Poll: What is your religion? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#231

Post by bad_user » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:16 AM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #179

10ren wrote: post #176

oblig. Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer. Fred Brooks, p. 184 The Mythical Man-Month 2nd ed. It's interesting to me that several people I greatly admire in comp sci/technology are religious: Fred Brooks, Knuth, Larry Wall and Clayton Christensen ( The Innovator's Dilemma ). To me, on…

That's all fine as long as you don't make the leap from "my imaginary friend is useful" to "my imaginary friend is real". I would however assert an unnecessary semantic overloading -- why use a word (God) that has so many assumptions built into it? Invent a new word, and confuse fewer people.

> That's all fine as long as you don't make the leap from "my imaginary friend is useful" to "my imaginary friend is real".

You seem to assume that the later is a bad outcome. Also you can't really have a useful "imaginary friend" if don't believe he's real, or do you?

> why use a word (God) that has so many assumptions built into it? Invent a new word, and confuse fewer people.

Because God is word with a clearly defined semantic and definition ...

  the supernatural being conceived as the perfect and omnipotent and 
  omniscient originator and ruler of the universe

All unanswered questions about the Universe or God start with the most important question ...

  considering the law of Action-Reaction, how did it all started?

Which has the nice property that has the answer to all unanswered questions. And if you're going to answer that with "some superior, omnipotent being (whose existence we can't comprehend) did it all", then it's philosophy 101 ...

  there can't be two unsurpassable beings each of which is God

So why have another word with a watered-down meaning for it?

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#232

Post by pavelludiq » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:17 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #136

chc wrote: post #6

It's not hard to be atheist or agnostic and a Buddhist. It's fundamentally a very god-optional religion (though some traditions add them back in, like Jodo Shinshu).

Many schools of buddhism revere different buddhas as gods, believe reincarnation, a buddhist hell, etc. All too familiar. All religions have something useful to be gleaned, as do nearly all books, even if the useful content of that book amounts to a single sentence.

Those ideas are not the core of buddhism. Its like saying that christians believe in the easter bunny. They are just historical and cultural baggage that got along for the ride.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#233

Post by Gormo » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:24 AM UTC

MikeCapone wrote: post #137

Gormo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apathetist is a better description. An agnostic says he doesn't know the answer; I'm saying the question is meaningless.

To elaborate a little, would you say it's "meaningless" to you personally, or in general? Just curious.

I don't see how the concept of meaning can be discussed in general terms at all. It seems to inhere in the relationship between a person and the ideas he considers.

I've certainly encountered other people who behave and speak in ways that indicate that they attribute a great deal of meaning to this question (often ironically because they insist on asserting an empirical basis for their faith), so I would not presume to speak for them.

(BTW, note that I'm being pedantic in this thread in order to discuss this topic with a high degree of precision. I'm not trying to create a semantics rathole, honest. But oftentimes clarifying the semantics is necessary to have a productive conversation.)

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#234

Post by revolvingcur » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:31 AM UTC

rubinelli wrote: post #157

revolvingcur wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From someone raised in the Christian church: I was taught from a very young age certain things about God and man: that God was all-knowing and all-powerful; that God was the creator of everything; that man was irrevocably prone to sin and therefore needed a savior; that God chose certain people to save; that heaven was the ultimate destination for those who were saved; etc... As I grew older, I began to realize that…

Faith is the belief in what you can't prove. From a strictly rational point of view, it's a kind of madness, and the gospels explicitly point it out. To use a source I'm sure you know, in I Corinthians 13 there is an apparent contradiction: even if you act piously, you act in vain if if you don't feel love. The religious experience is emotional and visceral, not logical. It comes before codes and rules. From this per…

I'm not sure your example proves your assertion. This isn't sarcasm, I simply don't follow your reasoning. I will acknowledge, though, that the scriptures certainly do assert (Hebrews 11:1) the distinction between faith and proof.

I was using the word "prove" ironically. My actual contention was that believers lack not just proof, but also reason. They act certain, but cannot explain their certainty except with self-referential argument. It was this inability to maintain coherence that finally undid my faith.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#235

Post by po » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:31 AM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #126

Hey, the three people who voted Shinto - care to share what your practice is like? I was always interested to have a chat with someone who practices modern Shinto...

I didn't vote and I wouldn't identify myself as Shinto, but I did get married in a shinto shrine here in Tokyo. I typically describe shintoism as similar to native american religions and/or paganism. People here in Japan seem to practice shintoism more as a set of cultures and customs than what a westerner would describe as a religion.

There is a belief in good and bad fortune which can be altered by prayer to various spirits. The shrine sells lots of trinkets to help improve your luck in various aspects of your life. It reminds me a bit of Catholics who keep a St. Christopher trinket in their car for safe travels. At the shrine where I got married, it was discovered that there was a "power spot" on a path behind the shrine: a little puddle of water from a nearby spring. People would line up to take a turn standing in front of it and say a prayer.

We visit our local shrine on holidays, mostly because it is fun and peaceful. Sometimes there are festivals with good food, drink and music. People here will celebrate and visit a church, a temple (buddhist), or a shrine (shinto) without really seeing that there might be inconsistency. Christian weddings are very popular these days because the girls like to dress up in the princess-like "costume". I was recently told that you often don't know what religion someone is until they die: because then it comes down to what part of the cemetery do they put your ashes in.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#236

Post by anthonyb » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:33 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #217

anthonyb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have very different ideas of 'adequate' then. For example, I'll take modern medicine over faith healing any day.

I always wonder about the argument that since I believe in a higher power I am excluded from a belief in science and medicine. It is mostly an argument to diminish someone's position and make them defend territory that 90+% of religious people don't believe or want to defend. On a personal level, I am a Christian and I believe in the Big Bang (let there be light). I don't have any problems with evolution (1). I belie…

The problem that I have is that the 90+% of religious people are awfully hazy on which bits of the bible are inspired vs. literal, but all too keen to inflict the results of their beliefs on everyone else, despite no credible evidence that they have any benefit - universal suffrage, contraception, homosexuality/same sex marriage, single mothers, abortion, the earth going around the sun, etc.

In fact, religion has been fighting a rearguard action against science and the enlightenment for hundreds of years now; there's not a huge amount left to believe in, from what I can see.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#237

Post by anthonyb » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:34 AM UTC

anthonyb wrote: post #48

jbm wrote: post #32

It seems disingenuous to mix Agnosicism with Atheism. Both are utterly different - one makes a knowledge claim (atheism) while the other is in a position of neutrality or indifference (agnosticism)

Agnostics are just sissy Atheists.

What? They are so - they don't believe in God, but also don't want to bring down the hellfire and brimstone just in case they're wrong!

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#238

Post by Gormo » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:37 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #161

revolvingcur wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pascal's Wager is ridiculous. It is rooted in a false dichotomy and attempts to salve the conscience by the acceptance of a contradiction.

Ok, if you feel it is not a dichotomy, you are right. I only ever interpreted the dichotomoy as 'there are zero deities' or 'there are one or more deities'. Perhaps I like Pascal's Wager more than it deserves because it reminds me of: http://xkcd.com/525/

The zero vs. one-or-more dichotomy hits the nail on the head. The problem with Pascal's wager is that its rationale can apply to every proposition. If you're committed to err on the side of safety, you need to accept every possible non-falsifiable idea, because, hey, what if it's true?

Taken to its logical conclusion, accepting Pascal's wager would at best generate immense amounts of cognitive dissonance as you attempted to integrate potentially infinite contradictory ideas into your worldview.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#239

Post by bad_user » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:41 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #229

bad_user wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be turned around ... maybe our brains aren't able to process the existence of God.

I think this was about the ability to understand a fundamental concept. The fundamental concept of a god can be easily grasped by small children. There is a powerful being. He controls physical laws. How hard is that?

It is hard to sustain such understanding ... all children believe at some point in Santa Claus, but that's only because they receive gifts (or fear punishment in the case of God) and they believe in general whatever the parents tell them to.

Einstein's theory wasn't believed by the public until it was proven.

So yes ... if God exists, our primary senses cannot perceive Him, and although I have reasons to believe He exists, all of them are subjective, but as our species evolves we may actually be able to.

Re: Poll: What is your religion?

#240

Post by Gormo » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:45 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #149

I am not an adherent of any organized religion, but this question is puzzling: Where did stuff come from? There are two possibilities, either 1] it was put there, or 2] it was just there to begin with. God is an easy solution, but then where did he come from? Same problem. Maybe there are other possibilities that our brains just aren't able to process at this stage in our evolution. Anyway, before anyone says "the bi…

Who is to say that our concept of things "coming from" places even corresponds to anything real with respect to the origin of reality? Why must we presume that the universe has a definite point of origin in space and time?