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Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

As a Catholic who was studying to be a priest a long time ago (but that didn't end up happening), I've learned that in most tech circles, just mentioning anything even tangential to religion is a quick way to get shunned, or at minimum turn a conversation pretty awkward.

Therefore unless explicitly asked or warranted, it rarely is mentioned.

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I work at a Big Tech company (not necessarily a FANG though) and there's a weekly Rosary zoom session that the local Catholic group runs. It's really wholesome and fun! You just have to sort of keep your head down long enough, and then you'll realize there's actually a lot of us out there. The death of Religion for millennials has been greatly exaggerated.

Depressing though very depressing and concerning.

Normally modern companies are also sometimes a safe space for all the discrimination happening because of religion.

Like the campus of Aramco were you can be more lax. Or were homophobia is not tolerated etc.

COVID also showed how problematic it is if people just accept some believe system without expecting any logic.

If people don't question basic and stupid religios beliefs they also tend not to question real issues in society.

I think anyone still a catholic after all of the news stories about priests either has fully questioned their religion and come to their own conclusions or has decided to never question their religion at all.

The rampant sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests is a function of a couple things, but chiefly among them was the cultural moment and who, exactly, was entering Seminary at that time. You can trace back the overwhelming majority of abusers to specific cohorts. Not trying to get conspiratorial about it, it’s just a fact that this was something boomer priests did and they all joined the Church during the sexual revolution in the 1970s.

Not really sure I have a point other than to say modern Catholics are quite aware of what people think about the Church and waffle between being dismissive (because critics genuinely don’t understand it) or reactionary.

Well, personally, I'm not concerned as much about the actual low level priests. You'll get a few bad guys no matter what you're doing in an organization that big. It's the shuffling them around after being caught and not going to the police when they knew. If the middle and the top also have the bad guys you have to start questioning what the organization is really about. And I struggle to believe that it's just one generation of priests that was bad while all the other ones were perfect celibates, to be honest. This was just the generation that ran into media that couldn't be silenced.

I have a very different experience. In all tech companies I worked at (Bay Area) there were very many Indian immigrants, most of whom were religious. In fact, I have never met an atheist from India.

We would frequently discuss religion, philosophy, religious traditions - especially after work or on business trips.

I must add that I am an atheist, which was never an obstacle to our discussions.

Now you have. Lol

Oh haha, that's great! Nice to meet you! I am curious... are you a first generation atheist or were brought up in a non-religious environment?

Now you have met another one. Although I am a migrant in Europe and not in US.

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