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Comment by joshcsimmons | Hacker News Reader

This viewpoint is preposterous to me in the first place.

I am Christian. Everything in the world seems to be falling apart these days and my faith is one of the few real-feeling things!

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From my perspective, I do not perceive the world as "falling apart" and I wonder how much of your perception of the state of things (as if there was a universally defined "perfection" to strive towards instead of humans creating these concepts) falling apart is derived from your faith, which has a vested interest in presenting itself as a real-feeling thing in order to promulgate its existence. As a meme, it appears to be persistent in the environment for roughly 2k years, so clearly there's some fitness to its host species. And contrast its feelings of apocalyptic end times to Buddhism, where things are more cyclical rather than ending soon, and I wonder how your feelings would be affected were you to have been raised in that environment instead.

I feel like religion is the original corporation. You even have weekly 1-on-1s with your manager!

I don't often laugh on HN, but when I do, it's a big LOL.

first noble truth = life is suffering

yeah the Buddha totally didn’t mean that the world is falling apart.

i don’t have to wonder how my perception would have been affected because i was a buddhist for over a decade before coming to Christ.

While I can't speak to the universality or novelty of the world falling apart, I feel the same way.

Some people aren't yet in a place to understand this perspective. Others have been hurt by Christians who failed to live their faith or were otherwise misguided in their actions or teachings. Some slander the faith based on ignorance or misunderstanding.

We're called to forgive our enemies and respond with patience, humility, and compassion. I've found that doing this without losing sight of God's commandments is a struggle that requires daily prayer and reflection.

Have a good weekend, and peace be with you.

A thing you might want to consider is that how "good" a person is is largely independent from their level of religious faith.

It is common for religious people to assume they are linked and that a religious person does good deeds because they are faithful while somebody who does bad deeds has less faith.

Which leads to an assumption by some that atheists are have no morals and priest are exception good.

could you please explain your reason for posting this? it doesn't seem related to the preceding comment.

I was mainly replying to this sentence:

" Others have been hurt by Christians who failed to live their faith or were otherwise misguided in their actions or teachings. "

may i ask a bit more specifically why your comment evaluating the abstract concept of goodness and its relation to faith is related to this sentence? i'm still not seeing the connection.

"who failed to live their faith" - ie if they had lived up to their faith would have been good. I'm saying that the practice of "faith" and being "good" are largely unconnected. There are plenty of faithful Christians in prison.

By "good" I mean nice, polite, not murdering people. Generally accepted moral behavior.

if someone agrees on what it means to be good, their definition of the term has been subjectively qualified. muslims agree its good to cover their women, you probably dont, both these statements are true. seems to be a central aspect of religion, agreeing on codified morality. im fairly confident that not killing is a moral purported by christianity, therefore it doesnt seem logical to label murderers as christians - based on their murderous behaviour, murderers do not agree with christianity, regardless as to what they verbally state. would you label buddhists as immoral if an individual decided to call himself buddhist post-massacre?

I was raised atheist/agnostic and was one for decades. Now that I'm not, I frequently get unsolicited comments like the one you're responding to. People assume that I haven't considered foundational tenets of my religion, or that they're the first ones to raise basic ethical questions after thousands of years of tradition, teaching, and catechism.

There's a noticeable difference between those who are concerned but care about what I think, and those who have already made up their minds that I'm ignorant. It's tough, especially when it surfaces in longstanding relationships. I've had friends and family jump to all kinds of crazy conclusions about what I believe and why.

I'm not perfect, and I often reflect on whether I'm setting a bad example or being a poor witness to something that's a powerful source of strength and charity. Many times I've fallen short, and I ask for forgiveness. Christ asks me to pick up my cross and follow Him, and I pray for the humility and discernment to do so.

its a gracious outlook of you, to assign ignorance as the root cause of this behaviour. to me that dude looks like any other proselytizer - a man attempting to sway others views, without concern for their concerns. although if you try showing atheist proselytizers how similar they behave to preachers, or indeed compare any of their behaviour to religious zealots, this inevitably short circuits the proselytizer viewpoint and forces fight mode, resulting in termination of any productive discussion.

at the end of the day people say a lot of things, and until life teaches how little words matter, people do care about words by default. it is only those understanding life who look past words to see what truly matters. everything that anything living does in this existence is inherently selfish, otherwise it wouldnt happen, based on science and neurochemistry. this seeming impediment to becoming christlike is not an insurmountable obstacle, rather a beautiful choice we are offered - to accept animality, or to humbly push through the impossible and seek something more ...

laughably incorrect

one of the things i am very incapable of judging is whether someone is “good” or “bad”

> I am Christian. Everything in the world seems to be falling apart these days and my faith is one of the few real-feeling things!

Well, the world is exactly as "God" created it.

Thus, if the world is falling apart, then the God - observably so - has done a real shoddy job.

If you come upon a piece of well written software - you can infer that it's written by a good and competent programmer.

And if the software on the other hand is shitty, then more likely than not - made and created by a shitty programmer.

World as is - is obviously created by either somebody extremely incompetent or downright malevolent as far as UX for living beings is concerned.

>I am Christian. Everything in the world seems to be falling apart these days

You people have been telling this for the last 2000 years.

> You people have been telling this for the last 2000 years.

Imagine I was Jewish and you referred to Jews as “you people”

strange days we live in indeed.

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