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Comment by syedkarim | Hacker News Reader

Are you saying that Christianity and Islam don’t require the belief in a supernatural being?

“Supernatural being” and “omniscient man in the clouds” are not equivalent which is why it is a strawman caricature

So is the problem is "man" or "in the clouds", because it's certainly not "omniscient". Omniscience and omnipotence are foundational aspects of the Abrahamic religions, and many other religions as well.

It is the very concept of supernatural beings that's risible. That's not a strawman. Inevitably the arguments fall into:

1. My book says so. (Yeah, well, I have a different book that says your book isn't just wrong, but evil.)

2. The god of the gaps. (The ever shrinking god.)

3. So many people believe! (So what? Millions of people think the Earth is flat. That doesn't make them right.)

4. You don't know, so it's just as likely! (lol. Let's unicorn hunting. You don't know they're not real. So they must be!)

Shouldn't be "man" either because at least in Christianity he's described as the "Father".

I'll give him the benefit of chalking that up to Bronze Age societies failing to capture the transcendent nature of the sublime due to linguistic and cultural biases.

"omniscience and omnipotence" The wording unfortunately implies an agentic creature of this world.

Alternatively, God created the world as an arena, with creatures as agents. God manifests in the world through His creatures, in our quest to maximize truth, goodness, beauty. One step further, the purpose of the Son is to provide a humanly comprehensible blueprint on how to act as to maximize truth, goodness, beauty. Finally, the Holy Spirit is that which guides us in following the path the Son laid out for us.

For a scientifically trained mind, this can also be pictured as the quest to identify and asymptotically aim at maximizing the objective function that encodes truth, goodness, beauty. The stakes - a life well lived.

If it’s not an agent, then why bother it? Occam’s Razor would say you can safely ignore it, as something no effect is indistinguishable from something that doesn’t exist. Similarly, if it has effect, but no agency then it’s unworthy of any worship (putting aside just how profoundly offensive the very concept of worshipping is). No one worships gravity, and worshiping the sun is rightfully seen as primitive superstition.

As far as a deistic god , you clearly don’t believe in that, as any reference to divinely given scriptures runs counter that concept. You can’t claim its hands off while simultaneously engaging in miracles and vaguely interpret led prophecies.

It’s a weak, and lousy concept, propagated by cultural baggage.

Neither of the mentioned religions fixates solely on "believing in a man in the clouds." You're purposefully reducing the spiritual and prose content of these multifaceted, vibrant families of traditions. The person you're replying to isn't suggesting these religions don't believe in omniscient deities, they're trying to discuss them beyond the juvenile, r/atheist flat "le epic sky man" level of discourse.

Actually they literally do fixate on belief. In fact, the primacy of belief repeatedly and explicitly stated in their respective holy texts. And we’re not just talking about belief in some abstract feel good concept when it comes to Christianity and Islam specifically, but rather in the existence of actual physical miracles that happened to real people. The rejection of these purportedly real supernatural events is to reject the very foundation of these religions in particular.

Belief is so central to these religions in particular that there are multiple treatises arguing over the fate of good people that who do not share their belief, and whether mere ignorance (as opposed to conscious rejection) is enough for them to be “saved” from eternal damnation. To deny this, is either displaying ignorance or is rather disingenuous attempt to shift the discussion to abstract platitudes. Furthermore, the omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of their preeminent supernatural being are fundamental properties of it.

Using big words, and acting serious, doesn’t hide the fact that the very topic is unserious. It’s like holding a conference on the economy of the United Federation of Planets. Sure, it may be a fun intellectual exercise, but no matter how much you dress it up, the core concept is fiction. And treating it as serious is not only unproductive, it’s profoundly insulting.

But sure. The Emperor’s new clothes sure are fantastic, and anyone saying they don’t exist are just haters.

In practice they never did. Their utility (for good or bad) came from being widespread moral frameworks, shared by an entire society, that you were taught to respect from birth, plus that fact that they weren't up for debate, except through very slow processes.

Just for the sake of debating I wanted to add that the entire basis for not debating those facts is because they belonged to a dangerous being in the clouds. Not saying that they should have been debated more, nor less, just that pretty much all societies based their moral codes on very scary supernatural being(s). Maybe because only fear makes humans collaborate in good times - thus basically turning the "good times" into a permanent "dangerous times"...

Alternatively, 'traditions are experiments that worked', and 'fear of God' simply translates to 'fear of messing up', with an accent of 'by pridefully refusing to listen to the wisdom of tradition'. Darwinian insights apply to a wide range of human behaviors, from cooking to cheese making to moral systems. Debate is always welcome, but changing social norms willy-nilly on a whim comes with a high risk of chaos, pain and disfunction.

>I wanted to add that the entire basis for not debating those facts is because they belonged to a dangerous being in the clouds

The being in the clouds is a red herring. The real reason for not debating those facts was that they were conventional respected wisdom. People didn't have to, and often only superficially if at all, believe to the actuality of it - but they wouldn't contest the associated moral code, the same way they wouldn't contest the customs of their land.

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