[lotharbot]

For the most part, people on Hacker News want to read thoughtful and insightful comments. They want to learn new things, or gain new perspective, or otherwise extract value from the comments they read.

Comments about religious history (especially with sources) or religious artifacts (like manuscripts), clear explanations of interesting doctrines, and descriptions of how different religions/sects view some particular issue tend to be pretty well received. As a religious person, I've made a lot of comments along these lines (some about my own religion, some about other religions) and gotten a lot more upvotes than downvotes for them. Even the negative responses I get are thoughtful most of the time.

Assertions that religion X is true/false, statements that aren't backed up by appropriate evidence, and preachy comments tend to be poorly received.

[simon]

I'm glad that you have had more positive experience on HN with faith/religious comments than I have. Others have made similar observations to mine.

Some conversations have gone well, but there are more that have not. Most likely my own fault for calling people on their intolerance rather than just shrugging and finding another story to comment on. :-)

[lotharbot]

Remember that HN members aren't particularly concerned with being "tolerant". We tend to be very intolerant of weak or tired arguments, particularly those that don't seem to get basic facts straight (say, the kind of stuff you can find on wikipedia.) So, for example, an assertion that there's evidence of a worldwide flood, without a link to significant research, won't be taken well.

But HN members do like to learn new and interesting things, even from foreign worldviews. If the idea of "speaking in tongues" came up, a quick explanation of the practice and the history (especially with links) would be quite welcome.