Well, it can be an emergent property. To be honest, if your belief is heavily science-based, then there is not much else to believe regarding our very own consciouscness -- it is an emergent property of billions of interconnected neurons.
Though on the other hand, even the biggest AI systems are lightyears behind biological networks when we look at interconnectedness.
I wouldn’t call it science-based, it’s just materialism. There’s no science in believing that something that can be completely described
by a set of logical rules, or mathematical formulae, or something similar, suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic. It’s pure belief, without too many arguments for it.
> suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic
It at most can not be defined due to its complexity. Also, emergent properties are everywhere, like you can assign properties to a fire you can’t assign to the chemical process of burning. For all we know, consciousness may just as well be an arbitrary threshold of complexity.
But I stand corrected that the correct term is indeed materialism.
Do you mean that because of its complexity, we are not able to define it due to practical reasons (i.e. no powerful enough computer exists)? If so, that’s something completely different. Consciousness cannot be defined with math or logic even in principle. Certain aspects of consciousness can’t be defined either, like qualia (for example, the sensation of a color). Many materialists would even say that consciousness doesn’t exist because of that, and it’s all just a delusion (to which I ask: who/what is this delusion experienced by?).
Complex statistical models can be conscious. The reason AIs aren’t conscious is they’re not embodied beings and don’t have any need to develop it to stay alive.
So how being embodied helps consciousness emerge? If it’s just the statistical model that underpins the consciousness, then it doesn’t matter if it’s embodied or not. It doesn’t matter to the algorithm what hardware it runs on.
This seems irreverent to me. If you created an evolutionary algorithm, where these very complex statistical models competed for survival, I don’t see how that would help one of them become conscious.
I agree with that. By "AIs" I mean currently existing ML models we're calling AIs. That's not how we create them.
If we did make them that way, they wouldn't do large-language-model stuff though - what's that got to do with survival? Humans went millions of years without bothering to read that much too.
Is there any proof anything is anything but a mechanistic model and actually has consciousness?
Is there any definition of consciousness which even brings it into the realm of things for which there could in principal be evidence distinguishing it's presence from its absence?
The usual argument about intelligence usually retreats into it being a property entirely separate from the observable universe and yet still has it as something for which people demand “evidence” of it existing anywhere they don't assume without evidence that it exists before being willing to accept things equivalent in observable qualities to be actually similar.
The inconsistency gotchas in this thread are hilarious. “What if you replace religion with race or gender?” “What if you replace AI with god?” If your answers change then you have no principles.
it is easier to cast aside uncomfortable questions when you are able to group them into a monolith, relegating them to bad faith arguments and gotchas.
And? This just proves you lack a fundamental principle for or against discrimination. That’s fine, you do not need one. But you can’t refute a categorical opposition to discrimination by listing more subcategories of discrimination.
This seems like a fundamentally different question to me. Belief in a god explicitly depends on the unseen. You can't really even evaluate the personhood or lack thereof, there's nothing tangible to test.
If a god showed in in-person to whoever asked, easy peasy, then it'd be a different story.
While this is probably to early, the question of AI rights is one we have to answer in the foreseeable future. I hope we as humanity will do it right and I am a little scared this dismissive attitude will carry over.
Given how vibrant the academic/philosophical discussions of AI and consciousness have been for decades now, it's anti-intellectual to pretend there are any obvious answers.
We're headed towards a dilemma where most scientists claim categorically that a given AI/robot is non-conscious, but most layment think it is. If robots start behaving and talking like in Detroit: Become Human, won't people react with sympathy? Who cares if the behavior is purely imitative and non-conscious, how could we tell the difference?
> Given how vibrant the academic/philosophical discussions of AI and consciousness have been for decades now, it's anti-intellectual to pretend there are any obvious answers.
As a general principle, sure. Right now, though? AI's are still a looooong way away.
> If robots start behaving and talking like in Detroit: Become Human, won't people react with sympathy?
As I understand it, those are far, far more advanced than the chatbots we have.
In this article, the author doesn't provide any concrete example of the religious discrimination that he's allegedly experienced, or how it's impacted him in any way. It seems that he's very eager to play the victim.
A good example of his rush to victimhood is when he tells how he confronted leadership about why Google hasn't opened an engineering office in Louisiana. He seems to take the fact that Google doesn't have a office there as proof of their anti-Southern, anti-Christian bias. It's all very far-fetched.
Yeah. I'm open to believing there's more religious discrimination at Google -- and I have no trouble believing that being very Christian could make you a bit of a social pariah within the company -- but the lack of concrete examples is concerning.
In the US, it's very common for right-wing Christians to exaggerate claims of religious discrimination. For example, many consider not allowing public school teachers/coaches to lead prayer in schools to be religious discrimination.
I'm open to believing anything, with appropriate evidence.
The author makes specific claims about being judged by their manager for their religious beliefs. I'm not sure that's going to be enough to win a discrimination suit, but I wish them the best of luck. Religious discrimination at a workplace is (and should be) against the law.
I hope they find the appropriate lawyer who can navigate this for them! (For what it's worth, I'm an atheist, and I don't think anyone should be discriminated for their religious beliefs, no matter what they are. We're all atheists of some religions.)
It's usually phrased as "I just believe in one fewer God than you".
Christians don't on the whole believe in Thor and Zeus and so on, and neither do Atheists. But the Christians seem very hung up on approximately one God, especially those who have the most superficial beliefs. Thus it can be seen as a small difference.
I say approximately because, well... Trinitarian Christianity. Most modern Christians claim to believe in "One God" who is somehow also "Three persons".
If you don't regard the New Testament as the Holy word of God, but just some stories then this Holy Trinity sure looks like the explanation for the Kessel Run in Star Wars, or that thing where Klingons changed appearance radically in Star Trek, or a dozen other places in fiction where holes in the story were patched clumsily and fans pretend to look the other way.
Let me replace the word religious with racial:
"In this article, the author doesn't provide any concrete example of the racial discrimination that he's allegedly experienced, or how it's impacted him in any way. It seems that he's very eager to play the victim."
Sounds familiar now doesn't it? Claims like that have been dismissed for decades. Don't be so quick to get on the dismissal train.
Exactly. That's why published articles about racial discrimination at the workplace do contain evidence. Hell, the last on i read contained transcripts of recorded discussions, transcripts of Whatsapp discussions, and still commenters were like 'its not a proof that the police is racist'.
If you were to replace the religious belief with gender in his story would your assessment stay the same? You can use this method for example in this quote: "...VPs of research laughing in my face to HR representatives questioning my sanity based on my sincerely held religious beliefs...".
My criticism of the article is not based on a false assumption that religious discrimination is impossible, but rather that the author fails to offer a plausible, evidence-based case that such discrimination is actually happening to him.
Failing to open an office in Louisiana is not evidence of religious discrimination. Obviously we can't know exactly how his conversation with the VP actually went, but I find the lack of detail to be conspicuous.
Are you not moving the bar higher, from just an example, to now evidence? I am for high standards, it is just dangerous that, in the current culture, they are not the same for all.
its not a simple matter of substituting gender though, this is about beliefs and it depends, if he's saying the chat bots have a soul, then I can imagine he is getting some diverse reactions ( from other thread ). But since this one doesn't give us concrete examples, hard to judge, but it sounds like maybe he is overlaying his religious beliefs on the work and perhaps thinking he is discriminated against for doing that? Generally in a professional environment there is just no mention of religion, but somehow its become a topic, not sure how.... and the details matter here.
I submitted this link because it made me wonder what constitutes religious discrimination. If there is a non-work-related chat with colleagues, and someone thinks your opinion is wrong, I think they should be allowed to politely tell you. I think the author is not OK with this, if it's about religion (at least if many many people inside the company think he's wrong).
I get the reasons (both historical and present) that make religious disagreements a sensitive subject, and I can see how one would like to give some explicit protection to religious beliefs, but still I cannot ignore the fact we are talking about factual(ish) beliefs that one should be able to criticize.
Whatever you think that it's not relevant to your job (and it's not illegal) should affect your career; I don't know if that happened in this case but the author doesn't provide any example. But if you share your opinions, your colleagues are allowed to say you're wrong.
He claims not opening an office in Louisiana is religious bias. Protecting your company and employees from legislators in southern/bible belt is just good business. They’ve a long history of passing and enforcement of unconstitutional religiously inspired laws that impact businesses.
I agree. Some christians consider themselves oppressed if you say “I think everyone who believes in god is wrong,” and interpret the statement “I don’t believe in god” as “I think everyone who believes in god is wrong.” Therefore, they are oppressed until every atheist is completely silenced. Of course, forbidding Christians from talking about their beliefs is also verboten.
My impression is, they are very careful to not break any law. They are also giving some examples on personal level, but people here don't accept them, because it plays in their prejudice of the justified behavior against the religious.
I don't think it's up to us to decide how true or false the accusations are. People from Google reading this should reflect on their own behavior and environment, and whether they match this or not. Everyone else can only do the same for their own life and company.
But the important thing here is, people here seems to not understand such problems, if they are not delivered in concrete wording and explanation. Empathy(?) here is too low to understand and evaluate a situation from just vague explanations. And that is a serious problem in itself, leading to such problems.
"My superiors said clearly discriminatory things, but I won't tell you what. I will tell you some other words which I believe they truly wanted to say — but didn't — and look how awful those invented utterances are. No, I really won't tell what they actually said."
Your reply has nothing to do with the point I made.
I wrote nothing about the "believe" stuff, I wrote about his willful paraphrasing of what others said where he outright admits that it's his interpretation of what they meant but never really said.
Please wage your generic outrage war somewhere else.
Please don't take HN thread on ideological flamewar tangents. We've had to ask you this kind of thing several times before. We eventually ban accounts that keep doing this. I don't want to ban you, so please stop doing this.
This is funny to me as someone who participates in Christians @ Google and weekly prayer. The few coworkers outside of that who know of my faith are very accepting.
I have never personally experienced any kind of discrimination, but perhaps I could have if I had different teammates.
Try talking about it aggressively with everybody all the time (try your accepting colleagues to come to the weekly prayers), and I guess you will get bad feedback at some point.
I have a friend who's in the church of scientology, but he never tried to convience me that Xeno alien god took over human souls.
> Mysticism within the Abrahamic religions should not be such a strange thing to encounter that people would literally question my sanity for holding such beliefs
I think the author misses how rare it is to find highly educated, rational people who literally think they can talk to God. For most Google engineers, talking to the author would be the first time they encounter a person like that.
When are people going to stop expecting large public companies to cater to their every whim?
It seems these days people are expecting every possible form of accommodation and bending backwards.
People have forgotten in these companies you are there to give your time and get paid for said time given. Period.
Companies will do things to help employees spend even more hours and be more loyal to their workplace in the name of kowtowing to some kind of social or special interest group.
But one should never look upon that as a right.
One should always look on it as what it really is. A way to get more hours and loyalty from the employee.
So long as the company is not nakedly abusing anyone (and companies are not so stupid) - we should go ahead, give the hours, get paid for said hours and do social activism in personal hours far away from the precincts of the workplace.
> People have forgotten in these companies you are there to give your time and get paid for said time given. Period.
Well put - you're in a business relationship with your employer, they're not there to provide religious instruction, you do you job and they pay you for it - period!
you are not spending those 80 hours in a single location.
work-lunch and commute: 10-15 hours;
errands, shopping: 5 hours;
go out, dinner, friends, etc: 5-10 hours;
weekend activities: 5-15 hours.
these numbers are made up based on my experience. some people spend more time at home than others.
what remains is that work is the single largest block of time that you spend in the same location with the same group of people who are not all family and friends in an environment that you don't have any control over, and where you have no choice but to be there unless you quit your job. you don't even have to hang out at home if you don't like it there.
so work better be a place where i actually enjoy spending time because life is to short to suffer through a bad workplace.
Ah I see where our miscommunication is, I think. The comment I was responding to said "A company is where people spend most of their time" - I was simply saying that that's false, because most of your time is spent somewhere other than work. I think what you're saying is that (excluding sleep) a plurality of your time is spent at work, meaning that everything else you do (individually) is less time.
To clarify, I was looking at "work" and "not work" and seeing "not work" at the top. You're (I think) looking at each individual activity, and seeing "work" in #1 or #2.
what matters is that we need to look at time in the context of what should be adjusted to how people want to live their lives
to answer that question we need to look at what is taking up the biggest chunk in our life because that is where a change will have the most effect. if the biggest chunk is supposed to be "not work" then we end up with hundreds of little things that are different for every person that we could improve (many of which in fact are being improved) while we are ignoring the one chunk that affects most people a large part of their time, which is work.
it is interesting to note that one of the things that is happening slowly is the reduction of work hours (4day week, etc) which puts a larger focus on the "not work" parts of our lives. less work means we need more options for people to spend their free time.
>When are people going to stop expecting large public companies to cater to their every whim?
When these companies will stop to cater to specific groups and will stay politically neutral. The moment they started making socio-political utterances is the moment they've become a political entity not merely an economical one. And given that Google has profits that surpass the budgets of entire countries they can, they will and they have already mold society to their specific political whims: it is best for all of us that these whims are checked against to remind us that there exist alternatives to their techno-dystopian future.
You have to remember, however, that decisions companies make are things that people will interpret as “political” all the time - so this idea is without merit.
Google providing directions to vaccination sites on a map is “political”. Providing equal benefits to same-sex couples when they can’t marry is “political”. Providing a virtual gallery that celebrates women artists over history is “political”.
Too often “politically neutral” means “politically within a narrow range of values that I myself accept as uncontroversial” and hey-ho, you’re back to politics.
If other employees are mocking or harrasing you for you beliefs, then I think the company should step in. A hostile work environment should not be tolerated.
That being said: You leave your religious belief at home. Religion may guide you in life, but unless there’s a obvious reason religion is something you keep at home and in church/temple/whatever.
You can believe anything you want, but you keep it to yourself. If you somehow involve me, then you give me permission to have an opinion.
I didn’t get that impression. It seemed like the author openly talked about their beliefs, but didn’t like when people then shared their opinions about it.
But what if you really are crazy? Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Which is literally what the author (proudly) claims to be, no? Are we supposed to take such beliefs seriously? Being unable to tell people they're full of shit, in a respectful manner, is much more of a serious problem here. You want to hold certain beliefs and to express them, then you should be ready to be challenged. The more peculiar the beliefs the stronger and more immediate the challenges. Alternatively, you can, you know, just shut the fuck up and keep working on those wonderful products of yours and not pollute your social surroundings with religion that has oppressed and killed millions of people throughout history.
Nah, there's a bunch of very popular religions which probably are derived from Canaanite worship of El about 2500 years ago and these focus on that "Creation God" figure so much that their surviving text is today read by believers as saying there aren't any other Gods even though if you look at it frankly sure seems like it's actually ranking El as merely the most important of many Gods. Thus it's easy to see why you might think that, but plenty of religions don't have any personal Gods at all, or don't think you can talk to God.
History will also show you that it is religion that has formed the moral and social framework for today's values to be opposed to oppression. You might think they, human rights, good morals, fundamental truths, are innate and fundamental but then look at geography and history together and you will see that it's religion that is the origin for these beliefs.
The twentieth century featured many deaths caused by 2 different philosophies in 2 different places explicitly opposed to religion, for example!.
It's a paradox and irony in many cases.
Just some perspective and nuance for widening ones thoughts.
I asked about murder, not this particular special case. Furthermore, even from the paragraph that you cite, there is nothing explicitly connecting religious law with a prohibition of murder or infanticide. The article states the Christianity forbade infanticide, which I will note is about 1300 years AFTER Moses.
> I don't think you quite realize how much of modern morality traces itself to religious law. Maybe take a course in Philosophy.
Thanks for your unjustified condescension. Maybe you should read the articles that you cite?
As someone with a degree in Philosophy, I have no idea why you think doing a course in Philosophy would make you believe that religion was the basis of morality. There is plenty of philosophy which explicitly rejects that point of view.
The USSR, with a cult of personality around the leader, unquestionable doctrines, restraint on free thinking, and its own set of truths at odds with reality? Funny how they managed to stay anti-religious while keeping all the best bits of religion.
The notion that humanity would be morally lost without the guidance of religious belief is laughable. For sake of gaining some perspective and widening one's thoughts I'd suggest reading the works of any of the number of major philosophers.
And if you need to read in some book that oppression is bad, that murdering people is bad, that basic human rights are a good idea, etc. - if you need to read that in a book and have these concepts crystalized for you as capital T True by dogma fed to you by a church of some kind... then, my friend, you're just a bad person. And we do have bad people and will continue to have bad people but religion has done nothing to abate this. Moral compass is innate to human nature, not something you learn from a book.
"Moral compass is innate" is a belief. Science cannot provide evidence for it.
It's such a good belief, that we are blind to it being a belief and blind to its origins.
It's a belief that is so successful because it is true. It comes from the belief that every person has an intrinsic value. Philosophy isn't about rational atheistic science. Science cannot prove or disprove the idea that every human has value.
The Nazis didn't belief that and used science to back up their abhorrent beliefs. They murdered millions of religious People.
The communists also hated religion and murdered millions more of people who thought different. The irony is that they did so in the name of ending oppression.
History and geography will help you see that ideas about innate rights come from religion. But we don't need religion to keep these ideas going.
Just looking at how the human rights movement started should be illuminating.
The argument isn't "you can only be moral if you're religious", it's: "modern Western moral attitudes, even explicitly atheistic ones, are strongly influenced by historical religious ideas, and therefore the idea that religion is inherently immoral is incoherent; and contempt for religion is unjustified." Seems reasonable to me.
Religion was created by man, not by god. Religious ideas, including religious morality, are the results, not the causes, of the prevailing cultural attitudes of the societies that created them.
In the modern West, such as the US, "religious morality" is mostly synonymous with the morality of the ancient societies in which those religions originated, which is why religion is so out of step with modern sensibilities.
Thomas Aquinas saw a connection between the metaphysical existence of God and the values of morality in the sense that they are both grounded within His existence.
In other words, Aquinas saw God as the basis for and to all we experience. From the theistic perspective, my question is if moral subjectivism is true, it seems to be self defeating as the concept of truth is fundamentally underwhelmed.
There are plenty of atheistic and some theistic philosophers who see morality as independent of God. I wouldn't necessarily agree with them, but it's just a thought
> And if you need to read in some book that oppression is bad, that murdering people is bad, that basic human rights are a good idea, etc
I mean, you just called generations upon generations bad people.. Like, morals also evolve with society, and everyone is influenced by the society they grow up in.
Just a very easy counterexample -- gladiator fights were perfectly acceptable in people in Rome. Were they bad people for that?
A man can be made to say or do anything, with enough conditioning; we are animals after all. I'm not arguing the irrelevance of context here, but I am saying that people have natural tendencies which amount to an implicit innate moral compass. People want to be good and chill.
Most people want to be nice to their neighbors / tribe.
Most people find violence disturbing.
That they live in circumstance that encourages, requires, them to kill, to manipulate, to be an asshole - is just circumstance. That's why being a Good Person is Hard. You need to remain true to yourself, and fight against all kinds of external forces that seek to corrupt you.
It’s rare to find any ethics professors who argue in favor of moral relativism in this manner. A vast majority are realists or constructivists who would easily claim that Romans were bad for practicing slavery and forced combat for fun.
The Princess Alice experiments are evidence for the alternative rationale that belief in invisible God-like beings who impose rules is a useful trait for early civilisations which have inadequate oversight for their members.
Superstitious people will obey rules with no actual enforcement out of a mistaken belief that an invisible Deity might punish them for disobedience, this benefits the rest of their society, at least in the short term. Of course it breaks down if a few people in society exploit everybody else's beliefs. "Princess Alice wants you to look after the sheep" is beneficial because it means shepherds do their jobs properly, but "Princess Alice needs you to sell your worldly possessions so that I can have a nice necklace" not so much.
It's a rational looking theory, but is there any evidence that superstitious people exhibit more ethical behaviors?
I have the impression that since those people are not bound by evidences they can justify unethical behavior much more easily. And so this trait that should make them more ethical actually backfires and enable worse behavior.
Slave mentality back in the day (2000+ years ago) was converted into religious beliefs and then it got “mainstream” and all the religion that was focused on being a chad became unpopular thanks to this slave religion which made being a slave cool and being a chad uncool.
That’s the tl;dr of your argument afaict. Problem there is that religion was the problem in both contexts - so I don’t think it provided a solution so much as it caused the problem in the first place. Even then - it forced slave mentality onto the masses and that wasn’t exactly great for everyone either… Self-flagellation anyone?
> If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as smart as yourself.”
That does not sound like discrimination to me. It sounds like people have an opinion and they express that opinion. It also sounds like they express their opinion very politely and in a restrained manner.
Having opinions and saying them is a free speech, a cherrised cornerstone of the American culture.
Fascinating - to me, a thoroughly irreligious person, I can’t possibly imagine being that fucking rude to someone. The idea that you think it’s “very polite and restrained” is amazing.
It surely is quite aggressive. But the author qualifies it with "might even go so far as to say", so it seems like it's the absolute worst thing it was said to him. I've heard worse?
You missed the part where the OP is going around Google talking about how religious he is when nobody asked.
If you believe in something nonsensical, people will let it slide. If you believe in something nonsensical and are being obnoxious about it, you will be insulted and you will deserve it.
You are at a meeting with colleagues, one colleague suddenly starts to insist that Santa Claus is real. Do you take them seriously? Sure it’s freedom of speech but there will be some kind of drop in respect.
I mean I get that you believe that one book trumps all of human science because you were raised that way but when you grow up your critical thinking skills should kick in. If they don’t, it’s very difficult to keep taking an adult that believes in all kinds of unprovable stuff serious, because where does that end?
When is weird weird enough to be allowed to be publicly rejected every time it’s brought up, according to you?
It's likely that a minority of Christians take everything in the Bible literally and believe that it trumps science. I think you are being a bit disengenuous.
I don’t think you have justification for calling the argument “disingenuous”. Seems like accusations of people being disingenuous is the go-to accusation on HN and I’m tired of it.
I can’t follow your line of reasoning here. Seems like you’re saying that the comment is so absurd and fantastical that the author is either “out of touch with reality” or the author doesn’t believe it themselves… but I don’t know what line of reasoning you used to come to that conclusion. The conclusion is definitely not obvious to me.
That's such a bad take, and I'm not even religious. This is the utmost lack of respect for another person that we should strive to stray very very far away from.
Also, if you would know anything at all about religion (from context, I assume you mean Christianity), they don't believe that one book trumps all of human science at all -- taking the text literally is a relatively modern take done by very few branches of it, but Catholics were responsible for several huge discoveries in science and science is absolutely in line with the religion (the current Pope has a background in chemistry).
The usual direction of religious dogmas is not based directly on the Bible, but on its "interpretation" by the Church, which is evolving.
Copernicus’ theory of heliocentricity was taught in several Catholic universities until growing Protestant opposition made them stop. The worst the Catholic Church could be accused of is submitting to popular opinion, not being anti-intellectual.
That is not true: Catholic opposition made them stop. Catholics were also the first and most vocal to criticize heliocentricism of its heretical nature.
But wasn’t allowed to call it heresy until 1615, a while after Copernicus died. This isn’t an apologetic that the Catholic Church did the right thing, I’m not even Catholic. I’m trying to highlight that historically Christianity hasn’t been as anti-intellectual as many have been led to believe
> historically Christianity hasn’t been as anti-intellectual as many have been led to believe
That is absolutely not true. The 17th century was marked by the transition to the Age of Enlightenment, which carried an anti-anti-intellectual sentiment and thus found itself at odds with Christianity.
What you've just said doesn't have any tension with what I've said. For almost 17 centuries Christianity was not at odds with intellectualism. The Reformation introduced the clash.
> It is worth noting, as Stanford University does, that the Catholic Church had no official stance on Copernican teachings. Pope Clement VII, who died about a decade before Copernicus, was said to have been receptive about the astronomer’s theories. While there was no recorded response from Pope Paul III, one of his advisors intended to condemn the book before dying.
> Phil Lawler, editor of Catholic World News, also says Copernicus was in good standing with the Church when he died. He notes that while heliocentric theory was controversial during Copernicus’ lifetime his work did not cause him any conflict with the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church did not take action to ban Copernicus's book until long after he was dead (in 1616, more than 60 years after his death). The usual "Copernicus was fighting against the Church" narrative has no evidence at all.
I feel that everyone should be free to believe what they want. It’s just that if you start talking to me like Jaweh, Zeus, Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster are real, you loose some credibility with me.
I can think of many things on the spot that have the same level of evidence as you have for your $GOD but such a conversation just doesn’t make sense to me. I prefer to spend my time otherwise.
> This is a long discussion but perhaps to keep it short, the alternative is “thought police”.
Good point, agreed.
> But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer?
Why? :)
I believe people believing whatever they want is harmful. I believe you have no right to believe that the earth is flat. I'd love to know if there's a sensible option somewhere between "anyone is free to believe any untrue thing they want" and "thought police".
> I'd love to know if there's a sensible option somewhere between "anyone is free to believe any untrue thing they want" and "thought police".
i think that depends on two things - do you believe objective truths exist, and do you believe society should prefer objective truths over falsehoods? Or in a more abstract sense, should freedom of speech simply allow all speech (and by extension all beliefs) without question, or seek to discriminate truth from speech, as best it can?
"thought police" has a specific malevolent implication meant to equate the authoritative control of certain memes (in the original Dawkins sense) to fascistic thought control but does that implication apply to truth, or only minsinformation?
Again - because Hacker News loves this rabbithole - the assumption here is that truths exist and can be discovered. The infinite nihilistic regress of "but who decides what is is and who watches the watchers" is already discarded, if for no other reason than being uninteresting.
Maybe teaching people the earth is round isn't 'thought policing,' and if it is, maybe 'thought policing' isn't always harmful.
I think there is no final arbiter between good and bad, and change (for better of worse) starts at the fringes of society, the law, morality, political correctness. IMHO it is indeed unwise to go full thought police, but it is equally unwise to assign anything 100% true or false. Even Richard Dawkins is not 100% claiming there is no God (6.5/7 he calls it, don't ask someone to prove a negative). We all hold believes that are false. Some very obviously so to others.
So perhaps a Christian could convince me, perhaps even a flat earther. It’s just extremely unlikely and they’d better hit me with a good argument in their first sentence because I heard and dismissed many many arguments before.
But you are right, false believes are not harmless, see [0]. But, much like we can either have good encryption OR backdoors, you either have freedom OR you don’t, nothing may be “in between”, criminals using Signal and people thinking wrong stuff is just something that needs to be dealt with differently. (Because we want private communications and we want freedom.)
But I’m about 10% convinced I’ll have changed my mind on this in 5 years.
The obvious answer is many things now taken as truth were once considered heretical; and also many completely wrong ideas (ether, the humors, etc) still produced useful science and technology.
By all means demand falsifiability of any claims to truth, but don't insist that any one of us or all of us collectively are worthy arbiters of truth.
The arrogance displayed in some of these comments is astounding. Never mind the fact that our very existence is evidence of the existence of a Creator.
It can be easily put the other way around: to a believer, if someone starts talking that we came into existence from nothingness, then they lose credibility to the former.
Point is, this is not the way to have a discussion.
The author doesn't say which beliefs of his were mocked, and he doesn't say what religion he follows in this post, other than "Christian Mysticism." But in another post[1] he says
> The Gnostic gospels were what made the most sense to me so they formed the basis of my belief. That search never stopped and eventually led me to found Cool Magdalene. A cult led by Miss Kitty Stryker. That project is partly an artistic statement, partly a for-profit religious life coaching company and partly an attempt to build diverse communities of respect and dignity based around family in all of its senses.
I don't know if this is what OP was strawmanning about with his "Santa Claus" quip, but I think it's fair to say "founding a for-profit self-described cult / art project" doesn't have quite the same rich tradition as Christianity or other mainstream religions, and might be more deserving of skepticism.
You sure about that? They take a lot of it literally. They're selective about which parts because it's in their interest but that means the same book can both be a work of fiction and an historical record. The whole constant fails under light scrutiny, which is why from a young age they push "faith" so hard. Because if you want to believe it hard enough, it's basically true.
At least that was my upbringing. Wild stories told by dead mean trump science, in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary. It's fun stuff.
It depends. Fundamentalists exist and are quite dedidcated to attaining political power, but they're not the only ones. I don't live in the American South so I don't know the true extent of their spread, though.
Your equation of Santa Claus with God reveals your prejudice and stereotyping of religious people.
As another commenter has said, many great scientific discoveries over history have been made by Christians. It would be wrong of me to deny that there is an anti-intellectual strain in Christianity but it is not the dominant trend that American media would like to espouse.
Whether you think Christianity is sensible or not, if someone has made it to Google then they must possess at least some level of intelligence. To change your perspective on that based on previously unknown information about that person highlights a prejudice.
> As another commenter has said, many great scientific discoveries over history have been made by Christians.
Given that Christianity was the social norm in Europe and many European colonies for centuries, this statement is nearly equivalent to saying that many great scientific discoveries were made by Europeans. It's true, but only slightly interesting.
Or controlling it exclusively. Because if you look at the religion as a crowd control institution, that comes pretty naturally. Why fight education if you can just patronize it.
I respectfully disagree, given that the topic is antiscientific thinking within christianity. The fact that many contributions were made by that group is evidence regardless of the size of the group.
If this is not intuitive, consider the hypothetical world where no serious scientific contributions were made by christian europeans at all: would we then be free to dismiss that fact as uninteresting as well?
You are right of course, it does suggest at a minimum that Christianity did not at all times and in all places where it held sway entirely suppress scientific progress. And in fact I believe that some Christian societies could be rather conducive to science within certain limits.
My point is that for most of recorded European history, professing Christian beliefs was the default. Straying too far from Christian ways would have required considerable intellectual effort and have been socially and economically costly. So there should be little wonder that many great European scientists were Christians.
But I don't think the historical facts can be used to draw strong conclusions about scientific or anti-scientific thinking in the population of Christians living in modern secular democracies, as the context is very different.
I see it as a group of people who somehow believe what infinity is exactly, and a group that doesn’t. As infinity is far away enough, you can find all sorts of people who believe in god(s) and are at the same time intelligent, because the infinte trap is easy to fall into at any level of intelligence by definition.
To make it clear: sometimes I tend to suspect (not believe) that there are some parts of math that we can’t reach, yet or at all, and it has effects which break or create higher-level symmetries and create everything as an imminent result. Think of a monster group as a cute little example of it. That still doesn’t make me think that I’ll be salvaged into paradise if I don’t mastrubate.
Also, I’m not a historian, but wasn’t Christianity the only way to access education back then? That would explain something.
> Your equation of Santa Claus with God reveals your prejudice and stereotyping of religious people.
The person you're replying to never equated Santa Claus with any kind god. It was just a question. Would you take an adult insisting Santa Claus is real seriously? Do you think people are entitled to their beliefs, whatever they may be?
They didn’t explicitly state it but it’s heavily implied based on the context.
No, I wouldn’t take an adult believing in Santa Claus seriously. They’re entitled to their beliefs and if they do their job well then I have no reason to have an issue with them.
The issue I take is with the equivocation they have made. Believing in Santa Claus and believing in a divine entity are two drastically different things.
> The issue I take is with the equivocation they have made. Believing in Santa Claus and believing in a divine entity are two drastically different things.
Why? The only major difference I can see is that Santa Claus is explicitly understood as a made-up story, whereas Gods are believed in by others.
So there's social proof on the side of God, but in terms of tangible evidence they don't seem any different.
The fact that you say “a Devine entity” suggests you are a monotheist. As such you are atheistic wrt many many gods. Do you take all believers in all of them equally seriously?
Moreover, what is stopping me from defining Santa Claus as a Devine being?
Show me evidence that your $GOD (presumably Jaweh, but then with his image altered by some additions to your holy book only part of your community accepted, the rest rejected the new prophet) has sent a message, and while you're at it, tell my all the others are not the correct messages.
To be pedantic, Santa sends me messages every year through Coco Cola commercials. But I'm going to assume you mean older messages.
Hah! Because one worked/works at Google they must inherently be smart? If those walls could speak...
No. There are stupid people at Google too. It's a company and the hiring bar is high but it's also very specific. You can be an idiot in most things but still be very good at one. I've know a few. At Google.
There have also been hires that were "good demographics." (That's a quote from one of my senior leadership at the time I worked there.) Sometimes you can be rejected by all the interviewers and still make it.
For those who don't believe in religious doctrine, it is the same as believing in fairy tails. They come with equivalent amounts of proof and stand up to the same level of scrutiny.
The very fact that you're implying that being smart and believing in God are somehow contradictory reeks of condescension. Not to mention that you're grouping all religious doctrine for all religions into a "fairy tale" bucket shows that you did not spend time or effort understanding at least the existing major religions on Earth.
Don't leave us hanging like that. Which major religions do you personally consider not to be a fairy tale? Please also include, for each such religion, if you happen to believe in it, and whether it was the religion you grew up with (if applicable).
The superiority to which you refer is questionable. If the goal of these explanations is to prove the origin of the universe in some kind of mathematical sense, they all fail. They all belong to the same category.
The inferior tier is one where an explanation can be proven false with the limited tools of the 2022 version of humanity. Perhaps some religions' explanations fall into this category, but not all.
> Big Bang is the best available explanation of observed facts.
Best available is not proof. The sun rotating around the Earth was also the best explanation for a long time in Human history. Traditional physics theory was the best until we started to observe things at the atomic level. Certitudes in Science don't age well, and should teach humility more than absurd dogma.
Big bang has a lot more supporting evidence than a magical seven-day wishing-into-existence spree 6400 years ago. Closer to home, it makes a lot more sense that animals lived, died and were fossilized over millions of years than that they were added as hidden sculpture during the creation. Come on. And that particular god is very good at being useless since the Enlightenment.
One thing religions don't do is give up their certitudes in the face of evidence. Or prove useful to human existence. The Abrahamic God is a father who shot his wad, abandoned the child, but still demands tribute.
And that evidence is the state of the cosmos today?
Are you a software developer? Imagine that, for testing purposes, you want to test a particular state T in a simulation app that you believe can only occur organically after a large period of time.
Do you start the test simulation at a hypothetical t0 and wait to reach the desired state? Or do you simply bootstrap the simulation so that it starts in state T.
Well, you do the latter of course. So do the events at t0 need to occur for you to observe state T?
And I can verify the software to some degree there, or (more usually) find the bugs. So this is the bug-free simulation? It's easier to run the simulation and see what happens, so much state to initialize.
Without evidence, that's why it's called faith. There are thousands of unfalsifiable possible starting points, the Judeo-Christian one is laughable.
You're presenting a false dichotomy. Islam doesn't say that the world is 6,400 years old, and as far as I'm aware, neither do most followers of Judaism and Christianity believe in that either.
> One thing religions don't do is give up their certitudes in the face of evidence
Which religions? All of them? Did you study each and every one in detail to be able to make such a claim?
> Or prove useful to human existence
Same question.
> abandoned the child
According to Christianity, but not to Islam or Judaism.
A very common fallacy I see by atheists or secularists when these discussions come up is how they group all belief and faith systems into one thing called "religion", then cast the baby out with the bathwater so to speak, not realizing how easily falsifiable some of their claims are, or how they generalize across that which must not be generalized. You don't have to be an expert about "religions", but don't pretend you're one by the implications you're making.
It's just that stating "God created the universe." immediately leads to the question "Who created God?". And if you answer "God always was.", then you can also say "The Universe always was." (And 'it bounces between expansion/contraction' or 'new Big Bangs occur inside this Universe al ultra low probability according to Quantum Mechanics', or whatever.)
In any case, saying "The Universe always was." or "Time did not exist before the Universe so 'before' is only a term that makes sense inside the Universe, after its creation, and we cannot fathom what is beyond these limits.", is a more satisfying stance for looking at the Universe than first requiring a seemingly infinitely complex being that then created this universe to look like the being is not even required, according to Occam's razor. And it leaves some nice things to be discovered for us too.
I mean, why would I imagine a god building the Himalayas when I have plate tectonics to explain it? Plate tectonics explain it well, and it explains other phenomena, and we can experimentally verify the process. The god hypothesis just leads to infinity more questions, and as such is scientifically unsatisfying.
The god hypothesis generates a huge amount of un-testable hypotheses and suggests that we can simply give up our search for explanations whenever we can use god to explain things. Religion as such demotivates scientific inquiry, and I think it is not far fetched to assume that that was its original intention. Just read some Yuval Noah Harari, we began the scientific revolution when we no longer accepted what the priests told us.
In short, we indeed have no need for the god hypothesis. At least we never have so far, it has never been the simplest explanation for phenomena. God is simply placed into gaps in our knowledge until we fill the gaps (and answer questions), like: "Why lightning?" or "An Eye can never evolve [is irreducibly complex]." or "Why is earth at the center of the universe?". I therefor prefer to extrapolate the solved to the unsolved and believe that questions like "What is consciousness exactly?" and "Can a machine be conscious as we can be?" will also be answerable without invoking any god.
> It's just that stating "God created the universe." immediately leads to the question "Who created God?"
Simple answer: this is a logically contradictory question to ask. It's basically the same as saying: someone baked this piece of bread, then, who baked the baker?
The universe did not always exist, and provably so. The Creator exists outside the realm of His creation, and as such, our laws do not apply to Him.
The very fact that we're having this discussion is proof that God, The Creator, exists.
Secondly, God has sent us many messengers, and provably so. This means that "we have no need for God" assumption is meaningless.
"Simple answer: this is a logically contradictory question to ask. It's basically the same as saying: someone baked this piece of bread, then, who baked the baker?"
The baker evolved through mutation and natural selection. You envoke an answer outside the provable realm. By doing that you release all bounds. There is no limit to what you can place in that realm.
"The universe did not always exist, and provably so."
Then you are not agreeing with the best of our combined knowledge in knowing for a fact what happened at the very start of the Big Bang? I though we were uncertain up until 10^-38 seconds or so. Did the Big Bang occur in this universe or did it form the Universe? I don't know. Does anyone at this point? Is there any outcome that you would consider an argument against a god? I would not accept the prove of the universe not always existing as proof FOR a god anyway.
"The very fact that we're having this discussion is proof that God, The Creator, exists."
When I look at our DNA, and compare it to every other organism on earth, I see a tree of life, dependencies, common ancestors between species. No proof that a creator exists. I any case, simply stating that anything is proof a creator exist is a bit simplistic right?
"God has sent us many messengers, and provably so."
Could you point me to this proof? Is it a reproducible experiment? Can I do said experiment at home and come to appreciate your point of view?
Could you suggest any experiment that could help me accept that there is a god?
No one is trying to prove that nothing happened before the big bang. What may or may not have happened before (or even whether there was a before) is unknown. The big bang is as far as we can extrapolate cosmology backwards in time.
Uh yes on the first one. The Big Bang definitely happened and all the details of the study of the CMBR (for one thing -- there's many others like the Lyman Alpha Forest) show that it did.
The universe was once much, much smaller and the density was higher and the temperature was a plasma.
You can try to hide being "did you actually see it happen?" kind of arguments, but there's a massive amount of actual evidence behind that theory. It is more arrogant to reject the past 100 years of work on cosmology by thousands of scientists.
Of course it is, because of the implications that come out of it.
Either it came out of nothing (a logically absurd claim), in which case nothing really matters.
Or, it was initiated by an entity, The Creator, in which case you'd want to know what He has to say about how we conduct our lives and what comes next.
You're making a hell of a lot of assumptions. There's no evidence of a creator, no evidence the creator is a "He" and no evidence that it is remotely human with human concerns and that it cares about what we do one way or the other, or that it has any involvement after creation. You're projecting a creator that looks and thinks like you with absolutely zero evidence, which is alternatively your own lack of imagination or too much imagination depending on how you slice it. And we can go around and around on this argument, which after 50 years on this planet I can reassure you that I've seen it before. Even if I grant you a Creator (which I don't, we can always assume an infinite multiverse instead or just that cosmology allows for a causeless effect) then there's nothing that falls out of that other than the existence of a Creator. You then wind up with something like Spinoza/Einstein's God or the Prime Mover that agnostics like to consider. There's no evidence of any of it though.
Let's say you take the big bang as a historical fact. Something created the big bang. By definition, the "thing" that created it is a creator. We cannot say whether this creator is a sentient being that has vastly more intelligence than any human, but we can say that the possibility seems to make some people very uncomfortable.
As a casual philosopher, it seems like the big bang theory as the origin of everything falls apart under a trivial question. To you, such a discrepancy may be "irrelevant" to your life, but you're in the minority. The vast majority of people in this world are religious for a reason. They want to understand the bigger picture, and their curiosity does not stop when their finite logical facilities do.
It doesn't "fall apart", it just doesn't have any answer for what came before it.
That doesn't disprove what it can prove. We know the universe used to be very hot and dense and expanded and cooled.
What I don't buy is that because we don't understand something -- like what came before the big bang -- that it necessarily implies the existence of some old white bearded cishet white male who cares about our day to day lives.
I'm perfectly happy with having absolute uncertainty about what came before the big bang. There doesn't need to be any explanation, and there certainly doesn't need to be a religious explanation.
And there's the straw man. I don't think anyone is arguing for the existence of such.
It seems you have some misguided (and caricaturic) presumptions, but those should not blur your thinking
The fact that we exist necessarily implies a Creator. Just because you're happy putting your head in the sand does not mean that reality will disappear when you do.
Isn't it called the big bang theory, not the big bang fact? How many reputable scientists can you cite that would publicly declare the big bang as a fact rather than a theory?
I wonder if the person to whom I was originally responding finds your dogmatism as objectionable as dogmatism of a traditionally religious nature.
Let's cast aside for a moment that unlike gravity, the big bang, if it occurred, is impossible for a human to witness first hand.
The understanding of gravity had a tectonic shift about a century ago. Imagine if scientists declared that Newton's model of gravity was the final word, and that it was heretical to question it. These things are called theories, not facts, for a reason.
Such things happen all the time in the history of science. As another example, think about the phrase "subatomic particle" and the sequence of mistakes that must have occurred to arrive at such wording.
Paradoxically, instead of the history of science inspiring humility, it seems to encourage arrogance among some. Is the ego a friend or enemy of scientific advancement?
Comparing one’s religious beliefs with believing in the existence of Santa Clause misses the point completely and it validates what the author of the article is saying, i.e. that contempt for religion and, in the end, religious discrimination, is widespread in tech circles. (if it matters I’m an atheist myself)
Contempt for all religion is only pushing christian values further. Polytheistic religions incorporated every new Gods, as they all could very well exist. Then a new religion appeared and decided only one god existed and other gods did not. Athon and his clergy then died with the pharaoh pushing him, but around the same time, a new religion appeared in the middle east, led by a certain Moses(weirdly, an Egyptian name given to those destined to a clerical life)(probably an Athon priest imho, but i could be wrong).
Lot of stuff happens, it appears that divine right+monotheism is better than polytheism for population control (reason why and how Islamic faith spread amongst the ruling class of adjacent countries).
Contempt for all religions but the one from the book, and contempt for all religions are not really different. I just decided that .1% is a rounding error when deciding gods existence. I do respect polytheism more.
The fact that monotheism "is better than polytheism for population control" is a completely orthogonal topic to the truth of the monotheistic claim. This in fact, is a logical fallacy called the genetic fallacy.
No. First religions were ancestor's cult, those are polytheism. But even if you don't count them, this is patently false.
The oldest recorded religion is hinduism. Polytheistic. The second oldest is zoroastrism and is duotheistic. The first monotheistic religion is athenism, based of the egyptian polytheistic faith, then Judaism, which probably is a mix of athenism (in the rites) and a mix of caanism and zoroastrism in the myth (lucifer story especially).
My point wasn't that monotheism is false because its better for population control, my point was it was adopted against polytheist faith and ancestor's cults faith across the word by the local ruling class because it was better at population control. I'm saying nothing about the truth of this particular faith
And i don't understand why my last statement is a genetic fallacy. I find people believing in 100% of the gods (or a deist) more interesting than those believing in one specific god.
I'm going on a tangent here but I will make a bold statement: I think one unfortunate side effect of the sciences, is the acceleration of the demise of other domains of humans knowledge, specifically philosophy.
After all, why bother reading the works of Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther or Dietrich Bonhoeffer and compare their arguments against the likes of Nietzsche, Kant and Jean Paul Sartre when we know about Evolution ? Those old ancient texts and discussions are silly and passe.. It is clear that these poor uneducated people were busy arguing over the existence of Santa Clause.
The 21st century has regrettably produced some of the most illiterate minds in _this_ area. We have incredibly bright people who can build complex systems, think logically and excel at sciences, yet they fail at expanding their minds slightly above the materialistic universe; This is where arts, philosophy and theology reside. We call it the realm of transcendence.
The side effect of such phenomena is that bleeds into today's thought process and prevents nuanced discussions regarding any topic (whether it's equality, religion, freedom, justice,..). We have completely forgotten how to form coherent arguments and this thread itself is a great example; The basis of modern discussions boils down to: I can shout the loudest, therefore I am right. The lack of humility is rampant, especially on social media and everything is black and white.
I don't care if you are an Atheist, a Theist, an Agnostic or a Marxist, but if you have the urge to start a discussion with "You think Santa Clause is real", I plead you to think twice before posting it and go read any pages of Francis Shaffer or Soren Kierkeggard and then come here and assert that these people had completely surrendered all thought and reason.
Okay, so how would you consider the alternative when someone is expressing their opinion on other topics like: “Do you really like dating people of the same sex? Sorry that’s the kind of thing I associate with someone who does not have any mental issues as yourself”.
I am not advocating if any of them are good or bad (personally I avoid both), but we should really have the same standards when it comes to the famed “free speech”.
All of these hypothetical conversations are great reasons why sex, politics, and religion should never be discussed in the workplace. Somebody's feelings are going to get hurt.
I don't understand how that's relevant. The comment I replied to was arguing about applying the same standards in free speech, whereas "protected class" refers to employment discrimination.
Yes, it is. My philosophical stance has been changing and evolving constantly over these 40+ years that I have been alive. Unlike my race or my sexuality, it's not part of who I am, it's part of who I choose to be.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that anyone who feels like they have no control over their religion -- the same way they have no control over which color of skin they were born with -- should seek help because they're being abused by someone.
"So you think religion is a personal choice and sexual orientation isn't? Sorry, I cannot hang out with misguided people such as yourself!"
I can literally take anything you say and find any excuse to disassociate myself from you. The problem is when people don't talk to each other and it's worse when they disassociate based on topics they likely have no idea about.
Is it a personal choice though? If in the morning I decide between wearing a blue shirt or a red shirt, that's arguably a matter of personal choice, but deciding to believe in God is as much a 'personal choice' as deciding to believe in gravity or deciding to believe in homeopathy.
It’s quite baffling to me that people would start talking about religion at social events that are not related to religion in the first place.
To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics unless you’re amongst people who share your views or it’s a specific religious or political gathering.
If I’m attending a social function, I certainly don’t want to hear about your religious views or political bent. Chances are slim that I would espouse compatible views and that would just make things very uncomfortable for either or both of us.
There are so many other interesting and less polarising topics of discussion with strangers.
Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity are the same age, though. They cover two ends of the propagation strategy spectrum. Paul tried to position Christianity as a pivot from Temple Judaism like the Sanhedrin did with Rabbinic Judaism, but the "light" version that spread like wildfire among Roman slaves is what survived. Roman slaves didn't really care about Jesus's messianic genealogy or all the allusions to him being the final pascal lamb, it was the salvation story ( itself a repackaging of exodus) that resonated. So Christianity sees itself as a successor while Rabbinic Judaism sees itself as a continuation.
> To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics
Yeah I agree, I'm also surprised, never talk about religion/politics, health or money, those are private matters shared with people you can choose freely, and not with colleagues or other random people you can't choose, but need to get along with.
When it comes to money we should more freely talk about it. Trying to prevent discussions of salary and benefits is largely to keep us from shared understanding of the market rate, etc, which penalizes people less connected with the field.
> To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics unless you’re amongst people who share your views or it’s a specific religious or political gathering.
in case you have not noticed politics is creeping everywhere these days, even in non-political events.
> To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics unless you’re amongst people who share your views or it’s a specific religious or political gathering.
This strikes me as a tradition that seriously bolsters religious & political partisanship in America.
It also keeps a lot of encounters from uncomfortable or erupting. Fervent believers of different things, of course, are supposed to be converting the others, and being told that their god says your practice is heresy doesn't make the canapes taste any better.
That's a crappy rule and it is incompatible with democracy. Part of the reason "freedom of expression" tenants exist is because voters need to be able to convince their peers on various issues. Religion is literally why people believe everything they believe in and asking people to avoid religious topics instead of discussing how to converse controversial topics without causing offense is precisely how you end up with social bubbles of extremes ready to tear apart society to destroy each other.
Part of that however is telling others explicitly when their topic of choice makes you uncomfortable and them ceasing the discussion after clarifying their intent immediately.
Same thing with politics, superpacs and millions in advertising money isn't how politicians should reach out to voters, it is supposed to be by voters talking to people on the other side about their guy and his/her policies. Civilized discourse about controversial topics is a corr foundation of a free society. And it is being eroded by modern social media driven society.
> To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics unless you’re amongst people who share your views or it’s a specific religious or political gathering.
This to me is destroying social debate. How can one grow without believes being challenged? - I don't want to live in my bubble of self-confirmation. I want my believes to be challenged with good arguments and improve my thinking.
Of course the key is "good argument" and not "bah stupid"
You are in good company here on HN but in general this is not how people work. Specifically re religion and politics, the reason it is a common adage to not discuss them in social settings is because people rarely engage rationally in those topics. For whatever reason, it triggers people's emotional reactions deeply and quickly. When people's emotions are involved rational discussion departs quickly, and (positive, negative) feelings linger.
> If I’m attending a social function, I certainly don’t want to hear about your religious views or political bent. Chances are slim that I would espouse compatible views and that would just make things very uncomfortable for either or both of us.
Maybe it's because I'm high but that sounds fascinating, as mr. Spock likes to say.
Why is it that knowing that another human being at a social event has a different political [or reality] view than you cause you discomfort?
p.s. and what does that phenomena foretell for viability of 'democracy'?
I disagree heavily. You would talk about the latest movies, your pet,etc... but Religion is offtopic...why? It literally is the most important thing outside of work to most religious people. If people say they don't feel comfortable with the topic of course they should change it.
I disagree. People have mocked others that hold my beliefs (negative) and I respond with a positive view. Why is it somehow deemed acceptable to denigrate religions at social events, but if you say you believe X then it’s “baffling”?
The author is trying their best to be the odd one out. A few coversation topics will always be controversial when hanging out with your coworkers, religion being one of the leading examples. The question is why would you even want to bring it up unless you're looking for someone to argue with.
Dissociating yourself from people based on their beliefs is new thing and it's wreaking havoc. The colleague in question did not even ask any details about author's faith and what was told was enough for him to disassociate. In this case the author was treated like lower caste Indian.
The proper negative response would be in my opinion "I don't like discussing religion, can we keep it outside of the conversation?"
It is weirdly common for people to conflate running into others who disagree with or aren’t interested in them with authoritarian suppression. You even see people going on television to talk about how they have been silenced.
Because it's largely impossible to find out whether people believe nonsense or just pretend to, one should where possible avoid needing to know. If you can set things up so that the consequences for Jim killed the puppy plus either "Jim believes God told him to kill the puppy" or "Jim pretended God told him to kill the puppy" are roughly identical you needn't waste your time trying to see inside Jim's mind.
This is trickier with retributional justice. If you think your justice system's goal is to punish wrong doing it's difficult to argue that it doesn't matter what Jim really believed, as if he really believed God was telling him to kill the puppy how can that be wrong?
Sorry, to me it's pretty obvious that most of these people don't really believe they were silenced when they're on TV shouting about it. But I can't prove that, so, fine, maybe they believe this, we should treat both the false belief and the lying about it the same way.
I would see a big red flag on the person if they would start discussing religion even at non-work settings, unless I know that person really well. (And if the person knows me very well, I don't think they will bother...)
Someone having religious beliefs does not give them right to rude with their colleagues, while his desire to hold certain religious beliefs respected and accommodated where appropriate (which would be discrimination if not) that does not mean people around him need to respect what he believe.
From my past encounters with religious people, I can't help notice there's mix up on this.
> It also sounds like they express their opinion very politely and in a restrained
How is an insult restrained? The reactions are just disrespectful, and I can understand why someone could feel it as some kind of discrimination. Just switch Religion with your preferred technology, hobby or even some political topic, and think about how you would take such reactions, if they come up too often.
> Having opinions and saying them is a free speech, a cherrised cornerstone of the American culture.
Free Speech should also come with respect and manners.
It is discrimination, and I say that as an atheist. Imagine asking a devout Hindu: “you really don’t eat beef? How crazy is that? Do you know how good it tastes?” or questioning a devout Hebrew about he not doing any work on Shabbat.
You are right, he did not state actions taken against him based on his beliefs so it isn't employer discrimination.
However, the fact that this thread is flagged speaks volumes. In the global west in general there is an unhealthy extremisim between being anti-religious or a force-it-down-your-throat extrimist.
An argument could be made that lack of education about religious tolerance has resulted in a hostile workspace against religious people in companies with very secular workers and against people who don't have a religion at very religious workspaces.
The sword cuts both ways and it is a shame even mention of a discussion about tolerance is met with such hostility. You don't have to take a person's belief seriously in order to be respectful or tolerant of them, especially in the work place.
That said, I have no reason to believe OPs claims are correct.
I grew up in the Southern Baptist church. These people have a serious persecution complex - in fact, they want to be persecuted because that makes them most like Jesus!
The guy feels "persecuted" because Google hasn't opened an office in Louisiana? Google hasn't opened offices in most states! Why haven't they opened offices in Louisiana? Who knows? Does that mean Google hates the South? Well, if so then why do they have offices in Atlanta? Last I checked, Atlanta is still in the US South!
Like I said, this guy is fulfilling his religious need to feel persecuted and grasping at nonsense to justify their persecution complex.
Whether or not this person's claims of discrimination are valid, this method of airing this kind of grievance is probably totally ineffective. This is your brain on not having a union.
I've seen this approach before - typically someone who wants to be special, pronounces their specialness as unique and wonderful, demands their specialness be recognized, and then screams 'they're discriminating on me because of my specialness', when in fact they're being fired because in their exhaustive (and exhausting) efforts to promote their own specialness, they're not getting work done. They see the writing on the wall, and try to find some way to blame the world around them (discrimination, anti-Whateverism, etc).
To be clear, discrimination exists in this world and it should be abhorred, but if the thing 90% of your coworkers think when they think of you is "Oh, that guy who's always talking about X?" instead of 'That guy who built Y' - you've let your personal identity overwhelm your work identity, and it's not a good career move.
> If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face
Let's say someone brought up BDSM at a social event. How would the average religious person feel? Exactly how non religious people feel when someone brings up their religious beliefs.
If you were into some niche sex act, chances are you'd completely understand if other people didn't like it. However, religion is usually ingrained in religious people's ideology. Which means they are low key uncomfortable when people have incompatible beliefs. OP is projecting exactly that.
A funny thing about this post is if you want to get into BDSM with your partner, the people into it are well known for having a community with a lot of social events you might end up having to go to even if you don’t want to hang out with any of them.
I've noticed that Google Maps Timeline utterly refuses to ever mark a Synagogue as a location you've visited. It always marks it as the city or neighborhood.
Other locations show up just fine, but for a synagogue you also have to manually override it.
Of course, it could just be "it's not sure you actually were there" kind of thing, but I don't think I've ever seen it mark a synagogue as a visited location.
I want to ask if anyone else has seen that, but I have a feeling there aren't that many people who check their timeline and correct it........ so I'll never know if it's just me, or Google really does discriminate in this way.
1) the Indian caste system is not _just_ religious discrimination, its a class system that is devilishly tricky to escape. Its difficult to comprehend in the USA because the class system there is basically skin colour>money>very distant last religion. OP touches on this, but doesn't really quite grasp the difference.
The implication is that he is but a poor dalit, because of his faith. Which is pretty wild.
2) choosing to preach in work will lead to raised eyebrows.
on point two he says there are other mystics about in google, but I strongly suspect they aren't trying to convert people.
Look, I am surprisingly religious, I don't talk about my faith unless it's expressly required. Like my penis, it doesn't come out at work.
No its a bit more complex, there is nationality mixed in there as well as colour.
however my statement is based on personal experience travelling through the USA. Americans talk a lot more about race than I expected. They are upfront about their dislike of certain racial epithets.
You can change your wealth much easier than you can change your race. Sure a rich person will have it a fucktonne easier than a poor person, regardless of race. However race is the first thing you see.
As someone who is from the outside, Its especially obvious at points where the state or large institutions interact. (ie property, banking, police, airports etc etc)
Of course you can’t change your race, but we’re talking about some American analog of the caste system. Race just isn’t nearly as large a factor as money. Not even close
I don't see a problem with this. I'm glad that we have freedom of religion in the United States, and nobody is systemically persecuted or deprived of opportunities based on believing in one god or another, but I also feel organized religion is a dangerous set of beliefs from another time.
I'm glad we're finally reaching the point in the timeline of civilization where we can stop taking it seriously and start treating it as inanity, which is what it always was. I think it had value a long time ago, before we had developed better forms of societal organization and better explanations for our world, but that value is long since gone.
While I would never vote for a law persecuting religious persons, I do believe it's fairly crazy to believe in made up things that make no sense, and I certainly don't consider it discrimination to treat those beliefs as such.
Google is probably going to come out of this looking good. The fact that they were tolerant enough to welcome an openly religious ex-convict and are still supporting him even as he skewers them in public (since he's just on paid leave not fired). I wouldn't be surprised if he was doing this for years, and then things didn't get real until he started stirring up fear against technology. That's one thing that will actually trigger them.
>If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as smart as yourself.”
If you start talking about religion at a corporate gathering then you may be infringing on the rights of the people you are talking to. If you chose to engage them, and they respond with their own beliefs on religion, then you don't really have a leg to stand on, do you?
> If you start talking about religion at a corporate gathering then you may be infringing on the rights of the people you are talking to.
Unless your "corporation" is actually a government institution, no person's rights are being violated. At most you're generating a lot of evidence for unfair dismissal/treatment lawsuits.
Religion isn't like race or disability, you can change it if you want to. It's a set of ideas and ideas can be challenged.
I think it would be pretty rude to start criticizing someone's religion unprompted, but if they start the conversation then it's fair game. Religion really should have no special legal protection.
This probably isn’t going to get read, but the HN comments to this post really are off putting. They show Reddit levels of naivety. Just spewing further insults and discrimination with no attempt in putting yourself in the author’s position. And enough straw to feed a horse (as someone else said the other day). I came to HN to get away from this sort of thing, but the Zeitgeist here seems to be just the same.
The most off-putting thing is when some commenters incoherently go from arguing religion is a private matter and should not be revealed even when asked, to arguing "belief in a dude in the sky" is a pathology or "crazy" (first, nobody asked. And you're not a doctor). Seems very narrow minded.
So for one, if you ignore the political connotations and ignore the author's seeingly strong identity, the argument is absurd. That's going to attract some ridicule here, regardless of what they guidelines say.
Secondly, yeah I think your expecting a bit much at least from a thread like this. You can go back and look at, for example, the caste discrimination threads from recent. They aren't much better.
This is a topic that 1) hacker news commenters can't resist and 2) is totally inappropriate for hacker news. Hence the flags.
Someone getting fired or disciplined at a big tech company always attracts comments here, not always good ones.
The reason certain topics are prohibited here is because even good commenters can get in too deep and end up writing bad comments. I hope people mostly don't hold my bad comments against me for too long, and I try to do the same for them.
> when a random manager at Google with whom I had never spoken began harassing me about my beliefs. [...] I think he did it out of ignorance but it is an incredibly common type of harassment that religious people have to endure [...] if they are crazy enough to actually admit that they believe in the divine power of God.
followed by a
> I had simply posted a meme on an internal social media platform in support of Tanuja Gupta’s protest against caste discrimination at Google.
This reads like "I posted a meme and a random person who read it started harassing me because he didn't share my belief."
What did this harassment look like? Also, I really would like to see that meme. And the examples he/she sent privately to the manager and the responses to it.
Then there's this thing: In my first quoted paragraph is the line "if they are crazy enough to actually admit that they believe in the divine power of God."
together with
"If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?"
I'd make sure to not talk about religion with this person anymore, and if that overly religious person would try to do so again, would I be seeing that as an harassment?
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 316 ms ] thread...okay.
Though on the other hand, even the biggest AI systems are lightyears behind biological networks when we look at interconnectedness.
It at most can not be defined due to its complexity. Also, emergent properties are everywhere, like you can assign properties to a fire you can’t assign to the chemical process of burning. For all we know, consciousness may just as well be an arbitrary threshold of complexity.
But I stand corrected that the correct term is indeed materialism.
What properties of fire do you mean?
If we did make them that way, they wouldn't do large-language-model stuff though - what's that got to do with survival? Humans went millions of years without bothering to read that much too.
Is there any definition of consciousness which even brings it into the realm of things for which there could in principal be evidence distinguishing it's presence from its absence?
The usual argument about intelligence usually retreats into it being a property entirely separate from the observable universe and yet still has it as something for which people demand “evidence” of it existing anywhere they don't assume without evidence that it exists before being willing to accept things equivalent in observable qualities to be actually similar.
Can you tell how stupid the question is then? You can’t just do arbitrary word replacement. Words have meaning and are context dependent.
If a god showed in in-person to whoever asked, easy peasy, then it'd be a different story.
https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/06/09/artificia...
Given how vibrant the academic/philosophical discussions of AI and consciousness have been for decades now, it's anti-intellectual to pretend there are any obvious answers.
We're headed towards a dilemma where most scientists claim categorically that a given AI/robot is non-conscious, but most layment think it is. If robots start behaving and talking like in Detroit: Become Human, won't people react with sympathy? Who cares if the behavior is purely imitative and non-conscious, how could we tell the difference?
Read this, and tell me honestly that you can objectively, beyond a shadow of any doubt make a conclusion either way: https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-inte...
As a general principle, sure. Right now, though? AI's are still a looooong way away.
> If robots start behaving and talking like in Detroit: Become Human, won't people react with sympathy?
As I understand it, those are far, far more advanced than the chatbots we have.
A good example of his rush to victimhood is when he tells how he confronted leadership about why Google hasn't opened an engineering office in Louisiana. He seems to take the fact that Google doesn't have a office there as proof of their anti-Southern, anti-Christian bias. It's all very far-fetched.
In the US, it's very common for right-wing Christians to exaggerate claims of religious discrimination. For example, many consider not allowing public school teachers/coaches to lead prayer in schools to be religious discrimination.
The author makes specific claims about being judged by their manager for their religious beliefs. I'm not sure that's going to be enough to win a discrimination suit, but I wish them the best of luck. Religious discrimination at a workplace is (and should be) against the law.
I hope they find the appropriate lawyer who can navigate this for them! (For what it's worth, I'm an atheist, and I don't think anyone should be discriminated for their religious beliefs, no matter what they are. We're all atheists of some religions.)
Christians don't on the whole believe in Thor and Zeus and so on, and neither do Atheists. But the Christians seem very hung up on approximately one God, especially those who have the most superficial beliefs. Thus it can be seen as a small difference.
I say approximately because, well... Trinitarian Christianity. Most modern Christians claim to believe in "One God" who is somehow also "Three persons".
If you don't regard the New Testament as the Holy word of God, but just some stories then this Holy Trinity sure looks like the explanation for the Kessel Run in Star Wars, or that thing where Klingons changed appearance radically in Star Trek, or a dozen other places in fiction where holes in the story were patched clumsily and fans pretend to look the other way.
regardless of what each of us believes, there are beliefs that we would reject. how we treat people that share those beliefs is what matters.
Sounds familiar now doesn't it? Claims like that have been dismissed for decades. Don't be so quick to get on the dismissal train.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-...
crucially they are incidents that occurred because of who they are rather than actions they willingly took.
Failing to open an office in Louisiana is not evidence of religious discrimination. Obviously we can't know exactly how his conversation with the VP actually went, but I find the lack of detail to be conspicuous.
You do understand how ridiculous this line of reasoning is, right?
I submitted this link because it made me wonder what constitutes religious discrimination. If there is a non-work-related chat with colleagues, and someone thinks your opinion is wrong, I think they should be allowed to politely tell you. I think the author is not OK with this, if it's about religion (at least if many many people inside the company think he's wrong).
I get the reasons (both historical and present) that make religious disagreements a sensitive subject, and I can see how one would like to give some explicit protection to religious beliefs, but still I cannot ignore the fact we are talking about factual(ish) beliefs that one should be able to criticize.
Whatever you think that it's not relevant to your job (and it's not illegal) should affect your career; I don't know if that happened in this case but the author doesn't provide any example. But if you share your opinions, your colleagues are allowed to say you're wrong.
Additionally, out of all the southern states, I'd probably have to put Louisiana as the least "holy".
I don't think it's up to us to decide how true or false the accusations are. People from Google reading this should reflect on their own behavior and environment, and whether they match this or not. Everyone else can only do the same for their own life and company.
But the important thing here is, people here seems to not understand such problems, if they are not delivered in concrete wording and explanation. Empathy(?) here is too low to understand and evaluate a situation from just vague explanations. And that is a serious problem in itself, leading to such problems.
"My superiors said clearly discriminatory things, but I won't tell you what. I will tell you some other words which I believe they truly wanted to say — but didn't — and look how awful those invented utterances are. No, I really won't tell what they actually said."
I wrote nothing about the "believe" stuff, I wrote about his willful paraphrasing of what others said where he outright admits that it's his interpretation of what they meant but never really said.
Please wage your generic outrage war somewhere else.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I have never personally experienced any kind of discrimination, but perhaps I could have if I had different teammates.
I have a friend who's in the church of scientology, but he never tried to convience me that Xeno alien god took over human souls.
Are you sure this isn't because you aren't rich enough? :)
I think the author misses how rare it is to find highly educated, rational people who literally think they can talk to God. For most Google engineers, talking to the author would be the first time they encounter a person like that.
The noisy ones perhaps. I strongly suspect that only a small, vocal minority believe in actual dialogue with god.
When are people going to stop expecting large public companies to cater to their every whim?
It seems these days people are expecting every possible form of accommodation and bending backwards.
People have forgotten in these companies you are there to give your time and get paid for said time given. Period.
Companies will do things to help employees spend even more hours and be more loyal to their workplace in the name of kowtowing to some kind of social or special interest group.
But one should never look upon that as a right.
One should always look on it as what it really is. A way to get more hours and loyalty from the employee.
So long as the company is not nakedly abusing anyone (and companies are not so stupid) - we should go ahead, give the hours, get paid for said hours and do social activism in personal hours far away from the precincts of the workplace.
Well put - you're in a business relationship with your employer, they're not there to provide religious instruction, you do you job and they pay you for it - period!
(24*7-8*7)/2=56
If you're working 60 hour weeks I'm pretty sure you're not getting 8 hours of sleep every night, either.
that leaves 72-80 hours for other stuff. but,
you are not spending those 80 hours in a single location.
work-lunch and commute: 10-15 hours; errands, shopping: 5 hours; go out, dinner, friends, etc: 5-10 hours; weekend activities: 5-15 hours.
these numbers are made up based on my experience. some people spend more time at home than others.
what remains is that work is the single largest block of time that you spend in the same location with the same group of people who are not all family and friends in an environment that you don't have any control over, and where you have no choice but to be there unless you quit your job. you don't even have to hang out at home if you don't like it there.
so work better be a place where i actually enjoy spending time because life is to short to suffer through a bad workplace.
what matters is that we need to look at time in the context of what should be adjusted to how people want to live their lives
to answer that question we need to look at what is taking up the biggest chunk in our life because that is where a change will have the most effect. if the biggest chunk is supposed to be "not work" then we end up with hundreds of little things that are different for every person that we could improve (many of which in fact are being improved) while we are ignoring the one chunk that affects most people a large part of their time, which is work.
it is interesting to note that one of the things that is happening slowly is the reduction of work hours (4day week, etc) which puts a larger focus on the "not work" parts of our lives. less work means we need more options for people to spend their free time.
When these companies will stop to cater to specific groups and will stay politically neutral. The moment they started making socio-political utterances is the moment they've become a political entity not merely an economical one. And given that Google has profits that surpass the budgets of entire countries they can, they will and they have already mold society to their specific political whims: it is best for all of us that these whims are checked against to remind us that there exist alternatives to their techno-dystopian future.
Google providing directions to vaccination sites on a map is “political”. Providing equal benefits to same-sex couples when they can’t marry is “political”. Providing a virtual gallery that celebrates women artists over history is “political”.
Too often “politically neutral” means “politically within a narrow range of values that I myself accept as uncontroversial” and hey-ho, you’re back to politics.
That being said: You leave your religious belief at home. Religion may guide you in life, but unless there’s a obvious reason religion is something you keep at home and in church/temple/whatever.
You can believe anything you want, but you keep it to yourself. If you somehow involve me, then you give me permission to have an opinion.
Or harassing you WITH their beliefs, like OP is doing.
Isn't that.. all religions?
(Although despite Buddhism’s non-theistic reputation, the most popular kinds do have Pure-Land-old-guy worship)
The twentieth century featured many deaths caused by 2 different philosophies in 2 different places explicitly opposed to religion, for example!.
It's a paradox and irony in many cases.
Just some perspective and nuance for widening ones thoughts.
Religion, at best, codified moral values that were already in place in society.
Pretty much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide read the 4th paragraph.
Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_war which also traces its roots to religion. Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
I don't think you quite realize how much of modern morality traces itself to religious law. Maybe take a course in Philosophy.
I asked about murder, not this particular special case. Furthermore, even from the paragraph that you cite, there is nothing explicitly connecting religious law with a prohibition of murder or infanticide. The article states the Christianity forbade infanticide, which I will note is about 1300 years AFTER Moses.
> I don't think you quite realize how much of modern morality traces itself to religious law. Maybe take a course in Philosophy.
Thanks for your unjustified condescension. Maybe you should read the articles that you cite?
Slavery and sexual violence could be a better example as it's more closer to now. History is illuminating.
Add up deaths in the name of religion this century and get back to me
And yes, that holds true even if you include Hitlers regime on the religious side despite the fact that major religious factions were against him.
And if you need to read in some book that oppression is bad, that murdering people is bad, that basic human rights are a good idea, etc. - if you need to read that in a book and have these concepts crystalized for you as capital T True by dogma fed to you by a church of some kind... then, my friend, you're just a bad person. And we do have bad people and will continue to have bad people but religion has done nothing to abate this. Moral compass is innate to human nature, not something you learn from a book.
It's such a good belief, that we are blind to it being a belief and blind to its origins.
It's a belief that is so successful because it is true. It comes from the belief that every person has an intrinsic value. Philosophy isn't about rational atheistic science. Science cannot prove or disprove the idea that every human has value.
The Nazis didn't belief that and used science to back up their abhorrent beliefs. They murdered millions of religious People.
The communists also hated religion and murdered millions more of people who thought different. The irony is that they did so in the name of ending oppression.
History and geography will help you see that ideas about innate rights come from religion. But we don't need religion to keep these ideas going.
Just looking at how the human rights movement started should be illuminating.
There's a big gap between "morality is innate" and "morality can be achieved only through religion."
Religion was created by man, not by god. Religious ideas, including religious morality, are the results, not the causes, of the prevailing cultural attitudes of the societies that created them.
In the modern West, such as the US, "religious morality" is mostly synonymous with the morality of the ancient societies in which those religions originated, which is why religion is so out of step with modern sensibilities.
In other words, Aquinas saw God as the basis for and to all we experience. From the theistic perspective, my question is if moral subjectivism is true, it seems to be self defeating as the concept of truth is fundamentally underwhelmed.
There are plenty of atheistic and some theistic philosophers who see morality as independent of God. I wouldn't necessarily agree with them, but it's just a thought
It seems there is some component of evolved morality; psychopaths would have been excluded by the tribe.
I mean, you just called generations upon generations bad people.. Like, morals also evolve with society, and everyone is influenced by the society they grow up in.
Just a very easy counterexample -- gladiator fights were perfectly acceptable in people in Rome. Were they bad people for that?
Most people want to be nice to their neighbors / tribe.
Most people find violence disturbing.
That they live in circumstance that encourages, requires, them to kill, to manipulate, to be an asshole - is just circumstance. That's why being a Good Person is Hard. You need to remain true to yourself, and fight against all kinds of external forces that seek to corrupt you.
Superstitious people will obey rules with no actual enforcement out of a mistaken belief that an invisible Deity might punish them for disobedience, this benefits the rest of their society, at least in the short term. Of course it breaks down if a few people in society exploit everybody else's beliefs. "Princess Alice wants you to look after the sheep" is beneficial because it means shepherds do their jobs properly, but "Princess Alice needs you to sell your worldly possessions so that I can have a nice necklace" not so much.
I have the impression that since those people are not bound by evidences they can justify unethical behavior much more easily. And so this trait that should make them more ethical actually backfires and enable worse behavior.
This shows that religion could perform a valuable function in a pre-historic human society independent of whether it's true.
That’s the tl;dr of your argument afaict. Problem there is that religion was the problem in both contexts - so I don’t think it provided a solution so much as it caused the problem in the first place. Even then - it forced slave mentality onto the masses and that wasn’t exactly great for everyone either… Self-flagellation anyone?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as smart as yourself.”
That does not sound like discrimination to me. It sounds like people have an opinion and they express that opinion. It also sounds like they express their opinion very politely and in a restrained manner.
Having opinions and saying them is a free speech, a cherrised cornerstone of the American culture.
If you believe in something nonsensical, people will let it slide. If you believe in something nonsensical and are being obnoxious about it, you will be insulted and you will deserve it.
I mean I get that you believe that one book trumps all of human science because you were raised that way but when you grow up your critical thinking skills should kick in. If they don’t, it’s very difficult to keep taking an adult that believes in all kinds of unprovable stuff serious, because where does that end?
When is weird weird enough to be allowed to be publicly rejected every time it’s brought up, according to you?
Also, if you would know anything at all about religion (from context, I assume you mean Christianity), they don't believe that one book trumps all of human science at all -- taking the text literally is a relatively modern take done by very few branches of it, but Catholics were responsible for several huge discoveries in science and science is absolutely in line with the religion (the current Pope has a background in chemistry). The usual direction of religious dogmas is not based directly on the Bible, but on its "interpretation" by the Church, which is evolving.
This comes off as hugely apologetic. I’m not sure whether Copernicus would agree with the sentiment.
That is absolutely not true. The 17th century was marked by the transition to the Age of Enlightenment, which carried an anti-anti-intellectual sentiment and thus found itself at odds with Christianity.
This shows your ignorance of History more than anything else.
And it would seem I was taught just fine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus#Tolosani
> Phil Lawler, editor of Catholic World News, also says Copernicus was in good standing with the Church when he died. He notes that while heliocentric theory was controversial during Copernicus’ lifetime his work did not cause him any conflict with the Catholic Church.
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0219/Copernicus-an...
The Catholic Church did not take action to ban Copernicus's book until long after he was dead (in 1616, more than 60 years after his death). The usual "Copernicus was fighting against the Church" narrative has no evidence at all.
I can think of many things on the spot that have the same level of evidence as you have for your $GOD but such a conversation just doesn’t make sense to me. I prefer to spend my time otherwise.
Why?
Good point, agreed.
> But I have the feeling you’re not asking for an answer?
Why? :)
I believe people believing whatever they want is harmful. I believe you have no right to believe that the earth is flat. I'd love to know if there's a sensible option somewhere between "anyone is free to believe any untrue thing they want" and "thought police".
i think that depends on two things - do you believe objective truths exist, and do you believe society should prefer objective truths over falsehoods? Or in a more abstract sense, should freedom of speech simply allow all speech (and by extension all beliefs) without question, or seek to discriminate truth from speech, as best it can?
"thought police" has a specific malevolent implication meant to equate the authoritative control of certain memes (in the original Dawkins sense) to fascistic thought control but does that implication apply to truth, or only minsinformation?
Again - because Hacker News loves this rabbithole - the assumption here is that truths exist and can be discovered. The infinite nihilistic regress of "but who decides what is is and who watches the watchers" is already discarded, if for no other reason than being uninteresting.
Maybe teaching people the earth is round isn't 'thought policing,' and if it is, maybe 'thought policing' isn't always harmful.
So perhaps a Christian could convince me, perhaps even a flat earther. It’s just extremely unlikely and they’d better hit me with a good argument in their first sentence because I heard and dismissed many many arguments before.
But you are right, false believes are not harmless, see [0]. But, much like we can either have good encryption OR backdoors, you either have freedom OR you don’t, nothing may be “in between”, criminals using Signal and people thinking wrong stuff is just something that needs to be dealt with differently. (Because we want private communications and we want freedom.)
But I’m about 10% convinced I’ll have changed my mind on this in 5 years.
[0]: http://whatstheharm.net/
By all means demand falsifiability of any claims to truth, but don't insist that any one of us or all of us collectively are worthy arbiters of truth.
It can be easily put the other way around: to a believer, if someone starts talking that we came into existence from nothingness, then they lose credibility to the former.
Point is, this is not the way to have a discussion.
> The Gnostic gospels were what made the most sense to me so they formed the basis of my belief. That search never stopped and eventually led me to found Cool Magdalene. A cult led by Miss Kitty Stryker. That project is partly an artistic statement, partly a for-profit religious life coaching company and partly an attempt to build diverse communities of respect and dignity based around family in all of its senses.
I don't know if this is what OP was strawmanning about with his "Santa Claus" quip, but I think it's fair to say "founding a for-profit self-described cult / art project" doesn't have quite the same rich tradition as Christianity or other mainstream religions, and might be more deserving of skepticism.
[1] https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/explaining-google-c73caa0...
At least that was my upbringing. Wild stories told by dead mean trump science, in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary. It's fun stuff.
As another commenter has said, many great scientific discoveries over history have been made by Christians. It would be wrong of me to deny that there is an anti-intellectual strain in Christianity but it is not the dominant trend that American media would like to espouse.
Whether you think Christianity is sensible or not, if someone has made it to Google then they must possess at least some level of intelligence. To change your perspective on that based on previously unknown information about that person highlights a prejudice.
Given that Christianity was the social norm in Europe and many European colonies for centuries, this statement is nearly equivalent to saying that many great scientific discoveries were made by Europeans. It's true, but only slightly interesting.
If this is not intuitive, consider the hypothetical world where no serious scientific contributions were made by christian europeans at all: would we then be free to dismiss that fact as uninteresting as well?
My point is that for most of recorded European history, professing Christian beliefs was the default. Straying too far from Christian ways would have required considerable intellectual effort and have been socially and economically costly. So there should be little wonder that many great European scientists were Christians.
But I don't think the historical facts can be used to draw strong conclusions about scientific or anti-scientific thinking in the population of Christians living in modern secular democracies, as the context is very different.
To make it clear: sometimes I tend to suspect (not believe) that there are some parts of math that we can’t reach, yet or at all, and it has effects which break or create higher-level symmetries and create everything as an imminent result. Think of a monster group as a cute little example of it. That still doesn’t make me think that I’ll be salvaged into paradise if I don’t mastrubate.
Also, I’m not a historian, but wasn’t Christianity the only way to access education back then? That would explain something.
The person you're replying to never equated Santa Claus with any kind god. It was just a question. Would you take an adult insisting Santa Claus is real seriously? Do you think people are entitled to their beliefs, whatever they may be?
No, I wouldn’t take an adult believing in Santa Claus seriously. They’re entitled to their beliefs and if they do their job well then I have no reason to have an issue with them.
The issue I take is with the equivocation they have made. Believing in Santa Claus and believing in a divine entity are two drastically different things.
Or is there a stop? And then what? Your stance creates more questions than it answers while introducing extra, unnecessary parameters.
Why not?
Why? The only major difference I can see is that Santa Claus is explicitly understood as a made-up story, whereas Gods are believed in by others.
So there's social proof on the side of God, but in terms of tangible evidence they don't seem any different.
Moreover, what is stopping me from defining Santa Claus as a Devine being?
Show me evidence that Santa Clause sent a message to us.
To be pedantic, Santa sends me messages every year through Coco Cola commercials. But I'm going to assume you mean older messages.
No. There are stupid people at Google too. It's a company and the hiring bar is high but it's also very specific. You can be an idiot in most things but still be very good at one. I've know a few. At Google.
There have also been hires that were "good demographics." (That's a quote from one of my senior leadership at the time I worked there.) Sometimes you can be rejected by all the interviewers and still make it.
For those who don't believe in religious doctrine, it is the same as believing in fairy tails. They come with equivalent amounts of proof and stand up to the same level of scrutiny.
If you are as rational as you arrogantly imply, then the obvious answers to these are no.
Are you equally appalled when you come across average people talking about these theories as if they are facts? I wonder.
This doesn't mean it's the right one, but other explanations are inferior. Especially those provided by religions.
The inferior tier is one where an explanation can be proven false with the limited tools of the 2022 version of humanity. Perhaps some religions' explanations fall into this category, but not all.
Best available is not proof. The sun rotating around the Earth was also the best explanation for a long time in Human history. Traditional physics theory was the best until we started to observe things at the atomic level. Certitudes in Science don't age well, and should teach humility more than absurd dogma.
One thing religions don't do is give up their certitudes in the face of evidence. Or prove useful to human existence. The Abrahamic God is a father who shot his wad, abandoned the child, but still demands tribute.
Are you a software developer? Imagine that, for testing purposes, you want to test a particular state T in a simulation app that you believe can only occur organically after a large period of time.
Do you start the test simulation at a hypothetical t0 and wait to reach the desired state? Or do you simply bootstrap the simulation so that it starts in state T.
Well, you do the latter of course. So do the events at t0 need to occur for you to observe state T?
Without evidence, that's why it's called faith. There are thousands of unfalsifiable possible starting points, the Judeo-Christian one is laughable.
No one said faith should be based on blind belief. You can most certainly have faith based in evidence. It's not a dichotomy.
The "Abrahamic" faiths have demonstrated themselves, but only one remains uncorrupted: Islam. You can check out provingislam.com for some hard proofs.
1. Politically useful sects which demand followers and everyone else accept certitudes based on pure authority.
2. Politically useless to troublesome sects that don't.
The overton window is set such that the second group can't be acknowledged.
> One thing religions don't do is give up their certitudes in the face of evidence
Which religions? All of them? Did you study each and every one in detail to be able to make such a claim?
> Or prove useful to human existence
Same question.
> abandoned the child
According to Christianity, but not to Islam or Judaism.
A very common fallacy I see by atheists or secularists when these discussions come up is how they group all belief and faith systems into one thing called "religion", then cast the baby out with the bathwater so to speak, not realizing how easily falsifiable some of their claims are, or how they generalize across that which must not be generalized. You don't have to be an expert about "religions", but don't pretend you're one by the implications you're making.
The major monotheistic religions state that God created and initiated our universe, which does not contradict that a Big Bang happened.
In any case, saying "The Universe always was." or "Time did not exist before the Universe so 'before' is only a term that makes sense inside the Universe, after its creation, and we cannot fathom what is beyond these limits.", is a more satisfying stance for looking at the Universe than first requiring a seemingly infinitely complex being that then created this universe to look like the being is not even required, according to Occam's razor. And it leaves some nice things to be discovered for us too.
I mean, why would I imagine a god building the Himalayas when I have plate tectonics to explain it? Plate tectonics explain it well, and it explains other phenomena, and we can experimentally verify the process. The god hypothesis just leads to infinity more questions, and as such is scientifically unsatisfying.
The god hypothesis generates a huge amount of un-testable hypotheses and suggests that we can simply give up our search for explanations whenever we can use god to explain things. Religion as such demotivates scientific inquiry, and I think it is not far fetched to assume that that was its original intention. Just read some Yuval Noah Harari, we began the scientific revolution when we no longer accepted what the priests told us.
In short, we indeed have no need for the god hypothesis. At least we never have so far, it has never been the simplest explanation for phenomena. God is simply placed into gaps in our knowledge until we fill the gaps (and answer questions), like: "Why lightning?" or "An Eye can never evolve [is irreducibly complex]." or "Why is earth at the center of the universe?". I therefor prefer to extrapolate the solved to the unsolved and believe that questions like "What is consciousness exactly?" and "Can a machine be conscious as we can be?" will also be answerable without invoking any god.
Simple answer: this is a logically contradictory question to ask. It's basically the same as saying: someone baked this piece of bread, then, who baked the baker?
The universe did not always exist, and provably so. The Creator exists outside the realm of His creation, and as such, our laws do not apply to Him.
The very fact that we're having this discussion is proof that God, The Creator, exists.
Secondly, God has sent us many messengers, and provably so. This means that "we have no need for God" assumption is meaningless.
The baker evolved through mutation and natural selection. You envoke an answer outside the provable realm. By doing that you release all bounds. There is no limit to what you can place in that realm.
"The universe did not always exist, and provably so."
Then you are not agreeing with the best of our combined knowledge in knowing for a fact what happened at the very start of the Big Bang? I though we were uncertain up until 10^-38 seconds or so. Did the Big Bang occur in this universe or did it form the Universe? I don't know. Does anyone at this point? Is there any outcome that you would consider an argument against a god? I would not accept the prove of the universe not always existing as proof FOR a god anyway.
"The very fact that we're having this discussion is proof that God, The Creator, exists."
When I look at our DNA, and compare it to every other organism on earth, I see a tree of life, dependencies, common ancestors between species. No proof that a creator exists. I any case, simply stating that anything is proof a creator exist is a bit simplistic right?
"God has sent us many messengers, and provably so."
Could you point me to this proof? Is it a reproducible experiment? Can I do said experiment at home and come to appreciate your point of view?
Could you suggest any experiment that could help me accept that there is a god?
The universe was once much, much smaller and the density was higher and the temperature was a plasma.
You can try to hide being "did you actually see it happen?" kind of arguments, but there's a massive amount of actual evidence behind that theory. It is more arrogant to reject the past 100 years of work on cosmology by thousands of scientists.
Either it came out of nothing (a logically absurd claim), in which case nothing really matters.
Or, it was initiated by an entity, The Creator, in which case you'd want to know what He has to say about how we conduct our lives and what comes next.
He is just how we are able to articulate in our language. We are limited, and He chose to reveal Himself using He, so who are we to question?
> or that it has any involvement after creation
Provably false.
We have hard evidence for our belief and faith. Here's a good starting point: www.provingislam.com
That doesn't disprove what it can prove. We know the universe used to be very hot and dense and expanded and cooled.
What I don't buy is that because we don't understand something -- like what came before the big bang -- that it necessarily implies the existence of some old white bearded cishet white male who cares about our day to day lives.
I'm perfectly happy with having absolute uncertainty about what came before the big bang. There doesn't need to be any explanation, and there certainly doesn't need to be a religious explanation.
And there's the straw man. I don't think anyone is arguing for the existence of such.
It seems you have some misguided (and caricaturic) presumptions, but those should not blur your thinking
The fact that we exist necessarily implies a Creator. Just because you're happy putting your head in the sand does not mean that reality will disappear when you do.
I wonder if the person to whom I was originally responding finds your dogmatism as objectionable as dogmatism of a traditionally religious nature.
Science also refers to the theory of gravity, which I would suspect we can agree exists.
The understanding of gravity had a tectonic shift about a century ago. Imagine if scientists declared that Newton's model of gravity was the final word, and that it was heretical to question it. These things are called theories, not facts, for a reason.
Such things happen all the time in the history of science. As another example, think about the phrase "subatomic particle" and the sequence of mistakes that must have occurred to arrive at such wording.
Paradoxically, instead of the history of science inspiring humility, it seems to encourage arrogance among some. Is the ego a friend or enemy of scientific advancement?
The fact that monotheism "is better than polytheism for population control" is a completely orthogonal topic to the truth of the monotheistic claim. This in fact, is a logical fallacy called the genetic fallacy.
Your last statement is also a genetic fallacy.
The oldest recorded religion is hinduism. Polytheistic. The second oldest is zoroastrism and is duotheistic. The first monotheistic religion is athenism, based of the egyptian polytheistic faith, then Judaism, which probably is a mix of athenism (in the rites) and a mix of caanism and zoroastrism in the myth (lucifer story especially).
My point wasn't that monotheism is false because its better for population control, my point was it was adopted against polytheist faith and ancestor's cults faith across the word by the local ruling class because it was better at population control. I'm saying nothing about the truth of this particular faith
And i don't understand why my last statement is a genetic fallacy. I find people believing in 100% of the gods (or a deist) more interesting than those believing in one specific god.
I'm going on a tangent here but I will make a bold statement: I think one unfortunate side effect of the sciences, is the acceleration of the demise of other domains of humans knowledge, specifically philosophy.
After all, why bother reading the works of Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther or Dietrich Bonhoeffer and compare their arguments against the likes of Nietzsche, Kant and Jean Paul Sartre when we know about Evolution ? Those old ancient texts and discussions are silly and passe.. It is clear that these poor uneducated people were busy arguing over the existence of Santa Clause.
The 21st century has regrettably produced some of the most illiterate minds in _this_ area. We have incredibly bright people who can build complex systems, think logically and excel at sciences, yet they fail at expanding their minds slightly above the materialistic universe; This is where arts, philosophy and theology reside. We call it the realm of transcendence.
The side effect of such phenomena is that bleeds into today's thought process and prevents nuanced discussions regarding any topic (whether it's equality, religion, freedom, justice,..). We have completely forgotten how to form coherent arguments and this thread itself is a great example; The basis of modern discussions boils down to: I can shout the loudest, therefore I am right. The lack of humility is rampant, especially on social media and everything is black and white.
I don't care if you are an Atheist, a Theist, an Agnostic or a Marxist, but if you have the urge to start a discussion with "You think Santa Clause is real", I plead you to think twice before posting it and go read any pages of Francis Shaffer or Soren Kierkeggard and then come here and assert that these people had completely surrendered all thought and reason.
I am not advocating if any of them are good or bad (personally I avoid both), but we should really have the same standards when it comes to the famed “free speech”.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that anyone who feels like they have no control over their religion -- the same way they have no control over which color of skin they were born with -- should seek help because they're being abused by someone.
I can literally take anything you say and find any excuse to disassociate myself from you. The problem is when people don't talk to each other and it's worse when they disassociate based on topics they likely have no idea about.
To me, one of the basic rules of social etiquette is never talk about religion or politics unless you’re amongst people who share your views or it’s a specific religious or political gathering.
If I’m attending a social function, I certainly don’t want to hear about your religious views or political bent. Chances are slim that I would espouse compatible views and that would just make things very uncomfortable for either or both of us.
There are so many other interesting and less polarising topics of discussion with strangers.
Many religions explicitly require followers to try to 'spread the word' for exactly this reason.
Yeah I agree, I'm also surprised, never talk about religion/politics, health or money, those are private matters shared with people you can choose freely, and not with colleagues or other random people you can't choose, but need to get along with.
in case you have not noticed politics is creeping everywhere these days, even in non-political events.
This strikes me as a tradition that seriously bolsters religious & political partisanship in America.
Part of that however is telling others explicitly when their topic of choice makes you uncomfortable and them ceasing the discussion after clarifying their intent immediately.
Same thing with politics, superpacs and millions in advertising money isn't how politicians should reach out to voters, it is supposed to be by voters talking to people on the other side about their guy and his/her policies. Civilized discourse about controversial topics is a corr foundation of a free society. And it is being eroded by modern social media driven society.
A major component of the current crisis is the willingness of some to scuttle traditional norms amd mores.
One is now subject to evangelistic browbeatings from the "Woke" along Orwellian lines.
Satan is now cast in orange, according to this faith, and the networks genuflected for two hours of televangelism in prime time on Thursday the 9th.
This to me is destroying social debate. How can one grow without believes being challenged? - I don't want to live in my bubble of self-confirmation. I want my believes to be challenged with good arguments and improve my thinking.
Of course the key is "good argument" and not "bah stupid"
Maybe it's because I'm high but that sounds fascinating, as mr. Spock likes to say.
Why is it that knowing that another human being at a social event has a different political [or reality] view than you cause you discomfort?
p.s. and what does that phenomena foretell for viability of 'democracy'?
The proper negative response would be in my opinion "I don't like discussing religion, can we keep it outside of the conversation?"
This is trickier with retributional justice. If you think your justice system's goal is to punish wrong doing it's difficult to argue that it doesn't matter what Jim really believed, as if he really believed God was telling him to kill the puppy how can that be wrong?
Someone having religious beliefs does not give them right to rude with their colleagues, while his desire to hold certain religious beliefs respected and accommodated where appropriate (which would be discrimination if not) that does not mean people around him need to respect what he believe.
From my past encounters with religious people, I can't help notice there's mix up on this.
How is an insult restrained? The reactions are just disrespectful, and I can understand why someone could feel it as some kind of discrimination. Just switch Religion with your preferred technology, hobby or even some political topic, and think about how you would take such reactions, if they come up too often.
> Having opinions and saying them is a free speech, a cherrised cornerstone of the American culture.
Free Speech should also come with respect and manners.
However, the fact that this thread is flagged speaks volumes. In the global west in general there is an unhealthy extremisim between being anti-religious or a force-it-down-your-throat extrimist.
An argument could be made that lack of education about religious tolerance has resulted in a hostile workspace against religious people in companies with very secular workers and against people who don't have a religion at very religious workspaces.
The sword cuts both ways and it is a shame even mention of a discussion about tolerance is met with such hostility. You don't have to take a person's belief seriously in order to be respectful or tolerant of them, especially in the work place.
That said, I have no reason to believe OPs claims are correct.
The guy feels "persecuted" because Google hasn't opened an office in Louisiana? Google hasn't opened offices in most states! Why haven't they opened offices in Louisiana? Who knows? Does that mean Google hates the South? Well, if so then why do they have offices in Atlanta? Last I checked, Atlanta is still in the US South!
Like I said, this guy is fulfilling his religious need to feel persecuted and grasping at nonsense to justify their persecution complex.
To be clear, discrimination exists in this world and it should be abhorred, but if the thing 90% of your coworkers think when they think of you is "Oh, that guy who's always talking about X?" instead of 'That guy who built Y' - you've let your personal identity overwhelm your work identity, and it's not a good career move.
Let's say someone brought up BDSM at a social event. How would the average religious person feel? Exactly how non religious people feel when someone brings up their religious beliefs.
If you were into some niche sex act, chances are you'd completely understand if other people didn't like it. However, religion is usually ingrained in religious people's ideology. Which means they are low key uncomfortable when people have incompatible beliefs. OP is projecting exactly that.
Other locations show up just fine, but for a synagogue you also have to manually override it.
Of course, it could just be "it's not sure you actually were there" kind of thing, but I don't think I've ever seen it mark a synagogue as a visited location.
I want to ask if anyone else has seen that, but I have a feeling there aren't that many people who check their timeline and correct it........ so I'll never know if it's just me, or Google really does discriminate in this way.
1) the Indian caste system is not _just_ religious discrimination, its a class system that is devilishly tricky to escape. Its difficult to comprehend in the USA because the class system there is basically skin colour>money>very distant last religion. OP touches on this, but doesn't really quite grasp the difference.
The implication is that he is but a poor dalit, because of his faith. Which is pretty wild.
2) choosing to preach in work will lead to raised eyebrows.
on point two he says there are other mystics about in google, but I strongly suspect they aren't trying to convert people.
Look, I am surprisingly religious, I don't talk about my faith unless it's expressly required. Like my penis, it doesn't come out at work.
however my statement is based on personal experience travelling through the USA. Americans talk a lot more about race than I expected. They are upfront about their dislike of certain racial epithets.
As someone who is from the outside, Its especially obvious at points where the state or large institutions interact. (ie property, banking, police, airports etc etc)
I'm glad we're finally reaching the point in the timeline of civilization where we can stop taking it seriously and start treating it as inanity, which is what it always was. I think it had value a long time ago, before we had developed better forms of societal organization and better explanations for our world, but that value is long since gone.
While I would never vote for a law persecuting religious persons, I do believe it's fairly crazy to believe in made up things that make no sense, and I certainly don't consider it discrimination to treat those beliefs as such.
If you start talking about religion at a corporate gathering then you may be infringing on the rights of the people you are talking to. If you chose to engage them, and they respond with their own beliefs on religion, then you don't really have a leg to stand on, do you?
Unless your "corporation" is actually a government institution, no person's rights are being violated. At most you're generating a lot of evidence for unfair dismissal/treatment lawsuits.
It sounds like the writer is going through a rough time, and I wonder whether they're overwhelmed, and not reasoning as well as they normally would.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31704063
Or is this just a case of „a loud few“?
Secondly, yeah I think your expecting a bit much at least from a thread like this. You can go back and look at, for example, the caste discrimination threads from recent. They aren't much better.
Someone getting fired or disciplined at a big tech company always attracts comments here, not always good ones.
The reason certain topics are prohibited here is because even good commenters can get in too deep and end up writing bad comments. I hope people mostly don't hold my bad comments against me for too long, and I try to do the same for them.
followed by a
> I had simply posted a meme on an internal social media platform in support of Tanuja Gupta’s protest against caste discrimination at Google.
This reads like "I posted a meme and a random person who read it started harassing me because he didn't share my belief."
What did this harassment look like? Also, I really would like to see that meme. And the examples he/she sent privately to the manager and the responses to it.
Then there's this thing: In my first quoted paragraph is the line "if they are crazy enough to actually admit that they believe in the divine power of God."
together with
"If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?"
I'd make sure to not talk about religion with this person anymore, and if that overly religious person would try to do so again, would I be seeing that as an harassment?