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Comment by pibaker | Hacker News Reader

What's going on with all the open proselytizing on HN these days? I don't remember seeing them five years ago but now in every thread about personal struggles there is someone trying to convert people. Always to the same religion, too.

Edit: some people have replied saying why religion is helpful. Ok. But that doesn't answer my question of why is it showing up so much on HN lately.

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Feels a lot more like an offer than a hard sell to me.

I do sense the same thing you do, though; that there’s something of a religious revival swelling, at least in the West that’s overwhelmingly represented here:

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/10/20/growing-shar...

Economist via archive: https://archive.ph/M7NW0

Feels completely inappropriate to me. Imagine someone came in with cancer and were told to pray it away. This is is the mental health version.

That's probably because the religion itself naturally results in trying to help others.

Turning yourself over to a "higher power" and recognizing that you cannot fix yourself by yourself can be very helpful for some. It won't always be the right answer of course.

probably because society does not provide a manual on behaviour and ethics but religion does? and more people nowadays are getting sick of how the 2 default human values of pleasure/pain are systematically used against them? and once you join a community its nice to add new members? regardless as to any of those answers it's been acceptable to openly proselytize atheism on the internet forever, bit hypocritical not to allow other religions to do the same.

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