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Religious Discrimination at Google

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Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#251

Post by teekert »

tasuki wrote: post #181
teekert wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that everyone should be free to believe what they want. It’s just that if you start talking to me like Jaweh, Zeus, Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster are real, you loose some credibility with me. I can think of many things on the spot that have the same level of evidence as you have for your $GOD but such a conversation just doesn’t make sense to me. I prefer to spend my time otherwise.

> I feel that everyone should be free to believe what they want. Why?

This is a long discussion but perhaps to keep it short, the alternative is “thought police”. But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer?

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#252

Post by CodeMage »

kaba0 wrote: post #113
CodeMage wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how that's relevant. The comment I replied to was arguing about applying the same standards in free speech, whereas "protected class" refers to employment discrimination.

Religion is not a personal choice? Is your philosophical stance a personal choice?

Yes, it is. My philosophical stance has been changing and evolving constantly over these 40+ years that I have been alive. Unlike my race or my sexuality, it's not part of who I am, it's part of who I choose to be.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that anyone who feels like they have no control over their religion -- the same way they have no control over which color of skin they were born with -- should seek help because they're being abused by someone.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#253

Post by pc86 »

em-bee wrote: post #153
pc86 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, in any sane work arrangement you spend the majority of your time somewhere other than work.

only if you count sleeping.

Are you sleeping at work? Regardless, the point stands unless you work nearly 60 hours a week.

(24*7-8*7)/2=56

If you're working 60 hour weeks I'm pretty sure you're not getting 8 hours of sleep every night, either.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#254

Post by quantified »

ken47 wrote: post #237
quantified wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big bang has a lot more supporting evidence than a magical seven-day wishing-into-existence spree 6400 years ago. Closer to home, it makes a lot more sense that animals lived, died and were fossilized over millions of years than that they were added as hidden sculpture during the creation. Come on. And that particular god is very good at being useless since the Enlightenment. One thing religions don't do is give up t…

And that evidence is the state of the cosmos today? Are you a software developer? Imagine that, for testing purposes, you want to test a particular state T in a simulation app that you believe can only occur organically after a large period of time. Do you start the test simulation at a hypothetical t0 and wait to reach the desired state? Or do you simply bootstrap the simulation so that it starts in state T. Well, y…

And I can verify the software to some degree there, or (more usually) find the bugs. So this is the bug-free simulation? It's easier to run the simulation and see what happens, so much state to initialize.

Without evidence, that's why it's called faith. There are thousands of unfalsifiable possible starting points, the Judeo-Christian one is laughable.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#255

Post by dang »

k1ll3r wrote: 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…

Please do not take HN threads into religious flamewar. Last thing we need here.

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

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#256

Post by tasuki »

teekert wrote: post #251
tasuki wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel that everyone should be free to believe what they want. Why?

This is a long discussion but perhaps to keep it short, the alternative is “thought police”. But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer?

> This is a long discussion but perhaps to keep it short, the alternative is “thought police”.

Good point, agreed.

> But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer?

Why? :)

I believe people believing whatever they want is harmful. I believe you have no right to believe that the earth is flat. I'd love to know if there's a sensible option somewhere between "anyone is free to believe any untrue thing they want" and "thought police".

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#257

Post by krapp »

tasuki wrote: post #256
teekert wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a long discussion but perhaps to keep it short, the alternative is “thought police”. But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer?

> This is a long discussion but perhaps to keep it short, the alternative is “thought police”. Good point, agreed. > But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer? Why? :) I believe people believing whatever they want is harmful. I believe you have no right to believe that the earth is flat. I'd love to know if there's a sensible option somewhere between "anyone is free to believe any untrue thing they want"…

> I'd love to know if there's a sensible option somewhere between "anyone is free to believe any untrue thing they want" and "thought police".

i think that depends on two things - do you believe objective truths exist, and do you believe society should prefer objective truths over falsehoods? Or in a more abstract sense, should freedom of speech simply allow all speech (and by extension all beliefs) without question, or seek to discriminate truth from speech, as best it can?

"thought police" has a specific malevolent implication meant to equate the authoritative control of certain memes (in the original Dawkins sense) to fascistic thought control but does that implication apply to truth, or only minsinformation?

Again - because Hacker News loves this rabbithole - the assumption here is that truths exist and can be discovered. The infinite nihilistic regress of "but who decides what is is and who watches the watchers" is already discarded, if for no other reason than being uninteresting.

Maybe teaching people the earth is round isn't 'thought policing,' and if it is, maybe 'thought policing' isn't always harmful.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#258

Post by em-bee »

pc86 wrote: post #253
em-bee wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only if you count sleeping.

Are you sleeping at work? Regardless, the point stands unless you work nearly 60 hours a week. (24*7-8*7)/2=56 If you're working 60 hour weeks I'm pretty sure you're not getting 8 hours of sleep every night, either.

sleep: 48-56 hours; work: 40 hours

that leaves 72-80 hours for other stuff. but,

you are not spending those 80 hours in a single location.

work-lunch and commute: 10-15 hours; errands, shopping: 5 hours; go out, dinner, friends, etc: 5-10 hours; weekend activities: 5-15 hours.

these numbers are made up based on my experience. some people spend more time at home than others.

what remains is that work is the single largest block of time that you spend in the same location with the same group of people who are not all family and friends in an environment that you don't have any control over, and where you have no choice but to be there unless you quit your job. you don't even have to hang out at home if you don't like it there.

so work better be a place where i actually enjoy spending time because life is to short to suffer through a bad workplace.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#259

Post by eurasiantiger »

ekianjo wrote: post #193
eurasiantiger wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. That is what I was taught, living in a Protestant country. And it would seem I was taught just fine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus#Tolosani

> It is worth noting, as Stanford University does, that the Catholic Church had no official stance on Copernican teachings. Pope Clement VII, who died about a decade before Copernicus, was said to have been receptive about the astronomer’s theories. While there was no recorded response from Pope Paul III, one of his advisors intended to condemn the book before dying. > Phil Lawler, editor of Catholic World News, also…

Alright, so are you trying to say it wasn’t Copernicus who got roasted for Copernicus’ writings, but Galileo?

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#260

Post by teekert »

tasuki wrote: post #256
teekert wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a long discussion but perhaps to keep it short, the alternative is “thought police”. But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer?

> This is a long discussion but perhaps to keep it short, the alternative is “thought police”. Good point, agreed. > But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer? Why? :) I believe people believing whatever they want is harmful. I believe you have no right to believe that the earth is flat. I'd love to know if there's a sensible option somewhere between "anyone is free to believe any untrue thing they want"…

I think there is no final arbiter between good and bad, and change (for better of worse) starts at the fringes of society, the law, morality, political correctness. IMHO it is indeed unwise to go full thought police, but it is equally unwise to assign anything 100% true or false. Even Richard Dawkins is not 100% claiming there is no God (6.5/7 he calls it, don't ask someone to prove a negative). We all hold believes that are false. Some very obviously so to others.

So perhaps a Christian could convince me, perhaps even a flat earther. It’s just extremely unlikely and they’d better hit me with a good argument in their first sentence because I heard and dismissed many many arguments before.

But you are right, false believes are not harmless, see [0]. But, much like we can either have good encryption OR backdoors, you either have freedom OR you don’t, nothing may be “in between”, criminals using Signal and people thinking wrong stuff is just something that needs to be dealt with differently. (Because we want private communications and we want freedom.)

But I’m about 10% convinced I’ll have changed my mind on this in 5 years.

[0]: http://whatstheharm.net/

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