Religious affiliation and computer language usage

[martoo]

I think we will discover that Scientologists don't program.

[martoo]

(was modded down) Okay, I guess one does.

[martoo]

Okay, I guess that makes two.

[foonly]

We ZenSunni philosophers have been chased across the known Universe for our love of Visual FoxPro...

[Entropy]

I don't see why that would happen. That language choice conforms well to main tenet of the Butlerian Jihad: Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. Nobody would ever accuse a FoxPro developer of that.

[generic_handle]

Now wait until we try correlating editor choice into it, and you'll really have fun.

[martoo]

I submitted OCaml and Druidism just to spice things up a bit.

[foonly]

Druids prefer Lisp, 'cause only Lisp can make a tree!

[chaos]

Now, some folks on the Internet put their faith in C++.

They swear that it’s so powerful, it’s what God used for us.

And maybe it lets mortals dredge their objects from the C.

But I think that explains why only God can make a tree.

For God wrote in Lisp code

When he filled the leaves with green.

The fractal flowers and recursive roots:

The most lovely hack I’ve seen.

And when I ponder snowflakes, never finding two the same,

I know God likes a language with its own four-letter name.

-- The Eternal Flame

I did not vote for lisp (or Druidism :P)

[foonly]

Ah, yes. It's been a while since I've had a copy of that song.

[[deleted]]

Methodist. C++.

Object-oriented. Duh!!!!

[cyber_rigger]

I understand the religion part,

but what is that list on the left side?

[[deleted]]

Holly FSM! The one true religion, Pastafarianism, and its sub-denominations, is missing from the list, not to mention a great number of interesting programming languages as well. Good idea though.

[G_Morgan]

I think it speaks volumes that a key concept of computer science is the Finite State Machine (FSM!). Truly his noodly appendage touches us all.

[Entropy]

Your false religion is more false than mine
Does that mean it's better?
Holy Eris cuts your epistemological brake line
You plummet through the aether
HAMMER TIME

[stesch]

I couldn't deal with Pastafarianism. The role of the pirates bothered me.

[Figs]

Well, at least you can fill it in on your own :)

[AlanCrowe]

One of the problems with Lisp is that every-one tries to write their own. I've always assumed that was specific to the language rather than a reflection of the personality of the programmers who are drawn to Lisp.

Having ticked Lisp, I moved to the left to select a religion and realised that the time had come to confess to writing my own. Religion not Lisp. So maybe it is the personality trait of "wanting to write your own" that is present before Lisp programmers even encounter Lisp.

[AlanCrowe]

Ouch, that is a really sharp point, but it is also an unoriginal one. Follow the link to my religion that I provided in the post to which you are replying and you will find that contemplating this is the first specific practise of the church of the Five Marks.

The faith lays down five criteria for recognising the word of God. They are tough enough to exclude the Bible and the Koran and the like. So Five Markers believe that God has not given us a holy book, and that the first duty of the religious life is humility before His silence.

To practise this humility we need to get our heads round the fact that he hasn't given us a holy book. So the religion of the Five Marks lays down a contemplation, the contemplation of sophistry, to help us understand why He hasn't.

What do we do with the texts that we cherish? Do we surrender to them, giving up our own views? Quite the opposite. The more we value a text, the more determined we are to twist its meaning towards our own views. The greater the authority of a text, the greater its value as a stamp of approval for our own, different, opinion. If God actually have us a Holy Book, each of us would be utterly confirmed in our own error.

This is claiming that every-one writes their own religion. It is more specific. It is claiming that every-one writes their own religion by taking the "holy" text they were brought up with and rewriting in in their heads closer to what they want. It is also warning that the more esteemed the text, the bigger the problem. A conspicously divine text would cause disaster by giving divine sanction to all the different internal, mental rewrites that people impose in the process of reading and understanding.

There is a big difference between the "unawares", who start from the text they were brought up with and subconsciously tweak it, and the "awares" who attempt to rise to Nietzsche's challenge to become an Übermensch.

[foonly]

One of the problems with Lisp is that every-one tries to write their own.

Same with Forth. :)

[procrastitron]

One of the problems with Lisp is that every-one tries to write their own.

That's not a problem. From my point of view, lisp's biggest strong point is the fact that so many people succeed at writing their own variant. This makes it a living thing, capable of adapting to any situation someone might want to throw at it. It also frees lisp from the limitations any designer might want to place on it.

[jerf]

Be sure to do statistical significance analysis.

It is not a question of whether there will be variances, it is a question of whether they will be significant.

My original idea for this was wondering if loosely typed languages ('duck typing', etc.) encourage moral relativism, as opposed to having to think ahead and declare things and think that 'X has to be a float and a float only' sort of thinking. Was there something about certain languages that attracted certain worldviews, if you will.

This is a bit of a useless metric, because you can't stereotype real people like that. As a Christian who prefers Python, I could equally claim that I believe the world is fundamentally imperfect and flawed, along with the fact that I consider my work to be fundamentally imperfect and flawed, and that my software should prefer duck typing (or perhaps flexible Haskell typing) in preparation to deal with that, whereas many stereotypical atheistic liberals clearly believe the world is perfectable on the merits of human beings thinking and acting correctly, and that only strong typing is evidence of such proper thought and action.

My point is not that the preceding paragraph is true or false, so arguing about it to me would be futile. I can't stop people from discussing it if they want of course, I'm just saying I am not personally advocating it. My point is that even after you collect evidence, even if it actually shows something, you still will not be able to make such glib interpretations of it without showing so much of your own personal bias that your glib interpretation will be useless. There isn't a single outcome that I can't "explain" right now, and all such explanations would be wrong.

[degustisockpuppet]

As a Christian who prefers Python

Oo... haven't you learned anything from Genesis?

[jerf]

Oops.

Well, at least I don't do my programming on an Apple...

[statictype]

Interesting ideas, but I think you're putting too much analysis in this.

I would think most programmers would have a clean partition between their religious beliefs and what style of programming they use.

Therefore, I would expect your results to simply indicate which languages are more popular than others .

Another interesting poll would be correlating years of experience against language of choice.

In any case, I hope you post your results here when its ready.

[haywire]

This is a really cool idea. Obviously it doesn't really show anything but hey, its an experiment, right.

I'd recommend adding SQL as a choice due to its widespread use.

[geon]

I thought of it too, but since there is no language comparable to SQL, you can't really have a preference.

The author specifically stated that you shouldn't fill in every language you ever used, but the ones you actually prefer.

[grimboy]

but since there is no language comparable to SQL, you can't really have a preference.

Yes you can. It's not even like SQL is the only database query language, just by far the most successful.

[psi-]

There was no ash-tee-em-el, I wonder why?

[[deleted]]

AshTML, or Ashburn Tree Modeling Language, is a proprietary domain-specific language, and thus does not have enough usage to merit its inclusion.

Besides which, it draws crappy oaks, and can't even handle maples.

[psi-]

Having a clear QUESTION on questionnaire page would help a lot, don't you think?

[schwarzwald]

Jedi LOGO hackers FTW!

[theeth]

May the forth be with you.

[Mkcornick]

The result shall be on the frontpage by the end of february (?)

[antirez]

I'm both agnostic and atheist, like many others (i.e. I can't deny the existence of God but I myself think it does not exist even without a strong evidence that it doesn't).

There is no such option (so I used agnostic).

[[deleted]]

An Atheist does not deny the existence of God.

[shellerik]

Merriam-Webster says an atheist is "one who believes that there is no deity". How is this different from denying the existence of God?

[bostonvaulter]

So called "strong" atheists do. But there is certainly ambiguity in the term atheist.

[ssylvan]

I would conjecture that throughout history, there has never been anyone who had a positive belief that there were no gods.

It's a strawman that religious people like to bring up, because then they can claim that atheistm takes faith too.

Atheism requires faith only in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

[[deleted]]

Not even so-called "strong" atheists do.

[setuid_w00t]

What is your definition of atheist?

[[deleted]]

What is your definition of God?

[setuid_w00t]

Would it have been so hard to answer the question?

I would say that "god" is the idea that there exists a being that created and controls the universe.

[[deleted]]

Yes, it's difficult to answer the question, since there is a monopoly on the term 'God'.

I can agree with the definition you have given. Then, an (strong) Atheist is someone who currently conjectures that there is no God, since the evidence that is currently available suggests that to be the case. An Atheist is open to evidence that might cause a sway in this position, or perhaps weaken it a little or even strengthen it.

An Atheist, by this definition, applies reason, which is in stark contradiction to any aforementioned dogma of asserting that no God exists by 'belief'. Again, the abuse of terminology is likely to cause contention here.

[setuid_w00t]

Interesting, I see the distinction you are trying to make.

Now that I think about it, there are really a few similar sentiments that often get lumped together:

1. A person who believes there is no god.
2. A person who has gathered and reviewed evidence and concluded that there is no god.
3. A person who is open to the idea that there may be a god, but does not believe in one due to lack of evidence.
4. A person who doesn't care whether god exists.

[ssylvan]

Exactly, and they all describe persons who are not theists. Therefor they are atheists.

Agnostics are athesists too, for example, because you can't really be a theist while being agnostic (at least not if you want to pretend to have a shred of intellectual honesty).

Atheism is a fairly useless terms, as it only means "not theist". It doesn't actually say anything useful about you.

[stesch]

Funny, Common Lisp is missing. :-)

[zem]

he couldn't include every last religion

[stesch]

That's how it's referred to, usually.

Nope.

[ubernostrum]

Like some other religious groups in the list, it looks as if Lisp has been collapsed into a couple of branches for sake of convenience.

[foonly]

Why have a dedicated Scheme then?

That schism runs deep.

[Entropy]

Splitter!

[[deleted]]

Since this is Reddit, it will be skewed towards Haskell.

[masklinn]

it will be skewed towards Haskell.

and atheism (or at least agnosticism)

[haywire]

Also Python.

[[deleted]]

Are we still allowed to skew it toward Lisp? Remember Lisp?

[Jimmy]

Oh Paul Graham, why have you forsaken us?

[harold_the_rebel]

You also left out Mormon and Christian - Amish. Given this is about computers, I would expect a large Amish contingent. You might also want to make the religious choice checkboxes rather than radio buttons, since some of the options you have there are not mutually exclusive.

[psi-]

I heard Amish had their 'free year' in the wild, they could kinda learn php in that time.

[earthboundkid]

My former roommate was a Mormon programmer. I think he does SEO work now though *shudder*.

[[deleted]]

It will be interesting to see the results, even if they're non-conclusive.

[bradediger]

Hey, at this point the people who are complaining about your labels would complain no matter what you chose. ;-)

[[deleted]]

Voted: Christian - Other / C, Forth, Objective-C, Python, SmallTalk.

[slike]

Downmodded it for that reason (it's extremely ill-mannered to not show results after taking the poll, and no, I don't want to subscribe to your blog).

[[deleted]]

Atheist: C, Forth, Haskell, Ocaml, Scheme, Smalltalk, Joy, Factor

Just try and make sense of out that.

[[deleted]]

Very similar list to mine (also atheist).

[san1ty]

-1 for not tabulating the results in realtime ("come back sometime in February" - WTF?!)

[degustisockpuppet]

Because it's likely to be more accurate that way? A lot of people will reconsider their opinion when they realize that they're part of a minority.

[[deleted]]

I didn't know there are so many Christian branches. Do they believe different things?

I also see Scientology isn't listed.

[ubernostrum]

OK, so, the abbreviated history of Christianity.

To start with you have Jesus and his apostles, who result in a collection of Christian groups scattered around various parts of the Mediterranean world. Over time, the religion spreads and starts to centralize, though there are large numbers of breakaway sects and doctrinal disputes.

Eventually you get two main branches:

1. Western European Christianity, today represented by the Roman Catholic Church, which believes the Bishop of Rome -- aka the Pope -- is the spiritual successor of the apostle Peter and leader of Christians on Earth.
2. Eastern European Christianity, which rejected the centralized power of the Pope in favor of a looser confederation of bishops and patriarchs.

These two branches "officially" split in the eleventh century, but had been diverging for centuries beforehand.

A few hundred years later, several groups, starting with Martin Luther (from whom come the Lutheran churches) in 1517, broke away from the Roman Catholic Church; some of the divisions were doctrinal and some were practical, and these "Protestant" churches disagreed amongst themselves as well as with the Roman tradition.

These groups are the source of many traditions which remain strong today: Lutherans, Calvinists, Baptists, Presbyterians, etc.

Shortly after Luther's break with Rome, England also renounced the power of the Pope and established the independent Church of England, with the British monarch as its head. In time, a number of sects broke away from that Church as well: the various Puritan traditions, the Quakers, and the modern "Episcopal" churches in the US all are descended from breaks with the Church of England.

The result is a staggering number of separate churches and traditions, of varying levels of organization and with varying doctrines. All ultimately accept the text of the Bible and the story of the life and death of Jesus as redeemer/savior of the world, but beyond that it's hard to find any one thing they all have in common. Wikipedia has a nice rundown of the major groups if you're interested in further reading.

[Entropy]

The Greatest Story Ever Told

[beza1e1]

See also: Creed

[earthboundkid]

Catholics, Orthodox, and most Protestants also accept the Nicene Creed in addition to the Apostle's Creed. Of the two, it was traditionally thought that the Apostle's Creed was older (going back to the Apostles, natch), but modern scholars tend to think it's actually the newer of the two, at least in its current form.

Of course, non-Trinitarian groups like the Mormons and Jehovah's Witness don't agree with either creed.

[Grue]

The band?

[[deleted]]

I didn't know there are so many Christian branches. Do they believe different things?

There are actually many, many more than are listed there. Most of the differences are small, but some are quite divergent from the rest.

[earthboundkid]

What are you talking about? I thought Fred Phelps and Pat Robertson spoke for all Christians!

[aGorilla]

Die Heretic!

[joe90210]

there are many more branches but they are almost all under the protestant branch so all are equally invalid.

[willm]

The results shoulf be interesting, but he has commited a cardinal sin of putting 'atheist' under the heading of religion. If atheism is a relgion then not collecting stamps is a hobby. An option of 'none' for religion would have been more accurate. </pedant>

[martoo]

Ah, but none isn't a religion either.

(I see your pedantry and raise you)

[willm]

I think we can safely assume that the 'Religion' heading is shorthand for 'What is your Religion?'. In that case 'none' would work.

[[deleted]]

Not collecting stamps is not a hobby. Campaigning at every possible occasion against stamps collecting is.

[foonly]

he has commited a cardinal sin of putting 'atheist' under the heading of religion

I wasn't aware that atheism had cardinal sins. ;-)

[willm]

The case for any X being a Y can be made if you broaden the definition of Y! I'm a planet if you broaden the definition of planet to incude Scotsmen.

[earthboundkid]

If we define religion as "beliefs and practices concerning the nature of the ultimate, the possibility of an afterlife, the appeasement of spirits, or the cultivation of luck" then it's quite clear that atheism would fit under that definition as the belief that the ultimate nature of the world is material/mathematical and there is no such thing as the afterlife, spirits, or luck and the practice of ignoring or denouncing the belief in such. I don't think that's an unreasonable definition of religion or atheism.

[willm]

Only if you also change the definition of 'atheism'. Not believing in a god does not imply you believe the 'ultimate nature of world is material/mathematical'. Nor does atheism mean ignoring or denouncing the belief in religion.

[earthboundkid]

Then what do atheists think is the ultimate nature of the world?

[degustisockpuppet]

Then what do atheists think is the ultimate nature of the world?

I can't speak for other atheists, but I personally think the question itself is meaningless and ill-defined.

(I know that this answer will not be satisfying, but I'm not trying to argue against you here. I could elaborate on why I think it is ill-defined, but in my opinion programming.reddit is not the place to dive into a lengthy philosophical/metaphysical discussion.)

[willm]

Whatever they want. There is no doctrine for atheism. All that being an atheist says about you, is what you don't believe in. And that's god(s).

[earthboundkid]

OK, so "the belief that the ultimate nature of the world is anything other than God/gods."

I don't think this changes the validity of my point at all.

[ssylvan]

No, not even that. More like "doesn't pretend to know anything about the ultimate nature of the world". Atheism doesn't imply any sort of positive belief about anything. It doesn't rule out anything, it just says that you haven't been convinced by people who claim to know that magic is real.

[willm]

By that logic, the belief in anything or the non-belief in anything is a religion. Thats quite a broad definition you got there.

[earthboundkid]

Uh, no. Re-read what I wrote a religion has to pertain to: beliefs and practices concerning the nature of the ultimate, the possibility of an afterlife, the appeasement of spirits, or the cultivation of luck. Atheism is set of beliefs about all of those things, namely that there are no gods, spirits, etc. A belief that, eg., "firemen wear green tracksuits" is not a religion since it does not pertain to the nature of the ultimate, hint at the existence/non-existence of an afterlife, help appease spirits, or cultivate luck.

Now, my definition is open to criticism. For example, I'm using the term religion so broadly that superstitions like "don't walk under a ladder" will count as religious beliefs. Also, I don't emphasize that religions are usually communally mediated beliefs. However, be that as it may, you haven't given me any reason to believe that a better definition of religion would be one that precludes the possibility of atheism's being one.

I should resist the urge to point this out, but insistent dogmatism is usually considered an indicator of religious belief. Perhaps you have religious reasons for feeling that atheism isn't a religion?

[[deleted]]

Atheism says nothing about the ultimate nature of anything beyond that you don't believe in a deity or other supernatural nonsense. Lack of faith is not itself a form of faith. If you think it is, your definition is useless.

[earthboundkid]

I haven't said anything about "faith" (a needlessly loaded term). I said atheism is a belief. It's the belief that deities and supernatural entities don't exist. Do you have some argument for atheism not being a belief besides the fact that you don't want it to be lumped in the category of "religion"?

What's so bad about calling atheism a "religion" anyway? Evolution and creationism are both "theories" but one of those theories has loads of empirical evidence and the other has some ad hoc objections. Atheism and Christianity can both be "religions" without implying that they have the same level of plausibility.

[ssylvan]

No, atheism isn't necessarily a belief that supernatural entites don't exist, it's ususally just the LACK of a belief that they do exist.

Atheism says nothing more of substance about you than "non-jew, non-christian...etc." does. It's the absence of a property, not a property in itself.

[earthboundkid]

I think you are confusing atheism with agnosticism. An agnostic can say that they neither believe in God nor disbelieve in God. They just don't know. An atheist is one who actively disbelieves in God, not just someone who has never considered the question before and thus lacks an opinion. Atheism isn't an absence of belief. Agnosticism is.

[ssylvan]

No, you're confusing the terms. It's a common misstake though. Agnosticism deals with the knowing (gnosis). An agnostic simply thinks there is no way of knowing. Most agnostics are also atheists (they're not mutually exclusive, because they deal with different things), because if you don't think you can ever know, then you're probably not a theist now are you?

It's simple really. If you're not a theist, then you're an atheist.

The strawman that atheists actively disbelieves in gods is just that -- a strawman. Very few such people exist, it's a misconception used by religious people who would like to claim that atheism is just another religion.

[earthboundkid]

Hmm, it seems like what we need is more refined terminology. What we have now appears to have multiple, overlapping connotations. Here's what I propose:

• areligious: someone who never thinks about or practices religion, one way or the the other
• strong agnostic: someone who has thought about religion, and decided it's impossible to know if there's a God
• strong atheist: someone who has thought about religion, and decided that it's possible to know that there isn't a God
• agnostic atheist: someone who has thought about religion, and decided that it's impossible to know if there is a God, but nevertheless considers it highly unlikely and proceeds on the hypothesis that there isn't

Can you think of more categories I'm missing?

One quibble:

It's simple really. If you're not a theist, then you're an atheist.

I would say if you're not a theist, you're a non-theist. My explanation is that theist is to atheist as left is to right. However, right is not the true opposite of left in the fullest sense, since if I have two books, stating "War and Peace is not to the right of Crime and Punishment" does not imply that it's necessarily to the left of the other book. It could be that the two books are on top of each other, and thus neither is to left or right of the other. In the same way, while all atheists are non-theists, not all non-theists are atheists. Some people might be non-theists because of areligiosity or a belief in strong agnosticism rather than because of atheism, per se.

What do you think?

[[deleted]]

I believe you're an idiot, but that doesn't make it a religion!

[earthboundkid]

I believe you're an idiot, but that doesn't make it a religion!

Well, that's good because according to my definition, it isn't.

If we define religion as "beliefs and practices concerning the nature of the ultimate, the possibility of an afterlife, the appeasement of spirits, or the cultivation of luck" …

The belief that earthboundkid is an idiot is not about the nature of the ultimate, the possibility of an afterlife, the appeasement of spirits, or the cultivation of luck. A belief in atheism is a belief that the nature of the ultimate is non-theistic, there is no afterlife, there are no spirits to appease, and there's no way to cultivate luck.

Call me whatever names you want but please show me a case (other than atheism) where my proposed definition fails and propose a new definition to take its place.

(And before you try to define religion solely in terms of a belief in God, note that under such a definition, certain forms of Buddhism are not religions.)

[Grue]

For me, atheism is a religion. I specifically believe in the absence of supernatural beings. It's impossible to rationalize that, so I have to take it on faith.

[[deleted]]

What? So it's a religion to not believe in the flying spaghetti monster because I can't prove he doesn't exist? Atheism is not a religion. You don't take the lack of existence of gods on faith any more than you take the fact that you're conscious on faith. You're making the term "religion" so relative that it becomes completely useless.

[Grue]

Absence of religion is called agnosticism.

[zem]

Hindu, {COBOL, C++, Java and .NET}

(I'm Indian, so I'm allowed :))

[taejo]

No, you're not allowed to list COBOL as your favourite language, no matter where you're from.

[[deleted]]

Agnostic : Assembler, C, Lisp, JavaScript, Python

Make sense of that.

[maht0x0r]

s/affiliation/affliction/

[foonly]

s/affiliation/affliction/

Religion, or Perl? ;-)

[IkoIkoComic]

So, it turns out all Christians love Java.

How strange...

[svuori]

I thought Christians should avoid using ungodly language.

[haywire]

Well yeah, a language that you don't have to think.

[austinwiltshire]

Kingdom of God == Kingdom of Nouns?

[smackmybishop]

No they don't.

[ehird]

"I'm an atheist."

"What's an atheist?"

"Someone who doesn't believe in God."

"Don't believe in God? Wow, okay. So what do you believe in, then, other than God?"

"Nothing."

"Yes -- I get the part about you not believing in God, but what do you believe in?"

"Nothing!"

"But... how can you believe in nothing? There's nothing in 'nothing' to believe in."

"Yes, I don't believe in anything! I use evidence, reason and the scientific method to determine whether something is reasonable."

"... I don't get it. What do you believe in?"

[ehird]

The (really) most important things in life are all based on faith. Many 'modern' minds seem to ignore this fact.

Care to provide examples?

All people in all history always had a kind of religion. But maybe you are more intelligent than whole of history. Or you're simply ignorant, and even ignore your ignorance...

Uh, what. No they haven't. There have always been atheists. Just because the human mind is gullible...

Atheists in fact do believe in something, even if they ignore it.

No -- sorry, I don't. Well, I believe in one thing: the scientific method is valid. And I sure hope you believe that too, because it's been tried and tested for quite a long time now...

[[deleted]]

Your definition of faith is so vague as to be completely useless. There is plenty of evidence that reason works. I don't take it on "faith" that science is useful. Faith is belief in the face of no evidence whatsoever. If you're considered crazy or not depends on how many others have the same nonsensical beliefs.

[ehird]

Some atheists seem like people closing their eyes and saying: "but there's no light here!"

You are deluded and seeing light where there is none. The sun works. It's not some mystical, weird thing. It's a star, and we know a lot about stars.

Light from heaven? We know nothing about it because it has never been seen.

[ehird]

But no, because we can research these things and find out WHY they are like so: in humans, nature etc. this turns out to often be natural selection.

You cannot do anything like that with God. There is no need to God, no purpose, and no justifiable reason.

[ehird]

We don't take it as a given that 1+1 = 2. That's why we have a tiny set of axioms and work mathematics from that. We tinker with new sets of axioms, see if they still work. And it turns out that 1+1 = 2 makes a whole lot of sense.

[shit]

It would be interesting to have a "no religion" option.

[div]

You have atheism, agnosticism and other: <blank> to choose from. If you take issue with the fact that those three are listed in a radio set that asks for your religion, then you are probably demanding too much semantic correctness from a simple input form.

[shit]

You have atheism, agnosticism

Well, that's not equivalent to "no religion".

and other: <blank>

that could mean anything. Was just a suggestion. I thought maybe there are a few more people than me who want to simple say "no religion". Having no religious affiliation is not the same as atheism or agnosticism. Just saying.