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Comment by dvdhnt | Hacker News Reader

> “God exists ... > Fact check by Progressive-example: false

I know you’re making an observation so this isn’t directed at you, but to those who got us to this segregation - so no offense intended towards you friend.

It makes me so sad that this is the assumption. Yes, the traditional definition of God is not one many of us subscribe to, but to generally group progressives and atheists together, conservatives and religion together is just as much the problem as “fake news”.

Reference, myself, a progressive who found his spirituality in his late twenties while working at a startup and finding the church of consumerism unacceptable. Yet, look at that, still progressive.

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Well, in the US, most people believe in God, regardless of political affiliation. The % of Democrats that are also atheists is larger, but it's still under 15%.

True, but "nones" (those with no religious affiliation) are on the rise, now accounting for a fifth of the U.S. population, and the overwhelming reason for that is a backlash against the religious right.

Sources: Gallup, https://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-vol1-24-423/

The "Nones" are actually two different groups of people:

(1) Those with religious belief but no religious affiliation. They believe in God and/or an afterlife, but they don't participate in or identify with any organised religion.

(2) Those with neither religious belief nor affiliation. They say that there is no good reason to believe that God exists and that when we die we irreversibly cease to exist.

Both groups are growing, but group (1) is significantly bigger than group (2).

I'm not sure how helpful it really is to lump these two groups together.

Unfortunately, while I personally appreciate you sharing this, I thought I'd mention that I think you are being downvoted because your post is too far off the primary topic--which is an appropriate reason to downvote--and not because your idea does not contain merit (I think that it does).

"Progressive" and "Conservative" are sometimes used in extra-political contexts this way, e.g. in linguistics when characterizing dialects.

> “God exists ... > Fact check by Progressive-example: false

Not even false. Religion is immune to fact checks.

But if you introduce categories that are immune to fact checking the flat earth society will claim that too. Same for evolution.

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