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No, my argument is that none of the examples given by the author are of people acting religious.

The most obvious one is the photo of Stallman that opens the article, posing as "Saint Ignucious": that's a joke, and Stallman is a self-declared atheist. Likewise, "Folklore.org" is a website about the early history of Apple; anecdotes told by the people who were there; there's nothing spiritual or mystic about it. I also explained many of the rest of TFA's examples.

The only exception is TempleOS, but that was the work of a schizophrenic and maybe not the best example of the hacker community at large. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from that particular example.




If you can't make the distinction without an internal testament, then yeah that's a religious idea. It's the mark of a religious idea.


I honestly don't understand what you mean. Can you challenge one of my assertions more directly, so that I can better understand?

For example, do you believe Folklore.org is about what people commonly understand as "folklore"; or that Stallman believes himself a saint; or that programming "religious wars" (e.g. vim vs emacs, or Linux vs Windows) are truly religious in nature? Do you believe when people talk about the "Dragon Book" they revere it as a mystical book, or that someone believes the Tao of Programming is truly a religious text?

Religion has permeated and shaped common language so that a lot of the expressions we use originally had a religious meaning but don't anymore. Others, like "crusade" or "religious wars", or even "evangelize" are not meant to be taken literally, they just evoke religious imagery but nowadays often mean something else.


I think people can be canonized by others without a church, yeah. An Irish Catholic might fight me if I insult St. Patrick. A wokester might fight me if I insult George Floyd. A techie might fight me if I insult Elon or Stallman. The behavior is there and very real, and whether it's fueled by a religious or abstract idea is completely irrelevant to me if I don't share those beliefs.

If someone does canonize Stallman, then Stallman's beliefs on the matter are similarly irrelevant. The "religious" behavior is exactly the same. There's just no supernatural element. But you already don't believe there's a supernatural element. So I guess I just don't get the distinction you're making here.

Just the idea that you think something can be "truly" religious exposes this for what it is: Your opinion on a thing. You're an atheist and you don't think anything is truly religious, right? All pictures of Jesus are a guy dressed as Jesus. I just don't understand why the picture of Stallman dressed as Jesus is different. To you I mean. I get why I think that but I'm a Christian.

Do you have any actual religious behaviors to point to that aren't already human behaviors? Because right now it's like, two guys are doing cartwheels. But one guy thinks cartwheels are very important so it's fundamentally different when he does them. The other guy was just doing cartwheels for fun so it's not the same.


Stallman isn't dressed as Jesus, but as a (mock) saint named Saint Ignucious. Get it? "Gnu".

> But you already don't believe there's a supernatural element

I didn't mention my own beliefs whatsoever. In order to note all of the examples in TFA are wrong, I don't need to refer to my own beliefs.

The rest of your comment... I just don't know how to engage with it. So I guess I won't.


> Do you have any actual religious behaviors to point to that aren't already human behaviors?

I couldn't answer this either! And that was the day I stopped hating religious people or seeing myself as somehow different or better than them.


No, I mean there's barely any relation between your comments and mine, that's what's stopping me from engaging. It's like trying to converse with a wall.

This may shock you but I don't hate religious people. I guess good for you that you stopped hating them?

You assume way too much. I notice you failed to respond any of my questions, and so I'm uninterested in continuing this conversation.




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