Why are geeks often atheist?

http://m4th.com/Articles/Why-are-geeks-often-atheists.php

by nreece • 18 years ago

50 232 18 years ago

wheels• 18 years ago

Tied into the recent Meyer-Briggs poll I'd also posit that the prototypical geek personality, INTJ, also tends towards Things Needing To Be Right. Meaning, many people simply don't find a need to break down systems of belief and settle on a solid, well constructed belief structure. Geeks like binary stuff. Religion is true or false. The Christian geeks that I do know seem to confirm this by being rather taken with systematic theology.

henning• 18 years ago

"Systematic theology"? That sounds like a lot of effort to dance around the fact that Christians worship a magical Jewish zombie who is all that stands between them and hell.

rbanffy5• 18 years ago

After all, not all zombies can fly and that one did.

IsaacSchlueter18• 18 years ago

Spluh, it's because they're smart.

robg29• 18 years ago

Or lazy.

Coming late to this game, I'm still surprised by this attitude in CS circles. To me, an atheist has refused to see the problem in defining one simple term: "God". Rejecting one definition (after a half-hearted explication) doesn't solve anything except by ignoring further inquiry.

As a neuroscientist, I know that finite matter gives rise to visions of the infinite. To me, that itself is an awe-inspiring moment for which I have no rational basis. Call it what you will (even delusion) but the challenge is to explain it away when no explanation seems adequate.

Of course, solving for "God" need not be tied to a particular faith. On it's own, it's a personal undertaking where rejecting an understanding in being atheist is certainly one's right. But replace the loaded term "God" with something else, say "Nature" or "Infinite" or "Universe" or even "Matter", and I can't see how one doesn't tumble back to a more humble position.

dfranke4• 18 years ago

All Sagan's books touch the nerve-endings of transcendent wonder that religion monopolized in past centuries. My own books have the same aspiration. Consequently I hear myself often described as a deeply religious man. An American student wrote to me that she had asked her professor whether he had a view about me. 'Sure,' he replied. 'He's positive science is incompatible with religion, but he waxes ecstatic about nature and the universe. To me, that is religion!' But is 'religion' the right word? I don't think so. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist (and atheist) Steven Weinberg made the point as well as anybody, in Dreams of a Final Theory:

Some people have views of God that are so broad and flexible that it is inevitable that they will find God wherever they look for him. One hears it said that 'God is the ultimate' or 'God is our better nature' or 'God is the universe.' Of course, like any other word, the word 'God' can be given any meaning we like. If you want to say that 'God is energy,' then you can find God in a lump of coal.

Weinberg is surely right that, if the word God is not to become completely useless, it should be used in the way people have generally understood it: to denote a supernatural creator that is 'appropriate for us to worship'.

--Dawkins

DougBTX3• 18 years ago

Understanding "God" as a "Personal God" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_god) is by no means limited to CS circles, I'd say it is the default position in much of the western world.

Beyond that, yes, you're probably right: a broader definition of god would probably lead to less people calling themselves atheist. I'm not sure how you would go about expanding the definition, it seems like any religion which says "this is what god is" will have a natural advantage over one which says "god is whatever you like", since people are better at coming together over things which they share, rather than things they agree not to share.

pg4• 18 years ago

Or lazy.

No, the lazy choice is to have the visions of the infinite you mention and instead of trying to understand them, simply to describe them in terms of whatever traditional concepts are floating around in your culture-- which in this case are at best 99% anthropomorphizing fable, and often consciously designed to enslave you.

aswanson8• 18 years ago

While I welcome the debate, I don't think this is the forum for it. All we will end up doing is insulting one another leaving opinions unchanged. It's been proven time and again that this type of stuff only results in flamewars. !HN

as4• 18 years ago

"As a neuroscientist, I know that finite matter gives rise to visions of the infinite."

I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean anything.

IsaacSchlueter18• 18 years ago

Rejecting one definition (after a half-hearted explication) doesn't solve anything except by ignoring further inquiry.

But replace the loaded term "God" with something else, say "Nature" or "Infinite" or "Universe" or even "Matter", and I can't see how one doesn't tumble back to a more humble position.

Well, obviously I believe in "nature" and "universe" and "matter". But praying to these things is silly, because they don't have minds and can't hear you.

That's not what "God" means. What "God" means, to the majority of english speakers at least, is some form of magical super-fairy who created the universe and loves you. And no, I don't believe in magic or super-fairies, and I am not convinced that the universe's has a creator, and if it does, I'm further not convinced that said creator would necessarily be loving, or even have emotions as you and I conceive them.

The slippery definition is a common tactic. You can't just redefine the term until it's something we all agree on, and then pretend that you're still talking about the same thing that we were disagreeing with. Either God is a magical ghost, or it's nature. If it's nature, then let's stop pretending that this is about deities and theism, and admit that we're just using poetic terms to talk about physics, declare that praying accomplishes no more than any other kind of meditative activity, and stop treating "religion" as any more special than sports or soap operas.

I'd be ok with that.

helveticaman2• 18 years ago

Or lazy.

It's easier to understand creationism than physics.

plugh• 18 years ago

That reminds me of something that happened a few years ago. I was sitting in my cube working. I shared a cube wall with the office secretary and she was chatting to another woman who had stopped by. It was typical girl-talk. I pretty much drowned it out until the woman said: I don't understand why all the really smart guys never believe in God... I burst out laughing. I don't know if they realized what I was laughing at.

IsaacSchlueter18• 18 years ago

Oh my god, no lie, I just overheard almost exactly this conversation at my local Starbucks.

"I don't know if God is testing me or something, but none of the smart nice guys I meet are even willing to hear the word of our Lord."

rkts3• 18 years ago

Isaac Newton was highly religious and he was smarter than any Digg user. In fact, most smart people in Newton's time were religious. Atheism in those days was associated with poor uneducated people, the same way racism is today. Doesn't that disprove the hypothesis that intelligence causes people to be atheist?

Wait, I know what you're going to say to that. You're going to say that Newton et al. don't count because they lived before Darwin. The theory of natural selection, you say, was the first non-religious explanation of life that smart people could believe. Before that, everyone just defaulted to religion because there was no better theory available.

It's a nice idea, but I don't buy it. When I became an atheist as a teenager, I wasn't thinking about evolution; I didn't even have the foggiest understanding of Darwin's theories. I've encountered many other atheists who don't. Obviously, evolution is not usually what causes people to reject religion.

I think the real difference is that, in Newton's time, it was fashionable for smart people to be religious, whereas in our time it's fashionable for smart people to be atheist. Evolution was just the fashion's tipping point.

Specifically, Darwin caused a few very smart people to change their minds about religion, and the greater bulk of somewhat smart people (who desperately wanted to seem like very smart people) followed suit. Now anyone who wants to be considered smart will reject religion out of conformance.

Basically, people will believe anything as long as their being wrong has no noticeable impact on their lives. Intelligence has little to do with it. And the moral of this story is not that you are all conformist sheep, but that it doesn't matter. If Isaac Newton struck out on the big questions, then you probably will too. Just stop trying to answer impossible questions, and go live your life.

sealedidentity4• 18 years ago

OK, as per your theory of conformism, smart people want to be accepted as smart by other smart people. That is why they are atheist in the current times. The fallacy of this argument is so transparent in that smart people are generally considered non-conformist. That is the essence of geekiness if one can put it that way.

That there is god is for the theist to prove and not the atheist to disprove. What anyone who is rational chooses to believe is the sum total of his knowledge and his experience. You have lumped smart people as characterless by calling them conformist. So either you are a charlatan theist trying to get in a word sideways or someone who is truly and hopelessly wrong.

neilk• 18 years ago

Atheism in those days was associated with poor uneducated people, the same way racism is today.

Citation?

Don't you mean paganism, rather than atheism? And by pagan I mean the jumble of indigenous beliefs that you get with a pre-literate people, freely mixing local superstitions and the official religion (in this case Christianity).

as4• 18 years ago

Here's a data point for you - I changed my mind because of evolution. Here we're not really interested in smart people - many smart people believe in God. We're interested in the subset of smart people with a special kind of honesty, the kind great scientists almost always have, and great philosophers often do. The 'smart people' you claim changed their minds because of fashion aren't the ones we're really interested in talking about.

Also, I like to distinguish between deliberate atheists (like myself) and people who are atheists by default. Some people are apathetic about philosophical questions and will say they don't believe in God simply because they weren't brought up with any religion.

cap4life• 18 years ago

This articles is absolute b.s. Faith and reason go together; they are not diametrically opposed. Perhaps the reason why geeks tend to be atheists is because they simply don't care that much about religion- they have other subjects to consider.

ajkirwin2• 18 years ago

Not meaning to start a theological debate here, as really, it's not the place, but how exactly do faith and reason go together?

robg29• 18 years ago

What annoys me is so-called scientists writing books where they cloak the discussion in pseudo-science. The scientific method requires hypothesis testing. When a scientist says faith involves delusion, they're really degrading science because anyone with "faith" knows it's not an objective reality to be tested. And so they reject science. To me, that explains the backlash against science. Scientists overstepping the bounds of their expertise damage the reputation of science itself.

That all said, reason should absolutely be used to examine faith. If your reason forces you to reject a faith, who's to say you must then reject all faith? Sure, you may decide to at any point. But it need not be the end of inquiry.

One fact that will always blow my mind for which I don't anticipate a fully rational explication: Right now we're all communicating across a tiny rock in the middle of nowhere. Yet we have the rational means (linguistic, mathematic, scientific) to ponder the depth and extent of our own existence. Call me a theist, but I don't see how that's possible based on strictly finite matter. An evolutionary biologist may spin a story, but it doesn't make it so. So too might an ancient book. Use reason to explore and understand the diversity of faith. In the process I can't see how you won't deepen your own understanding of both.

EDIT: If you disagree, say why you disagree even as I don't think I've said anything controversial here. I know some science. I know faith less. This thread is interesting to me exactly because of the seeming prevalence of atheist programmers for which I have no insight into why.

yummyfajitas• 18 years ago

All reasoning requires some unprovable axioms. That's Godel's incompleteness theorem. A religious person can simply take the divinity of jesus (or whatever) as an axiom and use reason from that point onward.

dfranke4• 18 years ago

> It might make sense to think that many such geeks simply find something as simple as a creator an overly simplistic explanation for something so elegant.

"Overly simplistic" is nearly the opposite of the problem. We want our first principles to be simple -- the fewer axioms, the better. By contrast, a god is something mind-bogglingly complex, far more complex than the universe itself. That makes it a thoroughly unsatisfactory explanation.

robg29• 18 years ago

But see it's up to you (if you accept the challenge) to come up with a satisfactory answer. I know I have - for myself. And my wife and I mostly agree. That's enough. We won't teach our (eventual) kids dogmatically but we will teach them a healthy appreciation of the power and pitfalls of religious thought. To us, it's a part of what it means to be human. An atheist, to me, is simply saying "No, that definition is wrong and I don't believe in it!". To me, that's a weird perspective for folks who come up with definitions day after day.

On topic, I do wish folks down-voting me throughout this thread would explain why. I started posting because I'm very interested in the question but lack an answer. Down-voting me only proves the point and necessitating the very question!

gizmo8• 18 years ago

We could argue with you, but it would accomplish little.

1. I'm not looking for a satisfactory answer. I'm looking for the answer that is most plausible. I go where evidence leads me. In this case, there is as much evidence for god as there is for unicorns. This is not sufficient to dismiss the concept of god entirely, but it should at least give you pause.

2. I have debated religious people for hours and hours. I don't know any atheist who hasn't seriously evaluated his beliefs. My position is very close to the one of Richard Dawkins. Read his books (especially Selfish Gene and The God Delusion). The last book is not as confrontational as the title suggests. Dawkins has done a few programmes for the BBC, you can easily find them online.

3. There doesn't -need- to be an answer. When a problem is very complex, it is always better to honestly admit you don't know than to make something up that sounds nice or gives comfort.

4. You can't expect people to explain their position again and again on forums like these. Reading books is a far more efficient way to understand alternative points of view. Only when you have -specific- questions does it make sense to challenge people online.

seer• 18 years ago

I would never forget the moment I became an atheist - it was somewhere in the middle of the 7th grade, and we had a lesson about the emerging empires in Mesopotamia ( The first time history touches organized religion, at least in my school). I was cautiously believing in christ then. Anyway we were discussing the merits of their religion (sovereign chosen by god, underworld or something like that), and it was all clear that their notion of religion was silly and could never be true, yet they passionately believed it. On top of that it was obvious that the ruling class had invented it to serve it's needs (the sovereign was entitled to his position, so was his family and hairs). And then it struck me, what will be different in say 3-4 thousand years into the future, when in some class a child will be learning about christianity, and discussing it's merits. In that exact moment the whole pillar of belief (which my parents were relentlessly building) crumbled like the WTC.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

robg29• 18 years ago

In rejecting an organized religion, why make a leap to rejecting the entire inquiry? We're already well-into that technological future you imagine. Indeed, we're communicating across the globe at sometimes the speed of light. But the most difficult questions of our humanity still have yet to be answered. I can't see that ever changing save for God incarnate descending (again?). :)

A very influential book for me: A Common Faith by John Dewey - a pragmatic philosopher with a realistic approach and hope.

The real problem, to me, is one of literalism vs. metaphor. I read the Old and New Testaments for insight but not history or science. Some would find that appalling. Others appealing. The choice is mine and ours to believe what we want.

tapostrophemo• 18 years ago

"In rejecting an organized religion, why make a leap to rejecting the entire inquiry?"

They spoiled it for us.

But if you're serious^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrational in your inquiry, you'll come to discover that, like Santa Claus, God does not exist, at which point you will also reject the inquiry. All of it.

Tichy2• 18 years ago

The thing is, if god exists, all is hopeless, because everything is arbitrary (at the whim of said god). Only without a god is there any hope for us humans to make sense of things.

I think in a way the existence of god would be very depressing, because it would make everything meaningless.

mleonhard• 18 years ago

I became an atheist gradually over my first year of university. That's when I took General Chemistry and realized that science really does work. Then I realized that the Earth really is very old, not 20,000 years old like my parents had taught me. From that point I just had to examine every one of my beliefs and see which ones crumble before the light of reason.

It's been a long process. I'm still discovering beliefs that need examination.

I think the hardest part about losing one's religious beliefs is that the differing belief systems become a barrier the relating to family and friends. And how can one avoid coming across as a know-it-all when talking with folks who are ignorant of science?

jncraton3• 18 years ago

"And how can one avoid coming across as a know-it-all when talking with folks who are ignorant of science?"

I don't see any way that science is incompatible with god. If science shows that something is false (eg. the age of the earth) then it is false. Science cannot disprove the existence of god by the very nature of what god is (outside of this reality). Science can show a need for a god or a multiverse, but it can't prove or disprove it.

You make it sound like people who learn about science automatically abandon a belief in the supernatural. There is some comfort to be had in believing that this physical world is the extent of reality, but that doesn't make it true.

kirubakaran3• 18 years ago

I love how you worked WTC, supposedly a victim of religion, into your story :-)

Herring• 18 years ago

Geeks aren't religious? I think Emacs would be a good OS if it came with a halfway-decent text editor.

anr• 18 years ago

Hehe, so true. Geeks usually place their religion all over licenses, languages, editors, operating systems, methodologies, etc.

Some people choose ideologies. There must be an evolutionary explanation for religion somewhere.

danteembermage• 18 years ago

Maybe this Usenet group is for you?

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.emacs/topics

almost• 18 years ago

DIE HERETIC SCUM!

petercooper3• 18 years ago

Simple. Geeks respect and understand the scientific method. Anything that cannot be observed and tested is considered speculation and not fact.

Being an atheist in no mean requires that you remain an atheist forever. Scientists have believed, at many times, in things that we now know are not strictly correct. Once evidence arrives and experiments are performed, scientific consensus changes.

reazalun2• 18 years ago

I know several atheists (some of them are scientists) who became Islam, Christian, etc, because they need HOPE in life. And they did not have to wait until science provides them the evidences that show God does exist.

petercooper3• 18 years ago

If you choose to ignore science and logic in one area of your life, that is your choice and not necessarily a bad thing. It is often necessary psychologically to hide from the truth, but it doesn't make the untrue any more true.

Some people find it impossible to accept or not accept all manner of things, but whether or not you accept or do not accept something does not change whether or not that something is true.

robg29• 18 years ago

Unfortunately though we put too much faith in the scientific method. I'm still waiting for an adequate explanation of Gravity but I believe in it.

albertcardona2• 18 years ago

A few years ago I was arguing with a mormon that, if he wanted some scientific theory to attack with bile, he'd have his best shot at gravity. Evolution, on the other hand, has been very well explained from all possible fronts.

The problem with gravity is that, as a daily experience, it fades out into uninteresting routine (except perhaps for rocket scientists and other specialists.)

gizmo8• 18 years ago

The scientific method is used to make educated guesses based on prior evidence.

Using newton's models we have figured out how (and why) planets orbit the sun, why objects fall equally quickly in a vacuum, etc. The scientific method has nothing to do with finding absolute answers. Still we're able to accomplish remarkable things simply by testing what works and what doesn't. Man on moon. Proves pretty conclusively that it's not about having ultimate answers, it's about having a model of the world that's so awesome you can stick people on a giant rocket and hurl them into space without anything going boom.

For every answer a scientist gives you you can answer a more specific question, until the scientist answers; "I don't know". Always. The ultimate answer is always "don't know". But every decade or so we have one extra answer in the chain of knowledge before we have to admit we don't know.

petercooper3• 18 years ago

Proving that something exists is the first step, before getting an "adequate explanation." The scientific method already proves that gravity exists. It doesn't matter if we don't have an explanation for it, but it exists. The same cannot be said for a god / gods at this stage.

tokipin2• 18 years ago

here's an explanation of gravity http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Charles-W-Misner/d...

long story short, gravity is the curvature of spacetime. objects of mass cause the curvature, and the curvature in turn causes objects to move locally along geodesics (shortest-distance paths), which causes the curvature to shift

when you throw a ball and it's moving through a parabola, that curve taken with time in a riemannian space is actually the straightest line possible from one end of the throw to the other

this is Einstein's magnum opus General Relativity

icey6• 18 years ago

Frankly, I believe that a lot of people who call themselves Athiests are in fact Agnostics; and don't really stop to think about the difference.

I would venture to guess that most scientists especially are agnostic because it fits the scientific method better - we can not presume to know what we cannot measure, and all that.

Atheism is the idea that we know that there is know higher power. Any scientist has to know that it is impossible to have that absolute knowledge because we have no tests to prove or disprove the hypothesis.

randallsquared4• 18 years ago

There is some confusion here, I'll agree.

I made the argument earlier in this thread that not only do we have no tests to prove or disprove theism, we cannot have any such tests, because theism and atheism are statements about what's beyond our (philosophical) universe. Any god you can formulate a test for isn't really God-the-Creator-of-All in the first place.

So, belief in God, or the lack thereof, is just an assumption. This assumption will influence your actions, of course, and belief or the absence of it may well be beneficial or harmful. Either you live your life as if God exists, or you don't. If you don't, you might as well call yourself an atheist... and that's why I do.

maw2• 18 years ago

I disagree. I think most atheists are, strictly speaking, agnostics (even if some may not know the term agnostic). When pressed, we'll concede that, no, we don't _really_ know whether a Creator exists. However, our doubts are so very small that, for all practical purposes, it's more convenient, and not really any less honest, to think and argue as though we were entirely sure.

Conversely, I think that intellectually honest believers have a similar but opposite belief. Although, as a nonbeliever myself, I have a hard time putting myself in their shoes, or my brain inside their skulls, so maybe I'm mistaken here.

ken• 18 years ago

No, it's worse than that. I think we know well enough that we're agnostic. It's just that agnostics have even worse PR than atheists.

Look at the digg survey this article links to: there's no option for "agnostic". Did the agnostics choose "atheist" or "other"? Either way, they're hidden.

Look at the photo spread: it lists "Famous Agnostics/Atheists", as if they're the same thing, but at least half are arguably agnostic:

- Darwin: self-described agnostic; claimed he had "never been an athiest"

- Einstein: "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic."

- Edison: apparently a lifelong agnostic

- Gates: can't find a clear statement, but said in an interview "I don't know if there's a god or not"

Look at the article itself: there's no mention of agnosticism at all. They're simply using a photo of a famous agnostic to bolster an argument about atheism.

I believe that a lot of us who are (and rightfully claim to be) agnostic are being labeled "atheist" by people who don't know or care.

icey6• 18 years ago

Ack, what a terrible typo I've made. I intended to state that "Atheism is the idea that we know there is NO higher power."

This is why you should not comment before your first coffee of the day.

reazalun2• 18 years ago

I suspect, atheism itself will become an organized religion several decades from now.

robg29• 18 years ago

I think in some circles it already has.

(Don't know why you got down-voted.)

olavk• 18 years ago

I think Unitarian Universalsm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism is some kind of organized atheism.

gnaritas• 18 years ago

"I suspect, baldness itself will become an accepted hair color several decades from now".

See how silly that sounds? Atheism is not nor will it ever be a religion.

cousin_it2• 18 years ago

It's happened long ago: Communism. One of the central dogmates: "Religion is opium for the people" (Marx). It went all the way here in Russia: purposely desecrating churches, blowing them up, using them as warehouses, shitting on icons etc.; newspapers named "Atheist" or "Blasphemer"; killing priests en masse as "reactionary elements".

utefan001• 18 years ago

Maybe some of us geeks just need to get outside more. Go hiking like Francis Collins did.

From (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article673663.ece) Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, claims there is a rational basis for a creator and that scientific discoveries bring man “closer to God”.

For Collins, unravelling the human genome did not create a conflict in his mind. Instead, it allowed him to “glimpse at the workings of God”.

“When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.”

“I see God’s hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings in his image and decided that the mechanism of evolution was an elegant way to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that is not the way,” he says.

Collins was an atheist until the age of 27, when as a young doctor he was impressed by the strength that faith gave to some of his most critical patients.

“They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance,” he said. “That was interesting, puzzling and unsettling.”

His epiphany came when he went hiking through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. He said: “It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt, ‘I cannot resist this another moment’.”

Collins believes that science cannot be used to refute the existence of God because it is confined to the “natural” world. In this light he believes miracles are a real possibility. “If one is willing to accept the existence of God or some supernatural force outside nature then it is not a logical problem to admit that, occasionally, a supernatural force might stage an invasion,” he says.

As for me, know that I respect your opinion. My life experiences are different than your life experiences. For me, God is very real. I find when I remember to pray sincerely in the morning, I can recognize God’s hand throughout the day. The things I see are usually small things but sometimes they are not small at all.

aswanson8• 18 years ago

Sam Harris hikes, and this is his take on Collins:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060815_sam_harris_lang...

What is your opinion on his interpretation?

DanielBMarkham11• 18 years ago

Let's put down the rationalist cool-aid for just a minute. While in every realm of scientific inquiry we have never discovered a man in a red suit (santa claus) by surprise, we have always discovered a greater level of complexity and uncertainty.

The question becomes whether or not we can assign names to things we cannot reason about. Human language and psychology are great things. I believe we can and I believe it is necessary. To say there is an intelligent prime mover at some level beyond our understanding is only far-out in one word: intelligent. I would argue as a baby species we're nowhere close to having a rational definition for intelligent. It's obvious there are complex levels of understanding to the universe that we do not grok.

So in 4 thousand years, when humans look back on us and laugh, so what? Were the Romans wrong in believing Zeus threw lightning bolts? I would argue they were not: some force existed that caused electrical discharges from the sky. By learning more about Zeus, humans simply took part of the meaning of "Zeus" and replaced it with various theories. (Which continue to be worked to this day, I might add)

We will never complete this exercise. There will always be holes in what we understand. And using our creativity and intellect to tell stories about what must be out there? It's the definition of human.

So yes, Virginia, there is a God. For some he is a personal, close advisor. For some he is simply a thing to be denied until time of dire stress. But he's been there, and will remain there, for millennium. Every time a scientist takes a deep-field shot from the Hubble for a picture of the "face of God", every time a MLK rises up to change society for the better, every time a child wonders where their dead parents "went to" -- God remains.

You can cling to your provisional theories as being the source of truth or you can accept the uncertainty of it all and grow up. Atheism is the ultimate negative statement "there is no such thing as I cannot define" and therefore, at the end of the day, is the most non-rational belief of all - in my opinion, of course.

pg4• 18 years ago

Atheism is the ultimate negative statement "there is no such thing as I cannot define"

No, it's just concluding, as JMC puts it, "the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question."

DanielBMarkham11• 18 years ago

But it's not. It's lazy (in my opinion) to have such a shallow view of the matter.

I would encourage you guys to listen to some discussion and arguments around proofs-of-God. The Teaching Company has a couple of great lecture series. Take some time and learn. The worst people to teach are those who think they have nothing to learn.

We can't make a conclusion one way or another given common terms and understanding. The question is really about how we deal with things outside of our ability to reason about them, not werewolves, santa clause, or any of that other nonsense.

I wonder how many have you studied any of this since university? I thought about it, and I got tired of hearing the same old arguments, so I reached out and kept reaching until I got it. To me this seems like one of those questions people are just happy repeating something they heard a long time ago while not looking at the subject with a fresh eye every so often.

Hey -- my opinion only. But it looks lazy to me.

sealedidentity4• 18 years ago

This is just wrong philosophy masquerading as science or skepticism. The question of lightning finally got solved by science and there're always things which are beyond the explanation of current science and technology. That doesn't mean that we'll not be able to explain it in the future.

Your belief in a "Personal god" is only equivalent to others believing in a gift of virgins and flying spaghetti monsters. - my opinion of course.

edu• 18 years ago

Because we all know we are living in a computer simulation... http://www.simulation-argument.com/

ahold• 18 years ago

It's because some of them are european buddhists :)

t0pj• 18 years ago

if(god.exists()){ return to_your_predetermined_role_in('work','play','etc'); }else{ while (true) { rage_against_the_machine(); } }

xlnt2• 18 years ago

One would hope the reason is: geeks more often manage to understand evolution properly.

fgb• 18 years ago

I know what you mean. I have a fairly good layman's understanding of evolution. Whenever I've been engaged in a discussion on the topic, I'm amazed by the level of ignorance that's often displayed. Especially when people repeat absurd statements like "survival of the fittest" which have no bearing whatsoever on evolution.

wumi2• 18 years ago

were there not atheists long before evolutionary theory?

xlnt2• 18 years ago

Few, because they didn't have an answer to the problem of design.

(Plus, back then, science and industry had yet to give a stunning demonstration of the power of human reason over nature.)

icey6• 18 years ago

I have to say that this thread shows why I'm so impressed with the YC community. Ordinarily this sort of discussion is very thorny; and almost always ends up as a flame fest within the first 10 posts.

Instead, we're drinking tea in the middle of the brier patch.

gizmo8• 18 years ago

We don't deserve an award for not killing each other because of differences in opinion. Or we might as well hand out "Not a racist" awards to everybody. Civility is something we should demand from everybody - not something to be pleasantly surprised by.

immad• 18 years ago

Celebrate your victories ;-)

procrastitron2• 18 years ago

"this thread shows why I'm so impressed with the YC community"

I was actually thinking the opposite. I come here for news and articles relating to technology start ups, and this thread shows how far off track hacker news has gotten.

dkokelley• 18 years ago

I was thinking the same thing. I thought about posting a "please stop" thread to this but decided against it. I figured that if I ignored it then it might go away.

It's not that I don't appreciate this sort of discussion. I like the openness of asking these questions. It's just that I can go to any corner of the internet with a forum and see most of the same.

They say you're not supposed to discuss religion and politics, I'd personally prefer to keep to this guide, and we don't see much of politics here.

jey2• 18 years ago

This site is now "Hacker News", not "Startup News". http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

Site guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

time_management4• 18 years ago

Hackers like to experience things directly, and improve them. Religion of the traditional sort tends to assert that there are immutable revealed truths, which cannot be experienced except by a rare few who lived millenia ago, and which it is a crime (heresy) to "hack". So traditional religion is unappealing, and a lot of them come to the conclusion that nothing in religion is true.

time_management4• 18 years ago

One note that I'll add: if we want to make "religion" palatable to hackers, there is a way in: reincarnation research. The reason I say this is that, as I mentioned in another post, hackers like to experience things directly, understand them at intimate levels, and improve them, which makes the immutable, transcendent, unprovable and irrefutable "truths" offered by religion unappealing.

500 years from now, we'll still have no scientific evidence either way regarding the existence of God, and there will be millions of people on each side of the debate. However, empirical reincarnation research (e.g. the work of Ian Stevenson) can be done, and early results are promising. It's not enough, at this very early stage, to "prove" that reincarnation occurs after death, but it could provide a lot of interesting insights into what we are as humans, using methodology that scientifically-minded hackers would approve.

lpgauth• 18 years ago

"God is dead" - Friedrich Nietzsche

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead

globalrev2• 18 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity == Atheism?

globalrev2• 18 years ago

i meant that some singularitists seem more reliogious about it that scientific.

i have no real opinion whether it will happen or not.

ashu3• 18 years ago

In a hypothetical universe, if kids weren't exposed to ANY thoughts about religion AT ALL and were taught about what we know about how the universe works, would the concept of God arise? Perhaps, since there are still a lot of things which are mysterious and can't be explained. But it seems that it will take a very different form than what we have been exposed to.

Hexstream2• 18 years ago

I agree. Religion is a bit like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation, it's "rationalisations" to explain phenomenons we weren't equipped to understand in the past. Religion is a relic of an era where we just didn't know any better. In the absence of the needed body of knowledge we invented models (ex: God) of how it supposedly works and then proceeded to believe them.

cousin_it2• 18 years ago

I think yes, the concept would still arise. Many disconnected societies had religion.

You know this feeling when, after stumbling and falling over a chair, you punish the poor piece of furniture as if it were alive? Or see a car crash about to occur and think to yourself, oh please, let's this not happen? Imagining self-consciousness around you, a natural human trait, leads to the invention of tree spirits, thunderstorm spirits, etc., all the way up to god.

And of course the concept of god (or any other Powerful Force orthogonal to human well-being) is very beneficial to those in power, to rationalize their decisions to the masses. So yes, it would be invented, and pretty soon.

ensignavenger• 18 years ago

I wonder if anyone else has caught the contradiction in the article-

"This makes them the single largest religious group on Digg,..." (The author acknowledges that atheism is a 'religious group')

"Religion has no place in science." (Used as a possible reason why Geeks tend to be atheists)

Religion is the greatest science of all. All other branches of science are merely an appendage to true religion. When we understand nature, and natures God (or the rules that govern nature) we understand science.

rw• 18 years ago

Hard agnostic != atheist.

sealedidentity4• 18 years ago

anyone who can understand probability in a half-decent manner wouldn't believe in god.

zach• 18 years ago

I think this may be the simplest explanation for why geeks often have any particular quality, this one included:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204240

natch• 18 years ago

For me it's because I understand the argument against the existence of God.

Specifically, a God, meaning some kind of conscious all-knowing, all-powerful entity that exists somehow "beyond" time, would have to be a thing of organized complexity.

And organized complexity does not just "exist beyond time."

Somehow, this kind of organized complexity has to come in to being. No, it does not "just exist."

We do know one process for bringing organized complexity into being, and that is evolution.

So far, it's the only process we know about for creating organized complexity on the scale required for consciousness and intelligence.

We don't know of any other processes that can do this.

That doesn't prove that there aren't other ways. But.

You tell me. If God knows everything, where did he/it get that knowledge?

If God "just exists", explain: how is that possible?

Your non-explanation, to me, proves nothing.

Rather than saying "I can't prove leprechauns exist, so therefore you must accept that they might exist" I am very content to say "I do not believe that leprechauns exist." Period. End of story.

Same with God. No reason to believe. Even Pascal's wager is flawed, because you lose so much by living your life according to faith, that it is not worth it, especially considering how unlikely it is that a complete perfect all-knowing all-powerful intelligence would just spring into being beyond time.

patrickg-zill• 18 years ago

Troll-bait. Digg does not represent geeks at large, and we have no idea if the poll was spammed or not.

Second, there are many geeks (like one client I have who is finishing up his studies at Cambridge this year) who are of one faith or another.

The guy who wrote the first silicon compiler (lets you lay out chip designs without having to do it manually) - fundamentalist Christian. Many Apple geeks - Buddhist. etc.

Allocator2008• 18 years ago

I would say by and large "geeks" subscribe to Occam's Razor, meaning the simplest self-consistent explanatory theory for a given explendum tends to be correct. If the explendum, is, for example, the Universe, then Occam's Razor would point to a well-defined, self-consistent theory of quantum gravity (as yet not entirely done), then positing say, the flying spaghetti monster. If "God" is defined as some sort of disembodied "macro-intelligence" then said notion becomes a casulty of Occam's Razor. If however, "God" is co-terminous with Nature, or the Universe, or the "creativity" of nature as some would have it, which I would take to mean emergent forms or fluctuations spontaneously arising from a system in thermal equlibrium in the macro-scale, then one can carry on using the word "God", without running into Occam's Razor. Personally I prefer the word "pantheist" to "atheist", meaning the former term is "glass half full" whereas the latter term is "glass half empty".

tptacek• 18 years ago

Eric Raymond has similar essays for why geeks are "often" libertarians, or "often" in favor of gun rights. "Logic dictates" that they would be so. Of course, a year later you find out that he also thinks people with dark skin are genetically inferior, and that we should bomb Tehran.

For my part, and despite what the avalanche of comments on this thread says to the contrary, I'll assert that it's hard to find an argument more boring and petulant than this one. "Geeks" are people who like to take things apart and build them back up again, and vice versa. That is the only thing they have in common. Unless you'd like me to make fun of your grimy pony tail and Star Trek ears.

nazgulnarsil• 18 years ago

Intelligent people have better things to do with their time than argue about undefined words. (edit: I just saw how many comments this thread has, never mind)

here's another one for you, why don't geeks believe in casplak?

It's the russel's teapot problem. People who talk about god are using a word with no referent.

giles_bowkett• 18 years ago

because we can do math.

urlwolf• 18 years ago

Steve pavlina is clearly a geek (you may think what you want of his ideas; being married to a psychic is not a good sign of good judgment if you ask me); he wrote an extensice critic of organized religion here: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/05/10-reasons-you-shou...

I agree, and I think most geeks I know fall into the category of people who question bullshit often.

liaohaohui• 18 years ago

I would think that cause there is no need to be religious. I mean what's the point of believing in something which no one knows whether existed or not while life goes on as usual. I mean computers work for both who believe in something and who don't.

arvid• 18 years ago

because smart scientific people are skeptics. It is tougher to resolve one's skepticism with religious beliefs than it is resolve with atheism. Interestingly, I have known several atheist who were almost "religious" in their atheism.

IsaacSchlueter18• 18 years ago

Isn't this roughly the same as my "spluh" comment? :)

In a religious culture, it's hard to find anyone more religious than an atheist. The reason for that, I think, is that you have to make a choice to be an atheist when it's not the default.

Why are geeks often atheist?

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