Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

independent.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 340 posts

Re: New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

#211

Post by consp »

tescocles wrote: post #9

Is there any actual strict requirement that you have to swear over a document of some kind? I'd have thought swearing over the bible is a stand-in for swearing "before God", and that God would ultimately be your reckoner should you break your oath. If you don't have that meaning behind the oath, what is the point in using a book at all unless it's something meaningful like the constitution of your country, as another…

> If you don't have that meaning behind the oath, what is the point in using a book at all unless?

Which is why it's not done in lots of places. Here it's only a sentence which is either translated "So help me God almighty" or "That I declare and promise" (pinky swear basically)

The legal meaning is that you can be held accountable to the preceding promise. Apparently God is only there to help you since you are unable to do it yourself but has no game in the promise.

Re: New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

#212

Post by leroy-is-here »

arvidkahl wrote: post #203
leroy-is-here wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are just the total sum of their actions. Actions beget being and so rituals beget a practiced being. Humans practice rituals every day without even thinking about it. Ever sat in your chair and immediately wanted a cold one?

What you describe sounds more like a habit to me. But even if it were a ritual —something (re-)enacted to imbue meaning to a moment— it's of a different quality than swearing in the head job of an organization that aims to bring humanity to the stars. There is a difference between what we consider to be the sacred and the profane. Rituals fall into either of these categories as well.

There are rituals with all sorts of meaning, individually and collectively. But if it can work individually then it can certainly work negatively too, such as with addictions. Many habits are rituals with no meaning, which is one of the reasons why people get depressed.

Re: New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

#213

Post by brenainn »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #112
jpm_sd wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What school did you graduate from? This is great.

Canadian engineering schools do a ceremony and oath designed by Rudyard Kipling. It has some serious gravitas and leaves a real impression on young minds. The Kipling oath isn't phrased that way so it probably wasn't a Canadian school, but it does have a similar intent.

They get cool rings as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

I'm not Canadian, but I took some engineering classes and these oaths and rings were brought up when discussing ethics. Funnily enough we were told they were forged from the material of a collapsed bridge as a reminder to not build shitty bridges, but according to the article that's a myth.

Re: New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

#214

Post by CydeWeys »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #118
jen729w wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you do so with your hand over a representation of who will witness and judge you for that The premise is flawed. I don’t believe that there is any being who ‘will witness and judge me’. That is, other than my peers. Who are not supernatural. My using a Sagan book is therefore nothing more than symbolism: here’s who I am. Here’s what I represent. If you see this and think, ‘hell yeah!’, then you are in the cohort wh…

For some reason this seems really hard for people to accept: That religious people actually think there are consequences for their choices, even if no human being ever knows.

The thing about religious people is, even if they lose their religion, they don't suddenly start committing all the wanton acts that when they were religious they insisted they only didn't do because fear of God was holding them back.

Swearing an oath is similar. You're not more or less trustworthy simply for being religious; it's just that, it you're religious, you think you are (but actually it's just based on internal factors of who you actually are and how you behave).

Re: New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

#215

Post by Tams80 »

tescocles wrote: post #9

Is there any actual strict requirement that you have to swear over a document of some kind? I'd have thought swearing over the bible is a stand-in for swearing "before God", and that God would ultimately be your reckoner should you break your oath. If you don't have that meaning behind the oath, what is the point in using a book at all unless it's something meaningful like the constitution of your country, as another…

Or, you know, it's just all symbolism.

The point is that what you swear is important to you and something you wouldn't want to let down.

I'm not sure why you are so upset about this.

Re: New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

#216

Post by klodolph »

nonethewiser wrote: post #136
autoexec wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you were to go against your duty as the head of NASA, Carl Sagan isn't going to rise from the grave and smite you for your transgression. It's like swearing something 'on your mother's grave'. That's not something done because zombie mothers will rise up to enforce anything. It's supposed to signify that you hold great reverence for your mother and that your conviction is as strong as that respect. Swearing on t…

> It's like swearing something 'on your mother's grave'. But they don’t swear people in over their mothers grave. If they did I hope everyone would agree that it’s meaningless, unless that person actually believed in some power of his dead mother.

People definitely do not agree with what you’re saying. Not everyone thinks that swearing an oath on something is only meaningful if that thing has some kind of power.

Re: New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

#217

Post by eesmith »

seanhunter wrote: post #79
skissane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditionally there is a distinction between an oath and an affirmation Swearing an oath was a religious ritual – a solemn promise made invoking the name of the deity, with the implication that any violation of the promise would be risking divine judgement, quite apart from whatever earthly consequences might follow (e.g. criminal prosecution for perjury) Then along came the Quakers, who objected to oaths on religiou…

This oath vs affirmation distinction is made clear in the UK for sure. For example when I became a British citizen I was given the option of swearing allegiance to the queen or making a "solemn affirmation" of the same. The only difference being a slight difference of wording. Weirdly I still remember the wording even though it was more than 30 years ago and I only heard it once just before I said it. > I, Sean Hunte…

"I, sovereign Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely affirm and declare that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonising Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the second ..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAJQ_K_CzCE

She was then required to follow the provided text. It's clear she didn't mean it.

Off-screen comment "None of us like it."

Re: New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

#218

Post by klodolph »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #118
jen729w wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you do so with your hand over a representation of who will witness and judge you for that The premise is flawed. I don’t believe that there is any being who ‘will witness and judge me’. That is, other than my peers. Who are not supernatural. My using a Sagan book is therefore nothing more than symbolism: here’s who I am. Here’s what I represent. If you see this and think, ‘hell yeah!’, then you are in the cohort wh…

For some reason this seems really hard for people to accept: That religious people actually think there are consequences for their choices, even if no human being ever knows.

I’m an atheist, and I believe that there are consequences to my choices, even if no human ever knows. Maybe I don’t understand what you are trying to say.

Re: New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

#219

Post by stronglikedan »

leroy-is-here wrote: post #195
kaitai wrote: post #177

This discussion is fascinating, anthropologically speaking. Some observations: * Many commenters seem to be holding to this weird idea that if you don't believe God will smite you, you will not be able to behave responsibly, give your word in a trustworthy manner, etc. If there's not a supernatural enforcer then there are no consequences to lying/breaking your oath. Interestingly, it looks to me that even atheists ar…

Humans are just the total sum of their actions. Actions beget being and so rituals beget a practiced being. Humans practice rituals every day without even thinking about it. Ever sat in your chair and immediately wanted a cold one?

> Ever sat in your chair and immediately wanted a cold one?

lol, categorically, no

Re: New NASA Director Swears Oath on Carl Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’ Instead of Bible

#220

Post by skissane »

solarkraft wrote: post #174
skissane wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I became a British citizen too, and had to say the same thing. I honestly can't remember now if I swore or affirmed –I was just mumbling words because I wanted a piece of paper, which would enable me to acquire other pieces of paper, which would have allowed me to do things I never got around to actually doing. Indeed, maybe somewhat unusually, despite going to the effort of becoming a British citizen, I've never act…

> Indeed, maybe somewhat unusually, despite going to the effort of becoming a British citizen, I've never actually stepped foot in the UK That sounds funny. Doesn't this give you more disadvantages than advantages? I'm surprised it's even possible; in other countries you have to have lived there for around 7 years or so until you get citizenship.

> Doesn't this give you more disadvantages than advantages?

No real disadvantages. Being a British citizen means I can live and work in the UK if I want. As I said, I’ve never been there-but you never know what the future holds.

Pre-Brexit, it let me live and work anywhere in the EU-not that I ever did that either. But I thought about it. My brother actually did it for a bit.

Maybe one day Scotland will become independent, and I’ll trade my British citizenship for Scottish, and then Scotland will rejoin the EU and I’ll get my EU citizenship back. A man can dream.

One drawback, is as a dual Australian citizen, the Australian constitution says I’m not allowed to run for (federal) Parliament. I doubt I’m ever going into politics, but if I was, I’d legally have to renounce my UK citizenship before nominating as a (federal) candidate. By contrast, the UK doesn’t bar dual citizens from Parliament-in fact, it even lets Australians vote, and run for Parliament-and I mean sole Australian citizens, who aren’t UK dual citizens.

> I'm surprised it's even possible; in other countries you have to have lived there for around 7 years or so until you get citizenship.

Due to the UK’s colonial/imperial history, its citizenship laws are insanely complex-arguably more complicated than any other nation on earth’s-full of all kinds of obscure complex exceptions-I’m one of those. You see, my mother was born in Scotland. My younger siblings, they inherited UK citizenship from her at birth. However, I was born when the old (pre-1983) law was still in force, which said legitimate children could only inherit British citizenship from their father (whereas, illegitimate children could only inherit it from their mother.) Since I was legitimate, and it was my mother not my father who was the UK citizen - no UK citizenship for me. Until, in my 20s, they changed the law so people in my situation could apply for citizenship by registration. Registration is legally equivalent to naturalisation - the ceremony is the same, the legal consequences are almost identical - the difference is, no residency requirements. So that’s how I got to go to my UK citizenship ceremony without ever having stepped foot in the UK in my life

Post reply on HN