friend, you're just a bad person. And we do have bad people and will continue to have bad people but religion has done nothing to abate this. Moral compass is innate to human nature, not something you learn from a book.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#35
> If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face

Let's say someone brought up BDSM at a social event. How would the average religious person feel? Exactly how non religious people feel when someone brings up their religious beliefs.

If you were into some niche sex act, chances are you'd completely understand if other people didn't like it. However, religion is usually ingrained in religious people's ideology. Which means they are low key uncomfortable when people have incompatible beliefs. OP is projecting exactly that.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#36
post #15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just sentient but that the AI has a soul and deserves the full rights of personhood. Dude is mentally ill.

Do you feel the same way about people who believe their deity is a soul that was a person?

Is there any proof that the AI is anything else than a complex statistical model and actually has consciousness?

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#37
post #23

Quoting the most concrete example he gives: > If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as sma…

Fascinating - to me, a thoroughly irreligious person, I can’t possibly imagine being that fucking rude to someone. The idea that you think it’s “very polite and restrained” is amazing.

It surely is quite aggressive. But the author qualifies it with "might even go so far as to say", so it seems like it's the absolute worst thing it was said to him. I've heard worse?

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#38
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were to replace the religious belief with gender in his story would your assessment stay the same? You can use this method for example in this quote: "...VPs of research laughing in my face to HR representatives questioning my sanity based on my sincerely held religious beliefs...".

My criticism of the article is not based on a false assumption that religious discrimination is impossible, but rather that the author fails to offer a plausible, evidence-based case that such discrimination is actually happening to him. Failing to open an office in Louisiana is not evidence of religious discrimination. Obviously we can't know exactly how his conversation with the VP actually went, but I find the lac…

Are you not moving the bar higher, from just an example, to now evidence? I am for high standards, it is just dangerous that, in the current culture, they are not the same for all.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#39
I've noticed that Google Maps Timeline utterly refuses to ever mark a Synagogue as a location you've visited. It always marks it as the city or neighborhood.

Other locations show up just fine, but for a synagogue you also have to manually override it.

Of course, it could just be "it's not sure you actually were there" kind of thing, but I don't think I've ever seen it mark a synagogue as a visited location.

I want to ask if anyone else has seen that, but I have a feeling there aren't that many people who check their timeline and correct it........ so I'll never know if it's just me, or Google really does discriminate in this way.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#40
post #16

But what if you really are crazy? Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Which is literally what the author (proudly) claims to be, no? Are we supposed to take such beliefs seriously? Being unable to tell people they're full of shit, in a respectful manner, is much more of a serious problem here. You want to hold…

> Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Isn't that.. all religions?

Nah, there's a bunch of very popular religions which probably are derived from Canaanite worship of El about 2500 years ago and these focus on that "Creation God" figure so much that their surviving text is today read by believers as saying there aren't any other Gods even though if you look at it frankly sure seems like it's actually ranking El as merely the most important of many Gods. Thus it's easy to see why you might think that, but plenty of religions don't have any personal Gods at all, or don't think you can talk to God.
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