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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Donald Knuth is a Stanford academic, a serious Lutheran Christian, and a liberal. For any of those three types of people, these viewpoints are unsurprising. I share them, too, but I feel queasy about an HN headline that says "Respect", as if it were contemptible to hold a different viewpoint.

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I think the respect is for him being bold enough to pose these questions, not for the content of the questions themselves.

He's a Stanford Emeritus and one of the most beloved computer scientists of all time. This isn't exactly the riskiest page he could have put up (though, if I wanted to be snarky, there's a wisecrack or two to be conjured about professing Christianity, right?).

But at the end of the day, of course I'm glad he has this page. Like I said, these are my viewpoints --- for the most part --- too. But I'm uncomfortable with the way we've chosen to promote the page here.

I sort of wonder how atheists process someone like him believing in God. Is he being irrational? Is he just foolish in this one area of his life? Is it hurting his life (as many atheists claim religion is)? And if any of those are true do you feel like you have the intellectual authority or capacity to say anything to him about his own life?

Being a theist of course does not preclude you from being a good person.

However, spreading theism, being a role model, teaching it to children who may not grow up to be college professors but merely ordinary people, is an idea under some amount of debate.

I personally do not really care. Faith is a personal matter. As long as we are not discussing it directly, why should it factor into a political conversation? Einstein was deeply religious, down to refusing to accept quantum theory because "god does not play with dice", but he also had things to say. Would it have made his discoveries more wonderful if he was an atheist? I believe that question is devoid of meaning.

Well many atheists claim that being an atheist is a qualification for being a serious scientist. Sam Harris wrote a pretty poorly thought out piece in the NYT about how a person who is otherwise qualified was not a good candidate because of their faith.

As someone who has education in science, but never 'got religion' as a child, I see atheism as the null hypothesis.

One way of formulating it would be: "There is(are) no all-powerful supernatural entity(ies) which has(ve) influence over my daily life."

No one has given me sufficient evidence that would go against this and contradict the null hypothesis, so I continue to not believe in God(s).

That said,

I don't think that believing things that are not scientifically proven/provable disqualifies one from performing scientific research. I'm know I have plenty of opinions/beliefs/biases that I couldn't back up for the life of me. It is part of being human and having been raised in a given environment. But it is important to be aware of your own biases in any endeavor.

Your logic would apply equally well with theism as the null hypothesis ("There is(are) an all-powerful supernatural entity(ies) which has(ve) influence over my daily life, but (s)(t)he(y) have been playing a game called science for the past few centuries")

I think agnosticism would be the better choice for a null hypothesis.

False. Einstein was an agnostic. The quote is roughly accurate, but the god is an abstraction, the maker of physical constants & such.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_religious_v...

He is being irrational. Happens to all people, really, including atheists.

Regarding you last sentence, I don’t think religion is the most interesting subject to bring up when you have the chance to talk to Donald Knuth.

But Iraq is? :)

Certainly not. It’s interesting to see what, well, intellectuals think about all kinds of topics (still not sure whether that makes it HN material) and I very much believe that Donald Knuth can say more intelligent things about religion and politics than the average person but it is well outside his (and my) area of expertise.

>I sort of wonder how atheists process someone like him believing in God.

Cognitive dissonance.

I kid, I kid: but I see too many atheists happy to deride a viewpoint with that pop-psychology term as a means of writing it off. Qualifying a behavior as inherently rational or irrational runs the risk of functioning rather like a dogma.

I'm fine with people believing in some sort of entity, I do have a problem if they actually adhere to an organized religion.

You can't definitely prove there is no god, but you can certainly show how dumb the concept of organized religion is, especially the books they rely on.

but you can certainly show how dumb the concept of organized religion is

Really? It seems to me that the concept of organized religion seems very useful even if there is no god. It actually might be most useful if there is no god.

I said it was dumb, not useless.

I understand the need that people feel to be part of communities, that's perfectly normal. It doesn't mean you need to adhere to a book that was written by goat herders a few thousands of years ago.

To what extent does Knuth believe in God? For all I know, he might be a Christian atheist. Such people do exist, at the extreme Spongian end of the church.

This isn't exactly the riskiest page he could have put up

Yeah, I think Prof. McCarthy has him beat in that category: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html

Yes you have a good point here, "The Respect" was just from me, sorry i I have miss led you...

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