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Comment by koonsolo | Hacker News Reader

The thing with belief is that you are 100% sure about something you cannot be sure about.

If you ask a religious person "what do you think is the chance that god exists?". A rational person will never say 100%, because objectively you cannot be 100% sure.

But a religious person is wired in a way were they are unable to admit this fact. It is a lie people tell themselves because somehow they think it benefits them.

Now whether it really benefits them or not, I'm not sure. But I would think nothing can beat the objective truth, and that truth might include probabilities.

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This is an egregious over simplification of religious belief. I think most religious people are absolutely not 100% sure. That's why faith is such a big topic, and why philosophers and theologians have written about faith, the existence of god, whether it can be proven, etc. for centuries.

Besides, aren't all your actions based on beliefs that are are less than 100% certain? I don't know that the line of code I'm writing is going to compile, or that the company I'm working for isn't going to go under tomorrow, or that the relationships I'm investing time into are going to last forever, but I'm certain enough that I proceed with them. Believing in God isn't so different.

Faith is a powerful force to drive you along, even among uncertainty and strife.

Beliefs are a house of cards.

This is true and one of the reasons I remain religious. Faith in an ultimate resolution allows you to persevere the suffering you will invariably go through. The loss you will certainly experience. It seems to me that without faith in something, Nihilism creeps in and that’s a dark place to live your short days.

> But a religious person is wired in a way were they are unable to admit this fact.

This religious person can. I am not 100% on anything via reason, I just don’t think reason is the only way of knowing. I can’t be certain that my dad loves me via reason but I know he loves me via human faith because I know my father, I don’t simply know about him. Authentic Christian faith in God is similar to that.

Thankfully not all non-religious people are wired to make such sophomoric sweeping generalizations as you.

It's not at all unusual for people to start off comfortable with their level of faith in others, and then discover their faith was misplaced.

I gave up on Christians specifically when I discovered that Christians all believe different things. I would literally ask in chat rooms for a group to define one thing they all agreed on, and then watch as fights broke out - because when pushed they all disagreed violently on core ethics and dogma, and yet they also believed they were right and other people with different views "Weren't real Christians."

It turns out there is no real content to that kind of religion. It's all meta-justification for a person's existing moral leanings, and meta-interpretation of a "sacred text" which is broad enough to rationalise pretty much anything, including some appalling and terrible things. (History has plenty to say about that.)

The only true common belief is that religious self-justification is a valid and respectable process. That was the one thing they had in common.

Specifics and details were wildly variable window dressing, and heavily customised to personal taste.

> I would literally ask in chat rooms for a group to define one thing they all agreed on, and then watch as fights broke out > It's all meta-justification for a person's existing moral leanings

There is a vibrant and ancient school of Christian moral teaching that still permeates to the core of western law and governance. Talking to strangers in chatrooms is not a serious confrontation of this reality nor any basis for dismissing it all.

> interpretation of a "sacred text" which is broad enough to rationalise pretty much anything, including some appalling and terrible things. (History has plenty to say about that.)

Interestingly, those Christians who did appalling things used the same cherry picking strategy with Scripture that you use with history.

I came to the same conclusion with my experience of religious people.

Good people will justify their deeds through their religion, and bad people will justify their deeds through religion.

> This religious person can.

So I'm guessing you are Christian because you were raised in an environment like that.

If you were raised in Pakistan, you would have been a Muslim.

So how much chance would you give each religion to be the correct one? Because they all contradict each other, and believing in one basically states that the other can't be true.

Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism & others.

Not all religions are centered around a 100% belief in God. That assumption seems to be a very common mistake among atheists and agnostics who are most familiar with Christianity.

I like the phrase "life stance" for this idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_stance

I used to be like this. I regret it. I made a distinction that didn't exist-- that there were non-religious people and religious people.

Naturally, I was one of the non-religious people and therefore better. Instead of defining what I believed in, I could just attack the things I didn't believe in. It was easy. I never had to play defense. I might not win every time but I could never lose. I could rattle cages but had no cage of my own.

The way you're describing yourself is how everyone thinks. Faith and doubt are two sides of the same coin. I consider faith worthless without doubt.

So if I say 0%, is that irrational? I mean I’m not 0% sure, but I am to many many decimal places. So what if somebody is religious in the same way? They’re not 100% sure, but they understand significant digits, and just round up.

With all the religions in the world, who each contradict each other, there is only a small chance that you were raised in the correct one.

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