Hacker News Reader

Comment by krisoft | Hacker News Reader

Quoting the most concrete example he gives:

> If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as smart as yourself.”

That does not sound like discrimination to me. It sounds like people have an opinion and they express that opinion. It also sounds like they express their opinion very politely and in a restrained manner.

Having opinions and saying them is a free speech, a cherrised cornerstone of the American culture.

View on HN

It’s quite baffling to me that people would start talking about religion at social events that are not related to religion in the first place.

To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics unless you’re amongst people who share your views or it’s a specific religious or political gathering.

If I’m attending a social function, I certainly don’t want to hear about your religious views or political bent. Chances are slim that I would espouse compatible views and that would just make things very uncomfortable for either or both of us.

There are so many other interesting and less polarising topics of discussion with strangers.

> To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics unless you’re amongst people who share your views or it’s a specific religious or political gathering.

This strikes me as a tradition that seriously bolsters religious & political partisanship in America.

That's a crappy rule and it is incompatible with democracy. Part of the reason "freedom of expression" tenants exist is because voters need to be able to convince their peers on various issues. Religion is literally why people believe everything they believe in and asking people to avoid religious topics instead of discussing how to converse controversial topics without causing offense is precisely how you end up with social bubbles of extremes ready to tear apart society to destroy each other.

Part of that however is telling others explicitly when their topic of choice makes you uncomfortable and them ceasing the discussion after clarifying their intent immediately.

Same thing with politics, superpacs and millions in advertising money isn't how politicians should reach out to voters, it is supposed to be by voters talking to people on the other side about their guy and his/her policies. Civilized discourse about controversial topics is a corr foundation of a free society. And it is being eroded by modern social media driven society.

It also keeps a lot of encounters from uncomfortable or erupting. Fervent believers of different things, of course, are supposed to be converting the others, and being told that their god says your practice is heresy doesn't make the canapes taste any better.

> To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics

Yeah I agree, I'm also surprised, never talk about religion/politics, health or money, those are private matters shared with people you can choose freely, and not with colleagues or other random people you can't choose, but need to get along with.

When it comes to money we should more freely talk about it. Trying to prevent discussions of salary and benefits is largely to keep us from shared understanding of the market rate, etc, which penalizes people less connected with the field.

The way religions spread is to violate this social etiquette.

Many religions explicitly require followers to try to 'spread the word' for exactly this reason.

All the religions that don’t encourage that quickly die out from lack of new members.

Judaism is still around.

It teaches self sustaining levels long ago. New religions probably require much more viral spread to survive.

Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity are the same age, though. They cover two ends of the propagation strategy spectrum. Paul tried to position Christianity as a pivot from Temple Judaism like the Sanhedrin did with Rabbinic Judaism, but the "light" version that spread like wildfire among Roman slaves is what survived. Roman slaves didn't really care about Jesus's messianic genealogy or all the allusions to him being the final pascal lamb, it was the salvation story ( itself a repackaging of exodus) that resonated. So Christianity sees itself as a successor while Rabbinic Judaism sees itself as a continuation.

So is politic, or pretty much anything else people have a personal interest in.

I disagree heavily. You would talk about the latest movies, your pet,etc... but Religion is offtopic...why? It literally is the most important thing outside of work to most religious people. If people say they don't feel comfortable with the topic of course they should change it.

> To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics unless you’re amongst people who share your views or it’s a specific religious or political gathering.

This to me is destroying social debate. How can one grow without believes being challenged? - I don't want to live in my bubble of self-confirmation. I want my believes to be challenged with good arguments and improve my thinking.

Of course the key is "good argument" and not "bah stupid"

You are in good company here on HN but in general this is not how people work. Specifically re religion and politics, the reason it is a common adage to not discuss them in social settings is because people rarely engage rationally in those topics. For whatever reason, it triggers people's emotional reactions deeply and quickly. When people's emotions are involved rational discussion departs quickly, and (positive, negative) feelings linger.

Keep the debate lord behavior to online discourse. No one likes that shit in person. Debate lord is a pejorative for a reason.

I disagree. People have mocked others that hold my beliefs (negative) and I respond with a positive view. Why is it somehow deemed acceptable to denigrate religions at social events, but if you say you believe X then it’s “baffling”?

> If I’m attending a social function, I certainly don’t want to hear about your religious views or political bent. Chances are slim that I would espouse compatible views and that would just make things very uncomfortable for either or both of us.

Maybe it's because I'm high but that sounds fascinating, as mr. Spock likes to say.

Why is it that knowing that another human being at a social event has a different political [or reality] view than you cause you discomfort?

p.s. and what does that phenomena foretell for viability of 'democracy'?

> To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics unless you’re amongst people who share your views or it’s a specific religious or political gathering.

in case you have not noticed politics is creeping everywhere these days, even in non-political events.

> It’s quite baffling to me that people would start talking about religion at social events that are not related to religion in the first place.

A major component of the current crisis is the willingness of some to scuttle traditional norms amd mores.

One is now subject to evangelistic browbeatings from the "Woke" along Orwellian lines.

Satan is now cast in orange, according to this faith, and the networks genuflected for two hours of televangelism in prime time on Thursday the 9th.

What?

You are at a meeting with colleagues, one colleague suddenly starts to insist that Santa Claus is real. Do you take them seriously? Sure it’s freedom of speech but there will be some kind of drop in respect.

I mean I get that you believe that one book trumps all of human science because you were raised that way but when you grow up your critical thinking skills should kick in. If they don’t, it’s very difficult to keep taking an adult that believes in all kinds of unprovable stuff serious, because where does that end?

When is weird weird enough to be allowed to be publicly rejected every time it’s brought up, according to you?

That's such a bad take, and I'm not even religious. This is the utmost lack of respect for another person that we should strive to stray very very far away from.

Also, if you would know anything at all about religion (from context, I assume you mean Christianity), they don't believe that one book trumps all of human science at all -- taking the text literally is a relatively modern take done by very few branches of it, but Catholics were responsible for several huge discoveries in science and science is absolutely in line with the religion (the current Pope has a background in chemistry). The usual direction of religious dogmas is not based directly on the Bible, but on its "interpretation" by the Church, which is evolving.

The author doesn't say which beliefs of his were mocked, and he doesn't say what religion he follows in this post, other than "Christian Mysticism." But in another post[1] he says

> The Gnostic gospels were what made the most sense to me so they formed the basis of my belief. That search never stopped and eventually led me to found Cool Magdalene. A cult led by Miss Kitty Stryker. That project is partly an artistic statement, partly a for-profit religious life coaching company and partly an attempt to build diverse communities of respect and dignity based around family in all of its senses.

I don't know if this is what OP was strawmanning about with his "Santa Claus" quip, but I think it's fair to say "founding a for-profit self-described cult / art project" doesn't have quite the same rich tradition as Christianity or other mainstream religions, and might be more deserving of skepticism.

[1] https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/explaining-google-c73caa0...

You sure about that? They take a lot of it literally. They're selective about which parts because it's in their interest but that means the same book can both be a work of fiction and an historical record. The whole constant fails under light scrutiny, which is why from a young age they push "faith" so hard. Because if you want to believe it hard enough, it's basically true.

At least that was my upbringing. Wild stories told by dead mean trump science, in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary. It's fun stuff.

It depends. Fundamentalists exist and are quite dedidcated to attaining political power, but they're not the only ones. I don't live in the American South so I don't know the true extent of their spread, though.

I feel that everyone should be free to believe what they want. It’s just that if you start talking to me like Jaweh, Zeus, Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster are real, you loose some credibility with me.

I can think of many things on the spot that have the same level of evidence as you have for your $GOD but such a conversation just doesn’t make sense to me. I prefer to spend my time otherwise.

The arrogance displayed in some of these comments is astounding. Never mind the fact that our very existence is evidence of the existence of a Creator.

It can be easily put the other way around: to a believer, if someone starts talking that we came into existence from nothingness, then they lose credibility to the former.

Point is, this is not the way to have a discussion.

I literally laughed out loud at the second sentence.

> I feel that everyone should be free to believe what they want.

Why?

This is a long discussion but perhaps to keep it short, the alternative is “thought police”. But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer?

> This is a long discussion but perhaps to keep it short, the alternative is “thought police”.

Good point, agreed.

> But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer?

Why? :)

I believe people believing whatever they want is harmful. I believe you have no right to believe that the earth is flat. I'd love to know if there's a sensible option somewhere between "anyone is free to believe any untrue thing they want" and "thought police".

I think there is no final arbiter between good and bad, and change (for better of worse) starts at the fringes of society, the law, morality, political correctness. IMHO it is indeed unwise to go full thought police, but it is equally unwise to assign anything 100% true or false. Even Richard Dawkins is not 100% claiming there is no God (6.5/7 he calls it, don't ask someone to prove a negative). We all hold believes that are false. Some very obviously so to others.

So perhaps a Christian could convince me, perhaps even a flat earther. It’s just extremely unlikely and they’d better hit me with a good argument in their first sentence because I heard and dismissed many many arguments before.

But you are right, false believes are not harmless, see [0]. But, much like we can either have good encryption OR backdoors, you either have freedom OR you don’t, nothing may be “in between”, criminals using Signal and people thinking wrong stuff is just something that needs to be dealt with differently. (Because we want private communications and we want freedom.)

But I’m about 10% convinced I’ll have changed my mind on this in 5 years.

[0]: http://whatstheharm.net/

> I'd love to know if there's a sensible option somewhere between "anyone is free to believe any untrue thing they want" and "thought police".

i think that depends on two things - do you believe objective truths exist, and do you believe society should prefer objective truths over falsehoods? Or in a more abstract sense, should freedom of speech simply allow all speech (and by extension all beliefs) without question, or seek to discriminate truth from speech, as best it can?

"thought police" has a specific malevolent implication meant to equate the authoritative control of certain memes (in the original Dawkins sense) to fascistic thought control but does that implication apply to truth, or only minsinformation?

Again - because Hacker News loves this rabbithole - the assumption here is that truths exist and can be discovered. The infinite nihilistic regress of "but who decides what is is and who watches the watchers" is already discarded, if for no other reason than being uninteresting.

Maybe teaching people the earth is round isn't 'thought policing,' and if it is, maybe 'thought policing' isn't always harmful.

The obvious answer is many things now taken as truth were once considered heretical; and also many completely wrong ideas (ether, the humors, etc) still produced useful science and technology.

By all means demand falsifiability of any claims to truth, but don't insist that any one of us or all of us collectively are worthy arbiters of truth.

> Catholics were responsible for several huge discoveries in science and science is absolutely in line with the religion

This comes off as hugely apologetic. I’m not sure whether Copernicus would agree with the sentiment.

Copernicus’ theory of heliocentricity was taught in several Catholic universities until growing Protestant opposition made them stop. The worst the Catholic Church could be accused of is submitting to popular opinion, not being anti-intellectual.

That is not true: Catholic opposition made them stop. Catholics were also the first and most vocal to criticize heliocentricism of its heretical nature.

Some Catholic theologians criticised but the church did not denounce the theory for some time

It is notable that the first critic was the Magister of the Holy Palace, the church’s chief censor.

But wasn’t allowed to call it heresy until 1615, a while after Copernicus died. This isn’t an apologetic that the Catholic Church did the right thing, I’m not even Catholic. I’m trying to highlight that historically Christianity hasn’t been as anti-intellectual as many have been led to believe

> historically Christianity hasn’t been as anti-intellectual as many have been led to believe

That is absolutely not true. The 17th century was marked by the transition to the Age of Enlightenment, which carried an anti-anti-intellectual sentiment and thus found itself at odds with Christianity.

What you've just said doesn't have any tension with what I've said. For almost 17 centuries Christianity was not at odds with intellectualism. The Reformation introduced the clash.

> I’m not sure whether Copernicus would agree with the sentiment.

This shows your ignorance of History more than anything else.

Hmm. That is what I was taught, living in a Protestant country.

And it would seem I was taught just fine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus#Tolosani

> It is worth noting, as Stanford University does, that the Catholic Church had no official stance on Copernican teachings. Pope Clement VII, who died about a decade before Copernicus, was said to have been receptive about the astronomer’s theories. While there was no recorded response from Pope Paul III, one of his advisors intended to condemn the book before dying.

> Phil Lawler, editor of Catholic World News, also says Copernicus was in good standing with the Church when he died. He notes that while heliocentric theory was controversial during Copernicus’ lifetime his work did not cause him any conflict with the Catholic Church.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0219/Copernicus-an...

The Catholic Church did not take action to ban Copernicus's book until long after he was dead (in 1616, more than 60 years after his death). The usual "Copernicus was fighting against the Church" narrative has no evidence at all.

Alright, so are you trying to say it wasn’t Copernicus who got roasted for Copernicus’ writings, but Galileo?

Your equation of Santa Claus with God reveals your prejudice and stereotyping of religious people.

As another commenter has said, many great scientific discoveries over history have been made by Christians. It would be wrong of me to deny that there is an anti-intellectual strain in Christianity but it is not the dominant trend that American media would like to espouse.

Whether you think Christianity is sensible or not, if someone has made it to Google then they must possess at least some level of intelligence. To change your perspective on that based on previously unknown information about that person highlights a prejudice.

> As another commenter has said, many great scientific discoveries over history have been made by Christians.

Given that Christianity was the social norm in Europe and many European colonies for centuries, this statement is nearly equivalent to saying that many great scientific discoveries were made by Europeans. It's true, but only slightly interesting.

I respectfully disagree, given that the topic is antiscientific thinking within christianity. The fact that many contributions were made by that group is evidence regardless of the size of the group.

If this is not intuitive, consider the hypothetical world where no serious scientific contributions were made by christian europeans at all: would we then be free to dismiss that fact as uninteresting as well?

You are right of course, it does suggest at a minimum that Christianity did not at all times and in all places where it held sway entirely suppress scientific progress. And in fact I believe that some Christian societies could be rather conducive to science within certain limits.

My point is that for most of recorded European history, professing Christian beliefs was the default. Straying too far from Christian ways would have required considerable intellectual effort and have been socially and economically costly. So there should be little wonder that many great European scientists were Christians.

But I don't think the historical facts can be used to draw strong conclusions about scientific or anti-scientific thinking in the population of Christians living in modern secular democracies, as the context is very different.

That’s a valid point, I think what should be considered though is the interest that the Catholic Church had in encouraging scientific study

Or controlling it exclusively. Because if you look at the religion as a crowd control institution, that comes pretty naturally. Why fight education if you can just patronize it.

I see it as a group of people who somehow believe what infinity is exactly, and a group that doesn’t. As infinity is far away enough, you can find all sorts of people who believe in god(s) and are at the same time intelligent, because the infinte trap is easy to fall into at any level of intelligence by definition.

To make it clear: sometimes I tend to suspect (not believe) that there are some parts of math that we can’t reach, yet or at all, and it has effects which break or create higher-level symmetries and create everything as an imminent result. Think of a monster group as a cute little example of it. That still doesn’t make me think that I’ll be salvaged into paradise if I don’t mastrubate.

Also, I’m not a historian, but wasn’t Christianity the only way to access education back then? That would explain something.

> Your equation of Santa Claus with God reveals your prejudice and stereotyping of religious people.

The person you're replying to never equated Santa Claus with any kind god. It was just a question. Would you take an adult insisting Santa Claus is real seriously? Do you think people are entitled to their beliefs, whatever they may be?

They didn’t explicitly state it but it’s heavily implied based on the context.

No, I wouldn’t take an adult believing in Santa Claus seriously. They’re entitled to their beliefs and if they do their job well then I have no reason to have an issue with them.

The issue I take is with the equivocation they have made. Believing in Santa Claus and believing in a divine entity are two drastically different things.

In what way are they different? There is no evidence any divine entities are real just like there is no evidence that Santa is real.

There's more evidence for Santa! He brings presents and they always appear, just as we were told ;)

The fact that you and I exist is sufficient evidence that the Creator exists.

And the fact that the creator exist is evidence that the creator’s creator exists, etc, etc.

Or is there a stop? And then what? Your stance creates more questions than it answers while introducing extra, unnecessary parameters.

> The issue I take is with the equivocation they have made. Believing in Santa Claus and believing in a divine entity are two drastically different things.

Why? The only major difference I can see is that Santa Claus is explicitly understood as a made-up story, whereas Gods are believed in by others.

So there's social proof on the side of God, but in terms of tangible evidence they don't seem any different.

The fact that you say “a Devine entity” suggests you are a monotheist. As such you are atheistic wrt many many gods. Do you take all believers in all of them equally seriously?

Moreover, what is stopping me from defining Santa Claus as a Devine being?

> Moreover, what is stopping me from defining Santa Claus as a Devine being?

Show me evidence that Santa Clause sent a message to us.

Show me evidence that your $GOD (presumably Jaweh, but then with his image altered by some additions to your holy book only part of your community accepted, the rest rejected the new prophet) has sent a message, and while you're at it, tell my all the others are not the correct messages.

To be pedantic, Santa sends me messages every year through Coco Cola commercials. But I'm going to assume you mean older messages.

> No, I wouldn’t take an adult believing in Santa Claus seriously.

Why not?

Hah! Because one worked/works at Google they must inherently be smart? If those walls could speak...

No. There are stupid people at Google too. It's a company and the hiring bar is high but it's also very specific. You can be an idiot in most things but still be very good at one. I've know a few. At Google.

There have also been hires that were "good demographics." (That's a quote from one of my senior leadership at the time I worked there.) Sometimes you can be rejected by all the interviewers and still make it.

For those who don't believe in religious doctrine, it is the same as believing in fairy tails. They come with equivalent amounts of proof and stand up to the same level of scrutiny.

The very fact that you're implying that being smart and believing in God are somehow contradictory reeks of condescension. Not to mention that you're grouping all religious doctrine for all religions into a "fairy tale" bucket shows that you did not spend time or effort understanding at least the existing major religions on Earth.

Don't leave us hanging like that. Which major religions do you personally consider not to be a fairy tale? Please also include, for each such religion, if you happen to believe in it, and whether it was the religion you grew up with (if applicable).

It's likely that a minority of Christians take everything in the Bible literally and believe that it trumps science. I think you are being a bit disengenuous.

I don’t think you have justification for calling the argument “disingenuous”. Seems like accusations of people being disingenuous is the go-to accusation on HN and I’m tired of it.

Well, if it's not disingenuous, then the commenter is very much out of touch with reality. Pick your poison.

I can’t follow your line of reasoning here. Seems like you’re saying that the comment is so absurd and fantastical that the author is either “out of touch with reality” or the author doesn’t believe it themselves… but I don’t know what line of reasoning you used to come to that conclusion. The conclusion is definitely not obvious to me.

Can you prove the Big Bang occurred? If so, can you prove that nothing preceded a Big Bang?

If you are as rational as you arrogantly imply, then the obvious answers to these are no.

Are you equally appalled when you come across average people talking about these theories as if they are facts? I wonder.

Big Bang is the best available explanation of observed facts.

This doesn't mean it's the right one, but other explanations are inferior. Especially those provided by religions.

The superiority to which you refer is questionable. If the goal of these explanations is to prove the origin of the universe in some kind of mathematical sense, they all fail. They all belong to the same category.

The inferior tier is one where an explanation can be proven false with the limited tools of the 2022 version of humanity. Perhaps some religions' explanations fall into this category, but not all.

Which religions?

The major monotheistic religions state that God created and initiated our universe, which does not contradict that a Big Bang happened.

It's just that stating "God created the universe." immediately leads to the question "Who created God?". And if you answer "God always was.", then you can also say "The Universe always was." (And 'it bounces between expansion/contraction' or 'new Big Bangs occur inside this Universe al ultra low probability according to Quantum Mechanics', or whatever.)

In any case, saying "The Universe always was." or "Time did not exist before the Universe so 'before' is only a term that makes sense inside the Universe, after its creation, and we cannot fathom what is beyond these limits.", is a more satisfying stance for looking at the Universe than first requiring a seemingly infinitely complex being that then created this universe to look like the being is not even required, according to Occam's razor. And it leaves some nice things to be discovered for us too.

I mean, why would I imagine a god building the Himalayas when I have plate tectonics to explain it? Plate tectonics explain it well, and it explains other phenomena, and we can experimentally verify the process. The god hypothesis just leads to infinity more questions, and as such is scientifically unsatisfying.

The god hypothesis generates a huge amount of un-testable hypotheses and suggests that we can simply give up our search for explanations whenever we can use god to explain things. Religion as such demotivates scientific inquiry, and I think it is not far fetched to assume that that was its original intention. Just read some Yuval Noah Harari, we began the scientific revolution when we no longer accepted what the priests told us.

In short, we indeed have no need for the god hypothesis. At least we never have so far, it has never been the simplest explanation for phenomena. God is simply placed into gaps in our knowledge until we fill the gaps (and answer questions), like: "Why lightning?" or "An Eye can never evolve [is irreducibly complex]." or "Why is earth at the center of the universe?". I therefor prefer to extrapolate the solved to the unsolved and believe that questions like "What is consciousness exactly?" and "Can a machine be conscious as we can be?" will also be answerable without invoking any god.

> It's just that stating "God created the universe." immediately leads to the question "Who created God?"

Simple answer: this is a logically contradictory question to ask. It's basically the same as saying: someone baked this piece of bread, then, who baked the baker?

The universe did not always exist, and provably so. The Creator exists outside the realm of His creation, and as such, our laws do not apply to Him.

The very fact that we're having this discussion is proof that God, The Creator, exists.

Secondly, God has sent us many messengers, and provably so. This means that "we have no need for God" assumption is meaningless.

"Simple answer: this is a logically contradictory question to ask. It's basically the same as saying: someone baked this piece of bread, then, who baked the baker?"

The baker evolved through mutation and natural selection. You envoke an answer outside the provable realm. By doing that you release all bounds. There is no limit to what you can place in that realm.

"The universe did not always exist, and provably so."

Then you are not agreeing with the best of our combined knowledge in knowing for a fact what happened at the very start of the Big Bang? I though we were uncertain up until 10^-38 seconds or so. Did the Big Bang occur in this universe or did it form the Universe? I don't know. Does anyone at this point? Is there any outcome that you would consider an argument against a god? I would not accept the prove of the universe not always existing as proof FOR a god anyway.

"The very fact that we're having this discussion is proof that God, The Creator, exists."

When I look at our DNA, and compare it to every other organism on earth, I see a tree of life, dependencies, common ancestors between species. No proof that a creator exists. I any case, simply stating that anything is proof a creator exist is a bit simplistic right?

"God has sent us many messengers, and provably so."

Could you point me to this proof? Is it a reproducible experiment? Can I do said experiment at home and come to appreciate your point of view?

Could you suggest any experiment that could help me accept that there is a god?

> Big Bang is the best available explanation of observed facts.

Best available is not proof. The sun rotating around the Earth was also the best explanation for a long time in Human history. Traditional physics theory was the best until we started to observe things at the atomic level. Certitudes in Science don't age well, and should teach humility more than absurd dogma.

Big bang has a lot more supporting evidence than a magical seven-day wishing-into-existence spree 6400 years ago. Closer to home, it makes a lot more sense that animals lived, died and were fossilized over millions of years than that they were added as hidden sculpture during the creation. Come on. And that particular god is very good at being useless since the Enlightenment.

One thing religions don't do is give up their certitudes in the face of evidence. Or prove useful to human existence. The Abrahamic God is a father who shot his wad, abandoned the child, but still demands tribute.

You're presenting a false dichotomy. Islam doesn't say that the world is 6,400 years old, and as far as I'm aware, neither do most followers of Judaism and Christianity believe in that either.

> One thing religions don't do is give up their certitudes in the face of evidence

Which religions? All of them? Did you study each and every one in detail to be able to make such a claim?

> Or prove useful to human existence

Same question.

> abandoned the child

According to Christianity, but not to Islam or Judaism.

A very common fallacy I see by atheists or secularists when these discussions come up is how they group all belief and faith systems into one thing called "religion", then cast the baby out with the bathwater so to speak, not realizing how easily falsifiable some of their claims are, or how they generalize across that which must not be generalized. You don't have to be an expert about "religions", but don't pretend you're one by the implications you're making.

I disagree with the point about giving up certitudes. Really there are two sorts of religious sects.

1. Politically useful sects which demand followers and everyone else accept certitudes based on pure authority.

2. Politically useless to troublesome sects that don't.

The overton window is set such that the second group can't be acknowledged.

And that evidence is the state of the cosmos today?

Are you a software developer? Imagine that, for testing purposes, you want to test a particular state T in a simulation app that you believe can only occur organically after a large period of time.

Do you start the test simulation at a hypothetical t0 and wait to reach the desired state? Or do you simply bootstrap the simulation so that it starts in state T.

Well, you do the latter of course. So do the events at t0 need to occur for you to observe state T?

And I can verify the software to some degree there, or (more usually) find the bugs. So this is the bug-free simulation? It's easier to run the simulation and see what happens, so much state to initialize.

Without evidence, that's why it's called faith. There are thousands of unfalsifiable possible starting points, the Judeo-Christian one is laughable.

> Without evidence, that's why it's called faith

No one said faith should be based on blind belief. You can most certainly have faith based in evidence. It's not a dichotomy.

There are many religions, and across them they are mutually incompatible. Which ones have evidence for themselves that demonstrates another is false?

Just because there are many mutually exclusive religions, does not imply that none of them are correct. Look up genetic fallacy.

The "Abrahamic" faiths have demonstrated themselves, but only one remains uncorrupted: Islam. You can check out provingislam.com for some hard proofs.

Which is correct, Sunni or Shi'ite?

I have no desire to discuss particular religions. As I said elsewhere, some religions provide explanations which are provably false.

Is your last sentence applicable to religion?

I think it applies to humanity as a whole. There's a certain obsession with a false sense of control.

Uh yes on the first one. The Big Bang definitely happened and all the details of the study of the CMBR (for one thing -- there's many others like the Lyman Alpha Forest) show that it did.

The universe was once much, much smaller and the density was higher and the temperature was a plasma.

You can try to hide being "did you actually see it happen?" kind of arguments, but there's a massive amount of actual evidence behind that theory. It is more arrogant to reject the past 100 years of work on cosmology by thousands of scientists.

What happened before the Big Bang, and who or what initiated it?

That question isn't relevant to my life.

Of course it is, because of the implications that come out of it.

Either it came out of nothing (a logically absurd claim), in which case nothing really matters.

Or, it was initiated by an entity, The Creator, in which case you'd want to know what He has to say about how we conduct our lives and what comes next.

You're making a hell of a lot of assumptions. There's no evidence of a creator, no evidence the creator is a "He" and no evidence that it is remotely human with human concerns and that it cares about what we do one way or the other, or that it has any involvement after creation. You're projecting a creator that looks and thinks like you with absolutely zero evidence, which is alternatively your own lack of imagination or too much imagination depending on how you slice it. And we can go around and around on this argument, which after 50 years on this planet I can reassure you that I've seen it before. Even if I grant you a Creator (which I don't, we can always assume an infinite multiverse instead or just that cosmology allows for a causeless effect) then there's nothing that falls out of that other than the existence of a Creator. You then wind up with something like Spinoza/Einstein's God or the Prime Mover that agnostics like to consider. There's no evidence of any of it though.

Let's say you take the big bang as a historical fact. Something created the big bang. By definition, the "thing" that created it is a creator. We cannot say whether this creator is a sentient being that has vastly more intelligence than any human, but we can say that the possibility seems to make some people very uncomfortable.

The evidence of The Creator is your very existence.

He is just how we are able to articulate in our language. We are limited, and He chose to reveal Himself using He, so who are we to question?

> or that it has any involvement after creation

Provably false.

We have hard evidence for our belief and faith. Here's a good starting point: www.provingislam.com

Yeah you're just getting into word salad now, later.

As a casual philosopher, it seems like the big bang theory as the origin of everything falls apart under a trivial question. To you, such a discrepancy may be "irrelevant" to your life, but you're in the minority. The vast majority of people in this world are religious for a reason. They want to understand the bigger picture, and their curiosity does not stop when their finite logical facilities do.

It doesn't "fall apart", it just doesn't have any answer for what came before it.

That doesn't disprove what it can prove. We know the universe used to be very hot and dense and expanded and cooled.

What I don't buy is that because we don't understand something -- like what came before the big bang -- that it necessarily implies the existence of some old white bearded cishet white male who cares about our day to day lives.

I'm perfectly happy with having absolute uncertainty about what came before the big bang. There doesn't need to be any explanation, and there certainly doesn't need to be a religious explanation.

> some old white bearded cishet white male

And there's the straw man. I don't think anyone is arguing for the existence of such.

It seems you have some misguided (and caricaturic) presumptions, but those should not blur your thinking

The fact that we exist necessarily implies a Creator. Just because you're happy putting your head in the sand does not mean that reality will disappear when you do.

Isn't it called the big bang theory, not the big bang fact? How many reputable scientists can you cite that would publicly declare the big bang as a fact rather than a theory?

I wonder if the person to whom I was originally responding finds your dogmatism as objectionable as dogmatism of a traditionally religious nature.

Ah, that old silly word game - haven't actually seen it in awhile. The definition is available if you'd care to read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

Science also refers to the theory of gravity, which I would suspect we can agree exists.

Let's cast aside for a moment that unlike gravity, the big bang, if it occurred, is impossible for a human to witness first hand.

The understanding of gravity had a tectonic shift about a century ago. Imagine if scientists declared that Newton's model of gravity was the final word, and that it was heretical to question it. These things are called theories, not facts, for a reason.

Such things happen all the time in the history of science. As another example, think about the phrase "subatomic particle" and the sequence of mistakes that must have occurred to arrive at such wording.

Paradoxically, instead of the history of science inspiring humility, it seems to encourage arrogance among some. Is the ego a friend or enemy of scientific advancement?

No one is trying to prove that nothing happened before the big bang. What may or may not have happened before (or even whether there was a before) is unknown. The big bang is as far as we can extrapolate cosmology backwards in time.

Comparing one’s religious beliefs with believing in the existence of Santa Clause misses the point completely and it validates what the author of the article is saying, i.e. that contempt for religion and, in the end, religious discrimination, is widespread in tech circles. (if it matters I’m an atheist myself)

Contempt for all religion is only pushing christian values further. Polytheistic religions incorporated every new Gods, as they all could very well exist. Then a new religion appeared and decided only one god existed and other gods did not. Athon and his clergy then died with the pharaoh pushing him, but around the same time, a new religion appeared in the middle east, led by a certain Moses(weirdly, an Egyptian name given to those destined to a clerical life)(probably an Athon priest imho, but i could be wrong).

  Lot of stuff happens, it appears that divine right+monotheism is better than polytheism for population control (reason why and how Islamic faith spread amongst the ruling class of adjacent countries).

Contempt for all religions but the one from the book, and contempt for all religions are not really different. I just decided that .1% is a rounding error when deciding gods existence. I do respect polytheism more.

Monotheism existed before polytheism.

The fact that monotheism "is better than polytheism for population control" is a completely orthogonal topic to the truth of the monotheistic claim. This in fact, is a logical fallacy called the genetic fallacy.

Your last statement is also a genetic fallacy.

No. First religions were ancestor's cult, those are polytheism. But even if you don't count them, this is patently false.

The oldest recorded religion is hinduism. Polytheistic. The second oldest is zoroastrism and is duotheistic. The first monotheistic religion is athenism, based of the egyptian polytheistic faith, then Judaism, which probably is a mix of athenism (in the rites) and a mix of caanism and zoroastrism in the myth (lucifer story especially).

My point wasn't that monotheism is false because its better for population control, my point was it was adopted against polytheist faith and ancestor's cults faith across the word by the local ruling class because it was better at population control. I'm saying nothing about the truth of this particular faith

And i don't understand why my last statement is a genetic fallacy. I find people believing in 100% of the gods (or a deist) more interesting than those believing in one specific god.

In one sense I see why it's insulting, but isn't Santa Claus basically a benevolent god?

Not when he gives a lump of coal to the bad kids.

What a strawman argument and moderately offensive metaphor

> Santa Claus is real.

I'm going on a tangent here but I will make a bold statement: I think one unfortunate side effect of the sciences, is the acceleration of the demise of other domains of humans knowledge, specifically philosophy.

After all, why bother reading the works of Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther or Dietrich Bonhoeffer and compare their arguments against the likes of Nietzsche, Kant and Jean Paul Sartre when we know about Evolution ? Those old ancient texts and discussions are silly and passe.. It is clear that these poor uneducated people were busy arguing over the existence of Santa Clause.

The 21st century has regrettably produced some of the most illiterate minds in _this_ area. We have incredibly bright people who can build complex systems, think logically and excel at sciences, yet they fail at expanding their minds slightly above the materialistic universe; This is where arts, philosophy and theology reside. We call it the realm of transcendence.

The side effect of such phenomena is that bleeds into today's thought process and prevents nuanced discussions regarding any topic (whether it's equality, religion, freedom, justice,..). We have completely forgotten how to form coherent arguments and this thread itself is a great example; The basis of modern discussions boils down to: I can shout the loudest, therefore I am right. The lack of humility is rampant, especially on social media and everything is black and white.

I don't care if you are an Atheist, a Theist, an Agnostic or a Marxist, but if you have the urge to start a discussion with "You think Santa Clause is real", I plead you to think twice before posting it and go read any pages of Francis Shaffer or Soren Kierkeggard and then come here and assert that these people had completely surrendered all thought and reason.

The author is trying their best to be the odd one out. A few coversation topics will always be controversial when hanging out with your coworkers, religion being one of the leading examples. The question is why would you even want to bring it up unless you're looking for someone to argue with.

I would see a big red flag on the person if they would start discussing religion even at non-work settings, unless I know that person really well. (And if the person knows me very well, I don't think they will bother...)

Someone having religious beliefs does not give them right to rude with their colleagues, while his desire to hold certain religious beliefs respected and accommodated where appropriate (which would be discrimination if not) that does not mean people around him need to respect what he believe.

From my past encounters with religious people, I can't help notice there's mix up on this.

It is weirdly common for people to conflate running into others who disagree with or aren’t interested in them with authoritarian suppression. You even see people going on television to talk about how they have been silenced.

Because it's largely impossible to find out whether people believe nonsense or just pretend to, one should where possible avoid needing to know. If you can set things up so that the consequences for Jim killed the puppy plus either "Jim believes God told him to kill the puppy" or "Jim pretended God told him to kill the puppy" are roughly identical you needn't waste your time trying to see inside Jim's mind.

This is trickier with retributional justice. If you think your justice system's goal is to punish wrong doing it's difficult to argue that it doesn't matter what Jim really believed, as if he really believed God was telling him to kill the puppy how can that be wrong?

Im sorry what are we taking about? I think I’ve gotten lost, or maybe your reply was meant for another thread?

Sorry, to me it's pretty obvious that most of these people don't really believe they were silenced when they're on TV shouting about it. But I can't prove that, so, fine, maybe they believe this, we should treat both the false belief and the lying about it the same way.

Got it, thanks!

Okay, so how would you consider the alternative when someone is expressing their opinion on other topics like: “Do you really like dating people of the same sex? Sorry that’s the kind of thing I associate with someone who does not have any mental issues as yourself”.

I am not advocating if any of them are good or bad (personally I avoid both), but we should really have the same standards when it comes to the famed “free speech”.

All of these hypothetical conversations are great reasons why sex, politics, and religion should never be discussed in the workplace. Somebody's feelings are going to get hurt.

False equivalence. Religion is a personal choice. Sexual orientation isn't.

Religion has been a protected class for the longest time.

I don't understand how that's relevant. The comment I replied to was arguing about applying the same standards in free speech, whereas "protected class" refers to employment discrimination.

Religion is not a personal choice? Is your philosophical stance a personal choice?

Yes, it is. My philosophical stance has been changing and evolving constantly over these 40+ years that I have been alive. Unlike my race or my sexuality, it's not part of who I am, it's part of who I choose to be.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that anyone who feels like they have no control over their religion -- the same way they have no control over which color of skin they were born with -- should seek help because they're being abused by someone.

But bringing up your sexuality in the workplace is a personal choice.

"So you think religion is a personal choice and sexual orientation isn't? Sorry, I cannot hang out with misguided people such as yourself!"

I can literally take anything you say and find any excuse to disassociate myself from you. The problem is when people don't talk to each other and it's worse when they disassociate based on topics they likely have no idea about.

Is it a personal choice though? If in the morning I decide between wearing a blue shirt or a red shirt, that's arguably a matter of personal choice, but deciding to believe in God is as much a 'personal choice' as deciding to believe in gravity or deciding to believe in homeopathy.

It’s reasonable to equate them. Both are protected classes.

Yes, it's reasonable to equate them in the context of employment discrimination. That's what "protected class" protects from.

Isn’t that the context here?

I grew up in the Southern Baptist church. These people have a serious persecution complex - in fact, they want to be persecuted because that makes them most like Jesus!

The guy feels "persecuted" because Google hasn't opened an office in Louisiana? Google hasn't opened offices in most states! Why haven't they opened offices in Louisiana? Who knows? Does that mean Google hates the South? Well, if so then why do they have offices in Atlanta? Last I checked, Atlanta is still in the US South!

Like I said, this guy is fulfilling his religious need to feel persecuted and grasping at nonsense to justify their persecution complex.

You are right, he did not state actions taken against him based on his beliefs so it isn't employer discrimination.

However, the fact that this thread is flagged speaks volumes. In the global west in general there is an unhealthy extremisim between being anti-religious or a force-it-down-your-throat extrimist.

An argument could be made that lack of education about religious tolerance has resulted in a hostile workspace against religious people in companies with very secular workers and against people who don't have a religion at very religious workspaces.

The sword cuts both ways and it is a shame even mention of a discussion about tolerance is met with such hostility. You don't have to take a person's belief seriously in order to be respectful or tolerant of them, especially in the work place.

That said, I have no reason to believe OPs claims are correct.

It is discrimination, and I say that as an atheist. Imagine asking a devout Hindu: “you really don’t eat beef? How crazy is that? Do you know how good it tastes?” or questioning a devout Hebrew about he not doing any work on Shabbat.

Not eating beef isn't something factually incorrect though, that's just a matter of personal preference.

What is factually incorrect then as far as this discussion goes?

God's existence

Fascinating - to me, a thoroughly irreligious person, I can’t possibly imagine being that fucking rude to someone. The idea that you think it’s “very polite and restrained” is amazing.

It surely is quite aggressive. But the author qualifies it with "might even go so far as to say", so it seems like it's the absolute worst thing it was said to him. I've heard worse?

You missed the part where the OP is going around Google talking about how religious he is when nobody asked.

If you believe in something nonsensical, people will let it slide. If you believe in something nonsensical and are being obnoxious about it, you will be insulted and you will deserve it.

> It also sounds like they express their opinion very politely and in a restrained

How is an insult restrained? The reactions are just disrespectful, and I can understand why someone could feel it as some kind of discrimination. Just switch Religion with your preferred technology, hobby or even some political topic, and think about how you would take such reactions, if they come up too often.

> Having opinions and saying them is a free speech, a cherrised cornerstone of the American culture.

Free Speech should also come with respect and manners.

Dissociating yourself from people based on their beliefs is new thing and it's wreaking havoc. The colleague in question did not even ask any details about author's faith and what was told was enough for him to disassociate. In this case the author was treated like lower caste Indian.

The proper negative response would be in my opinion "I don't like discussing religion, can we keep it outside of the conversation?"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com