[quote name='Shanee' timestamp='1296900490' post='4769939']Btw, Jewish people cut a part of their male born sexual organ Is that morally right? I know a lot of people who say no. What's God's opinion on this then, umm?

I don't know about it being morally right...actually I don't see how it has anything to do with morality. But most American males are circumcised and agree w/ the practice...it's supposed to be healthier.
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Well, there's really no evidence to support that. Circumcision was a common religious practice, it only became popular in mainstream America due to the beliefs of John Harvey Kellogg ( yea, the cereal guy), who believed it would help stop "the evils of the solitary vice.", i.e. He was a total loon.

And yes, it's immoral. How could the unnecessary mutilation of a childs genitalia at birth without their consent NOT be immoral?

[quote name='slayemin' timestamp='1296854042' post='4769709']
I would bet that 80-90% of western game developers (and other engineers) are atheists or agnostics.

I suspect you're right - but do you think that's just reflective of intellectual/well educated people generally? Or do you think it's something about the computer programming / engineering mindset specifically? I only ask this because I was a student at Cambridge University where there's a disproportionately HIGH number of Christians, the vast majority of whom (at least in my circles) are from more scientific disciplines rather than the arty ones.
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I minored in philosophy and from my experience, about 95-98% of the students and professors were atheists. There was only one student I knew of in all my classes who was a christian and that's because he always wore a large wooden cross around his neck and was studying to become a pastor. I was glad to see that nobody gave him a hard time about it though.

I used to think that higher education was the enemy of religious beliefs, but then I encountered a christian bible club at a community college which put that theory to rest.

My current hypothesis is that philosophers are the most likely to be atheists because they tend to spend a lot of time reasoning things through. The more skilled a person is at reasoning, the less likely they are to be religious*. Skilled philosophers are probably the most proficient reasoners out of every academic discipline because that's their practice whereas computer scientists and engineers are more focused on the technical aspects of their academic discipline. Certainly, reasoning ability comes with the territory of being an engineer much more so than with creative arts, so you could expect to see a higher portion of engineers being atheists than creative arts majors.

Your high christian concentration at Cambridge seems to be a counter-example to my current hypothesis but I'd really need a lot more information before I'd be willing to offer a plausible explanation or ditch my hypothesis since there are a lot of possible factors that could account for it.

*I'm not implying that all religious people are unskilled at reasoning. Descartes and St. Thomas Aquinas were pretty good in their day.

Hm... I wonder how many biologists reject the theory of evolution in favor of creationism / intelligent design? Likewise for physicists, geologists, and astronomers for their respective theories...

Agnostic and Atheist are not the same type of qualifier. For example, Buddists are Atheist. Atheist means 'doesn't believe in a God', whereas Agnostic is 'it's unknowable'.

An Agnostic Atheist would be "I don't believe in a God, but one cannot be sure", where a Agnostic Theist would be "I'm spiritual and believe in a higher power, but I know not what it is".

And what would the agnostic say in regards to the existence of Santa Claus, leprechauns, unicorns, tooth fairies, ogres, and other fictitious entities? The "I don't believe in XYZ, but one cannot be sure" response seems absurd because it entertains the possibility of a known fictitious entity actually existing.

Well, I took your survey.

I'm a Christian and I find that the questions are really geared towards Christians, but not merely that simple. They seem to be based on a rather fundamentalist view of the Bible, although the view that is mainstream. I felt that I was forced to give "wrong answers" for questions that really didn't reflect my views on the Bible.

I found your survey to be as I find most, biased. You cannot possibly hope to get any kind of valuable information from it.

Hm... I wonder how many biologists reject the theory of evolution in favor of creationism / intelligent design? Likewise for physicists, geologists, and astronomers for their respective theories...

None that will do any relevant work.

Many prominent figures were religious. Yet their body of work was independent.

To put it differently. God created world in 6 days 6000 years ago. For a believer, that is it. The fossils are not older, they do not study them because there is nothing to study. God placed those fossils in earth. Creatures do not evolve. They haven't changed since God created them 6000 years ago. There is nothing to study.

As such, whatever the degree they hold or job function they perform is just that - a label. They are not doing anything to challenge any beliefs at all. Not religious, not personal, not scientific. They might be working in a role associated with science, but they will not contribute anything to it. They will be performing what is ultimately menial work. Running experiments, writing articles, talking at conferences. That is no more the insight than eating lunch or going to work. All great scientists did this - but it's not what brought new discoveries.


Theory of evolution is not a religion. It is an observation proven through scientific method. It can be disproven through scientific method. It cannot be disproven by dogma. It may be ignored.

It is perfectly fine for a biologist to examine alternate hypothesis for origins of life. They are perfectly fine to claim "All life was created 6000 years ago" or "Life was created by Xenu" or "it's turtles all the way down".

If they make such a claim in their respective domain, they better present proof of hypothesis or an design an experiment to validate it. If they don't, their career is over. When cold fusion became all the rage, many promising and smart physicists destroyed their careers with a single publication. Not because it touched the topic, but because they made claims they could not substantiate. Putting their name on such claims destroyed their credibility.

The drive of a scientist is to challenge the existing knowledge, to provide further insight. Accepting dogmatic view of anything prevents such scientist from doing anything meaningful. It took much less for people to waste their careers on dead ends.

Whether or not life began 6000 years ago is a pissing match. Nobody cares. The true insight lies in how it began. If it was God - cool, let's find him. If it was chemistry 6 billion years ago - cool, let's get a petri dish and make our own life. If it was aliens - cool, let's call them back and tell them we're fine. If we're in matrix - cool, let's hack it and go to Zion.

Personal beliefs are not exclusive with that. Trying to justify them however is. Not because of a conspiracy, but simply because historically, all such beliefs have turned out to be a folly. Or maybe not - but none of the people that we know of today and to whom we attribute advances in knowledge exhibited any such traits. So it has not been disproven, it's the lack of proof.

Any relevant scientific discovery speaks for itself. And no matter how loud people yell to keep it quiet, it persists. No amount of book burning, personal attacks or other attempts to silence them ever worked. It happened to Newton and it took several years to correct it. Many discoveries (although mostly related to technology rather than science) have been incorrectly attributed to people who were first to sell them, but this is correcting itself as more knowledge becomes accessible (see history of computing, the 50s and earlier era).

At the end, one lifetime is too short for any true advance to occur. People who promote their agenda have completely different goals and merely use some popular topic to promote themselves, not the beliefs or topics they talk about.

OK, here is what I think of the Bible. It is really very simple and goes counter to the past 2000 years of religious thinking and dogma:

The Bible is a guide!


That's it! Really! [size=2]It shows us where we came from, how we should live our lives and where we are going. That is it.


2000 years of misinterpretation and dogma have turned a history book into the "End-all Book of Everything". I'm not saying that I do not believe it is the word of God or wrong. I am saying that we have placed WAY to much emphasis on what was written. We (Christians) have become so completely sold on this line of thought that anything not appearing in the text is wrong.


I believe that a balance between the scientific community and religious community can be reached. If I believe that God created the universe and science is merely the study of that universe, then I have to accept that what we have and are finding is true. Genesis doesn't tell us HOW we were created, only THAT we were. There are MASSIVE gaps in Genesis. It simply is not possible to read that and say "That is how everything came into being!" There is far more unwritten and science is filling those gaps.

Personally totally with Carl Sagan on this.

I'm happy for anyone to believe whatever they want, but if they expect me to seriously consider their views then they need to substantiate them, or I won't.

Thing about the scientific method is that once it has a theory, it attempts to disprove it. The longer a theory withstands attempts to disprove it, the more likely the theory is true but it is never set in stone. IIRC, Karl Popper made the point that if our hypothesis is all swans are white, we do not validate our hypothesis by searching for and counting white swans, we validate it by searching for a swan that isn't white. The longer we fail to find one, the greater the chance that our hypothesis is true.

Modern science is a business and is very corrupt. The scientific method is not affected by this. If you think Jesus died for your sins and God is watching you, judging your morality, could you please start looking for evidence to disprove this? That is the only way to verify a theory.

IMHO, obviously.

[quote name='slayemin' timestamp='1296854042' post='4769709']
I would bet that 80-90% of western game developers (and other engineers) are atheists or agnostics.

I suspect you're right - but do you think that's just reflective of intellectual/well educated people generally? Or do you think it's something about the computer programming / engineering mindset specifically? I only ask this because I was a student at Cambridge University where there's a disproportionately HIGH number of Christians, the vast majority of whom (at least in my circles) are from more scientific disciplines rather than the arty ones.


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No. It has something to do with the Western culture at the present moment. Christianity is so saturated here in America that the name 'Christianity' does not carry any sacred meaning. It describes anything that's got anything to do with Jesus. There are literally hundreds of Christian denominations in the United States alone, each has their own teachings, philosophies, rules, and rituals. The Bible sort of becomes the Universal Book -- though some denominations regard only certain translations and versions.

Since America promotes freedom of religion, people can just start their own church from the basement of their house. Equipped with a Bible in your hand, some visionary dreams and personal experience/view about God, bless yourself you are good to go to become a reverend of your newfound church. Quote the Bible like crazy, reap profits from 10% income of the members of your church -- just because the Bible said so. It's like running your own corporation, except you can twist and turn the Bible however you see fit. These churches are running rampant like MLM scams. The members hunt you down if they didn't see you last Sunday. They ask for a complete devotion from a person who's got a ton of fucking things to do to make a living, not to God, Bible, but to the church.

It only makes sense that people run the fuck away from Christianity. To an outsider, it can be mind-bogglingly stupid to join these cults. Fuck, people just want to enjoy life and achieve happiness. These religions promote fear. How good is that? I might as well do yoga where I can exercise and attain a peace of mind, even for a day.

Christianity has become a for-profit institution (while Islam is a for-politics institution).

If God's morals are so absolute then how come they keep changing over 1000 years, 100 years and even every decade?

God's morals have never changed about this. Religions != God's morals.