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Comment by DiggyJohnson | Hacker News Reader

I’m pretty agnostic, but what are you answers to seemingly untraceable questions of life, meaning, and existence?

I’m starting to come around to the view that ridicule of religiosity is quite often more vacuous than spirituality.

That God kinda-became human to "sacrifice" himself (with no loss, got up 3 days later to live forever, nothing was sacrificed) in order to forgive the sins of people, but only if they believe it, isn't spiritual, it's silly. You owe someone something, and someone else or that person pays it for you -- but if you don't believe that happened, it never happened. Great stuff.

I don't need to have an answer for life, the universe and everything to reject that kind of answer. It smells way too much of humans. The Bible even has a bit where it says a pot should not criticize his potter for making it crooked -- while the potter blaming and condemning the pot he made is perfectly fine and sane. If you have a problem and try to fix it with such things, you now have two problems. "Jesus can save you, if you let him" -- nope, he can just do it if he exists and gives a fuck about anything other than playing abusive games.

The Quran is no better, with God bragging how he could have made everyone rightly guided but didn't because he promised to fill hell with people and djinn and always keeps his promises.

It all boils down to "might is right". That stuff isn't insane, by definition, at least to those who actually lap it up, because God threatens the people who reject it.

If a God exists, and made clouds and sparrows and sunshine and love, I would basically be spitting in his face for even considering any that sordid stuff. You might say I know my shepherd's voice, and differentiate it from humans in a trench coat pretending to be a giant, which sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me. I can dig Meister Eckhart, anything below that is just brown shirt antics in my sight, and my reaction to it was and is "come at me, bro". Don't tell me my knee will bend, bend it. Shit or get off the pot.

And people who are fine with being saved from eternal torture through essentially random chance ("being pulled"), while others who are every bit as bad as them get tortured forever, who are crying tears of gratitude while looking the other way, are not the ones I would want to spend eternity with.

Yes, some of those things do sound silly... but they are not at all what most Christians believe.

Which part of the following is not believed by most Christians?

> That God kinda-became human to "sacrifice" himself (with no loss, got up 3 days later to live forever, nothing was sacrificed) in order to forgive the sins of people, but only if they believe it

All of it? Specifically, the 'kind-of' - most Christians beleive Jesus was fully human/mortal. 'with no loss'- most Christians beleive Jesus gave the ultimate sacrifice, not only his mortal life, bit also profound and incomphrensible suffering (don't forget the events in Gethsemane, not just at the hands of the Sanhedrin and the Romans). Also his sacrifice went far beyond forgiving sins of beleivers. It included the promise of eventual resurection for for everyone, not just beleivers. (Details can vary among sects as well as individual persons as to the full impact of Christs sacrifice and resurection on unbeleivers, but the vast majority do beleive that there are effects for everyone, regardless of belief in this life or the next).

Christianity and its doctines are much deeper and richer on these topics than this characature would imply.

1. ok, so the word 'kinda' is not an essential part of the doctrine, got it.

2. 'profound and incomprehensible suffering' - what is Jesus supposed to have suffered which is different from many other humans who have been betrayed, tortured and killed? Whatever you think it is, it appears to be extra-biblical. The Gethsemane quote is just "my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death". Allowing for loss in translation this is an expression of suffering well within human experience.

3. 'the vast majority do beleive that there are effects for everyone, regardless of belief in this life or the next' Sorry, no. The vast majority of modern Christians belong to churches for which 'sola fide' is not just an essential part of their theology, but the foundation of their existence.

Rather, the lack of the word "kinda" is an essential part of the doctrine.

And everyone is affected: even if they may not be saved, they are all still resurrected in the end days. This is uncontroversial, and documented throughout the bible. Here is a summary: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/will-all-people-be-resu...

Actually, it's super controversial, even among Christians. If it is documented through the Bible, that's not evinced by your link (to a conservative Evangelical website), which only cites Acts and John, two very closely related parts of the Bible. And neither of those says anything about the resurrection of those who are not saved happening because of Jesus's sacrifice.

Hebrews also states that "we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all".

And not sure why you say "conservative Evangelical" as if it means less. They are the most biblically-based sect around.

I said "kinda" because I didn't want to get into the whole trinity stuff, since it's besides the point to me. But I agree that many Christians, and Muslims, and Jews (and other monotheists) are great people, my last paragraph was a bit harsh. I know many of those people would be happy for everyone to go to heaven, or paradise, or at least find peace in death, whatever it may be, they pray for them, and not just to get brownie points but out of genuine compassion. I know that.

But in my opinion, it's because they're better than the religion. That is their humanity, such humanity is not found in the source materials. I can only speak for myself: in my early 20s, I was confused and deeply in pain about the state of the world, and through a series of coincidences (or signs from God :P) I ended up kinda, vaguely, believing in it. I wanted to believe in it. But I could not get over my empathy for everyone: if everybody isn't saved, nobody is saved. Not to mention that "saving" someone from the wrath you inflict on someone for not believing you saved them is equal parts crazy and abusive. Jesus can mock the wise and laud the wide-eyed children all he wants, but even in the deepest depths of my desperation I could not accept it. I read the stuff, I think about it, and I'm out.

My beef isn't with God, if it exists. But I do have beef with religion, yes. Disappointed with the Bible, I turned to the Quran, found the exact same content with even more bragging. And something about "Jesus can save you (if you let him)" did kinda trigger me, since the Bible says, nobody can come to God lest they get pulled. So don't blame people for not getting pulled, that's victim blaming.

The way you speak of wrath gives me the impression you have only heard of the "eternal conscious torment" interpretation of Hell. You should know that this isn't found in the preachings of Jesus, or the Bible in general. There are several other Biblically-founded interpretations of Hell, including things like "torment in proportion to sins", "torment until repentance", and what might be considered "eternal emptiness", basically the same as what an atheist would say happens on death. I learned this via these lectures: https://www.thenarrowpath.com/topical_lectures.php#Three_Vie..., but you can google "three views of hell" to get a variety of takes on the topic.

Under these interpretations, there is no "wrath" inflicted upon the lost, they simply do not gain the reward of having faith and instead enter into the "default" death state.

> "Jesus can save you (if you let him)" did kinda trigger me, since the Bible says, nobody can come to God lest they get pulled. So don't blame people for not getting pulled, that's victim blaming.

Your view is sounds consistent with a lack of belief in Free Will, is that what you believe? The Calvinist branch of Christianity supports this view, but it is not the only interpretation. If you don't believe in Free Will might as well just stop reading here because nothing is in your control anyways :)

If on the other hand you do believe in Free Will, it must be the case that you have a choice in coming to Christ. It is true that nobody can come unless they are pulled, but they can also resist that pull. The Bible speaks many times of God saying mortals resisted His call. Most famously perhaps Sodom and Gamora.

And the pull can come in many forms, most commonly in being preached the Gospel. It is very hard at this point to exist in the world without someone at some point having attempted to preach the Gospel to you, and the Bible makes it clear that Jesus Christ gave up his life so that all may be saved. Indeed, the most famous sentence in perhaps all of time supports this: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (emphasis mine).

So under a non-Calvinist interpretation everybody has the opportunity to come to salvation, assuming they have heard of Christ (the pull), and it is up to them to choose to do so, by choosing to believe in Him.

> It smells way too much of humans.

It's a shame you can only experience your comment from your perspective.

Consider you are developing a genetic algorithm with the goal of creating a cohort of entities that have the ability to pursue light. Each generation, you initialize a set of start states based on the prior generation and let things play out according to your rules. In the end, you persist those that found the light by taking their information and carrying it on in some sense in the next generation. The information of those that did not find the light is discarded.

Now, you are the author of the entire creation. At any point you can intervene in any way you want, for instance to relocate an entity that was very far from the light to be much closer to it. And you do indeed do this quite regularly. In fact a large amount of what you do as the author is go out to find the entities that are very far from the light and shepherd them back to be close to it. Sometimes, this relocation sticks: the entity sees the light, recognizes it, and continues to pursue it. Sometimes, it doesn't: the entity either wanders around aimlessly with no regard for the direction of the light, or indeed it actively pursues darkness.

At the end of the generation you have a spectrum of entities: those who never left the light, those who strayed occasionally but always took to your shepherding back, ..., all the way to those who actively ran away from the light at every opportunity. So yes, you are the author. You have complete control over how all these entitles move into the next generation, and you can save all of them if you'd like. But why would you?

If the goal is to evolve an entity which can pursue light independently, why compromise this goal by "relocat[ing] an entity that was very far from the light to be much closer to it"?

And if the goal is just to allow as many entities as possible to enjoy the light, why not relocate them all to be close to it? Why not save all of them into the next generation?

You know that small difference in the initial conditions of an entity can play a large role in the path it follows, and you further know that an entity which is spawned into a position where the light is very faint is less likely to be able to pursue it. You sometimes put new creations in which you have much confidence into initial conditions where they are very unlikely to survive, as a means of testing them (perhaps there is another "level" they are taken to to train a new feature once this stage is mastered). If they do not end up being able to pursue the light in those initial conditions, you might indeed let their information perish. But you might instead want to see if they could find the light when moved somewhat closer to it, as a way of checking if their ability is entirely busted or simply not as sensitive as you thought it might be.

> And if the goal is just to allow as many entities as possible to enjoy the light, why not relocate them all to be close to it? Why not save all of them into the next generation?

I'm not sure that is the goal, but regardless your machine only has finite resources, but is changed with presenting an infinite environment. Sacrifices must be made.

You seem to have wandered off the justification of God's behavior as part of a coherent mission, and you are simply describing the characteristics of God which you believe in, but which many people with other beliefs have cogently described as illogical, cruel or anti-humanistic, in sci-fi terms.

The mission remains to develop a cohort of light seeking entities. But this is all a metaphor. I cannot hope to comprehend, much less explain, the intricacies of the situation.

And if you have an argument to make, make it. Don't just say "other people made arguments, and trust me: they were really good".

That’s a really long response for something you feel is trivially silly. Maybe it’s cognitive dissonance?

Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm a flesh automaton created to house a polymer that is capable of propagating itself through time. For what end? Maybe it's emergent behavior from a structured universe, maybe life is meant to converge towards some higher end. Who knows.

Yeah, that's the thing, who knows?

So who has any right to ridicule anyone else for having a different perspective?

Just choose whatever narrative that floats your boat and live and let live.

Ridiculing is one thing. Waging holy war, murdering, burning and dehumanizing is unfortunately a common reaction to differing viewpoints among religious folk.

Yes, but also: Waging war, murdering, burning and dehumanizing is unfortunately a common reaction to differing viewpoints among folk.

And I would add, the world is more peaceful and loving and moral under Christian morals (the morals we all currently share) than under the ethics of the Roman Empire. Christians ended the slave trade for specifically, uniquely Christian reasons. It was a religious issue. Modern progressives grew out of the Protestant culture of puritan founders. It’s why we embraced immigration.

It’s one thing to be ignorant of the creator (and deny creations miraculous nature), but to be ignorant of world history; please read about Rome.

religious folk and every other kind

> Yeah, that's the thing, who knows?

> So who has any right to ridicule anyone else for having a different perspective?>

> Just choose whatever narrative that floats your boat and live and let live.

Sometimes the right answer is that there isn't enough information to choose, therefore making it 'objectively' correct.

Yeah, I'm 100% atheist, but often feel horrified by the shallow understanding of religion and theology that many other atheists exhibit. I want shake them and say "do you really think you're smarter than Thomas Aquinas?"

Sure, he was wrong... but not worthy of ridicule. It's just so easy and satisfying to assume that disagreement indicates stupidity.

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