someone on HN believes in God? No judgments, I just thought hacker and atheist were deeply intertwined. Perhaps I just picked up the wrong impression from Reddit.
HN is a more mature environment. Probably the atheist:believer ratio is not all that different from Reddit... but your likelihood of being derided for your religious beliefs is a bit less.
People here are more interested in talking about creating successful startups than in being "right" about their spiritual beliefs.
I ticked over to the HN comments to see just how many people would be mocking him for his stance, since he made absolutely no apology for his faith. I have indeed been very pleasantly surprised.
I think there was a previous poll on this that said that Christian hackers were ~30% of this site, give or take, but I might have misremembered that statistic.
As a Christian hacker, I find it annoying^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H interesting your implication that belief in Evolution (and by extension in all scientific discoveries and methods) precludes people from participation in Christian faith and community (or any religious experience, for the matter).
I think you have in mind a very vocal minority of Christians. Most of us would not even consider taking every sentence in the Bible in a literal sense, if not for the debate with those minorities.
So, no need of technical savviness, advanced degrees or even high IQ. Millions of average Christians will share your intuition of "common sense".
God is not within the realm of science, science is our best effort explanation of the physical universe as we see it. Nor is God within the realm of philosophy for God by definition is beyond comprehension.
God however may be within the realm of history, if at just the right time, God revealed himself in history. That is the Christian claim: Jesus died and rose from the dead in history.
"And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead." - Paul the Apostle (a persecutor of the first Christians before seeing the risen Lord for himself, a Roman citizen, highly educated, he was himself martyred for his testimony, after being tried by several of the Roman magistrates, likely including Nero)
To reject the claim of Christ a priori because of naturalistic views of the universe is inadequate.
Better to examine the historicity of the accounts of Christ. How soon after the events were they recorded? What was the cost to those who gave their accounts? Did it happen? If it happened, what does it mean?
God may not be within the realm of science, but most claims of organized religions are certainly incompatible with science. Religion directly contradicts science in many ways. Science is all about learning the truth, by changing falsifiable theories when proven wrong. Religion is all about having answers to every question, even if they contradict each other and reality, thanks to "faith" that lets you believe contradictory illogical things. Religion kills people, puts them in jail, and denies the truth when it's proven wrong. Religious dogma only grudgingly changes when it's forced to, and even then many people still believe the Earth is 6000 years old. If a religion is so wrong about important things like that, and has insisted on many other things we know to be false for thousands of years, and is used to justify hating gays and oppressing women, then why the hell do you trust anything it says for your moral guidance?
Usually hackers are very good at logic, which precludes believing the self-contradictory bible and religious dogma, but some people are very good at compartmentalizing their brains and avoiding applying logic to some parts of their lives, apparently.
Belief in a higher power is not completely illogical. I build/design things, and take apart and analyze other people's designs. Looking at the universe, from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies, I see a beautifully complex system of interdependent cogs that mesh together perfectly to enable life to exist.
I have yet to come across an intricate system that did not have a designer, and it would be illogical for me to believe the universe just exists.
There's a huge difference between a tentative belief in a vaguely defined "higher power", and a confident belief in a well defined organized religious dogma or bible full of self-contradictions and logical impossibilities. Faith in beliefs that are provably wrong is illogical (but EXTREMELY common), and that's the basis of organized religion, which presumes to provide you with all the answers to questions that don't even make sense to ask. Organized religions are afraid to say "I don't know" and simply lie instead.
Most programmers should be smart and logical enough to reject that kind of bullshit, but my point is that some have their minds so compartmentalized that they fall for it hook line and sinker.
Everyone was shocked that Brendan Eich turned out to be a religiously motivated homophobe. He may be able to think logically about algorithms and programming language design, but his thought process about ethics and human rights is so illogical, severely flawed and compartmentalized that he's afraid to discuss it in public. That kind of religiously motivated irrationality is detrimental to a start-up, high tech company or open source project that needs to attract the best people regardless of their sexual preference, race, sex, etc.
There's a reply to this comment that says "belief in god" != "belief in the literal truth of the Bible". I'll add to that "belief in Christianity" != "belief in the literal truth of the Bible", because somehow you seem to equate the two. In fact most Christian denominations/faiths do not believe in the literal truth of the Bible.
In fact, none of the adherents to either Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy that I've met(I live in the middle east, so those two denominations constitute most of the Christian population in these parts) have held a literal belief in the Bible(ie, young earth creationism and all that crap).
There is something that irks me in militant secularism/atheism, it is this attitude of neither wanting to learn about something yet holding extremely negative views towards it and actively fighting it. People like Richard Dawkins are the the worst offenders in this respect.
Although I doubt I can change your mind on this, I hope you'd reconsider at least learning about what it is that you're criticizing here. A very good book on the topic is C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity". It is quite short, extremely well written and therefore can be read quite fast. It does a wonderful job of explaining -- with no denominational bias that I can detect -- what it is that Christians believe and what it is that they don't. I doubt you can read that and still come out thinking that Christianity is provably wrong or even that illogical/irrational. You may still disagree with it(in fact you almost surely will), but you won't hold the current just plain wrong attitude towards it(and by proxy all religions) that stems from ignorance.
What's terrible is that many Christians who claim not to believe the bible literally still pick and choose the few parts of it that are anti-gay to justify their homophobic bigotry. So "disbelief in the literal truth of the Bible" != "not homophobic bigot". I'd wager that Brendan Eich doesn't believe the bible literally, yet he's clearly a homophobic bigot.
That wouldn't be picking and choosing parts to interpret literally. Even though some parts aren't interpreted literally(the creation story in genesis for example) the message about morality still holds(otherwise let's just discard the whole thing and burn it, it has no content).
And while I don't want to discuss this issue here(we've veered way off topic) let me just state that "does not think gay marriage should be legal" does not equate to "homophobic bigotry". You can have gay friends, have no problem with them as people, but still believe that marriage is something that has a very clear definition(sacred bond between husband and wife, for life, for the purpose of building family) which doesn't include same-sex relationships.
As an atheist, I just don't see the point in picking a religious fight and insulting people for their religious beliefs in a thread about managing a personal life while also creating a startup.
Well said crusso, I'm not sure of the point of militant secularism either. How the hell does it have to do with startups?
Bringing it back to discussion and finding relevance..
It's fine and wonderful to have different points of view to be able to discuss and learn from... but when one brings a "you are a _____ so i think everything you say is ____", it seems as presumptuous and blind as the blindness being pointed out.
It just reeks of the kind of closemindedness no one likes to see or put anyone through, and is frankly kind of embarrassing to have to read through. Respect as a currency gets so much further, no matter what the subject is.
Militant secularism is it's own belief system. They're as pushy about their beliefs as the well-dressed folks who knock on my door with "information" pamphlets...
"I have yet to come across an intricate system that did not have a designer, and it would be illogical for me to believe the universe just exists."
This is called the Teleological argument for the existence of God [1]. Its been around for a long time, is the basis for creationism and intelligent design, and criticism of it goes all the way back to David Hume. Its just a weak argument.
It's illogical of you to not recurse and ask the question: "who designed the designer?" If you can't explain a complex system, then introducing a vastly more complex system to explain it is a terrible explanation, and hardly logical. It's intellectually dishonest to make such an argument, since it's so obviously flawed. No competent programmer doesn't understand recursion.
Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Before we point fingers to look at others, mind clarifying a few things for me?
These are honest and serious questions, if you feel more comfortable talking by email I welcome it.
Are you saying:
- All belief systems are identical, incomplete and short sighted as the one you are speaking of?
- How much of what you believe is based on judging your own experience with one belief system and applying it to every other belief system?
- Have you actually learnt about each belief system yourself?
- Is there no other way to see things except how you see them right now?
- Is there no way anything can exist outside of your understanding?
- People compartmentalize themselves but it's different if you compartmentalize anyone who has a belief you don't agree with?
- There is no interpretation of any teaching that is remotely religious or spiritual that could have any scientific backing
- If a particular experience of a group involves a bible or a dogma, any other group that doesn't have a bible or dogma is as well painted with the same brush?
If you're curious where I'm coming from I'll try to clarify up front. I'm not a particularly religious or non-religious person. I don't have a clue what kind of trauma you've been through with the bible or religious dogma as it's not a belief system I've first hand experienced. I guess one could say my religion is curiosity that leads me to have insight on myself.
Fanatics look the same to me when they say their way is the right and only way.
I'm not talking about one particular belief system, just organized religions that have religious doctrines or bibles that contradict themselves, contain logical impossibilities, or scientific inaccuracies. That covers most of the mainstream religions, but I'm sure you could gerrymander your own personal belief system to avoid my definition. I don't claim they're identical, just that they're wrong because it's logically impossible to be true. And my point is that there are some programmers who understand logic and should be able to think their way out of believing logically impossible dogmas, but they don't, because they're mentally compartmentalized and intellectually dishonest.
Brendan Eich for example should be smart and logical enough to figure out that gay people marrying don't effect his own marriage or harm society. Yet he gave $1000 to the Proposition 8 campaign which successfully overturned the right to gay marriage in California, so his money had a negative effect on real people's lives. And that rightfully pissed off a lot of his co-workers and community.
"Brendan Eich’s actions are homophobic and disappointing.
Want to know why it is disappointing? Frankly, I expect more from techie programmer types. Being bullied mercilessly for being a spotty, out-of-shape loser who prefers Star Trek to sports usually helps instill some solidarity. As the Jargon File puts it: “Hackerdom easily tolerates a much wider range of sexual and lifestyle variation than the mainstream culture.” You have to be reasonably intelligent to do well in the programming game, and usually people become pretty critical and questioning and skeptical in the process, and outgrow the bigotry (even if they do occasionally have social awkwardness and cluelessness).
It is disappointing when that doesn’t turn out to be as true as one thought."
And that's why I explicitly said "self-contradictory bible and religious dogma". Of course the vague hippy-dippy handwaving and misused pseudoscientific buzzwords of Deepak Chopra is pretty stupid and illogical too.
