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Comment by throwawaygh | Hacker News Reader

Exactly.

I grew up in the Midwest and outside of the city. When I visit home, I pretend to believe in God, lie-by-omission about my bisexuality, stay silent about politics, pretend to say grace at dinner, and go to Church on Sunday mornings. If I didn't, then in many ways I'd not longer be welcome in that social group. Finding a iving-wage job in the local community would certainly be impossible. There are only a few tech firms and all the owners are members of the same bible study.

Want to see real cancel culture? Live in any of America's many culturally homogeneous rural communities for a month. Put up a Biden sign in panhandle.

None of this is a defense of cancel culture, but it's worth keeping in perspective that way more "cancelling" goes on in deeply conservative communities than in extremely liberal communities. We just call it "keeping American a Christian nation" instead of "cancel culture".

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I used to feel to belong to "The Left" (whatever that is) precisely because it did not do these things. Now it does, and sees it even as a moral imperative to do so.

I'm on the autism spectrum, as are many others around here. Social rules are hard in the best of times. Now they are impossible to follow, and breaking them is outright dangerous.

But I can keep to myself, I guess I'll be fine.

I also find this trend on the left morally unfortunate, historically out-of-character, and strategically flawed.

My point here is not to defend cancel culture, but rather to point out that something like it has always existed and still exists on the right. IMO the only solution is everyone realizing this fact and explicitly agreeing to some form of detente.

I'm not holding my breath, but step zero is both sides realizing that the their side also does the thing they're complaining about.

I completely agree that there are problems on both sides, but I don't see how your reasoning encourages "everyone realizing this fact and explicitly agreeing to some form of detente". On the contrary, progressives seem to see "the right has oppressed people" as a mandate to do everything they can to make war on the right and even moderate positions (because moderate positions are characterized as dog whistles that conservatives hide behind, and the "fascist" "Nazi" right must not be given any potential cover no matter the cost). I really thought your posts were intentionally stoking this attitude, and I would never have guessed that you wanted detente if you hadn't explicitly said so.

GP comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26306326

So... your strategy to achieve detente is to inflame and justify hatred of people in rural areas? You're extrapolating a personal anecdote in order to stereotype millions of people. It's hard to see how that is anything but destructive.

I'm sorry that you've had to go through those experiences, but not everyone rural or Christian is like that, and it's very harmful to characterize them that way. It's not accurate to stereotype Christians as hateful any more than it's accurate to stereotype Muslims as supporting terrorism. They are extremely diverse groups with some truly bad subgroups, but also some good ones, and most subgroups are in-between. The extremes aren't representative of the group as a whole.

If you need to appeal to the goodness of people's hearts, you know you've lost.

The age of Enlightement and the idea of liberalism have been so powerful because they programmatically went against any kind of censorship. Their ideas helped to see how humans are truly all equal, that we all share what it means to be human.

Identity politics set out to destroy these ideas. It is the enemy of liberalism, of a free flow of ideas, of a will to see us all as equals. It divides us into groups, based on biological features like the color of our skin, our age and our genitals.

This insanity will not end well.

We really need a right left coalition of Anti-Cancelling advocates, calling out both close minded rural conservative communities, and close minded liberal communities living on Twitter. Ideally, with those on the right calling out the conservatives and those on the left calling out the liberals.

those people have zero cultural or institutional power.

They do in those communities.

And Donald Trump and Fox News have a heck of a lot of cultural and institutional power.

The opposite has been true for many decades now. There are many Christians who are extremely capable scientists, ready to perform experiments, document cause and effect and all manners of empirical scientific study but can't find work (or tenure) because they're not willing to bet all their beliefs on the theory that everything came from literally nothing, which is by itself non-scientific anyway.

> but can't find work (or tenure) because they're not willing to bet all their beliefs on the theory that everything came from literally nothing, which is by itself non-scientific anyway.

Can you point to a single example of a hiring or T&P policy that overtly discriminates on the basis of religion?

I certainly can. Wheaton College, Cedarville University, and Liberty University come to mind. None of those places will hire non-Christians, and a Statement of Faith is a required component of every faculty application.

This is complete hogwash. I know and work with plenty of Christian scientists. They do just as well as everyone else in the job market.

Name one prominent scientist who is on record (and has tenure) who holds the position that the origin of the big bang as taught today is un-scientific. Of course there are Christian scientists, but Academia only promotes and gives tenure to atheists for a growing number of fields.

Name any scientist that has a position other than the big bang theory, that has any evidence backing it?

The standard isn't "can't include God", but "must fit the facts". God is unprovable and untestable; making a theory depend on a God makes the theory unprovable and untestable. Most scientists who also have religious beliefs don't see the two conflicting; their religion gives the why, their profession the how.

Or more succinctly, no one is blackballing scientists for saying "I believe God caused the Big Bang". But claims of, for instance, "I believe the world was created 6000 years ago over a period of 7 literal days" requires some evidence beyond "My understanding of the Bible tells me so", and doesn't jibe with your initial statement of empirical scientific study.

A Christian is defined by belief in salvation through Christ's death and resurrection. Not disbelief in the Big Bang.

Isn't it kind of arrogant to think that one knows the mechanisms of God so surely as to settle the question on the origins of the universe?

The bible, esp. genesis, is taken metaphorically, or else a lot of problematic interpretations will arise.

Also, even scholars of the Abrahamic faiths do not readily disclose their intimate religious faith, lest their work be discredited — such as a professor who studies Christianity, but holds Islamic faith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQhMllQ-ODw&feature=emb_logo

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