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This story just sold a book. Off topic question: I know many here aren't necessarily religious (Though some would say they are spiritual)... Do the non-religio

• carterschonwald 14y ago
  A person's values and opinions are not inextricably tied to their religiosity. I'm about as irreligious as is possible to be, but two of the nicest most intelligent and genuinely nice guys I know on the planet are respectively a devout Mormon and a guy who's a serious evangelical Christian who does ethnic Chinese American rap and last I checked is planning to attend seminary. Point being, say no to monoculture, say yes to having interesting caring people who enrich those around them.
• ReidZB 14y ago
  Absolutely. Religion is a personal view, one that everyone decides. I can't fault anyone for their belief. I loved this story and I generally love whatever I read on this site. For a non-religious person, death is an even sadder event than it is for the religious... because we view it as permanent.
  • tseabrooks 14y ago
    Right. My comment originated by wondering, "How many HNers would buy his book". His book, that contains this story, is overtly religious in nature. Is this story enough to make you interested in his book even though you know some of the content will be in fierce opposition with your own beliefs?
  • benjohnson 14y ago
    >>because we view it as permanent Given an infinite time and an infinite universes, there becomes a small possibility of existence again after death. (I'm Christian, so I admit that I may be a bit more optimistic than is warranted)
    • stitchy 14y ago
      I like this quote from Penn Jillete on the subject of the afterlife: "I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day."
• dhimes 14y ago
  Yes. I believe in spiritual geniuses, like mathematical or literary geniuses. I believe that these people have figured out how, to put it simply, to get the most out of life, and I enjoy learning what they share. I believe Jesus and Siddhartha Guatama (Buddha) were two of these people.
• swombat 14y ago
  I am non-religious, in the sense that I do not follow any organised religion, nor do I believe in the vast majority of the superstitions of many religions. I don't believe there is a God as described by the christians, muslims or jews, or supernatural beings as proposed by Hinduism, etc. However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid. Religion, religious texts, concepts of religion, and so on, have been a natural repository for boundless amounts of human wisdom accumulated over the centuries. Each religion, with all its flaws, is trying to grasp at an essential Truth of human existence. That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless. Nor is it intelligent to ignore the fact that there have been numerous people throughout history whom one could call "enlightened", who touched on something beyond our normal existences. There is a very deep well of value in religion. Those who spit in that well are to be pitied. I'll close with an idea from Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher of the late 19th Century, who suggested that much of humanity's efforts (in the intellectual spheres) aim to reconcile the physical and the spiritual, to answer the question of how it is possible that there is matter and thinking (two apparently fundamentally different things), and how it is possible that there is such a thing as matter that thinks about its own nature. He suggests that this striving to reconcile the two is split into three great movements: art, science and religion. Dismissing one in favour of the other is like choosing to ignore your left leg in favour of your right. A complete human being will not ignore one of the three pillars of human thought.
  • mike-cardwell 14y ago
    Who dismisses religion as worthless? It obviously has both costs and benefits... I don't think it's important to discuss how much religion is "worth". How much religion is "worth" bares no relation to how true it is. How true religion is, is the much more important discussion.
    • theorique 14y ago
      Some examples of the "new atheists" or commentators who dismiss religion as worthless: Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens
• mike-cardwell 14y ago
  An authors religion is irrelevant. If the content is good, it is good regardless. The only time I need to know an authors religion is if it's relevant to the topic at hand and I need to make a judgement on which way they might be biased.
• DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  Yes. As long as they don't sound arrogant and cocky (I would say the same for reading atheist authors) I really enjoyed David Bently Hart's defense of Christianity a few years ago. Thick material, but it was fascinating to hear several popular versions of historical events challenged by somebody well-educated. ( Affiliate link: http://amzn.to/IupRsn http://amzn.to/IupRsn ) But after thinking about your question a bit more, it occurs to me that you might mean reading religious authors writing about religion. The answer here is also yes, at least for me. A few years ago I completed an audio course in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition and it included several religious authors. This makes sense. Modern western intellectual thought has deep roots in Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem. Can't study the ancients without understanding what they believed and reading what they said in their own words.
  • loeschg 14y ago
    Checking out that book. As a proclaimed Christ follower, I've recently found myself in discussions in which certain historical "facts" (I hesitated to put that in quotes) were tossed my direction which I felt unprepared to answer. As one who believes history to be a small thing to get caught up on given Christianity is about a lot more than that, I think it's very relevant and is a needed piece to intelligently discuss Biblical truth.
  • rokhayakebe 14y ago
    I am currently going through the Greatest Books of Western Civilization (Still working on Plato's works), which I believe the audio sets are based on. I haven't gotten to the religious works yet and I literally cannot wait. If you have some writings, notes, that you would not mind sharing, please let me know.
    • DanielBMarkham 14y ago
      I've done the tapes 3 times. I'm seriously thinking about doing them again this summer. An absolutely great series. It was one of my first from the Teaching Company and it started me on-track to be a raving fan of theirs. I'll look around and see if I've written up anything.
• Danieru 14y ago
  The Mythical Man-Month's Fred Brooks is a devote Christian.
  • Dove 14y ago
    So is Larry Wall.
    • cchurch 14y ago
      Donald Knuth too.
    • deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
• mikeash 14y ago
  I don't care about a person's religion unless it negatively affects their words or actions. However, I don't see why you ask here, as I don't see anything religious in this story.
• demallien 14y ago
  Well, that depends on the subject of the book. For example, "Ender's Game" is a great book that I really enjoyed reading, which had many good lessons in it. "Speaker for the Dead" on the other hand, by the same author, was one of the worst pieces of science fiction that I have ever read, largely because the author insisted on waving religion in the reader's face in a most unconvincing way. I've never met anyone as analytical and free-thinking as Ender that wasn't an atheist, so turning him into a practicing Catholic was really hard to swallow. The worst offenders are self-help books. The moment the author starts rambling about spirituality, religion or other nonsense, it immediately destroys the author's credibility for me: how can I trust what someone is saying when they refuse to apply the rules of evidence to their world view? I'm forced to step back and evaluate what they are saying with more extreme scepticism, and in the end I'm left feeling like I may as well have just thought through the issues myself rather than reading the book (note, thinking for yourself is a good thing - but you don't need some dumb book filled with religious rubbish to give you permission to do it!)
  • pazimzadeh 14y ago
    Can you elaborate? I don't remember the plot too clearly, but I count "Speaker for the Dead" as one of the books responsible for making me an atheist, as opposed to not having an opinion on the subject.
  • cobrausn 14y ago
    > I've never met anyone as analytical and free-thinking as Ender that wasn't an atheist... Some of the most narrow-minded fools I've ever met have been atheists, and some of the most analytical have been religious. The reverse is also true. I'm reading a bit of confirmation bias in your observation.
    • demallien 14y ago
      Some atheists are narrow-minded, sure. I didn't say anything to the contrary, although in my experience atheists on average are more broad-minded than their religious counterparts. I also know plenty of very analytical religious people, and even some that are free-thinking. They were all raised in the church, and didn't come to religion by any rational decision. I don't know any religious people that have the combination of being analytical and free-thinking, and converted to being religious as adults. I'm sure such cases must exist, but I'm equally sure that they are as rare as hen's teeth.
• cilo 14y ago
  First off, my own anecdotal findings are that atheists are some of the best read people on religious subject matters. So I would say many of them have no qualms with reading religious themed work. Secondly, at its core Zen Buddhism is more philosophy than religion. I'm an atheist and can still agree with most of the concepts found in Zen Buddhism. It's not about worshipping gods but more about the philosophical teachings of Siddhartha who most Zen Buddhist regards as having no particular supernatural powers. I would hope most non religious people have no bias against it and if they do I would recommend they give that a second thought.
  • bendmorris 14y ago
    Not just anecdotal. Atheists and agnostics score higher in tests of religious knowledge. See, for example, this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html
• yason 14y ago
  Depends on what they're writing about, of course. If the writings are religious, I'm quite allergic. Religion is a system of society, I'm not interested in that. On the other hand, if the writings reflect truths that aren't limited to a single religion or only some religions, and that can be found without subscribing to a religion, then certainly.
• stitchy 14y ago
  I'm an Atheist, but I often find beauty in religious artwork, writing, or music. In fact, I find myself listening to Christian music fairly often. It's very difficult to divorce yourself from all things religious. We're constantly surrounded by it (next Christmas time, try putting yourself in the mindset of an Atheist.) As an Atheist I can either become embittered by that fact, or I can find value in it despite core differences. I choose the latter option. That said, I take issue with many religious concepts, hence the Atheism.
• Rudism 14y ago
  I generally find religious writings to be either neutral to my atheist sensibilities, or (in the case of scriptures or apologetics) sometimes quite fascinating. The only time it dips into the negative end of the scale is in the case of glurge.
• kstenerud 14y ago
  The only time I take exception to a religion or philosophy is when either it commands one to do evil, or when its adherents use it as an excuse to do evil. As for individuals, so long as they reject all evil commandments and retain their humanity, I will not criticize their choice in religion or philosophy.
• paulsutter 14y ago
  The central topic of Buddhism is psychology, understanding that most of the reasons that life is painful are within ourselves. It's not a religion. It doesn't describe a god, nor does it preclude one. It isn't even a philosophy, because it doesn't tell you what you should or shouldn't do. It really is psychology. And as an old programmer from way back, who has always been cynical about life and laughed at the hypocrisy and dogma in religion, I can say straight up that Buddhism is the most intelligent thing I have ever encountered.