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Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

#121

Post by yters »

menloparkbum wrote: post #30

This is the stupidest thing you've ever posted and you should be ashamed of yourself. There are plenty of other sites where you can wallow in junior-high level discussion and polls about off topic subjects. These types of posts encourage stupid people to comment, contain no useful or interesting information, and bring out the worst in smart people. The religion and "meta" discussions of late have polluted the /newcom…

Do you think the poll itself is uninformative/uninteresting? I think things turned out alright, the comments have been pretty civil. Don't worry, I probably won't post something like this again, at least until the newbie surge passes.

And, there is informative contribution, like this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=470158&whence=%69%7...

As for your other point, I don't know if disallowing certain topics is the solution. I see value in easing the community into discussing controversial topics without flamewars. They draw flamewars because people are so interested in the issues, so everyone gains if we can get past the flamewar stage.

For example, I am considering broaching ID, because no one really gets what its about, or its significance. I want to clearly demarcate it from creationism, and also explain the theory as clearly as possible. If you want, I can send you my blog post link once its written, so's you can give thumbs up/down.

Re: Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

#122

Post by yters »

gjm11 wrote: post #32

It's interesting to compare these figures with those found at http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html concerning two populations of scientists in the US, one supposedly representative of all US scientists and one supposedly representative of "leading" ones. Ignoring the (very severe) issues of sample bias here, it seems that HN contributors are intermediate in skepticism between Larson&Witham's two popu…

That is interesting. Do you know of such a study that breaks it down across scientific disciplines? I've heard that while the proportion of atheistic scientists is high, it is actually skewed towards the softer sciences.

Re: Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

#123

Post by yters »

pg wrote: post #110
natch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably an atheist without realizing it. I've met many agnostics who weren't aware that there are different types of atheists, including many who don't know one way or another but lean toward disbelief, which is very close to agnosticism. The typical misunderstanding of atheism from self-described agnostics is that atheists claim to be certain that there is no God. Some atheists do that, but that's not the on…

Argh. Here it is: the moment the thread turns into an argument about religion. When this poll was first posted, I worried it would. Then a bit later I saw the number of comments and knew that it had. What a tar-baby the topic of religion is. A forum just can't seem to touch it any point without dragging in the whole thing.

If you look at the comments, they are largely free of flaming. Where disagreements did emerge, people are largely civil, much better than in other threads not even related to controversial topics.

I think this is a step towards HN being able to handle the topic maturely. Such a process is probably best done by not posting inflammatory articles. I tried to not make the poll inflammatory, though I forgot the agnostic option.

Re: Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

#124

Post by yters »

tsally wrote: post #88
noodle wrote: post #2

so, to be clear, you noticed that pandora's box is closed and you figure it would be good to open it?

While intellectually I'm interested in the results of this poll, I agree with what was said above. It's simply better not to get into this type of stuff as ultimately it will detract from the value of this site. As such, I've flagged this and I encourage others to do the same.

Well, even though it died, I think it managed to get interesting numbers. Overall, looks like nothing got out of hand.

Re: Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

#125

Post by yters »

biohacker42 wrote: post #77
lst wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to correct you, but you're actually kind of shy (that is, not really determined): You simply confirm that if 3 persons of human species are exposed to the same reality (yes, reality, because the impressions may be different, but the reality is well defined and precisely one ): So, if 3 persons of the same species are all concluding more or less different things, then you have the definite answer that none of th…

Either you're WAAAAAAAAAY smarter then me, or you're babbling.

He seems to be saying your thought experiment only shows reality is too complex to be viewed the same way by multiple people, and your claim assumes too much.

Re: Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

#126

Post by yters »

olavk wrote: post #93
kubrick wrote: post #13

I wonder how many atheists are actually agnostics (depend on your definitions, naturally). No one can (yet?) prove the existence or non-existence of a god, and although there are some who claim that they can show that a god isn't necessary for all of this reality stuff to have come about (read: Dawkins), I am less convinced of that -- we (via science) don't know enough to make that argument. Yet. Are you sure there i…

I think it depends which God you ask if someone believe in. For example, the Platonic idea of The Good is a pretty abstract philosophical concept which does not exist in the physical world - rather the physical world is some kind of shadow or reflection of this Good. You can't really prove or disprove the "existence" of this interpretation of reality, although some would say you can apply occams razor to it. Plato wo…

Minimally, I would say a conscious being in control of all of reality.

Re: Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

#127

Post by rms »

yters wrote: post #123
pg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argh. Here it is: the moment the thread turns into an argument about religion. When this poll was first posted, I worried it would. Then a bit later I saw the number of comments and knew that it had. What a tar-baby the topic of religion is. A forum just can't seem to touch it any point without dragging in the whole thing.

If you look at the comments, they are largely free of flaming. Where disagreements did emerge, people are largely civil, much better than in other threads not even related to controversial topics. I think this is a step towards HN being able to handle the topic maturely. Such a process is probably best done by not posting inflammatory articles. I tried to not make the poll inflammatory, though I forgot the agnostic o…

Agnosticism does fall under the broadest definition of atheism, nontheism, so it wasn't really incorrect. People just feel very strongly about their particular labels.

Re: Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

#128

Post by yters »

rms wrote: post #127
yters wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the comments, they are largely free of flaming. Where disagreements did emerge, people are largely civil, much better than in other threads not even related to controversial topics. I think this is a step towards HN being able to handle the topic maturely. Such a process is probably best done by not posting inflammatory articles. I tried to not make the poll inflammatory, though I forgot the agnostic o…

Agnosticism does fall under the broadest definition of atheism, nontheism, so it wasn't really incorrect. People just feel very strongly about their particular labels.

That's true. I think lst makes that point somewhere, and gets downvoted for it. What is your opinion of the poll, in terms of pushing the HN community towards being able to talk about such things well?

Re: Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

#129

Post by Herring »

biohacker42 wrote: post #71
Herring wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what happens when they don't see a black sheep?

As Dawkins puts it, if there were a teapot orbiting the sun, we'd have no way of detecting it. It is too small for our telescopes, so we have absolutely no evidence for a teapot orbiting the sun. You don't believe in that teapot, do you? That's silly. But Dawkins is a biologist, and I'm a computer scientist, I don't believe in the teapot, but I also don't KNOW it's not there. And that has nothing to do with shyness.

What would a proof of "not there" consist of?

What I mean is, how can you claim to know anything if you allow the possibility of supernatural things interfering with your experiments?

Re: Poll: Atheist, Deist, Theist?

#130

Post by homme »

yters wrote: post #117
homme wrote: post #111

Sorry, yters. No harm intended. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=430118

Are you saying I should have added an agnostic choice? Or there is a better intepretation to what I've seen than "religion is not attacked as rabidly?"

No, I was apologizing for an offensive post I made awhile back.
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