14 ms·

I know HN hates religion, but after being an atheist all my life, and graduating with a STEM degree (the 'S' part) from a top tier institution, I've started in

I know HN hates religion, but after being an atheist all my life, and graduating with a STEM degree (the 'S' part) from a top tier institution, I've started in the last year or so to turn to the church (Roman Catholic) and theism, both to find answers to some of life's mysteries, such as the origin of the Universe, and for personal reasons (I plan to start my initiation, starting with a baptism, within the next year or so) I have no evidence that God is real, yet I have faith in him. The idea that God created the universe is more satisfying to me than any scientific theory, and it isn't incompatible with the simulation hypothesis, or the idea that the Universe was created by a higher-level construct. Edit: To reply to a commenter below, since I'm "posting too fast" according to HN. > However, I fail to see how you settled on Catholicism to give you the answers you're looking for. [...] And if not, why pick Catholicism over any other major religion? Fair question. I come from a Roman Catholic cultural background, even though I wasn't raised in a religious household, so the church is where I feel most at home. > Do you really believe all the stories in the bible actually happened? No, I don't. I regard the Bible more as a work of literature and a source of spiritual and personal inspiration than a history of events. > And if this God does exist and wants us to worship him, why doesn't he make that more obvious, and why does he allow children to be raped and worshippers to be gunned down in his own Church? My view is that God does not want us to worship him. God loves all his children regardless. Evil exists in the world. It shouldn't, and we should do our best to rid ourselves of it. I'll have more answers when I go through my initiation.

oefnak 4y ago
Most of the other teachings of the church, however, are.
- pibechorro 4y ago
  This. While there are benefits to most religions (community being the biggest) it comes along with insane and very often deadly noise, be it ignorant, purposely wrong or errors in translations or lost information through time, editors, gatekeepers. The closest path to god is reality, from personal observation ad questions.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mr_mitm 4y ago
Do you think satisfaction is a good measure of what we should believe to be true?
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Don't you think that question presupposes a materialist world view?
- bawolff 4y ago
  As an atheist, what other measure should we use? Like when it comes down to it we are all looking for answers that "satisfy" us. What else is there? Logic is just a complex way of verifying that the answers are convincing enough and thus satisfying.
  - _a_a_a_ 4y ago
    > what other measure should we use? The truth, meaning accepting our best accordance of theory to observable reality, then acting on that? That means not just in physics but in ethics as well and any other area.
    - bawolff 4y ago
      > The truth, meaning accepting our best accordance of theory to observable reality, then acting on that? That sounds like satisfaction to me. You looked for the answer that made sense and satisfied your notions of reality. But its not like you have access to divine revelation or Truth. You are working on what you think is like based on your observations and throwing ideas that aren't in accordance with what you know away because they don't satisfy you as an explanation. > That means not just in physics but in ethics as well and any other area. Oh boy. This makes even less sense for ethics. There is no emperical basis for ethics. Its entirely around what people feel is "right". You can't get to even simple things like murder is wrong just by observing the universe.
      - _a_a_a_ 4y ago
throwaway2056 4y ago
I am sure a lot of HN do it in private. In modern world (>90s) to be non-religious due to stereotyping people.
LispSporks22 4y ago
[flagged]
- hungryforcodes 4y ago
  Good point. One of my relatives did that too.
- jliptzin 4y ago
  I also know someone in a similar circumstance who suddenly turned to religion. Turns out he was becoming schizophrenic.
_a_a_a_ 4y ago
I don't understand what you expect me to take from this by your sharing of it.
umvi 4y ago
I myself am partial to the Latter-day Saint teaching that matter/energy has always existed (and forever will exist) and that the creation of the world involved "organizing" existing matter in an iterative process. That matches the pattern of creation I've experienced myself where I take something that already exists and iterate on it until it is in a refined state that I desire. I find it hard to believe that the mindboggling complexity of protein machinery was purely accidental/probabilistic. I understand how evolution works, and it makes sense, but... to me at least, it seems more likely that there was a creative iterative process that "guided" matter towards the evolutionary system we have on earth vs lightning striking an ocean full of amino acids and DNA/cells/proteins coincidentally arranging in the right configuration to jump start evolution.
- rubicon33 4y ago
  Uh, what man? That “guide” was natural selection over millions of years. It’s literally random chance, and if a change is beneficial, it sticks. If we were really “designed” then there are so many failures and inefficiencies that deserve scrutiny. Chief among them, childhood cancers. Fuck a designer that left that bug in the system and shipped it.
  - akiselev 4y ago
    > That “guide” was natural selection over millions of years. Small nitpick: millions of years is how long Hominini brains have been evolving with stone tools. Mammalian brains had already been evolving for at least a hundred million years, animals in general for seven hundred million years, and the basic molecular machinery like genetics and proteomics had been evolving for billions of years. The scale at which evolution operates at is truly mind boggling.
  - umvi 4y ago
    I understand how natural selection works in the framework of evolution. But how did the evolutionary framework itself emerge? Natural selection can't happen without being contained in a larger self-propagating evolutionary system, correct? And it seems sophisticated enough for me to believe that an intelligent force helped create it. Of course, I could be wrong, but I'd need some pretty compelling proof of abiogenesis, not just isolated examples of self assembling or replicating molecules. > Chief among them, childhood cancers. Fuck a designer that left that bug in the system and shipped it. How is it the designer's fault if (for example) humans decide to build and detonate nuclear weapons, the fallout is blown across oceans and/or continents and precipitates into water supplies which then manifests as childhood cancers 25 years later (unbeknownst to the citizens)? That's not a "bug", that's just a natural consequence of physics and physical interactions of matter. Rinse and repeat with lead and other compounds which unknowingly are contaminating our environment and causing childhood cancers to happen in the aggregate?
m3kw9 4y ago
And who created that higher level construct
- GalenErso 4y ago
  God, as creator of time, is outside of time. Since therefore He has no beginning in time, He has always existed, so doesn't need a cause. I long wrestled with the idea that the Universe could have existed forever, as a way to solve the first cause paradox, but I was never comfortable with the idea. So I've made a leap of faith and applied the same mental framework to an immaterial construct (God), and for the sake of my sanity I don't try to go further than that :-] I believe there are questions that aren't meant to be answered, and knowing the truth would break our collective minds.
  - p_j_w 4y ago
    That sounds very hand wavy and not at all convincing. You could just as easily say that time is an emergent property of the universe, so the universe has always existed and needs no cause. The problem in doing that with God is you have something intelligent and complex enough that it was capable of creating the universe with the metaphorical snap of its fingers. This is a harder pill to swallow than the universe just existing, because the universe is not intelligent, is less complex, and can't create things whole cloth.
jmull 4y ago
Back when they taught me catholicism, the doctrine on science vs. religion was “truth cannot contradict truth”. They’d still say God created everything, but that science was a good way to understand God’s creation, from a certain perspective. (Things like Genesis were not considered literal.) So I’m surprised to see the Catholicism presented as an alternative to science. Maybe they’ve reverted since I was a follower?
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Catholicism, despite their attempts, is not just one set of teachings. At the end of the day, each catholic only knows what their local church teaches. If your state's cardinal is aggressively homophobic, you can bet local teachings about the evils of homosexuality and pleadings to the flock to save their wandering fellows despite the literal Pope basically saying "maybe we should leave them alone a bit"
criloz2 4y ago
The universe, for me, without any doubt, is a simulation, I even believe that the the algorithms that would explain how the universe reached this level of complexity would be the same that explain intelligence, I think that we got all wrong believing that matter come before consciousness when, in reality, it is the other way around. And languages are a big part of all the equation, physics and space are all languages.
bazoom42 4y ago
Does the child abuse bother you?
- GalenErso 4y ago
  Yes. It's not going to erode my faith, since I'm loyal to Christian values and principles more than any individuals, but the things some of these people in power have done are unacceptable, immoral, and fundamentally un-Christian, and they should be held accountable.
  - bazoom42 4y ago
    As a non-religious person, it is hard to grasp the mindset where one can denounce the abuse in words, but in actions support the institution which perpetrated the abuse and protected the abusers. But I understand faith is not rational.
dctoedt 4y ago
I hear you: I've got a STEM background as well, and for many years I was a Catholic-raised agnostic, having bailed from belief at age 12 (and having been skeptical starting at age 5). In later life I worked my way back around to sort of a general agnosto-monotheism, to coin a phrase, and am now at least nominally an Episcopalian (I married one). I did a lot of thinking and writing on the subject and concluded that we're part of what could be called "The Great Project"; see https://www.questioningchristian.org/2006/06/metanarratives_.html https://www.questioningchristian.org/2006/06/metanarratives_... and the other "Favorites" links in the right-hand column.
- GalenErso 4y ago
  Thanks, I'll check it out.
- dctoedt 4y ago
  Supplement to the above: "Why I Still Call Myself a Christian and an Episcopalian" — https://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/why_i_call_myse.html https://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/why_i_call_myse...
lastofus 4y ago
> I've started in the last year or so to turn to the church (Roman Catholic) and theism, both to find answers to some of life's mysteries, such as the origin of the Universe... Accepting God created the universe just moves the big questions one level of indirection upward: Why does God exist? Why does God exist with the characteristics that he does (e.g. why is God X instead of Y)? It's unclear how this is more satisfying on an intellectual level. It's only more satisfying on an emotional level, as it usually comes with the belief of a personal God that loves and wants the best for you, not to mention an afterlife.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Humans are fundamentally emotional, not intellectual.
- skissane 4y ago
  > It's unclear how this is more satisfying on an intellectual level. It's only more satisfying on an emotional level, as it usually comes with the belief of a personal God that loves and wants the best for you, not to mention an afterlife. This idea of treating intellect and emotions as a dichotomy rather than as two inseparable parts of a harmonious whole has a history – it goes back to the ancient Greeks. Maybe we should question that idea, rather than just assuming it must be true? And, is an afterlife really that implausible? Putting "supernatural" accounts of it to one side, how sure can you be that the quantum immortality hypothesis is false? Or: in an infinite future, any event with non-zero probability, no matter how remote its chance, will almost certainly eventually happen. Since the probability of our spontaneous resurrection from the dead (through thermal and/or quantum fluctuations) is unimaginably tiny yet strictly speaking non-zero, in a spatiotemporally infinite universe (as in eternal inflation), almost surely it will eventually happen. If the universe is infinite, an afterlife is almost certain; we don't really know whether the universe is infinite, so let's say that's 50-50, which makes an afterlife 50-50 – even if just as a Boltzmann brain. Of course, you can argue against this if you make certain assumptions about the criterion of personal identity, but we really don't know if those assumptions are true – which brings the probability of an afterlife back to 50-50. And then, if the simulation hypothesis is true (another 50-50), it would be very easy for our simulators to give us an afterlife if they wanted, and they might even feel ethically obliged to do so. If the probability of an afterlife is actually 50-50, why do some people insist its probability is close to zero? Emotional reasons, perhaps? If you don't accept the religious claim that an afterlife is going to be fundamentally just–eternity suddenly becomes terrifying. What if our eternal fate is to spend aeons as a Boltzmann brain perpetually slipping in and out of existence in the cold darkness of space, a mind whose experiences have the bare minimum of coherence to count as experiences of a mind? What if our simulators are mischievous rather than benevolent, and have designed for us an afterlife in which they have fun at our expense?
jliptzin 4y ago
It's perfectly fine to believe in higher powers. For instance I think it's possible (or probable) we may be living in a simulated reality within a higher dimensional universe. If that's the case, a 4 dimensional (or higher) being would certainly satisfy the Judeo-Christian description of God, since it would be able to manipulate our world in any way it wants. We're basically sprites on a computer screen and God is the programmer. However, I fail to see how you settled on Catholicism to give you the answers you're looking for. Do you really believe all the stories in the bible actually happened? And if not, why pick Catholicism over any other major religion? And if this God does exist and wants us to worship him, why doesn't he make that more obvious, and why does he allow children to be raped and worshippers to be gunned down in his own Church?
markhahn 4y ago
the problem is epistemology, not aesthetics. why are you comfortable believing in things that are nonfalsifiable? that you find them comforting is not much of an argument.
- GalenErso 4y ago
  Scientific theories about the origins of the Universe, such as the one that this post is about, are equally nonfalsifiable.
  - htfu 4y ago
    A scientist theorizing is not the same as a scientific theory. Nonfalsifiable surely ought to mean end of wits or preferably being content with simply not being able to truly know, not "anything goes". Making stuff up to ponder the possibilities is all fine, don't get me wrong. But it shouldn't be given too much weight.
- gensym 4y ago
  - humans have value - life is worth living - doing the right thing matters All are unfalsifiable. I am deeply skeptical of anyone who claims to not believe unfalsifiable things.
  - Thiez 4y ago
    I don't believe those things are objectively true. Outside of other humans nobody cares about those things. And you don't need to search far to find people who clearly don't believe the first one when the humans are their out-group. Or to see the second belief being applied very differently on both sides of an abortion debate. I do think society works better if we assume these things to be rules (to a degree) and as a member of society I act (and benefit) accordingly, but objectively it doesn't matter at all. The beliefs you mention are a lot like belief in 'free will' in that regard, a convenient fiction.
rdtsc 4y ago
Just wanted to commend you for sharing your experience. It's not something that's popular on HN and, as expected, was immediately followed with "you probably have a brain tumor for doing it" comments. So wanted to counter-balance that and let you know that not everyone is as hostile and mean-spirited.
- _a_a_a_ 4y ago
  I'd say this kind of thing is not popular on HN because it had very little useful information content, and if he knew it was not going to be popular here because of religion, well he posted it anyway didn't he… > was immediately followed with "you probably have a brain tumor for doing it" comments Actually most comments weren't of this nature, but you climbed over those to find the one you could plant your flag of martyrdom on.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    To be fair, the brain tumour thing used to be much higher up (i guess it got downvoted), and i agree that it is an incredibly condescending and offensive thing to say. Like sheesh, imagine saying that in any other context. e.g. someone likes emacs, must be a brain tumour.
oldstrangers 4y ago
I think religion is great for a large majority of people that don't want to put in the painful existential work necessary to arrive at some more profound understanding of life. It feels like a shortcut, and you can certainly find your own spiritual beliefs without the aid of the Catholic Church.
q845712 4y ago
hey - thanks for this; it takes some bravery to say this stuff in public. I'll share that I've been slowly turning into a buddhist, which is not the religion I was born into. I think there's a few things in common, including a sort of universal love and a perspective that could be phrased "it's not about me", but that there's something bigger/higher/more-powerful going on and my specific life experience isn't the most important thing in the universe. Those two things - love, and humility (maybe that's the best single word?) go a long way towards reducing inter-personal frictions large and small.
mlmonge 4y ago
Hate seems to be such a strong word. I mean, as a man of faith myself, I have encountered HN posts that are compel me to consider "how can anyone, God-fearing or not, not see the disappointing hubris in this claim (that summarily and dogmatically counters the mystery of God)?" For one to express the pursuit and fruits of a relationship with the Creator, on the other hand, is quite the opposite and most admirable and NOT delusional, IMHO. @GallenErso: I celebrate your positive (sans skepticism, that is) investment in the mystery of Life! In the final analysis, I trust that you'll find more than just satisfaction in this supernatural pursuit--myself, I have found an alarming and disarming hope, beauty & suffering in charity and meaning & purpose in every single endeavor. Lasty... I'd encourage you to check out the Magis Center. God bless!
pieter_mj 4y ago
The idea of a Christian god is self contradictory and logically impossible. If you want a god it can't be an Abramistic one.
Apofis 4y ago
Keep working through the process. Talent is wasted without knowledge. HN doesn't hate religion, it's simply ignorant of it.
sorokod 4y ago
If it is more satisfying to you so be it, it is a personal choice to believe in this and that. As long as these are non overlapping magisteria. Not sure what your stem credentials have to do with anything here.
ddgflorida 4y ago
Intelligent design makes sense to me.
quags 4y ago
I went to a catholic high school pre 2000s and have nothing but respect for their teachings which was entirely opened to science, questioning religion itself, learning of other religions and using a metaphor interpretation of the bible. That was a change from young earth creationism that I was brought up in.
lazyant 4y ago
As an atheist, I have no problem with "God created the universe", as in "something/somebody" that has no interactions with us. It would have no effect on me (Epicureanism). The big jump is between "god created the universe" and "that god is the <human religion> one". And I'm not talking about all the contradictions and terrible things in <sacred book> or the absurdity of things like "the son of god saved humankind from offending god (sin)" but there's no (good) answer to a simple fact: "children's cancer", since the official religious answer is "we cannot understand (god's plan)".
yadingus 4y ago
Out of curiosity, what would you say to a person who shared the same story as you, but instead of Catholicism they turned to Scientology?

oefnak 4y ago

Most of the other teachings of the church, however, are.

pibechorro 4y ago
This. While there are benefits to most religions (community being the biggest) it comes along with insane and very often deadly noise, be it ignorant, purposely wrong or errors in translations or lost information through time, editors, gatekeepers. The closest path to god is reality, from personal observation ad questions.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mr_mitm 4y ago

Do you think satisfaction is a good measure of what we should believe to be true?

marginalia_nu 4y ago
Don't you think that question presupposes a materialist world view?
bawolff 4y ago
As an atheist, what other measure should we use? Like when it comes down to it we are all looking for answers that "satisfy" us. What else is there? Logic is just a complex way of verifying that the answers are convincing enough and thus satisfying.
- _a_a_a_ 4y ago
  > what other measure should we use? The truth, meaning accepting our best accordance of theory to observable reality, then acting on that? That means not just in physics but in ethics as well and any other area.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    > The truth, meaning accepting our best accordance of theory to observable reality, then acting on that? That sounds like satisfaction to me. You looked for the answer that made sense and satisfied your notions of reality. But its not like you have access to divine revelation or Truth. You are working on what you think is like based on your observations and throwing ideas that aren't in accordance with what you know away because they don't satisfy you as an explanation. > That means not just in physics but in ethics as well and any other area. Oh boy. This makes even less sense for ethics. There is no emperical basis for ethics. Its entirely around what people feel is "right". You can't get to even simple things like murder is wrong just by observing the universe.
    - _a_a_a_ 4y ago

throwaway2056 4y ago

I am sure a lot of HN do it in private. In modern world (>90s) to be non-religious due to stereotyping people.

LispSporks22 4y ago

[flagged]

hungryforcodes 4y ago
Good point. One of my relatives did that too.
jliptzin 4y ago
I also know someone in a similar circumstance who suddenly turned to religion. Turns out he was becoming schizophrenic.

_a_a_a_ 4y ago

I don't understand what you expect me to take from this by your sharing of it.

umvi 4y ago

I myself am partial to the Latter-day Saint teaching that matter/energy has always existed (and forever will exist) and that the creation of the world involved "organizing" existing matter in an iterative process. That matches the pattern of creation I've experienced myself where I take something that already exists and iterate on it until it is in a refined state that I desire. I find it hard to believe that the mindboggling complexity of protein machinery was purely accidental/probabilistic. I understand how evolution works, and it makes sense, but... to me at least, it seems more likely that there was a creative iterative process that "guided" matter towards the evolutionary system we have on earth vs lightning striking an ocean full of amino acids and DNA/cells/proteins coincidentally arranging in the right configuration to jump start evolution.

rubicon33 4y ago
Uh, what man? That “guide” was natural selection over millions of years. It’s literally random chance, and if a change is beneficial, it sticks. If we were really “designed” then there are so many failures and inefficiencies that deserve scrutiny. Chief among them, childhood cancers. Fuck a designer that left that bug in the system and shipped it.
- akiselev 4y ago
  > That “guide” was natural selection over millions of years. Small nitpick: millions of years is how long Hominini brains have been evolving with stone tools. Mammalian brains had already been evolving for at least a hundred million years, animals in general for seven hundred million years, and the basic molecular machinery like genetics and proteomics had been evolving for billions of years. The scale at which evolution operates at is truly mind boggling.
- umvi 4y ago
  I understand how natural selection works in the framework of evolution. But how did the evolutionary framework itself emerge? Natural selection can't happen without being contained in a larger self-propagating evolutionary system, correct? And it seems sophisticated enough for me to believe that an intelligent force helped create it. Of course, I could be wrong, but I'd need some pretty compelling proof of abiogenesis, not just isolated examples of self assembling or replicating molecules. > Chief among them, childhood cancers. Fuck a designer that left that bug in the system and shipped it. How is it the designer's fault if (for example) humans decide to build and detonate nuclear weapons, the fallout is blown across oceans and/or continents and precipitates into water supplies which then manifests as childhood cancers 25 years later (unbeknownst to the citizens)? That's not a "bug", that's just a natural consequence of physics and physical interactions of matter. Rinse and repeat with lead and other compounds which unknowingly are contaminating our environment and causing childhood cancers to happen in the aggregate?

m3kw9 4y ago

And who created that higher level construct

GalenErso 4y ago
God, as creator of time, is outside of time. Since therefore He has no beginning in time, He has always existed, so doesn't need a cause. I long wrestled with the idea that the Universe could have existed forever, as a way to solve the first cause paradox, but I was never comfortable with the idea. So I've made a leap of faith and applied the same mental framework to an immaterial construct (God), and for the sake of my sanity I don't try to go further than that :-] I believe there are questions that aren't meant to be answered, and knowing the truth would break our collective minds.
- p_j_w 4y ago
  That sounds very hand wavy and not at all convincing. You could just as easily say that time is an emergent property of the universe, so the universe has always existed and needs no cause. The problem in doing that with God is you have something intelligent and complex enough that it was capable of creating the universe with the metaphorical snap of its fingers. This is a harder pill to swallow than the universe just existing, because the universe is not intelligent, is less complex, and can't create things whole cloth.

jmull 4y ago

Back when they taught me catholicism, the doctrine on science vs. religion was “truth cannot contradict truth”. They’d still say God created everything, but that science was a good way to understand God’s creation, from a certain perspective. (Things like Genesis were not considered literal.) So I’m surprised to see the Catholicism presented as an alternative to science. Maybe they’ve reverted since I was a follower?

mrguyorama 4y ago
Catholicism, despite their attempts, is not just one set of teachings. At the end of the day, each catholic only knows what their local church teaches. If your state's cardinal is aggressively homophobic, you can bet local teachings about the evils of homosexuality and pleadings to the flock to save their wandering fellows despite the literal Pope basically saying "maybe we should leave them alone a bit"

criloz2 4y ago

The universe, for me, without any doubt, is a simulation, I even believe that the the algorithms that would explain how the universe reached this level of complexity would be the same that explain intelligence, I think that we got all wrong believing that matter come before consciousness when, in reality, it is the other way around. And languages are a big part of all the equation, physics and space are all languages.

bazoom42 4y ago

Does the child abuse bother you?

GalenErso 4y ago
Yes. It's not going to erode my faith, since I'm loyal to Christian values and principles more than any individuals, but the things some of these people in power have done are unacceptable, immoral, and fundamentally un-Christian, and they should be held accountable.
- bazoom42 4y ago
  As a non-religious person, it is hard to grasp the mindset where one can denounce the abuse in words, but in actions support the institution which perpetrated the abuse and protected the abusers. But I understand faith is not rational.

dctoedt 4y ago

I hear you: I've got a STEM background as well, and for many years I was a Catholic-raised agnostic, having bailed from belief at age 12 (and having been skeptical starting at age 5). In later life I worked my way back around to sort of a general agnosto-monotheism, to coin a phrase, and am now at least nominally an Episcopalian (I married one). I did a lot of thinking and writing on the subject and concluded that we're part of what could be called "The Great Project"; see https://www.questioningchristian.org/2006/06/metanarratives_.html https://www.questioningchristian.org/2006/06/metanarratives_... and the other "Favorites" links in the right-hand column.

GalenErso 4y ago
Thanks, I'll check it out.
dctoedt 4y ago
Supplement to the above: "Why I Still Call Myself a Christian and an Episcopalian" — https://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/why_i_call_myse.html https://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/why_i_call_myse...

lastofus 4y ago

> I've started in the last year or so to turn to the church (Roman Catholic) and theism, both to find answers to some of life's mysteries, such as the origin of the Universe... Accepting God created the universe just moves the big questions one level of indirection upward: Why does God exist? Why does God exist with the characteristics that he does (e.g. why is God X instead of Y)? It's unclear how this is more satisfying on an intellectual level. It's only more satisfying on an emotional level, as it usually comes with the belief of a personal God that loves and wants the best for you, not to mention an afterlife.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
SoftTalker 4y ago
Humans are fundamentally emotional, not intellectual.
skissane 4y ago
> It's unclear how this is more satisfying on an intellectual level. It's only more satisfying on an emotional level, as it usually comes with the belief of a personal God that loves and wants the best for you, not to mention an afterlife. This idea of treating intellect and emotions as a dichotomy rather than as two inseparable parts of a harmonious whole has a history – it goes back to the ancient Greeks. Maybe we should question that idea, rather than just assuming it must be true? And, is an afterlife really that implausible? Putting "supernatural" accounts of it to one side, how sure can you be that the quantum immortality hypothesis is false? Or: in an infinite future, any event with non-zero probability, no matter how remote its chance, will almost certainly eventually happen. Since the probability of our spontaneous resurrection from the dead (through thermal and/or quantum fluctuations) is unimaginably tiny yet strictly speaking non-zero, in a spatiotemporally infinite universe (as in eternal inflation), almost surely it will eventually happen. If the universe is infinite, an afterlife is almost certain; we don't really know whether the universe is infinite, so let's say that's 50-50, which makes an afterlife 50-50 – even if just as a Boltzmann brain. Of course, you can argue against this if you make certain assumptions about the criterion of personal identity, but we really don't know if those assumptions are true – which brings the probability of an afterlife back to 50-50. And then, if the simulation hypothesis is true (another 50-50), it would be very easy for our simulators to give us an afterlife if they wanted, and they might even feel ethically obliged to do so. If the probability of an afterlife is actually 50-50, why do some people insist its probability is close to zero? Emotional reasons, perhaps? If you don't accept the religious claim that an afterlife is going to be fundamentally just–eternity suddenly becomes terrifying. What if our eternal fate is to spend aeons as a Boltzmann brain perpetually slipping in and out of existence in the cold darkness of space, a mind whose experiences have the bare minimum of coherence to count as experiences of a mind? What if our simulators are mischievous rather than benevolent, and have designed for us an afterlife in which they have fun at our expense?

jliptzin 4y ago

It's perfectly fine to believe in higher powers. For instance I think it's possible (or probable) we may be living in a simulated reality within a higher dimensional universe. If that's the case, a 4 dimensional (or higher) being would certainly satisfy the Judeo-Christian description of God, since it would be able to manipulate our world in any way it wants. We're basically sprites on a computer screen and God is the programmer. However, I fail to see how you settled on Catholicism to give you the answers you're looking for. Do you really believe all the stories in the bible actually happened? And if not, why pick Catholicism over any other major religion? And if this God does exist and wants us to worship him, why doesn't he make that more obvious, and why does he allow children to be raped and worshippers to be gunned down in his own Church?

markhahn 4y ago

the problem is epistemology, not aesthetics. why are you comfortable believing in things that are nonfalsifiable? that you find them comforting is not much of an argument.

GalenErso 4y ago
Scientific theories about the origins of the Universe, such as the one that this post is about, are equally nonfalsifiable.
- htfu 4y ago
  A scientist theorizing is not the same as a scientific theory. Nonfalsifiable surely ought to mean end of wits or preferably being content with simply not being able to truly know, not "anything goes". Making stuff up to ponder the possibilities is all fine, don't get me wrong. But it shouldn't be given too much weight.
gensym 4y ago
- humans have value - life is worth living - doing the right thing matters All are unfalsifiable. I am deeply skeptical of anyone who claims to not believe unfalsifiable things.
- Thiez 4y ago
  I don't believe those things are objectively true. Outside of other humans nobody cares about those things. And you don't need to search far to find people who clearly don't believe the first one when the humans are their out-group. Or to see the second belief being applied very differently on both sides of an abortion debate. I do think society works better if we assume these things to be rules (to a degree) and as a member of society I act (and benefit) accordingly, but objectively it doesn't matter at all. The beliefs you mention are a lot like belief in 'free will' in that regard, a convenient fiction.

rdtsc 4y ago

Just wanted to commend you for sharing your experience. It's not something that's popular on HN and, as expected, was immediately followed with "you probably have a brain tumor for doing it" comments. So wanted to counter-balance that and let you know that not everyone is as hostile and mean-spirited.

_a_a_a_ 4y ago
I'd say this kind of thing is not popular on HN because it had very little useful information content, and if he knew it was not going to be popular here because of religion, well he posted it anyway didn't he… > was immediately followed with "you probably have a brain tumor for doing it" comments Actually most comments weren't of this nature, but you climbed over those to find the one you could plant your flag of martyrdom on.
- bawolff 4y ago
  To be fair, the brain tumour thing used to be much higher up (i guess it got downvoted), and i agree that it is an incredibly condescending and offensive thing to say. Like sheesh, imagine saying that in any other context. e.g. someone likes emacs, must be a brain tumour.

oldstrangers 4y ago

I think religion is great for a large majority of people that don't want to put in the painful existential work necessary to arrive at some more profound understanding of life. It feels like a shortcut, and you can certainly find your own spiritual beliefs without the aid of the Catholic Church.

q845712 4y ago

hey - thanks for this; it takes some bravery to say this stuff in public. I'll share that I've been slowly turning into a buddhist, which is not the religion I was born into. I think there's a few things in common, including a sort of universal love and a perspective that could be phrased "it's not about me", but that there's something bigger/higher/more-powerful going on and my specific life experience isn't the most important thing in the universe. Those two things - love, and humility (maybe that's the best single word?) go a long way towards reducing inter-personal frictions large and small.

mlmonge 4y ago

Hate seems to be such a strong word. I mean, as a man of faith myself, I have encountered HN posts that are compel me to consider "how can anyone, God-fearing or not, not see the disappointing hubris in this claim (that summarily and dogmatically counters the mystery of God)?" For one to express the pursuit and fruits of a relationship with the Creator, on the other hand, is quite the opposite and most admirable and NOT delusional, IMHO. @GallenErso: I celebrate your positive (sans skepticism, that is) investment in the mystery of Life! In the final analysis, I trust that you'll find more than just satisfaction in this supernatural pursuit--myself, I have found an alarming and disarming hope, beauty & suffering in charity and meaning & purpose in every single endeavor. Lasty... I'd encourage you to check out the Magis Center. God bless!

pieter_mj 4y ago

The idea of a Christian god is self contradictory and logically impossible. If you want a god it can't be an Abramistic one.

Apofis 4y ago

Keep working through the process. Talent is wasted without knowledge. HN doesn't hate religion, it's simply ignorant of it.

sorokod 4y ago

If it is more satisfying to you so be it, it is a personal choice to believe in this and that. As long as these are non overlapping magisteria. Not sure what your stem credentials have to do with anything here.

ddgflorida 4y ago

Intelligent design makes sense to me.

quags 4y ago

I went to a catholic high school pre 2000s and have nothing but respect for their teachings which was entirely opened to science, questioning religion itself, learning of other religions and using a metaphor interpretation of the bible. That was a change from young earth creationism that I was brought up in.

lazyant 4y ago

As an atheist, I have no problem with "God created the universe", as in "something/somebody" that has no interactions with us. It would have no effect on me (Epicureanism). The big jump is between "god created the universe" and "that god is the <human religion> one". And I'm not talking about all the contradictions and terrible things in <sacred book> or the absurdity of things like "the son of god saved humankind from offending god (sin)" but there's no (good) answer to a simple fact: "children's cancer", since the official religious answer is "we cannot understand (god's plan)".

yadingus 4y ago

Out of curiosity, what would you say to a person who shared the same story as you, but instead of Catholicism they turned to Scientology?