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Comment by highwaylights | Hacker News Reader

To follow your argument here, perhaps the person in question believes the Pale Blue Dot to be more meaningful than a legal document. I certainly do - it’s a wonderful book that absolutely captures Carl Sagan’s sense of wonder for the universe, which to me seems like exactly what you should want from a NASA director.

Most importantly, it also sends a strong message to the staff within NASA about how the new director views them and their work given how political appointments have become.

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I mean, yes, it is a very impactful book; I enjoyed it very much.

What I'm meaning, though, is that if you were to go against your duty as the head of NASA, Carl Sagan isn't going to rise from the grave and smite you for your transgression. Whereas I believe that is exactly the point of swearing over a bible.

I'm not meaning to say it's meaningless to swear over an important book (or that it doesn't make some kind of point), rather that an important element of what it means to swear over a religious text is lost. The whole point of rationalism is that the universe isn't sentient and won't and cannot judge your actions.

An oath is a promise to someone that you will act for the greater good, and you do so with your hand over a representation of who will witness and judge you for that.

I don't really know if I'm trying to say anything in particular. It's just some thoughts I had when reading.

> if you were to go against your duty as the head of NASA, Carl Sagan isn't going to rise from the grave and smite you for your transgression.

It's like swearing something 'on your mother's grave'. That's not something done because zombie mothers will rise up to enforce anything. It's supposed to signify that you hold great reverence for your mother and that your conviction is as strong as that respect. Swearing on the grave of your mother and lying would be dishonoring her and betraying the reverence you supposedly held. Swearing on Carl Sagan's book is expressing that the new director has great respect for Sagan (or at least that particular work) and that she'll treat her oath with the same level of respect. I think it's pretty appropriate given the role.

> That's not something done because zombie mothers will rise up to enforce anything.

This was done in cultures where people really believed their deceased ancestors were watching them and judging their every move, and that in the future they’d either see their ancestors in paradise, or they wouldn’t.

We just kept doing it long after those beliefs became uncool, like a lot of other vestiges of our religious past.

I wouldn't mind Carl Sagan judging my every move. Maybe I'll imagine this from now on.

She

Corrected! thanks!

That’s awfully presumptuous, don’t you think?

> It's like swearing something 'on your mother's grave'.

But they don’t swear people in over their mothers grave. If they did I hope everyone would agree that it’s meaningless, unless that person actually believed in some power of his dead mother.

People definitely do not agree with what you’re saying. Not everyone thinks that swearing an oath on something is only meaningful if that thing has some kind of power.

To elaborate on this, if I swear on my mother's grave, I'm pinning my respect for the oath to my respect for my dead mother. If I violate the oath, I'm also violating something I consider sacred. My mother never has to find out for me to feel the consequences.

Probably this doesn't work on everybody. Even if it only works on 5%, it's essentially free so why not?

Yes, and I think if we follow that scenario further, we can imagine ways it would play out. “Alice swore an oath on her mother’s grave, and then violated that oath? Wow, Alice really can’t be trusted.”

The oath is a symbolic ritual that communicates something to other people around you.

I could give you my word as a Spaniard?

> you do so with your hand over a representation of who will witness and judge you for that

The premise is flawed.

I don’t believe that there is any being who ‘will witness and judge me’.

That is, other than my peers. Who are not supernatural. My using a Sagan book is therefore nothing more than symbolism: here’s who I am. Here’s what I represent. If you see this and think, ‘hell yeah!’, then you are in the cohort whose approval I seek; you are one of those to whom I give my promise to do right.

But I know it’s only symbolism. Nothing actually happens. Whereas those who solemnly swear on the bible believe that they will literally be judged by god and sent to heaven or hell as a result.

For some reason this seems really hard for people to accept: That religious people actually think there are consequences for their choices, even if no human being ever knows.

The thing about religious people is, even if they lose their religion, they don't suddenly start committing all the wanton acts that when they were religious they insisted they only didn't do because fear of God was holding them back.

Swearing an oath is similar. You're not more or less trustworthy simply for being religious; it's just that, it you're religious, you think you are (but actually it's just based on internal factors of who you actually are and how you behave).

I’m an atheist, and I believe that there are consequences to my choices, even if no human ever knows. Maybe I don’t understand what you are trying to say.

There's always consequences for your action, regardless of anyone's watching you.

"Religious" people love using that to trick religious people.

God is not going to smite you for oath-breaking either though. What matters is that you keep your promise to (in this case) society, not whether you swear it on any book in particular. If the law requires the promise to be sworn over a book because the lawmakers at the time were religionists, you might as well choose a book you think represents your values.

Well no, God apparently hasn't done that since the Old Testament, but some Christians certainly do believe that breaking an oath you swore on the Bible will have certain repercussions for you in the afterlife...

And apparently the new NASA director is not a Christian, so what that group believes is not so relevant to this discussion.

I don’t think you’re following the argument, which is that swearing an oath over something like Sagans book doesn’t mean as much because the person making the oath doesn’t believe Sagan will hold them accountable.

I follow the argument just fine, but it's fallacious. You should keep your word because it is the right thing to do, not because some invisible boogeyman will toss you into hellfire if you don't. If someone can't be motivated to serve the public good without the background threat of eternal damnation, perhaps they are not mature enough yet to be appointed director of NASA.

But the person swearing the oath doesn't believe in gods, so swearing on any of them will mean much less to them.

If the only reason to do it is because the people around them will hold their oath in higher regard - shouldn't they swear on a stack of all religious texts, and on all gods?

What I keep thinking of following this is from Matthew 5:

> Again, you have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill your vows to the Lord.’ 34But I tell you not to swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35or by the earth, for it is His footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King...

Implying that even in a religious context, one might swear on "one's mother's grave"in the metaphorical sense. So then I think there must be a natural and historical reverence to oaths in general, which sends my mind down more Neil Gaiman-ish paths. I would bet that the significance of an Oath is older than every extant religion.

The point is there is a belief in a consequence for lying to God. Whether or not there is an actual consequence is irrelevant.

Furthermore, you can’t prove what happens after you die. I mean you may very well be right, but it’s just your personal belief.

Based on my interpretation of the Pale Blue Dot someone swearing to it would most likely be trying to convey a belief in consequences that occur regardless of the existence of a supreme being.

That is a belief in personal responsibility not motivated by fear of punishment by a supreme being.

This quote from Sagan convey's that meaning among others IMO:

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Also see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_o...

Where fear of gods punishement would be at the lowest level.

I have way more faith in the oath made to a real principle than a made up one. I haven't read the book in question but am familiar with the picture with the same name and Sagan's works. Someone that chooses to make an oath to something that is essentially meaningless except for itself is in my opinion way less likely to break that oath.

Can you give an example of a principle that isn’t made up?

I suppose that's an inaccurate choice of words. I meant to juxtapose something meaningful to someone in stead of the Skygod that the Christians pretend to worship on Sundays.

Please don’t denigrate others’ faith here.

I'm saying it's mostly performative. I can't denigrate something that actually doesn't exist.

You said, “the Skygod that the Christians pretend to worship on Sundays”. This comment is uncivil and does not belong here. That behavior is not acceptable and please do not behave this way in the future.

To be clear, the comment denigrates Christians, by (among other things) saying that they pretend to worship.

If you don't call out the hypocrites, how would they ever know they are wrong? Did I cast them in a negative light? Yes. Do they ever read that book of theirs? No.

Once in a while you see a shining example of compassion and generosity born from church activities like this one: https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1645867657697153046

That's the true Christian faith at work. Sadly it's the exception.

Your comment seems to be based on some kind of misconception about what religion is. Like, you seem to base your comments on the idea that the Christian bible is the sole foundation for Christian beliefs and practices. There are two problems with that—it’s not true in the first place, and even if it were true, it is not straightforward to interpret the bible.

If you are unwilling to put in the effort to learn what Christianity is, then you should also be unwilling to make comments about whether people are practicing it correctly.

Born raised and confirmed in Lutheran Christianity. Go project on someone else.

I’m responding to your comment, which seems to be based on misconceptions. If you have a working understanding of what religion is, it is not reflected in your comment. Or maybe I misunderstand the comment—you could elaborate what you mean.

I don’t think people who are raised Christianity are taught what Christianity is, so it doesn’t surprise me that you’re born, raised, & confirmed. People who are born and raised Christian are generally taught how to practice Christianity, and that instruction is tailored to their specific sect. They are not (typically) taught what Christianity is, especially other sects, because it is not really relevant to the practice of Christianity (this is not a judgment, I think it’s fine). I would expect people to learn what Christianity is if they went to seminary (depending, some seminaries don’t) or if they studied religion in college.

It is only through a misconception of religion that the accusation of pretense really stands. “These people aren’t really Christians, they are just pretending” is an old chestnut that has started enough wars; it is long past time to disabuse people of the misunderstandings that lead to those accusations in the first place.

I refuse to give any "believer" the benefit of the doubt. I assume they are socially Christian with no real practice or devotion from the getgo. To convince me of anything else they have to have works. There's a reason for the caricature comics have been lambasting for decades. It's only funny cause it's true.

You’re conflating “these Christians are behaving poorly (or in ways I disagree with)” with “these Christians are only pretending to worship God.” That’s the foundation on which you build a basis for sectarian violence, which is why I’m arguing here.

You can see Christians who are behaving the wrong way, by your judgment, without accusing them of acting unfaithfully.

The "behaving poorly in ways I disagree with" is them demanding legislation and judicial outcomes that hamper the way others want to live their lives. I am done with showing this group any sort of decorum.

Yeah, you’ve made it clear that you’re not interested in showing these people decorum, perhaps because you’ve decided that they don’t deserve decorum, or something like that. People are going to keep calling you out for being uncivil when you act like that; explaining your viewpoint is not going to help.

Read about the paradox of tolerating intolerance.

If they're only pretending to believe, they already know they're wrong.

If you sincerely do just want to communicate this to them, I recommend using "God" instead of "Skygod". It doesn't change the message and it makes it sound more like you're speaking in good faith.

You wrongfully assume I want to have any sort of conversation with the converts. The only conversation I want to have with them is to tell them to stay bloody clear of politics. If you want to have rules that govern your life, I'm perfectly fine with that up to where they want legislation that affects the freedom of other people. It seems too much of late that Evangelicals took The Handmaid's Tale as an instruction manual instead of a dystopic vision.

I didn't assume that you wanted to have a conversation with religious people; you said so and I believed you.

>If you don't call out the hypocrites, how would they ever know they are wrong?

If you're not actually trying to convince them they're wrong, you can't use that to justify uncivility.

I get that being polite is less important than preventing someone from leveraging the government to restrict others' freedoms. But if everyone defects from social norms, we'll be in the exact same place on those issues while being collectively worse off.

I can't convince them. Their belief precludes any sort of reason to pierce the veil.

Ah yes, those famously utopian atheistic societies… like Soviet Russia and Mao’s China. Good thing they kept Christianity bloody clear of politics or things might have gotten ugly!

Neither of those are utopian atheistic societies. They were authoritarian hellholes that weren't even socialist in nature.

If you don't believe in God, there is no difference between the Bible and any other book. You then choose whatever you value.

But do believe that the book you value will hold you accountable for breaking the oath?

That’s the point - that a non religious oath is emptier gesture because you don’t expect the thing you’re swearing on to hold you accountable.

The point is not that she shouldn’t be able to swear on Sagans book. Or that it doesn’t have meaning to her. Just that there are inherently religious roots to these oaths and when you remove them the oath makes less sense.

Antithesis: Turning it around, one could say that religious people are demonstrably either delusional or frauds, so their oaths mean nothing.

Synthesis: Oaths mean nothing to anyone but the oathtaker, and you can't magically wish someone into an unbreakable bond.

I believe religious people are delusional. But from that one cannot conclude that their oauths means nothing, quite the contrary.

To a non-believer swearing on Sagan's book has exactly the same "accountability" as swearing on a Bible (i.e. none of these books will hold you accountable in any way whatsoever), so the non-religious oath is exactly as meaningful as swearing on a Bible; it's not an emptier gesture, it's the same.

This is obviously incorrect. It sounds like you are assuming that the ONLY significance of swearing on a bible is that you believe that God will punish you? Well, that’s wrong, the ritual has other significance.

> that a non religious oath is emptier gesture because you don’t expect the thing you’re swearing on to hold you accountable.

If you're of the mindset that the value of an oath is that an external force will hold you accountable to it, then I think the nonreligious oath is a more powerful one, because the people you're making the oath to will hold you accountable in the here and now, not some ephemeral being at some point after you die.

> What I'm meaning, though, is that if you were to go against your duty as the head of NASA, Carl Sagan isn't going to rise from the grave and smite you for your transgression. Whereas I believe that is exactly the point of swearing over a bible.

Oh come on, god doesn't smite people anymore. He doesn't smite anyone except in the text of an old book. Religious people now swearing on the Bible are not seriously fearful of God personally smiting them should they break their oath.

what got me wondering is, how much the contents of the book is actually relevant. that is, i think it is, because it suggests that the person is promising to act according to the principles given in that book, at which point i want to ask how anyone else can accept a book whose contents they are not familiar with, or worse whose contents they would object to?

Carl Sagan isn't going to rise from the grave and smite you for your transgression. Whereas I believe that is exactly the point of swearing over a bible

that depends on what someone believes. for a believer in god, god may well judge that person for violating the goals or principles from carl sagan's book. or they may meet carl sagan in the afterlife and face his disappointment there.

again, the problem for me is not what the person swearing the oath believes, but what everyone else around believes about the gesture. and for them, if the document is not something that everyone is familiar with and supports, the gesture becomes meaningless.

Meaningless enough to engage a global-level conversation about the meaning of it.

well, in this case we can guess that carl sagan is meaningful to a larger than average subset of hackernews readers.

I feel like you just wrote the skeleton of a great sci-fi story...

What you're referring to is society's attempt to re-build itself based on rationality and individualism as a replacement to political and religious institutions. A canonical response to your point would be that we're seeking to build a society where the rational action would be for the head of NASA further the aims of NASA. This follows from an ideology set out by Ayn Rand. There are a collection of documentaries by Adam Curtis covering the arc of this philosophy: "All watched over by machines of loving grace." is probably the main one here, but "Century of the Self", and "Can't get you out of my head" are also very good.

Naturally, the problem with society's attempt to do this is that rationality is not sufficient for the head of NASA to not go against her duty as NASA's head. A utopia of radical individuals free from any ideology or institution hasn't (yet?) been realized. It's probably not a good idea, but it's the central dogma of silicon valley, the blockchain movement, the AGI movement (especially the sentience-heavy ones), much of the modern scientific community, and (as it happens) hacker news. So here we are.

Also, your logic holds that swearing on a Bible is — in the limit — more likely to lead to moral behavior than swearing on Carl Sagan's work. Nobody believes that Carl will punish wrongdoers (he might even reward them for being rational, or face questions on why he's pushing morality on others). However, people do believe that God punishes. So regardless of whether a deity exists, swearing on religious texts is more likely to alter behavior than on Sagan's.

> This follows from an ideology set out by Ayn Rand.

How does that follow? Ayn Rand did not create any ideology worth mentioning in this context.

I followed it, I read some of Ayn Rands books a long time ago and thought there was a lot of ideological thought that has context in this discussion. Individual responsibility vs crowd think - taking the oath on a Carl Sagan book rather than the Bible certainly seems to me an act of individual responsibility

Ayn Rand is at best a bad inspiration for people that are gullible and greedy, at worst a person that wrong footed the world about what the social contract is all about but didn't mind being the recipient of that very same social contract. She is nowhere near to Carl Sagan in influence, ethics or worldview and to see the two mentioned in one breath is sickening.

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”

But what does meaning have to do with it? Your marriage certificate and car title have meaning. But if the people being sworn in don’t view their documents as having some authority over their promise then what is the point? It’s equivalent to no document in that regard.

It really doesnt make much sense unless you’re using a Bible, Quran, etc.

Edit: Here is the crux:

God holds you accountable, or at least is believed to do so, by nature. Is the nature of the values symbolized in Dr. Seuss or Sagans book similar? Do those promising on them expect divine justice from the principles of science or fun word play with kids?

A person who doesn’t believe in religion being sworn in on a religious book is probably just annoyed. They’re not going to feel loyal to it.

Sworn statements as a whole are just entirely symbolic and don’t really guarantee loyalty or honesty, but if someone who doesn’t believe rejects a religious text that they disbelieve and instead choose something that has meaning and value to them, it’s better in the symbolic sense. A scientist swearing in on a scientific text that’s meaningful to them and that also addresses human morality makes as much sense and symbolically reflects their devotion to their mission as a Bible to a devout Christian.

That's absurd.

If God exists then God holds you accountable for your actions whether you swear or not, whether you use a Bible, Carl Sagan, Dr Seuss or a copy of TCP/IP Illustrated by W Richard Stevens.

If God doesn't exist then it clearly doesn't matter what document you swear on at all, because the document is just a signal of values in that case.

Either way you are legally bound by the oath you have made and if you broke it the authorities would be able to enforce that against you to the extent enabled by law regardless of what document you use or indeed no document at all.

The document is (like the ceremony itself) just an artifact that is part of the ritual which is a public observance of a binding promise. In that context, choosing one that has personal meaning makes total sense, whether it is a religious text or something else.

People give meaning to things. Bible, Quran, etc have meaning only because people express that meaning.

> But if the people being sworn in don’t view their documents as having some authority over their promise then what is the point?

The point is that swearing on a "Pale blue dot" is exactly expression of submitting to authority of that book.

> People give meaning to things. Bible, Quran, etc have meaning only because people express that meaning.

A fairly central part of the philosophy of quite a few religions is that there is a God who is quite capable of giving meaning to things independently of humans. Not everyone views these as "that's nice" documents. I mean, there's a bit in the Bible (1 Corinthians 15) that says that if the stuff in the Bible is actually true, then it's the most important thing in the world, but if it isn't, then there really isn't any point paying any attention to it at all.

> A fairly central part of the philosophy of quite a few religions is that there is a God who is quite capable of giving meaning to things independently of humans.

I think it's like that with all religions. I'd like to speak a little with that god about some meanings.

> Not everyone views these as "that's nice" documents.

You say that those people give a meaning to those documents?

Addendum:

What I mean is that when there is no people who express some meaning, it ceases to exist. If there appeared a god before me to give me a new meaning for something, I would accept it as given from god. But none did so far, ALL meanings are currently expressed by people as far as I know.

Consider the statement "2 + 2 = 4". If there were no people to express what that meant, it would still be true and have meaning.

If no one existed, who would consider it true? It would have meaning to who? If you showed that statement to some old tribe which doesn't know numbers beyond 3 (Pirahã), they would not know what you mean. If you showed that without translating to some Romans, they would probably have to think about meaning of that sequence of characters. Some ideas (like mathematics or existence of a higher being) are pretty natural for humans, doesn't mean that those ideas mean anything to anyone besides humans, without people there is no meaning, just some clumps of atoms.

People believe different things about the Bible. She me people think swearing on it is making a promise to God.

Does the person swearing on Sagans book think Sagan is going to hold them accountable to a broken promise?

I conclude that person thinks Sagan will hold them equally as accountable as God would if they’d chosen His book.

Yes, I think it's equivalent and Sagan will held them as accountable as your chosen god. For "the person", you can just ask directly.

They might be doing it intending that they will remember and endeavour to hold true to some message of the book.

Many people view those religious texts no differently than they do a book of secular fairy tales.

It’s not hard to imagine those people finding more meaning in ceremonially swearing over a Constitution, science text, or other important document.

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