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There's also that 1000 years of lost progress in science due to their persecution of scientists...

by johansch 13y ago

johansch 13y ago
Too many christian apologists around?
- ivanca 13y ago
  Something changed at some point in Hacker News; or maybe christians are getting together (twitter?) to downvote contrarian opinions.
  - ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
    No, HN has extremely good vote ring detectors. Blaming religion for the flaws of humanity got really old about 5 years ago. It reached its peak at Reddit but it's no longer popular. Turns out people realized that blaming an object (gun), a religion (islam, christianity), a movement (athiesm, feminism), or a philosophy (conservative, liberal) is dismissive of humanity's flaws. When you get rid of religion, extremists do not go away, people find something else to be extreme about.
    - ivanca 13y ago
      We are not blaming the flaws of humanity, just its own flaws, but that is enough to get downvoted. So maybe maybe the vote ring is incidental or not, is still one.
      - ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
        I think you got downvoted because you implied the community is protecting something you don't agree with, therefore there must be something wrong with the community. (I didn't think it deserved downvotes at all, it was just a question) It was silly for OP to pick on the Catholic church when all throughout history, from World War 1 and 2, to the African Genocides, and the inter European wars, and the Mongolian & Muslim invasions, and the European colonizations, and the Japanese massacres, and the Chinese wars and communist caused famines.... Hundreds of millions have died needlessly. We should look past it and be glad we as humans have evolved past those points. Human beings take advantage of large groups, infiltrate them and use them as their personal armies. Sometimes to do good, sometimes to do bad. The OP got downvoted into unreadable "grey hell" for a broad comment that brought nothing thought provoking.
      - lotharbot 13y ago
        ChrisNorstrom is on the right track. There's a small cluster of people who seem to think that, every time religion is mentioned, it's important to jump in and make negative comments no matter what the original topic is (and, on some sites, a small cluster of people who seem to think it's a good time to try to convert people.) The thing is, those comments (on both sides) are generally boring and unenlightening, two things we don't like to see on Hacker News. The idea that a group is digitizing a whole bunch of ancient documents is interesting and has potentially deep intellectual consequences for people interested in researching the topics covered in the ancient documents as well as for those interested in other ancient documents that might be digitized using the knowledge gained from this project. Kvetching about how harmful religion X is or was in the past is boring. Nobody in this thread has said anything genuinely new or insightful; you can hear these exact sentiments just by making a religious comment in a semi-public way (with a large group of friends, on FaceBook, etc.) On other sites they might provoke a flamewar, but here on HN we prefer comments to be thought-provoking. We downvote flamebait. Consider it a signal from the HN community: make more thoughtful and worthwhile contributions.
        ivanca 13y ago
        Fair enough.
- wglb 13y ago
  In my view, this and the later comment of yours offers nothing positive to the discussion.
nsxwolf 13y ago
Ridiculous. I could list dozens of important Catholic scientists over the centuries but I'm sure I'd be wasting my breath. Can you even name a persecuted scientist besides Gallileo? (The new secular darling Bruno was not a scientist)
- duaneb 13y ago
  Bruno was also executed for, among other things, denying the divinity of Jesus and the virginity of Mary, not any of his pseudo-science. (This a bad blemish on the current run of Cosmos; he should be remembered as a whacko philosopher rather than one who contributed to our current scientific corpus.)
- ivanca 13y ago
  That's the exact reason I can't name them; they got killed by the church before they could get famous.
  - Natsu 13y ago
    There's a list with all of the names inside Russel's Teapot.
    - ivanca 13y ago
      No sir, is closer than that: http://listverse.com/2011/06/08/top-10-shameful-moments-in-catholic-history/ http://listverse.com/2011/06/08/top-10-shameful-moments-in-c... And this are the know ones, if you don't think there is a single one outside those, you sir, are delusional (or just biased).
      - Natsu 13y ago
        That does not appear to be a list of scientists.
        ivanca 13y ago
        Ups, wrong link, it was meant to be: http://www.wired.com/2012/06/famous-persecuted-scientists/ http://www.wired.com/2012/06/famous-persecuted-scientists/
Cthulhu_ 13y ago
Maybe in the western / Catholic world; while they were busy burning witches, they kept going on mathematics and mechanics and whatnot in the islamic world.

There's also that 1000 years of lost progress in science due to their persecution of scientists...

johansch 13y ago

Too many christian apologists around?

ivanca 13y ago
Something changed at some point in Hacker News; or maybe christians are getting together (twitter?) to downvote contrarian opinions.
- ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
  No, HN has extremely good vote ring detectors. Blaming religion for the flaws of humanity got really old about 5 years ago. It reached its peak at Reddit but it's no longer popular. Turns out people realized that blaming an object (gun), a religion (islam, christianity), a movement (athiesm, feminism), or a philosophy (conservative, liberal) is dismissive of humanity's flaws. When you get rid of religion, extremists do not go away, people find something else to be extreme about.
  - ivanca 13y ago
    We are not blaming the flaws of humanity, just its own flaws, but that is enough to get downvoted. So maybe maybe the vote ring is incidental or not, is still one.
    - ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
      I think you got downvoted because you implied the community is protecting something you don't agree with, therefore there must be something wrong with the community. (I didn't think it deserved downvotes at all, it was just a question) It was silly for OP to pick on the Catholic church when all throughout history, from World War 1 and 2, to the African Genocides, and the inter European wars, and the Mongolian & Muslim invasions, and the European colonizations, and the Japanese massacres, and the Chinese wars and communist caused famines.... Hundreds of millions have died needlessly. We should look past it and be glad we as humans have evolved past those points. Human beings take advantage of large groups, infiltrate them and use them as their personal armies. Sometimes to do good, sometimes to do bad. The OP got downvoted into unreadable "grey hell" for a broad comment that brought nothing thought provoking.
    - lotharbot 13y ago
      ChrisNorstrom is on the right track. There's a small cluster of people who seem to think that, every time religion is mentioned, it's important to jump in and make negative comments no matter what the original topic is (and, on some sites, a small cluster of people who seem to think it's a good time to try to convert people.) The thing is, those comments (on both sides) are generally boring and unenlightening, two things we don't like to see on Hacker News. The idea that a group is digitizing a whole bunch of ancient documents is interesting and has potentially deep intellectual consequences for people interested in researching the topics covered in the ancient documents as well as for those interested in other ancient documents that might be digitized using the knowledge gained from this project. Kvetching about how harmful religion X is or was in the past is boring. Nobody in this thread has said anything genuinely new or insightful; you can hear these exact sentiments just by making a religious comment in a semi-public way (with a large group of friends, on FaceBook, etc.) On other sites they might provoke a flamewar, but here on HN we prefer comments to be thought-provoking. We downvote flamebait. Consider it a signal from the HN community: make more thoughtful and worthwhile contributions.
      - ivanca 13y ago
        Fair enough.
wglb 13y ago
In my view, this and the later comment of yours offers nothing positive to the discussion.

nsxwolf 13y ago

Ridiculous. I could list dozens of important Catholic scientists over the centuries but I'm sure I'd be wasting my breath. Can you even name a persecuted scientist besides Gallileo? (The new secular darling Bruno was not a scientist)

duaneb 13y ago
Bruno was also executed for, among other things, denying the divinity of Jesus and the virginity of Mary, not any of his pseudo-science. (This a bad blemish on the current run of Cosmos; he should be remembered as a whacko philosopher rather than one who contributed to our current scientific corpus.)
ivanca 13y ago
That's the exact reason I can't name them; they got killed by the church before they could get famous.
- Natsu 13y ago
  There's a list with all of the names inside Russel's Teapot.
  - ivanca 13y ago
    No sir, is closer than that: http://listverse.com/2011/06/08/top-10-shameful-moments-in-catholic-history/ http://listverse.com/2011/06/08/top-10-shameful-moments-in-c... And this are the know ones, if you don't think there is a single one outside those, you sir, are delusional (or just biased).
    - Natsu 13y ago
      That does not appear to be a list of scientists.
      - ivanca 13y ago
        Ups, wrong link, it was meant to be: http://www.wired.com/2012/06/famous-persecuted-scientists/ http://www.wired.com/2012/06/famous-persecuted-scientists/

Cthulhu_ 13y ago

Maybe in the western / Catholic world; while they were busy burning witches, they kept going on mathematics and mechanics and whatnot in the islamic world.