Ask HN: Hackers and Religion

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=822318

by yangtheman • 17 years ago

5 10 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Just out of pure curiosity, how many of you are religious or have faith? I think certain types of people make up hackers, and I am curious about relationship between hackers and religion.

ncarlson• 17 years ago

From my anecdotal experience, hackers tend to have a distaste for organized religion. Atheism and Agnosticism seem to run strong among programmers.

saurabh• 17 years ago

Curiousity about systems makes you a hacker, be it religion or a machine or behaviour. If you don't question your beliefs, you are not a hacker.

noodle• 17 years ago

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

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

edw519• 17 years ago

I'm probably an outlier here at hn, but I feel fortunate to have been born into the religion of my parents and grandparents, which is perfectly suited to my "hacker" mindset. It incorporates a system of thinking and lifelong learning along with an understanding that there is still that which is bigger than ourselves.

I won't say any more than that because these kinds of discussions at hn quickly devolve into something other than what was intended. I do answer emails.

byoung2• 17 years ago

I'm definitely not religious but I don't completely discount the possibility of a higher power. I believe the search for an answer to the question "is there a god?" is more interesting than any answer could be.

acg• 17 years ago

There is not a relationship, just because people do or don't believe in a god, many gods or what have you has little to do with their creativity. If there is a relationship it might be that some religions have an emphasis on reading and books. Some people also confuse the want for secularism with the absence of belief in something. Religious belief is culture as much as anything, often parents bring children up to believe or not.

thunk• 17 years ago

I count a belief in "the singularity" as to some degree religious. Composed of equal parts millennialist eschatological zeal, denial of the lack of compelling evidence for the emergence of the requisite strong AI, and even its own Heaven (see "Rapture of the Nerds"), Singularitarianism is usually where your religiously inclined hacker ends up.

iterationx• 17 years ago

I'm a traditionalist Catholic. This should probably be a poll.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

I'm not much of anything, but if you had to pigeon-hole me, I'll take agnostic pantheistic deist. But that's a stretch. Agnostic probably covers me more than anything else.

Mz• 17 years ago

I sometimes refer to "god". It's shorter than saying "whatever intelligence is behind the workings of the universe". I believe that belief systems attempt to squish the grandness of whatever intelligence is out there into this little box known as the human mind. I am not so arrogant as to think I can comprehend the universe to that degree. I also like to leave room for the universe to surprise me.

FWIW: my ex used to describe me as a "non-denominational christian". Not really accurate but perhaps as close as one is likely to get. (To quote Madonna:) I hate labels. They are too limiting.

Ask HN: Hackers and Religion

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