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Comment by roflc0ptic | Hacker News Reader

It's really not a bad point. As one of those college graduates, having children is probably the only reason I'd get married.

Marriage has been and is many other things, too. It's has been a tool women have used to escape their parent's house. It's been used to build social ties among disparate groups, as well as maintain social ties within tight knit communities. It's been a union of two humans in the eyes of God. It's been a tool for subjugating women, and social control.

College graduates are getting married less, and later. The point of that sentence, I think, is that the values driving the decision to get married have shifted, and are somewhat stratified by socioeconomic status.

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In the eyes of theists it is the union of two humans in the eyes of God. I think in 2017 it's time we start calling this fairy-tale bullshit out instead of stating it as fact.

I don't think being a theist means you believe in religious ceremonies necessarily. Also, the comment you replied to made pretty clear that marriage is many things to different people.

In any event, in 2017 and 5000 you'll be able to spend your life arguing what a fact is. I'm an atheist, but I'm totally OK with that comment. People should relax across the theological board...

Yeah! The comment is taking an anthropological perspective - marriage is a complex institution with huge differences between cultures, and a simplistic description "evolutionarily/economically beneficial strategy for pooling of resources for child rearing" lacks a lot of explanatory power. What about gay people? etc

this is a level of vitriol and hostility that gets people like Trump elected.

I don't believe in the Judaeo-Christian God either, but I don't feel compelled to make nasty remarks about it in public. Other people have different beliefs than you. Judge them on their behavior, not their beliefs.

You can tell someone they are being a jerk without blaming Trump on them.

Now it seems like the auto response to someone saying something distasteful and liberal is to say "you, saying stuff like this that I don't like, that's why Trump got elected" and intended or not it's an implicit threat -- don't say things I don't like or else we'll get another Trump.

People being rude on the Internet is NOT why Trump won the election and believing so, and letting people hold you and what you say hostage with the threat "I might vote for Trump again if you e.g. defend feminism too rigorously and loudly, watch it liberal" isn't sustainable or acceptable.

But you're right the comment you're referring to was very rude and unacceptable, my response is intended towards this sort of response /in general/.

I was using hyperbole to make a point. The point is that backlash is a real thing, and one of the causes of backlash (particularly right-wing backlash) is feeling like you are hated for your beliefs.

The thing is, @feld never said anything hateful about @roflc0ptic or anyone else.

There's a difference between between not respecting a person's beliefs, and not respecting a person because of their beliefs. It is possible to engage in the former while not engaging in the latter.

This breaks down, though, when people somehow equate what they believe with who they are, and thus if you attack their beliefs in any manner, somehow you are now attacking them. This isn't confined to any particular belief system or ideology (you see it in liberals as well). One should, however, be on guard to not let this kind of conflation happen to themselves, because it does nothing to further discussion or reflection upon the ideas/beliefs, and their likely veracity or usefulness to themselves and/or society at large.

Unfortunately, many people lack this kind of ability to self-reflect and understand that they are not being attacked or derided, but rather their ideas and beliefs are. There are very few cases in which an individual should not be respected because of their beliefs; these cases are typically when society has deemed such ideas/beliefs to be harmful or dangerous to society or others, yet they continue to hold onto those ideas/beliefs and/or promote them as well.

Otherwise, except for those cases, one should feel free to criticize, attack, or disrespect beliefs apart from the individual holding them, and that person should also understand that they are not the target of such - and should self-reflect upon why their beliefs are being viewed this way.

Of course - this can lead to absurdities - for instance, if all of a society deemed that hitting oneself in the head with a hammer was the way to cure a headache, despite objective evidence - to go against this idea while being in the minority can and would be extremely maddening and depressing.

One can thus understand why being an atheist in a country that is mostly religious, has almost no representation within their country's government, while being told that they are part of the problems of that country, that they are the immoral ones (despite what statistics really show about crime and incarceration demographically), and that the religious ones (and mainly of a particular religion) are the ones being suppressed (again, never mind the real objective facts of the matter) - can be an almost Kafka-esque experience...

I understand what you're saying but I disagree that it is reasonable, despite sounding reasonable. I think you have one serious flawed assumption, which is that it is possible to disidentify from your beliefs.

There is no separation here, and particularly not in the case of religious beliefs.

The type of belief a person can disidentify with, and evaluate objectively without emotional response, is basically a very narrow subset of beliefs that are limited to things that are 1) empirically falsifiable and 2) not fettered with excessive social attachments.

almost no beliefs meet both of those criteria. the vast majority of people's beliefs, ESPECIALLY RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, are core to identity and must be treated as such during discourse if we have any expectation of getting good political and social outcomes.

I realize this is very disappointing to people who live a very rationalist, atheist, materialist world. The standards of discourse in that world are extremely different than in the world of religious belief. There is a huge difference between ecumenicism and rational debate. It's even more painful in that the irrational behaviors of some religious groups result in a lot of nastiness directed at non-believers. I don't like that either. It's not ok. However, the solution to it is not to be nasty back to them (or pre-emptively nasty to them). That only makes the already bad situation worse.

I'm a political realist. I don't like that intolerant religious fanatics have as much influence as they do, but that is the situation we find ourselves in. I try to behave appropriately given the world we live in. Save myself and my loved ones a lot of grief while focusing on actions that can actually make a difference, and in particular not making things worse by provoking a group of people that is in a position to hurt you.

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