A great idea, but the blog entry linked is from April 2012. Go to the site, click on the site title and then navigate around from there. It would be helpful if this link had gone to a page that gave a summary or a list of links to the material. It just seemed a dead end at first.
Not sure. I know you can edit comments for up to an hour after posting, but I don't know about top level stories. People with moderator privs can change things. Perhaps one will see it and change it.
Or you could just post a new top level story with a better URL.
Either way, I'd hate to see this story get no traction. Good on you.
posted again with a URL to the blog's About page. It's not getting much attention anyway it seems :) It's not my blog but I thought that people here may find it useful
Where's the data to support this claim? You do understand there were the crusades and all the violence out of that. (Don't get me started on the wars actually talked about in the bible as well, where god says from Deuteronomy 20:14
"As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies." So basically he gave the warriors clearance to rape and pillage.)
The crusades are probably smaller, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of world population, than you realized.
I'm not sure how many of those events you can officially put down to atheism, but the death toll from officially atheist states alone--e.g., the USSR--are pretty bad. My reading is that religiously motivated manmade disasters are a blip compared to the secularly motivated ones. Your reading may vary, though. :)
When there are difficult or tragic circumstances and we believers speak up to try to help or encourage, we get voted up, but the rest of the time, we get downvotes and negative responses.
For the most part, people on Hacker News want to read thoughtful and insightful comments. They want to learn new things, or gain new perspective, or otherwise extract value from the comments they read.
Comments about religious history (especially with sources) or religious artifacts (like manuscripts), clear explanations of interesting doctrines, and descriptions of how different religions/sects view some particular issue tend to be pretty well received. As a religious person, I've made a lot of comments along these lines (some about my own religion, some about other religions) and gotten a lot more upvotes than downvotes for them. Even the negative responses I get are thoughtful most of the time.
Assertions that religion X is true/false, statements that aren't backed up by appropriate evidence, and preachy comments tend to be poorly received.
I'm glad that you have had more positive experience on HN with faith/religious comments than I have. Others have made similar observations to mine.
Some conversations have gone well, but there are more that have not. Most likely my own fault for calling people on their intolerance rather than just shrugging and finding another story to comment on. :-)
Remember that HN members aren't particularly concerned with being "tolerant". We tend to be very intolerant of weak or tired arguments, particularly those that don't seem to get basic facts straight (say, the kind of stuff you can find on wikipedia.) So, for example, an assertion that there's evidence of a worldwide flood, without a link to significant research, won't be taken well.
But HN members do like to learn new and interesting things, even from foreign worldviews. If the idea of "speaking in tongues" came up, a quick explanation of the practice and the history (especially with links) would be quite welcome.
Technically, "bible fanatics" is only insulting to one religion, Christianity. The Jews observe the Torah, which while being 99'ish percent the same as the OT is technically different because of ordering of the books and the combining of some.
Well the Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons use different "bibles" even though they are largely the same content. So I was including the Jews as well.
Yeah, although it pretty much depends on how you define bible.
The Catholics use the KJV with the Apocrypha inserted between the OT and NT. Most of the denominational churches (loosely what you referred to as Protestants) use similar bibles unless you want to be picky over their use of different translations or get into which original manuscript they were translated from. And that's just getting warmed up. I'm into this stuff.
Catholics don't use the KJV. King James was a Protestant. The contemporaneous parallel to the KJV used within the Catholic Church is the Douay-Rheims, but even that isn't approved for liturgical use in English; only the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and New American Bible (NAB) are.
The term "apocrypha" is one only used by Protestants, as a pejorative term for the books Luther excised from the Septuagint, the Old Testament used by Jesus and the Apostles. The non-pejorative term is "deuterocanonicals", so-called because they were canonized later than the Old Testament books Luther accepted. Notably, Luther also excluded four New Testament books from his canon: Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, and Revelation. I suppose he found sola fide a lot easier to defend when he didn't have to contend with James' "So you see that a man is justified by works, not by faith." The Reformation didn't follow Luther's lead on the New Testament, though, and that's why Protestant Bibles have 66 books, not 62.
I'd suggest a little more warm up :) Some of us were really into this stuff before departing the faith.
Being "really, really into this stuff" is why I lost my faith. The deeper I dug, the more I found that none of the meaningful Christian beliefs that I held stood up to the epistemic bar I'd adopted as an adult.
You can read more details at http:?/epistemicfaithcrisis.wordpress.com/ if you're interested.
Catholics/Protestants/Orthodox scriptures are almost entirely the same content. Jewish scriptures are a much smaller subset, while Mormon scriptures are a much larger superset.
Specifically: Jewish scripture consists of what is called the "Tanakh" [0], which is the same content as the Protestant Old Testament but in a different order. The Tanakh tells the history of the Jewish people from "origins" to around 500 BC.
Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox scripture (generally called "the Bible") consist of everything in the Tanakh, in this case called the "Old Testament", plus the "New Testament" which tells the story of Jesus and his first generation of followers. Additionally, Catholics and Orthodox include other Jewish writings (pre-Jesus) which mostly fill in the gaps between the two narratives [1]. A number of other post-Jesus writings (such as letters written by early Christians, which tell the history of the next generation of the church) are sometimes included as additional reference material.
(As a brief aside: among Protestants in particular, there's a tendency to use different "translations" which consist of the same material but use different vocabulary and sentence structure. Generally speaking, which translation is used matters only for doctrinal edge cases.)
Mormon scripture consists of the Protestant Old and New Testaments, usually the King James translation, as well as three additional books collectively called the Standard Works [2]. The "Book of Mormon" tells the history of the inhabitants of the Americas. "Doctrine and Covenants" contains official teachings of Mormon leaders, who are considered to be modern-day prophets. "Pearl of Great Price" is kind of a grab bag, consisting of everything from revisions of other parts of the Bible to the controversial "book of Abraham" [3] to the life of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. In addition, Mormons consider their president and his 12 closest advisers to be "prophets, seers, and revelators" [4] whose teachings are more important than scripture.
World-wide flood? There has never been a worldwide flood during the brief time that we have been on earth. There are a few potential periods where the earth might have been covered in snow, the last of which might have been around 650 million years ago during the Marinoan period. There have also been plenty of big floods, but nothing remotely resembling what the bible describes.
There is some scientific evidence for a large flood in the Black Sea [1] which may easily have been the basis for a Noah's Ark type story, but not a world-wide flood.
Referring to "Bible fanatics" is no more intolerant than referring to "Tolkien fanatics". If you're being downvoted, it's because you're applying an inappropriate and prejudicial label.
Your point about "Tolkien fanatics" is a good one, but I was not reacting to just one word. As a Toby Mac fan, I like to refer to myself as a Jesus Freak, so mere labels aren't the issue. It's the tone of the whole comment and the inference that one who believes the bible is the literal word of God is an unwise and foolish person.
The only "tone" in "I've never understood why bible fanatics are so fixated on that story, it's one of the bible's most conspicuous flaws." is the one you've projected onto it. On its face, it's an honest statement of lack of understanding. It was neither unnecessarily offensive nor was it unnecessarily derogatory. You only see "tone" because it doesn't support or affirm your worldview.
Additionally, even explicitly saying, "Anyone who believes the bible is the literal word of God is an unwise and foolish person" isn't intolerant. Intolerance is more than just disagreement. Intolerance is saying, "You should not be allowed to think those thoughts," not just "If you think those thoughts, you're unwise and foolish." It's unwise and foolish to think that jumping off a bridge will solve your problems. It's unwise and foolish to believe that vaccines cause autism. Many things in this world are unwise and foolish, and it's meaningless to claim that whenever someone refers to a belief as unwise and foolish he's somehow "intolerant" of those who hold that belief.
It is no more "intolerant" of me to say "If you believe the Bible is the literal word of God you're being unwise and foolish," than it is for me to say, "If you believe that programming languages should be dynamically typed you're being unwise and foolish." The only difference is your sensitivity to those claims.
Your whole answer radiates a tone. Tone is that sentiment that is expressed over and above the words actually used. You could say that tone is found by reading between the lines.
Describing something as a conspicuous flaw is not a statement of lack of understanding. It is an assertion. You can say that you don't understand the Christian perspective on the flood account and then we could have a conversation about it. But making a strong assertion does indeed set a tone.
As a former atheist, I understand the perspective that causes people to make such statements, but please do not confuse my willingness to point out such things with being a sensitive little snowflake. Your whole reply is intolerant because of the combination of your statements and the tone you have used. Methinks you are the sensitive one here. :-)
Mostly just those from the subset of Christianity called "Fundamentalism" [0], which was founded around a hundred years ago as a reaction (IMO, an overreaction) to "Liberal Christianity" [1]. It's worth reading up on the history of those movements to get a clear understanding of where the modern move toward strong literalism originated.
You may also find it worthwhile to read Origen's De Principiis, particularly book IV sections 16-22 [2], and Augustine's On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, particularly chapter 19 [3]. I've found a number of very early Christian scholars tend to treat certain sections of the Bible (particularly the first sections of Genesis) as not being intended to be understood literally.
I downloaded this and the PDF looks nice. I'll try the EPUB file on my Nook later. I'll read it and if I like it, I will likely go back and purchase it for real. Thankyou leanpub for making this available for free.
Slow-carb diet (from the Four Hour Body) and Intermittent Fasting (primarily eat in the evenings, per The Warrior Diet) and Kettlebell exercises (swings and getups).
My life is too busy (I'm a pastor) for anything more complicated, but I find that this combination works well for me.
Intermittent Fasting (IF) is great. I really found that it was more helpful to read up on Ketogenic cycles and Autophagy (the process of removing waste/toxins from cells). Check out Bulletproof Executive and look up some papers on PubMed on these. They are great!
I have found that, after moving away from the Slow-carb diet and moving towards a more Paleo diet, I have more energy, can sleep less, and perform better.
Interesting that you mentioned dental health, as after a year or so of following the slow-carb diet, my dental nurse complimented me on the good condition of my teeth and gums. Sugar is not our friend!
I'm all for playing nice with your employer ... stayed late on my last day at previous client because they scheduled an install for the project I was the technical advisor for that weekend! Yes, really. Sigh. It went well in the end.
The problem is that my observations of corporate America leave me very cynical about your requests. After 23 years of seeing the exact opposite behaviour, it gets harder to believe that the company cares about what you think or feel. I have learned that when the words and the actions don't sync, you believe the actions.
Now, HN is likely mostly populated by young hipster developers who work at fun trendy places where playing nice is appreciated, so I'm just an old dinosaur roaring off in the distance. I accept that as my role. :-(
I'm all for employee self interest. Yet I still think it makes sense to follow (most of) the article guidelines. Even in companies that treat employees poorly.
Here's why: it is in your own interest to leave good impression, for the obvious practical reasons. A hearty "screw you, idiots!" might feel good for a moment but it won't do any good and ultimately hurts your own interest. Jerks do not change because of feedback, they might change in response to people mass quitting.
If you want to get even do it by a) being awesome somewhere else and b) keeping the bozos unaware of the reasons why people leave in droves.
Yeah, b) contradicts the article - IMHO honest feedback should only be given to those who can take it and what's even more important, you should only consider quitting after your feedback falls on deaf ears.
I completely agree with a default plan of not burning bridges anywhere. But it is still possible to do that without tipping your hand to the employer.
If the employer needs more than two weeks to be ready for an employee to leave, then the employer needs to be better organized or they need to ask for longer resignation timeframes. Of course, the two times I was ever "let go" (both from re-structuring), I had zero advance notice, so that doesn't seem very balanced.
My favorite kidsafe curse is from an old BBC radio show from the late 40's and early 50's, called The Goon Show. The main character would say "curses and naughty words". The BBC at that time was super-strict and you couldn't say curses and naughty words, so he would literally say it instead. Very funny.
True, but I despair of it ever actually happening. If even companies with sales people can get it wrong, where getting it wrong makes a difference, then what hope to companies who stick employees in little fabric colored boxes have?
Of course, 23 years in the cube farm might have left me cynical.
I had a brief glimmer of hope back when I first worked for Lands' End. They encouraged their employees to care about the customers to the extent of the whole company culture reflecting that care. After they were sold to Sears and then K-Mart, the whole place began the slump into the typical corporate bean counting contempt for the customer that we have all come to know and not love.
Personally, I shop where I get good service even if it means I have to go out of my way or shop there slightly less if they're higher priced.
