[bendmorris]

While I'm not myself Catholic... I disagree that celebrating hackers is "attempting to speak for them." Also, there are plenty of religious hackers, logical Catholics, Catholic hackers, etc. so your assertion of some sort of conflict between logical reasoning and the Vatican seems rather bigoted.

[jeromec]

Bigoted? I simply made an objective observation. None of the thousands of religions of the world stand up particularly well to strict logic and reasoning. The very nature of faith is belief without objective proof. I did not attack faith.

Hacker News is obviously home to a very large sample size of "hackers", and the poll I linked clearly appears to support my observation. I never said there were no religious hackers, just as it can't be said there are no religious scientists.

Also, I would call "hackers see such and such" as speaking for, not celebrating hackers.

[adammichaelc]

How ironic that you linked to such a non-scientific, inherently flawed poll (ie not a random sample of HN readers) to argue in favor of science and objectivity. Just sayin! ;-)

[jeromec]

No, I didn't link to a non-scientific, inherently flawed poll to argue in favor of science and objectivity.

I suggested two things: first, that the opinionated people at the Vatican would probably do well to take note of the results of that particular poll -- for whatever it's worth; second, that the poll appeared to support my observation. I never said it was scientific. I would very much welcome the conducting of an actual scientific poll on the subject.

I have other reasons to argue in favor of science and objectivity, which certainly don't stem from a Web poll.

[lotharbot]

> "The very nature of faith is belief without objective proof."

It's only about the last 150 years, within a small subset of Christianity, that faith has meant "belief without proof" or "belief without reason". Throughout the rest of Jewish and Christian history, as well as in other classical European and Middle Eastern writings, faith has been used to mean "acting upon a belief you hold for good reason, and continuing to act in the face of emotional difficulty". The classical definition of faith, which is still used by most serious religious scholars, is the triumph of reason and evidence over temporary emotion. (Previously discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2366932 )

> None of the thousands of religions of the world stand up particularly well to strict logic and reasoning

Obligatory [citation needed]. Or, rather, [many thousands of citations needed].

If you ever happen to be in my neighborhood, join me for dinner and you can do your best to demonstrate how my particular religion doesn't stand up well to strict logic and reasoning.