I generally don't like discussing religion on HN, so apologies if I decline to respond to a reply, but the description of God in the Bible doesn't really fit with Spinoza's God for the mere fact that evil is wholly set apart. It exists within demons and humans but it does not exist within God. The logic of an entity with infinite attributes being God is true, but just as the natural numbers are infinite but do not contain negative integers so does the existence of an infinite Divine not contain all attributes.

Besides, some attributes cannot be co-existent anyway, at least not without breaking logic and mathematics. A man cannot turn 20 years old and 120 years old at the same time, for example.

That said, I'm not fully sure because there are some escape valves. Matthew 19:26 or Romans 8:28, for example.

But one of the reasons I don't like talking about religion on HN is that I've found a computer science centric way of thinking about some sub branches of philosophy and theology is a dead end. We're used to dealing with such pedantry and strict logic that I find we over use them in places where they're not nearly as useful as they seem.

> But one of the reasons I don't like talking about religion on HN is that I've found a computer science centric way of thinking about some sub branches of philosophy and theology is a dead end. We're used to dealing with such pedantry and strict logic that I find we over use them in places where they're not nearly as useful as they seem.

Fair enough. I like discussing religion in circles like this one, because I'm convinced there is a lot of value to be found in religious traditions, but I find it hard to connect to the typical religious crowd.

> A man cannot turn 20 years old and 120 years old at the same time

Interesting example, because he could get in a spaceship at age 19, travel out and back at very high speeds, and arrive back at Earth 101 years later having aged just one year. He turned 20 and 120 at the same time.

I realize I've turned myself into a prime example of the pedantry you mentioned, but what I mean to say is that strict logic can be misleading if we don't have the whole picture, which we probably don't.

> But one of the reasons I don't like talking about religion on HN is that I've found a computer science centric way of thinking about some sub branches of philosophy and theology is a dead end. We're used to dealing with such pedantry and strict logic that I find we over use them in places where they're not nearly as useful as they seem.

And not just that. I feel that many of the habits of thinking that lead to success in software engineering actually have pretty limited applicability, but too many software engineer internet commenters parochially assume those habits are superior and universally applicable. It's hard for me to articulate though, because I have those same habits and it's hard to see outside one's limitations.

> natural numbers are infinite but do not contain negative integers

While Z is not a subset of N, N maps 1-1, onto to Z (i.e., they have the same cardinality). That means every element of one set has a corresponding element in the other and vice versa.

Similarly, ismorphisms, homeomorphisms, diffeomorphisms are formalizations of the idea of "different but equivalent in the relevant structures".

I do not have a deeper point to make, but I think your intro argument is not as solid as you might imagine. Plus, things get weird when you go beyond discrete infinities and into the continuum and beyond.

I am not religious however I find religion fascinating because it clearly has had a massive impact on the history and evolution of humankind. Understanding why that is the case (independently of whether you believe in a God or not) makes it something worth discussing I think. Unless of course the discussion diverges into a “here is proof that what I believe is true” argument which is a waste of time.

Whose understanding of Christianity? Modern day American tech workers? Because that is the traditional understanding. It sure was how Christianity was understood by st. Augustine, st. Thomas Aquinas and st. Anzelm. And how Christian philosophers still understand it today.

I don't understand the down voting. I also believe that the idea of the Christian god that most (non-Christian) people have is quite naive and distinct to the idea of God in the great Christian thinkers, such those mentioned by the comment.

>people have is quite naive and distinct to the idea of God in the great Christian thinkers, such those mentioned by the comment.

But that would mean people would need to drop their condescending sense of superiority over others... come on, don't take that away from people for in their eyes it's an easy win.

In defence, that is not the idea of God many people would grow up with.

I'm a Pole, even during "religion" classes or in church during preparation to baptism, the idea of God they would try to show us WAS the "man in the clouds" one, not philosophical one.

You're baptized while you're a child, and the use of tales and short stories is pretty common for plenty of subjects when ever you want to teach children.

The main idea is to pass down moral values.

I can't speak for others but I find it very hard for people to hold on to the literal content of the bible with today's education. Some might believe in the man in the sky, others might stand by just doing what they think is the right thing to do in the framework that was passed on to them, others turn to it in very difficult times because there's nothing else to hold on to and that gives them hope/peace/comfort.

I say this as someone who had catholic upbringing, took those classes for baptism and first communion. Yet I don't consider myself a catholic, still it was part of the context where I grew up.

> The main idea is to pass down moral values.

I am not sure that is true. You can absolutely pass down moral values without involving a God. That is what happened to me. It seems to me that the goal of a lot of religious teaching is to use a bogeyman (God) to scare little children into doing what you want instead of teaching the children why it makes sense to do the right thing.

I'd agree with you if somewhere down the line the, let's call it, character of Jesus was introduced as the personification of God's ideals in a human being.

Suddenly we could move away from the "fear based framework" to the "strive to be closer to the idea of God" framework since we had someone to emulate.

In fact we can arguably say that God gave us complete freedom, and full responsibility since he died on a cross (and in that process He even doubted himself) left us with a role model.

>why it makes sense to do the right thing.

This seems like a trivial task but it's not. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't make any sense at all.

> Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't make any sense at all.

I am struggling to find examples where that might be true. Can you give an example?

Sorry, I've made an error - I meant to say confirmation, not baptism, confused these words. :/

Let's say it isn't the idea of religion I got growing up. There was no one around who could make a convincing case for Christianity, so I and everyone I knew thought religious people were completely delusional.

As I (very) slowly try to reduce my ignorance around the topic, I find that uncovering a more traditional understanding of it reveals something much more rich than I was led to believe. That's precisely my point :)

Father, Mother and Son are occult terms with standard meaning: father means spirit, the immutable and unreal principle behind reality; mother means undifferentiated matter in its most prototypical form; son is the mix of the two, i.e. the spirit causes that proto-matter to assume meaningful forms, all those atoms, etc. Also, the "Word" is a particular way that process is initiated. The bible has lots of mysterious gems that are difficult to decipher even if you know the terminology, but that's certainly not one of those.