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Hackers And Mysticism?
Chaoli the Grey asks: "Long before everybody and their mother used the Internet there were neo-pagan and occult ftp-archives and newsgroups. Margot Adler notes in her book _Drawing Down the Moon_ that among neo-pagans, '[an] amazingly high percentage [works] in computer, scientific and technical fields'. Appendix B in the Jargon File states that 'There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic sensibility that shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with neo-paganism, Discordianism, or Zen.' But has the interest in things mystical and occult among computer geeks watered down after the masses found computers and the Net? Do hackers still believe in magic or practice a mystical religion?" A risky question, as most of us have beliefs that we feel strongly about, but it is an interesting question nonetheless. So those interested in sharing what they believe in, please feel free. I'm sure others may find it interesting. The one thing I do ask is that you not judge people based on the information that is shared here, as all that is bound to do is cause problems.
...it's Gnostic/Linux
Only weak minded individuals grasp at beliefs for which they have no logical basis. At heart, all religions argue most effectively towards the existence of *some* sort of "supernatural" force in the universe, whatever that may be, but usually have nothing to support their version over another.
right. it's pretty convenient to dismiss most of the world as 'weak-minded' because they have faith in another being. Very clever.
Or perhaps you are weak minded because you do not wish to see or understand the everyday miracle that we are alive and self-aware? Perhaps the fact that we can come up with phrases such as 'I think, therefore I am' doesn't quite make it to miraculous in your book?
Religion isn't about proof. It's about faith. The two are quite different. Many of the world's scientists believe in a higher being, and are at the same time quite methodical and rigorous in their proofs. Are they somehow weak-minded in their ability to incorporate both possibilities into their world?
Intelligence contains in it the ability to understand and live with contradiction. Hence the presence of some Zen Koans-- those who can wrap their minds around statements such as "Movement is nonmovement; nonmovement is movement" are wise indeed. Even if it sounds like so much malarky to people who don't want to pause and give it a moment's thought.
Peope who know and understand computers deeply also wants to know the structures of the reality. But this is not mysticism. It is seeking the truth. You understand the working mechanisms of your computer. This kind of mind you've got. Of course you want to understand the working mechanics of the reality, the universe, anythig. It could lead to Zen, to oriental philosopies or occult things, but not necessarily. You've got a mind which has to be fed with information. You're destined to try to understand things.
right. it's pretty convenient to dismiss most of the world as 'weak-minded' because they have faith in another being
Actually, if you had the ability to read without inflecting your own bias onto the ideas, I said no such thing. I said it's weak minded to grasp at beliefs that have no logical basis. The existence of a higher being could be argued. My point is that all of the major religions don't stop there, they add a huge layer of other crap. Believing in this other crap simply because one believes in a higher being is a logical fallacy that I have no respect for.
Religion isn't about proof. It's about faith
Ah yes the official defense. This concept is worthless without a context, a basis.
Many of the world's scientists believe in a higher being, and are at the same time quite methodical and rigorous in their proofs. Are they somehow weak-minded in their ability to incorporate both possibilities into their world?
Once again, believing in a higher being has nothing to do with all of the other trappings of religions such as arbitrary illogical rules and inconsistent worldviews. My original post allowed room for belief in a higher power (though it doesn't mesh with Occam's razor, one can't disprove it after all).
Most religious people I know base their faith on the emotional comfort they feel by clinging to reassuring dogmas. This is what I feel is weak minded, because it often accompanies an inability to come to terms with a reality that does not include these reassurances.
Oh yeah... and the Earth is flat, and the sun revolves around it, and there are no molecules, and every piece of evidence that doesn't fit my perception is simply a hoax... 'cause the Government/Religion/Military told me so!
Simply because you don't experience something firsthand doesn't defy it's existance.
Especially when 'fool' and 'dolt' are so much more succinct.
some people don't limit themselves to things which can be sensed, or things that can be proven, but rather things that can be disproven. there's a critical difference here, as well. if it ain't testable, then it needn't exist.
perhaps you have no understanding of zen?
Because zen is a version of Buddhism, and is one of the world's leading religions. To include it in the same breath as 'occultism' betrays a lack of knowledge of the two very different religions.
I'm not going to go into the differences here; do a google search to find out for yourself (for starters).
I lived with some guys in college who used to be into playing DnD. I tried it a few times but could not stand it. I did not like the idea that everything depends on chance - you could not rationally plan on anything.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
Rational.
Proven and observed are not the same thing. It is possible to build a system which has no connection to observable reality, (for example, starting with false premises).
I would be very interested to know your definition of 'deities' :) is gravity a deity? Is the self-organizing properties of genetic algorithms a deity? Is Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (or its sentence 'g') a deity? (I think the last would make a nifty one, in all seriousness :) )
I think you're mistaken. The goats only work in solving SCSI-related problems. For general swerver-related trouble you need a virgin. You may have to check your local preschool to find one though.
Human knowledge just isn't ultimate. There's always a chance of discovering something new about the universe that we are a part of which leads me to think that just because I can't detect or prove something right now does not mean I (or someone else) won't detect or prove it in the future.
Of course, I'm still not likely to believe some of the garbage dogma that so many others are more than willing to stuff down my throat. But I leave my definition of reality rather open-ended because there's been more than once that I myself and humans in general have been proven wrong in their belief about what reality really is.
But that's just crazy ol' me. :)
jer
I've considered that before, and think great things could come of such a project. There might be great difficulties in finding agreement about which truths deserve to be committed to the cvs repository, but "Nothing unreal exists" might be a good start. Or "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." (--PKD?) I'll subscribe to the dev list!
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Slighly reworded and snarfed!
"Zen is for opening your eyes. Most other religions and occult movements are for putting on cool-looking blindfolds."
Stephan
OTOH, I've heard plenty of "listen to your wife's advice - she probably knows people better than you do" and "your relationship with your family is more important than your success at work".
Nevertheless, I'm _sure_ you're right, and all that nasty stuff is hidden in there. Oh, if only I could ferret it out ...
Point how many commandments are there in the first 5 books of the bible. (Hint its more than 10)
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
A few things bother me any time the topics of religion, magic, etc. get brought up, and since this is getting posted late in the discussion, hopefully I'll be ignored by the moderators.
First, most believers in miracles, magic, magick, or whatever you decide to call it seem to ignore the many miracles that happen right under their noses. Someone will pray to god for a miracle of healing, and forgets that the doctors & technology that saves a person's life is that prayer answered. Someone looks for deeper mystical meaning or phenomena, and forgets that grass growing in a lawn is a miraculous and wonderful thing. People get so caught up in what might happen after they die that they forget to spend time thinking about what will happen while they live, how they will affect the Now.
Second, religious fundamentalism is a horrible thing, and if affects ALL systems of belief. It is a sad thing to meet a pagan who claims to be more open minded about spiritual matters to suddenly say "Church of the SubGenius? oh, that's not a real religion". It is a sad thing to meet a Christian who claims that the greatest thing to do is to love everyone to suddenly claim "don't believe in my god? I hate you and you should die". Condemnation, prejudice, intolerance, hatred-of-the-different, these are constants of the human condition, but one hopes that perhaps some enlightened few can rise above it.
As for myself, well, you're all going to burn when the flying saucers come, you mindless Pinks, and don't you forget it! ;)
Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
I'd like to point out that Wicca does not "recruit people". Wicca is a religion of converts. Wiccans do not proselytize at all. Proselytizing is a Christian concept. :)
Fialar
I don't think this is any big deal, as those interested in computers come from a wide range of religions.
I'd be interested in seeing statistics on how many neo-pagans/heathens are interested in computers, and what percentage of those geeks study or follow neo-pagan religions. It'd certainly be interesting to find out.
I personally think computer's are Loki's domain because they are so tempermental. :)
Fialar
Vingolf Fellowship
Me I believe in Exo-solipsism. This is all the head, just it must be someone elses....
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$you = new YOU;
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)
Zen has had a major effect in the East. The famous tea ceremony is a Zen ritual. Many martial arts, especially Aikido draw heavily on Zen. You should also realize that while Asians spent plenty of time killing each other it usually wasn't on the basis of religion. So you'll find that many Asians practice several different religions and several different forms of the same religion applying them where appropriate. Zen is a fairly intellectual "sect" of Budhism. Zen monks have been writing about it for hundreds of years and you probably recognize some of them. Does a dog have the Buddah nature? What is the sound of one hand clapping? These are examples of Koans which are phrases designed to confuse the mind and open the practitioner up to enlightenment (Snowcrash anyone ?)
I can believe I exist because I observe myself. I can believe certain properties of the universe are true for the context in which we can observe them. There is a valid, logical argument in favor of believing these things in the absence of data to the contrary.
What is this valid, logical argument in favor of believing these thing in the absence of data to the contrary?
What are empirical observations based on? Whatever measurements we take come down to our senses; sight, sound, etc. But ultimately we must believe that our senses are a reflection of reality solely on the basis of faith.
I can hold a rock in my hand. I can feel the force that it exerts on my hand and it's texture. I can see the surface of the rock. When I drop it I can watch it fall and here the thunk when it hits the ground. But how can I know that these sensations are indicative of a rock? How can I know that they indicate anything at all? Would I have different sensations if I were disimbodied spirit being fed hallucinations by an evil deity?
Futhermore, what logical reason is there for believing that the rock will even fall the next time you drop it? Even if your senses do reflect an objective reality, you cannot logically assume that the rock will fall simply because you have seen it fall X times in the past.
If you can go on to believe a vastly compliated system of physical laws based on observations which really don't prove anything at all, what is weak minded about someone who believes that God created the world in 7 days, or that Cthulu is eteranlly attempting reentry into our world, simply on faith?
And then you have superstition, fantasy, and the supernatural. Here we have absolutely zero observation of these things. All we have is human assertion.
But aren't alot of your beliefs based simply on human assertion? What your parents told you, what your teachers told you, what scientists tell you. You believe that you could go out and test these things but until you actually do test any given assertion such as "The sun is made mostly of hydrogen." you are just taking it on faith.
These assertions are not verifiable or observable. The assertion doesn't explain anything either: it doesn't explain where the universe came from, as it begs the question of where this supernatural force came from.
True, but that neither proves they are wrong, nor does it indicate that the adherants of such beliefs are weak minded. Science does not indicate morality to us but that does not make scientists amoral. And science doesn't do a very good job of explaining where the universe came from either. Doesn't the big bang theory beg the question of what made it go bang? Even Hawking's theory of circular time begs the question of why this time circle exists.
Grasping at beliefs for which one has no logical basis is something which every human must do. Logic itself is based on the concept of proofs. Proofs are ultimately based on axioms and definitions. A definition is when we all say "Let's agree this is so." An axiom is just a guess. Take any axiom and prove it's true. I dare you, I double dare you. If you don't believe me go buy a logic textbook.
Furthermore many people view the "supernatural" aspects of religion as SYMBOLS. Human language is pretty shitty in terms of what information it can convey and symbols are often a powerful way to convey large amounts of data between a speaker and a listener.
When Christians talk about "God" they are not talking about some brawny one-eyed diety with a spear that never misses. They are talking about someone that they believe to be omniscient and omnipotent. In other words it is clearly within his power to know how each of us will react and place us in situations which will allow us to excercise our free agency, so that we can learn and grow (assuming we choose correctly :).
Yes, this is true. On the other hand if you had something that made your life better wouldn't you want to share it with others. Honestly, most true Christians are only trying to help, and they generally don't get mad if you are not interested.
We all do this to some extent. For example, you talk about your more "normal" explanations. Which, of course, implies that a Christian's explanations would be somehow inferior. Not that I am criticizing you, I am simply pointing out that all of us have opinions on these sorts of subjects, and we all share them quite freely.
We also all believe that we have the "normal" explanations.
Believe it or not, there are well educated Christians. I personally believe that I am a better person for my beliefs, and I know that the Lord has helped me in many ways. I am certainly not perfect, but I am better than I was before, and will hopefully be better still tomorrow. You might scoff at my beliefs as delusion, that is certainly your right. But to judge my belief system without making the experiment yourself is hardly scientific. Open the scriptures with an open mind, read them, and pray to your Heavenly Father in Christ's name and ask him if he truly exists. Then make your judgements as to what is true.
An outrageously high percentage of Americans are Christian. Some of these Christians are annoying (a small percentage), and somehow you believe the fault for these annoying people is Christ's.
On the other hand, there is a rather small percentage of Americans that are not Christian (less than 10%). Of this minority nearly all of them are quite vocal in their contempt for Christianity. Look at the number of Darwin fish you see, for example. Just like you don't want to hear me talk of Christ I don't particularly want to hear you compare Christians to Spammers. Especially since the vast majority of Christians are not banging on your door trying to get you to listen. Do you blame everyone in the world with an email address every time you receive spam? Then why do you blame all Christians every time you meet an annoying one.
Anyway, you gotta believe Zen advice from a poster named digitalhermit. :-) Somebody give him an "Insightful" or two.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I thought you meant Promise Keeper. I was all prepared to lose all respect for the guy :-)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
I'm not aware of any real misogyny... and the intolerance is more or less endemic to the type of people who join. I don't like Promise Keepers because IME people who join it do so out of a need to be told what to do, and the organization exists mainly to bleed the faithful of their cash.
:-)
Just another ex-fundie...
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
- JR Tolkien [if you don't think he counts see:
Engines of Our Ingenuity: C.S. LEWIS AND TOLKIEN
] What would geek life be without Lord of the Rings?
- Larry Wall, what would geekdom be without Perl? See Feed Mag on Larry Wall: Divine Invention
-Peace DaveFree as in "the Truth shall set you..."
Just as a note, I know of at least two people named 'Christian' who use 'Xian' as an abbreviation for thier name.
This certainly qualifies as "neutral or positive".
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I guess this just proves /. has a distinctively anti-Christian bias, eh? Way to go on the tolerance there people.
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When you get down to it, Jesus was the original geek. He was persecuted for the first thirty years of his life, then he "graduated" amidst a storm of insults and is now lord of all he surveys.
*boik*
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But what if you're agnustic?
----Daniel Pearson of the UMBC LUG
He's also a PK.
Yuck. I can't stand those. I try to stay away from MUDs where that sort of behavior is tolerated...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Indeed. Just because you explain something scientifically doesn't make it any less magickal. I always love it when people claim "magick doesn't work" and when confronted with an example, explain how it does work! I guess they think that if they can explain it, it's not magick. I don't quite follow the logic there.
Personally, I don't believe in the supernatural. Nothing violates the laws of Nature, her rules are absolute. Those of us who practice magick do so with her blessing...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Do hackers ever believe in magic or practice a mystical religion?
Yes. This is an established fact, assuming you consider Eric S. Raymond a hacker and paganism a mystical religion. See his Dancing With The Gods. He's also the maintainer of the Neopaganism FAQ.
Not to mention I'm YATP (Yet Another TechnoPagan) myself...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Err, no. Tolerance is born from respect for the rights of others. You can believe someone else is wrong (and you're right; i.e. you can reject relativism) without in any way hurting your ability to respect their rights, including their right to be wrong. Tolerance has absolutely nothing at all whatsoever with believing nobody is right or wrong.
If somebody tries to tell you that Christ is your savior, don't hate them for it.
This is the religious equivalent of telemarking or spam. I have every respect for your right to choose whoever you like as your savior, or no one at all if you like. If I decide I want to do the same, I'll come to one of your churches and ask for help. What I don't want in your unsolicited attempts to convert me. If I want to join your religion, I'll come to you, just as if I want to buy your products, I'll come to you. Proselytize me, telemarket me, or spam me, and I will be quite annoyed...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Err, replace "with" with "to do with". [sigh]... My typing starts to fail when I enter rant mode...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
But for what it's worth, I agree with you. If you're familiar with physics at all, you know about the Law of Conservation. You never get something from nothing, and things always go somewhere. In short, things can change form, but they can never be created or destroyed. "Creation" and "destruction" are myths we concocted to explain things when we don't understand where they came from or what happened to them, but rest assured, they came from something beforehand and they went somewhere after. The logical implication here is that in the entire history of the universe, nothing has ever been created, and nothing has ever been destroyed. Everything that truly does exist always has existed and always will exist.
It follows from this that if Jesus ever did exist, he still does. Of course, this is also true of Nero, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Ghengis Khan, Buddha, and Adolf Hitler. There's nothing special about Jesus in this respect...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Please note I do not mean to compare Jesus to Hitler, I'm merely pointing out that "influential man" is not a valid credential for believing what he says. If you're sincere in your faith, I'm sure you can come up with about twelve better reasons why people should listen to Jesus. I certainly can and I'm not even Christian. I think Jesus was worth listening to, it's just the people who subsequently deified him and built a religion around him who aren't worth listening to. But from everything I've heard he himself was a great man, much like Buddha or Ghandi or any number of other great men whose ideas were greater than others and will doubtless echo through the centuries. I have a great, great respect for Jesus. I just don't happen to worship him...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Saying you fail to believe in god does not make you an atheist. Nor does it make you an agnostic. You could be either. That fact alone doesn't make you an agnostic (nor does it make you an atheist). Further information is required to determine which of these two categories to fall into.
Someone who fails to believe X does not necessarily believe not-X (but they might). If X = "god(s) exist" and you fail to believe X but also fail to believe not-X, you're an agnostic. If you fail to believe X but actually do believe not-X, you're an atheist. The two terms ARE mutually exclusive, since to claim "god(s) do not exist" is to make a claim about which you cannot possibly have knowledge, thus violating the (correct) definition of agnosticism you're using.
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
* A sceptic is someone who does not believe. A sceptic never utters the sentence "I believe X", it does not matter whether you replace X with a positive or negative. I.e. you can replace X with either "unicorns exist" or "unicorns do not exist" and get a sentence that a sceptic WILL NOT agree to. Sceptics do not believe things don't exist. Sceptics both don't believe things exist and don't believe things don't exist. They suspend judgement until proof exists (and for most true sceptics, their standards are so high that the proposition is never proven, be the proposition X or not-X). The fundamental confusion between true sceptics and what people frequently call sceptics (but who are in fact not at all sceptical, since they believe many things, that X doesn't exist, that Y doesn't exist, etc) underlies why many people confuse agnosticism and atheism. Agnostics are a particular kind of sceptic, who make no knowledge claims (by modern definition) about the exist of god(s). Atheists may a claim, they believe god(s) do not exist, thus they are neither sceptics of any sort, including agnostics.
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
This is also Benedictus de Spinoza's version of God. (Spinoza was a contemporary of Descartes and Leibniz, and much of his philisophical writing was in a way a response/rebuttal to Descartes. Thus, since Descartes was consider so wonderful, Spinoza became rather obscure. Of course, it didn't help that he was a heretic who didn't publish much in his life for fear over his life.)
Everyone who believes in the universe believes in Spinoza's God... the problem is, was Spinoza really just (as many have claimed) an atheist in disguise? If you take his work and replace the word "God" with the word "nature" everywhere it occurs, it makes just as much sense (some would say more). He even uses the phrase in one place, "God, or Nature," as if the two terms are completely interchangeable (and they are, if you buy his philosophy). Ultimately, thought, there is a distinction between pantheism and atheism, and I don't believe Spinoza was an atheist, just a man with an extremely heretical view of God. (Extremely heretical -- as you might expect from someone who considers "God" and "The Universe" as interchangeable terms, he believed God could not be said to love anyone, could not be said to make decisions or possess free will (he was also a determinist), etc...)
I was unaware that Taoists has a similar formulation. I'd be interested in how close or how far it is from Spinoza's...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
However, neopagans tend to be pathologically eclectic. Many have taken concepts from Asian religions, including both true and "Beat" Zen. This should be considered a form of flattery but I can also see how it can be quite annoying when they put their own spin on it.
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
What pagans have you been hanging around with? People with these sorts of issues are generally drawn towards Christianity, which attempts to remove this part of life from the equation (or at least simplify it by restricting it to particular times and circumstances). You have to be prepared to deal with this much more around pagans, where this type of social interaction tends to be much less restricted and more complex (especially when you throw polyamorists into the mix).
I don't follow the socio-political thing, though. I've noticed no difference between the social and political views of pagans vs. non-pagans aside from the obvious (i.e. when someone says your religion isn't even a religion, you tend not to vote for them -- and conservatives are good as loosing the pagan vote this way, not that it's a statistically significant loss... but I still find conservative pagans).
And as far as intellectually weak goes, that seems pretty much dead-opposite to what I've observed. Most pagans I know are both intelligent and (more importantly, at least according to Albert Einstein) more imaginative that average.
Incidently, your last comment is way off base. No intellectually dominant, self-assured type scorns anyone else's pursuits. Scorn is heaped out by people with feelings of inferiority in order to try to make themselves feel superior. If they already felt that way, they'd have no need of scorn.
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Of course. Being Christian doesn't disqualify you from being highly intelligent and independent, strongly anti-authoritarian, animistic, magickal, creative, or interesting and weird. Only Fundamentalists would disagree with anything on this list (particularly the animistic and magickal parts). But I know of Christians with very animistic, even shamanistic world-views, and I know of Christians who use magick. Nothing in Bible ("properly" translated) contradicts or forbids this, only mainline churches do.
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
If that is someone's reason for following a religion, it saddens me, too. However, I don't find that that sort of comfort is reason why very many people are into religion at all. Perhaps that's true for many Christians, I wouldn't know (I don't know many Christians), but it's certainly not true for most of the religious people I know. Even the Christians I know don't seem to need any religious justification for their existence -- that's just not what it's all about for most of us.
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
By no means does this mean the typical hacker is into mysticism, nor does it mean the typical mystic is a geek. It does seem to beg some sort of explanation, though...
Incidently, engineering & science types tend to be over-represented among pagans, too. Lots of pagans tend to be very scientific. Part of what drives them from mainstream religion is a design to experiment with things to determine what is true, rather than simply accept dogma taught to them. Paganism is sometimes said to be a designer religion because people tend to experiment with any new idea that comes along to put it to test, and only keep the ones that work best. Putting it to the test is kinda frowned upon by more dogmatic religions, as well as determining for yourself what is true. Putting it to the test is smiled upon by science, but determining for yourself what is true is frowned upon -- that's what the community and peer review is supposed to do. So, most pagans are completely at home with either, although their experimental style often serves them well as scientists...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
The ninja example is good. Personally, I do believe in magick, but I don't believe in the supernatural...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I don't know what you mean by "the web design thing", so I'll pass commenting on that.
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Your definition of agnostic is correct, you are however definately not one. Witness your next remarks:
There is no God. There are no gods.
An agnostic would never say this.
Here's a quick scorecare everyone can use:
If you answered (A), congratulations, you're a monotheist! God Bless!
If you answered (B), congratulations, you're a polytheist! Blessed Be!
If you answered (C), congratulations, you're an atheist! Have a nice day!
If you answered (D), congratulatoins, you're an agnostic! Your intellectual honesty (in admitting you don't know when you actually don't know) is highly admirable.
If you answered (E), congratulations, you're a strong agnostic! This is actually the traditional meaning of "agnostic", although (D) is also an accepted use of the word these days. You may or may not also be an epistemological sceptic (i.e. you deny the possibility of knowledge altogether).
To claim to know whether a god exists or not automatically makes you not an agnostic, regardless of whether that claim is that a god exists or that no god exists. To make either claim is to violate the very definition you gave for what it means to be agnostic. Since you believe no god exists, you are an atheist and definately not at all agnostic.
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Not if they obviously weren't interested.
Honestly, most true Christians are only trying to help, and they generally don't get mad if you are not interested.
Spammers are genuinely interested in generating customers, and are not the slightest bit interested in annoying people. They still annoy people, though, because they are intrusive with their unsolicited advertising.
Why are Christians so convinced that anyone who is genuinely interested won't be able to find their church? They're not that hard to find, people! Don't come knocking on my door, don't harass me as I walk between classes, I'm not interested! The fact that I'm in my home or walking to my next class rather than standing in your church ought to be a clue!
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
After following your hyperlink, I'm not sure if I can give a better answer, but I'll take a stab at it. I guess you might say I'm something of the Technoshaman type. I always giggle as the phrase "software engineer", since how I write code has nothing in common with what most people think of as engineering. It's an intuitive, artistic talent, based almost entirely on ones sense of aesthetics, or at least that's my experience. I completely dumbfounded my boss when he discovered I can't tell a resistor from a, well, I can't even think of the name of another electronic component to complete this sentence. I have no idea how computers work. Everything below the level of assembly language is simply magick as far as I'm concerned. I believe ideas exist independently of people, and I believe they sometimes desire to be expressed into the physical world. Philosophers have often wondered at how mental events cause physical events and vice versa (the lack of a plausible mechanism is the primary argument used against Dualism). I don't know and/or care much how it happens, but I know it does. Because of this, we serve as perfect conduits for ideas (completely mental things) who want to find physical expression, to actually affect the physical world. ESR has been known to describe programming as scratching an itch nagging at you. That itch is an idea trying to being expressed. For me, though, this would be a gross understatement. Some ideas I can ignore, and they either continue to hound me or go look for another conduit. But some are far more powerful than an itch. The really powerful ones take over completely. I am ridden, as a voudon preist ridden by the legba. I achieve a state psychologists call disassociation. I watch, passively, as this living, willful force expresses itself through me. I do not tire, I do not hunger, I have no sense of touch, I do not hear the events around me, I do not see except in the narrow tunnel before me. I feel the idea, I feel its presence. I don't think about algorithms, I feel them. There's no normal sensory analog, but I liken it to that feeling you get when you walk through a dark room that you're familiar with -- you can feel where all the furniture is. It's like that -- I feel the program taking shape, and I feel the idea moving about to flesh it out, and not being the kind of person who can easily dismiss the evidence of my own senses, I cannot possibly rationally disbelieve in the real, independent existance of the ideas, and their ability act idependantly of us. The ancient greek philosophers were right, the Forms are there, I know for I have seen them. I communicate with them, in a way, and they communicate with me, "speak" to me, "speak" through me when I let them (and sometimes I cannot help but let them).
Sometimes they are not around. Then, I plod through code like the untalented students I went to school with, producing mediocre stuff. But eventually, the spirits return, and I produce works of great beauty and efficiency. And I thank the gods for allowing me to serve this function.
I hope this answers your question...
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
No! You're trying to bring together the Wired and the real world! You will have to be stopped...
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
I like computers (I'm even studyin comp sci at the moment), though I never played RPGs and I do definitely believe in magic. Where's your theory now? :)
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
haha, I think I like you.
:)
But I'm not classified under either "demon-worshipping dragon-killing weirdo" or "UFO-nut Vulcan-salutin' Trekkie"... I'm more of a "Klingon-speaking Trekkie Witch slash Pagan"
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
I meant the term in the technical sense an earlier
poster in this thread. In Gnosticism, one achieves
communion with God not through faith but through
gnosis, a shattering knowledge of the true nature
of things.
>>esr>>
Exactly.
>>esr>>
Logic is a powerful tool when explaining what "is" or what "exists" from OUR perspective. Logic dictates that for every observable occurrence there will exsist a root cause. Logic however is completely unable to explain the the unobservable occurences i.e. quantum pre-states, or root causes (i.e. where reality came from). Logically speaking "something' cannot come from "nothing", this would be impossible. Thus the only logical conclusion is that what we call "reality" came from something "outside" of itself. Anyone who thinks our sensory input can even remotely explain "reality", I recommend you do some reading on the subject of quantum mechanics. I am not saying that quantum mechanics proves the existence of the "outside cause" only that it shows the limits of our logic. The fact that all of our "reality" is built on something like quantum mechanics leads me to believe that the only thing I know for sure, is that I exist. Everything else I believe/think is merely an illusion created by me. Even the illusion that I Shane am seperate from everything else is merely my perspective. Albert Einstein said it best: "The illusion that we are separate from one another is an optical delusion of our consiousness"
-- You can be a geeklord too
Why don't you jus tell us exactly what one must do to be a Christian? I've never had any two Christians come up with the same response when posed with this question.
For example: is baptism necessary for salvation? Either way you answer I can confront you with scripture which will contradict what you said.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
If thou art truly LORD, then send me a sign! Fill mine account with karma!
To me, technology and (stereotypically Pagan) mysticism are a natural combination. Many Pagans believe, simply, in working to make the world a better place. Yeah it's a blatant cliche, but I freely admit to being an idealist.
I dream (and yes, I really do have dreams about this!) of a world where people are taken as people, and that is all. Maybe a touch of meritocracy, but where all of us realize the inherent equality of one another, and each of respects the rights and ideas of the rest.
To my mind, one of the major stumbling blocks in this idea(l) is the fact that most of us don't communicate well with one another. We get lost in the moment. (When was the last time you called your mother, by the way?) We get hung up on different eye colour, different skin colour, different religious preferences (both in interpretation of $DEITY and that whole KDE/Gnome debacle). We talk, we listen sometimes, but we rarely understand.
(Insert standard "Internet shattering communicative and cultural barriers" speech here.)
>Admittedly, becoming a shaman is a lot more :)
>difficult than installing Enlightenment... But
>it's the same thing, I think
Well, if you're hacking meatspace, it's what you're doing, right?
A pity apt-get doesn't work on the mind...
Umm, early morning? /. regulars have no concept of early morning, usually sleeping straight through it. :)
Ever use a ouija board as a mousepad? It's an interesting experience.
Not exactly. I have faith that I can understand, and probably fix any problem concerning computer and networking, given enough time and ressource. Every thing in computing is logic and can be understood, and I trust my capacity to learn and understand. This has nothing to do with religion; I guess we should call that confidence and self-esteem.
:wq
pronoblem
Mod this UP!
pronoblem
- Hackers are highly intelligent and independent. If they're curious about something, they will investigate it themselves. In the case of spirituality and religion, this can lead to a "shop around" approach. There's a lot of weird stuff in this particular store, and hackers tend to like weird stuff...
- Hackers tend to be strongly anti-authoritarian. For some, this can cause discontent with monotheistic faiths; or, at least, a discontent with how such faiths are often presented.
- Contact with computers can lead to animism, a belief that objects can have spirits or lives of their own. It can be difficult to look at, say, a server hosting a MUD, with a virtual world and a couple hundred people inside, and not think of it as at least somewhat alive.
- Coding is a magical activity. You gather your thoughts, wave your hands, and your will is made real. You are working with "clouds of pure thought-stuff", to quote Fred Brooks (a Christian). Approaching other problems with similar rituals is, for some, a natural extension.
- Neo-paganism is, in its better forms, creative. "We do as the ancients did -- we make it up as we go along." Creativity and adaptability are hacker values.
- Neo-pagans tend to be interesting, weird, and very often (as mentiond in the article) involved with computers. Groups of such people may appeal to hackers who are interested in group worship, ritual, or ceremony.
OTOH, there are also plenty of brilliant, interesting, weird Christian hackers out there. Just look at Larry Wall.Zen Buddhism is one particular philosophy with a strong foundation in China and Japan. (Note: the dominant religion in Japan is Shinto). Zen imposes a more austere discipline on its followers. Meditation is one way to achieve this discipline.
As I write this, I wonder why more programmer are not Zen Buddhists. Austere discipline, the ability to focus, self-meditation. Sounds like introverts to me.
Hmmm, Tiger Woods is a Zen Buddhist. I wonder if knows C++?
--
http://slashdot.org/yro/99/11/28/1310259.shtml#235
--
I could use a soul debugger.
I know...
start typing
or
RTFM
Paganism accepts that there is no one truth, so there is no one correct way.
So what you saying is that it's kind of like Perl?
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
One definition of a mystic may be a person who seeks to understand and control the phenomena around him more deeply than those around him.
In pre computing meatspace externally measurable success in such endeavors was generally poor, and internal success seemed to correspond quite distinctly to the extent to which the mystic could circumscribe his environment.
With the advent of computers there exists a "world" in which the "mystic" really *can* understand and control his environment, with a success directly related to his intelligence and dedication. It is little wonder that we para-mystics have been laboring furiously for the last thirty years or more to extend the overlap between cyberspace and meatspace. We have traded
our "magic" in cyberspace with those desparate for control and power in meatspace for standing outside our realm.
Sometimes I wonder if it is wholly coincidental that I hail in part from the family Faust.
-- TWZ
Who's for starting a religion on SourceForge? The OpenReligion project should be able to have GnuMysticism v0.1 out within a few weeks if we start now!
-Waldo
-------------------
The writer is a bit quick to conclude that
most programmers are morons. Many of us don't
believe in mystical bullshit or any other
religious beliefs.
To be a member of a minority religion or other belief system is difficult at best in a monotheistic society. (I'll spare you my rant on why I think monotheism virtually guarantees bigotry and intolerance; it's off-topic and probably flamebait anyway.) The pre-AOL internet was a good place for geographically distant minorities to meet and, well, hide. Hackerdom was also a good place to hide and to find community outside of the mainstream. Beyond that, I don't think there's any causal connection.
The nearer today's Internet comes to imitating TV, the less it comes to differ from the general populace. Those oldbies who remain have either hidden themselves a little deeper or moved on.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
What about the position "On present evidence I believe that God does not exist, but I can't prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. If new evidence on the matter comes to light, I will re-evaluate my position."
What does that make me, according to your neat little five-way test?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
> Also, as is quite obvious many of them turn to very vocal atheism. This atheism/agnosticism is most likely so vocal because secretly they want someone to come around and convince them they are wrong
Speaking as a born-again atheist, I agree. Good ol happy existence forever and ever, however implausible, because I would eventually run out of things to experience, still has a certain allure for my mortal self. As it stands, I still believe in the oblivion part, but feel free to convince me otherwise.
And you will convince me by proving that I am wrong. Though I can't think of anything more horrifying than the thought of a jealous and petty god who damns people to eternal suffering because of their sexual peccadilos or their use of profane language...
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> One thing that I have not seen, and I hope never to, is any geek attempt to press his/her views on anyone else
Oh please. Linux. Windows. Unix. Emacs. Vi. GUI. Text.
Geeks are some of the most vocally opinionated people on earth and spare no opportunity to make their case for the technology they consider superior. I'm certainly a geek and I certainly do so, and I don't apologize for it.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
For my part, I am an atheist. (Strictly speaking, I am also an agnostic ...
... so this little gem of not being able to prove a negative still gets hauled out.
:)
There is no God. There are no gods. Jesus was a man. He lived, he died. End of story
This sounds like the rarer variety of "strong atheism" that actively denies any existence of the divine, as opposed to the more common "weak atheism" (or "strong agnosticism") that says the existence of a higher power is unproven, unprovable, and at best irrelevant to everyday life. So I'd say you're not also agnostic, you have already made the ontological choice the agnostic refuses to make when he says that the existence of a god is unknowable.
Strong atheism is strictly speaking, logically indefensable, since you can't prove a negative you have no direct experience of or show that its existence is contrary to known facts about the subjects (thus I can prove there is not an elephant under my bed, because the physical dimensions of an elephant are incompatible with the space under my bed). This is a revision of the old saw "you can't prove a negative". In the case of a supreme entity, its existence would violate any number of laws of physics, but he who makes the rules can apparently break them if we're to take the definitions usually made of a god
I'm a strong atheist myself, and I defend this claim with the simple declaration that it's absurd. I start with the foundation of weak atheism: requiring a standard of proof, even for the most spectacular claims -- especially for them (I don't subscribe to the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, any evidence will do). But since logic is only a framework of consistency and not an epistemological foundation, I merely present the absurdity of the idea in general, of the good and evil forces, devils, demons, and how they are chuckled at in children's stories and other religions, but taken for granted in the mythos of a believer.
There's no winning the argument. With fundies, at some point it boils down to argumentum ad bacillum (argument from the club) that I'm damned to hell if I don't believe. Currently I continue to argue (not always fruitlessly, I've uncovered interesting variations on beliefs) at the illogic of hell. I think instead I just need to learn how to say "then I'll see you there" in the native tongues of a few other religions
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Wow, and I thought *I* was the only solipsist around here :)
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I'm *sure* this is gonna be read (right - maybe I should say I believe in the last word, insead of the first post), but...
some of us have been into neoPaganism or Buddhism since before a good number of the kiddies here were born...*and* we also work as techies.
I *am* somewhat irritated by the "parody religions" comments. I s'pose that someone with a black-and-white worldview can't deal with "religions" that can laugh at the world, which includes themselves and their beliefs, when all they know is Protestant Xianity(1), which seems to require Absolute Sobriety about itself.
Yes, there are a good number of real hackers who are into Zen, meditation, etc - after all, how *do* you work on a *hard* problem, get a working answer...and realize you've been at the terminal for *how* many hours? That is, most certainly close to what I understand of the Zen ideal of meditation.
Then, there's Magick(2). Look at True Names(3). What do we do when we program? Create spells (watch them syntax errors), and invoke and instantiate, call daemons....
The issue of sf I've dealt with before(4). I get *so* tired of the ignorant kids here, at times.
At any rate, the answer is yes.
mark
1) to quote what was in common usage in newgroups eight years ago, Xtian is not a "denigration" - consider Xmas. It has been used by Xian religious personnel for hundreds of years, X being the Greek letter "chi", and refers to Christos...but the folks who get upset tend to be those who know *nothing* of the history of their religion.... Funnymentalists, on the other hand...that is most *certainly* an insult, though I consider it dueling with an unarmed opponent, who tend to deny reality, and, with simple logic, seem to believe in a deity that is more than just perverse.
2) Magick is spelled this way, to distinguish it from prestidigitation (state magic). The definition that I go with is, "a series of psychological techniques, used to control one's consciousness, or psi powers". Forget "deals with the Devil (tm)", that's what you do when you deal with entrepreneurs and marketdroids.
3) True Names, Vernor Vinge, around '85, I b'lieve.
4) early last week, when I responded to the Hugo awards thread.
Definition time:
Atheist is broken into two parts, strong and weak.
Strong atheism says that god does not exist. The logical support for this position is as precarious as the logical support for believing in a god.
Weak atheism says that there is no evidence for god, therefore no reason to hypothesize one. This is the strongest logical position to take. It fits the physical evidence and does not break rules and guidelines of science. i.e. Occam's Razor.
Agnostic means that the person belives in a god, but cannot distinguish between all the different choices.
Of course, your definitions may vary. This is one of the big problems with discussing religion or the lack thereof with terms such as atheist, agnostic, or whatever. The terms are not solidly nailed down, so it's easy to miscommunicate. I suggest the above as a working set of definitions.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
... the desperate need to prove to them they are wrong and broudcast it loudly probably represents a desire to be proven wrong.
Does this hold true for everyone, or just Atheists? What about Christians who do this?
-rozzin.
Have you ever used the internet to learn about your religion?
Other members experiences?
History and events?
Quite interesting.
"The truth shall set ye free"
"The gift of the Holy Ghost to discern truth from deception"
http://www.adherents.com/largecom/co m_lds.html - demographic stats, pretty detailed, but old (1990)
http://www.xmission.com/~count ry/reason/mormhist.htm - Mormon history by a mormon historian who had unprecedented access to church historical documents before they were again sealed (pretty much) back up in the archives.
http://www.teleport.com/~packham/templ es.htm - Temple info
Etc.
Hmm.. i bet AOL is working on a "Sunday Services" program. LOL
Apparently you completely overlook the abuse, censor tatics used by Scientology to shut up detractors or people leaking 'sensitive' information.
The Scientologists were the first to assualt web freedoms with legal bullying.
Wonderful daily contributions they make.
Dude, you have no fucking clue.
The documents were verbatim copies of supposedly 'secret, very sensitive documents' that they were charging upwards of $50k for copies of. See the whole fish man story.
At any rate, there was no *abuse*, unless you call depriving them of the ability to charge clueless cult followers fifty grand for some fiction a crime or abuse.
What is this GPL your talking about? Don't fuck with us or we sue you out of existence?
They even sued a fucking cult awareness site, non profit, non biased, because of some sensitive information regarding member of the fucking scientologist crap.
They got sued out of existence, after all, non profit organisations dont stand against cults with $50k+ paperback fiction fanatics.
Get a grip man.
Sorry, your wrong.
We sense time. We just cannot universally sense specific quantities of time.
The mind is its own proof of concept. The fact that we perceive, is fact that 'it' perceives. You *are* your mind, your body is simply an input device.
Consciousness is sensed. Every thought you think, of which you are aware, is 'sensed; by your consciousness. You can't touch a thought, if that's what your getting at, but human senses are not truly limited to the 5 common ones.
I still manage to be surprised that rational people can accept supernatural explanations for their own subjective experiences. Read the sci.skeptic FAQ? It's good stuff. I tend to pigeonhole theists alongside UFO freaks, crystal-waving new age bubbleheads and Carlos Castaneda fans. I really cannot understand how people who use computers daily can swallow such transparent myth.
On the other hand, I recently started reading about Buddhism here, and, modulo the culturally specific far-eastern context, found it very interesting and thought-provoking. Next thing in the reading pile happened to be The Elegant Universe, which discusses superstring theory and how it unifies quantum mechanics and relativity. (Links to Amazon, sorry B&N too slow... where else is there? anyone?) This last is utterly mind-bending. Now there are still some features of the universe and cosmology that are poorly understood; some things we may never be able to know, although we can invent untestable theories about what they might mean. I can see that there is space within this framework for something... hard to comprehend. We may call this 'the mind of god' if we like, but whatever it is, is sure as hell isn't an old guy with a big beard sitting on a cloud taking an interest in the events on planet Earth.
Christian Geeks? Do me a favour.
This comment posted with mozilla!
Camaron de la Isla 'When I sing with pleasure, my
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Emotions have a very logical basis - it's call chemistry. With a little electricity theory tossed in for good measure. The whole science of psychochemistry is based on shifting emotions via brain electro-chemical interactions.
--
James Michael Keller
"Linux is not our destination, it is simply the open road to tommorow"
zen is not obscure.
yes, YOU are a zen master!
(although ignorant.)
great programs come from great programmers, who are lucky to be great.
Thre is nothing mystical, pagan or whatever about Zen. :)))
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Well, I like to tell people that I'm an autotheist. Is that odd?
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
"Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" (as I recall).
Personally, I think it's the other way around (any sufficiently advanced magic looks like technology).
Now, excuse me, as it is time to invoke the name of Cron so that my data will be magically backed up....
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
You seem to be saying that 'judging people and/or their beliefs is bad'.
It is the belief of the DVDCCA that the world will end if Australians can view mail-ordered DVD's from USA. It is the belief (at least, the publicly stated one) of the RIAA that Napster steals food from the mouths of starving artists. It is the belief of US Government, inc, that the Big Business is it's only reasonable source of political campaign money, and must therefore be pandered to. It is also the belief of the US Government, inc, that the rest of the world should think the same way. It is the belief of 'John Q. Public' that inconvenience is worse than lack of rights.....Shall I continue? I won't even mention the one about the group who thinks all of our problems are caused by being possessed by the spirits of dead space-aliens...
Mind you, I understand what you mean, but so far this topic seems to have generated a far better ratio of 'informative posts' to 'flambait' that I would have imagined.
So, in short, yes we SHOULD judge other's beliefs, along with everything else in the world - we should just do so rationally and constructively.
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
For me, experiences with martial arts have always had a strong correlation to software development. Both require an advanced degree of concentration. The chief tool of buddhist "mystics" is meditation, and anyone who tries it for a long period of time learns that the mind is merely another tool.
:-)
A calm mind can explore the farthest reaches of the universe within all of us. Eventually we learn that we can shatter the "Ball of Confusion" that we think we are and become better people, more compassionate, less likely to work for Microsoft.
The mind is a powerful thing, and I truly believe many people live their lives without ever knowing this. Holding thousands of lines of code in the mind like an algorithmic mandala has allowed some people to realize the awesome power that lies just beneath the surface.
Break on through to the other side. Use the code, young padawan.
I think what Kintannon was trying to say is that our good friend Joshua ben Joseph probably looked a lot like a Sefarad (or Sabra) Jew (leaning on the dark complexion side of the colour spectrum) rather than an Askenad Jew (which, by virtue of having mixed with Central Europeans throughout the centuries came to look a little like them).
His traditional portrait (with the light hair and blue eyes) of course draws a lot from Medieval artists from Germany, England and the Netherlands portraying the Son of God in their own (and their neighbour's) image. But long hair and beards have been popular in the Middle East for quite a long time, if those mesopothamian and persian sculptures are to be trusted.
And last, but not in any way the least, Aramaic, just as Hebrew is a close relative of Arabic, so Kintannon is really not that far off.
--
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
And the folks at Jonestown followed a version of Christianity... From what I understand, Zen Buddhists are a fairly minor sect, in the same way that Franciscans are a fairly minor sect in the Catholic church (note the choice of Franciscans for comparison: like the followers of Zen, I believe they have an influence on the mainstream religion that is definitely out of proportaion with their numbers.)
On the other hand, the number of mystics, new-age wannabes and other feel-good semi-religious types that have latched onto Zen as a vehicle for their various ideas probably outweighs the number of true practicioners, helping reinforce the image that many have that Zen is nothing more than some sort of mystical snake-oil that only an idiot could believe in. What's worse, they're right, in a way; that particular, watered down, corrupted, I'll-bend-it-to-meet-my-needs type of Zen really isn't really what Zen is like, any more than the folks at Jonestown were really what the vast majority of Christians are like.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Awww come on, hasen't everyone used their "mojo" to overcome some sillycon stupidity?
It's no different. As a practicing witch and compu-geek, I must admit to having - on several different problems - used "magic".
boo
First of all, I'm not reading most of this thread; the first three highest moderated posts - at this time - are jokes, and the fourth is pro-Christian.
;))
Second, my real identity, etc, are not available to slashdot users just so I can be honest about questions like this in this forum. (Yes, this means I basically trust Rob &co. to not reveal my e-mail address. Sue me for not being entirely cynical. Oh, wait, you can't, you don't know who I am...
Anyway.
I am a Pagan, and have been, and I've been on the net since '85 (though at that time, only usenet and e-mail), using Linux since '94. I dabbled in mysticism and gnosticism before I came to the realization that Paganism was what I believed, what I'd -always- believed, and just been afraid to -do- it. (i.e., when I was told that the Pagan myths were just myths, and the Christian myths were 'religion' and that people didn't follow the pagan myths anymore, I kind of cut that off as an option for religion, even though I felt that's what I -should- be doing. 'But why? I wish people still believed that way, it feels more right...' I thought, but eventually put away with time & indoctrination.)
Anyway. I think the commonality is the same thing that is in common with all people in all alternative lifestyles - they can look at the world and say 'wait - that may be what everyone does, but it isn't -right-' and change the direction their going in. This takes some combination of intelligence, curiousity, and independent-mindedness.
Which is something for a lot of people in the geek community to think about. You have a lot in common with alternative religions, political activists, transsexuals, homosexuals, mystics, and hell, even politicians. (You think people go into politics for the money? Shyeah, right, you'd make more as an NT Admin and not spend it all on your next campaign. They do it because they think they can -change- things.)
Think about it.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
The problem with that is that if you just pick and choose what you like you'll not be any closer to finding the truth. You have to find what is true, not what is immediately pleasant. Something like that.
Isaac Asimov wrote a delightful essay, about his time as an undergraduate, that explains why all mathematicians are mystics. I won't bother to repeat the entire story, only the punchline. Mathematicians are mystics because they believe in the unreal and the imaginary. They conduct entire branches of their science around the notion that the square root of -1 exists and is real yet is also imaginary.
By Jungs personality typing system, which became the Myers-Briggs, many IT people are INTPs. Introverted, intuitive, perceivers of possibilities and primarily driven by their thinking faculty. According to Jung, in his book "Psychological Types", the introverted intuitive is more open to the mystical, spiritual dimention of life.
This type is also more likely to find the first half of life the most difficult when it comes to worldly affairs, while the extrovert will dominate and succeed in worldly matters more easily. However, the dominance is reversed in the second half of life, where the extrovert finds it increasingly more difficult to deal with his/her own "twilight", and hence the bigger question of "why am I here?", "what does it mean to 'be'?" and "who am I?". The extrovert is simply not equipped, and may try to find fulfillment by trying to "stay young", having affairs etc. But the introvert is already open to these questions, and through philosophy, religion etc. will deepen his understanding and create more meaning.
Ok, now for a quick poll. Who here has ever heard of:
You're all welcome to add your favourite philosophy/guru/technique...
Deep within the farthest hours of night,
Deep within the occult essence tearing,
Deep within the runes of cold blue light,
I forge the edge of mind and matter's sharing.
Powerful the ways of my familiar,
Powerful the discipline of symbol,
Powerful the cast of each peculiar,
Into structures intricate and nimble.
Pulse of knowledge, flow through silver tracing,
Pulse of thought, leap from spark and sand,
Pulse of mind, this mind-built flesh embracing,
Thrive in reason, speak and understand!
Mind, if I do reach that potent prize,
Kobold, child, or angel: What will rise?
"According to a survey published April 3 in the journal Nature, 40 percent of all scientists believe in a personal god who answers prayers, 50 percent believed in personal immortality, and 85 percent believed in god in some sense or other. Moreover, those trained in the hard sciences like physics and chemistry were more likely to be religious than those trained in disciplines such as anthropology and psychology."
:) so I grabbed the first page off Google that mentions the Nature study. The above source is relevant although I do not agree with it, but I think everyone should see it.
http://www.wsws.org/news/1997/apr 1997/hg-a7.shtml
I'm unable to get a direct link to Nature, because they don't carry their 1997 back issues. I'm tired and going to bed
I think the claim that you still can predict coin tosses with 90% accuracy is more impressive than that you used to control rain or that you believe you once exorcised a demon. It would be easily demonstrable and scientifically testable. If you could do it under controlled conditions, you could even win the million dollar Randi Psychic Challenge.
However, it seems more likely that your statistics are biased. For example, by continuing runs as long as you're getting hits and ending them when you start missing, by not counting any runs when your accuracy is low, or by choosing when in a run to start and stop counting after the fact (selecting only the streaks).
Yes, I'm terribly limited by not using pink unicorns to explain the existence of swiss cheese. The logic that the atheist (I'm one) limits him/herself by not exploring mystical channels is, frankly, BS.
It's generally called Occam's Razor when you go with the simplest explanation...
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
There's no fundamental, logical reason why the simplist solution
should be the correct one
It's called entropy, son. Occam's Razor just has happened to be a good, fast explanation of the well-supported theory that the simplest solution (defined in terms of energy expended) is the one that happens.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Geeze you guys are picky.
Why would we even think of
constructing devices to enhance our senses unless we had every reason to think that things exist beyond our perception?
Planets. We first saw planets as stars that moved quickly, and then did little loop-de-loops in otherwise stable paths in the night sky. Lives were spent creating extravagant models to explain these movements in a geocentric model.
Various bright fellows (Galileo, Aristotle) had different ideas. They saw the patterns generated, and created a new models that placed Earth as another object wandering the heavens around a central body (the sun...), and the incredibly complex models of circles within circles within circles all revolving about changed into very simple ellipses.
This model repeats itself. We notice objects burning in the abscense of measurable heat. We ponder the situation. is God extending His Wrath? No, it's gamma radiation.
So far, we've found very solid reasons for phenomena within the physical realm. There is no apparant change in this happening.
I'd wager most atheists would change their mind on seeing angels sweeping down from on high, priests raising the dead or Wiccans effecting measurable and objective changes through magick, all in cases where other explanations don't fly.
I'd hope that most Christians would change their mind, given the chance, after they died and didn't turn into spirits. I.E., given irrefutable evidence, one is likely to change the tune being sung.
He's not saying he absolutely disbelieves in alternate beliefs, but that his own belief is one of atheism. Chill.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
If you don't have empirical evidence, then what do you have? What constitutes "proper explanation" if not sensory (== empirical) evidence, hypothesization, prediction, and test? I have never seen anything that could not be explained by current science or modest extensions thereof.
Thus my subject; if it has an effect on the natural world, it can be measured in the natural world, and thus it is not supernatural. Anything that is supernatural either has an effect on the natural world, or it doesn't. The first means that it's no longer supernatural, the second means that you never see or feel it. As such, how can it be said to exist?
Oh, but you can. Any action you take is controlled by nerves, which are in turn controlled by various parts of your brain. We don't understand the brain as a whole, but we have a pretty good idea of how it works. Any action you take physically has a basis in electro-chemical interactions in your head. Your memories, who you are, is nothing but structure inside your brain.
Bertrand Russell, from a collection of his essays entitled Why I am not a Christian:
I defer further discussion on this topic to The Secular Web,
You'll go ahead and make one anyway. Heck, with logic like this, you're already ahead of the game, right?
I really don't want to believe in a higher power. Because that would mean that I was supposed to be this fucked up.
Just to put my .0011 binary cents in (eh...so we're learning about binary floating point...sue me), I am a Christian. Yep, I believe that one omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, loving God created the entire universe yet exists outside of it. I believe that he sent his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to die for the sins of mankind and that he affects the world today through the presence of the Holy Spirit. I believe that those who do not accept salvation through Christ will spend an eternity in a real place called Hell where they will be subjected to immeasureable pain through seperation from God. That about sums it up, I suppose.
:)
:)
As for the number of neopagans or 'alternative' religion-type people among geeks, well, intellectualism is a great barrier to Christianity (intellectualism, btw, does not mean that being smart or using ones God-given intellect is bad, rather intellectualism is the sin of having self-love and/or pride because of ones intellect, rather than using it to further the kingdom of God on earth). Essentially, there are two kinds of faith: Christianity and everything else. Since everything else is equal in the eyes of God (i.e. equally sinful), then it should come as no surprise that most geeks are either agnostics, atheists, or a part of some 'alternative' religion or other. In any case, geeks would tend to be drawn to alternative religions (as opposed to hindism, buddhism, etc) because they are just that, alternative (e.g., non-mainstream).
Ah well, that's enough spouting for one day.
Ha! I'm sure I'll get flamed beyond imagination and modded down, but y'all can consider it a divine mandate to share my beliefs.
btw, for the record, all of the geeks that I know are stricly agnostic/atheistic. None of them are neopagans, but, then, I live in Arkansas.
also, btw, I was not raised a Christian; rather, I became one at the age of 16 after having been a confirmed agnostic for quite some time, so don't knock me as a Southern Baptist Fundie Wacko[tm]
"If in that syrian garden ages slain
you sleep and know not you are dead in vain
nor see in dreams how dark and bright
ascends in fire by day and smoky by night
the hate you died to quench and could but fan
sleep well, and see no morning, son of man.
But if grave rent, and stone rolled by,
you sit, ascendant, on your throne on high
and sitting so, remember yet,
your agony and bloody sweat,
the love, and passion, and life you gave,
bow hither out of heaven, and see, and save."
-- A.E. Houseman.
I think he had the same thing to say as the above comment, but just a little more eloquent.
Darn. Now I've violated copyright, probably.
Tweet, tweet.
Of course it's not treated quite right in the media. In "My Name is Asher Lev" said something like this.... magazines, newspapers, gossip... these things are not good vehicles for communicating nuances of truth. Slashdot included. And
Potok's books have been really good reads for me. The themes of personal struggle within a religious or cultural community spoke to me even though I'm outside of the Jewish communities he wrote about. Maybe it helped that The Chosen and The Promise were about smart people.
Tweet, tweet.
Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
/. message boards.
YOG-SOTHOTH
This is the spell of summoning of Bowie J. Poag.
By reciting this incarnation, you can summon a twisted and deformed being that has done absolutely nothing with other that posting a few tiled backgrounds -- something monkeys can be trained to accomplish.
Despite this, the deranged being will assert that it is some sort of leading light in the linux community and will pursue it's strange agenda of destroying VA Linux by making an ass of itself on the
Try the incantation, it really works!
--Shoeboy
Basically the fundamental principal of Democracy is that we are all sovereign and that we bequeath that soveriegnty unto our chosen government officials. As an extension of this is the notion that we are all equal. From this has evolved a strong relativistic view point on the world that says nobody's right and nobody's wrong.
Out of this relativistic perspective is born the notion of tolerance. Basically if nobody is right or wrong then we should accept other people's beliefs. But it isn't a pure tolerance. If one was to be purely tolerant, one would even tolerate intolerance. But in fact what happens is that we believe everybody should be tolerant and open to others beliefs.
As a result, we find that people are actually very intolerant despite their claim of tolerance. They are only tolerant of those who are tolerant and relativistic as well. To be intolerant or to have an absolute belief in certain fundamental truths is considered arrogant.
To further the problem many people who believe in these truths have incorporated in their beliefs the notion that they must help others find the truth that they know. To relativists, this comes off as pig headed and pushy. How can you know the truth? What makes you better than everybody else?
Now, having said all that, I consider myself a relativist. But I think there's an important consideration people need to make in relativism. One can say that nobody has an iron grip on what the right answers are, but that doesn't mean you can't find truths that work within your own life. And it doesn't mean you can't respect people for the truths that they find in their life that make them happy.
If somebody tries to tell you that Christ is your savior, don't hate them for it. They are doing it because they think that if you don't believe that, you are going to suffer. They are doing it because they love you as a human being. Respect that fact, even if you disagree with them. Don't hold them in contempt if they found a belief that makes them happy. Respect them for it and move on to find what makes you happy.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
As this is the one thing all mainstream (and all non-mainstream religions that I know of) religions have in common, its not to far a leap to conclude that mysticism is the central or core tenet of religion. I believe this is the defining characteristic of a religion... and that a lack of a mystic expression in the religion means its more appropriately referred to as a pop-psych phenomenom (scientology leaps to mind here).
--
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will deserve neither and lose both."
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
I'd like to see anyone try and get between a hacker and their pr0n...
Me - I can't go a day without checking out the news at big-soapy-mystical-boobs.com
Jeremy
"Opinions are like assholes; everyone's got one..."
so what kind of technopagan are you?
just wondering...
I think generic Mysticism is the gentler, more open minded alternative to Atheism... face it, most people can't stand to look up into the sky and think that there isn't *something* out there...
check -- THIS -- out
Exclusion of all yet-undiscovered possibilities in your beliefs system is irrational. I think anti-spiritualitsm is irrational. It's impossible to prove what you can't point to, but it's impossible to disprove it either... Many beliefs systems are beyond the scope of rationalism and verifiability... so why do you have to be such an asshole about it? and do you need a rundown of what "Occult" is or where it came from??
actually, it's common for *mystics* to be geeks, but seemingly not the other way around...
these surveys come from neo-pagan litterature, thus they are sampling from the *mystic* pool only...
it would be nice to have a slashdot poll on this stuff tho...
(Religiously) I am an...
1) Atheist, you morons!
2) Christian, you heathens!
3) Agnostic, you somethings?
4) Discordian/Subgenius
5) Neo-Pagan
6) Fluffy white bunny
7) Cowboy Neilist
I actually have quite the phillosophy on creation that coincides with evolution and personal powers of creation (software authorship)...
you see the duality, balance, and divinity of creaiton is central to Neo-Paganism... in particular the universe exists because of the "sexual" union of dieties (remember the Greek Eros and Gaia?)
modern Wicca embraces a simmilar creation idea, and Thelema even has a triumvate (father, son, spirit) simmilar to Christianity...
can you verify salvation or spritualism?
on the other hand how do you measure the failure of salvation or spirit based theodicy?
rather it's a failure to verify... does that exclude it from possability?
what if you write some code and stick it into gcc, but you die before it finishes compiling?
Y'AI 'NG'NGAH,
YOG-SOTHOTH
I deffinately believe...
dude, that whole BS about Wicca being THE "Old Religion" is something you grow out of... at least most Pagans I know grew out of it to an extent...
yes, there is symbolism and reflection on "old ways" etc etc... but most people realize that nothing is as static as that!
Wicca is a modern religion modeled after stuff inspired by primitive beliefs and practices... but it's modernized for the most part...
yes, I do gag when I hear much about the "Celtic Reconstructionists" etc etc...
I've had a few very positive experiences, particularly in a circle with my current group...
if you can stand in with a local Pagan group I'm sure you'll enjoy the experience...
other great mystic events for me include a terrific wind storm I experienced on the beach in Key West...
Does anyone have actual statistics to go with the article? There is nothing empirically verifiable about the article's claims: all I see is a lot of hand-waving. Surely techies of any religious affiliation would appreciate some hard numbers here.
There is no God. There are no gods. Jesus was a man. He lived, he died. End of story. There are no UFOs hovering over earth. The Loch Ness Monster does not exit. Neither does Bigfoot. There are not an abnormal number of vanishing ships/planes in the Bermuda Triangle compared to anywhere else. Crystals do not have unexplained power. There is no such thing as chi.
Fnord. Keep thinking that if it makes you feel better.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
But "A Discordian is prohibited from believing what s/he reads".
Simpletoneity, n. -- The phenomenon of many people all doing the same stupid thing at the same time.
Story from my last job ...
... *tomorrow morning*. The hardware guys dragged it up front, so us software geeks could load it, yet no matter what they did, the unit was DOA. Stone, utterly, irrevocably dead.
We had a unit, an older prototype that Management, in all its wisdom, suddenly wanted to use to demonstrate some new software we were writting
Love and Light,
Jeannette
Three hardware guys tried everything they could dream up on it, and it stayed dead. I, the neo-Pagan High Priestess, came over to it, touched the same boards the guys did, wiggled the same wires, said my best "raise dead" spell, and it came up fine.
We loaded the software on it, and some genius shut it off. It refused to come back to life. The hardware guys did all they could, to no avail. I was, jokingly, dragged over, and did a repeat performance. It came up fine.
We let it run all night, but the cleaning crew unplugged it. The next morning, it was stone dead again. Guess who did a third "raise dead" spell and laying-on of hands? Guess what worked, again?
They left it there, and brought the Lords High Muckeymuck to our area to demo it. When done, it was unplugged. I never tried again. It remained dead untill it was scrapped.
Who says magic doesn't work?
Lemon curry?
Um, "long-haired Satan-worshipping Wiccans"? Gee, I find it rather hard to worship a being that I feel does not exist.
:-\
Yes, I'm Wiccan - Dianic Wiccan, to be precise. I'm an ordained minister, even have my certificate to show that, hanging on my wall (not that it does me any good, being solitary, but still...).
Yes, I have long hair as well. I find long hair sensual and soft, two aspects of myself that are hard to express with computers. I'll probably lop some off soon - these split ends are killing me
Am I then to be considered a criminal? From this anonymous coward's words, it would appear so. Gee, this brave, right-minded God-fearing Christian wouldn't even share his (or her) identity with us. Why am I neither surprised nor impressed?
Love and Light,
Jeannette
Lemon curry?
Pigeonholing geeks is absurd. Of those that I know personally, very few generalities can be made. They range from fundamentalist christian and muslim to athiest to mysticism-of-the-week. Politics are ditto. I am I libertarian, and that is supposed to be the stereotype, but I personally know more libertarians working for the military than with computers.
The one constant trait of geeks is that they cannot be pigeonholed.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Ah, the exception proves the rule.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
> GnuMysticism v0.1 out within a few weeks if we start now!
Gnosticism has been around for a couple of millenia already.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> In Gnosticism, one achieves communion with God not through faith but through gnosis, a shattering knowledge of the true nature of things.
Kinda like when you suddenly figure out why your program wasn't working right.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Reincarnation... PAH! The living outnumber the dead (or allegedly did at the time), so reincarnation is a screwed philosophy unless there's a big "store" of unused souls out there waiting to be born. There's CLEARLY an increasing number of "souls" out there, and if the living really outnumber the dead, then there's obviously over 50% of us who are here for the FIRST TIME...
Now, take this to it's (il)logical extreme... What if we're ALL re-incarnations of exactly the same "soul"? I am YOU in another life, or if you prefer, YOU are ME in another life. If you hurt someone, you're only hurting yourself in another life. If you're nice to someone, you're really just being nice to yourself. "What goes around, comes around" and "do unto others..." make a whole lot more sense. We all agreed that this was a great philosophy, even if it WAS pure undilluted idle speculation.
This theory also means that all sex is just masturbation, but we all knew that anyway ;-)
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
Don't tell me you believe that stuff? Do you not know that A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads?
--
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
Sorry.. I didn't mean to imply that Zen was 'obscure' or wierd...
I just meant that it bothers me when people try to draw this kind of conclusion about techies in general.
And by 'obscure' I suppose I meant everythign aside from the Jews, Jesus & his fanclub, and their enemies.. and the Muslims.
I always find it disturbing when people try to statistically (or otherwise) state (or try to prove) that 'hackers believe in xxx' or whatever.
Do younger, tech-savvy people tend to stray from standard religion and perhaps look at more obscure things such as zen, etc? Certainly.
Does that mean they believe in magic (magik) or whatever? Sheesh. I'm betting not.
Many people I've spoken with, especially in the tech world, don't believe in *any* religion, otehr than things that help them obtain focus and peace of mind. To them, it is nothing but this.
I'm not sure I see what's so nasty about the term xtian, being that x is a fairly commonly accepted abbreviation for Christ. (Think Xmas, and my favorite -- Xtal for crystal) At any rate, it was the christians who came up with it in the first place.
As for the term "fundie", while I agree that it's certainly somewhat belittling, I think that it reflects more of a "political" (for lack of a better word -- at least one that comes to me at 1 in the morning) distaste for rigid adherence to readily disprovable beliefs as opposed to the belittling of a religious orientation per se.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
ever hear this joke?
An atheist is fishing somewhere in the loch ness, when all-of-a-sudden the loch ness monster comes out and starts approaching his boat.
"Dear god save me!!" screams the atheist..
[BOOOM!] a thunderous explosion stops all creation freezing it in place and time, and this deep, powerful voice says "I thought you didn't believe in Me..."
the atheist says "gimme a break God, a minute ago I didn't believe in the loch ness monster either.."
------ Poo-tee-weet?
That's an understatement
Look, you're obviously not an atheist, so stop pretending to know what all atheist in the world are thinking. Heck, even if you were an atheist you could never know that. Personally, I am an atheist, and it is not something I go around advertising. I am not the least bit vocal about it. In fact, a lot of good friends of mine probably don't even know it. The only reason I bring it up here is because it is relevant to the discussion. I'm not trying to hide anything, it's just that if the subject doesn't come up I don't mention it.
I think I know where you're getting this idea that most atheists are vocal about it, as I've experienced it firsthand, but you have a very important fact confused: it's generally not the atheists who bring it up. For example, back at my old high school I can remember the subject of religion coming up casually in a conversation, and I made the mistake of mentioning I was an atheist. Because of this, I was harrassed for years. I had people constantly bringing up the subject, again and again and again. I had people trying to convert me just about every single day. They always ask, "why are you an atheist?" Had said I was christian, jewish, muslim, or even budhist I can't imagine being asked that question so many times. But I was asked, "why are you an atheist" just about every single day by somebody or other. It's as if everyone felt that there was something wrong with me and it was their job to fix it. So what do I do? I tell them why I'm an atheist! I've had to tell them why so many times because I've been asked that damn question so many times.
And now we get people like you claiming that atheists go around advertising that fact because they want to be converted. You'll excuse me if I'm more than a little bitter after reading your comment, but you couldn't possibly be further from the truth. You ask why I don't treat religious people just like anyone else has their facts wrong? Guess what? I do! I have never once in my life tried to convince anyone to give up religion. I do not bring up the subject of religion for no reason. I have plenty of friends who are religious. No, I don't treat them any differently. It is religious people (admittedly not all religious people, but definately a large number of them) who treat me differently.
Well, I guess I'm about done with this ramp. You can disagree with me all you want, just don't try to convert me.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
I'm a computer geek and a practicing Wiccan (sounds like an AA meeting :). I've been into computers since I was 12 or so (I'm 29 now). I've been searching for a religion for longer than that and spent alot of time researching many religions (Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, etc). I never found anything in my childhood searchings that felt right so I spent many years developing my own ethics, morals and beliefs. I was fortunate enough about 4 years ago to meet a Wiccan (Gardnerian) Coven and quickly grew close to the group as I found the beliefs I held about the world and the ways I expressed myself in this regard were extremely similar. I'm not a convert (I have never claimed affiliation with a religion before), and I'm [I hope] quite sane and un-"wacked". I'm an initiate of my Coven and am very much not in the closet (I also don't flaunt my pentacle just to stress people out as I have seen other do when they seem like they have something to "prove"). My bosses and co-workers who have discussed religion with me have come away perfectly fine with my path. My family was concerned at first but has also come to grips with it just fine. I fully expect I'll be a practicing Wiccan long after I am no longer paid to write code and do demonstrations.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
While I'll agree that "fundie" would seem to take aim at those deemed at a loss for critical thought, the use of the letter X to take the place of the word CHRIST is only slightly less old than Chistianity itself. Those who decry the "secularization" of Christmas be its common abbreviation X-mas seem to have their history turned around. People are historically lazy, and the abbreviation (X for Christ) dates from the earliest Greek and Roman Christians. Christmas the holiday is actually much younger.
This falls into the same category as those who decry as semi-literate those who say "ax" for the word spelled a-s-k. It was pronounced "ax" for a long long time before being modified to ask sometime around the evolution of modern english (16th cty). People may indeed be using it to slander, or out of ignorance, but it does not mean they're wrong.
Thank you James! Zen Buddhism does get lumped with neopaganism and other forms of occult mysticism because a) it's poorly understood by most people and b) Discordians and other related types appropriate bits of 'Beat Zen', which is itself a misinterpretation of the Zen tradition.
Please, neopaganism has nothing to with Zen.
I am not a tolerant person. I don't think that a great deal of Christians are tolerant either. Happy? I should be more tolerant, and so should they, but that isn't the way things are. I think that tolerance is good, but it pisses me off when people are pricks to me, oh well.
Another way to look at it would be to assign levels of tolerance, and say that cristians are intolerant on level one, and that causes others to be intollerant on the much nicer level two.
To me, it is much better to get pissed off at someone for being unneccasarily judgemental than it is to go ahead and get pissed off because you don't like something about them. I don't think I am really getting anywhere with my argument, so I am going to stop now.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
hah, my first(and only time) time on shrooms i took a double dose. for most of the trip i had a hard time trying to focus my eyes. heh.
'kay, I'm gonna sit here and listen to my music and write a bit, so bear with, I'm going somewhere with this.
/several/ reasons, not one. So even if A reason does not seem sufficient to explain the observation, it does not mean that it is the only contributing factor. So the following are the primary factors that I propose to account for the observation.
/is/ bigger/smarter than your upper mind) and some of those answers they find in mysticism. Many aspects of Hacking go into this dark place, which is of course why many people (including me) do it. It feels cool to 'talk' to a you that aint you, or something like that.
First, lets take the posit of this article as true, so to do that, I'll say -
Observation: A disproportiantetly large percentage of hackers and other techland creatures belive in 'magic', or something close enough to it that no one but them would argue the point.
Now, we must look for the reason. But not really, because in social anomalies, there are usually
0) The RPG Integral:
Many have already suggested that the effects of Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, and Fantasy. So I wont go into detail, But it is a factor. It gives the mind something to chew on, so that when an expresion is needed, it may be used as a source. D&D doesn't make people crazy, but some crazy people have been exposed to D&D, and thus think that 'Feather Fall' will work. Same for religeons. And smart people like complex games, and games don't come more complex than D&D with all its expansions, so we get a large exposure base.
1) The Clark Equation:
Some people (not all people, but some) really like to make things happen. They get a kick from it. I'm one, Clark was another. Magic just seems the logical end of the curve, I point, it happens. Think about how many people you know that are going to LOVE good voice/gesture recognition as computre intarfaces. Thinks how many of those wish the real world worked like that. Xyzzy, anyone?
2) The Gonzo Factor:
Now, what if you are already weird? Well, if you are (and I am), normal social taboos don't apply very strongly to you ('cause society is already "punishing" you, what more can they do?), so you end up thinking about/trying many more things. This is why you see large (compared to the normal population) numbers of people aware that they are homosexuals in EVERY 'weird' group. If you are already a bixer/dancer/actor, there is not nearly as much pain in realizing that you are gay, so more of them do. The same things apply to religeons. If no one talks to you in high school already, maybe getting naked and freaky on the solstice doesn't seem as a likely to bring negative repercusions, so you "shop arround" as it were.
3) The I-Wanna-Be-Gonzo Coefficient:
Wanna-Bes, every group has them, and hackers are not an exception. If all the other guys whorship THor, and you don't really care, you might try it just to get along. ANd then the religion's got you hooked, as most of them are based upon social groups anyway, and there you go.
4) The Bicycle Exponent:
This is a weird one. You cannot (well, you can, but its the common example, and you should already know that, so hush) simultaneously ride a bicycle, and think about the muscle movements necessary to ride a bicycle. This is an example of a (rather large an interseting) class of actions which can be done, but cannot always be explained by the person doing them. Why? Well, cognitive studies shows us that there is a WHOLE lot more capacity "under the surface" of the mind than the conscious mind can ever get hold of (walking is HARD, yall), and all the true geniuses/artists/etc GO with that, and learn to toss problems to there undermind, problems that come back with answers that are obviously correct, but the peson is completely unable to explain how they did it (even to themselves). This makes some people look for answers (which is silly, as the answers is right there, your undermind
But finally, I think most just worship at the church of "Wouldn't It Be Pretty To Think So?", and I challenge anyone to tell me that the various magic, magik, majick, etc. religeons arent pretty.
::To set the record straight, I personally am a meta-agnostic, as I dont think the question 'Is there a God' can have a meaningful answer from inside the system, so I don't bother asking it; as opposed to agnostics who wonder about it, or atheists who belive that there is no God (which they cannot prove, which is my point.)
Have fun flamming me to death on this one, if you want.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
shouldn't it be more like "serviam >/dev/null" ? or maybe just "rm serviam"
I read this in a book (illusions, don't remember the author) about the golden rule that I always think is pretty funny. Suppose we have a worshiper of the great crocadile god who's greatest aspiration in life is to be thrown (as a sacrafice) kicking and screaming into a pit of hurngy crocs. Should this worshipper go and do it to others because this is what he wants done to himself.
Part of the point is that not everyone wants the same thing, so that rule is just a bit to broad (or maybe peoples beleivfs are too broad to be covered by one simple rule)
The above makes no sense within the context of itself.
Time to go find a plush cthullu doll.
All of them hate it when people make broad, sweeping statements that are supposed to apply accurately to every hacker.
Am I the only one who started cracking up with that line?
Zen is not about intelligence, it is the art of turning off intelligence.
...but seriously folks.
Thus proving that the most successful Zen denomination so far is Christianity.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I, for one, remember sitting at my computer, so young that I wasn't really cognizant of the commands I was giving the computer. To 7-year-old-me on an Atari computer, I was speaking a magic spell, albeit with my fingers.
Is it any wonder that we're mystical as a group? We speak in arcane languages, and through our words and thoughts, actions are performed. Whether they be parlor tricks, or real power, we can still do something, merely by speaking, that 98% of humanity (or whatever) cannot, and honestly probably about 80% even if they devoted their lives to it. Why aren't we wizards, again?
I started both with mysticism and computers as a teen in the 60s, and I actually walked away from my first programming job because I realized very vividly that it was going to distract me from the search for self-knowledge (which was very big in the early 70s).
I explored mystics like Gurdjieff and psychological systems like Fritz Perls' gestalt psych, and I put a lot of effort into meditation as a way of seeing what was really going on in my psyche/subconscious.
By the mid-70s this range of 'gurus' had narrowed to one who was especially austere and conceptually challenging-- J Krishnamurti. From him I came to see that soiritual freedom was about living without preconceptions or attachments, which is a common theme of a lot of mystical schools (especially Zen), but one that Krishnamurti handled with greater honesty, I thought.
At a certain point then I turned away from the whole mystical 'quest' and just started living, and at that point sociobiology became very inspiring, as did (non-sci-fi) literature.
I formulated a philosophy I call 'Robot Wisdom' that demands-- ultimately-- computer models of human behavior, that fit the requirements of sociobiology but also have the humane dimension of literature.
So my whole thrust has been to wrestle with how to model human emotions on a computer, eg in video games. And I look to great literature (especially James Joyce) for inspiration about the laws of human emotion.
I still feel a lot of sympathy for mystical points of view, because they deal with real psychological phenomena that materialist viewpoints seem to deny, but I don't practice any form of organised worship.
Information about Setianism and the Temple of Set can be found at http://www.xeper.org.
Setianism is fundamentally about becoming more conscious. Methods include rigorous scientific method as well as introspective and magical techniques, each supporting the other. (IOW that great "insight" you just had - any evidence for it? Mark it "hypothesis".)
As to noticing things, I think this is where heavy-thinkers get disturbed or dis-enfranchised by "organized religions" (defining organized religions as those that impose, rather than inspire belief). Speculation and contemplation of religious writings will inevitably result in paradoxes that people of simple faith will have difficulty defending to someone with good logical analysis skills. Yet there's a great and joyfull challenge for a thoughfull person in discovering consistency and constancy in the scriptures of all faiths. Metaphors and parables in religious literature have been intended to obscure the truth throughout history, both to inspire the believers to thorough study and contemplation and to protect the believer's activities from persecution. Joseph Campbell's studies show the inter-connectedness of belief systems throughout history.
Personally, I'm Baha'i. I believe in progressive revelation from God that is guiding us in building a united, peacefull world. We can't wait around expecting miracles if we're not ready to start making things better ourselves. To do that requires a bit of faith, and alot of hard work and thought. I think it's my beliefs as a Baha'i that makes me so enthusiastic about open source. It's a community working together despite of, or even because of, their differences to make something better.
'Xtian' is not derogatory, at least not originally, the X is a greek letter (Chi?) not the roman X, and was a very common abbreviation at one time, used by Chritians themselves.
;)
Fundie is a different matter, but doesn't apply to Christians in particular, you get Linux fundies too
mailto:anonymous.coward
Haha! Not so clever now, are you?!
So 25 word posts displaying your disliking yayda *aren't* inane and childish then?
But there is nothing good about religion that can't be obtained with secular philosphies, except maybe the peace of mind it gives the grieving or those afraid of death. Of course, secular philosophies are just as capable of justifying evil, but we denegrate those as well. The evil stems from the fact that once someone believes they know absolute "truth", they can justify any action if it can be worked into the framework of that "truth". Religions started this behavior and have been encouraging it for millenia, as they are the tools of those in power (God rules over the universe, and by God's will, I rule over you). Only recently have things like Marxism or Objectivism taken God out of the equation.
I think they act like such assholes and throw those words about because they assume they will only anger the people who hate them (those really intolerant). An open-minded Christian is not going to identify with the word "fundie", but use it front of Pat Robertson and he'll know you're making fun of him.
Mocking organized religion is an example of intolerance of intolerance: superficially intolerant, but generally aimed at a net gain in tolerance.
What an interesting concept.
Is it intolerant to promote the idea that racists are dim-witted rednecks?
That homophobes are closet-cases afraid of their own sexual instincts (hence the name).
That misogynists are insecure and threatened by women?
What makes these stereotypes acceptable is that the attributes in question are almost universally despised, so much so that even the people who have those attributes don't admit it to themselves.
But a lot of people believe in organized religion, and specifically, a lot of people see nothing wrong with being a complete snot about other people's religious beliefs. Because, after all, one can't help being black, gay, or a woman, but you have a choice to baleeeve in Jeeezuss!
(uh oh, rant coming)
And then they get snippy when you criticize them for it! Intolerance? What's so intolerant about it? Like you said, it was your choice to baleeve in Jeeezuss! But what makes me different from you is that I don't really hold that against you. I may laugh at you behind your back, and mock your belief system publicly *ahem*, but I'm not going to be a jerk to you about it. My philosophy is to treat all people with simple courtesy, and judge people by their actions, not by what they say they believe (because beliefs and actions are often inconsistent, for better and worse).
Now, I told you to piss off because you won't stop bugging me about that Jeeezus guy, and you keep trying to push it on my kids in school. You promote the idea that my (lack of) beliefs makes me incapable of behaving ethically and responsibly, that my female friends should be submissive, and that my gay friends should be condemed for doing what comes naturally, though when you do it you call it an expression of "love". And you know, I don't think you're really over that racism thing, because you keep representing that Jeeezus guy with blue eyes, even though he is should clearly be of Semitic decent.
You think you are so God-damned superior because God is on your side, and it shows in everything you say and do. It is so pervasive and insidious, but you won't admit it is bigotry, because after all, I can always leave the oppressed and join the oppressors. Join the winning team, you say, be SAVED! You'll see that we really love you, and though we may seem to act like jerks, it is for your own good, because you need to be SAVED!
Yea, right. And I suppose the school bully acts like he does because he wants his victims to learn to stand up for themselves. I see through your agenda and understand your motivations, and they ain't as pure and noble as you say they are. Don't lecture me about tolerance, buddy, because you've already demonstrated just how intolerant you are. Once you go from live and let live to live as I tell you to live (or else), I'm under no obligation to treat you with respect or courtesy.
Heheh. Half of my family are rednecks (and proud of it!) and the other half are Southern Baptists. But the rednecks aren't dim-witted or racists, and the Baptists aren't fundamentalists.
If you think I'm referring to you, you might be guilty of the things I ascribe. Nowhere in my rant did I mention a specific group or denomination, or even the word Christianity.
But there is a specific group of people, who have some very specific ideas about their place in the world and the place of everyone who isn't like them. They're out there banning books from libraries, trying to censor the internet, trying to put a bible in every student's hand and the ten commandments on every classroom wall. On the TV they talk about putting religion back in government, all religions, mind you, because we can't play favorites, but in their churches and their PAC meetings it's all about the superiority of their ideology and how they need to fight the evil of Islam, New Age, Atheism, sec-u-lar humanism, and those dirty moral relativists of all stripes, and yes, that includes other Christians.
Bigotry is about creating conflict were there isn't any. But there is a conflict here, and my side didn't start it.
I think there is a more direct explanation. Computers allow one to make abstract ideas a functional reality. Anything you can conceive of can be implemented, assuming you have the skill and it doesn't violate some fundamental laws on algorithmic efficiency, which, for the most part, are far more forgiving than the laws of the physical universe.
This lack of constraints appeals to the creative person who has little patience for the real world. The computer offers limitless possiblities and great power for those who understand them. In this sense, computers are much like magic, and the hacker much like a wizard.
Myths and fantasy are appealing to the hacker, because they offer flexibility and strangeness not found in the real world. But the most important part is that these systems are internally consistent, just like mathematics. It is fun to imagine things that cannot exist, but it is even more fun to imagine the ramifications of those things, and that can only be done if there is an order to their being.
That is why we just don't just settle for sword and sorcery stories, but construct a taxonomy of monstors and magical creatures, of spells and weapons, of characters and races, etc. It isn't enough to just make shit up, you've to got make up a system so that it can be understood and manipulated, otherwise, what's the point?*
So computers and fantasy do two things: they both offer greater possibilies than the mundane world, and they both offer much greater power over their respective environments than we are used to, so we can achieve more of those possibilities.
(*) This probably where us rationalists differ from actual mystics and romantics in our view of these things. The romantic likes fantasy because it's pretty, or horror because its scary. The mystic likes the lack of responsibility implied in being part of "something bigger".
"How come abbreviated is such a long word?"
...so it can be used as an example to explain itself: abbr.
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It's a rare genius that's understood in his own day.
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I know, because I believe in solipsism absolutely and I am a geek.
(think about it)
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Wow, what a skeptic!
I suppose all the websites could be fakes, but I could take you to a convention where you could see it with your own eyes.
You could probably go and confirm it yourself too, if you just go to the store in town with a name like "The Dragon's Dicecup", "Gandalf's Library", or "The Android's Dungeon".
Or perhaps you are referring to the TV show. A lot of people have foggy half-memories that they suspect might be false, but if you watch Fox tomorrow morning, you can confirm that one for yourself, too.
Oh, by the way, the whole "pagan" movement mostly has to do with trying to justify orgies.
Orgies need no justification. An orgy is an end unto itself.
Hmmm, perhaps you forgot to add "...to your girlfriend." That makes more sense. If what it takes is some chanting, candle mood-lighting, and a bucket of goat's blood to get her going, you just thank your lucky stars that that's all.
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All of them hate it when people make broad, sweeping statements that are supposed to apply accurately to every hacker.
This is because hackers are highly individualistic and all deeply resent being referred to as having anything in common with other hackers than the ability to program computers.
Also, all hackers are open-minded and sensitive, so they don't like to exclude people who don't fit the description.
Finally, hackers universally reject all religion as superstitious nonsense, so they are annoyed by the suggestion that they believe in mystical crap.
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"hostile to organized religion in general" and "enjoy `parody' religions" come a lot closer to being religious bigotry than they are to being hostile to religious bigotry.
Hah! Organized religions are really organized religious bigotry. Organization and religious tolerance don't go together. They are systems for gaining profit for the priests, and as such, they are generally as ruthless and intolerant as they can get away with, which is generally a function of what percentage of the population they can claim. This is why minority religions almost always seem gentler and friendlier: they are weak and could be wiped out if they made too much fuss. For example, Judaism seems a gentle, harmless religion (especially in America), but look in the Old Testament and you'll find that ancient Hebrew law in the days when it had a local near-monopoly was as brutally intolerant as the Catholic inquisition; look to modern Isreal and you can just how "gentle" and "harmless" it is becoming once again, now that the very government is based on the religion (mind you, this would happen with any organized religion; it doesn't matter what it's "about", the priesthood will always attract those who enjoy exercising the power abusing their authority gives them). Look to Iran, if you want to see the threat of organized religion with general support over a long period.
Mocking organized religion is an example of intolerance of intolerance: superficially intolerant, but generally aimed at a net gain in tolerance.
They don't mock the belief, but the ridiculous convoluted propaganda that is used to promote the belief, and the hypocracy of prominent members of the religion.
an example that you see here frequently is the use of "xtian" and "fundie".
Are we reading the same website? I hear xtians bitching about this from time to time, but I never have read it other than that. Anyway, they're just abbreviations, don't get your panties in a bunch.
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One who believes that there can be no proof of the existence of God but does not deny the possibility that God exists.
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Gnostic (nstk) adj.
gnostic. Of, relating to, or possessing intellectual or spiritual knowledge.
Of or relating to Gnosticism.
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atheist (th-st) n.
One that disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.
Atheist and agnostic are mutually exclusive. Aside from that, I agree with you. Although I am actively hostile to organized religions and mystics in general, which in my mind includes most (all?) religious people, though I have different reasons for different people. Or more than one reason for some people. Look at it how you want to. Yes, I'm aware this is closed-minded and probably makes me a bad person. I'm ok with that.
Hackers/geeks like everyone else *want* to believe in religion a higher power to give them comfort. While some may deny this I think the prevalance of religious people on earth (for whatever reason) is more than enough to establish that the human pysche naturally craves something outside itself.
No, hackers and geeks don't want to believe in a higher power. Some of them do in fact believe in a higher power, some do not. I think what most hackers and geeks want is a) the truth. [wanting something doesn't make it true] b) a consistent worldview. [exceptions in life are as frustrating as in code]c) free beer. and d)pizza. [if you really need to have c) and d) elaborated then you probably should not be on slashdot] Not necessarily in that order.
No, an athiest is someone who DISBELIEVES in a higher power. To be an athiest requires a postive action, some kind of change in mental inertia. Failing to believe is an attribute of an agnostic. Either belief that a higher power does exist or does not exist is a hypothesis. To say I don't know if it exists or not is essentially the lack of a hypothesis. You can't say "I don't know" and "I know its not" and be consistent. As for the meaning of agnostic, regardless of what Mr. Huxley meant when he said it, the etymology of it has nothing to do with morality of claiming knowledge one does not posses--it is merely a factual word meaning "I don't possess knowledge". Athiest, on the other hand, from the modifier 'a' (not) and the greek 'theos' meaning god, means literally 'godless' and practically one who denies the existence of god. To say merely that an athiest doesn't believe is insufficient and inadequate. It is much more apropo to say that an athiest believes there is no god, for such a belief is an affirmative statement on the part of the athiest in question.
And for the record, while you may disagree, I consider myself fairly intelligent and definitely an athiest, and *I* describe myself as actively disbelieving.
I subscribe to a relatively traditional sort of Christianity, no particular denomination, with an emphasis on personal well-thinking and acting, instead of wide societal change.
I remember reading that JRR Tolkien attributed his Lord of the Rings trilogy to a desire to pay homage to god by creating his own world, in the image of god's creation but with different elements. This was his tribute, in creation - imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery.
I liken this to programming, personally - I take huge creative pride in my work, and I prefer the encompassing, huge programs that take lots of modules and good design to make work -- epic programs, even if they don't come out right.
Such is my tribute, homage, to god.
Long before I found out that the moon was of special importance in magic (or at least some kinds), I would find myself feeling strange emotions whenever I would look up at the moon at night. I believe in reincarnation and some of the feelings and thoughts I had gave me the impression that the moon was of some special importance to me in the past. I would be happy to see it. Whenever I'd be out and I would look up at it, at the first glance these feelings would always hit me. They are hard to describe. I would be filled with a sense of possibility and excitement. That is the best way I can put it and even that isn't a very good description. These feelings were perplexing because I didn't have the memories to go along with them that would explain why I felt that way.
Later on I found out that the moon was important to various kinds of magic and was seen as the source of magical power. When I first heard the term "drawing down the moon" I realized that was what my emotions were about. That when I would stand out in my backyard and lookup at it and be filled with these powerful emotions, that that was what I was unconsciously trying to do. This explained an awful lot. You see while I don't believe in magic per se, I do believe in the ability of people to influence reality by the power of their will. Its something I've done all my life. Once upon a time I could change the weather. If I wanted it to rain, it would rain. I would sit in class on boring days and look out the window making the rain stop and start and stop again. I never got rained on when I was outside because I'd just reach up into the clouds and desire for the rain to stop, and it would. But then something bad happened. I came out here to Arizona in '92 and I didn't like how dry it was. So I encouraged the weather to change and for rain to fall. There were flash flood in phoenix and the interstate between Phoenix and Tucson was washed out in a couple of places. But the truly bad thing was that people died because of it. I dont know their names but I do know I'm responsible for their deaths. Ever since I realized this my influence over the weather has been gone. Actually I don't really think it is gone, I think I'm holding myself back from using it. I'm sorry for the deaths of those people and this is my subconscious way of keeping it from happening again. Maybe someday I'll get over this and have better mastery of this ability so that such things won't happen again. Phoenix is a desert, I was wrong to try and change that and others paid the ultimate price for my foolishness. Of course if I tell people these things they'll think I'm crazy, so I don't.
There are other less impressive things I can still do, such as predict with 90+% accuracy the outcome of coin tosses. If I think about it and try to figure out what will happen my accuracy goes to shit. But if I just let go and let the answer come to me I'll get it right almost always. My sister is even more talented in these areas than I am. Being female that only makes sense. Unfortunately she made the mistake of trying to talk to spirits and got a hold of a demon. The bastard set up house in the extra room of our house. I come home to find this malignant presence in one room and my sister terrified and in tears in the other room. I contronted the demon and eventually got him to leave but not before he put the screws to me including trying to possess my body. Not fun. Now my sister is a super devout christian who thinks anything that isn't christian is satanic. There is evil in the world but most of what I've experienced has been me and not other entities and I can't see how I'm satanic.
I'm also a computer geek/nerd/hacker (but not cracker). I always have been. When I was a young child and I first heard the word computer I knew it was something special and wonderful even though I didn't know what it was. Seems "magic" isn't the only thing I've dealt with in past lives. I've got a lot of talent with computers and understand things easily which others have difficulty with. I also have "magical" abilities with computers and other electronic things. Computers begin working just because I show up to look at the problem. This is a common thing I see with others who have ability in this area too. Now there are people who are into computers because computers are popular now. They aren't like me and their mindset and talents are not like mine. I was a computer geek long before being one was "cool." I'm the real deal you know? I'm sure there are lots of others here who are the same.
To some of you I've come accross as a nutcase, or an idiot or both. But those of you who have seen or experienced the kinds of things I've described know I'm not. In either case I just hope this post doesn't get flagged as flamebait or as the ravings of the insane. I was originally going to post it anonymously but not I've decided not to.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
There is something that seems very much like story-book wizardry in hacking. Like the really wonderful Steve Savitsky song, a computer's innards are
A world where magic rules,
Where the only rule is logic,
Webs of words the only tools.
Maybe that has something to do with the "magical" inclination, and also not taking it too seriously. For most, it seems to me, it's more a game than anything else. I heard one neopagan define his religion as "a religion you make up as you go along", though I'm sure there are those who will object that that's taking it too "not seriously".
It seems to me there are a lot more "mainstream" sorts than you might think from reading the Jargon File item. I get the impression that saying orthodox Christianity was "rare" somewhat overstates the case. "Somewhat unusual" seems closer to the mark, and some are quite prominent hackers.
From wordnet:
- a.the.ist (n.)
- ag.nos.tic(n.)
Sounds like you, as with many people, are closer to agnostic than athiest. I'm of the belief that, given the definitions above, athiesm is no more or less rational than thiesm.One that disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.
One who believes that there can be no proof of the existence of God but does not deny the possibility that God exists.
That's not what I mean at all, if anything, it's a question of scope. You're willing to accept intuition and imagination as a tool; but only insofar as you can understand how they work in concrete terms.
The important thing to me is recognition that this, as much as fundamental christianity, or new-agism, is a dogmatic foundation. You're starting from the point that the concrete and sensory is what's 'real'. By corollary, the intuitive, or mystic, is to be fiercly distrusted. And there is nothing wrong with that as a viewpoint. But it is, still, just a viewpoint, and to me, it's no more or less valid that many others.
Another question: "terribly limiting" in what way? Am I less capable of insight and thoughtfulness because I don't accept the existence of the mystical? Am I less intelligent and creative because of it? How am I limited? Be specific. If you can't be specific to my case (as you don't know me very well, I would imagine :) then be specific about
what kinds of ways I might be "terribly limit[ed]" by such a philosophy.
I believe that this viewpoint is limiting in its very assertion that it is the only possible correct way to look at things. I'm a much, much more concrete person than, say, my wife. She does not insist on such a rigid, consistent interpretation of her experiences and life; yet she still surprises me, almost every single day, with insights that were beyond me. And, on the other side of the coin, I help to keep her grounded in the sensory, the 'real', as you put it.
It's that dogmatic belief in the tangible that I find limiting; if you don't flex your view of what's 'real' from time to time, there are insights and epiphanies that will stay out of your reach.
You've made my point for me, here. From www.dictionary.com:
That statement, the one core assumption upon which you base everything:
Only the physical exists
is just as dogmatic as
God Exists
Proving either one is a descent into metaphysical philosophy. Your evidence is, at the end, a circular argument. You've started with the assumption that only the physical exists, and then used it to build a system of beliefs which then supports the original statement.
For fun, from E. A. Poe:
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
My point is, you are asking me to prove something outside your system of beliefs, using only those things within your beliefs. While this is sometimes possible, it can be quite impossible.
For example, if I were to state that I believed the whole world was but some sort of process analagous to a dream to some outside, greater universe, and that nothing in our world really existed, it would be easy, trivial, really, to build a self-consistent set of beliefs around that original dogma. But in the end, that original statement is still a dogma, a starting point which cannot truly be justified or proven in and of itself.
Go on, try to prove me wrong, using arguments and constructs from my system of beliefs. That's exactly what you are asking me to do for you, (and, to throw a self referential loop, what I'm trying to do. :)
On a slight tangent, have you ever read Sophie's World? Excellent read.
I see mysticism as, in part, an intuitive leap forward from the senses. It's certainly not going to be as accurate as relying strictly on sensory input, but it is an enabler for seeing farther than your senses allow.
I believe the right path, if one can be said to exist, lies in a balance of sensory grounding with mystic thought and practice. To use science as an analogy, it is the great foundation of experimental evidence which grounds us, but it is the imagination and intuition of where to look next that provides progress and inspiration.
The complete skeptic may, IMHO, minimize the risk of being wrong. This same conservatism and fear, though, may inhibit personal growth and understanding of the world that surrounds us.
http://quaker.org . (I can't say any more than that lest I lose my Quaker badge, because we try very hard not to evangelize.)
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
'sgot 't be:
/. w/e's --
Perl Kreator
-- I start work tuesdays and don't do
-~ ~- -~ ~-
__
Arse
I for one, am a Discordian. It's all chaos by heart, baby. Offer the goddess Eris jello snacks, and your modem will connect better.
Here's the Amazon.com book review (and summary):
That's a pretty fair summary of the work. It's a decent read for people interested in this topic, and now it's out in paperback so you don't have to shell out to much cash to get it.
--
Behold the Power of Cheese!
As a pagan (specifically, I practice according to Celtic customs), I firmly believe that the net is the antithesis of your mainstream, organized religons.
.....and then revered.
Catholicisim, Christianity, all are well ordered, and, to some degree, strict houses, now, I am no religious bigot, I have tolerance of religon, save for zealots perhaps, who tend to tell me Im going to burn in hell, etc etc. That their way is the only way.
Well, the net is definately the antithesis of this. Because, 'their' way, be it M$, or any other stagnated monstrosity cannot stand in the way of someone who believes differently, and goes about making a change.
So, I would have to say yes, mysticisim is a part of what the net is. Open minds tend to be able to accept other points of view. And, open minds are willing to accept unconventional ideas, leaps in thought usually stamped out by people who are satisfied with the status quo. Think about it, the true visionaries of the net, were very much considered nuts, or crazy at the time. As most genius is.
Genius is often recognized a decade late...
Supernaut
You have then chosen to assume -- or believe, perhaps -- that in lack of evidence to the contrary, the book does not exist. (Re-read what you wrote.) The reality, however, is that the book may or may not exist; not having entered the room, you don't know which. Therefore, if you were truly a facts-only person, you would have said, "... lacking said information, I have no rational choice but to accept the possibility of the book's existence (or nonexistence)."
Your choosing to continue on as if there were no book is a leap of faith, just as another person's choosing to believe that the book does exist is also a leap of faith.
Quantitatively speaking, if the probability of the book's existence could be determined to be p and hence its nonexistence q=1-p, your leap could be considered of magnitude 1/q and the other person's 1/p. (Note that if the book were known to exist, i.e., p=1, your leap would have to be infinite, which agrees with intuition.) As long as neither p nor q can be proven to be zero, there is a possibility that they are nonzero, and choosing to believe in either of possibilities they represent to the exclusion of the other is to some magnitude a leap of faith.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
That still doesn't invalidate the original point you quoted. Occam's razor just says that we should assume that the simplest theory is correct because it is the most likely, not that it proves that is correct.
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...but human senses are not truly limited to the 5 common ones.
Nope. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, pressure, pain, heat, cold, balance...
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To see a lot more members of the Order of the Mystical Frog of the Playa hacking.
But we're busy gathering signatures for the Seattle Monorail Initiative today, so I guess not.
Seriously, I think we're all a bit closer to the mystical, whether hacker or not. You need to put things in a frame of reference, and mysticism works pretty darn well when you have to keep trying and trying to get it working.
Although, if we mean hacking as an altruistic state, then there is Good Code, Grey Code, and Bad Code. MSFT churns out Bad Code, many people churn out Grey Code, and few attain the enlightened state of Good Code.
Will in Seattle
And so it goes. Naturally, there will be plenty of hacker types that don't believe in X (and, btw, please spare the jokes about the windowing system--you know what I mean), but those counterexamples are either ignored or marginalized as "rare exceptions" or "not true hackers" or whatever.
If you want to see some really good examples of this phenomenon in action, have a(nother) look at the Jargon File; it is rife with them. I mean, do we really believe that you're not a true hacker if you don't like Chinese food? I suspect not, but the guys that wrote the Jargon File liked it, and they constructed a whole mythology around why it was only natural that their hacker nature should lead to a love of Chinese food. It's the same thing with religion; in fact, with religion people have even more personal incentive to rationalize their beliefs, particularly in a subculture that prizes logic and analytical skills above all else.
My feeling is that there probably isn't any one religious stereotype that applies to hackers in general. There may be a slight trend away from mainstream religion, but even at that there seems to be no shortage of hackers that do follow a mainstream religion. Just believe what you want to believe, and don't worry about whether it's the "hackish" thing to do. And don't waste time trying to rationalize it. Religion is an inherently nonrational phenomenon, and that is not a bad thing.
-rpl
But there are necessarly limits to what Science can explain--limits imposed by Godel's incompleteness theorm, and by the nature of Science as a refind version of Logical Positivism. (That is, there are limits on what Science can explain because it's model of explaining the universe presupposes a number of postulates, such that there is no unseen intelligent force who controls the throw of the dice to it's own ends.)
Beyond what Science can explain are a number of areas of philosophy which relate to human existance. For example, why are we here? While the answer provided by Science (that we are the chance happenings of an uncaring universe) may be intellectually satisfying to some, this sort of existentialist void is emotionally unsatisfying to most who really give it some thought.
My personal take, picked up from someone else, is that Science is great at explaining the "how" of the universe. Theology or philosophy or religion or whatever the heck you want to call it is great at providing the "why."
Cool! I never met a practitioner of ancient Indian religion!
Or are you refering to that bullshit that a bunch of Germans came up with at the beginning of the century which was based on some really bad (and since debunked) anthropology?
Gnostics believed that the world was created not by God, but by an evil being called Demiurge.
Except that it's unclear if the Demiurge is evil or just uncaring (not the same thing), and it's unclear if the Demiurge even exists, or if the Demiurge is a "being" below the ultimate who believes it is the ultimate because it's simply too dumb to look "up."
Further, most modern day Gnostics I know are more interested in what I would call "Zen Gnosticism"--that is, they are interested in achieving a direct communion with the Divine through various means, some highly intellectual (the Enochian system comes to mind), some very emotionally intuitive.
I for one wait for Jesus Christ to come back. How do I know He will come back? Because He told us He would.
...
And you believe everything people tell you, right?
You stiff-necked people - you must prove to me that there is no God, because it's been proven already to me that there IS a God, and His incarnation of flesh is named Jesus, and one day, He will return.
"Take heed that ye do not your alms before men,
to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward
of your Father which is in heaven.
"Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not
sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrits do
in the synagogues and in the streets, that they
may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you,
They have their reward.
"But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand
know what thy right hand doeth:
"That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father
which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee
openly.
"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as
they hypocrits are: for they love to pray standing
in the synagogues and in the corners of the
streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I
say unto you, They have their reward.
"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy
closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray
to thy Father which is in secret; and they Father
which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
"But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as
the heathen do: for they think that they shall be
heard for their much speaking.
"Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your
Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before
ye ask him."
Matthew 6:1-8.
By demanding that I explain my religion to you, and by standing up in your righteousness before men, you act as the fool on the corner of the street shouting repetitions so that men may hear your vain prostrations. Jesus himself said you will have your reward--but it won't be alongside the Father.
Witnessing is a tricky thing at best. Many in the United States, in large part due to the history of Baptists and others in the south in the last century, take it that "witnessing" involves pounding the bible on street corners attempting to convert the "wicked"--not even knowing if the next "wicked" person coming down the street is Jesus Christ Himself, freshly arrived and steeling into town as a thief in the night, as Christians believe he will appear.
But it's pretty clear that this sort of "vain repitition" and building vast monuments and sounding large trumphets to "God" that are only witnessed by men is exactly the sort of crap that Jesus Christ warned against in Matthews. And it's pretty clear why He warned us about this sort of person: time and time again televangelists are revealed to be nothing more than side-show carnies, thiefs, adulterers and con-men who claim they act in the name of God but who really only serve themselves.
That is the reward Jesus Christ was talking about when he said "Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." This is the reward of sin--the reward of self-delusion in the form of "righteousness"--the very reward you appear to be trying to strive for when you "proclaim" publically for all to see.
Best to witness silently, by example--to share a kind word rather than beat people over the head because you think their belief in God is not good enough for you. It isn't for you to judge our beliefs--that right is reserved to God and God alone.
Why? Because Jesus Christ said so. If Jesus Christ is your Lord and Saviour, then why do you so flagrently ignore His Word?
I am an Atheist. That pretty much puts me at the bottom of everyone's list, I know. Religion tends to be a "pick a religion, any religion" proposition. "You must believe is SOMEthing!" they say. Or my personal favorite: "Atheism is a religion too." Yeah, and health is a form of disease. (Health is the absence of disease not a type of disease. Atheism is the absence of religion*.)
:)
Disclaimer: If you think I am bashing your religion right now, think again.
* belief in deities.
The thing is, I think a lot of geeks, especially science geeks, are much more likely to be atheists than the general population. And by atheists what I mean probably includes most peoples' definitions of agnostics and about a dozen other labels. (Like the difference between Free Software and Open Source.)
Hmm. Slow News Day.
I don't know about killing, but MTG (which I used to play) is certainly in no way an RPG.
Chi can be detected with the senses.
As the mystic said to the hot dog vendor, "Make me one with everything"
how many hackers use hallucinogenic drugs? i think perhaps the common link between mystics, zens, trippers, programmers, etc... are the desire to program, alter, and most of all explore complex systems. they wish to understand that which most people...or nobody at all understand, and make use of it.
this reminds me of an essay that was posted on slashdot a while back. i cant find the article, but here's the essay...The Academy and the Ecstasy
echo-e
Well, it's not a "duh" thing at all. Philosophers spend a lot of time discussing such things. In casual discussions of "religion vs. science", yes, you have a default idea, but some ideas of god(s) are much more subtle.
There is just a little bit more to it than that. It's like the difference between "yes, that is a pattern of sonic vibrations of such-and-such frequencies and overtones" and "that's Beethoven's `Ode to Joy'". The physical observations are the same, but the subjective meaning, the use, the psychological/spiritual resonance, is completely different. You can (at least in principle) observe and understand the electrochemical events in my brain, but that's not the same as understanding my thoughts. No objective observation will let you know what it's like to see through my eyes. I didn't say you did. I said that you have reason to question that things you have sensed exist.You also have reason to question reports of what others have sensed, because 1) they are subject to the same sensory limitations, and 2) they sometimes lie. And you have reason to question inferences made from sense data, since we all are subject to error.
Just a reminder that we don't have a strong dichotomy of TRUTH vs. bullshit, that we must question everything.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
You should come to a Pagan festival like Starwood or the Free Spirit Gathering and see just how many hackers are there. It's remarkable, and leaves little doubt that there is some connection.
IMHO, Zen and Paganism appeal to hackers because they are centered on experience, rather than dogma ("Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proven it correct, not tested it"), and because they allow for heterodoxy ("There's more than one way to do it.").
Suggested reading: my own introduction to the Laughing Thunder Circle and ESR's Frequently Asked Questions about Neopaganism
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"Chi" literally just means "breath", which clearly exists; if you mean the semi-supernatural "life energy" extolled by some I'll agree that it doesn't have physical existence, yet concepts of chi can be useful in martial arts and in healing practices.
Atheism is not incompatable with Paganism. I label myself a Zen Pagan Taoist Atheist Discordian; it all fits together.
The following questions are left as an exercise for the reader:Does the number 3 exist? Does truth? Beauty? The note Bb? The color red? The property redness? Your thoughts? Your mind? My mind?
Who is more real: Mr. Spock, or John Smith, Esq. of Crofton, Maryland? One is fictional, one is (according to the phonebook) a real person; but Mr. Spock exists in many more minds than Mr. Smith. Which is the more durable existence?
Every see Penn & Teller in action? Your senses are limited and can be fooled; what reason do you have to think that what you can detect with them means anything? What assumptions are you making when you integrate sense data? What other sets of assumptions are possible? Can these other sets of assumption led to useful results?
The Paganism I practice has more to do with questions like this than with "How do I cast a love spell?"
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I merely said that there is no reason to think that anything exists aside from what we can detect with our senses (and devices that enhance our senses).
I'm going to have to guess that this phrase best represents what others see as a problem with your belief structure. Why would we even think of constructing devices to enhance our senses unless we had every reason to think that things exist beyond our perception? Time and time again, these devices have shown that there is, indeed, more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophies.
For what it's worth... as part of a "services rendered" compensation package to a local group of nuts^h^h^h^h free thinkers, I got a cassette tape entitled "Top Down Liturgical Design" by Isaac Bonewits, where (if memory serves) he described some basic coding techniques to be used for... um... that spellcasting stuff.
If there's interest...
Get to Isaac: http://www.neopagan.net/
Get to A.C.E: http://rosencomet.com/
Too lazy to do the tags... sorry.
Of course there's something... billions and billions of stars, an almost unlimited quantity of worlds to discover, probably a zillion different lifeforms. Now why would anyone want to see *anything else* in the sky is beyond me...
ObTagLine: The more you run over the 'possum, the flatter it gets.
By the way, it's "Christianity" and "Judaism". We're not speaking Greek, so the "x" is inappropriate.
ObTagLine: The more you run over the 'possum, the flatter it gets.
How about some specifices? You're painting w/ a broad brush here. Who said this? I'm sure there are some groups that push the "barefoot and pregnant" idealogy, but that doesn't make them the majority.
No doubt. After all, it's your duty to inform anybody who admits to being a Christian that they're "[not] really over that racism thing" and "act like jerks". Congratulations. You've successfully imaged a false stereotype. You've taken a few wrong and/or overzealous people and used them to paint the whole group of people as bullying fools. And you don't see anything wrong w/ this. You've taken the things that can (and do) happen in any religious group and assigned them to Christianity, because everybody knows that "Christians are all just stupid bigots anyway". And you still don't see anything wrong w/ this.
Congratulations again, you've hit on a pet peeve. :> If I offended you, sorry. I'm just trying to get you to think about what you're actually saying, not what you think you are saying.
ObTagLine: The more you run over the 'possum, the flatter it gets.
However, back when LotR was getting big, in the 70's (also when a lot of the big computer milestones were being met) one of the ways the love of fantasy it engendered was express was through Fantasy Role Playing Games. The history of Fantasy role playing games is that they grew out of tabletop miniature games with wonderfully complex rules and cool little figurines (don't forget the sand tables!) Eventually, fantasy elements were added to medieval miniature wargames, and that evolved (sorry for offending any Kansans reading this!) into the earliest versions of Dungeons and Dragons. It seems to me that Dungeons and Dragons was very popular among computer programmers. Either that, or the complex rules of D&D were just perfect for creating computer games. Whatever the reasons, a lot of the earliest computer games I played, Zork, Ultima, Temple of Apshai were more or less ripoffs of Dungeons and Dragons.
Of course, D&D was legally forbidden to use the concepts and mythology present in Tolkien, so the creators borrowed from many sources, as diverse as H.P. Lovecraft and Ancient Greek and Egyptian religions. Besides, that stuff was cool, and in the early days, D&D liked to include stuff that was cool.
Well, some fundamentalist preachers eventually decided that they needed to unite their sheep against an enemy, and unfortunately one of them discovered D&D. It was perfect, it contained demons and pagan gods, so the simple minded members of the faith could be convinced that the complex rulebooks (which were... ahem... beyond the level of the average sheep's reading ability) contained actual evil incantation for summoning Lucifer and Demogorgon.
I can remember even Infocom got somewhat caught up with this, someone sent a letter into The New Zork Times telling them how evil their games were and how they were all going to Hell. (If you've ever played an Infocom game, you'll know why this is ridiculous... the Frobozz Magic Glue factory is not the stuff of real magick.)
So, I suspect this is where the myth that hackers were more likely to be pagans or into alternative religion comes from.
Now... it may be that there is more actual alternative religious belief among hackers than among more average society. Certainly, California seems to be more open to alternative religions than the rest of the country. I don't think there has ever been an actual scientific poll take to determine numbers. Myself? I used to be Catholic and now basically consider myself mostly agnostic.
Ia, Ia Cthulhu ftagn!!
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Modern Judaism has evolved just like any other 6000 year old religion. 6000 years ago, life was much more hostile..so in order to keep Justice and Law intact the laws were generally strict. Judaism was not a religion 6000 years ago..it was a system of government and lifestyle, given (or created for the agnostics/atheists), so that people will know what is wrong and what is right and how to be more right than wrong.
Modern Judaism still contains all those precepts..that man is not perfect, and that he should try to be good. Knowing the difference between good and evil, in Judaism, is an absolute. Without a written set of rules (the Ten Commandments for starters) one could easily mistake evil for good, and think one is doing good when one is really evil. For an example, look at Hitler.
Israel's government is NOT based solely on the religion. In fact, the government is entirely secular, with an organization of Rabbis (the Rabbinate) advising the Knessat (their Congress) on issues dealing with modern day conflicts between Judaism and internationally accepted law.
If you ever go to Israel you'd see that the majority of people are secular Jews. They are ethnically and culturally connected to Judaism, but they don't follow it as a religion.
In the future, get your facts straight before spewing onto /. All you're doing is spreading misinformation and ignorance.
Salis
Favorite
am a "hacker", and am also a born-again Christian. So I guess I broke the trend ;-)
Did you know that Larry Wall is a Christian? I learned this in Wired, October 2000. He's also a PK.
PK = Preacher's Kid
Quite right!
As you might have guessed, I had my scientific materialist ("right tool for the job", "religion is a way to help you deal with certain feelings") hat on when I wrote that. The notion that "real" might constitute anything beyond the material world was quite preposterous to me, and so I said "real-world" when I meant "physical world".
Which is a long way of saying that what's "real" to me is a function of me mental state at any given moment in time. Or "Who is the master who makes the grass green?" (As you can guess now, I'm in a Zen state :)
Incidentally, I note that my belief systems have been fairly carefully evolved to have relatively minor areas of overlap. To use the example at hand, there's not much in the Zen concept behind "you are the master who makes the grass green" that gets in the way of the principles Jesus elucidated in, say, the Sermon on the Mount, and it's a very elegant way of reminding yourself that there are damn good reasons why the scientific method requires double-blind experiments.
Huh? If by "why are we here", you mean "how did homo sapiens evolve?", you're absolutely right. That question is within the realm of science.
I meant "is there any purpose to our existence as conscious beings? What are we supposed to do with our lives?" That's metaphysics.
And while the opinions of scientists on that question are every bit as useful and interesting as the opinions of philosophers and religious types, they're just that: opinions. I know of no scientist who would call them "facts" in the sense of scientific truth.
To take the question "Why are we here" in the sense in which I meant it:
Dawkins would argue argue "No reason beyond providing an environment (a body and reproductive system) to propagate your genes. Indeed, you only exist in a form that's capable of asking such a silly question because 'consciousness' happens to be just one of about 30 million effective methods (species) that genes use to ensure their propagation".
A follower of Zen would say "Mu." The very notion that there exists some "thing" that one is "supposed" to do with one's life is wholly bogus in Zen. It's like asking a mathematician "What quantity is expressed by the sum 2 + fish?".
A Christian would say that one ought to follow the example set down by Christ in the Bible. (Umm, and the next Christian beside him would say the same thing, but they'd disagree violently on exactly what that example was ;-)
And a Fundie of any religious stripe would say that one also ought coerce everyone else into doing the same thing.
If you've got a double-blind experiment that will determine which of these (and the other zillion-odd religious and philosophical viewpoints out there) is demonstrably right, I'd like to see it.
I point out that the scientific method can be expressed in five words:
Hypothesis. Materials. Method. Data. Conclusion.
I finally got around to playing Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri last night, and finished it in a couple of all-nighters.
Your quote reminds me of something from the game. Paraphrasing the game, "The question isn't why a perfect God would create this universe, but why a perfect God would create a universe at all".
My take on the topic at hand: Geeks are freethinkers. Because we acknowledge that it's very hard for one geek to understand all that's going on inside these boxes we call "computers", we're tolerant of views in the absence of conclusive evidence. All geeks believe that what does on inside the box is understandable, but the process whereby any one geek understands a piece of code is something uniquely a function of (a) the geek, and (b) the code.
If I extrapolate these beliefs about computability to the Real World, I see two tendencies:
- First - geeks will choose world views that imply the world is understandable and that there are processes whereby one can change the world.
- Unlike normals, geeks tend to be tolerant where evidence is unclear. We're willing to use the best tool for the job.
Traditional religions have never tolerated this - they tend to be monolithic one-size-fits-all solutions geared for memetic propagation, rather than best-of-breed solutions for particular subsets of philosophical problems.Whether it be Fundamentalist Christianity ("know God and follow His commandments"), Paganism ("Change the world through acts of Magick"), Buddhism ("You are the master who makes the grass green"), or Scientific Materialism ("The world operates according to physical laws which can be divined through experiment"), all of these world views provide adherents with tools whereby reality can be manipulated.
The scientific method is an excellent tool for figuring out how gravity works and why the stars shine. It's not as useful a tool for answering the answers to philosophical questions like "Why are we here", and "How shall we live?". Religions are pretty good for this. You may not like the answer any one religion provides, but you have to admit it's an answer.
Normals tend to want one tool for everything. Fundamentalist Christian Normals have a lot of trouble with dinosaur fossils. Scientific materialists have trouble with metaphysics. Normals end up like Linux users without an xterm trying to use Internet Explorer to rename 100 files, or MSOffice users trying to write annual reports in TeX.
The "joke religions", such as the Church of the SubGenius, or Discordianism, have a significant place in geek culture because they're explicit demonstrations of an important principle - "best tool for the job" doesn't mean "science or religion", but can mean multiple religions for multiple types of religious type questions.
Normals hate having to pick and choose and learn something new every time they encounter something new. Geeks love having to adapt - we do it for fun - it's what happens every time we design new software, debug old software, or play any game from Quake to Everquest to D&D.
I'll close off by describing my belief system: I'm a scientific materialist when solving real-world problems; I have no need of the God hypothesis to explain physics, evolution, or even human intelligence. I've chosen the Christian God (and I freely admit "because that's how I was brung up" - an accident of the religious affiliation of my parents, who infected me with the Judeo-Christan meme) as my arbitrary Big Brother figure. But I also like the Zen and Existentialist approaches to life when Big Brother doesn't give me what I want.
Oddly enough, I appear to lack the capability to really get into the altered mental/emotional states experienced by Pagans, neo-shamans, or to use the modern equivalent, trance/techno music and dance. So I concluded that the "really mystical" stuff that started this thread wasn't for me. (But if it's your thing, hey, more power to ya. It's your brain; if you've got the circuitry to enjoy this kinda stuff, enjoy the hell out of it!)
And I'm a card-carrying SubGenius. Which means I'm not really here -- I left Earth on July 5, 1998 with the rest of the SubGenii, and am beaming this message to MWOWM from my Pleasure Spacecraft. You are actually a brain in a vat, living in a World Without Slack.
The movie The Matrix was a practical joke we decided to play on you to see if you'd figure it out. Of course you missed the point completely, just like we knew you would. But it was right there in the movie -- for stupid primates to believe in a virtual world, it's gotta suck.
And that, humans, is why the world (well, at least the one you slackless gimps live in) is so fscked up.
"The one thing I do ask is that you not judge people based on the information that is shared here, as all that is bound to do is cause problems"
/.ers don't know what we're talking about on any subject, but we still have enough frustrated emotion to float a battleship." Still, as long as we're banned from judging each other's shared information (opinions, anyone?) in general or tendencies towards ridiculous cults in particular, we can be sure that our discussions will be A-OK with Lawyer Central. God Bless America!
Phew - thank goodness for that. For a second, I thought a rational discussion might break out here... We could see all sorts of 'radical' statements, like "Microsoft isn't so bad after all," or "RMS is a little out of touch with the real world," or even "en masse, we
It wouldn't surprise me if many of the professed atheists/agnostics here were young. A lot of people feel that way when they are young.
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
Some look at cyberspace as a subset of meatspace, and others look at it as a parallel space. However you look at it, cyberspace is a place where humans have much more control, which is why many geeks/nerds are so lost in it - they can control it, whereas their success in meatspace is limited. Some hackers don't wish to give up and limit their mastery to cyberspace, so they attempt to manipulate meatspace with magic and other mystical trappings.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Hmm, I suppose this could be a Troll, but I'll bite (a little) anyway...
I for one wait for Jesus Christ to come back. How do I know He will come back? Because He told us He would.
Yet your faith, Anonymous Coward, is not strong enough to associate an identity with? Why, are you more concerned with earthly acceptance than divine acceptance? Bah... If you have faith, prove it by not hiding.
''
No Laughing Allowed!
Inquiring minds want to know.
No Laughing Allowed!
I read it as Primary Key. Guess what I've been doing for a living?
--
This is not my sandwich.
I believe in first posts
Bertrand Russell wrote the definitions of atheism, theism, and agnosticism that have the most meaning in my life. I can only paraphrase, but he said, basically, this:
Atheists believe that they can KNOW that God does NOT exist.
A theist believes that it is possible to KNOW that God DOES exist.
An agnostist believes that it is impossible to know whether God exists.
In this way, I consider myself, in a purely _pragmatic_ sense, to be both an atheist and an agnostic. I don't believe that God exists, but I acknowledge that He might.
And, truthfully, at this point in my life, I consider the question of His existance or non-existance to be (almost) irrelevant. If I knew that he existed, I wouldn't live my life any differently than I do now. Still, there is the intellectual curiosity, and I wouldn't pass up the opportunity of certainty if it arose (assuming that this opportunity did not involve wish-fulfillment or self-delusion).
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
If I believed that God existed, I would be unlikely to believe any of the aforementioned. Currently, when I entertain the idea that God exists, I consider him as an 18th century Deist might, choosing to believe that he interferes not one iota with his universe. If he really knows me "completely and truly," as you say, then he will understand my skepticism.
Also, I wasn't talking about God "show[ing] up." I was referring more to the intellectual conviction that he did exist, and not a personal visit. In some scenarios, a visit from a vastly superior being would certainly be terrifying. However,unless his point was to terrify, he could appear to me in a totally non-threatening form.
I would be unprepared to believe in the Xtian God without a visitation, incidentally. It would take less to persuade me that a more impersonal God existed, but I am not expecting any such evidence to be presented soon.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Ah, you mean Frisbyterianism. . .
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
For example, back at my old high school I can remember the subject of religion coming up casually in a conversation, and I made the mistake of mentioning I was an atheist. Because of this, I was harrassed for years. I had people constantly bringing up the subject, again and again and again. I had people trying to convert me just about every single day. They always ask, "why are you an atheist?" Had said I was christian, jewish, muslim, or even budhist I can't imagine being asked that question so many times.
That's because religious people (myself included) do not understand Atheism. We understand Agnosticism, we understand other religions. But we do not understand Atheists. The fact that someone is actually willing to say that 'NO! There is no deity of any kind anywhere and I KNOW THIS FOR CERTAIN.' baffles us completely. Agnostics proclaim not to know the answer, perfectly understandable. Other religions have their own views, but all admit the possibility of an all powerful deity or multiple powerful deities somewhere doing something. Atheists proclaim that they have sure knowledge of the nonexistance of such a being despite there being no proof one way or the other. That is why you are constantly asked 'Why are you an Atheist.' if you were an Agnostic that probably wouldn't happen...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I obviously can't speak for anyone else, but the only reason I'd be vocal with my religious beliefs would be to see how others react to challenges about their religion. I've noticed that people often react by trying to insult you, try to convert you to the One True religion (theirs), ignore you, or will discuss it rationally with you (very rare).
,and I wish more Christians and in fact more people of all faiths would put a little more effort into understanding themselves and what they believe before they go blindly attempting to convert everyone to a system that they don't even understand yet.
Boy do I ever hear that!
I'll go ahead and state that I'm a Christian. I suppose I'm technically a Baptist, but I tend to hold a lot of beliefs that most Baptists don't. And when I hear Christians babbling on about how God hates this and God hates that and telling people 'This is the Way it Is.' I have the urge to kick them. Because invariably when you take an opposing view point that don't have any argument beyond 'That's just the way it is.' which tells me pretty clearly that they haven't put one seconds thought in to what they believe. So how is anyone supposed to take them seriously? I see supposed Christian groups protesting Homosexuality, screaming about how 'God Hates Fags!' and it makes me sick. These are the kind of people that don't even bother to find out what Christ was actually teaching, they just use their religion as a big stick to beat down anyone they find annoying or disagreeable and then they pretend it makes them better people. I've made absolutely certain that I know why I believe what I believe and can discuss it with anyone who comes along no matter from what angle they attack my views (attack used in the sense of challenging ones ideas, not slandering them.)
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Hah! Organized religions are really organized religious bigotry. Organization and religious tolerance don't go together. They are systems for gaining profit for the priests, and as such, they are generally as ruthless and intolerant as they can get away with, which is generally a function of what percentage of the population they can claim. This is why minority religions almost always seem gentler and friendlier: they are weak and could be wiped out if they made too much fuss. For example, Judaism seems a gentle, harmless religion (especially in America), but look in the Old Testament and you'll find that ancient Hebrew law in the days when it had a local near-monopoly was as brutally intolerant as the Catholic inquisition; look to modern Isreal and you can just how "gentle" and "harmless" it is becoming once again, now that the very government is based on the religion (mind you, this would happen with any organized religion; it doesn't matter what it's "about", the priesthood will always attract those who enjoy exercising the power abusing their authority gives them). Look to Iran, if you want to see the threat of organized religion with general support over a long period.
Asa Christian I have to say this is VERY true.
Christianity began as small groups that studied together and only wanted enough political pull to stop themselves from being fed to lions. But as more people joined the movement various politically motivated people saw this demographic that didn't have much represntation in their government and saw it as a potential powerbase to further their own agenda. And hence 'The Church' was born. Christianity began it's downward spiral into an inreasingly harmful political movement instead of a beneficial religious movement with a primary motivation to help everyone. I find it extremely distateful when some pseudo-religious political figure gets up and pretends to represent MY views as a Christian while at the same time advocating all manner of harmful legislation, and proclaiming their hatred for various social groups. It's nothing like Christ seems to have intended it to be. Of course I can't say for certain that Christ wanted anything to be like anything else since I wasn't there. But from all accounts He was a tolerant and peaceful person not prone to inciting crusades to slaughter millions of people who disagree.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I'm painted as the bad guy for even asking where the clothes on the emperor are. As if I'm being silly, or worse a bigot just for disagreeing. Someone please explain this reasoning to me, but skip the common explanations. Been there, done that.
Welp, the simple explanation for my belief in God (or some kind of creator deity) is that to me Random Chance just doesn't cut it for an explanation of the origin of all things. When someone can give me a better explanation for that I'll pick it up. But The idea that we went from nothing to today simply by random chance is to me as equally absurd as the idea that an all powerful God had nothing better to do than create walking meat. I think that as long as I'm going to believe something it might as well be something that has things working out well for me in the end (eternity in paradise isn't that bad a deal). I believe most of the main tenets of Christianity, that Christ walked the earth and performed mircales (don't see any reason why he couldn't have, we don't yet understand enough about the way the universe works to say it's impossible), that Christ wants us to dwell with him in heaven for eternity (must get somewhat boring being all powerful and not having anyone to play with). Beyond that I think it's just details.
I also whole heartedly agree with you, nonsense is nonsense, and my opinion of current scientific theory on the origin of everything and how it went from nothing to today is that it's equally nonsensical.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Yes, I was referring to the supernatural (semi? are you kidding?) life-energy often referred to. I'm not aware how it is necessary for any martial art to function.
Chi is used by practitioners of Chinese Kung Fu (Wu Shu, Gung Fu, whichever you want to call it) to inrease the strength of their strikes and to lessen the impact of an opponents strike. The existance of the ability of Chi Masters to manipulate the heat and electrical energy in their body is a proven fact. You can hook them up to machines and watch the heat increase wherever they say it will increase, it's all about controlling your body. It's spiritual in the respect that one MUST be calm and mentally stable in order to concentrate well enough to do any of this. So it requires meditation and a lot of spirtuality in order to achieve this mental attitude. Chi is a very real physical principal and isn't exactly pseudo-mystical. If you ever get the chance to speak with a Chinese Kung Fu master get them to demonstrate Chi. Ask a practitioner of Iron Palm to break a coconut open for you with his hand... Those involve Chi Energy Transfers, not just brute strength. Sine the strongest man on earth can't break open a coconut simply by punching it.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I'm still confused on why taking the 'None of the above' opinion brings out such ire. I don't hate people for being religious. (In Rome a few years ago, I even watched in admiration the Pope give a public greeting on the steps of St. Peter's.)
Because 'None of the above' isn't as comforting as A,B, or C. And as long as you can admit to yourself (we can admit to ourselves) that we're picking our religion based on greed (God created us, he knows we operate on greed and self interest, He knows how to make it work for Him) then we won't be intolerant of others. But it's the people that feel they are somehow superior for choosing this particular religion over that particular religion (this and that being generic) that cause problems. Just like people who feel they are superior for being this color instead of that color, or this gender instead of that gender.
People who are insecure in their faith, and unsure as to why they believe what they believe are going to be openly hostile to anything which challenges their ideas because they know they have no defense for them.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I hate it when they post topics I have a vocal opinion on during the weekends, I didn't find the topic until saturday night.>:)
In that case, you don't misunderstand atheists, you misunderstand what is meant by the term "atheist." It's rare for an atheist to claim they know for certain there is no deity of any kind; rather, they reject specific claims for the existence of a deity on the same grounds for which they reject the claim for the existence of the Easter Bunny, for example, or of Santa Claus.
You don't have a problem with someone rejecting the existence of (for example) Allah -- if you're a Christian, you no doubt do this yourself ("Thou shalt have no other gods before Me"). You say you understand other religions, which I take to mean you understand someone rejecting the existence of the Christian God. How then is there a problem with understanding the union of all these specific sets of disbelief?
Another way to put it is this: all the world's religions can't be right -- there's too much contradiction between them -- but they can all be wrong. I can't prove that that's the case, but after careful examination of a large number of religions, I have to say that it's pretty easy for me to conclude that the whole lot is not worth pursuing...
What you describe here is what I view as Agnostic, not as Atheist. You admit that there is the possibility of one of the current religions being right, but you think they are wrong, but you also admit the possibility of their being a deity of some sort.
Oh, I personally do not deny the existance of Allah, and I base it on the very line you quoted. In order for there to be other gods that we could place before Him, then there must be other gods. Hence I believe there are other deities that exist as well as the Christian God. Also, my wife and I have developed a working theory for the coexistance of all religions based on the premise that all rewards and punishments are visited only on those who believe in them. Hence, Saved Christians go to heaven, unsaved go to Hell, worshippers of Satan go to Hell, everyone else is taken care of by their own deities, and Atheists and Agnostics if they are full 100% (Very difficult, most have some underlying background belief) simply cease to exist. It's not exactly scientific, but it's possible.
Anyways, I don't think you are an Atheist, I think you are an Agnostic. You haven't found anything you believe is correct yet, but you admit the possibility of something coming along.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Eh? What's this? If we can't judge people based on their beliefs (and/or actions arising from those beliefs), what are we supposed to judge them according to? Superficial things, like their appearance?
Regards,
Just because of the Roman Empire we have had to put up with 2000 years of paranoid psychotic fundyism
Actually, it's more like 1500 years, but who's counting.
Looking at the historical record, Christians have done far more to persecute and kill others than they have ever suffered
Wrong. The atrocities commited in the name of Christ were commited by innocent people who were manipulated by the corrupt and anti-Christ church, a political entity. Thus, it was the politicians using and abusing the faith of the people who brought about such attrocities. Those they manipulated continued to suffer all through the time of the church's domination in Europe. Looking at it that way, Christians never stopped suffering.
To so many Christians simply not sharing their beliefs is tantamount to religious bigotry and persecution.
That makes no sense at all. Because I'm not out on the streets sharing my beliefs, I'm being persecuted and am a victim of bigotry? You're either used to dealing with some seriously messed up people who in no way represent what Christianity is all about, or are getting your signals crossed.
They demand prayer in school (which is always forced and lead by teachers. I grew up in Alabama, so I know the reality, when they say it is always student lead and not imposed, they either don't know what is going on, or are lying).
It may have been in your school, but in my school, it really was a bunch of students who instituted a before-school prayer session. It really was students who went to the principal to obtain permission to do it. I grew up in Hawaii, so I know the reality. Yes, I just made a fallacy, as you did. You assume that your experience in Alabama is reality, where it really demonstrates the reality at your school in your community. Things were much different in my school and my community. To assume it constitutes a relevant reality to everyone else is a mistake. Be careful that you avoid making the mistakes that lead to bigotry. You're very close to it.
Christians must believe that without coercion from the government their religion will die out.
Not true at all. The Christians I know don't feel that way, and I, as a Christian, believe that government support of my Faith will result in its downfall as a part of mainstream culture. It's a historical fact that government-sanctioned/supported religions eventually die (often along with the government that supported them), while those the government persecutes endure, and even can rise to take their place. In that way, a cycle is born.
There's a reason why the United States of America was created with separation of church and state in mind. When either has a hold on the other, they both go down hard.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
I am appalled at the mention of Zen in your story submittal. It should not be included among 'paganism' of all things when considering mystical-occult-type of beliefs.
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
O confer with you on this. I myself was appalled top find it listed among the other mystic and occult beliefs such as 'paganism'. Zen is so far from all of these that is not even funny.
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
I was greatly appalled at the mention of Zen in all of this.
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
It's just a way of hacking meatspace.
No, really.
Think about it. Your average person who will follow a shamanistic path, or a neo-pagan one (with the possible exception of Gardner's Wicca) is interested in defining their own reality, in being able to have some form of control, or hand in the processes that take place around them. They want to be able to do something which The Church doesn't permit in their theology. That might not be their main motivation, they may have a host of other reasons for studying Faerie Wicca instead of Roman Catholicism, but it usually biols down to 'I want something that mainstream religion does not provide for. I want something more, and I want it to be personal.'
Well.
Replace the word 'religion' with OSs/GUIs/Servers/etc, and you have the mentality of a great number of hackers out there. Admittedly, becoming a shaman is a lot more difficult than installing Enlightenment... But it's the same thing, I think. You're changing the way you interact with the world, and defining your reality.
Jairus Pryor
Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.
> Often I solve problems well beyond my capabilities
So what your'e saying is that you can do stuff that you can't do?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
....or so they say in the atheist church in my neighborhood.
Your language, like your viewpoint, dies from your abuse of the verb to be. Your arguments extend only so far as you can stretch the meaning of that term. Your insistence that anything "is" this or "is" that completely comprises your stated agnosticism. You who'd state it immoral to project presumptions about what is unknowable carelessly toss the very verb of existence around as if it seemed some mundane quality, some common sensical notion which everyone has innate and perfect understanding of.
Your arguments carry no more weight than those of the flat-earthers, who, by common sense alone, delude themselves based on the seductive, seemingly inerrant nature of the obvious and apparent, those things which seem to need no interpretation (this, btw, is a set for which I have located no elements so far...). For a man so obviously devoted to qualifying what people may and may not know, and what they may and may not reasonably speak of, I'd suggest an emergency dose of Robert Anton Wilson and his dialogues on operational English (his tome Quantum Psychology, for example).
Your notions of rationality and reality reduce to merely another reality tunnel among the infinite range of reality tunnels. Yet another (arbitrary) grid laid against the continuum.
Sadly, you appear stuck within the confines of your own devices, striving continually to deny the subjectivity of your perspective. As if, at some point, you might completely convince yourself that your perspective was entirely objective, and thus truly qualified for gnosticism.
From within that circle, you're neglecting that the merit of any worldview descends not from any innate "accuracy" (objectivity) it possesses, but rather solely from its contextual usefulness.
Damn Cretans.
Its obvious that the universe is a lying, sneaking, sniveling, prank-pulling sack of shit.
i didn't write this next line...i don't know why it's showing up...
I have felt for a long time that the strong correlation between computer programers/sysadmins and alternative religions has to do with BOTH requiring the ability to think "outside the box" in certain ways.
Understanding computers, how they work and how to program and manage them requires thinking about things most people never approach, much less study or do routinely. The same ability to get outside the box of routine thinking is required when a person begins questioning the religion they were raised in.
I am not at all surprised that many IT professionals are exploring other religions. It is an outgrowth of their natural abilities.
--[Cyber Bear]
> Only weak minded individuals grasp at beliefs for which they have no logical basis.
Emotions have no logical basis, yet I still believe in them. Belief has nothing to do with weak-mindedness (allthough there is a tendancy for them to go hand-in-hand for some reason.)
> At heart, all religions argue most effectively towards the existence of *some* sort of "supernatural" force in the universe,
You mean TRY to prove. You can't PROVE supernatural existance, unfortunately. (Of course you can't disprove it.) Hence the mess religion is in today.
> all religions usually have nothing to support their version over another.
*ahem*
The Golden Rule "Treat others as you would have them treat you" is nothing ? I don't know about you, but ANY religion that guides a person to make the world a better place, by treating others with RESPECT, COMPASSION, and UNDERSTANDING, can't be all that bad. Methinks you need to take another in-depth look at just exactly what religion is preaching. There are SOME that are "worthwhile"
Cheers
> Christians have done far more to persecute and kill others than they have ever suffered.
Any Christian breaking the 2nd new commandment "Love your neighbor" by killing, isn't a Christian then, now is he?
--
Ya just gotta love how catholics go perverting true Christianity...
> 'No true Scotsman' falacy.
I'm not familiar with that analogy. Please explain it.
> It amazes me how often one theist bashes another theist
Pointing out incorrect doctrine and showing the correct SCRIPTURE with what it ACTUALLY says, is not bashing, unless I'm missing something.
Cheers
No Text.
Sounds like it is entirely possible to be an agnostic Christian then.
Personally I find very strong parallels between hacking, especially at some areas and mystical pursuits. Many of us "old-timers" (people around when the latest Apple prototype was in a wooden box) hung out with or were techno-hippies out to change the world through these cheap and hopefully someday ubiquitous computer chips. We largely succeeeded. Many of us felt this was as high, holy and even religious a quest as it was ever possible to have. All the more wonderful because it did not depend on any moldy ancient text or highly unlikely beliefs. Many of us are still in it to change the world and to transform humanity.
Speaking personally, I see and have always seen "the work" this way. I've always been moved by making a difference in the world. At one time I thought maybe the real difference wouldn't come through tech and attempted with full energy to find a mysticism path that worked for me and where I felt I could grow and make a difference. I learned a lot there. But technology and transformation through technology is central to me.
i think that most who partake in zen/occultism/whatever seem to treat it as more of a game then a way of life (at least i hope so). sorta similar to the reason we play d&d or magic.
--- Hey, Jesus is coming! Everyone look busy
If the Question is whether or not hackers believe in spirtual natures, my opinion is that they have to. Not because some dark master is secretly pulling at thier strings, but mainly because of the possibility that they could exist. I think most people on the net have an atheist (sorry if that is spelt wrong) type opinion to the whole spirtual side of nature, but I think those who are wise still respect them, without actually believing in them.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
There's no fundamental, logical reason why the simplist solution should be the correct one.
That is not what Occam's Razor states. The original wording was "pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate," meaning "plurality should not be posited without necessity." This basically means that when formulating a theory, there is no need for complex ideas when simpler ones will do. For example, Occam was opposed to the idea of universals, abstract terms that are common among a number of objects, such as heaviness. By Occam's Razor, there is no need for universals to exist (outside of human thought); all objects can be described by their physical attributes and the way we perceive them.
I just gnu there was something gnostic about it.
This is stereotypical nonsense with not a shred of evidence to back it up. In fact the gross generalizations are in complete disagreement with my own anecdotal observations that hackers tend to be engineering & science oriented folks with a healthy contempt for the sort of wishy washy nonsense peddled in this article. A fondness for science & sci-fi (the latter optional) and a tinkering, curious, analytical rather objective approach to everything is the norm. To dress this up with all this talk of mystic nonsense & magic is to completely misunderstand the culture. Aside from RPG's like D&D & related Tolkein-esque material there's no mysticism, and this connection has nothing to do with conventional notions of mysticism or magic.
...because if you do, then we quickly can prove using induction that all we people are gods. Of course, this depends also on YOUR definition of God. Mine is that God is the creator of the life, the universe and everything. And you don't created yourself, of course, so - in my definition of God - autotheism is crap. I'll post some of my religious views on my website someday. The only thing I can say now is that you can't play with this subject.
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
Ah, but arn't you pigeonholing geeks into the hole marked "can't be pigeonholed"?
Insert wit here.
I don't use *nixes to deviate from the rest of society. I have recognized a need for more stability, scalability, etc. in an OS. I don't necessarily feel shunned. MS products don't offer what I need, so I seek alternatives. I do not do this to become a non-conformist.
Granted, I probably play D&D/Rifts/*.RPG because of the geek in me, but I refuse to believe that my life is based upon consciencious objection.
i bet this study was around older scientists. i wonder what they would find in a study of 20-30 year old tech/science types. i would guess much more nonbelievers
There are many ideas in Christianity. What you have chosen to emphasize makes you essentially no different from a good Buddhist, Pagan or Athiest. It seems you have found an aspect of your tradional religion you can focus on and be a good person. That's good, but what about the other parts of Christianity?
So, are these elements not bad, or are they not Christianity? Hell and Original Sin are certainly a large part of the teaching of the Bible. How do you deal with them?
-- Only unbalanced people can tip the scales.
Back in the early ninties I and some of my friends got into magic, but quickly got out when we all came to the independant conclusion that it was "just another religion." By '95, almost all the the technically elite people I knew were atheist, non-mystic types.
Today, all of the technically competent people I know are atheist, non-mystic types.
It's worth noting that the circles I run in tend to be west coast (both bay area and LA), mostly ex-musician, math/EE geek types.
From my small corner of the world it looks like the current batch of digit-heads is rejecting the dualist view of the world (sometimes violently).
-RB
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
So now for a brief commercial: isn't the Biblical account of creation uniquely rational and uniquely similar to present-day scientific theory on how and when things came to be?
The Biblical account of creation appears to claim, among other things:
a.) There was a self-conscious, intelligent entity - which means, at least, that you or I could in theory have a conversation with it - and this entity existed before the creation of all the matter in the universe.
b.) There was exactly one of these things: not two, not zero.
c.) This entity, the very same one, whom English-speaking believers refer to as "God," exists essentially unchanged and with a continuity of identity, from prior to the beginning of the universe to this very day.
d.) And finally, this entity is actively concerned, even as I type, with every detail of my unimportant and pointless life, as well as yours.
Pitch overboard any of the above elements and I say you have abandoned the Biblical creation hypothesis altogether. But if these four axioms are central to the Biblical creation theory, I fail to see what is so "uniquely" convincing about it. First of all, why only one "God"? In nature, as we see around us, so many things that generate new forms reproduce by twos; why is "God" single and lonely? Second, if the properties of the universe are the outcome of consciousness, why are they so boringly mechanical? One would expect water to flow up hill every now and again, just by Divine whim, if consciousness rather than mechanics created and ruled the cosmos.
Finally, why is today's "God" identical with the creator "God"? Other living things age and die and are replaced by new ones, and besides if I were "God," sentenced as He is to loneliness forever, and beholding this unsatisfactory world in such close detail as He does, I do believe I'd jump off the bridge. I did once read some philosopher somewhere who claimed that "God," though He is omnipotent by definition, nonetheless is logically incapable of killing Himself, from which follows the pride-inflating lemma that you and I possess a super-divine power to do what even "God" himself can not.
Finally, where you say
Atheistic materialism ultimately can't explain anything, because it can't account for its own existence
I can buy that notion, less because of Godel's theorem (why should the number of rules of the universe be countable, anyway?) than the old "first cause" argument (if X caused everything what caused X? if the world rests on the back of a giant turtle, upon what does the turtle rest?) but the "first cause" paradox weighs equally heavily against any scheme, theistic or atheistic, which claims to globally explain the universe.
Skeptically yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
How can you possibly know there are no gods / is no God?
The problem you have is that you expect a person's beliefs to be watertight and absolutely unsinkable. I can't imagine being so egotistical to claim that my arguments are irresistible against those of any and all debaters from now till eternity. I would also like to point out that you yourself surely do not use the words "belief" of "believe" in this rigid sense elsewhere when you talk.
For example, you or I might honestly, sincerely, and reasonably say, "I believe it's not going to rain tomorrow, so I will pack a picnic lunch and prepare to go fishing." If you say this to me, I'm not about to jump down your throat with "But how can you be sure?" Now we know that we can't be absolutely sure what the weather is going to be tomorrow. But we can still formulate a belief and act upon it. A couple of other common beliefs are these:
a.) The Sun is going to rise tomorrow, and
b.) The Sun is going to rise the day after I die.
Everyone believes the first, right? yet no one can prove it ahead of time; we'd have to wait until tomorrow to absolutely know it is true. The second is even weirder; clearly, by deinition, I can't ever possibly prove that one. But who reading this fails to put 100% full reliance on either conjecture?
If you like, for us to firmly hold mundane beliefs such as these is nothing less than a leap of faith; "faith" is a word which alarms atheists and theists alike, but the alternative to this ordinary sort of faith is that we don't make any plans whatsoever any more.
The difference, then, between an atheist and an agnostic is that an atheist believes that there definitely is no such thing as "God" and he orders his actions and plans accordingly, whereas an agnostic believes that the "God" question is either currently unsolved in practice, or else is unsolvable per axiom, and he conducts his affairs with that somewhat different belief in mind.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Nice rant! Thanks for writing. Say, how do you feel about VP candidate Lieberman, that Social Security bandito^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprivatizer, and his claim that we atheists (and for that matter, followers of non-theistic religions like Buddhism) can't possibly be good Merkins on account of us failing to believe in "God"? And, ha ha, the very next day after I read that crap in the newspaper, I get a solicitation in my mailbox from the Democratic National Committee asking me to dig into my wallet and give till it hurts! Bite me, DNC, and rack up another vote for Righteous Ralph instead!
cf. our crabby old friend Mencken on this very issue.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Me too, I agree entirely, you betcha. "IXTHUS," Greek for "fish," is an acronym and an excellent multi-level pun (cf. Mark 1:17, Matthew 4:19) nearly two millenia old, which, expanded, spells out "Iesus Christos Theu Uios Soter," or in English "Jesus Christ Son of God Savior".
Now whenever I see someone with one of them cute lil' "IXTHUS" fishies glued to the rear end of their car, I immediately think, "Whoo-ee! What a vicious atheist, gratuitously insulting the world's billion-plus Christians with that ugly one-letter abbreviation for 'Christ'".
Yeah buddy, yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
ps: animated fish .GIF courtesy of this web page...
So whatever X is, Xes are just wonderful and they never do wrong, because as soon as they do wrong, they're instantly no longer Xes. That's cheating.
Besides, ask them. Axe in hand, blood up to their elbows and knees, they'll proudly tell you, "ad majorem gloriam Dei."
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Maybe I scrolled to fast, but I didn't see this yet. So I put it there. fnord.
good call dude.
absolutely.
http://www.stallman.org/saint.html.
--
Jon
(actually a Christian, but at least no longer using vi)
One thing that I have not seen, and I hope never to, is any geek attempt to press his/her views on anyone else. One common trend seems to be, these are my beliefs, I will discuss them, but not try and convert people. Most people have the intelligence to choose there own way, and there seems to be a respect for that. (this does not apply to window managers)
I have also noticed that even with hackers and geeks that follow "mainstream" beliefs there is often a tendancy to reject the organised structures of thats belief, which in most religions is not against the word of the god(s), but can be against specific branchs of that religion (there are some obvious exceptions).
-- "[The] NSA can eat shit and die until they stop listening to my phone calls" - TastyWheat
There was a need to replace the spiritual void left by this departure of both kin group and Christianity, and the default was to seek out pre-Christian spiritual traditions. Unfortunately, those spiritual traditions were of by and for country folk, and instead we got the urban neopagans headed by urban ethnics like Margot Adler and "Starhawk" who describes herself as a "radical Jew". Sorry, Jews just aren't country folk -- they are virtually the antithesis -- and they really don't understand the spiritual needs of the kinds of people who came off the farms to build engineering excellence at places like Control Data Corporation, Cray Research, PLATO and NCSA.
Whether you call yourself a "heathen" meaning you're from the heather lands, or you call yourself a pagan, meaning you're from the countryside, you don't really belong in an urban area and you don't really belong under the influence of the current neopagan leadership.
Neopaganism is merely a new form of that old time Middle Eastern religion run by urbanites just like Christianity.
Seastead this.
Dickhead and asshole are not inherently insults either but when they are spoken with the intent to be interpreted in a certain way (sarcasm), they are insults.
xian is not historical. It is a different language. We do not speak hebrew-english anymore and chinese-english. Let alone the dialect of Christ and the Apostles.
Would you question where your senses came from? I wonder what your senses can tell you there.
Well, What we are talking about is 'x' being translated from the greek 'Chi' (pronounced 'kee') and it's not a proper translation. There is more but this is not a direct christian theological debate, it doesn't require detail. (Detail=argument.. bleh)
fnord.
What will the Internet bring for religions? We are starting to see more and more information about the 'secondary' religions. What is this going to mean to the primary faiths? Are we looking at witch-hunts in cyberspace?
With all the advances in life and technology, why are we still bound to ways of an empire that 'Blue Screened' 1500 years ago? Why is there still a separation between men and women with the Christian church? This is due to the fact that the first churches were based on the Roman Government hierarchy. How can we continue this when more and more of our lives are in the net where sex doesn't change much? Why is the Christian church based on the Bible, when the actually text was determined by the size of the first books donated for this purpose? Text and scripture were dropped due to the lack of space. Are we not in age where we want all information, we want it now, and we want it free?
Maybe some of these are the reasons for the link between 'Hackers' and Mystics. Maybe it is the idea that opposite are needed in life, the highest technology and the most basic of earth.
These points are just to make you question within your own life and faith. It is said that God is love. God loves all equally. Then why is there so much hate and inequality with churches?
CaptAngryPants aka Eric
http://rustmedia.tv
Well its certainly true within my experience that a lot of modern Pagans are also technically inclined, but not my experience that a lot of techs are Pagans. I think the one is a subset of the other.
I have been interested in computers since I first played with the mainframe at the University of Victoria, and with my friends Trash80 and Apple II. I have been interested in Witchcraft and Paganism for an even longer period - over 25 years now. I am an initiated Alexandrian Wiccan (for those not familiar with Wicca, view it as a subset of Modern Paganism. Modern Paganism includes a variety of religious beliefs based on resurrecting Pre-Christian religous practices. Neither have anything to do with Satanism, Satan being part of the Judeo-Christian mythos).
I run a website devoted to Paganism (Omphalos if you are curious), currently work as a programmer on several websites, and spend much of my time learning about various technical subjects - mostly relating to programming, Linux, and FreeBSD. Within the Pagan community, I am fairly typical.
I think the thing that attracts many technical types to Paganism is that it is generally unstructured, non-authoritarian, and fairly do-it-yourself in nature. It also does not insist in any "One True Way(TM)". I can have a conversation with another Pagan, differing in our viewpoints entirely, and there is nothing in either philosophy which excludes acceptance of the other's religous practices in most cases. Paganism accepts that there is no one truth, so there is no one correct way.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Uhm, contradictions in reality are a big part of science. Look at quantum physics for some nice examples. Math/CS are different since they are invented logical systems, but the physical sciences are hardly straightforward.
(That being said, I'm still an atheist... but the real world is f**ked up and complicated, "clean logical structure" exists only in your mind, if at all).
I don't like mocking people's beliefs, but,
... means "thinks that it is immoral to have knowledge that you could not possibly have".
"I am also agnostic -- "agnostic"
There is no God. There are no gods..."
How can you possibly know there are no gods / is no God? How can you know the Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist? I agree that they probably don't, but saying that you consider claiming knowledge that you don't have immoral, and then claiming such knowledge yourself, seems a bit odd.
I've probably misunderstood something here, and this isn't intended as a flame to your set of beliefs, but I don't see how your attitude is consistent.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I do see a bit of a Gnostic attitude in many hackers, though, and it conflates with the anti-orgnaized religion tendency. Gnostics believed that the world was created not by God, but by an evil being called Demiurge. ISTM that many hackers feel the world is far too fscked up to have been created by a perfect, good being. A general preference for the intellectual (not to say noetic) over the physical, corresponding roughly to the Gnostic belief that material existence is inherently evil, exemplifies this as well.
Me? I'm an Eastern Orthodox Christian. This is the Christian group that has best preserved it's mystical traditions, so in a way I'm an example of what Chaoli the Grey was talking about.
And the brethren went away edified.
The fact that such a miserable, hate-filled screed filled with questionable facts and flaccid self-justification got modded up to 4 is proof that the statement in the subject line is true.
And the brethren went away edified.
I like to smoke pot and play Quake, and when I do it feels pretty damned righteous.... does that count?
Oompa Doompa Doompa de de.
I want Linux instead on NT.
It's always fun to play with religious fundies (kind of like poking a rabid badger with sharp sticks).
One fun thing to do: hold a long religious discussion w/in earshot of a fundie, but always refering to God & Jesus as females (e.g., Goddess instead of God), but leave most of the other details the same.
Most of them will recognize what you're doing, but the conflict that the mental imagery creates with their permanently-engraved patriarchical view of their faith will REALLY make them uncomfortable - and the ones who can't take it also get upset when you accuse them of not believing that She is All Things and can be female if She wants to, and that they shouldn't be imposing their puny human prejudices on Her.
I'm assuming that you also include the ability to detect by deduction, as in: "We cannot directly observe the existence of this phenomena (like an elusive subatomic particle, for instance), but through logic & indirect observations, we have eliminated all other probable causes."
I always thought Chi was some kind of useful mental abstraction which allowed someone who was "practiced" in it to manipulate a lot of the usually-subconscious functions of their brain & bodies.
ala John C. Lilly's Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Bio-Computer.
and to stay on topic, i'm a geek, and i'd be more willing to believe John Lilly's beliefs over that of any of the Bishops i know. so the stereotype fits here, at least. :)
- j
dude, take some strong hallucinogens. seriously.
- j
I wonder what effect having a Churge of Open Religion would have on the current legal landscape. Could we argue against the DMCA on grounds that it violates the separation of church and state?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Hackers are statistically brighter than normal and prone to long periods of introspection. Anyone who has debugged code for more than 4 hours straight can claim that easily. So they'll think about philosophical issues, including religion and actually have an opinion. Most people I've encountered don't care enough about any of this stuff to have one - the response to "What religion are you?" is "I dunno".
Why neopaganism, buddhism, and other alternative religious beliefs? That's easy - you get to pick the rules you like, or better yet, make up your own rules as you go along. Atheists have it best of all - no rules at all. The traditional "mainstream" (OK, Judeo-Christian) religious beliefs mostly talk about rules, self-sacrifice, and morality, which are so inconvenient. They have hard standards to live up to (you try really loving your enemies). They get a lot of bad press because nothing gets people pissed off faster than someone else telling them they shouldn't do what they want to do. I haven't see anything that makes hackers any different than anyone else in that respect.
BTW, I was heavily into RPGs, Zen Buddhism, and magic at different times, too. Now I'm into the the scary stuff - I'm a Jesus Freak.
Pachooka-san
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. --Thomas Jefferson
Long before everybody and their mother used the Internet there were neo-pagan and occult ftp-archives and newsgroups
There is a good reason for that. I remember when I was in high school, and I was quite interested in the concept of Libertarianism, which I had only ready about in books. Growing up in a small town in Canada, there were no other people with similar beliefs... which frustrated me a lot. Then I discovered Usenet... where thousands of people discussed and argued the things I thought about, instead of pop artists and movie stars and football players.
Now, I can imagine someone interested in the occult, or some other somewhat obscure concept, that would have a great attraction to the net for the same reason. I don't think that there is any natural disposition to the occult... it's just a result of the disparate locations of uncommon beliefs.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
Religion tends to be rigid as most religions have a set of beliefs to conform to, I think rather it's your faith thats modular. Faith and religion don't necesarily walk hand in hand... my 2 cents
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
ACK! Where do I begin with this.... Lets get this out of the way I am NOT a christian (is that like IANAL?) But to have no faith in anything you cannot see or detect seems to me to be a pretty empty way to live your life. I don't mean any disrespect of course. So many things can be inferred from existence itself. The very idea that we live, breathe and walk in such an amazing world/universe requires faith in something, be it religion/science whatever. Science itself requires vast amounts of faith. so many "theories" have nothing else to stand on but "possiblies", "maybes", and "this might have happened..."
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
There is no God. There are no gods. Jesus was a man. He lived, he died. End of story. There are no UFOs hovering over earth. The Loch Ness Monster does not exit. Neither does Bigfoot. There are not an abnormal number of vanishing ships/planes in the Bermuda Triangle compared to anywhere else. Crystals do not have unexplained power. There is no such thing as chi.
I could go on. My point is, there is no reason to think that anything exists aside from what we can detect with our senses (and devices that enhance our senses, like radio telescopes).
Mysticism has its place -- in sci-fi. That's it. In the real world, all that has a place is reality.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I disagree. We don't "have faith" that it works. We KNOW FOR A FACT IT WORKS. How? I may not have any idea how gcc works, but I can actually use it to compile a program. I don't have to have faith that it compiled, because I have hard evidence: the binary!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
My apologies; what I should have said was, "I have no reason to think that there is a God, or that there are any gods."
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Oh who cares! Christians have the biggest, most pathetic persecution complex. Just because of the Roman Empire we have had to put up with 2000 years of paranoid psychotic fundyism. Looking at the historical record, Christians have done far more to persecute and kill others than they have ever suffered. To so many Christians simply not sharing their beliefs is tantamount to religious bigotry and persecution. They demand prayer in school (which is always forced and lead by teachers. I grew up in Alabama, so I know the reality, when they say it is always student lead and not imposed, they either don't know what is going on, or are lying). Christians must believe that without coercion from the government their religion will die out.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
What, in a forum chock full of geeks? :) Admittedly, I was looking forward to finding out what MUD he was on so I could see how many times I could whip his ass while he tried to PK me using some godawful 12,000 line perl script as a client. ;)
Deo
I find it hard to believe that comparing someone (favorably or unfavorably) to any bodily oriface can be seen as a neutral statement of fact - regardless of intonation.
Referring to someone by their faith because it is the salient thing about them at that moment is NOT the same as calling someone a dickhead. I doubt most Christians are offended at being labelled "Christian" - I know some of the more fervent believers dislike the shortening of Christ in any context (Xmas, Xtian, etc), but I'm not sure they should consider it an insult any more than when someone uses other acronyms, like, say, "AFAIK".
Of course, if you really want, you can turn any word into an insult if you try hard enough.
Wind
Politics: You kid me not?
Money: Makes the world go around?
There is scientific evidence that the earth
has rotated without is as well..
Hinduism: Worshipping of all evil things like Shiva, the Godess of destruction and bringing
sacrifices.
Principally the same ancient believe know as
Baal (god of the heavens, also know as Lord of hell)/ Astarte (she who revolts, queen of heavens)-worshipping were the Bible is pretty straight-forward about..
Neo-Paganism: See Hinduism
New-age: See Hinduism
Budhism: Sacrificing your bad habits, seeking the small path to enlightment
(to bad they never seem to find the small path
leading to Jesus, so they could fill their need
for ultimate enlightment). p.s. A Budist once rose from the dead after three days (he already smelled like a corpse), he told the other monks it was all a lye, he saw Budha and the other enlightened people burn in hell (sad, but possibly true).
300 Budist became Christians, but the guy was
later on killed, because of his views..
Jews: "Ye Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one", the God of Abrahim, Isaac and Jacob is
the only God, to bad they didn't notice the Messiah came already..
Islam: They are getting closer, Jesus is a remarkable Prophet and His word is the Word of God, yes indeed, but without regonizing Jesus as Savior, you can't enter the Heavenly Kingdom.
Remember what Mohamed said about the other prophets? (Somewhere in "Yuna Yuris", or how do
you spell it) If you can't find your answer in the Koran, try the Bible..
Mormons: see Hinduism
Sihks: Every one should work hard for his living,
even bosses (yep) and everyone should be able to protect himself.. Hmm okay sounds reasonable, but how about a living relationship with God?
Atheist: Ever tried the Red Pill?
Religous Christianity: Didn't you learn anything
what Jesus said about the Pharisees?
Hates everything what makes life enjoyable..
Gives Christianity a bad taste in a lot of peoples
mouths..
Practical Christianity: Rare, takes Galatians
and Mathew 24,25 as their guiding line..
It's walking the small path to enlightment
and salvation, sacrificing your bad habits etc..
Another thing:
Yoga: Idiotic practice of worshipping of
the Goddess of Destruction (Shiva), definatly the primary ingredient for destroying your own life..
The Holy Spirit is the only one, who gives
true peace...
IXTHUS, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour
In God we trust,
manuel
I took a degree in Philosophy, with a concentration on the philosophy of religion. A year later, I was programming in Perl and maintaining a medium sized website for a living. People always ask, "do you do anything with what you learned in college?" I always tell them that the skill I learned was focus and clear thought - a requirement for both reaching spiritual states of mind and keeping all your variables in scope.
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
So, if programmers are sorcerers, what does that make us computer hardware engineers? And, in understanding how the computer operates, does that may me mad, relative to normal life?
-Dave Haynie
'nuff said. ^_^
Is it possible there's simply a diverse group of people, with many faiths, much like the population at large, and the story here is that there is no story?
/., in the geek community, as in the public at large, people tend to adopt certain attitudes based on their perspective vis a vis those of other. Atheists decry the terrible influence and backwards political agenda of the religious right; christians cite the unacceptance of their religion, many believers in smaller practices are either the "lurkers" of their religions (practicing, not talking about it), or talkative, enthusiastic, information, and oddly accepted by the same people decrying christianity as backwards. And what I believe is the largely silent majority has little to say on the topic other than: don't use religion to judge people or their views
/. posts which actually have something insightful to offer, and at the same time horrified of the ease at which people toss around harmful labels or sarcastic flames, as though the sarcastic flaming will appeal to anyone other than the people they pander to with it.
I think so. I also have noticed that here on
Personally, I'd probably expand that: don't use labels, religious or otherwise. I've been labelled a number of things myself, from ignorant to "randite", based on the topic at hand, and it certainly doesn't advance us anywhere to label people instead of using arguments that make sense. I've found myself both consistently impressed by the plethora of truly intelligent
Or, in other words, it seems to me no different that the people I encounter every day in normal life (a geeky life though it may be). And that variety truly is the spice of life, and one of the best things the net has going for it. By committing to truly commit for a minute to another viewpoint, we can all gain the ability to either integrate it into ourselves, or reject it and know why, if we truly seek to understand, rather than to attack.
And even better, when I enter a room, I wave my hand towards the wall next to the door, and "let there be light"
A.C. Clarke once said that sufficently advanced thechnology is magic. (=
- Knut S.
Heh, heh...
Problem I face I try to live Catholocism to its fullest However, I say this and everyone in the tech world that is so open minded to all the 'fringe' ideas calls me an idiot for being 'traditional' etc. BULL ... shit
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
...that this post hasn't got a hope in hell of getting modded up, being so far down the list and all, but oh well.
Personally, I don't believe in a god. My friends tell me I'm too scientifically minded; I think that's close: I'm too logical. Or something. I can't accept the idea of any god. But on the other hand, I know many people do. And I think that, for them, in some way, that god is real. But I doubt that there is one Jewish god, or one Christian god, or one Muslim god, or that they're all the same, or whatever, because I think that each person's god would be different. Religion is sort of a symbiont: you serve it, but at the same time, it serves you. And so I think everyone believes in their religion the way it best suits them, and thus their god in the way it suits them, and so there's really a god for every person.
Well, maybe. I'm still not sure. All I know is that I don't have a god. I guess for that you need faith, and I can't put faith in something I have no tangible evidence for the existence of.
On an almost totally related note, I have noticed varous spellings of magic. Magik, magick, magic... I am reminded of Terry Pratchett's recent masterpiece, Carpe Jugulum. It's about vampires. But they're trying to be modern (unhurt by garlic, holy wayter, etc.), so they call themselves vampyres. But in the end, holy water burns them the same as any other Creature of the Night. The narrator ntoes, "Vampyres are just like vampires, except they can't spell" or some such. Does it matter how you spell it? It's the same idea, no? (I might be totally off. Magic and magick could be totally seaprate things and it's just beyond my comprehension. If that's the case, please tell me)
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Indeed, I remember when I learned this concept in my high school freshman biology class. It was one of the cornerstone ideas that changed my athiesm from one form to another.
I used to dispute the Bible (et al.) in terms of contradictions and historical evidence. However, I no longer debate history or the fossil record. There is no need.
Now, I simply ignore the religion as an unprovable, irrelevant story. The scientific requirement that "a hypothesis must be testable" was a key idea that motivated my transition.
God gave all people an opportunity to choose.
One of my gripes with Christianity is the lack of concensus about which events are forced by God and which events are chosen by people. People thank God for giving them opportunities, as if the world was contrived just to present them with such a decision; then, a person's response to such a challenge is judged as "sinful" or "righteous" or whatever. My observation of Christians is that their partition between "events that God determines" and "events decided by the morality of people" is cloudy; their classification seems to be based more on convenience and context than on principle.
Most people I know that are Christians (including myself) believe that they are no better than other people.
Christians might withhold judgement my morality, but often they still try to convert me. In other words, they still say: I know this and you don't. That implied insult just advocates their "better-that-thou" status in a different way.
I admit that I am not flawless, but every time I have trusted in God I have been happier.
That is probably the most convincing argument for becoming a Christian. "Try it, have faith, and you will be rewarded." The only problem is that I have good reasoning skills and knowledge of math and statistics. Therefore, I am unlikely to associate perceived rewards with the appropriate moral actions because I usually find easier, more normal explanations.
When Christians talk about "God"... They are talking about someone that they believe to be omniscient and omnipotent. In other words it is clearly within his power to know how each of us will react and place us in situations which will allow us to excercise our free agency, so that we can learn and grow (assuming we choose correctly :).
This reply doesn't contradict my point; it supports it. If He "knows how each of us will react" then what is the point of testing us? If he is all-knowing and can predict our responses, then why would he throw me into a situation that tests my morality and then make a judgment based on whether I did good or bad (i.e. whether I go to Heavan or Hell)? Nevermind the fact how that particular test interacts with other people's trials.
Perhaps you want to clarify your point?
You might scoff at my beliefs as delusion, that is certainly your right. But to judge my belief system without making the experiment yourself is hardly scientific. Open the scriptures with an open mind, read them, and pray to your Heavenly Father in Christ's name and ask him if he truly exists. Then make your judgements as to what is true.
I rarely "scoff at" or "judge" your belief system. I mostly ignore it, like I dismiss the other religions that I could also try. For a true outsider, Christianity does not seem particularly attractive; there just isn't a good starting point.
I may occasionally sample a religion for whatever value I can extract. For example, I saw a documentary once on the Sherpas(?) of Tibet. They labored for hours creating colorful sand pictures; when they finished, they would blow the sands away until nothing remained. I thought of it as a beautiful analogy for death (sort of a way to practice becoming comfortable with loss). I could empathize with them enough to see that their traditions had value. I didn't have to follow their entire lifestyle or believe their whole religion.
However, I see evidence that the only way for me to experience Christianity is to completely immerse myself in it. Fat chance, given that I am already very comfortable with my more scientific view of the world.
We are tested because that is how we learn.
Learning may occur as a result of the test, but I am still concerned with the Heaven vs. Hell thing. Good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell, right? Presumably, the decision is based on what people do when God removes the collar and unleashes them in an environment that challenges them with a choice between righteous acts and evil deeds. In the words of another poster:
However, if He "knows how each of us will react" then the test is determined in advance. This seems to contradict the idea that the person has free will. That's why I asked for a clarification from that poster. Do YOU believe that God knows the result of actions of free will, despite the fact that he is not controlling the person during that time of freedom?
If you are truely seeking the Truth you will examine all evidence.
I don't seek "the Truth", as you call it. When something inspires me to wonder "is there a god-like influence in the universe" then I will examine religion. Until then, I think that God is an irrelevant and unprovable hypothesis.
If you truely feel strongly about what you believe then Christians wouldn't bother you a bit.
Indeed, non-interfering Christians don't bother me a bit.
I encourage you not to make your judgements just because you don't feel right, or there are people pressuring you to think differently.
Oh please... like I need a lesson in critical thinking.
I have learned patience, love, and peace all through God.
I have learned patience, love, and peace through introspection, examples, and possibly other mundane means. I am not deprived of feeling.
No. It is not about good and bad people, there is no such thing.
I don't want to debate the petty semantics of "good" and "bad". My point is that there must be some decision procedure for deciding whether people go to Heaven or Hell. Your followup describes that procedure:
Heaven according to Christianity is for those that believe in Jesus Christ as their savior (the one who can wash away their sins) and God as the only true God.
Okay whatever, so some people have x and some don't, and only people with x go to Heaven. The particular choice of x is not the main focus of my writing, so I will ignore the issues that it raises, such as sudden deathbed conversions.
Yes, he sees everything as a line of time, we see only what we are alive for, and how things affect us... He knows we are going to make mistakes, but he allows us to have a free will because he wants us to believe in Him because we know it's the Truth, not because we were forced into believing it.
This is exactly what I wanted you to say :-)
It would be a good exercise for me to write a critique of this philosophy; however, today I want to keep it brief. Let me just say that there are big issues about where the line is drawn between God's will and free will. Every time a football player thanks God for the opportunity to play in the championship game, the player asserts something about that boundary. It seems to be common practice among Christians to make similar assumptions in other circumstances. Sure, you can be humble about it when debating philosophy:
I'd like to say that I don't know everything, and I don't intend on ever thinking I do.
...but in reality, I often see Christians being very arrogant about knowing the difference, despite the complexity of it. I stand by my original comment: "One of my gripes with Christianity is the lack of concensus about which events are forced by God and which events are chosen by people. My observation of Christians is that their partition between 'events that God determines' and 'events decided by the morality of people' is cloudy; their classification seems to be based more on convenience and context than on principle"
Why have the Christians been hit so hard with animocity of solicitation? I see far more solicitators that are trying to take something from you. Christians at least are trying to give you something.
It has nothing to do with your intentions; it's about your product. You have nothing to offer. That is why you are rejected like a bad spam.
You might think that I haven't properly tried the religion and therefore I have no basis for rejecting it. However, I am confident that I can ignore Christianity. I have my reasons. If I smell sour milk, then I don't have to drink it to know it's rotten.
On the other hand, there is a rather small percentage of Americans that are not Christian (less than 10%). Of this minority nearly all of them are quite vocal in their contempt for Christianity.
Common Christian arrogance. Sorry for the flaming, but in this case I fight fire with fire.
I won't speak for the Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, etc., but I can say with confidence that most athiests and agnostics are not seeking a religious fight nor are they even demanding your attention. That lack of obvious visible presence is probably why you underestimate the representation of beliefs other than your own. Hmmm, does it suprise you that Slashdot seems to have an anti-Christian bias?
As for myself, I've been very comfortable with my athiesm for a long time. I engaged in only one serious religious discussion in the past seven years (since I was a college freshman). It was provoked by a dinner companion who commented that the Hare Krishnas across the street were going to Hell; he then spontaneously asked me: "so what do YOU believe?" He gave me the usual "try it, you'll like it" speech as if I hadn't been exposed to Christianity enough already.
Personally, I have had about a dozen friends, coworkers, and relatives who I knew were athiest. All of them were thoughtful, independent, well-educated people. More importantly, none of them were forcefully pushing an agenda. Perhaps I know many more athiests, but I don't notice because the conversation simply doesn't revolve around that sort of thing.
Anyway, I'm not suprised by the lack of athiest efforts to convert people or even to be noticed. Since I doubt that a Christian could convert me, I know by my own example that it is hopeless to try to talk sense into Christians. Furthermore, it is not our religious imperative to convert others in an a friendly effort to save their souls.
Of course, there are many kinds of athiests and agnostics, and certainly some of them will be vocal. For example, they may engage in political action to prevent their rights from being trampled by Christians. School-led Christian prayer is a classic example. Consider that for every "minority" that counteracts school-sponsored Christian prayer, there were many, many individuals who tolerated the Christian arrogance silently. On a more personal note, I participate in Christian activities with my Christian family. I value the interaction with my family and I simply don't want to rock the boat.
In summary, the common Christian myth that athiests are vocal activists results from Christian ignorance and lack of exposure.
Look at the number of Darwin fish you see, for example.
Do you think that wearing a Darwin fish is more intrusive and contemptuous than wearing a cross?
Just like you don't want to hear me talk of Christ I don't particularly want to hear you compare Christians to Spammers.
These are not parallel. You asked why "if you had something that made your life better wouldn't you want to share it with others?" Are you complaining that you got a response? In contrast, the original poster is simply not searching for religion and does not need preachers to bring it to him.
Then why do you blame all Christians every time you meet an annoying one.
I don't think that overgeneralizations are a problem with the original post. Perhaps his post would make more sense if you replaced the word "Christians" with the phrase "Christians who preach to me" which is clearly what the author is referring to. I think that your fixation on that issue has caused you to miss the main idea of his post. Since his point is similar to one that I made earlier, I will paraphrase it by quoting my own earlier words:
"You (Christians) have nothing to offer. That is why you are rejected like a bad spam. You might think that I haven't properly tried the religion and therefore I have no basis for rejecting it. However, I am confident that I can ignore Christianity. I have my reasons. If I smell sour milk, then I don't have to drink it to know it's rotten."
Hence, repeated Christian intrusions are treated like spam.
This typecasting of people never gets old, does it. Note the number of posts.
I agree with the dude who said "I believe I'll have another drink"
Now that's cool!!!
i flew out of my body once(okay thirteen times) while i was on shrooms.
Wow, one of the most interesting things I have read here for a very long time. Thank you for taking the time to set that down.
--8<--
--8<--
It could just be the fact that the people who are attracted to high-tech jobs tend to be intelligent and metnally active and, over time, start to notice things. Not a few of them are given to speculation, contemplation, and looking for patterns. Not only that, we may find that "nerds" suffer from some social austracism (okay, we've been over this). This might lead to a tendency to look outside the herd for ideas and beliefs.
Add the fact that programming can require the ability to enter near-autistic states of concentration and you have people looking at Zen (actually meditation) seriously. You might also get people thinking about the mystical connectivity of the Internet and also the fact that it all just "works" (if you have ever written a program on one computer and compiled it on another you may know what I mean) and you have "faith" in the system. None of us FULLY understands every aspect of computing and networking. We have faith that it all works most of the time. When we know what is wrong we fix it, but there is always some unknown factors. Refreshing isn't it? :)
--8<--
--8<--
I propose a challenge.
Slashdost posts two stories:
We'll see which one gets breaks the 500 comment barrier first!
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!
I prefer to think of religion as Object Oriented code.
while reincarnation() { never die };
if jesus(savior) == true { &praise(jesus) };
etc...
-Josh
Makes things much simpler. Easier to parse.
> Oh, by the way, the whole "pagan" movement > mostly has to do with trying to justify orgies So who's the Geek now?
I was not the one who posted, but I will put my name behind it. I am sorry that the original author is not putting a name behind his (or her) beliefs. I too believe that there is one true God; and He exists in three persons: The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Over 2 million people came to Rome in late August this year to celebrate World Youth Day 2000! This is an unbelievable number of people celebrating their faith. As Pope John Paul II said, in the past, when large groups of young people came together, it was for war. Now, so many young persons have come together to celebrate peace and faith in Christ.
The Holy Spirit was with us that week, and all of us were moved deeply by the experience. I know that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour, and hope that all who profess the same have live more fully in him and experience the love of Christ.
Magic might be described as the ways to deal with the unknown (or what can't easily be known thru our senses).
seen this way, computers are magic for virtually everyone using a computer. Who understand their hardware, and all code for their OS and all apps?
Since both misticism and computers require the same kind of curiosity, open mind, and patience, maybe the link between both is just natural?
Anyway, I fit the description being interested in easters "religions", meditations and magick
I _believe_ Discoridanism is the true faith. hehehe
I've always felt that hacking and 'magic' overlap so much because they're both difficult and confusing ways to view the world :)
:) It's much easier to believe that the computer is angry at me for something, and needs to be appeased (usually by swearing vehemently). I know that deep down, it's all ones and zeroes, all just electrons zipping around through semiconductors. But still I always keep a few broken ICs next to my Yoda PEZ dispenser, to scare away the evil spirits lurking inside the case. (Not to mention the hex inverter hung above my door...)
Seriously, though... given the correlation between SciFi/Fantasy fans and hackers (and why is that? That's another topic entirely), I think it's pretty self-evident. Think about it. Wizards make strange sounds and gestures that Mere Mortals can't possibly comprehend, and *poof!* Something amazing occurs. Hackers type strange things that Mere Mortals can't possibly comprehend, and *poof!* The machine does something amazing.
Plus, computers are complex entities. Borrowing a meme from ESR, it's much easier sometimes to imagine that a computer is a sentient (and sometimes malevolent) being, with its own thoughts, desires, fears, and motives... and that we can never quite know what all those motives are.
I know that when my code fails to compile even though the changes I've made should work perfectly, I've done something wrong. But we hate thinking that our mistakes are our own fault
How this relates to Real World religion is kinda unclear to me... I know that personally, traditional Western religions seem too arbitrary and internally inconsistent to me to be of much value. Perhaps that has something to do with it -- spending our lives working on devices that are by definition perfectly consistent (we hope) tends to lead us to feel that God(s) wouldn't be any less. *shrug*
I dunno. Zen just "feels right" sometimes. But then there are the days that I truly *am* a Discordian...
- fader
Or, if you prefer, Riven, the sequel to the Mystery of faith.
----
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
The only thing I desperately want to believe in is the human spirit, but thus far, I've been severely disappointed.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
It is moderately likely on the grounds that geeks tend to be non-conformist (so I can use anecdotal evidence too) which will increase the percentage of both atheists and mystics compared to the general population.
To my mind, a more pernicious questionable link is geeks and libertarianism.
I am an atheist (closely linked to a scientific world view/philosophy), middle-left politically, pro-gun control (and fortunately living in a country with fairly good gun laws.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
"The electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud" --The Mentor That is indeed the religon of many who roam the digital world. Some say it's just a machine, but to others such as myself, the machine has a soul, it gives so much and asks for hardly anything in return. We devote ourselves to the machine, and knowing it better. For that is what the meaning of hacking is. In devoting ourselves to the machine, we better ourselves. It doesn't matter what you are running, from an Athalon to a Comodore 64, it's there. One day I hope to unlock the mystery, but I have a long way to go, as it is a journey that never ends. Why bother with other religons when there is one right here, right now.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
You're very correct. Many so-called adherents to the doctrine think that Zen is only a mindset, a way of approaching the world. As you say, this fits in easily with their comfortable lifestyle. Zen is hard. It is waking up every morning before the dawn to practice the form and doing so until the night.
So are deep-lore programmers Zen? Are they taoists? When they can write code and *know* that it works, are they akin to the Tao archer that lets his arrow loose and does not check the target because he *knows* that it struck true?
Realizing that both ways hold truths, maybe a Seeker looks to some Eastern tradition and finds comfort in a religion that accepts all gods. It accepts the Tao as easily as Yama and YHWH and Jehovah. The outward representations of its faith become apparent in intricate mathematical mosaics and is conducive to the programmer occupations, not just for the math, but for the meditative sessions required for both.
pish.
I merely have to WALK by the box to resurrect it. Shit you not, it's like an EM field or something.. or maybe it's my unshakeable belief that they're just fucking idiots and it only takes someone with half a brain to get it to boot.
Back in Ceramics class ( quit sniggering- not everyone in IT was a CS major ) we used to make a kiln-god to watch over the fire every semester. Woe betide the fool who moved and enraged the kiln-god. One unbeliever claimed it was nonsense, moved the kiln-god from his incandescent perch above the glory hole, and a greenware plate somehow managed to find it's way into the high-fire with explosive results... six shelves of porcelain pots collapsed,and the glazes and resulting pile of shards fuzed into one solid, jagged lump about a cubic meter in size. We had to use a sledgehammer to break it up...
Fast forward 13 years and two career changes. Now we have the Evil-Eye Clown Wand. The EECW consists of a Monster Eyeball Crazy-straw ( Taco Bell, 3 Halloweens ago.. ) with a Jack in the Box antenna ball stuck firmly on the end. Whenever we feel the dark cloud of self-doubt and confusion hovering above our heads, dulling our edge and robbing us of our supernatural IT abilities, we bless each other on the forehead with the EECW.... and then it's miracles as usual ( the impossible takes an extra day ) We used to just laugh about it, but lately... I figure it's building up a ferocious amount of negative karmic charge. When that wand is full, we're gonna be at ground zero of the biggest fuck-up fest you've ever seen...
3C
"If I were creating a world, I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils! I would've started with lasers, eight o'clock, day one!"
-Evil
The Christian right in the US wants to take away your freedom. Plain and simple. Anytime religion and politics cozy up, we have trouble.
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
I'm not actually going to state my beliefs because that would take too long, however, I did want to comment on the thing about judging others. I'm sure the majority of /. readers are in the computer/technology field and so in that case most of us should - if not naturally - from habit of being in the field for so long think logically and intelligently. That being the cause should you really have to tell people not to judge and argue about other people's beliefs? Shouldn't it just be I suppose common sense to accept that different people believe in different things and they are free to do that?
Me-- well I used to like playing M:TG, am a "hacker", and am also a born-again Christian. So I guess I broke the trend ;-)
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
I met a few people in high school who appeared to believe in magical stuff. I never really knew for sure. You could find hackers in the magical group, but it was most certainly not entirely computer nerds. I never really knew for sure if they actually believed in that stuff or if they were just trying to be completely different (scary too) from everyone else. The latter seemed to make more sense to me.
My father is a high school teacher, pretty good one I think, and he believes that a lot of parents (especially (not all of course) the real artsy types) try to let their children raise themselves. The parents don't pay any attention to their children, so the children go looking for attention elsewhere. After all, negative attention is better than no attention at all, right?
Personally, as far as religion goes, I don't have a freakin' clue what "is". Anyone who tells you they have it all figured out is either lying or crazy.
On another note, everyone has seen those religious zealots, right? My roomate described them in a manner that I thought fit perfectly: They have sold their souls to their religion, and now there is no hope for them. My girlfriend ran into one of those people on her college campus the other day. Spouting BS about how gays are going to hell and premarital sex is a mortal sin...etc... To me, those people are a lot scarrier than the magic people.
.sdrawkcab si gis siht
I'm a Roman Catholic.
Aren't you glad a told you so?
(This is a great Slashdot topic, ain't it?)
Watered down... I don't know. Been watered down... yes. Spend any time in alt.magick.chaos and just try to imagine a curious person being impressed by the miscellaneous posturing and repetitive quotations from their favourite Golden Dawn member.
Do hackers still believe in magic or practice a mystical religion?
Ummm.... What do you mean by 'magic'. I would suspect that most hackers believe in some form of magic, even if only by acknowledging the validity of terminology like 'rain dance' (which I'm sure every hacker has experienced first hand).
As to practicing, most of the religions with strong connections to 'magic' don't require much in the way of practice. (I know, kabbalah...) A better word than 'practice' would probably be 'ascribe to'.
To me, the awnser seems pretty simple. I think the type of people who are drawn to computers are also drawn to the mysterious. Take me for an example. Whenever I play a D&D sort of RPG, I like to be a mage. You have control over something that noone else can control or even understand. Fighting you can understand easily. Theivery you can understand easily. Wizardry, now there's the challenge for the mind.
...which is exactly it. Hackers love a challege. They love to explore the unexplored realm of computers just as the mage explores the unexplored realm of magics.
What am I you (may) ask? As far as theology goes, I'm still exploring. Trying to figure out the unknown and perhaps unknowable. My only tools I have at my disposal in order to take on this challenge responsibly: Science, Math, and Logic. For we can only know more when we know what is known. Ya know?
Kingpin
;P
Zen is not mysticism. The dictionary definition that you got is not as technical and indepth as a religious one. Under religious definition Zen is not mysticism because one of the fist moves in Buddhism was to move away from metaphysics. Zen and Buddhism are pragmatic efforts looking into ending dukha. Nagarjuna considered by many to be the most important Buddhist figure after Shakhamunni Buddha stated: "Nirvana is Samsara." Which means that Buddhists are not looking into any "transcendent" realities they just look at this reality differently.
It is not X. It is not ~X. It is not not X. it is not not ~X.
If slashdot continues to reveal our secrets, I'll turn you all into toads!
8-)
This is my
This is my
--An Oldie, but a Goodie!
That's a pretty blunt way of putting it but I kindo-of agree.... that way I say it though is that gods are for people who want/need them. That is, people who can't cope with ideas like infinity, time, quantum physics, relativity, etc, blah and want much more "plain-and-simple" ideas. It is pretty damn interesting however, that many "hard" scientists (physicists, etc) seem to believe in a god of some sort. I think that as I've said all my life, the universe is amazing enough if you have a good look at it, without trying to invent some (less than imho) amazing explanation for it... just accept that it is wonderful, beautiful, etc but that you will never be able to really understand HOW or WHY.... In who-evers infinite wisdom "SHIT HAPPENS!"
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" -William Blake.
3 GODdamn pages of the crap!!! I think that if you believe in god/s - you need to; because you can't cope with the idea that there are many things that we homo sapiens sapiens will *never* understand or comprehend, so you want an idea that feeds your ego - like an anthropomorphic "installer" and "system administrator" of the universe. Face it, shit just happens.
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" -William Blake.
If you cant post something Informative, interesting, or insightful be funny...
:P
:P
Here goes.. of course this is not funny to me but im up for humor on my part
I am working for a software company that is branching off from a PR/Advertising firm.
I walked into a meeting room and was stricken with absolute terror.
Okay so no one was in the room but there was a wall with slogans on it for brainstorming, and it had the words Innovate, People, and Power to many times.. I couldnt move it was like all of the hateful slurs I see in advertising all concentrated in one place
Jeremy
Okay, if anyone is shallow enough to choose religion because everyone else is NOT choosing that religion its more along the lines of a "popular" religion than any kind of true belief.
Jeremy
fool, you have done it wrong.
Like this:
I _believe_ Discordianism is the true faith.
I _believe_ Discordianism is the true faith.
I _believe_ Discordianism is the true faith.
I _believe_ Discordianism is the true faith.
I _believe_ Discordianism is the true faith.
Follow the Law of Fives!
See this page here for more information on Discordianism, including... everything!
- We all know far too much about science, and hope something might be "magic". (I'd hate to believe that all I know is all there is.)
- Most of us have been rejected in some way by the "normal" society, so the Big Religions are out. We turn to something on the fringe. This doesn't mean that the church directly rejected us. Take it more to mean that we're "outsiders" for the most part, and feel more comfortable on the fringe.
This pretty much explains why we all move toward fantasy games & sci-fi when we're young. When we find others like ourselves interested in the same things, it simply cements the preference toward fantasy/mysticism.Do hackers still believe in magic or practice a mystical religion?
Did we ever? Are we all part of an alternate religous movement, or do we all see some of the contradictions in Western Religion? Do we believe these things because we were slighted as children? Or, as I think, do we take all this with a grain of salt, and simply *wish* these things were true?
Personally, as you probably managed to glean from the above, I'm not at all serious about mysticism. I just can't make myself believe in magic, just like I can't make myself believe in the organized religion I was brought up in. I chalk it all up to culture, and happily continue reading and watching sci-fi & fantasy. And, I presume, like many of you, I also continue watching Monty Python, writing code, learning every day, and doing all those things that are classically "geeky", even now when being a geek is fashionable.
fnord
So we create these threads to mislead them,
throw them off course, while we draw the sacred
circles of Mystic RAM Tripling (these things come in threes, no?)
in candlelit orgiastic rituals.
Course, the orgiastic part of it doesn't
work that well, as it's mostly those of us with Y-chromosomes that feel the need to tinker
with their computers.
On the serious side, however, I have been interested :)
in pagan/shamanistic-type systems for quite some time
, and I gotta say, I have good memories of learning about it
on the web back in '95 and '96, before
WebTV began to spread its gospel of evil about the realm.
dan - No #s in my email.
My other computer is at the north pole and was built by a crystal of kryptonite.
Next week, Steve's youngest brainchild will reach its penultimate incarnation. The two most energetic and visionary threads in computer history, Unix and Apple, will be clasped as never before in a divine father-mother transcendant Great Symbol.
Just call me an OS X-tian!
-Toddhisattva
ps I could go on like this for hours...any requests?
mysticism
1a. Immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality or God.
1b. The experience of such communion as described by mystics.
2. A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience.
3. Vague, groundless speculation
Zen certainly fits definitions 1 and 2. It does not fit definition 3: it has definite progressive goals and the provable acheivement of those goals by individuals constitutes a grounding in experience.
And I have no idea how anyone could lump it together with paganism, either!
-toddhisattva
Either way, I think religion is just something that allows people to step outside of themselves, and into something (or someone) else for awhile. As for the concept of magic, or hackery, or whatever you're calling it today, I think it's what happens when one gets the courage or will to just run with it...
If you're able to become something else at will, why not? Just remember that your effort to remain what you are is what limits you.. :)
Example:
I may call myself an atheist, but there's still things I've seen (and done, from time to time) that science (Which is often a religion unto itself) simply does not yet explain. A religion can be an answer to those.. It's a useful tool when you know how to use it. In untrained hands however, it's an extremely sharp blade that's often wielded at yourself. Use it wisely.
I think that Robert Anton Wilson said it best that "Convictions cause Convicts". We all need to remember that as we go about our jobs. No one technology is the best. Linux, Unix, Macintosh, All are great OSs.
"Remember King Kong died for your sins."
-Principia Discordia
I like my religion like I like my hardware: Do-It-Yourself.
A little bit of Hindu reincarnation here, some Celtic gods and goddesses there. Religion is modular, right?
Pax Digitalia
-= Griffis =-
fo moe foebidden knowledge see hea: http://www.rounin.com/other/othermain.asp
I doubt being a hacker has anything to do with religious preference or person belief. Though, speaking from my own experiences, and preference, there are a lof of computer-oriented people who practice these. Perhaps we are the more enlightened group, and share our beliefs openly due to the fact that since we communicate with so many people over the internet in the quest for knowledge alone, we just don't care. We don't judge on race or sex, but on actions and knowledge. Many more people than we know may participate in these practices but fear being riduculed by their peers. Not so in "our" community. Take myself for example: I'm an avid believer in the Metaphysical. Telekenisis, Astral Projection, Astral Sigh, and the like. Though, while at school or work I don't preach it. While on the internet though, it's almost the complete opposite. I like telling people my thoughts. I don't fear being rejected. As a matter of fact, I've met professors on the subjects of my interest who have aggreed to assist me in any way they can. So, like I stated, I don't believe in any direct relation between hacker and believer in this subject matter, but rather it's those of us who have been here longer and are more comfortable. Not "everyone and their grandmothers". Nitric
Try actually thinking for yourself. It's quite refreshing.
Okay, I had I thought the other day and I figured this would be a good place to mention it.
Everyone on Slashdot is familiar with trolls. Please note I do not mean flamebait but a troll (as in trolling for fish).
So what if you looked at Scientology (sp?) as a very big troll?
I thought it was slightly interesting.
Please don't be offended. (Not that I'm worried about there being to many that subscribe to that religion on Slashdot, but hey...)
// Brought to you by letters Q and E and by the number 7.
Thanks for this stuff -- I'm new to this kind of thing, so it's nice to have an expert to help me out. However, when I tried this simple command out on my Ether-eal network, I had a few unexpected results
Are you sure this one's out of alpha?
You know, it never ceases to amaze me how people love to say that they are tolerant and that Christians are not, and that Christians are so rude and judgemental.
Hmm.
And what does that make them? How "tolerant" are they towards Christians? Seems pretty hypocritical to claim to be tolerant, demand tolerance, and then be exclusive in dishing it out.
Just a thought...
------------------ D. A. Davenport: http://www.firebin.net
I'd have to say that both hackers and mystic people are a little offbeat. It's not that being a hacker causes you to become a mystic, or the other way round. Simply that both groups do not draw heavily from the Joe-schmo segment of the population.
No great revelation there... Marketing people know about segmentation from the time they can first stick their heads up their asses.
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
I believe in Todd.
No wait, I believe in Wally.
I believe that Wally is Todd.
Brought to you by: "Al"toids - the curiously weird mint.
Actually, I did a lot of research into occultism, and you wouldn't believe some of the prevalent memes. If you took them in the context that most 'occult practitioners' do -- self deception, it's just that. If you really take a hard look at it, some things are unbelievably accurate. Like the life-board business. It's positive thinking, visualization and all that jazz. It's what we'd call 'psychology' if we took it seriously. There have been numerous TV specials about stuff like this... and there have been numerous quotes about how all of science was at one point considered 'magic.'
The truth is everywhere you look, it just depends on -how- you look.
---
[ approaching AI ]
You know, personally, I cannot stand Christianity. At the same time, I spell it out, and capitalize it. I do the same for Satanism, Discordianism and Zen, which I don't mind so much. I'll do it for any religion, regardless of how I feel about it.
---
[ approaching AI ]
I disagree, in a way. We use plenty of things from other languages. Like any 'scientific' word, which essentially means it's really latin or greek or worse (*G*). (silver orange... I must know you...)
---
[ approaching AI ]
Interesting, I was asked very similar question once. My response was 'Yes.'
---
[ approaching AI ]
Do hackers still believe in magic or practice a mystical religion?
The real question should be:
Dd hackers ever believe in magic or practice a mystical religion?"
The closest I can think of geeks coming to this is Magic: The Gathering, and D&D. I don't think anyone (very few anyway) took this stuff seriously. It was just a game to geeks then, and it still is.
A Zen mentality is very useful when dealing with computers, I find. I even go so far as a Dirk Gently mentality sometimes. It helps when you have the inclination to use said hammer on your box because it refuses to recognize that you do, indeed, have a cdrom.....but that's just me...
I have, on occassion, tried 'alternate' means to get a Windows NT server to work.....
Eeka! Beeka! Boo!
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
The Myticism in hackers has always interested me. To me it seems contradictory for a 'profession' which relies so heavily on science and strict logic to be so riddled with mystics. I'm an Atheist myself and to me one of the appeals of Mathematics/Computer Science was it's very clean logical structure. How can people who accept contradictions and hunches in reality manage to flush them out for when they sit down to hack on GNOME?
Cheers Koz
There is a close relationship between Zen and Logic, which is better appreciated, or at least discussed, from the Logic side (where things tend to be more lucid and explicit). Programming is (at its best) practical application of formal logic (Ref: D Gries, The Science of Programming; Ref: Formal Semantics of Programming Languages; Ref: The lambda papers). The best theoretical work in logic, or at least some of the most renowned, addresses the issue of the limits of logic (Ref: Nagel, Goedel's Theorem; Ref: Turing Computability). Fundamental to Zen is the notion of the inexpressible truth (Ref: Mu-mon's Gate, "No-thing, not nothing"; Ref: The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, article "Nothing" (that which Noths)). Indeed the pinnacle of Logical Atomism is Wittgenstein's "Tractatus", which ends in the words "About that whereof we cannot speak, let us then remain silent". In the vision of WBYeats, the Mysticism and Logic which BRussell proposed to be antagonistic opposites are in fact interpenetrating complimentary principles of consciousness. Consciousness itself inheres in the organization of its unconscious implementation medium. Mysticism recognizes that this nature of consciousness invalidates the authority of the logical principles by which it organizes its experience, and embraces the arational (not irrational) substance of its own existence. This is a position which can only be arrived at (consciously) by means of a sophisticated inference. It is the convergence of these two complimentary principles which validates the interpretation of complementarity itself. That's about as much as I can jam into this margin.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
"xtian," "xian," "xpn," and the like are all abbreviations for Christian that have been around for centuries in one form or another. They are shorter, not more derogatory. Similarly, 'fundie' is short for 'fundamentalist,' which is not really a blanket insult.
Of course, saying that someone is a fundamentalist is not inherently an insult, it depends on your view of fundamentalism. The word doesn't mean to ascribe any additional attributes other than a literal and somewhat fanatical belief in the bible. Since this is a fairly loony belief, however, I can see how you might get the impression that it is an insult.
Nastiness towards the christian religion can usually be left to a pointed description of the facts of that belief. However, if you really want to spew bile, 'xian' and 'fundie' are hardly sufficient. The preferred words for insulting christians are as follows:
funnymentalist
christfuck (use as a general exclamation)
god-ite
christ on a stick (another exclamation)
sheep
conformist fuckwad
brainwashee
Also good are references to their invisible god and magical christ figure.
HTH!
--
share and enjoy
I believe in the Frisbee religion, wherein when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and you can't get it back down again.
-------------------------------------------------
I bent my wookie
Gee, you're dumb.
-------------------------------------------------
I bent my wookie
Spinoza, I believe, came up with "The Wager"
-------------------------------------------------
I bent my wookie
an amazingly high percentage [works] in computer, scientific and technical fields
Computer, yes, technical, yes, scientific, no. It seems to me that scientists on the average tend to be more atheistic, while engineers tend to be more religious.
--
In high school I was seen as a religious fanatic/soul winner for a while, but I grew tired of it quickly. I quit going to church, I quit reading the bible, I even got growly when my parents watched a preacher on Sunday morning.
And then I got to college. Immediately I claimed agnosticism, but then I met up with a guy who was reading a bible in class, and he tried to drag me back to my parents' beliefs again.
Don't go flaming me yet, because my story is only beginning...
I met the first girl I ever fell in love with, and she sat there and turned my world upside down. She claimed to believe in Ancient Irish Spiritualism when I met her, but through her I met a couple Wiccans. I borrowed and read a book on Wicca, and found I agreed with many of the points in the text. However, it just wasn't quite right for me...
My would-be girlfriend had weird way of reading my mind and finishing my sentences, and told me all about reincarnation and how she was supposedly able to 'split' her soul and jump into other people--she claimed to have been my mother in a previous life and to have saved my life in a motorcycle accident before I'd even met her in this life.
Before she and I went on with our own lives, she'd given me a crash course in Spiritualism, Wicca, Earthism, and Paganism in general.
After the breakup, I had a time where I considered becoming Catholic, but decided against it as well.
Now, I don't really know of a religion that describes what I believe, but here is brief list of what I do believe...
I believe in reincarnation.
I believe that all things are connected, and you meet up with the same people in different lives.
There is no Hell, but there is some "higher" plane of sorts to go to, after several lives on earth.
There are 4 types of people:
1) No soul;
2) Have a soul and spirit, but just go through life, and are here to learn as much as we can, and eventually move on; We don't remember our previous lives.
3) Have a soul&spirit, but do remember previous lives, and can tell people about them;
4) Just a soul this type never live on Earth, but "manage" the higher plane.
Type 3s watch over the type 2s, 2s don't watch anyone else, but are connected to others and can feel/sense those they're connected to (but often don't), type 1s live for one lifetime and die, never to return.
Upon dying, returning to the Earth as quickly as possible is good--we are for creamation.
Even type 2s can "know" things without being told, in a psychic-like fashion (I can predict the weather with >95% accuracy, and know what my current g/f is feeling, as well as how my family is doing and how some of my friends are, even if we don't talk for weeks/months and are hundreds of miles apart--they can never escape whatever higher power there is.)
A person can lose their "psychic/clairvoyant" abilities, or can shield themselves from having others connect with them and read their thoughts.
People should not be trying to advocate/dupe others into their religion, everyone should figure out for themselves what they believe.
I don't prescribe to any religion that I'm aware of, what I believe is a juxtoposition of all the religions I've been exposed to, so I don't know a specific name for it.
If anyone wants to know more about my beliefs, just post a reply to ask, and I'll be happy to tell you more.
Now we all make take different paths to that truth, and they may also differ widely.
But it still remains a search for the truth of who we are, and why we are here.
Now as far as magic goes, I'll say this.
Look in to the love of your life's eyes, a child's joyous eyes, or a Newborn baby's eyes.
Then tell me there is no magic in the world.
I my self believe that reality is some what subjective, and that we can have a degree of control over it.
How much control is the real question in that area.
But we must agree that life it self is magical, and can be full of wonder if we let it.
Now I will get off my soap box.
Thanks
TeTalon
Are you a part of the problem, or a part of the solution?
TeTalon
You are either a part of the problem, or a part of the solution, which are you.
TeTalon
You are either a part of the problem, or a part of the solution, which are you.
If there was any such thing as "magic" in this day and age, it would be technology. Heck, technological geniuses are still often called "wizards" by the popular media, on front page stories.
Conciously or subconciously, I think many people who are fascinated by ideas of "magic" tend to gain a desire to master this secret power, so enroll in schools that teach them the arcane symbols of binary, calculus, solid state physics... To the unwashed masses, the educated practically become "wizards", able to do feats that common man could never do, let alone understand.
Some previous poster mentioned that electricity used to be magic to everyone. Well, to most people, it STILL IS MAGIC. It's just a magic that they've become used to, and know what to expect from. What's the difference?
We're a lot closer to our ignorant past than we would like to admit.
I'm glad someone brought this subject up. Here's how I figure it. Whatever God is, he is to us as we are to computers. Don't understand? Think of it this way: We made computers and we say they can't think, at least in the capacity that we think. We say, "Oh, it's just a machine." Maybe that's what the Creator (whoever the Creator is) is thinking about us.
Let me add to that by saying that this sort of thing was destined to happen in some form or another, just as generations 'happen,' although I don't mean 'destined' in a Calvinist sense.
*** Stop trying to be cool. ***
Well in my opinion many of the open scource people happen to be interested in mystisism.
spelling mistakes are in my nature, just accept it.
This is funny, too bad , no mod points to give
spelling mistakes are in my nature, just accept it.
It is my belief that people have evolved over the past decades, since making a living is not our primary objective anymore we start to waste our spare time, thinking about life. Just see the block some of the hit movies this year, american beauty (my personal favorite this year), beach and fight club all movies consrned in a way with the meaning of life. yes shure movies like this are made all the time but never with such wide acceptace. so why limiting the scope to "hackers".
spelling mistakes are in my nature, just accept it.
When I'm not feeling atheistic or agnostic, I'm a Polytheistic Sollipsist, which is a belief that the universe is a consensual hallucination by all the souls participating in it.
Either that or I believe the Earth is a sitcom for an alien race.
A Call for Open Standards
vs.
[I think] that it is immoral to claim to have knowledge that you could not possibly have
And just how have you come to know there is no god?
RNG
As a practical joke on mankind-- we just don't get it.
On a related note, when Coyote was asked if someone got conned selling New York to the Dutch for a box of beads, he said, "of course someone got conned. Stupid Dutch. Don't they know they can't own land?"
Rene Descarte said "I think therefor I am." I think he assumed an aweful lot.
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I definately fall into the "converted athiest" crowd: that is, I grew up athiest but was forced to give up that religion because I saw too many things that just didn't fit into that framework.
As a rationalist who is interested in mysticism, I would suggest yet another possible reason for the connection between geeks and magic: It seems to me that mysticism is (and always has been) a way to try to comprehend intuitively things that are too complex for rational analysis. A geek is (usually) up to his/her neck in some type of highly complex system, and makes his living by having a better understanding of it than the average person.
Now it is certainly true that modern technology was invented using, and operates according to, rational, predictable, stable laws. However, when a system becomes sufficiently complex, it will often exhibit emergent behaviors that cannot be well understood by looking at it from a reductionistic viewpoint, because to do so would require keeping track of too many interrelationships. Yet is it precisely these complex, odd behaviors that a geek must master.
Being a good geek requires the flexibility to use a mixture of intuition and rational analysis to solve problems. Mysticism can provide a framework in which one can intuitively approach complex systems. Thus it is no surprise to me that there is a strong mystical influence in geekdom.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
I believe to some degree that Zen or some form of Taoist belief system is prevalent amongst most 'hackers'. Because when you get right down to it most talented 'users' feel more of a kinship with this belief system than the more traditional (popular) religions, i.e. Christianity, Mohammedism, etc... For myself it lends itself to the fact that the world we live in (virtually) is more akin to the principles of Zen or Taoism. For example the sense of community empathy. The feeling that we are all somehow connected on a deeper level. The internet and it's makeup facilitates this to a great extent because we are no longer limited by physical or geographical boundaries. And on the hardware end you get to see creation from the groun up, you not only see that everything has a place and a purpose but also that the purpose does not have to be used by the maker to be fully realized. That once made it could go on and become. This belief system is what has helped along such things as GPL and the 'hacker ethic'.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Personally, that all told me that there must be something else out there with that created (and that it was quite the artist). From there, I went on to form a pretty fringe pagan belief structure, but no matter what else, I don't even think it's possible for there not to be some higher power, be it the christian god, mother nature, the elements, or even Bob, the subgenius.
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`Lex - Find Me Here: Text Appeal
I believe that my talents flow from God. Which god? There is only one. Often I solve problems well beyond my capabilities and then I KNOW HE EXISTS.
And yes, a lot of Christians and members of other "mainstream" religions are hypocrites. ... That's not specific to organized religions; it's a dark side of human nature.
Personally, I don't care about the whacko religous leaders. They're nothing without followers.
Here's my enlightened conclusion on religon and good deeds in general that meshes well with your last comment;
Religon is often used as a way to be 'good' and allows the practitioners to be 'bad' in other ways.
Guilt and subservience is used to regulate the 'bad' actions but the thoughts are still there and make many highly religous people seem fake -- they aren't true to thier nature, and can't be trusted 100%.
Personally, I don't care what nonsense people believe. There's probably some truth in it, but none in the literal details. If someone says one thing odd, I try not to take it literally, and I suspect many other hackers/geeks are the same regaurdless of the topic. If the person insists on pushing a point they're being rude or just crazy. If it's nonsense they deserve getting mocked or referred for medication -- religion or not. Nonsense is nonsesnse.
What concerns me deeply are when friends and people I trust tell me what I think...as if gods are somehow normal and all over the place.
I'm painted as the bad guy for even asking where the clothes on the emperor are. As if I'm being silly, or worse a bigot just for disagreeing. Someone please explain this reasoning to me, but skip the common explanations. Been there, done that.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I do understand, though. Since I was a young teen, I thought that atheist=bigot. Because of that, I told people I was a non-practing Christian not an atheist.
Nothing has happened in my basic lack of beliefs between then and now. The only 'difference' is the label. I've been an atheist since I was probably about 12 to 14 years old.
Now, if I even give a hint that I think the god concept is only a concept and not reality, I get harrased...or a wry grin. There are other heathens out there, don't you know? :}
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Welp, the simple explanation for my belief in God ... [ snip ] ...I also whole heartedly agree with you, nonsense is nonsense, and my opinion of current scientific theory on the origin of everything and how it went from nothing to today is that it's equally nonsensical.
I _was_ Christian. I _know_ this point of view in detail...and don't begrudge you for having it.
I'm still confused on why taking the 'None of the above' opinion brings out such ire. I don't hate people for being religious. (In Rome a few years ago, I even watched in admiration the Pope give a public greeting on the steps of St. Peter's.)
Is there a legitimate reason for such an attitude? Why is it so common among religous people -- even those with under grad and graduate degrees?
Way off topic...I'm stopping now but will look for replies later.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
It's surprising to see this topic on slashdot. I was raised as a Christian but I knew it wasn't right for me, so I remained an agnostic for a few years but I knew that there was something out there..I can't really explain it but I was somehow led to Taoism, and to Hinduism from there. I don't really belong to a specific religion now but my beliefs are derived primarily from Eastern religions. By the way, some good books to read on the subject are Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu (Taoist texts), I Ching, and Be Here Now (general spirituality), which I highly recommend.
It seems to me that "hackers" are extremely curious people. Much more so than the "average joe." They are therefore more prone to experiment with their toys than ol' Joe.
Why would this curiosity be limited to computers? Now wether most end in a pagan religion is a debateable topic. But I can see a canned life being less appealing than out of the box software.
So maybe its nothing more mystical than curiosity.
In your post, you mentioned 'Discordianism'. I would like to preface my opinion by stating that I know very little about Discordianism.
From what little I have gathered about the topic, it seems that followers of discord would most likely beleive that entropy is to be held with high respect. I find it difficult to beleive that anyone who would encorporate entropy into their everyday life would have much success using any types of electronic systems. (Or any systems for that matter.)
I'm a Taoist, but not much of a hacker, or programmer. But I would say that its because most tech types have wider interests than just what is solid, and what can be seen. Possibly its some sort of belief that not everything is obvious, maybe life has hidden files.
From what I've been told magic is the term used for stage magic (a la Houdini) and magick (or magik) is used to refer to the spellcasting that Pagans/Wiccans sometimes do in their rituals. The k is tossed in there just so there is an obvious distinction between the two.
In that case, you don't misunderstand atheists, you misunderstand what is meant by the term "atheist." It's rare for an atheist to claim they know for certain there is no deity of any kind; rather, they reject specific claims for the existence of a deity on the same grounds for which they reject the claim for the existence of the Easter Bunny, for example, or of Santa Claus.
You don't have a problem with someone rejecting the existence of (for example) Allah -- if you're a Christian, you no doubt do this yourself ("Thou shalt have no other gods before Me"). You say you understand other religions, which I take to mean you understand someone rejecting the existence of the Christian God. How then is there a problem with understanding the union of all these specific sets of disbelief?
Another way to put it is this: all the world's religions can't be right -- there's too much contradiction between them -- but they can all be wrong. I can't prove that that's the case, but after careful examination of a large number of religions, I have to say that it's pretty easy for me to conclude that the whole lot is not worth pursuing...
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
Ummmm... not exactly. There's a distinction commonly drawn between "strong" and "weak" atheism which applies here:
This was the point I was trying to make: when it comes to Allah, Jehovah and the Easter Bunny, I'm strongly atheistic -- I believe they do not exist, because of both lack of evidence in favor and the strong externally-confirmable evidence against it. Because of this long string of "strong" atheisms, then, I have a "weak" atheistic position on godhood of any variety. And I find this to be different from agnosticism, because agnostics believe you can't truly know, whereas I believe I do truly know, negatively. (If a god were to walk up to me on the street and introduce him/her/itsself, I'd demand several different ID's... and still have my doubts.)
Huh. Interesting... and not exactly traditional Christian. Mind they don't burn you at the stake!
So where does that leave me? I was raised fundamentalist Christian, and actually preached the Word for a while... until my knowledge of science undermined the fundamentalist dogma, and I started a years-long study of religion from many different perspectives, beginning a long slide which ended in atheism when none of the basic tenants of religion itself proved reasonable to me. (In short, it seems to me that you can't maintain faith without deciding to believe in the first place -- but that first step can be taken in the direction of any religion, which makes the whole thing pointless precisely because there's no objective reason for it.)
No, I honestly don't. I admit the possibility of there being more intelligent, more powerful entities in the universe than I, even to the point where they might not consider humans intelligent, but I wouldn't call such "gods." (They are perhaps a bit like the Greek gods, "men writ large," but not supernatural... Clarke's Third Law and all that.)
In spite of all this, I'm not antagonistic toward those with religious beliefs (well, as long as they aren't knocking on my door at 9:00 am Saturday morning... or any other time, for that matter ;> ). I think religious beliefs are personal, and should be kept that way; I also think that folks ought to think about their religious beliefs, rather than blindly accepting what they've been told -- but this goes for all beliefs, IMHO. You obviously fall into that category of "thinking believer," so more power to you!
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
The only mysticism I see is the belief that you the computer guru are god of all things wired. And by extension all things that matter on this little ball of mud. I mean come on, wouldn't you all wanna be like Neo? The hacker god who has transcended those physical barriers and gets around pesky exception handlers that limit mere mortals to only exist at sub-light speeds. That one movie has given hope to all 100lb pimpled geeks who were looking for something to prove to them that there might is hope of being able to gain the strength to move more than that precious 1978 Altair. That is your mysticism. You know your brain has expended to the point that it somehow has a volume greater than your cranium. Of course you should be able to use those extra CPU cycles to do inhuman things.
Okay, so let me get this strait... to be a true geek you must:
1) Like Star Trek
2) Watch Anime like your addicted
3) Drink caffinated beverages like water
4) Have a printed copy of the GPL
5) Be a social outcast
6) Skip college
7) Read 'User Friendly'
8) Protect Free Speech (tm) at all costs
9) Believe in Mysticism
I just don't see how #9 fits... I mean sure, 1-8 are common sense, but Mysticism??
witty sig goes here
There only labels that describe me are my name, social security number or driver's license number. Since I am unique, only a unique label can describe me.
Since you ask, I'll tell you a little about me:
So now you know more about me than you probably wanted to, but perhaps it will help you in your "profiling" of me.Sincerely,
ZC
"...almost Gnostic sensibility..." hah. thats only because 99.9% of computer geeks were or still are into the fantasy/d&d trend.
I am making 35k a yr. 3yr out of HighSchool.
Andy's a Gimp 10-4
The first occurred when I was with a group of friends experimenting with a Ouija board. We were all receptive and open-minded about the whole thing, and sure enough, we were summoning spirits that would move the little plastic piece around and form letters. We got well past the point where any of us was skeptical that something otherworldy was taking place.
The weirdest part of that whole time was the night before we were all going to go see Al Di Meola/Paco De Lucia/John McLaughlin/Steve Morse in concert. We summoned this particularly nasty spirit and proceeded to insult it, being the well-mannered geeky teenagers that we were. Well, I kid you not, we all received what felt like an electric shock from this thing. Ever touch a piece of metal that is inserted into an electric socket? That's EXACTLY what it felt like.
I was pretty freaked about it. When I talked it over with my Dad, he insisted that it was a bunch of nonsense - anything we experienced was created entirely out of our own minds. However, I never forgot the experience, and I still don't understand how that kind of shock could be transmitted through a plastic piece.
I believe there are natural explanations for everything supernatural. Anyone here want to explain how the above could have happened?
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
This has fascinated me for a while. I'm finding more and more that people with more tech-savvy, or education in general tend to steer clear of organized religions, or any religion at all. I've only done one (very unscientific) polling of my highschool, and found that the people who tend to do better (not always a measure of intelligence, but sometimes can be) or attend better programs (IB,AP) usually lack any specific religion (agnostic) or are tried and true atheists (as myself). It seems to me there is a trend towards atheism with the well educated of my area. I'd like to know if this holds true elsewhere. [warning, possibly offensive statement ahead] (RANT)Personally I've always found religions to be comfort for the weak of mind, those who need the comfort of a 'god' to justify their existance. This saddens me. (and no, it's not because I was raised this way -- I was actually brought up Roman Catholic, I enjoyed the ceremonies, they were always nice, but I never found myself actually believing any of it -- too many contradictions, unexplained things, and others easily explained that the bible gives an extensive explanation for. There are entire books whose purpose was propaganda (revelations, anti-rome) and have been integrated into the book because the guy was supposedly visited by god in his dreams.)(/RANT) Anyway, I talk too much.
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www.stallman.org is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on FreeBSD
>>Do hackers still believe in magic or practice a mystical religion?
;-)
Only a silly muggle would ask a question like that
We asked questions, and each decided on our own view. I personally am either an agnostic/athiest. Depends on how I am thinking.
Most Religions, if they follow their own values, I respect. However, how many people actually do. What is funny is that NONE of the people who say that (generic) "the church, book, etc" is the teaching of morals or ethics, are more ethical or moral than any (aside from one person) agnostic/athiest.
Leave me alone, and I leave you alone. Bug me and discover I can start tossing out facts on (most semiknown) your religion that you will not like. For example: are you greedy and a christian? Greed is one of the worst sins, and actually you should be (according to the bible) shunned everywhere.
Fire is the essense of Slashdot. In flam - Sad if you recognise the game series.
What Pagan doesn't mean:
What Pagan does mean:
I'm a neo/techno-Pagan type that believes in Stephen Hawking, Larry Wall, Richard M. Stallman, Norse gods (not by choice...they're just kind of there), practicality and relativism, karma (not the
I have dealt with many common and uncommon strains of Pagans, and my view may be a bit broad for the liking of most common Pagan types, so I'm probably not the guy to tell you all this. If you want to know any more about the topic, I'd recommend the book that was referenced in the original story.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
-The Professor, Futurama
Oh, by the way, the whole "pagan" movement mostly has to do with trying to justify orgies.
No in fact I am an atheist. I was giving an explanation for why many atheists seem to preech their atheism as much as religions preech.
The motivations for an argument have no bearing on the truth of that argument. I may want others to belive the earth is 4 billion (or however) many years old because I want to discredit their religious philosophy but this does not change in any way the truth of my claim.
And my observation does not individually impinge upon you. This is something that really bothers me when someone says group X is more likely to have prooperty Y and someone who is in group X gets very mad because they do not have property Y. You don't fall into the category good for you...now it very well be that I have made an incorrect generalization and you are one data point against that but don't take it personally.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
While I do generally dislike broad generalizations made about hackers/geeks this is quite an interesting question.
Hackers/geeks like everyone else *want* to believe in religion a higher power to give them comfort. While some may deny this I think the prevalance of religious people on earth (for whatever reason) is more than enough to establish that the human pysche naturally craves something outside itself.
Unfourtunatly people of our persuasion often find "normal" religions inadequate. Whether it is because we are smarter than the average practitioner and hence see the flaws in their belif or because we are used to working in formal none emotive enviornment and hence aren't well equiped to handle the emotional type of religion often practiced hackers often seem to reject conventional religion.
This pushes them in several ways. First some of them turn to alternate spiritualites which let them blaze their own path. Also, as is quite obvious many of them turn to very vocal atheism. This atheism/agnosticism is most likely so vocal because secretly they want someone to come around and convince them they are wrong. If they simply thought others were making a factual mistake they would treat them no differntly than someone who belived (mistakenly) that Mt. McKinley is higher than everest but the desperate need to prove to them they are wrong and broudcast it loudly probably represents a desire to be proven wrong.
Well this is at least true of myself and maybe Im wrong in my generalization but im interested in your comments.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Being of Pagan/Wiccan ideals, I'd have to say that mystic beliefs and success in any field are tied together. For those that believe in the impossible, everyday work and system design become an unworthy task.
I also like the thought that what I create serves a greater purpose than just my need to do it, or whoever I do it for. If hackers were judged on the way they think/act compared to the way their own systems/code, I think we would see a lot of hypocrisy.
Also, it would seem that those hackers who create works that are the best (or sometimes more) that they have to offer seem to have strong believe in themselves, their reputation, their name, and their beliefs a.k.a. religion.
By defining myself as a mystic it might lead people to think I use magic (which I believe in/practice) for my code. I don't need magic for my code to be good, it often comes in 'frenzies at 3am, last I looked at the clock it was 11pm and I have a working system/code' scenes that redefines how I code from then on....
Many of you know what I mean.
-MPCM
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
There already is an Open Religion format. IT's called Unitarian Universilism, or UU for short. They can be found in just about any city.
Fear the power of NTie!
Those who set out to understand and hopefully master complex systems learn quickly that reaching for answers outside of logic can be rewarding (in moderation at least). Also, having at least tentative faith in hidden laws is necessary to the first steps of any serious study. Scepticism, of course, should play strong role as well.
Furthermore, if computers are a large part of one's reality, and one finds a way to control parts of this part of reality through faith and indirect methods, a great temptation exists to step away from the keyboard and hack life int he same manner.
This all doesn't address the merits of a mystical, nor a scientific, approach to computing and life in general. It just explains why I wouldn't be surprised.
I have maintained for years online oracles, shrines and other religious resources (at http://www.artwells.com/oracula/ and only recently have I started to receive emails from people who are surprised that there can be religious and/or mystical online experiences. When I started out, nobody seemed surprise.
Christianity has many "mystical" elements, such as the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the holy trinity, among others. It's perfectly reasonable to lump Christianity in with other mystic religions--the main distinction is that it's much more popular than most. Therefore, you don't break the trend; you support it. Don't you feel better now?
Both my parents are Episcipal or how ever it's spelled, as were my mothers parents and my father's father. my dad's mom is a Catholic. I was raised Episcipal until i was about 10. at which time, due to the death of my mother's parents i came to the conclusion that God obviously doesn't give a shit, so why should i waste my time going to church. Incidentyl, i had taken up BASIC around this time.
When i was 12 i started messing with UNIX(FreeBSD) via an ISP shell account. When i was 13 i started to learn C and installed a copy of RedHat 4.1 on my pc. At this time, i not only had not many friends, was depressed from the earlier events described, and spent all my time writing programmes and hating god, i got into the whole gothic thing. Mostly 'cause of this girl i know, who has been my best friend since she moved here at that time. she got me into it. i started doing the spell stuff.
I was never a "satanist" per ce, as Satan is a creation of the christians. Not only that, but since he seams to have almost god-like powers, he could be considered a minor god. this would make christianity a polythestic religion, as you can't have god without satan, and vise versa. Anyway, everybod thought i was. not that i really cared.
I eventualy gave up on the whole magick thing. I don't suppose i'm REALLY an atheist, but i have no real faith in either the christian/jewish/islahmic god and/or satan and/or any other religion's head dude.
AS the point has come up in other peoples posts, that there are not that many people in the hacker community that actualy believe in say, wicca as a religion, but mainly as a game. this is better said as most people ,not just hackers. there are many people at my highschool who claim to be wiccan. these people don't really believe it, they just say it 'cause it's like, cool. it's also apparantly cool for chicks to say they are bi at this school too, not that there is anything wrong with being bi, but hey, what ever.
the mainstream religions people follow because most of them TRUELY believe in . some follow it because their parents will spank them if they don't watch Billy Grahm on TV or what not. However, alot of people pick an "alternative" religion just to be different. trying to be different undermines all the people who just are. it's not fair.
I have been involved in many mach religions as well: Church Of The Fluffy Pine Apple, started by my friend Matt King over a moldy pine apple discovered in his refridgerator; The Igloo Of The King Penguin, started by my self (last count of membership was 200 or some); and as of late, one worshiping former Smashing Pumpkins bass player D'Arcy. this is my favorite.
I'm not sure if my comments really matter to anyone, but hey, again, just my $.02. The point is just being, it's not the just nerd types who join these weird religions and such. it's alot of people just looking for attention, and then the handfull of true believers. My friends are. I was once. I play the games too, that's just for fun (M:TG, AD&D, Zork, ADVENT, etc), and i never let it influence my own personal belifes. it's just a game. rarely is actulay based on anything except say, Richard Garfield's spiffy fantasy universe (although, i'd say ever since maybe, Ice Age, the plot as really lost any cool factor.).
William D. Freeman http://members.xoom.com/EvilGNU -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s+:++ a---
>Atheism is the LACK of belief in any deity. It >is *NOT* (repeat **NOT**) the belief that the >deity does not exist.
Your definition contradicts all of the four dictionaries I checked, each defining it as, "The doctrine that there is no God or gods," or equivalent.
You sound like Humpty Dumpty:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."
BTW the proof was of the proposition that, "There is no valid proof of God's non-existence." It is valid, as such.
But, useful as these are as symbols, which is why there are so many references to them in the abstract world of computing, the difference between geeks and (for example) christians, is that most are aware of their status as symbols, rather than confusing them with something which exists.
Of course, there is the human temptation to wish they were more than symbols (that's how religions get started, after all), because then the responsibility is shifted to the god in question - "I don't need to be wise, I can just prey to Athena for guidance and if I blow the exam then it's not all my fault, the gods just didn't hear my prayer". The christian's most common error is to assume that everyone will be "found out" in the end, and to let evil slip by on the grounds that "they'll get their punishment in the next world". But all religions do this in some form; it is the basis of Karma, too.
As long as people remember that the gods are our children and not the other way around then there's nothing to worry about and they can be useful in thinking about otherwise abstract notions. But as soon as we think that our lives are the symbols (eg a great chess-game between supernatural forces) then things rapidly fall apart and people get killed with alarming frequency.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I must say that I agree with the reply to the comment more than the comment itself. It seems pretty arrogant and small minded to assume that because you may understand a little of how the universe works through sciences such as physics and quantum mechanics, that you really can say there is no god. Even Eintsein and Hawkings beleive in god, and they understood more of the workings of the universe than probably any other man in history! I do beleive in the idea of a god more than the religions which preach it, but I tend to agree with Hawking's appraoch to god: in that the universe in it's vast complexity and size, started with such an undeniably perfect beginning, that there MUST have been 'something' behind it, nothing since then has been created so perfectly. But if you and your anarchistic freinds feel more comfortable when your drinking together at night discussing these things to simply let what mankind has come up with explain the universe, or if you are in fact religious(because I have nothing against your opinion personally), and wish to let some self-righteous 'freind' of GOD give his 2000 year old explanation(which has been revised more than ANY peice of really bad code) and take him at his word: knock yourself out! When is comes down to the end of it, for each of us, it's what you've done with that belief that counts. And the quality of the code you spew forth.
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
First off, I'm not a hacker. I'm not even sure what phreaking means, and from looking into the sites which say they have info on the subject, I'm not sure I want to know. I am, however, a logical thinker, who tries to see all sides of the story before making a decision. From what i've been reading here, most people who proclaim themselves as Hackers(and I'm sure you ALL aren't, otherwise we wouldn't have a 'net left to stand on) are very dark, very cynical people who either feel they are above all else, or just their opinions. I have found that the few people I know who are real hackers, are not like this. I found some of these people scattered throughout the comments, and I find their thoughts both interesting and based on facts, not the type of bull that breeds these idiots I see on the streets who think they're vampires or some sort of goth. There is sort of a mythical presence to hackers that I, and others I'm sure, find alluring. Something to the whole scene of intelligent people who have become one way or another, social deviants with the ability to bring the capitalist, facist world to it's knees, but more often, don't. I would love to be able to hack. My background in enterprise networking and mission-critical systems doesn't seem to be offering me the kind of skills I require to be a hacker I guess. But more than that, I don't seem to fit the bill. I love Sci-Fi, Fantasy novels(anything by A.C. Clark, Isaac Asimov, William whats-his-name who wrote Neuromancer etc...), I have watched X-Files since the beginning, I have played D&D at least once, and I have conspiracy theories comming out of my ars, but that's not enough! I AM STILL NOT A HACKER! I'm a geek. A geek with a good job, a wife, a child, and a desire to hack when the family's asleep, and the lights are out. That, unfortunately, is not enough though, and neither is it to the rest of you self-proclaimed anarchists...You know who you are. I apologize if I offend any real hackers, this was not posted from my own home IP address, just in case...
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
One excellent book that touches on this is "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. I don't believe one causes the other, but I do believe there are some parallels that can be drawn between hackers and mysticism. First of all, the open mind and reasoning ability. Hackers tend to analyze situations, religion included, and draw their own conclusions from it. They see the illogical easily and review other religions. For many reasons, neo-Pagan religions tend to contain more logic than good old Christianity, since they're mostly "go-out-and-do-it" religions, as opposed to "blind faith". Especially since much neo-Paganism is formed on the belief of not shoving their beliefs down others' throats, like most other religions do tend to do. Although, from my experience, most hackers and programmers tend to lean towards agnosticism and/or atheism, this stems from the same ideas, as well. I've always found it extremely interesting .. but with the teenage hackers from Christian families, I'd just love to know how their parents react to their beliefs/open-mindedness. /:
My money's on Linux desktops.
Secondly Zen is nothing but fucus and peace of mind
...but I thought it had something to do with renouncing "worldly pleasures"?!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
--
Freeper Logic
A conventional oven works on science. Gas flows down a vented pipe where it is ignited by a pilot light. The burning gas (reacting with oxygen) heats the oven chamber until a bimetallic metal strip inside the oven bends enough to trip a lever that cuts off the flow of gas. Then as the oven cools, the metal bends back until it opens the gas flow to again heat the oven. A regulated temperature hysterisis is maintained. All goooood solid reliable and science. All of the chemical and physical properties of this non-living system are readily known and predictable.
A microwave oven, on the other hand, works on magic. When you press the 'start' button, an unseen dimensional portal is opened up inside the oven chamber and a horde of tiny invisible demons is released. The demons poke your food with their magic charged pitchforks causing it to heat up. The demons are picky, though. They don't like to touch some materials so they don't heat up at all (e.g., glass or porcelin). The demons are also playful. Sometimes they deliberately leave a big region of your food uncooked and laugh feindlishly as you later bite into that big chink of ice in your otherwise scalding hot lasagne. Sometimes the demons get so excited that they actually explode. This explains the mysterious splatters you find stuck to the interrior walls of the oven even though you always keep your food covered while cooking it. (Demons, once dead, can no longer maintain their invisibility and so show up as visible splatterings). When the timer stops, power is cut, and the warp hole begins to collapse and sucks all the demons back into the other realm. So since they're based on magic and rely on conscious beings with random personalities, microwave ovens are inherently unreliable and unpredictable.
There is no doubt that computers operate on magic. The entire device requires a spell (we call them programs today) in order to do anything useful. Truly, we programmers are the modern day sorcerers.
My faith is that faith itself is flawed
Whether you belive in "God" or pagan beliefs or anything else, each religeon has at some point said that "what is made by man is ultimately flawed."
This means whatever we come up with, no matter how good it may be, is always going to be flawed. I get that from conventional religeons.
I myself believe that we don't yet have the ability to comprehend the truth. I think time is a demintion the same as up is, and for that matter speed itself is a demintion of its own. Each demintion has its limitations, and time and speed have that as well. I do realize that speed is related to at least one of the first 3 demintions but so is time. The faster you go, the more the demintions seem to come together.
Modern physics says that if a chunk of matter were to reach the true speed of light it would be equal in mass the the universe itself, and that is how the light barier is intact. If something gets more massive the closer it gets to the speed if light, eventually it will be too massive to accellerate and would take more than the mass of the universe for fuel to go any faster.
Confused yet?,
thats my point, if we can't even figure out why certain things are how they are in the universe, then how are we going to figure out how the univers is made or controlled? Its easy to explain the "God" made everything but isn't that just the "easy" was of explaining it? I could say "God" made everything and just leave the definition of "God" blank and i can just fill in the space as i learn more.
believe what you believe, and im not chooseing the better religeon cause i don't know what it is, but the pegan/witch/wiccan religeons do leave everybody alone and don't try to force their opinion on people, (just pointing out that im talking about "Jehovas' Whitnesses" and the ever popular "Mormons"(btw, J.Smith was a liar and a murderer, did i mention liar?))
anyway, im always up for a good discussion on religeon or politics so don't be afraid to send me some email(positive or hate, either. Im open minded).
whats a signature??
What's even more interesting is how so many of these people use so much precious breath claiming to be part of some ages-old tradition that apparently predates dinosaurs. Seems a bit odd that none of them have ever bothered with so much as cursory research into the subject.
I just have one question: Who's the most gullible, Christians or Wiccans?
Not trolling, not trying to start a flame war. Just expressing my honest opinions and views.
>"best tools for the job" etc.
This reminds me of what I know about Japanese religion. If my sources and memory are right, then the Japanese have both Shintoism and Buddhism - rather conveniently, Shintoism doesn't deal with the afterlife and Buddhism doesn't deal with the gods, so they fit well together. IIRC, they also had Confuscism (sp?), and (I'm less sure of this) at times some of them tried to shoehorn Christianity into the mix, only to realise that it didn't sit well with the others.
Of course, Christianity (as with most Judaism-derived religions) doesn't mix well with anything - the commandment "Thou shalt have no other gods" tends to cause problems...
I spent a lot of money on TSR books and game sets. But I never was able to find or get a group of people together to play. So I just read the books. I later found out that I wanted to be a great character in real life, so I read Occult materials. You name it.
In the later part of 1986, I moved into the Punk Rock monastery. Or that is what I would call it. Then At the Age of 17, in 1987, I became a Philosophy major. I found that Eastern Philosophy materials where much more to my taste and liking than where the Occult materials.
One friend has said that I change religion like some change underwhere. That's an interesting observation.
Gnu/Linux, and the open source movement grabbed me about a year ago. I just read a news paper article about this company called "Red Hat". Since then my whole perception of computers has changed dramatically. Through solving problems with Linux I have made my Windows machine work better.
Do it yourself is good, but in reality you are not doing it yourself. Maybe you are taking the less beaten path. The Buddha advised on travelling only with those who were also interested in enlightenment. If one could not find such person/s, then it was best to travel alone.
Roughly equal to rubbish, --V_Rvrnd_Al
Technology has always been thought of as something cold and lifeless, contrary to art, nature and agriculture.
Not that attractive.
But when that technology is able to carry, control, manipulate and transform data into knowledge, (mis)information or Art, it becomes a very powerfull medium. So the craftmanship to create a complex medium as this, rapidly raises philosophical, political, and ethical questions, whether you want it or not, and undeliberate associations with occultism, mysticism are easily made.
For this seems, but is *not* a microclimate we live in. This is not a simulation.
This "geeky" environment touches almost every aspect of life. So why not religion?
--------
* Sigh *
I love it when people walk around with their eyes closed screaming that everyone else is blind.
"usualy" being the key word.
You sounded like way smart there for a second, couldn't you have made it mean something?
Electricity used to be magic, people classify magic as what they don't understand yet.
I don't remember Arthur C. Clark's quote at the moment, must go dig.
Those quotes work very well for 95% of the Christian based Religions, and not very well for Magic and wicca (in general, even witchcraft has it's psychos).
If I am understanding you, if it's Magic, it has to be advanced tech - fair enough, that's basicaly the point. However, if A = B, does A stop being a condition?
I am going to get a friggin' headache form that. Stupid circles.
Paganish people tend to seek knowledge in hidden places.The internet or fidonet or whatever you were using used to be an unexplored frontier, and was in its own way a 'secret society', an electronic "secret garden" in a way. Now it keeps asking me to punch a monkey.
I can see the direct coorelation from computers and magick. Computers are a "non-real" way of making real things happen. Electronic money for example is just as real as cash money, however its intangable in the physical world. This is just as much magick as anything else.
Going on that tangent however Crowley once said in "Magick Theory and Practice" that any act is a magickal act So with that said, pretty much anything would be considered magick.
If you ask me TCP/IP is a startling realization of this fact. How many people understand completely and absolutley how TCP/IP works, yet how many people use it??
That and Bill Gates actually rising to any kind of success. There has got to be something else going on there, with software like that, we know he didn't earn it. :)
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
To anyone who doubts geeks love with Religion, one name will answer that. Lovecraft.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
I think pagan/occult type people are drawn to the technological fields. Essentially, (boy, now I'm really laying it on thick) the tech fields are the closest thing we have to a meritocracy where you are judged by what you are capable of doing not who you are or what God/dess you do or don't worship.
I think there is another factor in regards to this subject. When I was younger, I was a devote atheist. The concept of any Divine Figure was absurd to me. As I got older, there was too many things that could't be explained properly any other way except through a mystical/religious element. These things were all touchy/feely kinds of issues that you can't gather imperical evidence on. Because of my past beliefs, I was more open to hearing from different religions and belief structures which then led me down the path to a pagan belief.
I am also going to blame roleplaying games a bit in this process, because of D&D I was exposed to the concept of entire Worlds devoted to occultism.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
While not really much more than a baby hacker I am a yogi. Yoga is often referred to as the supreme science. It is the science of consciousness.
:-). Got an auto-reply too . . .
;-). I mean what will all of this mean in 5,000 or 10,000 yrs anyway? I perceive the possibility of more.
I sent a letter to larry wall today on the subject
I have read that "y(j)esu christos" can be translated as I am conscious . . . I don't know if that's true but it sure does sound alot like buddha translating to "I am awake." I pay my bills as a web developer but my conscious pursuit is infinity or bust
Here is a book from my yoga teacher and mentor . . . if any of you come to grasp all that's in this book, I imagine your life will be very fulfilling.
I seek to experience and merge consciously with that which rotates this earth.
Listen to Reality!
not todate . . . I have read the work of sri ramakrishna, sri easwaran, some upanishads, bhagavad ghita, dhamapada, and a few others.
:-) . . . still working on it hence my handle.
In the end it seamed that I should probably just start meditating and achieve the experience which all of these try to describe
Listen to Reality!
This is a serious subject. This very evening I called upon the daemons of Mandrake while windows into the microsoft underworld were still closing. In my ignorance I created a rent in the ether and brought my local time-space to a screeching halt. This required several hours of meditation and propitation to save my soul.
"Do not call up what you can not put down." - Aleister Crowley
Deep linking will get you sued!
sulli
RTFJ.
Pretty well too. I can repair them. I can program them. I can describe thier functions. And I have been doing it for twenty years on a wide variety of platforms.
Computers are not magic!
"Any Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - A.C. Clarke"
U suX0r! und3rp4n75 7r011 15 4 84574rd!
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The geeks shall inherit the earth.
k155 my 455, und3rp4n75 7r011!
l053r
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The geeks shall inherit the earth.
I do practice magick, read tarot cards, and go to various pagan gatherings and rituals. I have only been doing so for around a year, some psychadelic experiences I had opened me up to the idea of all of the different ways it is possible to see reality.
I try very hard to neither believe nor disbelieve, the experiences are incredibly valuable and wonderful regardless of what the ontological reality of them is. When one casts a circle or contacts a "spirit" the mood of the area shifts and insights can be gained. This is valuable regardless as to whether the spirits are beings with objective existance or just constructs of our own minds. The feeling of being in a group doing a ritual that is really on cannot be described! I also feel a much more heightened connection to nature than I used to
Likewise I have gained many insights for the tarot, whether this is from the patterns of the cards themselves being nonrandom or just the exercise engage parts of my mind that are not normally active I don't know, and ultimately it really does not matter.
I have noticed a fair number of computer geeks among the neopagan community (of course this is the Bay Area where there are a fair number of geeks in *every* community. I especially love my fellow geek pagans they seem to strike a good balence between questioning skepticism and being able to get into that magickal space where anything is possible.
MichelleThere is certainly a connection between scientists and mystics; Mystics are scientists.
Consider the following questions:
These are questions that scientists and other technically minded people ask, and they are questions that mystics ask as well. Note that the word "Gnostic", used in this Slashdot intro, means "Understanding".
Of all religious devotees, Mystics are the most scientific, since they constantly try to find the truth through observation, trial, and error. Mystics generally find that the the written word takes second place to first hand repeatable experiments, usually in the form of meditation.
If there is any one thing that would make a mystic out of a scientifically minded person (assuming that the scientist hasn't already taking Socrates' advice to heart and studying their own awareness), it would have to be the hard problem of consciousness, which is essentially, the problem of how we are ever aware of anything at all; why it is that there is something like to be a person (or a butterfly).
If you can explain the universe, but can't explain how it is that you're even aware of it in the first place, you may have just as well just explained a very nice and very neat little dream. Universes are probably a dime a dozen.
Let me put it a completely different way:
If you were a computer programmer, electronics enthusiast, or some other kind of tinkerer, and you come across these concepts of awareness, something called "God", different dimensions, and this mystery of light and sound, which of the following would appeal most to you:
(Necessary plug: Personally, I practice Surat Shabda Yoga).
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, (1888) Oxford University Press, Book III, Part I, Section I, pgs. 469-470.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I think you could make a strong case that meditation practice could be viewed as hacking our own personal operating system...
Hey, If pretending your Christ, helps you write better code I'm all for it! Do it guy! I'm an orthodox Jew myself and I believe making ANYTHING more perfect means making it closer to G-d. I suppose we're saying the same thing I just very carefully subract the anthropomorphism.
The technology invites us to intuit, to think, to dare, to extend our intellectual borders, what would make more sense than to resonate to aspects of other theologies, or ANY extracultural systems, which make sense to us? I think it is a gross oversimplification to group all the free thinkers into the heading of "mysticism". Gnosis is to have a secret knowledge, so that which sets the brightest at the edge of knowledge (or the fastest game players at the top of their game) would tend to beckon them to more exclusive, ie "secret" knowledge. Not much spectacular about the that, but as a blueprint for religion and life? That would depend on the other forces shaping the individual and the realities in place in the other aspects of her/his life.
This certainly qualifies as "neutral or positive".
You don't know that for sure. They might really hate themselves.
ben to tha muthafuckin shutman
NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
Having spent seven years in the Occult capitol of Canada (ie: Victoria, British Columbia), and having dated a couple of Wiccans, I think the connection between the two is obvious.
I would say, however, that someone who is sensitive, feels rejected by/rejects society, and seeks a feeling of power and control will most likely end up in one or both of these cultures. People find well-being and belonging in mysticism. If they don't find that in the mainstream, they will seek out more obscure ways to connect to their world.
The "I'm a tormented Goth with long hair and a trench-coat" & "I'm an ecstatic Wiccan with long hair and flowing robes" sets do tend to get along well. Also, Wiccans are always talking about "The Goddess" and faeries and spells and shit, and hackers are always talking about Root and Daemons and scripts and shit.
I won't even go into similarities in hygiene...
I think that, in the beginning, most hackers were considered by everybody else to be incredibly smart. I mean, if they could work out how to operate them "blinkenlighten" contraptions, well they must know things that no ordinary people know. Things of the occult. Things like magic.
It would be fun to have magical powers, tho. If only to annoy stupid users who come up with strange new ways of screwing things up.
"So, what happens if I press *this* button here?"
"No, you don't want to do that. That's basically a low-level format of your hard drive, and..."
"Hey, Format! My kid learnt something about this in school! Let's see what happens..."
"YOU TOUCH THAT BUTTON AND I'LL TURN YOU INTO A FROG... OR SOMETHING!"
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
All I can say is,
"/Dev/Null Serviam!"
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Typical Wiccan:
- American
- Female
- Under 18 or between 30 and 40 years old
- Below average to average looks
- Average to above average intelligence
In addition to the above factors, I would also note a cultural tendency (predating interest in the "alternatives") toward romanticism, usually at the expense of economic, social and political awareness. This leads me to believe that interest in the "occult" as defined in the article is usually an attempt by intellectually weak, physically diminutive individuals to seek a form of worldview which cannot be based on either complex socio-political ideas or typical, sexually driven social interaction.Needless to say, I do not exactly see the correlation between being a geek and being a devotee of some pagan spinoff cult. To the contrary, I think that most geeks - not the teenage losers Jon Katz likes writing about, but the intellectually dominant, self-assured types - can only scorn any such cheap escapist pursuits.
--
Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
H. Rap Brown
Folks, it comes down to this. We geeks are real world 'Solution Providers.' We have to think out of the box. If we think like normal people things don't get done (I mean come on! Do you honestly think the average 'Joe' can work with C++ Pointers??!) As such we tend to let this creativity bleed out in to our surrounding thoughts, daily lives and metaphysical beliefs. And it isn't long before we start asking questions like your neighbor's 5 year old son... [5 Year old] Daddy.. If God created everything then who created him? What was there before God? And hence you start looking for a new solution to this problem...And you start coming up with different answers... Answers that are MORE acceptable to you then those that were handed to you on a silver plate.
LFS. Have you built your system today?
"Just wait until you see the GNOSTICISM vs. KDE flame wars"
Of course, correlation does not imply confirmation. While a lot of Wiccan or other pagan groups may use the Internet to try to draw in new recruits, it's unlikely that there's much of a direct link between hacking and getting interested in mysticism, or being a mystic and getting interested in hacking. It's just that few of the mystics happen to be interested in many of the principles that power the open source movement.
Zen is not mystical. It only appears to be.
I (also) was surprised to see Zen grouped with "neo-paganism, Discordianism" and in one post "occultism".
I like to watch how people group or classify things they don't understand.
I'm no hacker, but I am learning (slowly) to program, and I have been noticing interesting connections between Zen and programming. For example, there is some difficulty in teaching a computer to recognize things. This is something we do easily and naturally, so I was reminded: recognizing things is something we DO. We recognize things. It's an action on our part. What if we were to practice NOT recognizing things for a while? To NOT impose meanings, words, and associations onto a recognized 'thing', but just to experience it as it is? Acceptance. For me, this is part of Zen.
Zen has taught me that thinking is a tool. But it is a tool that is often abused. Just because you have a hammer doesn't mean you should go around banging everything you see. You should put it down. Pick it up when you need it, then put it back down. Is it hard to let go of? Then you should practice.
James.
You have then chosen to assume -- or believe, perhaps -- that in lack of evidence to the contrary, the book does not exist. (Re-read what you wrote.) The reality, however, is that the book may or may not exist; not having entered the room, you don't know which. Therefore, if you were truly a facts-only person, you would have said, "... lacking said information, I have no rational choice but to accept the possibility of the book's existence (or nonexistence)."
Wrong. If there is no evidence of something existing, then to an atheist (or a scientist), it does not exist.
If there is evidence that leans toward an explanation, then it might be assumed to exist, such as with black holes.
At most, scientists (and atheists) might have theories about the existence of something, even if they don't have hard proof. However, unlike most religious people, they would have no problem with someone proving that aforementioned thing does not exist.
It's the difference between believing things you want to believe, and believing things that are actually proven correct.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
"If quitters never win, and winners never quit, what fool came up with, 'Quit ... while you're ahead?"
"How come you don't hear about gruntled employees?"
"If it's zero degrees outside today, and it's supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?"
And my personal favorite...
"Whose cruel idea was it for the word 'lisp' to have an 's' in it?"
All stolen from Steven Wright. A true thinker if I ever heard one.
-thomas
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"And like that
Personally I'm atheist, but the point I've noticed is that there seems to be two subjects guaranteed to generate the most comments on any forum (even techie ones) and thats God (existence/non-existence of) and Sex (particularly gay sex - pro/anti arguments)
I have no idea if this means anything at all, just something I've noticed...:)
*BenZilla*
I have indeed noticed that there are some common trends that thread they're way through certain types of people. For instance, people who are into computers are more often than not into role playing, anime and certain other non-computer-related activities. Hell, you can see it in the kind of posts we get here on slashdot.
I don't, however, know if these traits are developed independently, for instance whether it's just the same kind of people who are interested in computers are the same kinds of people who are interested in d&d, or whether it's the influence of the geek community that introduces us to these things.
[shrug] I don't know really, but I think these are fairly common trends, do tell me if I'm wrong.
Joshua
Organization and religious tolerance don't go together. They are systems for gaining profit for the priests, and as such, they are generally as ruthless and intolerant as they can get away with, which is generally a function of what percentage of the population they can claim. I don't know about you and your church, but my own clergy make a heck of a lot less money than myself. If you want to look at certain religions... a massive amount of money has been/is spent on towering buildings, but hey... I like architecture Let's be real... organized religion suggests that worship is communal. So do certain practioners of Wicca, etc... but many 'occult' believers don't recognize any necessary community. Are some programers spatially antisocial? Sure. And does any faith that is self-directed have more appeal? Sure.
The unilluminated have spotted our secret symbolism of the ASCII bird and fish. Their resistance is futile! The Gnomes of Zurich have been notified. The Orbital Mind Control Lazers are powered. Behold the power of C. My bird perches and sings. My fish ate a worm. We shall undermine and overcome. We are united in our estrangement. One million dollars. Buahahaha!
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
BOO! (Get thee behind...uh, let me rephrase that.)
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
with all this talk of discordianism how is it that no one has mentioned the church of the subgenius and out savior of slack "Bob" hell theres been "Bob" references all through out the linux community everything from redhat being distributed with a "Bob" screen savers on up.is this religion just a bad joke just another lie or is this the greatest lie that ended being the truth ask yourself that or are you to afraid of the lie/truth/truthfull lie i know i am So pull the wool over your own eyes pink boy and launch the severed head of arnold palmer into space.oh and most of all Slack off.
,kill pinks-(sacred subgenius prayer)
-PRAISE "Bob",exterminate normals
-GoodCitizen
Plain and simple... no pagan beliefs here. I guess it's always been that way with me. I will say that of my friends in the geek community amazingly about 50% are Christian while the other 50% appear to be Atheists or Gnostics. I would have expected there to be fewer Christians amongst Geeks for some reason... I have no logical reason why - just seems right I guess. Of course this is only my personal experience and I live in the Bible Belt so maybe elsewhere the number is closer to like 20% Christian and the other mostly pagan religions accounting for the other 80%. It would be interesting to see a scientific study of such including demographic information.
At the time you posted this, there have already been eight people explaining to me, with various degrees of rudeness and historical inaccuracy, that "X" has long been used as an abbrevaition for Christ.
Yes, I know that! I've explained that I know that 17 hours ago. Let me try this one last time before I give up on this thread.
By the way, Mencken was an unfunny, classist, cheap-shot artist prick.
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Could it theoretically be used in a neutral or positive way? Sure. But it's not used that way and I'm objecting to the way in which it is used.
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But that's irrelevant to my point. The responses to my original post include several textbook examples of the "hostile to organized religion in general" mindset. Now you tell me -- do any of these guys give an impression of tolerance or respect for those whose beliefs differ from their own? Whether or not their anger and bile are justified, they're certainly not impressing me with their openmindedness.
Flame away! I'm neither religious nor a Christian.
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Even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be relaxed about it, hostile to organized religion in general and all forms of religious bigotry in particular. Many enjoy `parody' religions such as Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius.
To my mind, "hostile to organized religion in general" and "enjoy `parody' religions" come a lot closer to being religious bigotry than they are to being hostile to religious bigotry.
While I'm on the subject, an example that you see here frequently is the use of "xtian" and "fundie". I'm neither an xtian nor a fundie, but I find that sort of gratuitous nastiness distasteful. It only makes me think less of the person who uses it, not the person it's directed at.
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I think its a safe thing to say that I would not have .. researched Discordiasm(read: not even known it existed) without the internet. I think the reason why a lot of the esoteric relegions were downloaded a lot is because they weren't readily available in libraries, go ahead and TRY to find _Princpia Discordia: Or, How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her_ in a library.
;)
I also think the internet is a favorite for the irrepresable Illuminatus(which may or may not be closely tied to Discordiasm)
As for Ringism, very few know what that is, and even less where to find it
(hint: its in one of my email sig's)
In short, I think a lot of the techie community comes up with thier own belief method. I'm curious as to how many Christians we have in the tech field, I made the mistake once of assuming that there weren't to many.. and made a flip remark.. the next thing I knew, I had about 5 megs of packets comeing at me.
Ps..
HAIL ERIS!
-- MrMud
Not every hacker hangs a pentagram on their wall in front of their computer.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Then, once we've all been reduced to zombies they will enter our universe and take over.
Don't believe me, well, then you've never used SAP!
Waking up in the middle of the night screaming
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
I think this interest in the occult stems from the interest of nerds in general in scifi/fantasy (the genre). I know I became involved in computers partially because of scifi. And doesn't everyone just love that computer in Discworld? I know that I for one wish magic existed, just as I wish I could be in Captain Picard's shoes, or have sex with Deanna Troi, Seven of Nine, and Dax all at once. Just as I wish I could be a character in the Wheel of Time, or the Lord of the Rings. Just as I wish I was telekinetic. In short, with all of us being technology buffs merely by using computers, it is natural that we be sci-fi buffs, and thus fantasy buffs as well, and therefore that we have an interest in the occult. Steve Rogers aciel@speakeasy.net
When our server crashed last week, in a fit of desperation, I sacrificed a goat. No more blue screens; everything worked fine. Just a slight, Gates-esque cackle on the edges of perception.
I... uh... don't go in the server room anymore. As of tomorrow, you can find me three miles away from the nearest signs of civilization, lying under a rock with my blankie and crying uncontrollably.
On second though... Ah, what the Hel (sic), I'll just keep sacrifing goats. I've heard that Windows 2000 requires black goats, so I think we'll wait to upgrade.
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When we program we deal with a large project, from a human's point of view. Even small programs are complex. Often thousands of different variables, not all of which are under our control, or even known to us affect what we do. We try to fix something that is immensely complex, and often, for no reason we can understand, it breaks, or fixes, itself.
When you put people into a system where the manipulations and results are not predictable, you are going to get some form of religion out. It is just that Lutheran ministers and Babtist preachers don't know what you are babbling about, and whatever it is, they can't help you with it. They also don't want you to infect their flock with thought, or ideas, or anything, and so programming folk are often pushed out to the edges of established religions (or any other social system, really.)
As this technology becomes better understood and more widespread (yes, computers are everywhere, but programming is not. How many of the actual public knows what a systems programmer looks like?)then I suspect a drop in alternative religion use by programmer folk. This may be what is happening.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Just my few cents...or maybe more.
~KONala >^..^
Well but of course!
As more facts are known, there is less need for mysticism... and that includes religion...
Technology and the communications channels that it opens becomes a natural barrier to mysticism. Sure, there are protestant channels and cults spread through the Internet; but the mayority of the information passing through caters either to our desires as humans or to our need to know.
That need to know; it is why we made up religion in the first place; it filled a void that's has steadily become smaller for some.
Every advancement made in science and technology is an afront to the religious establishment and they would as soon stop all research and developement. Of course, as a geek/scientist/nerd; who would be willing to be part of an establishment that goes against your desire to know? to advance technology?
hopelessly in need of a sig
I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
The scary reality of life is as follows...
There is no God.
There is no Magic.
There is no Spirit.
There is only a cold, sterile, dead universe governed by harsh physical laws.
Welcome to existence, fellow humans! Enjoy your delusions while you slowly oxidize towards your permanent, endless death.
Then the whores come in, shaking their rumps for the menfolk.
i don't think it's so much of a belief in "magic" or "uncommon religions"...but rather a different, often "off-the-wall" way of thinking
of the people i've met that (and me included) that are truly technically inclined, the majority are atheist, agnostic, or one of various "other" religions (can't think of the correct word)...the one person i know who follows a mainstream religion is Jewish....but was raised Christian...
my theory is that since programming is a major time-consuming activity that also requires nearly full concentration, people who enjoy programming are often recluses (which makes sense why many coders prefer working late nights: no disturbances)
anyways, due to the lack of social interaction (i myself never had a real friend until i was 16 or 17) the person develops an independent set of beliefs, and often studies various nontraditional religions/theories/etc...not due to "evilness" but rather curiousity...at 14 or 15 i was studying witchcraft and satanism-i grew out of it in time and it never had a negative impact on me, but i was in search of a higher power or another way of life , and i was studying ideas that had never been presented to me in hope of acheiving happiness (loneliness didn't help)...i've talked to others who are "technically inclined" and, as i said, for the most part their youths were fairly similar...
anyway, if that made any sense, that's my theory...
I know a few guys at church that are pretty computer geek oriented. The computer geeks i know outside of church, i really dont know what there relegious affiliations are, religion is the last thing we talk about together.
But this is something that I have been mulling over in my mind lately. The internet has changed almost every aspect of how I live my life. The job I have is based somewhat on the internet. The way I keep in touch with freinds and family is 90% over the internet. Most of my recreation is on the internet. (linux + quake :)
But the internet has yet to change the way I worship, the way i practice my religion. Im not sure I would want to logon every sunday morning for my church services. Could I get closer to god in an AOL chatroom?
Ive also wondered why there doesnt seem to be any type of big Jerry Fallwell type Internet preachers the way there are the TV preachers.
Im wondering if technology and religion are mutually exclusive, or will these to social institutions converge the way everything else in my life has.
I think that why there is such a connection between geeks and the mystical/occult is that there aren't any set rules in how you should/shouldn't practice your own form of religion. There are a certain set of beliefs, but it's basically what you make of it, it's very unrestrictive, and allows for creativity. I'm not saying that other more mainstream religions aren't creative, but they tend to look down on what is "different" in their eyes, it's more about conforming your life to the way "they" think you should live it, "their" guidelines. Geeks are known for their creativity and opposition to restraints on their lifestyles (censorship, etc.), and the occult really allows them/us to live their lives as they choose.
I have to say that I don't think you can take these claims too seriously. People with non-mainstream beliefs tend to gravitate to new communications mediums because it is the only way to find other like-minded people. Witness the proliferation of neo-nazi and hate websites (NOTE: I am NOT equating paganism with nazism; I am just using it as an example). People in these groups have the impetus to undertake steep learning curves to spread their message or find other like-minded people. Look at all the strange stuff on CB and shortwave when they were new.
You won't find PTA groups and Boy Scout groups pioneering new communications methods simply because they already have a clearly defined communications infrastructure in place. Can you imagine a den mother giving a URL to other den mothers six-seven years ago? I don't think so. It's much easier to imagine a small group of people with non-mainstream beliefs finding a new way to talk to each other or evangelize their cause.
Finally, I don't think you can classify geeks as quasi-mystical. I would guess that, other than a shared interest in computers, geeks pretty much cut across the same demographic lines as most of America. Whether you are pigeonholing geeks positively or negatively, you're still lumping them all together.
I think it is true with some hackers more than others. Some play things like the old text adventures, others do dungeons and dragons, others love fake identities, and some are none of the above.
Many are confusing an interest in fantasy books, games and entertainment with belief in mystic or occult powers/entities. Interest does not denote belief!
I play Nethack, but I know there's no such thing as magic. I love Tolkien, Glenn Danzig and JC Superstar, but I don't believe in elves, devils or singing, dancing demi-gods! There is not substantial evidence showing that any of those ideas have become reality. Believing in that for which there is no evidence is irrational. Delusional.
I feel that agnosticism is probably the wiser way to go than atheism, but I'm willing to go the distance and carry logic to its conclusion: There are no gods, magic spells, heavens, hells, demons, devils, spirits, angels, deus ex machinae, etc.
Arguments such as Pascal's Wager are faulty. It reminds me of people who threaten, "If you don't believe in (and obey) God, you'll be damned in the afterlife! (or get reincarnated as a newt, etc.)"
My response: "I'm ready to die, what are you afraid of?"
Gods cannot be fashioned out of human need and emotion, try as we might.
I won't address organized religion in this post because organized religion(s) exists regardless of whether or not its tenets, beliefs and decrees are well-founded.
By definition, one cannot hold values without first making judgements. Make yours.
-A
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Sucks to your ass-mar! - _Lord of the Flies_ by William Golding
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clark
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Sucks to your ass-mar! - _Lord of the Flies_ by William Golding
I myself am not a Christian. It's kind of strange saying that considering my father is Southern Baptist minister. I am what you would call a spiritual orphan. Although I believe in God, I have seen all the in-fighting and politics of religion for so long that I no longer want a part of it.
By force of will alone...
My husband is a network admin; I'm a programmer. He once related to me a story about a user that was having a problem with his computer. As soon as he arrived at the users cube the problem disappeared. The user was amazed and baffled that his computer was now working and couldn't understand what had been done to make it work. My husbands reply was "By force of will alone".
I have since witnessed this many times myself. On a related note, I brew beer. When I first started brewing I got books on the subject, read up on it all over the internet and on rec.crafts.brewing and basically immersed myself in brewing lore for weeks on end. I make good beer now. My brother-in-law also wanted to make beer so I gave him the books I bought and pointed him to good sites on the internet to read. He has tried three times to make beer and each time has reported that his beer came out tasting like crap. He had all the same resources and used the same kind of water and ingredients as I did and still could not do it. So, "By force of will alone" I, "goddess of beer and programming" perform my arcane arts with fabulous results.
Our believe lies in Accordianism. Our goddess is Judy Tenuda.
That is the nature of religion. Religion, in any form, is the punchline. Gnostic experiences, where you feel the presence of God in your life, is the actual 'set up' of the joke.
Now, for almost everyone, genuine gnostic experience is a very powerful and rare thing. It doesn't happen often and when it does, it changes your view. You lose sight, for a moment, of the temporal confinement of man, seeing your soul as part of a greater consciousness. When that happens, most people struggle for a bit, trying to get a handle of what happened, what did it mean, etc.
Religion evolves as a codified way of reminding people about the gnostic experiences in their lives. In some sense, it can help make it easier for you to have that gnostic experience, that awareness of God's presence and role, but in general, it is there to remind you of a prior experience. In essence, religion is the repeated telling of a punchline of the funniest, most powerful joke you ever heard.
Where does intolerance come from? In my opinion, it comes from people who never heard the set up, only the punchline. These people generally believe that they know the actual joke, both the set up and the punchline, but they really only have heard the punchline and it is really threatening to them to have it possibly come out that they really never heard the whole joke, that they don't really know why it is funny, but someone once told them they would:
* Never go to heaven
* Go to hell
* Be a bad person
If they didn't understand the joke. Where Christianity, Paganism, Wiccanism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Islam, etc., all of them; where every single last religion fails is in this one aspect:
They spend more time telling the punchline than helping people get the joke.
Hackers, coders, tech writers, all of the people with balanced brains out there (left and right in full tune and hitting all cylinders) have a trait in common with other intelligent people - curiousity and a desire to understand why the joke is so funny to everyone else
Most anti-christian sentiment arises from the problem that is similar to what occurs when a person asks someone laughing why they are laughing so hard and the laughing person replies,
"I can't explain it, but you are going to die if you don't start laughing with me"
It doesn't mean they are evil, or bad (although some are). It does mean that they really need to have the joke explained to them, ie. to have a gnostic experience genuinely occur to them.
Is mysticism or paganism bad? I don't know, I can't say for sure. My test for any religion is whether or not it helps explain the whole joke, not just the punchline. I am Catholic and I am constantly appalled at how bad we are at telling the whole joke well, even thought, to me at least, I found it very very funny.
For anyone who make take offense at this, please realize that I use the Joke symbolism as a metaphor, not to make fun of any religion. I do, however, find the gnostic experiences I have had to be far more rewarding than a hearty belly laugh, but very similar in feel.
Technology Marketing is what happens when people turn their hard work over to people paid to manipulate others.
I'm pagan. Heaviest influences from wicca, qaballah, and ceremonial magic. Some influences from unitarian universalism, the society of friends (commonly known as quakers), catholocism, judaism, and zen buddhism. I cannot (and would not) claim any particular tradition or following, because I walk a path of my own definition.
I believe in magic... for some definitions thereof. I don't believe in throwing lightning bolts or unassisted human flight or anything like that, but I do believe in the ability of the mind to manipulate reality (and people's perceptions of reality) through poorly understood means. I use magic to help create or combat the sorts of 'oogie' feelings that seem to be associated with places and people. I bless people. I ward places. I clean up stray energy so that it doesn't bother folks. I encourage people to believe in their ability to heal. I pay attention to people's moods, and the atmosphere they create with them.
The purpose of religion is to give a framework for dealing with the things that we do not have the time to understand fully. I cannot explain what the purpose of life is, but religion gives me a way to enjoy and celebrate the twists and turns it brings. I revere the cycle of life, its beginning, growth, and ending so that other life may go on. I revere the flow of thought and feeling from one person to another, and the structures which are erected to channel and strengthen such communion. I glory in the beauty of the universe, and I try to find the beauty in everything.
I'm far from surprised to see so few people expressing their beliefs here; the first few posts clearly demonstrate that most folks posting cannot help but judge based on their preconceptions, despite being asked not to.
as we all know zen is a big movement in buddhism because it actually says something very important about the very fabric of reality, or the fabric of the fabric of reality etc etc. Zen is for opening your eyes. Most occultism is for putting on cool-looking/hip blindfolds.
Secondly Zen is nothing but fucus and peace of mind, which makes your post very strange imho
Information wants to be free, as do our minds.
I think it would be extremely strange if you as a programmer always thought that the real world was as logical and clean as the world of computers. Reality isn't anywhere near making sense the way computers do. I don't see how you can defend an atheistic belief. Long live the agnostics! :P
I'm there.
Lots of entropy in your everyday life means less entropy in the computers :P
Keeping movies and science fiction novels based on cyberspace/virtuality/cyberspace in a proper viewpoint as just popular fiction ideas, the inevitability of the merging of our meat brains, computers, and networks into one shared new plan of existence is the ultimate expression and realization of what human religious beliefs and philosophies have sought since the beginning of history. Every year that passes and technology moves forward we come closer to achieve the overcoming of the meat- of death, of limitations. Who here cannot see this? We will all be willingly reduced to brains in a vat, connected via medium of experience that is god-like- where we can create and do anything. Sure we can still see the "real world" through cameras and other devices, but why bother? The real world will be a place just for archeologists. We shall see the beginnings of this in just a few more years as millions of people start to live dichotomatic lives- half in the real world, half in virtual worlds. People will change the way they live in order to maximize their time in fictional virtual worlds, where they can be anybody and do anything. This may sound all optimistic but I expect much blood to be shed over the cultural shockwave that will occur. Honestly, if you could have an OC768 bolted into your skull and could mainline the Net, wouldn't you do it?
I strongly believe in and practice magick in the form of Celtic Shamanism / Druidry. My belief in this has only grown stronger the more I delve and learn about computers. Whether their is any form of connection between the two, sociologically I am sure that you could prove this. However, from personal experience I have noticed that most of my friends / coworkers who are heavily into computers also subscribe to a 'mystical' belief system, such as Wicca, Zen, Druidry, animistic, or shamanistic beliefs.
While they may not manifest themselves in experimentaly verifieable ways our reactions to their wishes determine the fate of what religous people call our souls. Our inability to perceive such powers does not preclude their existance.
Since it doesn't manifest in any verifiable way, what then is the difference whether they exist or not? The net result is the same until such time as we die, at which point other undetectable things supposedly are affected.
The only interface we have to the universe is our five senses, and our ability to build tools that can talk to us using these senses. If there is anything else, it is as if it doesn't exist. For your hot iron example, touching it would have some result like the loss of hand function. Also, in your example one of the paties can see it and experience it, and tell the other. With the supernatural we have nothing more than one's imagination.
I pull out the goat blood every time I build.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
OK, here's one (Christian developer, former OSS writer). The basic idea of Christianity is to try to be like Christ. This means I write the best code I can, don't overcharge for it, "go the extra mile" in fixing bugs or doing those last-minute tweaks the customer didn't think of during spec or design review, and don't put my business ahead of treating people like human beings (God made us all, he must have had SOME reason). (....) OK, now I've got the asbestos suit on: It seems that the most hateful comments in newsgroups and other forums come from people who are hostile to Christianity or to religion in general. A dangerous generalization, not based on supportable research. Anyway, if the hateful bigot is an untrue stereotype of the Christian, then what's left: honesty, diligence, patience, and other Biblical virtues, all of which seem useful traits for someone developing something which most developers will not comprehend in depth but will depend upon for their own livelihood anyway.
This is not a self-referential sig.
I am a devote Christian, and am proud to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I am not posting to argue about what people believe or the specifics of one religion versus another, I would just like to share my understanding of human nature and the reasons that I believe certain kinds of people are drawn to computers more than others.
I believe that God created all mankind in His Image, and as such, we reflect how He is in many of our fundamental desires, but we are also imperfect, which skews our implementation of these desires. Thus we like to create, to exercise power, and to be in control of ourselves, our creations, and our investments. In addition to these things, we enjoy receiving praise from or about these things, as it reaffirms our self-appointed position of god of our own lives. So we have a world full of mini-gods running around, all seeking these same things, not that they are all self-serving. Humans are God's ultimate creations, with both a spirit and a body, created to be like Him, to live with Him and in this world, and to praise Him. For most people, they themselves and their children are the most important things to them, because human life is the ultimate creation that we can make. Once again, I am simply offering explanations from my own understanding, not passing judgements.
Computers offer an environment where our creative energies are nearly boundless, a place where I can exercise my power to create programs, to customize my interface, and to test my power against others online through games. These are only a few of the things a computer allows me to do. I could also exercise my power in tyrranical ways, if I choose to crack. Here on my computer I am a king. All hackers to some extenet want to be in complete control over their machines and others as well, to be gods. Computers allow us to do that.
Personally, I have decided that the best and most powerful I could ever be is a servant of the One High God, letting Him be in control, letting His Power be used through me, still creating and exercising power, but not my own power, and not for my own reasons. This, to me, is the ultimate of human existance, since every need is filled and I lack nothing. God just wants to dwell with us, to be our personal friend, and to have us give Him the praise and love that He deserves. This is why I love Jesus and why I love computers. I am a Christian. And I am a hacker.
God cannot do anything. One thing God cannot do is sin, because by definition, sin is not of God, and therefore, God cannot sin. By the way, God can't make a rock so big that He can't pick it up, because there is no limit on infinite power. So God is logical, and you are not, because your argument can be false even when all the premises are true. Please, study logic formally before you make assumptions.
I used to play MTG and currently am involved in the 'hacking' world, I think its because we are so much smarter than everyone else, I mean the same people who had no chance building a good deck have no chance securing a box. Either that or we do these things because we want money or no one in the 'real' world likes us.
Through high-school, I was really into these kind of stuff. Now I'm in college and I'm so busy there is no time to believe anymore. Anyone else see what I'm saying? I think about how to code my next algorithm instead of the stuff I used to think about (god, gods, spiritual force, reality). And I used to trip a lot, but not in a way that it hurt my ability to concentrate on my school work. What do I believe now? C++ baby! Well, java too. Hell, ASM!!