Ask YC: Are you religous?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253682

by BenS • 18 years ago

15 109 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I feel like online applications and communities built around religion are pretty poor given how important religion is for lots of people. One hypothesis is that few hackers are religious. Maybe the YC community can confirm/offer a counter-explanation.

holdenk• 18 years ago

I'm not religious and religion makes me somewhat uncomfortable . This may be in part since religion is largely considered a private/personal matter in Canada (or at least Ontario :P).

noonespecial• 18 years ago

I do believe in God and religion makes me somewhat uncomfortable as well! I find nearly all of it to be a bunch of superstitions that people would like to believe, both without evidence or logic.

I respect people of every faith, (and no faith) that have developed for themselves a systematic theology/cosmology that has some modicum of internal consistency. I have no time to talk to or debate those who can't be bothered and just go around believing "by faith" whatever they feel like.

mrtron• 18 years ago

Perhaps because people's beliefs are so diverse. In Toronto, there is about 8 groups of beliefs (if no affiliation is a group in itself) with over 100,000 members. That is in a city of ~2.5 million

I personally find that sort of mixing of cultures is fantastic for a city.

ars3• 18 years ago

No, there are plenty of religious hackers, it's that they don't talk about it because there is nothing much to say: every single religious argument has been argued over and over for thousands of years. What's the point in doing it again?

as5• 18 years ago

I don't find this convincing. The arguments are thousands of years old, but most of the relevant data is <200 years old. The reason most religious hackers don't talk about it is that they know better - that unless you're sufficiently vague, believing in supernatural stories born of bronze age cultures is logically indefensible.

silentbicycle10• 18 years ago

The arguments also tend to turn uncharacteristically ugly.

as5• 18 years ago

I've been down voted, but I only say this because it's been the case in every one of the (literally) hundreds of discussions I've had on the topic.

ars3• 18 years ago

You really think this is the first time science has discovered something? The details may change, but the arguments stay the same.

> believing in supernatural stories born of bronze age cultures is logically indefensible

Unless of course it actually happened.....

Which you'll never believe, and I won't convince you, so why talk about it over and over?

senthil_rajasek• 18 years ago

I haven't given religion much thought (as a coding problem),

But have you looked at sites like,

http://www.beliefnet.com/

vaksel5• 18 years ago

Sort of, I believe that there is probably a higher being that created that initial micron of matter. But I don't believe that there is a "god" that watches our every move.

And I believe that organized religion is nothing more than a huge thousand year old scam. Make lots of money and convert as many people as you can to make even more money. 400 years from now Scientology will be on the same level as Christianity.

maxwell2• 18 years ago

  created that initial micron of matter

Just curious, does this mean you believe there was an absolute, finite beginning of time/space?

vaksel5• 18 years ago

its more of the evolution approach, the belief is more of: it probably started out with a tiny spec that was created due to special circumstances and the universe grew from it

oz• 18 years ago

Well, what happened to him?

ericb5• 18 years ago

And who created him?

Hexstream• 18 years ago

I think any serious answer would be preposterous and probably irrelevant. Even if it was spot on. Let's say we could prove we live in a computer simulation. Would you really stop living your life? Would you try to talk with the admins of the universe? Isn't that a bit pointless? Reminds me of the South Park episode where they discover the Earth is a giant reality show for aliens.

vaksel5• 18 years ago

it moved on to create the next trillion parallel universes

jaxn2• 18 years ago

I took a fair amount of religion courses in college, but I am not religious (believe there is no God, etc). However, I do find religion very interesting.

The irony here is that the tech community is extremely "religious" in another context. Vim or Emacs? Mac or Linux? Java/.NET or Python/Perl/Ruby/PHP? In that sense there are a ton of religious communities.

vaksel5• 18 years ago

Fanboy is probably a better term for that

jaxn2• 18 years ago

No, religion is much deeper.

silentbicycle10• 18 years ago

I don't consider myself religious, but I have incorporated some buddhist practices into my life.

Also, not to derail, but I think that it's pretty ambiguous whether buddhism counts as a religion, per se, according to the (generally unstated) assumptions in discussions like these. Some schools of buddhism are athiestic or agnostic, some are not, etc.

as5• 18 years ago

Yea, many schools of Buddhism have a lot of supernatural trappings that are basically ornaments and interpretations from the cultures they grew to prominence in. I think this is why the most popular school of Buddhism in the west is Zen, which strips most of that away.

silentbicycle10• 18 years ago

Right. I remember reading something where the author's teacher, when asked what some chanting in a sutra meant, basically said, "Oh, that? That's just Hindu stuff."

Historically, buddhism has partially melded with the local worldview as it has been carried from culture to culture: Theravada in India seems to have a lot of elements from Hinduism in it, Mahayana in China and Japan incorporated Taoism and Shinto respectively, Tibetan Vajrayana melded with Bon, etc. It seems to me that buddhism in America has been absorbing psychology, though it may be too early to say.

Also, I think another reason for the relative popularity of Zen / Mahayana here is that some of the Beats, particularly Alan Watts, attracted people to Shunryu Suzuki and the San Francisco Zen Center. Other buddhisms are common in immigrant communities, for example, but the Zen Center had a head start.

mattmaroon5• 18 years ago

Buddhism as most Americans understand it is more philosophy than religion for that reason.

ericb5• 18 years ago

Nope. Edit: As Dawkins pointed out, most Christians are atheists in regard to Thor and Zeus. Atheists just go one god farther.

msg3• 18 years ago

Most realists believe in only one observable universe. Solipsists just go one universe farther.

msg3• 18 years ago

Most baseball fanatics pull for only one team. People who hate baseball just go one team farther.

byrneseyeview2• 18 years ago

Are there other -ists who seriously believe in the existence of other universes, and disbelieve in this one? Your analogy is only consistent if: there is a single religion in which nearly everyone believes; or there is a multitude of universes in which large groups (none a majority of the population) believe, to the exclusion of all other universes.

petercooper• 18 years ago

No. I consider the scientific method valid and not something to be taken on faith.

tjr4• 18 years ago

I hold Christian faith. In some ways, I hesitate to label myself as "religious," as it seems to me that a great deal of stuff that has been done and said in the name of Christianity is a bunch of rubbish -- while I believe Christianity itself is good, I also believe that a lot of cruft and misinformation has been tacked on over the years.

Even amongst Christians, there is a regrettable amount of division. This group believes X, this group believes Y, this group believes Z, and none of them want to have anything to do with each other. It's a mess, and I really don't understand why folks act that way. But it makes it hard to discuss matters of religious belief, because as soon as you present view X, those who hold view Y are prone to get angry or cut you off or whatever. Then adherents of view X get angry, and adherents of view Z think X and Y are both wacky, and... sigh

Certainly, not all religious people are like this; I don't mean to claim that at all. It may just be, like in many arenas of life, a vocal minority really can't get along, giving the more sensible majority a bad reputation.

Several years ago, I participated in a reasonably successful online forum about Christian music production. After a couple of years, a few people totally ruined it for everyone else by turning the forum into a religious flame war, and the forum was eventually shut down. My guess is that online communities centered around religious topics could only exist both peacefully and for a long duration with heavy moderation.

ltbarcly4• 18 years ago

... I really don't understand why folks act that way.

They act that way because when 2 people disagree, and there is absolutely no way to determine who is right, the only way to convince the other person is to coerce them.

If I say "Santa has a blue suit", most people would say it's actually a red suit. Fine, lets go find santa and see what color his suit is, that is how you determine the truth, you go find out. But crapola, there is no santa, just fictional images of him, and if I take my 'facts' from a different fictional source than you, we will disagree forever because we are both hopeless morons.

But frankly, you don't have any reason to believe in Christianity. If believe you have talked to Jesus or an Angel, you need medical help. If you believe in these beings without having witnessed them then you are just buying into a very old rumor with no evidence whatsoever.

roadtripgeek• 18 years ago

I've noticed there's a difference in how people who label themselves "religious" and people who choose the label "spiritual" act (at least in the Bible Belt). Most of the people in my hometown who chose religious would beat you over the head with how good of a Christian they are and criticize you for not following what was clearly the One True Way. My father-in-law is proud of being a religious man and it's frustrating that he's unwilling to accept other's beliefs.

The ones who chose spiritual were much more pleasant to be around. My spiritual friends usually let me know what time their churches' main events kick off and that I have a standing invite if I decide I'm interested. Most of the time I forget they go to church X until I ask them to do something and they have prior plans involving their church. They also don't brag about their work within the community. They tend to be the type who will say "Glad I could help" and really mean it when someone thanks them. In contrast, my father-in-law is proud of how religious he is and gets upset if he feels he wasn't properly recognized for his good works.

I've noticed that certain types of communities (usually the mainstream ones aimed at moms) tend to also be more religious than not. They're ok communities until something that has a religious aspect comes up and then it's witch hunting time. I've also run across a few niche Christian sites when looking for things related to my hobbies. They don't seem to have flame war issues, but they have closed forums for the main discussions and public forums to vet new members.

rrf• 18 years ago

Alternate theory: The Internet is a dangerous idea – cf Raganwald last post. Religions would probably prefer to keep followers away from the web and in a place of worship, where there is more direct idea control; therefore would be less interested in devoting resources to developing websites. Second, I’d suggest that the average hacker puts reason before faith, so is less likely to believe in a supernatural creator.

silentbicycle10• 18 years ago

Religion and the internet are interacting, but not just in the ways you think. For example: http://www.opensourcejudaism.com/ (NB: I'm not particularly well-informed about Judaism, but I heard Douglas Rushkoff talking about religion and internet culture, and that was one example. Just passing it along.) Authorities who want to keep those under their power uninformed of alternatives are in no way unique to religion.

Also, I'd wager that some religious hackers don't bring it up much because some hackers are really outspoken athiests, and it's a really tedious debate.

mlinsey• 18 years ago

I don't agree at all with your first point. The internet is just a communication tool, albeit far more powerful than ones that have come before it. This means that it can be used to build religious organizations or proselytize just as easily as it could spread knowledge about secular humanism or whatever.

paulgb2• 18 years ago

> Religions would probably prefer to keep followers away from the web and in a place of worship, where there is more direct idea control; therefore would be less interested in devoting resources to developing websites.

I think this is too cynical a view of religion. Most religious people I've known value truth as much as any atheist, and would know it if they were the subject of this sort of idea control. I know there are plenty of counterexamples, but I think we only see the worst side of religion through the media.

(fwiw., I'm atheist, and I've read Dawkins, but I don't get the whole "militant atheist" movement.)

silentbicycle10• 18 years ago

Agreed. With religion, as with many things, people with loud extreme opinions make for good tv, and tend to be vastly overrepresented in the media because of it.

ericb5• 18 years ago

I'm not sure militant is the right word--seems like that would be adopting the nomenclature of the religious. I've never had an atheist knock on my door and try to convert me. I think the term militant comes out because believers sometimes find non-belief threatening in and of itself.

Most religions have, built into them, a meme for spreading (evangelizing) themselves. There is no such meme for atheism to spread itself. The idea is to put atheism on a more equal footing. Being open about atheism counters conformity:

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

Prrometheus3• 18 years ago

Why do you care? If you draw any generalizations from the replies on this forum, then you are committing every statistical fallacy in the book.

As for your hypothesis, the Hacker News community is built around Hacker News and not religion or the lack thereof, so I find it hard to see how it fits in. I would agree that online communities built around religion are of little interest, but only because I find the subject matter so tedious.

If you could flesh out your argument and make it a little more clear, I'm sure you would get better replies from this community.

Personally I try to never judge the people I socialize with based on their beliefs in irrelevant subject matters. But I am an oddity, being born without the seemingly common gene that causes most people to derive pleasure from meddling and prying into the personal affairs of others.

BenS2• 18 years ago

I wasn't really looking to conduct a survey, I was just hoping to get a few opinions. True, hacker news is not about religion, nor is it a good way to conduct statistically signifcant surveys, but it's still nice to hear what people think.

I could think of lots of explanations for the shortage of religious sites...and I was looking for some opinions. A few possibilities include (A) there is no shortage of sites, i'm just ignorant, or (B) there are a relatively small number of religious hackers, or (C) there isn't really a pressing 'need' that has been identified, or something I didn't think of at all.

I hope that this wasn't construed as being a judging question - I was just curious.

Prrometheus3• 18 years ago

Your point makes a LOT more sense now that you put it that way. Titling your post "Are you religious?" probably isn't a good way to get people's thoughts on why there is a perceived poverty of religious websites. You will notice that most of the responses on this page are about people's personal beliefs and not about their thoughts on religious websites.

dhbradshaw4• 18 years ago

Most people would call me religious. I'm a practicing Mormon. I pray and believe that God answers my prayers. However, I hesitated to answer your original question because the label "religious" is mildly distasteful. It seems more external than internal, more political than spiritual.

As a practicer of my faith, I get plenty of chances to interact with people of my religion. So I don't feel much of a need for a 'religious' forum.

On the other hand, I do hunger for forums and other forms of social media where the standards that I hold are widely shared. I tried Reddit. It was great to have news and education combined. But in the end it wasn't worth wading through so many headlines, articles, and comments that were (to me) degrading in one way or another.

I love it here. I wouldn't call it at all religious. But the dialog is respectful and the people are interesting. I could use more places like this.

mattmaroon5• 18 years ago

A person's religion says a lot about their epistemology, which in turn says a lot about them. You have to pick and choose your friends somehow (this is not unnecessary meddling) and there are few more substantive ways.

I'm a non-militant atheist, so I generally don't "look down upon" religious people or feel it's my duty to convert them. But I also have a hard time really relating to anyone who is willing to base their morality or political/life decisions on such silly things as the Bible (see http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/... for explanation) or logically unsound principles with no factual evidence. Their epistemology is just too different from mine.

Andys• 18 years ago

In a sense, it would be very logically unsound to base faith in God on just a book, even if it is "The Book".

Isn't it because faith transcends logic and reason? This is my understanding of the word "faith", any way.

TransientMuse2• 18 years ago

"A person's religion says a lot about their epistemology..."

Where do you draw this from? Have you any citations you can make? This seems like something I'd be interested in learning more about.

Prrometheus3• 18 years ago

So, you can't be friends with religious people? Do you and your friends sit around and talk about epistemology all day?

maxwell2• 18 years ago

Is there anything interesting to say about religion?

tjr4• 18 years ago

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/things.html

mechanical_fish• 18 years ago

I feel like online applications and communities built around religion are pretty poor...

Your use of the word "poor" here is not merely delightfully ambiguous, but one of its meanings helps to explain the other: A lot of charities have poor websites because they are poor. Building sites costs money, as does maintaining them. And many people take a dim view of charities who spend more money trying to appear less poor than they spend on... the poor.

Of course, as the web matures nice websites cost less money. A lot of charities are turning to Drupal, for example, which in its simplest incarnations can be pretty straightforward to maintain, presuming you know how to set it up in the first place. ;) But beware the feeping creaturism...

I'm also pretty dubious about the facts of your statement -- not that online religious communities are poor, but that they're especially poor. A lot of online applications are poor, full stop. We're not going to run out of things to build anytime soon.

lakeeffect• 18 years ago

I have seen this post on here several . The answer, its always the same. I know Ruby coders who wont go near python.

We all have our own religions, some believe in trees others god, its all the same, experience.

alnayyir• 18 years ago

atheist, nihilist. tl;dr. Ponder the second sentence.

th0ma5• 18 years ago

deeply, but i'll argue against it until i die! err, unless you really wanna know why deeply.

ericb5• 18 years ago

I am too confused to either up or down vote you. Well played, sir, well played.

xlnt4• 18 years ago

Few hackers post that they are religious on left-leaning social news sites is different than few hackers are religious.

mattmaroon5• 18 years ago

I would be willing to bet that the average hacker is significantly less religious than the average American, if any of the terms in that sentence could be defined and then measured.

ltbarcly4• 18 years ago

It is well documented that the level of religious intensity is very dramatically inversely proportional to education, as well as IQ and income level.

dehowell• 18 years ago

Wait, are you saying that Hacker News is left leaning? I don't know, I think there's enough diversity of political opinion around here to prevent a broad characterization one way or the other.

xlnt4• 18 years ago

Yes it's definitely left-leaning. Did you see the poll about who you'll vote for? Obama won by a landslide.

YC's a bit right-leaning on economic issues, but left-leaning overall.

comatose_kid• 18 years ago

If there was a god, we wouldn't be subjected to posts like these.

blader• 18 years ago

Yes. About vim and unit testing.

MoeDrippins• 18 years ago

Blast! You stole my thunder - I was going to use the same argument here. But about emacs instead, you heathen. =)

robg• 18 years ago

The distribution here, if you believe this sample, is more biased to the heathens! than is the general population:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=237517

nazgulnarsil3• 18 years ago

meh, I think religion in this context is merely morality side-taking. morality is one of the great unsolved dilemma's of our kind, I can see the appeal of taking a shortcut. I myself have struggled with the balance between objective and subjective morals. I take an evolutionary psychology approach to why humans behave how they do, but that doesn't answer what we should do. I think this question is very relevant to hackers who work on AI. What happens when an artificial consciousness wakes up and it doesn't do anything because it doesn't have any idea of what it "should" do? there's axiometry, but in the absence of perfect information about the future you have to resort to Bayesian statistical models in order to choose between likely outcomes. I also think it's pretty clear that a 100% consistent interpretation of any axiomatic rule would have unintended consequences. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/terminal-values.html

gscott• 18 years ago

> morality is one of the great unsolved dilemma's of our kind

With religion morality is supposed to be the norm. For Christians, Jesus feed the hungry not because it made Jesus feel good but rather to model "normal behavior". This goes on with Jesus saving the woman from stoning, the son coming back to his father and his father forgiving him (for demanding his inheritance early and blowing it on hookers), and so on.

Morality in the real world (without religion) is an excercise in making yourself feel good (and feel you are "better then others") without any self-examination.

silentbicycle10• 18 years ago

Not all religious authority rests on any sort of divine command. In buddhism* , morality is based on the idea that it's immoral to do some things (primarily: kill, steal, engage in sexual misconduct, lie/slander, and consume intoxicants that cloud judgement) because they tend to increase the amount of suffering in the world.

* Which may or may not be considered a religion, depending on how you define things; it's not necessarily theistic, for example.

nazgulnarsil3• 18 years ago

I think that morality in the real world is a set of behaviors that made it easier for our ancestors to get along with the group, thus increasing their mating pool and offspring survival rates. Dunbar's number explains why it is so easy for us to espouse ideals like thou shalt not kill within the group and then justify the killing of other groups to take their resources and women. Intuitive morality is a function of what was most effective in a tribal environment.

midnightmonster• 18 years ago

You could just say "online applications and communities are pretty poor" and be mostly right, too.

My wife participates in several online communities associated with our faith. They're technically a lot like most other such (could be better but quite adequate), and they cover a range in quality of discussion.

I run an online community of Christian web professionals/volunteers/whatever.. Our website is awful. I inherited it from the previous operators and haven't had time to redo it. I'll be taking the site in a whole new direction--i.e., new applications, not just a prettier face--but it's not there yet. Our community (which operates mostly via mailing list) is quite pleasant and mutually helpful.

You'll see competition and innovation most anywhere there's money, which is why you can find any number of automated website management services directed at churches (for example). But a lot of religion either is inappropriate to online expression, has no easy path to monetization, or both.

nickfox• 18 years ago

I'm mormon and I do practice all the "rules" of my religion and go to church every Sunday. I've been coding now for 11 years. I've been a contractor all that time. My religion is important to me but if you met me you wouldn't get the feeling that I'm all overly-religious. I don't try to pull any religious crap on people and I'm not trying to convert anyone unless they want to be.

teuobk• 18 years ago

No. I used to be a devout Catholic, but I lost my faith in the Church during high school. By the time my sophomore year in college rolled around, I decided I was agnostic. Now, a few years later, I have gone the extra step: I am atheist.

That said, I have become convinced that some sort of order exists in the universe. Things work out so elegantly so often... Perhaps that is a "god" of sorts, though not the sort of omnipotent (or even self-aware) being that is held up by most religions.

keefe• 18 years ago

Maybe most good hackers are pragmatic? I'm spiritual, but not religious.

The biggest tenet of my philosophy is "I don't know". I've always found that those people that turn to religion with dead-set certainty are usually running away from something and using religion as a shield.

The one point I have faith in is that we do not live in a random universe, that there is some design and point to our existence. This is actually a purely pragmatic point of view.

Either something happens after we die that can be influenced by the way we live, or nothing happens. If nothing happens - who cares? So, I choose to believe and seek whatever it is that is our species' purpose and follow it.

The problem is I have no idea what that is. So, I try to take care of myself first, my family second and my community next. The problem is just getting by on the day to day life is incredibly time consuming.

I hope to resolve my financial pressures (insert shameless startup plug here?) and then worry about these things when I'm a bit more wrinkly.

ltbarcly4• 18 years ago

'spiritual but not religious' is the most vapid phrase ever to originate on the lips of a douchebag.

Hexayurt• 18 years ago

I'm Hindu clergy.

silentbicycle10• 18 years ago

This isn't a direct response, but: cool project in your profile.

dan-kruchinin• 18 years ago

> Are you religous?

Nope. Religion implies belief in something/somebody. I for myself don't believe in anything at all. I can only assume. And I assume that there is no any god, life has not any sense and everything in this world can be understood and scientifically proved. From this point my position is safe, because it would be incorrectly to ask me prove my assumption just because it's assumption. Religion/belief, in contrary, is not about "assumption of anything", rather it's about "assertion of anything". And if someone asserts anything, he should be ready to prove his proposition if he would be asked(and of course he couldn't do it).

Such point of view is very much spread among technical/scientific guys. So, I don't think your hypothesis is right.

ajkirwin• 18 years ago

I'd say that I am spiritual, in that I have an interest in the enrichment of the body and the mind, but I am not religious in any way, shape or form.

Infact, I am something of a militant atheist, but I am a very moral person. I would happily tolerate religions of all types, if only they would tolerate me and mine. But, as they won't.. then neither shall I.

patrickg-zill• 18 years ago

In discussing Windows vs. Linux (a different sort of religious issue), you can call upon a series of verifiable facts to support whichever side of the argument you are on.

For instance, I could point to Linux's superior X in comparison to the X provided by Windows.

I cannot make similar arguments in defense of my Christianity however, without going through a lengthy process of communicating first with the person, determining what they consider important, reaching mutual agreement on a set of criteria by which to compare different religions (and atheism) , etc. Only then, given a hammered-out base to build on, could I then communicate clearly and succinctly why I believe "X".

Surely you can see that this would be a great amount of effort to expend in a forum, and probably would be best handled through one on one exchanges rather than allowing some random user, to whom my comments were not originally addressed, to jump in at any time.

mov• 18 years ago

I'm atheist.

eznet• 18 years ago

Agnostic and atheist beliefs are likely more concentrated in the hacker world because this is a world of science and mathematics - worlds that have not traditionally reconciled well with the world of religion (no flaming please, historical observation - Copernicus: "The Earth is not the center of the Universe" Church: "Condemn the heretic!"). You need not search far to find examples of this (aside from the previous example) as most popular scientific periodicals and journals frequently discuss the lack of religious faith in the scientific community - Scientific American, Nature and Science all regularly discuss this very topic (very frequently in Scientific American).

On the flip, there are many hackers who are religious. Despite popular consensus, hackers are people and some 80%+ of the world population claims one religion or another. It only serves to reason that some of this 80%+ of the worlds population would call a scientific discipline, such as programming, their trade of choice.

Although a generalization for sure, there is likely a grain of truth and logic to the posed argument - specifically, fewer hackers are religious than is the case with other disciplines (such as, say, insurance agent).

I know a great number of hackers who claim to be "religious", though philosophical discussions often show them to hold concepts more akin to agnosticism. My (unscientific) theory for this phenomenon is the "fire insurance" argument - i.e. If a particular religious system is correct, denouncing the legitimacy of said religion will ensure them a place in hell. If the individual does not formally denounce said religion (despite the religion not necessarily syncing with their true beliefs), they can still claim a place in heaven as a 'believer'. The "if there is a God, I am good, if there is not, what did it hurt to pray?" defense.

To each their own I say. If it works for you to believe, then by all means, believe. Concerning science and religion, evidence suggests if there is a God, he like to play dice - something that many notorious religious scientist were uncomfortable with. Myself, I find comfort in the randomness.

silentbicycle10• 18 years ago

It's not meaningful to generalize about all religion based on the church in medieval Europe. The potential behavior of a powerful theocracy, yes, but not religion in general.

Incidentally, your "fire insurance" argument is generally referred to as "Pascal's Wager" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager), in case you (or another reader) is interested in reading further along those lines.

natch• 18 years ago

I do not believe in leprechauns. In fact, I actually do believe that there is NOT a leprechaun dancing around my feet at this very moment.

Note this is different from having "no belief." I also feel this way about God, because intelligence, which is a kind of organized complexity, does not just spring into existence without some stage of organization such as evolution, at least as far as we know. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but it would take more than empty assertions to do so.

So that makes me an atheist. Of course, someone claiming "no belief in God" is also an atheist, but one of a different flavor. (You know, strong versus weak atheism).

To agnostics, I have only one question: If you are agnostic about God, are you also agnostic about the invisible leprechauns dancing around your feet?

whycombinator• 18 years ago

Hell no!

saundby• 18 years ago

I'm religious, but I'm seldom willing to discuss it in technical forums because of the responses it draws. Specifically those who feel it their mission to, first, tell me what it is I must believe, then, tell me why it's foolish to believe those things.

There are a lot of folks who feel tech forums are an appropriate place to make atheistic comments or anti-religious statements, probably because they feel like they're among a receptive audience. I think this gives an unbalanced impression of how far the split is to one side or the other. For myself, I just ignore the statements. It's not about what I'm in a tech forum for. And I don't consider it any more indicative of where the group mind is than statements on, say, film preferences.

Ask YC: Are you religous?

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