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

Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

pewresearch.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 115 posts

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#91

Post by missedthecue »

krapp wrote: post #90
missedthecue wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'miracles' can easily exist alongside his badness. I'm not sure why everyone makes it out to be either/or. There is no universal law that says being both can't logically be true. I mean, there's an easy way to prove this. If I said humans exist and humans are good, you could point out Hitler, and all it does is prove humans are good and bad, and doesn't test whether they exist. And in fact it doesn't even prove t…

When people say that "god isn't good, therefore he doesn't exist," they are very likely referring specifically to the Abrahamic God, and this is likely the only God they can conceive of as possibly existing. Of course you're correct that, in the abstract, the set of potential divine deities is infinite. But most people in the Western world turning away from religion are turning away from some flavor of the Abrahamic…

It's interesting you bring up the Abrahamic God, because the old testament specifically describes Him as, among other things,

- Jealous

- "Full of wrath"

- Vengeful

- Willing to harden hearts (make people resistant to obedience)

- demanding and severe

- prone to tempting or testing people

These are not my pejorative statements, but the literal language used, at least in the English translations. It seems the idea that the Abrahamic God is just trying to make everyone's life better all the time is a more modern western invention. I don't think it was common even 150 years ago.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#92

Post by spwa4 »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #55
Filligree wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's one way to win back believers and it's to eliminate in-group/out-group dynamics and replace it with material acts of benevolence - akin to large scale public works projects to eliminate suffering. That would make me think more of the organisations in question, but I don’t understand why it would affect belief. It has no bearing on the correctness of the claims they make.

It has no bearing on the correctness of the claims they make. It has bearing on the veracity of those making the claims. Why *believe* claims from those whose actions prove they don't really believe it themselves? If they did truly *believe*, they would certainly be acting much differently. "Do as I say, not as a I do" is not a convincing argument to most rational people.

Almost all believers I have ever known were believers for social reasons, for belonging to a group. I've yet to meet the first one (that wasn't 6 years old) that had actual belief.

Christianity is falling apart because all groups are falling apart in traditional Christian countries, including other religions, including everything from Tennis clubs to Latin study groups.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#93

Post by surgical_fire »

missedthecue wrote: post #91
krapp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say that "god isn't good, therefore he doesn't exist," they are very likely referring specifically to the Abrahamic God, and this is likely the only God they can conceive of as possibly existing. Of course you're correct that, in the abstract, the set of potential divine deities is infinite. But most people in the Western world turning away from religion are turning away from some flavor of the Abrahamic…

It's interesting you bring up the Abrahamic God, because the old testament specifically describes Him as, among other things, - Jealous - "Full of wrath" - Vengeful - Willing to harden hearts (make people resistant to obedience) - demanding and severe - prone to tempting or testing people These are not my pejorative statements, but the literal language used, at least in the English translations. It seems the idea tha…

Yeah, but this lore was retconned post Jesus. After that God was supposedly a lot merrier.

And I say supposedly because even this God of Love allowed merry events such as the Inquisition to happen.

Maybe He just liked a good barbecue.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#94

Post by ctrlp »

throwanem wrote: post #73
ctrlp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are fond of the expressive trope of the gnomic and obscure NPC from a fantasy game. Do you have any magic potions you could sell me? I have gold. Maybe I could trade a battle axe for a spell of regeneration?

Have you and I played games before? You have an abrasive and needlessly antagonistic style I think I recognize.

I think not. I regret my comment directed at you, it was a pointless rebuke. You did not deserve it.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#95

Post by throwanem »

ctrlp wrote: post #94
throwanem wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you and I played games before? You have an abrasive and needlessly antagonistic style I think I recognize.

I think not. I regret my comment directed at you, it was a pointless rebuke. You did not deserve it.

That's generous of you to say and I respect it. No harm done. It's the times.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#96

Post by warmedcookie »

selimthegrim wrote: post #26
blindriver wrote: post #3

I'm switching back to religion. I used to not believe but after the pandemic and researching the immune system, I don't believe that a complex system like simply the immune system can be not only created by chance but can be spread across an entire population. There are many components of the immune system and even the endocrine system that requires things to be designed together, not randomly across millions of year…

Somatic hypermutation is evidence of a loving God to you?

I don't see God or loving in his response. Maybe they believe in sadistic aliens from millions of big bangs ago?

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#97

Post by krapp »

surgical_fire wrote: post #93
missedthecue wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting you bring up the Abrahamic God, because the old testament specifically describes Him as, among other things, - Jealous - "Full of wrath" - Vengeful - Willing to harden hearts (make people resistant to obedience) - demanding and severe - prone to tempting or testing people These are not my pejorative statements, but the literal language used, at least in the English translations. It seems the idea tha…

Yeah, but this lore was retconned post Jesus. After that God was supposedly a lot merrier. And I say supposedly because even this God of Love allowed merry events such as the Inquisition to happen. Maybe He just liked a good barbecue.

There are a lot of problems with trying to tease a coherent overarching narrative, much less a coherent morality, out of a canon that has nothing of the sort. There are part of the Old Testament that were likely written before the Israelites were even monotheist. The Gnostics found the contradiction so irreconcilable they decided the God of the Old Testament was really an evil god who created our fundamentally flawed material universe as a prison.

There is no "God" of the Bible per se because the "Bible" itself is a, dare I say it, social construct and "God" is a mirror that people hold up to reflect their understanding of nature and morality, and that that context is always subjective and transitory. To me that conversation that humanity has with itself over time as it tries to reconcile a chaotic and arbitrary universe is far more interesting than anything one learns in Sunday School.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#98

Post by surgical_fire »

krapp wrote: post #97
surgical_fire wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but this lore was retconned post Jesus. After that God was supposedly a lot merrier. And I say supposedly because even this God of Love allowed merry events such as the Inquisition to happen. Maybe He just liked a good barbecue.

There are a lot of problems with trying to tease a coherent overarching narrative, much less a coherent morality, out of a canon that has nothing of the sort. There are part of the Old Testament that were likely written before the Israelites were even monotheist. The Gnostics found the contradiction so irreconcilable they decided the God of the Old Testament was really an evil god who created our fundamentally flawed…

> To me that conversation that humanity has with itself over time as it tries to reconcile a chaotic and arbitrary universe is far more interesting than anything one learns in Sunday School.

Agreed, looking at religion from a philosophical angle is a lot more interesting. I have little interest in Christianity from a dogmatic perspective - believing in a God is not something that makes much sense to me - but I find the lore of something written by multiple hands throughout centuries quite fascinating.

They don't seem to add more stuff to it though. Last commit to blble git was a long time ago.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#99

Post by balamatom »

card_zero wrote: post #85
mrob wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds more like your personal absolute threshold of suffering is unusually low, not a category error.

No, it just makes no conceptual sense to me to "prefer non-existence". It's a contradiction. The concepts of preference and not existing can't go together. I guess I'll allow that death is the ultimate undesirable thing, disrupting all intentions, negating all possibilities. I can see how this could be interpreted as unusually high tolerance for suffering, by any normal, latently suicidal person. But from my point of…

Nice conversation :)

I logically prefer than I had never existed, because existing is what exposes me to the cycle of suffering, and I cannot prevent suffering with any certainty. The opposite - this inability to prevent suffering is itself a source of chronic low-grade suffering known to all as "anxiety".

But... I've found myself here anyway! Furthermore, having been born an animal, I find myself bound here by my self-preservation instinct. So, the ethical thing for me to do would be to try and reduce that suffering which I observe. Am I succeeding? Honestly, I don't think I am. (But it's a source of meaning regardless.)

Can I imagine a life without this background of suffering? Only vaguely. Being able to imagine it may itself be a source of suffering, even if I were to accept that it's in fact beyond reach.

I don't think it would be possible to set a threshold for "what counts as suffering", since suffering is an interior experience. It would be the same as attempting to measure consciousness; you can measure its external manifestations, but not the thing itself.

Besides, who would be doing the measuring? Who would be systematizing the results? Who will be interpreting them? None other than beings who are themselves part of the cycle of suffering. So, even if the measurement was to be possible, and communicating its results was to be possible, it's impossible to avoid the data to be biased -- such as by the measurers' self-preservation instincts. An objective measurement can only happen from outside, and... there is no outside.

(I'm imagining maybe dystopian but I would hope at least comprehensible scenarios, such as a state-level actor developing the science enabling them to establish a (purportedly) objective scale of suffering, but then forcing the measurers to publish biased results under duress, in order to promote that state's self-serving agenda.)

Hence, I work with a simple and abstract distinction: less preferable = more suffering. So, not between 1 and 2 -- which communicates exactly as much meaning as 0 and 1, only at a greater cost, think vacuum tube bias voltage -- but fractionally between 0 and 1.

Where the threshold lies for the self and others to recognize that suffering, much less to take it into account, is entirely up to the perceiver(s) in question, and not something that could be irrevocably defined by fiat.

Re: Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions

#100

Post by BrandoElFollito »

sepositus wrote: post #67
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the shared opening to the esophagus and trachea in humans (and many other mammals). Hundreds of choking deaths occur in the US every year due to food obstructions in the trachea. Doesn't seem too intelligent to purposefully design such a hazard. Also the “incomplete” argument falls apart easily if the premise was a superior intelligence created it from the get go - if it was so, why would the “supreme intelligence” l…

> Why not make them right from the beginning? I don't intend to come off as obtuse here, but this was my original point. Our current understanding suggests this is a design flaw and is "wrong." However, there are plenty of cases where new discoveries have changed our understanding of a system. So, I'm simply putting forward the question: At what point can we confidently say something is poorly designed? I'm not disag…

Now, we can say it now. You have GP examples and someone more skilled wrote have avoided so many other issues.

The counter argument to that is that we do not understand why this is so (together with suffering etc.) which is the end of any discussion.

Post reply on HN