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Poll: How religious is hacker news?

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Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#131

Post by smallegan »

mbell wrote: post #81
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'm curious what your definition of atheism is. I consider myself an atheist but I don't in absolute terms claim that god(s) don't or can't exist, I simply reject the concept of 'belief' at large. i.e. if you can't provide definitive evidence in support of an idea, it's not fact.

Sounds like you'd fall into the Agnostic category by definition.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#132

Post by smallegan »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #9

Sometimes we make assumptions about a particular group of people and this poll seems like a great way to challenge those assumptions and take a closer look at who makes up the hacker news community. HN polls haven't been trustworthy for years. Too many people giving too many false results. Pg noticed this when there was a poll asking about the age of HNers and a bunch of people responded with "Over 80." He mentioned…

Fair enough but I figure it never hurts to ask if there is a chance at learning something new or interesting and the comments in this thread have proved interesting enough for me.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#133

Post by MaxDPS »

zaphar wrote: post #92
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.

I consider most if not all those consistencies to be manufactured. Evolution vs Creationism is of course the poster child for this. The simple answer is I wasn't around for either Evolution or Creation whichever one happened so I can't give a definitive ruling either way. I happen to believe that God did some sort of creative act. What form that act took (7 days of creative work? or billions of years of guided evolut…

Do you believe in the literal story of Noahs flood? As in, the whole world was covered in water?

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#134

Post by zaphar »

lotharbot wrote: post #126
gliese1337 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" Origen: "[if scripture was purely literal] we would not certainly believe, when thus possessing the meaning of Scripture in a continuous series, that anything else was contained in it save what was indicated on the surface; so for that reason divine wisdom took care that certain stumbling-blocks, or interruptions, to the historic…

    Of particular note, the earliest parts of Genesis would 
    have been obviously metaphorical to any of the early 
    readers... because they blatantly undermine the Egyptian 
    creation stories.
That would be an odd reason for the early readers of Genesis to consider them metaphorical. Just undermining the Egyptian creation stories is hardly a cause to assume a creation myth is metaphorical.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#135

Post by zaphar »

MaxDPS wrote: post #133
zaphar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider most if not all those consistencies to be manufactured. Evolution vs Creationism is of course the poster child for this. The simple answer is I wasn't around for either Evolution or Creation whichever one happened so I can't give a definitive ruling either way. I happen to believe that God did some sort of creative act. What form that act took (7 days of creative work? or billions of years of guided evolut…

Do you believe in the literal story of Noahs flood? As in, the whole world was covered in water?

I can't say one way or the other. There is enough water to cover most of the earths surface if it's not tied up in ice at the poles so it's physically possible. And there is also evidence of water coverage over many parts of the earth that are not near any ocean. However the story could also be interpreted in terms of a localized flood covering all of the known earth.

I do believe Noah was a literal person and I do believe there was a flood. I even like the idea of a global flood as it seems to allow one to explain some phenomena observed in Geological formations. However I'm not a Geologist so my opinions there are pretty uninformed and could just as likely be wrong.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#137

Post by joeclark77 »

shared4you wrote: post #77

Classifying Hinduism and Buddhism as "religions" in the Western sense of the word is imprecise and misleading at best. You can be a Hindu atheist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charvaka Swami Vivekananda popularized the Ramakrishna school of thought, but they themselves deny to be called Hindus. Goa deputy Chief Minister considers himself to be a "Christian Hindu": http://www.firstpost.com/politics/india-hindu-nation…

You can also be a Jewish Christian Buddhist Atheist if you want. You are Jewish if you're a member of the Jewish people (i.e. descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). You are Christian if you were baptized according to a valid Trinitarian formula. You are Buddhist if you believe in and practice Buddhism. You are atheist if you don't believe in God. The point? Religions are not all "the same kind of thing" and interchangeable.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#138

Post by pedrosorio »

ethana wrote: post #111

I've turned agnostic recently from being a sole christian. The more time I spend with computing and learn about machine learning/AI, I think that we can and will create self-aware AIs. At that point, we'll have to question what reality programmed us?

And then we'll have to ask: what reality programmed that one? It's turtles all the way down.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#139

Post by joeclark77 »

gfodor wrote: post #45
beefsack wrote: post #31

The idea of religious engineers has always been one that fascinates me.

Even better, try biologist creationists. They exist!

Your belief in pure Darwinism, 7-Day Creationism, or any theory in between, really doesn't have any impact on real-world biology or any of its applications (anatomy, physiology, medicine, agriculture, ecology, biotech, the creation of cyborg supersoldiers, etc, etc). I think real scientists are more interested in testable hypotheses about "how that thing works" than in untestable, unprovable claims about "how that thing got there".
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