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Comment by spydum | Hacker News Reader

The real question is what would have his life been like without that aid? Perhaps no education, no money for health care. Perhaps even loss of life (or a family member)?

On aside, since it was covered so heavily: I have heard of more than a few people who lose their faith due to church behavior. This seems almost immature thinking to me. If you see a problem with church leadership behavior, and you don't see fault in the beliefs, why not affect change in the church? Ask those tough questions about what money is spent on. This seems far more logical than abandoning faith.

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Why is it immature to see people preach one way, behave a separate way, and conclude they're full of shit? It seems a basic requirement of a reasonable human being that people preaching that folks should behave way X comport themselves in way X.

eg the catholic church is, at this point, practically a child rape conspiracy: over and over people in the church discovered what was going on, and over and over they chose to tolerate the behavior to protect the church. Just to pick one notable example, the pope chose not to defrock a priest that molested TWO HUNDRED boys in his care [1], instead squirreling him off to northern wisconsin... where he had more access to children. As their book says, you shall know them by their fruits. This was an act performed by the head of the catholic church.

If you can stomach the acts performed by the church and the totality of the church hierarchy, then still believe what they preach, I'd say you're practically deluded.

[1] http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2010/03/26/wisconsin-prie...

> Why is it immature to see people preach one way, behave a separate way, and conclude they're full of shit?

It's not. Concluding that people are unreasonable and summarily dismissing what they preach is what seems immature. One might instead realize that a church and its religion are related but distinct... that although people may not perfectly embody what they preach, the beliefs themselves may be virtuous.

I don't think anyone these days comes to religion as a logical explanation for observed facts. The nonexistence of a personal interventionist god (Clarke's "Alpha") is a couple of lines and Occam's razor; the nonexistence of a universe-creating god (Clarke's "Omega") doesn't even need the couple of lines.

The rationale usually given for religion these days is as a source of moral guidance; the bible may not be literally true, but it's full of wisdom you can apply to your daily life. The Church isn't really about preparing for the second coming of Jesus, but it helps bind the community together; it provides a place you can go for moral advice, a way to direct charitable efforts, shared rituals that help people know each other and so on.

But those matters are things you can judge through observation. If I know christians and atheists, and I observe that the atheists are living more moral lives than the christians, then even on the kind of grounds I've described above, I absolutely should choose to be atheist.

A lack of a belief in God, Atheism, isn't equal to Naturalism, a belief that there is nothing but what is measurable. There is quite a bit of room between the two.

Many early Christians were called Atheists because they denied the existence of other gods. Yet today they (and others) have forgotten the times before they were a dominant world view. True religious imperialists.

atheists don't go around evangelizing, do they?

I believe reasonable people should conclude that when people systemically preach X and behave !X that they, and their beliefs, are addled. Or more likely that they're hucksters. They're using their credibility to sell something, and they have no credibility.

Not to mention the bible, a rorshach of self-contradictory beliefs; christians regularly attempt to avoid standing behind their opinions or condemnation thereof via the "bible says so" ruse, though they're notably happy to lawyer their way out of biblical rules that have fallen out of favor (clothes of two threads, slavery, wife as chattel, homosexuality for some.)

I believe I should not lie. But sometimes I lie. I find this hard. It is a personal struggle, something I meditate on and genuinely try to improve myself. When others lie, I want to say that lying is wrong and simultaneously acknowledge that it's difficult to do the right thing.

I preach X and behave !X. But I don't think I'm a huckster, nor trying to sell anything. I'm just me. I'm not vying for credibility. But I still encourage people not to lie, even though it's hard.

Is there anyone who lives in perfect accordance with their ideals for how people should live?

People turn away from those that Preach "Everyone that does X is evil, and will go to hell," then are found out to be doing "X." Then they claim that they are not going to hell because they are the exception to the rule.

Doesn't even have to be around religion. Rush Limbaugh laughed at the idea that addiction was a 'disease' until it came out that he was an addict. Then all of the sudden it's a disease, with no apology to all of the others that were decried as stupid/wrong/etc over the years.

People don't come to religion through a rational and dispirited analysis of all available evidence. Why would you expect them to hold leaving religion to a higher standard?

Do you have evidence for this? Statistics? I don't think it is wholly irrational to seek community, as we are social animals; I think that people who join religion can do it for community. What irrational reasons do you know of and what percent of people do it for those reasons?

People can rationally join church for community.

People can rationally join religion for community, but only with very sophisiticated metacognition.

Most people slip into religion without a rational basis, but still may appreciate the benefits of their religion post hoc.

Statistics, no. But for evidence, talk to any religious person for 5 minutes about why they're religious.

You're right; it is not irrational to seek community, but believing a religion is correct in order to join a community is.

For irrational reasons, here: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1uvp3i/why_are_or...

The explanations on that page is a cavalcade of cognitive errors. There's plenty more where that came from.

Speaking as someone who's lived through the opposite experience (grew up seeing the wrong thing not believing, found the right thing and believed), I think it comes from the repeated dissonance between reading/being taught one thing, and then not seeing that thing actually lived out. Turns out that when you actually see people practicing what they preach on a large scale, things can turn out quite different!

I can only imagine people don't try and affect change for the same reasons they don't try and affect change in politics at large, namely that the issue seems so large that they can't see themselves making any headway against a seemingly advancing tide.

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