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Poll: How many HN readers are believers?

22 pointsby ofcapl_over 10 years ago
So here's my question: how many of You believes in religious way in something/someone (I mean here some Godlike being). I noticed that most (around 99%) tech people I know in-person do not believe in God or any other supernatural being. Besides believing, are You participating in all ceremonies (e.g. as a Christian going to church every sunday etc.) ?

28 comments

nvivoover 10 years ago
I do believe in God, I&#x27;m a christian, I go to church usually 3-4 times a week (because I want, not because the church requires it or any rules) and I&#x27;m a very technical person, software developer and I&#x27;m also very into astronomy and physics.<p>When you say &quot;around 99% tech people I know in-person do not believe in God&quot;, this may be biased based on your location. For example, my country (Brazil) is predominantly catholic. So, I&#x27;d say around 99% of people in tech I know believe in god in some sense.<p>There is a huge misconception, mainly in the US, with this evolutionist vs creationist thing where a correlation was created where evolutionists are mostly atheists, and believers are mostly creationists, so there must be a &quot;clear distinction&quot; between people that understand science and people that believe in some kind of god.<p>IMHO even great speakers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson fail epicly doing the same thing they complain about creationists, they reject arguments of anything related to God in a very unscientific way: &quot;oh, so you believe in God? so there is an old guy floating in the clouds? so his special ability is to turn water into beverages&quot; - How is this different from believing that, as Carl Sagan said, there are dinosaurs on venus? It is just making up a lot of assumptions out of nothing.
tboyd47over 10 years ago
I am a practicing Salafi Muslim, but also a Ruby on Rails developer of 7 years.<p>I have noticed this about the Ruby on Rails world. After working in Rails jobs at 5 different companies in 2 cities, I&#x27;ve met and worked with scores of other Rails devs, but I&#x27;ve only known only one other Rails dev who was even Muslim, and no one who was Salafi. Some would be disheartened by this, but I take it as a source of pride.<p>I was not born into a Muslim family, but I embraced it later in life. So I love Islam a great deal and consider it to be the best thing that has ever happened to me. But I do not get into debates about religion or God with co-workers or on the internet, because I don&#x27;t feel it&#x27;s appropriate. When I&#x27;m at work, I&#x27;m not there to proselytize; I&#x27;m there to make great software and earn money. And on the internet, it&#x27;s just too pointless. If I&#x27;m talking to you about Islam, then I&#x27;m not doing it for fun -- I&#x27;m doing it because I want you to become Muslim. I find it very unlikely that someone who never believed in God in their life would start believing just because some stranger on the internet talked them into it. Rather, the end result is always a flame war, and that doesn&#x27;t really encourage good manners.
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kevingoslarover 10 years ago
Pantheism. God is a word to describe the wholeness of reality, seen as a single living being (the One). &quot;Living&quot; here means complex, intelligent, interactive, responsive, loving, joyful, prospering, creative, amplifying, mysterious. To me (PhD, philosopher, entrepreneur, developer) these are the best attributes to describe the world I live in. Science describes this world in excruciating detail and beauty for my mind, religion makes the same available for my intuition.<p>If I would say &quot;I don&#x27;t believe in God&quot;, I wouldn&#x27;t be talking about God, because then I no longer talk about the One, but about two things: myself and God. Then I merely criticize my own limited image of God. Which is fine.<p>Besides that, my religion is a school for love. Loving is tricky: strong emotions, complex beings with individual edges and blind spots, very close to each other, causing friction. Much more tricky than for example driving cars. Yet, we all agree that attempting to learn to drive cars all on our own is not a good idea. Sure, like love, in the end driving cars is about developing intuition and following our instincts, and we can make it work somehow after lots of bruises, but its better to have some guidance and mentoring along the way. We need to learn about the basic rules that make traffic safe, or we&#x27;ll end up hurting ourselves or others. The same is true for love. Wisdom traditions that provide guidance on how to love (aka religions) are useful tools that add value here.
vhogemannover 10 years ago
There is no God.<p>My parents come from different religious backgrounds, my father was raised as a Lutheran while my mother as a Kardecist. Neither cared a lot about their religions, so while they tried to give me the general notions of their religions I was free to make my own mind.<p>So, having no pressure to follow my parents beliefs, and founding no logic reason or need for the existence of a God, I found myself an Atheist.<p>I can&#x27;t believe on it because I can&#x27;t find any logical reason to do so.<p>Also, knowing how much evil was done in the name of religion I came to have a strong opinion against the notion of faith. I really think religious faith, that is, believing without proof, is a disease that must be eradicated. No good that came from it justifies all the bad things that came along.
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jpetersonmnover 10 years ago
I don&#x27;t really believe any anything supernatural. I think there are definitely things that we couldn&#x27;t possibly understand yet in our universe; which people might see as supernatural because they don&#x27;t understand. If I showed up in 1800 with an iPhone people would have thought that was pretty supernatural even though all the raw materials to make that phone were already on the planet, all that was lacking was the knowledge.<p>I believe it living a good life, not hurting others, being empathetic, etc... But don&#x27;t feel the need to go to any church or anything like that. I think most organized religions scams preying on the weak.
gliese1337over 10 years ago
An actual poll seems to be missing here, so I&#x27;ll just add my comment.<p>I am a practicing Mormon (member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), and do in fact believe in God and the specific doctrines of my religions. I go to church every Sunday, pray and read the scriptures regularly, and plenty of other things besides. The majority of tech people I know in person are also religious, although I am very well aware that this is largely due to selection effects in my choice of friends and places of employment, and not necessarily reflective of general trends in the industry.<p>Furthermore, I find my education in computer science strengthens rather than diminishes my faith. Education <i>in general</i> strengthens my resolve that my religion is largely ascientific (not non-scientific, but rather outside the realm of applicability for scientific investigation); since it can be neither proven nor <i>disproven</i> by empirical evidence, I am free to continue to believe in it if I like, and I prefer to believe. Education in computer science specifically gives me a fairly unique set of tools compared to the average Christian apologist for investigating the internal logical consistency of my beliefs. For example, while I&#x27;m a big fan of C.S. Lewis and his works on the subject, I am also rather fond of the computational approach to the Problem of Pain (aka the Problem of Evil), as overviewed here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiTb6zhqHLI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fiTb6zhqHLI</a> .
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peterhiover 10 years ago
Personally I am still open to persuasion. However I am greatly disappointed when people say they have found God when all they have done is join a religion.<p>Finding God seems more of a life&#x27;s work rather than &quot;read this, wear these and you are good to go&quot;
Red_Tarsiusover 10 years ago
Everyone has their own ways of thinking and believing. Once you start to get rid of the labels — <i>agnostic</i>, <i>atheist</i> and <i>believer</i> — you can really listen to others. I’ve met far too many people who called themselves one way and later understood how unfitting was such label to their assumptions.<p>Unfortunately, the quest for the true nature of the universe has been reduced to Scriptures and the yes&#x2F;no question &quot;Do you believe in God?&quot;. The human mind is biased toward dualism, so it feels natural to talk about something as a competition of two mutually exclusive arguments.<p>Another issue I have with belief == religion is merging morality and the Truth. Religion delivers both in one convenient package. However, they are not necessarily bundled together. I love Jesus Christ&#x27;s teachings but I&#x27;m not Christian.<p>Truth is, many of our predecessors treated religion with much more self-inquiry than strict believers do today. <i>Biblical literalism</i> was not a given. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Biblical_literalism</a>
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richmarrover 10 years ago
There may well be a god, even a judeo-christian style one. He might even have a beard.<p>But there isn&#x27;t enough rational evidence for one. Even supposedly rational arguments like Intelligent Design fall laughably short, arguing that life is too complex and sophisticated not to have been created by something even more complex and sophisticated.<p>My take is that anyone who does &#x27;believe&#x27; is either doing so out of cognitive dissonance, for emotional&#x2F;psychological reasons, or just plain-old fear of being stoned to death (figuratively or literally depending on where you live).<p>Apologies to anyone offended. Just an opinion.
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markycover 10 years ago
Evangelical Christian here - regular Church going, missions, Bible study, etc. Most of my programmer friends are atheists, but I also have quite a few programmer Christian friends, and a lot of agnostics
marczellmover 10 years ago
I&#x27;m an MSc student in IT&#x2F;software engineering, and I am a practicing and believing Roman Catholic.<p>Some of the main reasons for this is<p>- having recognized that the teachings are consistent with my embedded worldview and ethical code<p>- a perception that living according to these teachings is much more beautiful, much less likely to hurt others or get hurt myself, mostly free from anger and bitterness, etc. The often repeated opinion that &quot;God gave you your life and his teachings are the owner&#x27;s manual&quot; seems to hold true for me.
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elric1vover 10 years ago
I choose to believe in God; I don&#x27;t have proof, but I like to believe. It makes life easier and in my case doesn&#x27;t seem to have any ill effects. Even with everything we have learned through science, there still seems to be room for God. We don&#x27;t seem to have any way to know what caused the universe to form, and I&#x27;d just as soon postulate an eternal God as an eternal universe even if it doesn&#x27;t follow Occam&#x27;s razor.
ofcapl_over 10 years ago
So here&#x27;s also my answer - I believe in God, I was raised in Catholic environment but lately I stopped going to Church - I&#x27;ve lost faith in Church as a place &amp; organization and started to believe that by being just the good person for other people (&amp; world environment) will be enough to achieve redemption - and I believe God is generous enough to respect my way of &#x27;believing&#x27;.
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kiliancsover 10 years ago
I do believe in God. I&#x27;m a Bahá&#x27;í, so I believe that all major world religions come from the same God and have been sent to humanity at different times and in different places according to their needs with the purpose of educating mankind, promoting its wellbeing and advancing civilization. Most of the activities I participate in are initiated by friends at their homes and have the purpose of contributing something to the community (the neighborhood or the town), like devotional gatherings, study circles to raise the capacity to serve, spiritual classes for children, groups for the junior youth, etc. There are some other events for the Bahá&#x27;í community but I wouldn&#x27;t call them ceremonies because we don&#x27;t have clergy and they are extremely flexible. These events are usually backed by our institutions, such as a Feast every 19 days where we pray and consult together, a quarterly meeting to reflect on the advancements of our endeavors in the betterment of the world and plan ahead, or a yearly convention to elect these institutions.
SamF1nover 10 years ago
Yes,I do believe in the God of heaven. I&#x27;ve read the Bible practically as I learnt to read, and found the Church failed to teach the Bible as it is, but is standing on the sand of human thoughts and traits.. I still read the Bible a lot in case I&#x27;d been misguided by my own thoughts but as I found too many lies I resigned the Lutheran Church and joined the SeventhDayAdventists. ..but after it was evident I really know what the Bible says I was promoted to teach them the Bible. After several years I found the people in SDA Church have even more sinister measures than my former Church I got greatly disappointed to human established and maintained Churches and as the Bible says, if any of you are gathered in the name of the Saviour, He is among them. I have some guys believing mostly as I do so that is the only Church I need.
drak0n1cover 10 years ago
Deist - the latest physics makes the universe reek of being a programmer&#x27;s hackjob. An impossibly narrow hard coded Dark energy constant, holographic principle (need I say more?), probabilistic phenomena coming together to create an illusion of deterministic order (a mask for runtime code injection, or just convoluted Rube Goldberg programming if not). If the inflationary multiverse is proven and people continue to claim anthropic survivor bias I still won&#x27;t admit defeat - I&#x27;ll just say that the multiverse is a for-loop. Something put the monkeys at typewriters, and if our addled grey matter can be considered sentience I&#x27;m pretty sure that magnificent something can fit the bill of intelligence as well. Sorry, but what more can a mortal say&#x2F;comprehend?
mswenover 10 years ago
Practicing Christian, participate in multiple ways within a local church.<p>I have a MA plus additional grad level work in quantitative social sciences. Many but not all fellow grad students were either atheists or agnostics.<p>I am fairly technical, in addition to grad level stats I have added semantic analysis, database and web development to my skill set in the past few years and combine it all in data science consulting and building my own web apps.<p>I worked in a start-up for awhile where 2 of the other top technical contributors including the founder were practicing Christians. We also had team members in India or from India who were likely Hindu. I don&#x27;t think our religious beliefs were ever a topic of conversation at work. And, only rarely came up in personal conversations.
selectnullover 10 years ago
An atheist.<p>I was born in catholic family and was baptized and sent to church as a kid. I very soon found it to be rather boring and brain washing and proclaimed myself an atheist before I was of full age. I simply did not need the god hypothesis to explain the world around me.
robobroover 10 years ago
I kind of see logic or the laws of nature as being &quot;higher forces,&quot; but I can&#x27;t bring myself to believe in sky wizards, ghosts, time travel, psychic powers, and the like.<p>As a philosophy major, I think something dissuading me from the religious persuasion is that most attempts to define&#x2F;describe God are either different kinds of logical games (God = Beauty; this is what beauty is; therefore, god is &#x2F;&#x2F; God = Perfection; this is what perfection is; etc &#x2F;&#x2F; God = Nature, Light, Truth, etc etc) or completely illogical ones (The Bible says that God is true, so he must be!).<p>The Problem of Evil, in particular, sways me from placing faith in a god like the Christian one.
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sshineover 10 years ago
Until I was 13, I belonged to an Indian sect and strongly believed that I, like everyone else, had the incarnation of the one God within me, who also happened to coincide with a short Indian man named Sai Baba. At the time of my Christian confirmation (I belonged to an otherwise protestant community), my minister couldn&#x27;t give me any satisfactory answers to my questions. At that point, I believe I started thinking for myself, because that&#x27;s when I picked up programming also. Today I&#x27;m an atheist.<p>I miss the Indian comicbooks with the blue men, though.
sumitviiiover 10 years ago
I am starting my own religion!<p>If that doesn&#x27;t sound crazy enough, see its commandments: 1. You should know that God doesn&#x27;t exist. 2. But you may ask god to help you do things that you think are somewhat out of your control. Eg: Please God, give me a good GPA this semester. 3. You have to acknowledge that just saying stuff won&#x27;t actually make it happen, but doing it might. 4. You may or may not fight self righteous wars in favor of this religion.
MalcolmDiggsover 10 years ago
I&#x27;m Pastafarian. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
DanBCover 10 years ago
&gt; I noticed that most (around 99%) tech people I know in-person do not believe in God<p>Do they talk about it? Some religious people are not particularly evangelical, especially in the workplace, so maybe some of them are observant religious and you just don&#x27;t know about it.<p>(Btw: I&#x27;m atheist if it helps.)
ragecoreover 10 years ago
Question: If God made man(intelligent design), you open a whole new plethora of questions, including &quot;Who made God&quot;, and we&#x27;re back to square one.
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haidraliover 10 years ago
I am Full Stack Developer with strong believe in GOD Muslim
azarasover 10 years ago
I am not believer.
louishkover 10 years ago
why u no poll?
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WorldWideWayneover 10 years ago
Why are you asking?
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