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Comment by nodata | Hacker News Reader

> The religious people were right all along. Given all this uncertainty and almost pointless nature of existence, the only rational course of action is to creatively speculate on what values you want for your life and why.

And it was going so well. The first sentence has no relation at all to the second.

Knowing you have a finite life doesn't make you do any less good, I'd argue it does the opposite. Religious or not, you can consider your values. sigh

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I was a little dismayed at that point too - but I think the rest of the paragraph clarifies the point well. I think he's talking about a sincere spiritual journey, not "religious people" as commonly encountered. I'm an atheist, but I also think there's a natural "spiritual" instinct that has to do with artfulness, reflection, and transcendence (eg. the attempt to transcend your view of the world as a single individual)

I think you've missed the point. "The religious people were right" refers to each individual having to make value decisions based on incomplete information, not conformity to an external value system. We completely agree.

I figured people would misread that section. I rewrote a couple of times, but in all honesty people see the word "religion" and then the conversation is over, as you have demonstrated. The problem is that the driver of religion -- creatively speculating on the unknown -- is a completely different thing than the application of these common myths in some kind of social structure. But the word has both meanings.

Sorry about that. I'll think about how to word it better.

EDIT: Reworded it a bit to try to clear it up.

I don't think it is poorly worded, though this sentence is a bit clumsy:

The existentialists argue that any formal, self-consistent religious structure is necessarily broken -- God is dead -- not that the essence of religion, finding meaning by artistically living an authentic life, doesn't work.

That cuts to the chase, but due to its structure, it can be easy to misread.

[Edit: grammar]

So in what sense is your tagline "The religious people were right all along." correct? Certainly not making decisions based on incomplete information.

"creatively speculating on the unknown" - sounds more like philosophy than religion to me.

"unquestioningly believing what you've been told" - how about that?

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