Actually I'm heartened to see people defending religion on HN. Tithing to a church you truly belong to is probably a better use of your money, even purely by personal benefit, than tithing Wall Street. I hope that I've introduced some of those ideas in the text by making a negative comparison to the church. But yes; it was sloppy and possibly interpreted as disparaging of religious practice itself, so for that I apologize.

Meta: this is what I like about Hacker News. I get challenged to maintain disciplined thinking, often at the boundaries of the argument where I casually drift.

You might be even more heartened to know that one of the top most and highly respected computer scientist, Donald Knuth, is ardently religious. The contrast between his works that is extraordinarily precisely well reasoned after decades of thinking and his complete submission to ancient religion where logical reasoning is not all that welcome, is absolutely a thing to behold. It makes me marvel at complexity and perhaps still evolving nature of our brains that can even do this. I used to be very interested in personalities who you would absolutely consider highly intellectual and utterly rational but at the same time extremely religious. My observation was that these people had developed some sort of switch in their brain which suddenly turns on and off depending on subject matter. One very common trait was also that all of these high IQ people were exposed into religious practices since very early age with a lot of non-negotiable enforcement from otherwise very loving parents. It seemed to me that part of their growing brain had just carved out area which was basically off limits to questioning ancient religious practices. Human brain is fascinating thing.

Is it really all that surprising? I’m a fairly spiritual person, and work with logic and reasoning every day.

I like to think about this kind of stuff for fun and one of my answers to this is that if you like fiction, you are able to suspend disbelief at will (whether aware of it or not). I think faith requires disbelief and trust to work. Without disbelief, you will question, and without trust, you’ll undermine.

Spirituality is not same as ardently following very specific religious practices. I believe everyone is spiritual in some way. I also don’t think we suspend disbelief when reading/watching work of fiction. We accept that to be fake but we are curious about what-if scenarios and it’s merely learning and/or entertain. This is not same as reading religious texts were you do not accept it to be fake and questioning is feared for.

I don't see any conflict between reason and religion. Knowing how an atomic bomb works doesn't conflict with the rationale for why it's immoral to use one.

The simpler explanation would be that spirituality is not as mutually exclusive with logic and reason as one might have been led to believe.

> ancient religion where logical reasoning is not all that welcome

If something gives you purpose and makes you happy isn't the most rational thing to do to follow that thing, even if the thing itself isn't logical?

Yes, I myself have done a lot of things that have no logical reasoning but gave life a purpose, or at least it seemed to. That was my “religion”. I really cannot say I am opposed anyone else’s religion. The big issue is that many religious people want everyone else to follow their religion and any refusal or reluctance means target on your back. This is why religions get bad name and produce negative impact on society, for example attempts to squash scientific progress in medieval dark times or formulating laws based on one religion to a force on to everyone else or forcing religious education on all children and actively preventing them from learning scientific concepts like evolution etc. Not everyone does this and in fact most religious people I know are very private about that aspect of their lives.

I didn’t see it as a defense of religion (it did not express an opinion) - more as a correction of your post.

Agreed, the reply makes me more sure that the comment suffers from non-expertise and that we should remember the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

If you are not going to get into it then consider commenting when you are ready. I find it bullying behavior when you put down a person, establish yourself as expert but refuse to provide why is it that way. This is not to say OP was correct but he is likely lousy or just informal in all academic meanings of the word that you probably understand deeply that general public likely don’t care because they focus on practical meaning or the meaning as applicable to usual encounters ignoring outliers. For instance, one can make statement that “terrorist are evil” but you can write 10,000 words academic essay on why it is not that way citing hundred outliers and perspectives from other side. This doesn’t give you power to put down a person calling him non-expert and questioning everything else they said because in general public encounter that statement has meaning that is well understood without academic idiosyncrasies.

>> People tithe and sacrifice to their church for a promise of rewards in the afterlife.

> This is a fundamental misunderstanding of tithing and I’m not going to get into that at the moment...

I'll explain some from a fairly classic Protestant perspective. This was literally what started the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther was horrified that the Church was essentially attempting to sell salvation via indulgences. He pointed out that the Bible teaches that salvation is completely free because Christ already paid for all our sins with his blood.

I agree with Luther and I tithe out of pure gratitude. I think the Church belongs to Jesus and so do I because he's kind and gracious.

All the money in the world can't buy my salvation, or even the smallest part of it. It's worthless to God, who made heaven and earth and all that is in them.

When you selected Martin Luther as your mental leader, have you been aware of his antisemitism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism

> When you selected Martin Luther as your mental leader

That's not what I got from the post at all. Historically Martin Luther is extremely significant, and as that's as far as I can see why OP referenced him. And frankly, it's not very useful to apply modern norms to historical figures. I get the same vibe from your post as "Did you know Thomas Jefferson owned slaves? And raped Sally Heming? Clearly it was non-consensual because of their master-slave relationship."

It is very important to apply modern norms to historical figures - to better understand the past and how misaligned ideas / movements / behaviors from the past can be in the present.

The ELCA has condemned his antisemitism while still lauding the brilliance of his theology. One is entirely separable from the other.

Very well said. I think a lot of atheists would be interested in some of Luther's critiques of the church.

> This is a fundamental misunderstanding of tithing

Depends on the church, really. There are plenty that do hold a lack of tithing against you.

This probably is a reference to Max Weber's "Protestant work ethic" - a classic and interesting read.

Do you have a citation for "you must usually be an adherent or serious prospect of conversion to the religion"? I've never worked with a church that required proof of membership or belief to receive services.