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

Poll: How religious is hacker news?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 168 posts

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#101

Post by gfodor »

gliese1337 wrote: post #74
gfodor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Teapotism doesn't have significant cultural importance. Atheism does. To a lot of people, it really does make a difference whether you actually disbelieve in the god they believe in, or if you are genuinely undecided. It is thus useful to have a word to distinguish between those two states, and perfectly honest (hardly weasely) to use them. Even if its only for social signalling, that's important!

I would guess most atheists would not say that they are certain a God does not exist. They certainly wouldn't say they can prove it to be the case. The path that leads you to atheism is the lack of evidence in favor of an unfalsifiable claim, that God exists. So the claim "God does not exist" is kind of meaningless, since it relies upon the definition of God, which is something atheists do not have a definition for since they do not have a belief about what that word means.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#102

Post by Zikes »

chadkruse wrote: post #80

Other - I identify with [insert own name here]. Let me explain... I dated a woman once who dated a woman just prior to dating me (I'm male). We were having beers with a mutual friend and upon hearing that fact, our mutual friend said "wow, I didn't know you were bisexual Jen" (not her real name). Jen's response..."I'm not bisexual...I'm Jen. I don't believe in labels." I'm not Atheist, Agnostic, or Lutheran (the reli…

I understand wanting to avoid labels to avoid associating yourself with the cultures and assumptions that come with them, but you can't avoid them all. If you go to a Christian church and believe in their ideologies, that makes you a Christian. If you're willing to get into a relationship with a person of either gender, that makes you bisexual. If you're open to the idea of an omnipotent deity but don't subscribe to any particular one, that makes you agnostic. If you're reading this, that makes you human. They're just facts of life.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#103

Post by dalke »

gliese1337 wrote: post #63
valine wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the key differences between Christianity and Mormonism is their classification of Jesus. Where a Morman would say that Jesus is the son of God, a Christian believes that Jesus is God incarnate.

Mormons do believe that Jesus is God incarnate. Mormon doctrine holds that Jehovah (the name of the God of Israel used in the Old Testament) and Jesus are the same person. See: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bd/jehovah

While on the other hand, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus and Michael the Archangel are different names for the same entity, which isn't the same as God. See: http://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/bible-teach/who-is-m... .

Since JW is usually categorized as Christian, I think valine's test should be considered approximate rather than exact.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#104

Post by MichaelGG »

Dewie wrote: post #58
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…

I don't like to say that I'm an agnostic or atheist or anything like that, because why would I? If I don't believe in a god, calling myself an atheist is like calling myself a non-Christian if I'm not a Christian, or a non-Jew if I'm not Jewish. Why would I define myself in contrast to whatever other religious groups there are, when I'm areligious (at least in my case)? It doesn't make sense. So because I don't belie…

Atheist is often an umbrella term for people that don't believe any sort of supernatural things, from an Abrahamic god to forest spirits.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#105

Post by MichaelGG »

Dewie wrote: post #58
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…

I don't like to say that I'm an agnostic or atheist or anything like that, because why would I? If I don't believe in a god, calling myself an atheist is like calling myself a non-Christian if I'm not a Christian, or a non-Jew if I'm not Jewish. Why would I define myself in contrast to whatever other religious groups there are, when I'm areligious (at least in my case)? It doesn't make sense. So because I don't belie…

Atheist is often an umbrella term for people that don't believe any sort of supernatural things, from an Abrahamic god to forest spirits.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#107

Post by robgibbons »

At first, I was an atheist, and I pitied religious folks for their incredible stupidity.

Then, I learned about agnosticism, and I realized it better describes what I believe, and that my lack of belief in God is possibly incorrect. I still pitied the religious for their blind faith.

Then I realized one day, while pondering the subject, that because it is not possible to experimentally test for the existence of God, nor to derive any conclusion based on logic, then the question itself is in fact "extra-logical." It cannot be resolved with the scientific method, or any other means of rationalization. To even attempt to do so is itself irrational.

The question therefore must be, simply, "Do you believe in God?" This question does not attempt to bring logic, science or rationality into the picture. It is a question purely of faith, of which I acknowledge I have none.

So, in the end, I am still an agnostic, but one who now accepts that there can be quite rational, scientific thinkers who have faith in the existence of God.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#108

Post by nknighthb »

georgemcbay wrote: post #56
netgineer wrote: post #26

The one scientologist is a troll, right? .... right?

One of my early jobs (mid-90s) was working for an unnamed but relatively famous (for the time) ISP in Los Angeles where the vast majority of other employees turned out to be Scientologists. They do exist in the tech industry.

What exactly is the point of saying "unnamed" when everyone knows exactly which company you're talking about? Its scientology connections are not a secret and have been covered in both tech and muggle press many times over the years.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#109

Post by jonnathanson »

Dewie wrote: post #58
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…

I don't like to say that I'm an agnostic or atheist or anything like that, because why would I? If I don't believe in a god, calling myself an atheist is like calling myself a non-Christian if I'm not a Christian, or a non-Jew if I'm not Jewish. Why would I define myself in contrast to whatever other religious groups there are, when I'm areligious (at least in my case)? It doesn't make sense. So because I don't belie…

Atheism doesn't necessarily imply that you care about, or are being forced to define yourself against, other people's conceptions of spirituality, or religion, or god(s). It simply means that you don't believe in a god, gods, etc. I'd suspect that for most atheists, the label begins and ends there. Atheism isn't a way of life for most people, and despite what anti-atheist types would proclaim, it's not a "religion," either. At its simplest, atheism is a philosophical stance. Religious people believe the value of god = 1; atheists believe it = 0.

Is atheism often framed within the context of theism? Well, sure, because that's the category of the discussion. Like you, I have a "don't believe; don't care too strongly; not a factor in my life whatsoever" stance toward religion. But if the subject of religion comes up, and I am asked to give my stance on the matter, atheism is a better label than most. "Apathetic atheist," or even "atheist who rejects the premise of this line of inquiry altogether" are acceptable and defensible flavors of atheism.

Atheism isn't specifically defined in opposition to the Abrahamic religions. It so happens that those religions (particularly, Christianity) occupy a majority of this country's religious population, and as such, they're the belief systems most often pitted vis-a-vis atheism, and vice versa. But there were atheists and agnostics long before Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.

Being an atheist doesn't have to mean much more to your life than not being a tennis fan. The state of not being a tennis fan is largely irrelevant until someone asks you if you watch tennis. At that point, you are temporarily and conditionally defined as a non-tennis-fan, within the framing of tennis fandom as a subject. But your non-tennis-fandom doesn't have to define your life, or even be much of a factor outside of that conversation.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#110

Post by zaphar »

gliese1337 wrote: post #99
pubby wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with all the inconsistencies between science and religion? e.g. evolution vs creationism.

Fundamentalist creationism is not an inescapable consequence of "religion" generally. Can't speak for zaphar, but I for one have no problem believing that God could've created the world any way he felt like, including by letting evolution happen. Despite being not merely religious but an actual Bible-believing Christian, I am nevertheless quite willing to accept that a good deal of scriptural text is metaphorical. A…

    A lot of it is pretty dang hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-stick 
    obviously metaphorical
Revelation anyone?
Post reply on HN