6 ms·

It never fails to amaze me how otherwise very intelligent and thoughtful people remain stuck believing in God. I must say I can't help feel a little less impre

• baddox 16y ago
  Why? Different axioms are just different, and they can't be argued logically because logic only follows from the axioms. The only arguments you can make for axioms are how useful they are and, more importantly, how well you think they reflect reality as you understand it. If one of his axioms is that not every truth has objective empirical evidence to support it, how can you formulate an argument against that? All you can say is that you don't see the world as operating that way, but you certainly can't use logic or reason to argue that he's incorrect.
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  • stopmi 16y ago
    but aren't axioms considered to be self-evident? usually by observation?
• doorhammer 16y ago
  It never fails to amaze me how otherwise very intelligent and thoughtful people remain stuck believing that it's relevant whether or not someone believes in God. I must say I can't help feel a little less impressed with people when I learn they are condescending.
  • stopmi 16y ago
    but it is relevant in the scientific community.. if you are religious/spiritual, then you have to believe some phenomena are inexplicable, as they are performed/commanded by some entity we cannot comprehend it just doesn't usually encourage the kind of inquisitive/iconoclastic/skeptical attitude that scientists need and if you are doing research, it could also result in confirmation bias why do you think it is not relevant? you could explain that instead of condescendingly accusing the OP of being condescending.
    • rosser 16y ago
      if you are religious/spiritual, then you have to believe some phenomena are inexplicable Do I? Because, if so, I'm doing it wrong.
      • stopmi 16y ago
        creation-myths, souls etc.
        • mckoss 16y ago
          It's funny, though.
        • rosser 16y ago
          (You rewrote your comment while I was drafting mine, so it looks like I'm replying to something I'm not.) I don't have to believe anything's inexplicable; in point of fact, I don't. That's not to say I think our puny little monkey brains are (presently) capable of understanding everything, but that's a completely different claim than that those things are inexplicable. As for assertions, I'm not the party making one. You asserted that religious/spiritual folk "have to believe some phenomena are inexplicable". That's a universal claim, which can be refuted by any existential quantifier to the contrary. In simple predicate logic: ∀: All believers hold that some phenomena are inexplicable. ∃: I don't. ∴: Not all believers believe so. As for specific examples, name any old thing you'd think a believer would hold as inexplicable. That. I believe it's explicable. Granted, I believe that because I believe the divine wants us to understand our world — to the extent we can anthropomorphize and attribute intent to it, of course. Indeed, it's one of my highest moral duties, according to my beliefs, to learn and understand as much as I possibly can. To do anything less with the incredible, indescribably precious gift of having a mind is to piss it away. So, net, in a lot of ways, we probably actually agree. I decry ignorance and superstition and the like pretty strongly, too. What I don't do is condescend, or paint with a brush broad enough to cover everyone in a class of humanity I seem not to have taken the time or effort to understand.
          • 16y ago
  • mckoss 16y ago
    Sorry. I didn't mean to be condescending. I meant to emphasize that I am puzzled to see people straddling high logical faculties, while choosing to disregard those abilities when it comes to some of their beliefs.
    • chromatic 16y ago
      I am puzzled to see people straddling high logical faculties, while choosing to disregard those abilities when it comes to some of their beliefs. Isn't that an a priori assumption that Larry's completely disregards his logical facilities in certain areas of his beliefs? Have you ever talked to him about what he believes and why? He might surprise you.
      • mckoss 16y ago
        I would love to meet him someday. Larry is obviously very thoughtful about many things. I guess it would have been more accurate to state that he uses his logical facilities to shoehorn what to me seem like obvious contradictions, into an integrated mindset, even though some of his axioms derive purely from his faith in tenants with no evidence.
        • chromatic 16y ago
          even though some of his axioms derive purely from his faith in [tenets] with no evidence. That reads to me like another a priori assumption. Larry's one of the most humble people I've ever met--and one of the most startling. Just when you're sure you've finished thinking about something, he can come up with a different approach that works better (and is often a simpler synthesis of ideas I'd considered too far separate). I wish I'd had the pleasure of being able to say the same thing about a George MacDonald or a G. K. Chesterton.
• spudlyo 16y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_scientist-clerics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_scientis...
• doorhammer 16y ago
  But seriously. I don't think it's pragmatically relevant. I'm personally what you might call a soft-atheist, and I can tell you that when it comes down to brass tacks, my general disinterest in theism or atheism of any sort does little to inform my coding. It does, however, seem fair to say that if Wall's self-assessment is to be believed, then at least some part of his personality and personal history, which ultimately led him to developing Perl, was tightly coupled with his experiences in Christianity. Of course, I'm not saying that Christianity is somehow responsible for Perl, or that it offered a unique addition in any metaphysical way. Perhaps a near religious interest in Harry Potter would have done the same thing. I'm saying that I value social and cultural diversity as much as nature values genetic diversity. For the most part, there is a large body that seems to generally be "right," but occasionally, from the outliers and mutations, you get something that is a novel and valuable contribution. One thing that I love about my personal tendency toward atheism is that nothing is telling me I have to care at all about what someone else's spiritual beliefs are. I'm left blissfully capable of simply looking at what they have to offer humanity, while ignoring the things that I don't think are relevant. In this case, I think the relevance of walls contribution to the world of software development is patently obvious, and anyone who would defame that on some bogus spiritual grounds is, at best, looking to give themselves a quick public pat on the back.
  • mckoss 16y ago
    I don't mean to be disrespectful to Mr. Wall. Of course I admire his brilliant creations. I made my statement in the context where those of us that rely on reason and evidence are under attack in popular culture. And people tout lists of brilliant scientists who were also Christians, as though it were proof that belief in Christianity is a reasonable philosophy. I don't begrudge anyone their own personal beliefs. But say, perhaps, Larry had mentioned that he drew his inspiration from a 5" fairy who was constantly sitting on his shoulder. Would it not give you some pause, and amazment that an otherwise articulate and intelligent man, would have such a strange belief. However interesting or charming that may be, that's how I feel when I hear about taking enduring Christian beliefs well into adulthood.
    • 16y ago
• epochwolf 16y ago
  I fail to understand how intelligence and being a theist are inversely related. I've always thought that there were serious limits to what science can prove. There are limits we what we can directly observe and indirect observation is significantly less reliable if you can't duplicate the predicted cause.
  • mckoss 16y ago
    I think it takes an amazing disregard for evidence to hold on to being a Christian. We're not really talking about deep mysteries of the universe here. The Christian myth is so obviously false to anyone who takes an even casual look at the historical evidence. So how is it that the human mind, while being so good at reasoning in one sphere, can be so easily defeated in another. I have nothing against the culture or ethics of Christianity or Christians. I was raised and hold dear those ethical teachings, myself (well, some of them). It's just that it's historical myths are so obviously false - it literally does baffle me that their belief is still so pervasive in Western society (actually, much more in the US than European society).
    • doorhammer 16y ago
      This is only thinly related, since I'm pretty sure Larry Wall isn't a deist, but it's always interesting to note that a number of the people involved in the United States inception didn't believe in Christianity in the way a lot of Christians think they do. For instance, Thomas Jefferson's edit of the bible (The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible a copy of the text: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefJesu.html http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefJesu.html
      • mckoss 16y ago
        I think if you read the article, you have to come to the conclusion that Wall is a diest. "Wall is also a serious evangelical Christian, a member (and webmaster) of the New Life Church's Cupertino Church of the Nazarene." as well as some of his direct quotes in the interview.
• dasil003 16y ago
  What do you think God is? Evangelical atheists want him to be a straw man poking his head of the clouds Monty-Python-style; but what if God is just a metaphor for everything greater than the reality we are capable of understanding in our tiny carbon-based brains? Do you really want to believe that the only things that matter in life are those that can be hypothesized, measured, and analyzed with physical instruments? If the answer is yes, that's fine, but remember that you are taking that assertion on faith. There is simply no evidence one way or the other about what lies outside the bounds of human knowledge.
  • stopmi 16y ago
    "that which can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof" and why give weight to the ramblings of the religious but not to all schizophrenics? shouldn't we give both views equal respect without calling to reason? edit: referring to the "difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences/delusions/hallucinations" symptoms when i said schizophrenics
    • baddox 16y ago
      Schizophrenia isn't what you think it is.
    • doorhammer 16y ago
      If a schizophrenic developed an elegant solution for highly efficient, commercially viable solar-panels, I'd probably listen intently to his views on semiconductors, while politely opting out of the dissertation on talking toast.
      • stopmi 16y ago
        heh.. or recruiting people to jump into the lion's den at the zoo to give it a hug? edited my parent comment to make it clearer
    • dasil003 16y ago
      > "that which can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof" Exactly! And vice versa! Who said anything about "giving weight" to "ramblings"? You are fixated on everything being about truth and facts and who's right, but that's not what I'm talking about. Maybe you don't want anything bigger than observable facts and theories based thereupon in your life, but I hope when your parents say they love you you don't tell yourself that it's simply endorphins firing in their brains.
• samvelst 16y ago
  The thing I wonder about the most is what their thought process is like. I believe any intelligent person will come to a point where they will question their faith. I'm genuinely curious as to what makes them side with faith. I know from my own culture that one's personal image is usually the biggest factor when deciding. Atheists are pretty much outcasts in my culture.
• SwellJoe 16y ago
  I went through a phase like that, and I still have to be careful not to let it slip into my judging process. Larry is one of the people who helped me get over it. I've met him a few times now, and he's strikingly intelligent and thoughtful. I've met very few people of that intellectual caliber, in fact, and I've met quite a few famously smart people. The difference between a brilliant theist and a stupid one is that the brilliant one knows enough to know what they don't know. Larry's religion, while strongly held, is not a small-minded one. The Perl community is strikingly open-minded and diverse (there are many gay folks, at least a couple transgendered folks, a huge contingent of straight men wearing skirts, and all manner of folks who choose to live differently), and Larry not only accepts this diversity, he cultivated it that way. Larry is simply not what most atheists or agnostics think of when they think of "religious person".
  • doorhammer 16y ago
    One of those things that attracts me to the hacker 'ethos', so-to-speak, is seeing people reaching into disparate and esoteric depths to stitch together seemingly outlandish but uniquely powerful solutions. I've been just as guilty of being intellectually self-righteous as anyone, but these days I see elitism of any status-quo as completely counter-productive when it comes to inspiring creativity and diversity. That said, it's hard not to slip back into it, heh. I really enjoyed the article, and while I haven't been a Christian for some time, I'd be totally stoked to meet Larry some day. He sounds like a stand up guy. Maybe I should start wearing a skirt.
    • SwellJoe 16y ago
      "Maybe I should start wearing a skirt." YAPC is in North Carolina in June. You'll fit right in. I won't be wearing a skirt, but I'm weird enough on other counts (I live in a truck, for instance, and travel full-time).
• alinajaf 16y ago
  Personally, it never fails to amaze me how otherwise very intelligent and thoughtful people remain stuck believing in an all knowing, all powerful, and apparently all loving sentient being who lives 'inside all of us', has a host of angels, who judges you when you die and depending on who you hear it from was revealed to us in a hate-filled book through a man who found an angel in a cave and used this power to carve an empire out of the arab world or instead revealed to us as the father of an admittedly decent dude, the story of which also happened to be documented in another suitably hate-filled book. Can you learn from their teachings? Yes. The same way you can learn from any other self-help book. The danger of religion is that it often comes loaded with a message that has been refined, over centuries, to become the perfect weapon of control over you. For this reason, I have to agree with the original poster. Theists who buy into the above stories and others like them, do not impress me. NB: This is of course referring to the Judeo-Christian God with a capital G, not the Deist "Supreme Architect" (which to me feels like a stepping stone for theists who feel kinda atheist but aren't ready to take the plunge yet) or the 'universe' that you feel a part of when you lose your sense of identity through drugs or meditation. Also, spirituality and prayer aren't necessarily bad things. In Japan I bought what's essentially a talisman of the god of good entrepreneurial fortune and took it with me to job interviews. I didn't believe that it would actually increase my chances of getting a job, but it became part of my pre-interview ritual and it was somehow 'nice' to know that I'd taken it to all my interviews.
• cristoperb 16y ago
  > It never fails to amaze me how otherwise very intelligent > and thoughtful people remain stuck believing in God. Hey! I'm a theist. Most of the time. I keep meaning to read Donald Knuth's "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About." Has anyone here read/listened to it? http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/things.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/things.html "In the fall of 1999, computer scientist Donald E. Knuth was invited to give six public lectures at MIT on the general subject of relations between faith and science."