Hacker News Reader

Comment by rwcarlsen | Hacker News Reader

I just wanted to come here and show some respect for religious communities that work very hard to help people and the world become a better place. On hacker news, I would hope we can be rational and respectful about beliefs that are important to (many real and good) people. There are many religious people/beliefs that I agree with - and many I disagree with - we can discuss that like adults. But sarcastic, unkind remarks in the HN comments are not productive.

View on HN

I'll acknowledge the hard work and kindness of (some) religious people if you'll acknowledge that we are talking about beliefs that are very obviously not true.

This isn't mean to be sarcastic, it's a statement about the special treatment that religion gets. Some of us simply do not agree that the best approach to this is to hold hands and discuss it like adults -- for all of the hard work and kindness you mention, there is also quite a lot of bad stuff too. It's far from obvious that the good outweighs the bad.

I'm looking forward to all the people promoting the Salvation Army ("salvation" is not about saving clothes from the trash) this winter while I know of at least one person who got kicked out of their shelter for being a trans person. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether its promoters don't know or don't care.

> ...that are very obviously not true

This is a sweeping generalization both about what religious beliefs are (for hundreds of religions) and also about how countless individuals uniquely interpret/feel about/understand those beliefs. I think that is very reductionist and incorrect position to hold. Is the bad stuff because of religion - or is it because humans? Humans have built up religion to what it is after all.

> It's far from obvious that the good outweighs the bad

It is also far from obvious that the bad outweighs the good. I never suggested anything about hand-holding.

Well, they are very obviously not true, as obvious as any other supernatural claim that is patent nonsense. My point is exactly that religion gets special treatment in this particular context.

Sure, we can debate the good/bad stuff, but only after it's acknowledged that the supernatural claims are false. After all, if the supernatural claims are true, that pretty much settles all the rest of the questions concerning religion.

The core argument here is that religious people cannot discuss the falsity of their beliefs, but that's a problem in discussing other things, because religious people don't constrain their beliefs to the purely metaphysical.

Can prayer help with stroke or not? Is Israel special to God's plans or not? Are other religions corrupting the souls of children with false idols or not? Does God generally regulate the affairs of the earth, including its ecology and climate, or not? Does God have prescriptions on medicine and biological contamination or not?

Since the confidence of existence in supernatural interaction means that secular frameworks are ignorant, how are spiritually different groups supposed to discuss these issues?

For instance, in my opinion, no kid should be pressured to take part in any kind of religious activities it does not feel comfortable with. I found this disturbing as a kid in a way I can't describe adequately here. If a religion involves this, it is not making the world a "better place" for me.

I just wanted to come here and show some respect for religious communities that work very hard to help people and the world become a better place.

Why specifically religious communities? As long as someone is doing good in the world, what difference does it make? People deserve respect so long as they themselves respect others.

That said, if they provide charity or other services while pushing their religious beliefs on folks, as is often the case for proselytizing religions (I'm looking at you World Vision), then they lose my respect. My spiritual beliefs should not be held hostage in exchange for charity.

I have the same feeling. When I analyse it closer, it looks like everything - religion, ideology, technology - can bring about wonderful things but also cause enormous harm. T pick one of these and say the fault is in it would be a great injustice. Religion is truly powerful - it can be of enormous help in difficult moments, it can give courage to those who work hard to make others' lives better - but in a distorted form it's a preposterous monster eating human lives. Is it the fault of religion (or of ideology, or technology)? No, it's the human nature, or the nature of certain humans to distort everything, to abuse great ideas, to get maximum personal gain without respect for others - this is the real cause things go wrong. It's enough to look at the forces ruling the world today to understand this.

can we not say anything about the ones that ruin people’s lives? or is that too unkind? sorry for being unkind to people who abandon their gay kids.

No because while religion is used to try to justify that, the real cause is just shitty people

how? does their book not say to stone gay people? if anything those people are better than their religion because they don’t stone gays, just discriminate. in fact, to be a good christian, by definition, one must hate gays. otherwise you are against your own holy text.

That's just one, and very unfortunate, aspect of some religions. Other seem to be very happy with gay kids.

When you ask someone like the Dalai Lama difficult questions such as ones about euthanasia or abortion - where traditional religious views and modern progressive outlook differ - you probably won't get an answer you'll like, but at the very least you'll receive a reasonable explanation behind it. And fortunately we're free and don't need to follow any religion. However, if you make the decision to follow it, you need to respect its rules, that's all.

People can do good without attached irrationality. In particular, I think no kid should be forced to take part in any of this. I found it greatly disturbing as a kid that adult people / school teachers who should know better and / or should serve as role models would present irrational activities like praying as if they were perfectly normal. Do what you want, but please keep people like me out of it until they are old enough to decide for themselves. If your cult doesn't respect this: sorry, it's certainly not making the world a "better place" for me.

Your argument is based on an opinion - "praying is irrational (because it clearly cannot work)" - that religious people do not hold! If they were to share your opinion I guess most would abandon the practice.

In this context one can see why they choose to raise their children in such a way. It would be irrational not to teach them how to pray if this is such an important part of their lives. Would you wait for your kids to grow up before teaching them personal hygiene because it is ultimately their choice?

You can die of bad hygiene.

Ok, you can die because of religion too, in many, many countries.

But I guess it's not a good thing, no ?

This crosses into religious flamewar, which is not allowed on HN, including in threads about religion. Please don't post like this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

indeed. it seems the reddit-style comments so quickly flagged in other threads are the norm thus far in this thread.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com