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Hello. I really like your honesty, courage and passion that I can sense from what you wrote. I don't want to sound offending, but you are saying that you are ha

Hello. I really like your honesty, courage and passion that I can sense from what you wrote. I don't want to sound offending, but you are saying that you are happy to discuss this and I have almost no contact with deep religious persons that are in IT, so I have a couple of questions. 1. Where is the boundary of your beliefs? I'm always trying to be polite with my dev co-workers, but for example if I write a flagged variable `$bible = false;` somewhere in my code, would you feel offended? 2. How do you mix the very science-based nature of IT with purely non-scientific phenomenon of religion? 3. Do you accept all scientifically proofed facts as true, that contradict ( might contradict ) your religious views? Like evolution of homo-sapiens, big bang, etc. 4. Do you accept all historically proofed facts as true, that contradict ( might contradict ) your religious views? Like politics behind let's say writing the bible, purpose of the religion and use as a tool of manipulation. Again really sorry if my questions sound offending not only to you, but to anyone else who reads this.

iamthepieman 11y ago
Hi these don't offend me at all but I think they deserve a more thoughtful response than I am able to give at this moment. I'll try to write a proper response during lunch today. Ok I've got some time now for a brief response. 1. There are none. And where there are I try to push them. I don't really see your example as a boundary issue. If other people malign or ridicule my beliefs it doesn't really bother me except to feel sadness for those people. 2. Acts 17:11 says: Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of the mind, examining the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so. It's out of context but basically its commending the Berean Jews for closely examining the teachings they were receiving from the apostles to verify that they were true. My faith demands rationality and my God is a rational God. 3. The Bible is not a science text book. The Bible is not a fairy tale either. I accept the bible as true understanding that it's purpose is not to teach me about scientific phenomenon. The travesty to me about evolution and the big bang is not that it is or isn't opposed to biblical teachings, it's that it is such a huge distraction from the true message of my faith. 4. No. This is the one I'm most likely to get into an argument about because history itself is subject to manipulation and interpretation. Has the bible been used to nefarious purpose? Yes. Is the bible's purpose nefarious? No.
- drinchev 11y ago
  Thank you so much for this. Not only you, but thanks everyone that took part in this conversation. I definitely have better understanding now.
jacquesm 11y ago
You're not addressing me so apologies for butting in but the human brain is perfectly capable of holding contradicting viewpoints at the same time. This quote is attributed to F Scott Fitzgerald: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." My grandmother was deeply religious (Catholic) and yet was very much down to earth and practical when it came to every day life. It never seemed as if she had any apparent problem with this. Religious people are not computer programs and do not need to pass some kind of unit test for consistency before they are allowed into production. And plenty of so called rational people hold contradictory beliefs as well, in fact I'd be surprised if anybody had a completely consistent set of beliefs and facts that they subscribed to. Case in point: I have a close family member that is extremely rational except for that one point where we are descended from primates, that's one step too far.
stoolpigeon 11y ago
Since you sound interested I'll give you my take. I work in tech but I do it as an evangelical missionary. I think I'm not too far outside the norm (as much as there is such a thing) for an American protestant. Of course the answers to your questions can vary pretty widely based on who you ask but that leads me to think you might be interested in hearing from more than one person. 1.) The boundary of my beliefs - in terms of people offending me by what they say or write - I really don't care and don't get offended. I have zero expectation for people who don't adhere to my beliefs to say things in line with them. If another person who is a Christian says things I think are really out of line, it wouldn't offend me but I'd try to engage them and work it out - but people who don't believe in it, I don't expect to act like they do. If a person who is of another faith or an atheist is interested in discussing something like the validity of the Bible, I'm happy to have that discussion as long as it is a real discussion. If it's a debate with us just mindlessly exchanging arguments, I have better things to do. 2) I don't think IT and religion are at odds in any way. The tension happens more at the level of your next question. IT is too far removed from those fundamental questions. In fact, as someone who's life is focused on sharing a message with as many people as possibe, IT is awesome. 3) This is trickier. If something is for sure a scientific fact and it conflicts with what I believe my faith teaches about the nature of the world then my assumption is that I've somehow misunderstood what my faith teaches. The only authority I recognize for this is the Bible - so to simplify the discussion - if a fact contradicts what I believe the Bible says then I assume my understanding of the Bible is wrong and I adjust. For your two examples - coming to understand evolution and fit it into my faith has been an on-going process for me over a lot of year. The Big Bang is something that fits my world view better than one that proposes God does not exist. 4) Same as above but I think that a lot of what people believe to be "historically proofed facts" about the Bible are in fact wrong and reflect a lack of information with regards to current knowledge on history. A lot of theories about when parts of the Bible were written and who wrote them rest on the bias of the theories authors rather than any facts. For instance I believe the New Testament was written by people who knew Jesus Christ, saw what he did in person or knew people from that group. I do not think it was written much later by people creating a religion. If I were to find out something I believe to be true is absolutely false - I would evaluate and adjust. I've done it in my lifetime. It's something I do about more than just my faith. My politics have changed during my adult life and lots of beliefs I have, have moved as I experience more and learn more. I've been living in Europe for 4 years, for example, and in that time I've changed my mind about lots of things. It has been a real education. I don't cling blindly to any opinon. I don't mindlessly follow any 'leaders' teaching or instructions. Hope that's the kind of feedback you are interested in - if you want to continue the discussion feel free to email me if that's easier than here - bittercode@gmail.com
cmdkeen 11y ago
Whilst I'm not the OP I'll happily give my thoughts as a not very good Anglican - who embodies the "great Anglican fudge". 1. Offended no. I'll think you're rather rude, the same as if I wrote $manifestDestiny = false. If you know someone you can have banter with them. 2. IT has all sorts of articles of faith. vi versus emacs, I'm weird as I like nano. Religion is a way of living your life, my code is in no way affected by it. How I interact with my colleagues is, for instance I'd hope that having a nice easy rationale for being a good person makes me a decent co-worker. I'd rather not work with a hedonist who doesn't give a fig for anything other than their own happiness, and with the internet we're exposed to plenty of those. 3. I don't view evolution, the big bang etc as contradicting my religious views. Genesis has been viewed as a metaphor since the 4th century BC. Creationism and biblical literalism are relatively recent "innovations" in some Christian traditions. It isn't about the "God of the gaps", it is about science revealing more of the complex creation we inhabit whilst being incapable of answering what the prime first mover was. That said science only shows us what we can measure from the construct of our own perspective. It cannot, and does not claim to be able, to answer everything. 4. Being a member of the Church of England you have to be pretty aware of the historical context of religion! I'm not a biblical literalist and my church is not solely guided by what is in the bible. One of the reasons theology exists is to take all that knowledge and use that context to look at what we can actually divine from the bible. Being religious doesn't make you automatically not a jerk. Neither does being "scientific" provide an alternative, science isn't a set of ethics. Up until the 1970s academic philosophy was viciously atheist (the only thing worse than a theist was an agnostic). However since then theism has enjoyed a resurgence and disciplines like epistemology have taken on the challenges raised by atheist philosophers. As a counter-point let me ask a non-religious person, what makes an act good? Be wary of associating it with something which makes you feel "warm and fuzzy" about having done it, because then would you expect someone who did not get that same feeling to do it.
- peeky 11y ago
  What makes you decide some bible rules are good and others less good? Same answer, probably.
- avar 11y ago
  > As a counter-point let me ask a non-religious person, > what makes an act good? You might be interested in reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris for an in-depth start at an answer to that question. It's a secular look at morality and how we can reason about morality without a foundation of unscientific ideas (e.g. the existence of a deity). In essence it makes the point that the religious idea of morality driven by a god with a big stick in the sky who'll discipline you if you step out of line isn't moral at all, and neither do most religious people actually adhere to it in practice. E.g. we're not stoning homosexuals or burning witches as we once were, and it's not because the scripture changed, but because of secular progress despite of scripture. How do you decide which instructions to cherry-pick from the Bible or whatever piece of scripture it is you believe in? He essentially defines an act as "good" if it's a net increase in human happiness and well-being. Burning people to death of persecuting homosexuals, not so much. Looking out for your fellow man so he'll look out for you. Note that this isn't the same thing as reducing morality to hedonism. Anyway, I'm doing a poor job of paraphrasing the gist of that book so I'll stop. But if you're genuinely interested in what constitutes a good act or moral behavior in the secular sense there's a lot of well-researched and interesting works you can read on the subject.
rmc 11y ago
I'm not religious, but I should point out that IT isn't the most 'scientific accepting' as some might think it is. For example: Is IT/open source/tech/programming a meritocracy? If so, how do you explain the massive gender skew? How do you explain how there are scientific studies showing people can be sexist in science (which should be as 'science-based' as IT)? Many people in tech, confronted with this, will double down. They'll claim tech is a total meritocracy, that women must just be studier at tech etc. etc. Atheist IT people can be just as closed minded as some bible thumper.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  It's not 100% a meritocracy, no, although it seems to be more of a meritocracy than other industries. And a lot of the gender skew starts real, real early. Anyone who took Computer Science in college could see the gender skew in action. I regularly had between 0 and 1 women in my 30+ student classes. They just weren't signing up for Computer Science classes. And there used to be quite a few female computer scientists, but that trend changed in the 70s. There was probably a cultural aspect to this (i.e. parents or peers influencing their decisions away from computers because computers are for asocial nerds, and you don't want to be a nerd!). It does appear that the cultural influence is shifting at least slightly in favor of women being programmers again, with nerd/geek culture becoming more fashionable and so many people using computers/smartphones all day long, so hopefully we will see more women pursuing computer science, but the root of the problem is mostly right at high school/college age, not nearly as much in the workforce.
gregoreous 11y ago
I hope you don't mind my taking this post as an open invitation for anyone to reply to, but I thought I should reply as well. 1. I love talking to people with different beliefs. If we have a respectful debate based on our best evidence I assume we will both learn something. 2. Facts are facts. However, I think all people build world views around those facts which interpret those facts in ways that are consistent with their non-scientific beliefs. The scientific method is just a important to me as an agnostic in terms of whether a medical procedure is safe. 3. See answer 2. Many Christians have no trouble with evolution. It was discovered by an Anglican after all. It's true that Darwin lost his faith over the discovery, but after a few years, many Christians just incorporated it into their faith. 4. It is very hard to prove historical facts, but there is good evidence for many arguments (like the resurrection for example; or that the King James Bible was developed by a committee). I think for many Christians, good historical scholarship is fundamental to the sorts of things that they now believe. This works both ways; however. For example, after the Divinci Code came out I was able to quickly discard the sorts of claims it made because the evidence was so bad. Similarly, Richard Dawkins should not give up his day job to become a biblical scholar since he doesn't seem to have the knack for it. Cheers
- marcosscriven 11y ago
  I'm not sure why you conflate the fiction of The Da Vinci Code with the cogent writings of Dawkins.

iamthepieman 11y ago

Hi these don't offend me at all but I think they deserve a more thoughtful response than I am able to give at this moment. I'll try to write a proper response during lunch today. Ok I've got some time now for a brief response. 1. There are none. And where there are I try to push them. I don't really see your example as a boundary issue. If other people malign or ridicule my beliefs it doesn't really bother me except to feel sadness for those people. 2. Acts 17:11 says: Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of the mind, examining the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so. It's out of context but basically its commending the Berean Jews for closely examining the teachings they were receiving from the apostles to verify that they were true. My faith demands rationality and my God is a rational God. 3. The Bible is not a science text book. The Bible is not a fairy tale either. I accept the bible as true understanding that it's purpose is not to teach me about scientific phenomenon. The travesty to me about evolution and the big bang is not that it is or isn't opposed to biblical teachings, it's that it is such a huge distraction from the true message of my faith. 4. No. This is the one I'm most likely to get into an argument about because history itself is subject to manipulation and interpretation. Has the bible been used to nefarious purpose? Yes. Is the bible's purpose nefarious? No.

drinchev 11y ago
Thank you so much for this. Not only you, but thanks everyone that took part in this conversation. I definitely have better understanding now.

jacquesm 11y ago

You're not addressing me so apologies for butting in but the human brain is perfectly capable of holding contradicting viewpoints at the same time. This quote is attributed to F Scott Fitzgerald: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." My grandmother was deeply religious (Catholic) and yet was very much down to earth and practical when it came to every day life. It never seemed as if she had any apparent problem with this. Religious people are not computer programs and do not need to pass some kind of unit test for consistency before they are allowed into production. And plenty of so called rational people hold contradictory beliefs as well, in fact I'd be surprised if anybody had a completely consistent set of beliefs and facts that they subscribed to. Case in point: I have a close family member that is extremely rational except for that one point where we are descended from primates, that's one step too far.

stoolpigeon 11y ago

Since you sound interested I'll give you my take. I work in tech but I do it as an evangelical missionary. I think I'm not too far outside the norm (as much as there is such a thing) for an American protestant. Of course the answers to your questions can vary pretty widely based on who you ask but that leads me to think you might be interested in hearing from more than one person. 1.) The boundary of my beliefs - in terms of people offending me by what they say or write - I really don't care and don't get offended. I have zero expectation for people who don't adhere to my beliefs to say things in line with them. If another person who is a Christian says things I think are really out of line, it wouldn't offend me but I'd try to engage them and work it out - but people who don't believe in it, I don't expect to act like they do. If a person who is of another faith or an atheist is interested in discussing something like the validity of the Bible, I'm happy to have that discussion as long as it is a real discussion. If it's a debate with us just mindlessly exchanging arguments, I have better things to do. 2) I don't think IT and religion are at odds in any way. The tension happens more at the level of your next question. IT is too far removed from those fundamental questions. In fact, as someone who's life is focused on sharing a message with as many people as possibe, IT is awesome. 3) This is trickier. If something is for sure a scientific fact and it conflicts with what I believe my faith teaches about the nature of the world then my assumption is that I've somehow misunderstood what my faith teaches. The only authority I recognize for this is the Bible - so to simplify the discussion - if a fact contradicts what I believe the Bible says then I assume my understanding of the Bible is wrong and I adjust. For your two examples - coming to understand evolution and fit it into my faith has been an on-going process for me over a lot of year. The Big Bang is something that fits my world view better than one that proposes God does not exist. 4) Same as above but I think that a lot of what people believe to be "historically proofed facts" about the Bible are in fact wrong and reflect a lack of information with regards to current knowledge on history. A lot of theories about when parts of the Bible were written and who wrote them rest on the bias of the theories authors rather than any facts. For instance I believe the New Testament was written by people who knew Jesus Christ, saw what he did in person or knew people from that group. I do not think it was written much later by people creating a religion. If I were to find out something I believe to be true is absolutely false - I would evaluate and adjust. I've done it in my lifetime. It's something I do about more than just my faith. My politics have changed during my adult life and lots of beliefs I have, have moved as I experience more and learn more. I've been living in Europe for 4 years, for example, and in that time I've changed my mind about lots of things. It has been a real education. I don't cling blindly to any opinon. I don't mindlessly follow any 'leaders' teaching or instructions. Hope that's the kind of feedback you are interested in - if you want to continue the discussion feel free to email me if that's easier than here - bittercode@gmail.com

cmdkeen 11y ago

Whilst I'm not the OP I'll happily give my thoughts as a not very good Anglican - who embodies the "great Anglican fudge". 1. Offended no. I'll think you're rather rude, the same as if I wrote $manifestDestiny = false. If you know someone you can have banter with them. 2. IT has all sorts of articles of faith. vi versus emacs, I'm weird as I like nano. Religion is a way of living your life, my code is in no way affected by it. How I interact with my colleagues is, for instance I'd hope that having a nice easy rationale for being a good person makes me a decent co-worker. I'd rather not work with a hedonist who doesn't give a fig for anything other than their own happiness, and with the internet we're exposed to plenty of those. 3. I don't view evolution, the big bang etc as contradicting my religious views. Genesis has been viewed as a metaphor since the 4th century BC. Creationism and biblical literalism are relatively recent "innovations" in some Christian traditions. It isn't about the "God of the gaps", it is about science revealing more of the complex creation we inhabit whilst being incapable of answering what the prime first mover was. That said science only shows us what we can measure from the construct of our own perspective. It cannot, and does not claim to be able, to answer everything. 4. Being a member of the Church of England you have to be pretty aware of the historical context of religion! I'm not a biblical literalist and my church is not solely guided by what is in the bible. One of the reasons theology exists is to take all that knowledge and use that context to look at what we can actually divine from the bible. Being religious doesn't make you automatically not a jerk. Neither does being "scientific" provide an alternative, science isn't a set of ethics. Up until the 1970s academic philosophy was viciously atheist (the only thing worse than a theist was an agnostic). However since then theism has enjoyed a resurgence and disciplines like epistemology have taken on the challenges raised by atheist philosophers. As a counter-point let me ask a non-religious person, what makes an act good? Be wary of associating it with something which makes you feel "warm and fuzzy" about having done it, because then would you expect someone who did not get that same feeling to do it.

peeky 11y ago
What makes you decide some bible rules are good and others less good? Same answer, probably.
avar 11y ago
> As a counter-point let me ask a non-religious person, > what makes an act good? You might be interested in reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris for an in-depth start at an answer to that question. It's a secular look at morality and how we can reason about morality without a foundation of unscientific ideas (e.g. the existence of a deity). In essence it makes the point that the religious idea of morality driven by a god with a big stick in the sky who'll discipline you if you step out of line isn't moral at all, and neither do most religious people actually adhere to it in practice. E.g. we're not stoning homosexuals or burning witches as we once were, and it's not because the scripture changed, but because of secular progress despite of scripture. How do you decide which instructions to cherry-pick from the Bible or whatever piece of scripture it is you believe in? He essentially defines an act as "good" if it's a net increase in human happiness and well-being. Burning people to death of persecuting homosexuals, not so much. Looking out for your fellow man so he'll look out for you. Note that this isn't the same thing as reducing morality to hedonism. Anyway, I'm doing a poor job of paraphrasing the gist of that book so I'll stop. But if you're genuinely interested in what constitutes a good act or moral behavior in the secular sense there's a lot of well-researched and interesting works you can read on the subject.

rmc 11y ago

I'm not religious, but I should point out that IT isn't the most 'scientific accepting' as some might think it is. For example: Is IT/open source/tech/programming a meritocracy? If so, how do you explain the massive gender skew? How do you explain how there are scientific studies showing people can be sexist in science (which should be as 'science-based' as IT)? Many people in tech, confronted with this, will double down. They'll claim tech is a total meritocracy, that women must just be studier at tech etc. etc. Atheist IT people can be just as closed minded as some bible thumper.

cableshaft 11y ago
It's not 100% a meritocracy, no, although it seems to be more of a meritocracy than other industries. And a lot of the gender skew starts real, real early. Anyone who took Computer Science in college could see the gender skew in action. I regularly had between 0 and 1 women in my 30+ student classes. They just weren't signing up for Computer Science classes. And there used to be quite a few female computer scientists, but that trend changed in the 70s. There was probably a cultural aspect to this (i.e. parents or peers influencing their decisions away from computers because computers are for asocial nerds, and you don't want to be a nerd!). It does appear that the cultural influence is shifting at least slightly in favor of women being programmers again, with nerd/geek culture becoming more fashionable and so many people using computers/smartphones all day long, so hopefully we will see more women pursuing computer science, but the root of the problem is mostly right at high school/college age, not nearly as much in the workforce.

gregoreous 11y ago

I hope you don't mind my taking this post as an open invitation for anyone to reply to, but I thought I should reply as well. 1. I love talking to people with different beliefs. If we have a respectful debate based on our best evidence I assume we will both learn something. 2. Facts are facts. However, I think all people build world views around those facts which interpret those facts in ways that are consistent with their non-scientific beliefs. The scientific method is just a important to me as an agnostic in terms of whether a medical procedure is safe. 3. See answer 2. Many Christians have no trouble with evolution. It was discovered by an Anglican after all. It's true that Darwin lost his faith over the discovery, but after a few years, many Christians just incorporated it into their faith. 4. It is very hard to prove historical facts, but there is good evidence for many arguments (like the resurrection for example; or that the King James Bible was developed by a committee). I think for many Christians, good historical scholarship is fundamental to the sorts of things that they now believe. This works both ways; however. For example, after the Divinci Code came out I was able to quickly discard the sorts of claims it made because the evidence was so bad. Similarly, Richard Dawkins should not give up his day job to become a biblical scholar since he doesn't seem to have the knack for it. Cheers

marcosscriven 11y ago
I'm not sure why you conflate the fiction of The Da Vinci Code with the cogent writings of Dawkins.