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Comment by bogdan | Hacker News Reader

I politely disagree with everything in your post.

It's worth reminding readers here that David Foster Wallace committed suicide, so perhaps some of his views on topics like this were not the healthiest.

Then you haven't thought very hard about the things you do worship.

It is not possible to be more of an atheist than myself but there are all these things I notice I worship with religious conviction instead.

You have your own rituals too. You are just calling them something else.

There has to be biological hard wiring for people to believe so much religious nonsense across space and time.

It is delusional to believe you don't believe in all kinds of similar nonsense if someone from 500 years in the future was looking at your beliefs.

Rituals and beliefs are not the same as "worship with religious conviction".

I ritually shower every day and I have beliefs like, when water comes out of the faucet it will fall to the floor because of gravity. That is wildly different than worshipping the water or the shower.

I suspect you have a very strange definition of the word worship.

I dont worship anything. Simple as that. What could you possibly consider the average atheist to worship?

Capitalism, family, pets, foodieism, pick your thing, most of us bow to the temple of something.

Nope. Swing and a miss. Looking after pets or children isn't bowing to anything nor are they temples. You need to check your definitions.

I agree with you. When I was younger, I spent many many years in evangelical Christian work and went to seminary. It is not difficult to manipulate people especially if one orates well and echoes the audience's pre-existing beliefs.

There appears to be a neurological wired-in need to 'believe' whether in God or UFOs (think Mulder in X-Files) which I think is a evolutionary survival mechanism to have an advantage to cope with the uncertainty of primitive survival. Any psychological edge such as believing we are special (chosen people arose during nation-building phases of cultural development) or that some supreme being will protect us against threats or enemies unifies and motivates feats involving danger.

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