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There hasn't been an angry response to this comment. In fact, they've been thoughtful, though some have disagreed.
I don't see how this is a generic tangent, since this comment directly expands on the post, and provides a Christian apologist viewpoint on artificial intelligence.
I politely request you retract your flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_(Internet)#:~:text=Fla...
The highly likely effect of posting a generic comment accusing other people of "hating on Christianity" is a religious flamewar, and that's what we got, with people accusing each other of not having read things (that was you, actually, more than once), being dicks, believing in leprechauns and orbiting teacups, and so on. This tedious stuff is not what HN is for, and destroys what it is for.
Your comment was certainly a generic tangent, as you changed the topic to the value of Christianity in general which is (1) as generic as it gets and (2) references nothing about the OP except that one point.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It's the absence of belief in a deity - and therefore the recognition that the starting conditions of our lives was random chance, out of our control - that provides the foundation that all humans are equal and of equal value. That after 14 billion years of my atoms circling the universe I sprung forth, child of middle-class but reasonably well-educated parents in the United States, and not the child of struggling farmers in Australia, or drug addicts in Eastern Europe, was complete chance. To me this means that I am of no more importance than people born to those situations, irrespective of what they eventually managed to accomplish.
It's the absence of belief in a deity - and therefore the realization that life is finite, precious, non-transferable, and fair in so far as much is the product of chance - that means we should prefer human life over sentient robots. The consciousness of a one-day sentient robot will likely be transferrable, and therefore durable mostly indefinitely. Mine consciousness is, as of yet, not.
It's the absence of belief in a deity that neatly solves the problem of evil in the world. And so on, and so forth.
I'm happy for people to be comforted by religion, as they hurtle through a probabilistic universe, trying to fill the time between their birth and their death with meaning and enjoyment. When we die, it's unlikely that even a single lifetime later people then alive will even know or think about how we ever existed. So do what you must to be comfortable now. It'll all be over soon.
1. > It's the absence of belief in a deity... that provides the foundation that all humans are equal and of equal value.
Historically, this is not true. A couple Greco-Roman philosophers entertained the idea, and surely other cultures here and there did too, but until Christianity, societies in the West believed might makes right. Which makes sense, because this is how the natural world works. Evolution is, at it's core, survival of the fittest. What lasts is what is most fit to reproduce.
Humans being of equal value as conceived in the West is derived straight from Christian philosophy. The Gospels, Paul, St Augustine, Erasmus, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, etc. This is a widely accepted point, and don't expect to argue this point further, since you can research it extensively.
Perhaps for you, personally, an atheistic belief provides this foundation, and that's perfectly fine, but this is not how it played out.
2. > It's the absence of belief in a deity - and therefore the realization that life is finite, precious, non-transferable, and fair in so far as much is the product of chance - that means we should prefer human life over sentient robots. The consciousness of a one-day sentient robot will likely be transferrable, and therefore durable mostly indefinitely. Mine consciousness is, as of yet, not.
This is without any solid foundation. Why does the transferability of human conciousness matter in terms of its sanctity? You can't poop out what I just pooped, but you don't consider it sacred? And this mentality is restricted purely by technology. Who's to say we couldn't transfer consciousness in the future?
It is also entirely non-falsifiable to say that we came about purely by chance. This athiestic view is actually just as fantastical as a Christian view. You might as well say you believe in Fortuna, rather than God, since the two views are equally dogmatic.
3. > It's the absence of belief in a deity that neatly solves the problem of evil in the world.
How? How do you determine what is right and wrong? If it's purely subjective, then there actually isn't right and wrong. They don't exist.
Christianity answers the problem of evil easily in the book of Job. You can't possibly understand everything God does, therefore you gotta make-do with what you're taught, and if something seems out of place in the world, it's God doing his divine plan. You can't understand it all.
4. > When we die, it's unlikely that even a single lifetime later people then alive will even know or think about how we ever existed. So do what you must to be comfortable now. It'll all be over soon.
This is another dogmatic view that is just as non-falsifiable as any view about the Christian afterlife. To say "nothing happens after we die" is just as rigid as to say "we go to heaven after we die". At least one is frank that it's dogma, and like you say, more comforting and useful in terms of providing moral guidance.
This is absolutely false if by "equal value" you mean anything other than "of no more value than any other product of randomness". But I doubt you believe that you and the drug addict in Eastern Europe are equally worthless (and equivalent to the return value of `head -c 100 /dev/urandom`). In fact, you say "the realization that life is ... precious". "Precious" to who, precisely?
> It's the absence of belief in a deity that neatly solves the problem of evil in the world
This is the same failing as above - it solves the problem of evil by removing evil as a category. There is only the actions of random chance, which cannot be evil. But you clearly still believe in evil. Where comes the good that evil opposes?
Christianity has so deeply penetrated our society that we don't even notice it's precepts anymore. It's like the air we breathe. It's so prevalent, it's become invisible to our eyes.
Of course there is. It’s a text that has survived two millennia. Almost anything that old is interesting due to selection effect.
The problem is not only has the book survived, but so have several political institutions and ways of thinking around it. Not from the time of Jesus. But from the centuries and millennia emperors and kings. That has resulted in our modern experience of Christianity, particularly in the West, as an antagonist to social progress. Pick a social issue fifty years ago, take most institutional church’s positions, and they’re pretty consistently wrong. (There are notable exceptions, of course.)
Religious texts contain deep wisdom. I’m much more sceptical of men of cloth, men who track the careers of politicians and CEOs yet, somehow, with even less accountability.
Maybe we need a new prophet for the modern world. One who tells of the Kingdom of Heaven having been voluntarily relinquished for a Republic. (The Bible was written in the shadow of Rome’s republic. It enshrines that era’s imperial tradition because if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have survived.)
> Pick a social issue fifty years ago, take most institutional church’s positions, and they’re pretty consistently wrong. (There are notable exceptions, of course.)
According to what definition of wrong? What is decided by popular vote? Although democracy in America has a Christian foundation (congregational churches), Christians pretty much defer right/wrong to the biblical tradition where a materialistic society has strayed from the teachings of Jesus. Whereas secular society has run away from home and suggests right/wrong is somehow simultaneously subjective and determined by popular culture.
I don't stake a claim either way, but it's important to note that many Christians would make this argument.
I would make the claim that many individual Christians over the past fifty years have made amazing life choices precisely because of their faith.
> Maybe we need a new prophet for the modern world. One who tells of the Kingdom of Heaven having been voluntarily relinquished for a Republic.
Well, I assume you know what Christians would say to this one... It's a lot of pain before it gets good.
According to what most people would consider wrong today. Supporting Mussolini. Interracial marriage. The right for gay people to exist.
(This is partly due to religion and the right having been allies in our modern history. So whenever there is a cultural clash where churches must take a position, it's usually with the conservative right. And the last century has been one where, on social issues, the conservative right has been wrong more than correct.)
> you know what Christians would say to this one... It's a lot of pain before it gets good
There is a lot of pain being caused by Christian institutions today. It’s why religiosity, particularly Christianity in America, is on a multigenerational slide [1]. (It could reverse. Young men, particularly on the far right, appear to be reversing course. And Christianity has thrived for millenia because it's particularly adaptable.)
We can learn from holy books and practice a faith without giving its institutions in the mortal realm power. Or at least, not putting them above reproach.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-reli...
And here we stand intellectually as humans, scattered across the wide plain of our accumulated knowledge. On that plain we can see peaks with higher plateaus representing areas as yet unexplored or with areas where our current understanding cannot properly define the conditions that exist on those plateaus.
As humans we are curious, seeking truth about the world around us. We attempt to understand the things we see and experience because ultimately, those are the things that we know best. Within any discipline of human study there are plateaus which represent situations that we have not yet experienced or studied well enough to become certain of the answers to the questions that lead to that information plateau where our actual knowledge is sparsely distributed today and therefore we have no idea how to truthfully answer the original question.
With many plateaus around us on this plain we seek enough information through our curiosity that we can connect the plateaus to each other since we know that everything is connected physically, and mathematically. As we study, test, and document our processes we add information to each plateau until we solve a problem. The solution to a problem is a new peak and the tested hypotheses that led us to that peak allow us to make the connections between peaks that create new knowledge plateaus where humanity has fewer real existential questions that still have no provable answers. As we reach each new peak we raise the plateau of knowledge upon which we all stand and that new plateau has fewer challenging areas to explore but at the same time we have a huge base of human knowledge and experience upon which to explore the final plateau rising from the plain.
Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Where did we come from? Is there a God? What happens to our spirits, our imaginations, and our energy when the clock runs out on our individual existence?
Answers to these and other currently unprovable questions will be found on that last, highest plateau after all other questions have been answered and have filled in the knowledge gaps between peaks where individual truths have been documented.
One thing that we don't know now is whether, once we reach the point where our research places us humans on the slopes up to that last plateau is just how wide that plateau will be and how persistent. The dimensions of the last plateau on that last broad plain are effectively defined by the uncertainty in the assumptions we can make from all our accumulated experiences. We can't know today whether as humans we will ever be able to decrease the dimensions of that plateau so that all questions we could ever have will have clearly defined answers supported by the accumulated knowledge of thousands of generations of curious human researchers.
We can hope that our curiosity will one day allow us to collapse that plateau to a peak where we suddenly know everything about everything all at once and knowing it all just seems natural. Perhaps this is our ultimate reward. Or perhaps in finally reaching this peak we initiate contact with the ultimate level of wisdom and in the process we prick our finger on the infinitely sharp point of wisdom and the blood flows out over humanity, waiting patiently on the plain for the real truths, drowning our brothers and sisters in the knowledge that we were never intended to have.
Curiosity is a human condition, also shared with other animals. Just as humans can bait traps to capture curious animals, our own curiosity could lead us to be captured by false peaks as we seek to understand and control everything around us.
EDIT: There’s another situation that we should consider. Consider the section 21 [0] in this Papal Note under Relationship with the Truth. The concluding section builds the case that humans are driven to understand the truth about things and “it is as if reason were overwhelmed to see that it can always go beyond what it has already achieved.”
Considering this section it appears that as humans, we are driven to know the truth. If our journey to understanding everything were to eventually give us ultimate wisdom, the power that would come from that would be immense, rivaling God’s own power. Therefore it seems likely to me that God, in his eternal wisdom, allows us to understand ever more about ourselves and our world but that there will be peaks that we reach – truths that we discover – that will result in the knowledge plain upon which we build our existence suddenly having more plateaus than before as the new truth reveals or suggests uncertainty in some of the assumptions that we had codified and considered well-understood truths.
God effectively moves the goalposts as we learn so that the fires that drive us to know ever more about everything around us are never quenched by the ultimate wisdom that would come from having answered all of our existential questions.
[0] >Relationship with the Truth 21. Human intelligence is ultimately “God’s gift fashioned for the assimilation of truth.”[34]In the dual sense of intellectus-ratio, it enables the person to explore realities that surpass mere sensory experience or utility, since “the desire for truth is part of human nature itself. It is an innate property of human reason to ask why things are as they are.”[35] Moving beyond the limits of empirical data, human intelligence can “with genuine certitude attain to reality itself as knowable.”[36] While reality remains only partially known, the desire for truth “spurs reason always to go further; indeed, it is as if reason were overwhelmed to see that it can always go beyond what it has already achieved.”[37] Although Truth in itself transcends the boundaries of human intelligence, it irresistibly attracts it.[38] Drawn by this attraction, the human person is led to seek “truths of a higher order.”[39]
The message is imaginary because it’s based on an imaginary idea: god
I claimed that your claim is just as unprovable as the claim that God does exist.
You are saying that by claiming that my claim is dogma. If I say the sky appears blue that isn't dogma, it's a statement of human perception of reality. I see it, you see it, everyone sees it. We know because it's what we perceive. We know how it works down to the quantum level. We can describe it with words and with math. We can test it.
Claiming there is a god is not that and the fact that it's unfalsifiable doesn't lend it a shred of legitimacy. It's an idea, nothing more.
I can just as simply say that atheism is based on ego worship, narcissism, and hyper-individuality.
That is to say, you dressing your conclusion as an axiom. We're better off without atheistic delusions.
The problem with the argument is that the Athiestic viewpoint is indeed just as fantastical as the Thiestic viewpoint. It's basically switching out "Yahweh" with "Chance".
It basically comes down to which God you believe in and how you define God.
In my reading, a definition of God that is "caused everything, exists onto itself, is in all places at all times, and completely miraculous" is the definition that best describes our universe and what we know about the Big Bang. I'm happy to hear other definitions, but let's not pretend the fact that anything exists at all is totally mundane and explicable.
I would find it hard to believe someone was being genuine if they said they reject the concept of God. Now for Christianity, I can see why people would refuse to believe that God came down to Earth in human form. And then they... washed feat and performed miracles. And the people then crucified the Son of God. But then that Son forgave them. Why would God let that happen and why so much forgiveness? And if that did happen, what would that mean?
The universe won’t damn you to an eternity of suffering if you don’t live by some standard. That’s a pretty big difference from any biblical definition.
No argument there.
There’s nothing wrong with speaking out when we see people saying things we believe to be false and it’s unreasonable to expect everyone to hedge every single thing they say simply because, well, we don’t really know anything.
I know there’s no omnipotent being who cares so much about the minutiae of our lives yet allows terrible things to happen. I know the bible was written by people who never experienced the magical things written about. The onus of proof is on the one making the extraordinary claim and religion is firmly on the side of the extraordinary.
Focusing on the impossibility of knowing is just skirting the issue of the impossibility of the claims.
Except the fact that something exists rather than nothing at all is absolutely extraordinary. I would put the burden of proof on anyone claiming it's completely explicable and mundane.
The idea of nothing existing is just that: an idea. Like god.
Unless your claim is that you always existed, you must admit that nothing is more than an idea.
And also, something existing for all of eternity forever is just as extraordinary as something coming from nothing.
Those are our two options and they both are extraordinary and imply something many people would call "God"