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Comment by Prrometheus | Hacker News Reader

Why do you care? If you draw any generalizations from the replies on this forum, then you are committing every statistical fallacy in the book.

As for your hypothesis, the Hacker News community is built around Hacker News and not religion or the lack thereof, so I find it hard to see how it fits in. I would agree that online communities built around religion are of little interest, but only because I find the subject matter so tedious.

If you could flesh out your argument and make it a little more clear, I'm sure you would get better replies from this community.

Personally I try to never judge the people I socialize with based on their beliefs in irrelevant subject matters. But I am an oddity, being born without the seemingly common gene that causes most people to derive pleasure from meddling and prying into the personal affairs of others.

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A person's religion says a lot about their epistemology, which in turn says a lot about them. You have to pick and choose your friends somehow (this is not unnecessary meddling) and there are few more substantive ways.

I'm a non-militant atheist, so I generally don't "look down upon" religious people or feel it's my duty to convert them. But I also have a hard time really relating to anyone who is willing to base their morality or political/life decisions on such silly things as the Bible (see http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/... for explanation) or logically unsound principles with no factual evidence. Their epistemology is just too different from mine.

In a sense, it would be very logically unsound to base faith in God on just a book, even if it is "The Book".

Isn't it because faith transcends logic and reason? This is my understanding of the word "faith", any way.

Right. It's essentially believing in something because you want to, rather than because evidence or logic points to it. Faith doesn't transcend reason, it is its opposite.

"A person's religion says a lot about their epistemology..."

Where do you draw this from? Have you any citations you can make? This seems like something I'd be interested in learning more about.

So, you can't be friends with religious people? Do you and your friends sit around and talk about epistemology all day?

I wasn't really looking to conduct a survey, I was just hoping to get a few opinions. True, hacker news is not about religion, nor is it a good way to conduct statistically signifcant surveys, but it's still nice to hear what people think.

I could think of lots of explanations for the shortage of religious sites...and I was looking for some opinions. A few possibilities include (A) there is no shortage of sites, i'm just ignorant, or (B) there are a relatively small number of religious hackers, or (C) there isn't really a pressing 'need' that has been identified, or something I didn't think of at all.

I hope that this wasn't construed as being a judging question - I was just curious.

Your point makes a LOT more sense now that you put it that way. Titling your post "Are you religious?" probably isn't a good way to get people's thoughts on why there is a perceived poverty of religious websites. You will notice that most of the responses on this page are about people's personal beliefs and not about their thoughts on religious websites.

lesson learned: i'll try to be a bit more descriptive in future submissions.

Most people would call me religious. I'm a practicing Mormon. I pray and believe that God answers my prayers. However, I hesitated to answer your original question because the label "religious" is mildly distasteful. It seems more external than internal, more political than spiritual.

As a practicer of my faith, I get plenty of chances to interact with people of my religion. So I don't feel much of a need for a 'religious' forum.

On the other hand, I do hunger for forums and other forms of social media where the standards that I hold are widely shared. I tried Reddit. It was great to have news and education combined. But in the end it wasn't worth wading through so many headlines, articles, and comments that were (to me) degrading in one way or another.

I love it here. I wouldn't call it at all religious. But the dialog is respectful and the people are interesting. I could use more places like this.

didn't mean to downvote - fatfingering on my new iPod touch.

I'm Mormon too, glad to know I'm not the only one. Email me.

Done.

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