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Poll: How religious is hacker news?

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Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#81

Post by mbell »

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.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#83

Post by danso »

java-man wrote: post #71

The data is clearly not representative. Take a look at number one post in Show HN titled " OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years". This post has 740 points | 203 comments, clearly very popular (number two has 77 points | 46 comments). Does it mean atheists are more open responding to polls about spirituality?

This is not true. The top post is:

"OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years"

I suspect that many, many HNers, myself included, upvoted because of this: "software I've been hacking on for 7 years" It's great whenever someone shows off their side project, and astonishing when it's a project they've diligently maintained for a generation in web-dev years.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#84

Post by joeclark77 »

brenfrow wrote: post #40

Now just waiting to do an analysis on what to do with this data?

Check how it correlates with browser choice? My hypothesis is that people of faith will be less likely to use Firefox since they purged Brendan Eich, while atheists will be more likely to use Apple (Safari) because the instinct toward religion is a strong one... [please know i'm just kidding here!]

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#85

Post by ryandvm »

java-man wrote: post #71

The data is clearly not representative. Take a look at number one post in Show HN titled " OneBody Church Directory software I've been hacking on for 7 years". This post has 740 points | 203 comments, clearly very popular (number two has 77 points | 46 comments). Does it mean atheists are more open responding to polls about spirituality?

I would agree with your supposition that atheists are disproportionately interested in taking part in polls about religion - particularly on sites with a palpable anti-religious bias.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#86

Post by [deleted] »

gfodor wrote: post #46
hnnewguy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#88

Post by a-nikolaev »

hnriot wrote: post #76
gfodor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, try biologist creationists. They exist!

I would contest that. They can be either but not both. They are either not very smart biologists or not very devout creationists. Or more likely just attention seekers.

There is a famous one, Michael Behe. Not exactly a creationist, but an intelligen design advocate.

http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/faculty/behe.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe

edit:

He has a nice paragraph on his web page:

>>Official Disclaimer

My ideas about irreducible complexity and intelligent design are entirely my own. They certainly are not in any sense endorsed by either Lehigh University in general or the Department of Biological Sciences in particular. In fact, most of my colleagues in the Department strongly disagree with them.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#89

Post by gfodor »

hnriot wrote: post #76
gfodor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, try biologist creationists. They exist!

I would contest that. They can be either but not both. They are either not very smart biologists or not very devout creationists. Or more likely just attention seekers.

Not true. I know someone who last I spoke was in graduate level cell biology and did lab work on brains at a top university, yet did not believe in evolution. In fact, I recall her citing her personal awe of the brain etc as evidence of intelligent design.

Don't underestimate humans' abilities to selectively ignore evidence, the immense pressure of their peers, parents, and friends who have similar beliefs, and the underlying fear of death that motivates people to believe in an afterlife (and all the various attached beliefs from there) to allow compartmentalization of beliefs from knowledge.

Re: Poll: How religious is hacker news?

#90

Post by designNERD »

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.

Just because they wouldn't admit to it does not mean that the condition doesn't exist. And I have met Christians who have stated that they can't prove God one or another but that doesn't stop their belief.
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