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Poll: How religious is hacker news?

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Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#41

Post by meepmorp »

mjburgess wrote: post #21
SamReidHughes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what agnostic means. Most people who believe in God wouldn't say they can prove God exists, and they aren't agnostic.

No, that is exactly what it means. It doesnt take very long to look something up (eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism ). Agnosticism is not about being uncertain, it's the position that the answer is unknowable or unknown - which is much stronger than merely being uncertain.

You have a point, but the person you're responding to makes a more important one - the colloquial definition of agnostic, in reference to religion, is a person who's not sure what they think about the existence of gods. When you call yourself an agnostic, that's what people typically understand by it.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#42

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

click170 wrote: post #35
seanalltogether wrote: post #11

Having grown up in the church, I have honestly never found a good replacement for the sense of community and support that a church offers. Its a shame that no other non-religious organizations have been able to replicate it.

I humbly suggest that you simply haven't found them yet. As an example, I understand that AA meetings foster a very supportive community atmosphere. My local Linux User Group meets regularly and has a very friendly homely feel where you can bring in whatever problem you're working on and people are always happy to at least hear you explain it even if they can't help. Meetup.com is a very good place to find meet-ups i…

I was a part of a car enthusiast group that was incredibly close as well.

You just need to find common ground and work from there.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#43

Post by hnnewguy »

gfodor wrote: post #30
designNERD wrote: post #3

You can be an Agnostic Atheist. Agnosticism is about whether you believe you can prove the existence of God or not. Atheism and Theism is about actual belief in God. One can be an Agnostic Atheist or Agnostic Theist. Agnostic atheist= I don't know whether we can prove God exists but I don't believe in God Agnostic theist= I don't know where we can prove the God exists or not but I do believe in God. Being an agnostic…

Inevitably any internet thread about religion has the "what does agnostic mean" argument. It's dumb, nobody cares. People who call themselves agnostic usually do so because they are too scared to call themselves atheist for whatever reason. (Fear of religious friends judging them, fear of losing pascal's wager, etc.) Or because they think they are clever and think atheists are foolish for asserting there is no God wi…

>These people should just suck it up and call themselves atheists.

Boy, look at you telling people what and how they should believe.

I'm agnostic because I don't know if there exists a God, and couldn't care less when it comes to the day to day affairs of my life.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#46

Post by gfodor »

hnnewguy wrote: post #43
gfodor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inevitably any internet thread about religion has the "what does agnostic mean" argument. It's dumb, nobody cares. People who call themselves agnostic usually do so because they are too scared to call themselves atheist for whatever reason. (Fear of religious friends judging them, fear of losing pascal's wager, etc.) Or because they think they are clever and think atheists are foolish for asserting there is no God wi…

> These people should just suck it up and call themselves atheists. Boy, look at you telling people what and how they should believe. I'm agnostic because I don't know if there exists a God, and couldn't care less when it comes to the day to day affairs of my life.

Right, so what you're saying is you're an atheist. It's okay. There are a lot of us.

I don't know if there is a teapot orbiting the Earth, but I wouldn't invent weasel words to distinguish between subtle groups of people who have varied opinions around the likely absence of said teapot. Especially not if most of the population believed strongly in the existence of said teapot.

edit: Also I'm not telling anyone how to believe, I'm just saying that people using the term agnostic as some way to contrast themselves with atheists either don't understand the term atheist, have an aversion to it or fear of using it to label themselves, or have some unsettled self-reflection to do on their existence because they secretly believe in a God but don't want to admit it. When you say you're an atheist you are saying you do not share the belief in God that most of the human population does. It's pretty simple.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#47

Post by staticshock »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #6
designNERD wrote: post #3

You can be an Agnostic Atheist. Agnosticism is about whether you believe you can prove the existence of God or not. Atheism and Theism is about actual belief in God. One can be an Agnostic Atheist or Agnostic Theist. Agnostic atheist= I don't know whether we can prove God exists but I don't believe in God Agnostic theist= I don't know where we can prove the God exists or not but I do believe in God. Being an agnostic…

That's not what agnostic means. Most people who believe in God wouldn't say they can prove God exists, and they aren't agnostic.

Sorry, but designNERD is right.

Agnosticism has the greek root "gnosis", which means "knowledge". It's technically defined as a view that some things ("God" being a common, but not sole example) are unknowable. It's an epistemological concept.

Theism has the greek root "theos", meaning "God". Its primary concern is with the actual existence of God, so it's an ontological concept.

It's possible to think of agnosticism as side-stepping the theism debate by saying, "the nature of knowing matters more to me than the nature of being," but they're definitely compatible. You can say that the existence of God is unknowable (agnosticism,) but you believe that He's still out there (theism.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#48

Post by eof »

Other - Using standard nomenclature in a non-standard way I'd call myself a "Spiritual Atheist."

I had been an atheist of the "cold" variety: life spontaneously arose from non-life in an undefined fashion, and everything relevant to the conversation evolved from this first life.. only the "observable" could be real.

Seemingly non-local consciousness-connections (a dream where something bad happens to someone and they die that night, you think of someone in that moment they call you, esoteric initations into new-agey meditation [law of attraction, remove viewing], they way the universe seems to be inscrutably "nicer" to me the more buddha-like it is [e.g. when regularly meditating])

The reasons my metaphysics changed are nearly ineffable; and are certainly not objectively verifiable (at least by me). The ramifications are easy to grok:

- The universe is a holy playground - The universe has some sort of intention - The more your intentions fall in line with the intentions of the universe, the more satisfying life is.

There are also some non-obvious (but ultimately important) "actionable" ramifications: primarily that sometimes the best way to solve a corporeal problem is to get the spiritual aspect (ie, the interface between you and the universe) in line.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#50

Post by joeclark77 »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #5

So do Mormons get to check two boxes? Mormons are Christian.

They probably should have offered mutually exclusive categories such as Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Mormon, and "Other Christian" so that the inevitable argument over "is ____ really Christian?" could have been avoided. Sigh.
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