3 ms·

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

by as 18y 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.

silentbicycle 18y ago
The arguments also tend to turn uncharacteristically ugly.
- as 18y ago
  That'll be the case in anything where people have strong attachments.
  - silentbicycle 18y ago
    Indeed.
as 18y 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.
- iamelgringo 18y ago
  Perhaps it's the tone and content of your post that got you voted down. Without even knowing what my religious faith is, in one broad, sweeping generalization, you've told me that whatever my faith is, it's logically indefensible because of evidence from the last 200 years. Those sorts of comments are usually voted down on Hacker News.
  - ltbarcly 18y ago
    Oh, you do have a logical defense then? Or are you just spitting into the wind and claiming that "there could be a logical defense, so we shouldn't say there isn't?
    - silentbicycle 18y ago
      "Be civil."
    - dhbradshaw 18y ago
      I submit that there can't be a logical defense. This is not because of a weakness in religion but rather because of a weakness in logic. To get to the point where logic becomes relevant you have to build up a set of shared assumptions. The beliefs from which you argue are formed from a set of experiences. Unless you have something of a common experience it is difficult to share a set of beliefs from which to argue. The process of joining a religion is not a logical one. It is a spiritual one and is based in experience. How, then, do we argue about experience? Either we discuss things and times and places that neither of us have witnessed, or we discuss and evaluate each others experiences. Perhaps we are fortunate and both accept a common ground distilled from some set of experiences. Maybe we are both physicists. But no such set of shared experiences seems to be broad enough to properly answer questions of religion. If you truly want to begin to discuss intelligently then you have to seek a shared set of religious experiences. But that might be dangerous. Change can happen at that point.
      - ltbarcly 18y ago
        Ahh, you have totally destroyed your own argument. If to argue using logic depends on building shared assumptions, the basis of all religion is to accept an entire laundry list of assumptions without questioning them. There is no reason to suspect that a soul or spirit exists, therefore what you mean by 'a spiritual' process is unclear. There are no 'religious experiences' that you can demonstrate to exist. At best, you can show me a group of people claiming to have a 'religious experience'. Can you define even a single way a 'religious experience' is different from any other emotional group experience? Please don't patronize me with your nonsense. You are hiding behind nice sounding phrases like 'religious experience' and 'weakness in logic', but these are merely rhetorical flourishes, there is no meaning to them. They are effective only because they are often repeated in discourse. You might as well tell me that I need to open my soul to the forces of goodness.
  - as 18y ago
    It's true that I didn't make any effort to soften what I said. If your understanding of the nature of things was largely formed more than 200 years ago, chances are that it's wrong.
    - ars 18y ago
      You think you are an exception, and this is a unique time in history, but it's not, give it another 200 years and you'll be wrong too. Science has a pattern it goes like this: you discover something and you find out more and you understand it fully. (Religions get bashed here.) Every single time that happens you find out a little more and you realize how much you don't actually know. (No more bashing.) If you think you know everything about a topic then you actually don't. You don't really understand something until you know what you don't know about it.
      - byrneseyeview 18y ago
        But religion as a real, testable phenomenon doesn't get more valid as one model of the physical world is discarded for a more accurate one. The Four Humors don't make a comeback when we develop an understanding of antibiotics that renders previous assumptions false. You're treating religion as the natural fallback hypothesis, which should make it fairly easy to convince yourself that you're right.
ars 18y 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?

by as 18y ago

silentbicycle 18y ago

The arguments also tend to turn uncharacteristically ugly.

as 18y ago
That'll be the case in anything where people have strong attachments.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  Indeed.

as 18y 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.

iamelgringo 18y ago
Perhaps it's the tone and content of your post that got you voted down. Without even knowing what my religious faith is, in one broad, sweeping generalization, you've told me that whatever my faith is, it's logically indefensible because of evidence from the last 200 years. Those sorts of comments are usually voted down on Hacker News.
- ltbarcly 18y ago
  Oh, you do have a logical defense then? Or are you just spitting into the wind and claiming that "there could be a logical defense, so we shouldn't say there isn't?
  - silentbicycle 18y ago
    "Be civil."
  - dhbradshaw 18y ago
    I submit that there can't be a logical defense. This is not because of a weakness in religion but rather because of a weakness in logic. To get to the point where logic becomes relevant you have to build up a set of shared assumptions. The beliefs from which you argue are formed from a set of experiences. Unless you have something of a common experience it is difficult to share a set of beliefs from which to argue. The process of joining a religion is not a logical one. It is a spiritual one and is based in experience. How, then, do we argue about experience? Either we discuss things and times and places that neither of us have witnessed, or we discuss and evaluate each others experiences. Perhaps we are fortunate and both accept a common ground distilled from some set of experiences. Maybe we are both physicists. But no such set of shared experiences seems to be broad enough to properly answer questions of religion. If you truly want to begin to discuss intelligently then you have to seek a shared set of religious experiences. But that might be dangerous. Change can happen at that point.
    - ltbarcly 18y ago
      Ahh, you have totally destroyed your own argument. If to argue using logic depends on building shared assumptions, the basis of all religion is to accept an entire laundry list of assumptions without questioning them. There is no reason to suspect that a soul or spirit exists, therefore what you mean by 'a spiritual' process is unclear. There are no 'religious experiences' that you can demonstrate to exist. At best, you can show me a group of people claiming to have a 'religious experience'. Can you define even a single way a 'religious experience' is different from any other emotional group experience? Please don't patronize me with your nonsense. You are hiding behind nice sounding phrases like 'religious experience' and 'weakness in logic', but these are merely rhetorical flourishes, there is no meaning to them. They are effective only because they are often repeated in discourse. You might as well tell me that I need to open my soul to the forces of goodness.
- as 18y ago
  It's true that I didn't make any effort to soften what I said. If your understanding of the nature of things was largely formed more than 200 years ago, chances are that it's wrong.
  - ars 18y ago
    You think you are an exception, and this is a unique time in history, but it's not, give it another 200 years and you'll be wrong too. Science has a pattern it goes like this: you discover something and you find out more and you understand it fully. (Religions get bashed here.) Every single time that happens you find out a little more and you realize how much you don't actually know. (No more bashing.) If you think you know everything about a topic then you actually don't. You don't really understand something until you know what you don't know about it.
    - byrneseyeview 18y ago
      But religion as a real, testable phenomenon doesn't get more valid as one model of the physical world is discarded for a more accurate one. The Four Humors don't make a comeback when we develop an understanding of antibiotics that renders previous assumptions false. You're treating religion as the natural fallback hypothesis, which should make it fairly easy to convince yourself that you're right.

ars 18y 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?