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Comment by kaba0 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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