
Thursday = Thor's day - CitizenKane
http://sivers.org/thor
======
grellas
The logic here doesn't hold with respect to monothestic religions such as
Judaism or Christianity.

The Ten Commandments, which are common to these two religions, have two
"tables," the first of which (commandments 1 - 5) defines the relations
between God and man and the second of which defines the relations between men
(6 - 10). The very first commandment is "thou shalt have no other gods before
me. The next proscription is against idolatry, which basically amounts to a
worship of things that are seen, or the creation itself, which in KJV language
is as follows: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any
likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth
beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." In other words, belief in
God is everything while belief (in the sense of worship) in anything else is
all idolatry.

Thus, the logic of a monothestic religion of this type is that there is one
true God and every other purported deity is a mere figment of man's
imagination, hence an idol (the very word "idol" derives from a Greek root
from which the Greek word "to see" comes from - even the word "idea" comes
from a Greek word originally meaning "to see with the mind") and hence not
real.

The logic of this piece holds if we proceed from an atheistic baseline, which
takes the opposite view that only that which is material is real and all
purported deities are only figments of man's imagination. If you assume that
premise, then it is true that my belief in one deity and rejection of the 529
that others have believed in is not materially different from your rejection
of all 530 of them (or whatever the number).

But this logic falls apart if one assumes there is one true deity (infinite
creator and providential overseer of a creation from which the deity is above
and apart) and all the rest of the purported deities are simply products of
the mind and hence not real or true. In that case, the person who believes in
the true deity can consistently say that he as a theist believes in the true
one while rejecting all the false ones while the person who denies all of them
includes in that denial the one true deity and hence is an atheist.

I know this is not the forum to get into religious debates but, if my summary
of the logic is wrong, I invite others to explain why. Note that I am not
assuming here that any religious point of view is true. I am merely taking
that view on its own logic and explaining why it makes perfect sense for
someone with that belief to say that he is a theist while one who is not a
believer is an atheist. If the premise of one true God is true, it is utterly
irrelevant to say that man has concocted a billion fake ones such that we are
all atheists in denying them.

In other words, from the theistic perspective, the question is whether there
is indeed a true deity of whatever type. If so, that is pretty important. If
not, then obviously it is not. (Disclaimer: I am a believer and, indeed, a
deacon in my church - but I am not making my points from a religious
perspective, merely a logical one).

Edit (concerning the several replies): I invited you to engage the logic of my
argument and you certainly did! My post _is_ probably beside the point if all
the original piece did was depict a way of steering away from a religious
discussion that begins "How can you not believe in God?" or if it was merely a
technique for getting a believer to understand the viewpoint of one who does
not believe in a particular deity or in any at all. I don't think I was trying
to exalt the theistic point of view or to denigrate those who don't accept it
- merely trying to say what follows from accepting its premises. Got to rush
now because I have to prepare to teach a Bible study tonight (really). Thanks
for the fine comments - very stimulating.

~~~
sgk284
I think the argument is fairly sound and is great at concisely explaining why
religion is a product of humanity's imagination and current culture. (With all
due respect, don't take this as an affront on your beliefs.)

I like the argument for a number of reasons:

\- It beg's the question "Why do I reject those other 529 gods?" Generally
there is no good answer for this other than being indoctrinated at a young
age. You realize that you believe what you believe because of the
circumstances in which you were born. This leads to the conclusion that the
religion you follow has more to do with where you live than what is "correct".
(Noting that there are plenty of exceptions to this).

\- It drives home the point that humanity has been creating gods for thousands
of years. Most of those gods have likely been created before your god had even
first been mentioned. Any rational person would ask why did humanity move past
those gods? You can never disprove the existence of a god, so what happened?
Ideally, you realize that religion is much like any trend, just with longer
than average turn around.

\- If you follow the trend of gods, you realize that humanity has been
generally moving away from polytheism towards monotheism. This makes you
wonder why and conclude that it is tightly correlated to (and arguably
directly caused by) humanity's understanding of the universe. As we understand
more about everything, we don't need gods to fill in these gaps of knowledge.
For instance, we understand why the Sun rises or lightning strikes. As
humanity has progressed, one by one we killed the need for Roman and Greek
gods. This leads you to wonder what role a monotheistic god fills and realize
that the god is generally used to bring understanding to things we don't
understand and reason to things we can't control. This is hardly a rational
reason for a figment that "solves" all unsolved problems.

In short, I like the "(n-1) vs n gods" argument because when you think through
everything implied by it, a rational being has no choice but to conclude that
in all likelihood the religion they follow is not correct. Unfortunately,
emotion plays a huge role in religion, making rational thought difficult. On a
personal note, I was a theist for 20 years, backed by 12 years of formal study
in my religion. Making the mental shift to realizing everything I'd believed
was wrong was difficult to say the least, but years later my life is all the
better for it.

~~~
arch_hunter
> It beg's the question "Why do I reject those other 529 gods?" Generally
> there is no good answer for this other than being indoctrinated at a young
> age.

But that does not explain people who switch religions later in life.

For myself, I decided that I could not be atheist after encountering spirits.
My encounters with spirits disproved atheism for me, instead I am currently a
Christian because that is the only religion that is able to accurately
describe my spiritual encounters. Atheism as a worldview denies that spirits
exist, therefore in my mind it can not possibly be accurate.

~~~
sofal
This is interesting. I wouldn't say that atheism "denies" that spirits exist
anymore than it denies that Russell's teapot exists. Besides, atheism still
provides plenty of room for spirits should there be any evidence for them
(subjective or objective). Since you have subjective evidence for spirits
(which I'm not discounting), I wonder why you would make the leap from that to
the validation of the entire Christian story, or why that leap has to involve
a currently organized religion at all?

------
qeorge
_I love that we're living in a time where it's so easy to learn._

Well put, Derek. Me too.

~~~
VictorHo
I agree with that statement, but it does pain me that this was his big
takeaway. There is no decision that is more life-impacting than
belief/disbelief in a God. To see someone so quickly silenced/swayed by such
simple rhetoric really illustrates how many important subjects are not getting
nearly as much thought as they deserve.

We will spend months stressing about a job or a start-up, which might affect
our lives for the subsequent year or two or three, and no more than a few
hours here and there really digging into what evidence exists to support an
atheist or religious perspective. It's a cycle that sadly continues - 200
years ago everyone was Christian so people defaulted to it. Now, the trendy
thing for "intellectuals" is atheism, and so many jump in without a thought
(this continues to hold for both sides, as exemplified in the article).

When deciding which direction to take with a start-up we do hours and hours of
customer interviews, site visits, market research, brainstorming, reading, and
even self-reflection. The same, and more, should be done for religion (e.g.,
check out a church, speak in a truly unbiased fashion with ardent believers
and non-believers alike, grab 20 minutes of a pastors time who has probably
dedicated his life to talking to people like us, etc).

There is no topic that gets less thought relative to its importance.

~~~
mixmax
That depends entirely on who you are, and I'd say your view is a bit
prejudiced.

I'm from one of the most atheist countries in the world, and to tell you the
truth I don't think I've ever had a serious conversation with friends or
family discussing whether God (or _a_ god) exists. To us it would be like
having a serious discussion about whether or not the tooth fairy existed. We
just don't really care, and think the whole discussion would be kind of silly
if it wasn't for all the wars fought in the name of various religions.

~~~
ErrantX
This interested me actually. In the UK we have a general baseline of
Christianity but I generally thought that the beliefs were mostly agnostic to
atheist. But when I happened to mention I was an atheist to my parents (who
show no other interest in religion) they were outwardly surprised.

~~~
mixmax
That _is_ interesting. I've never discussed religion with my parents or other
family - just assumed them to be agnostic. Maybe I'm wrong...

~~~
ErrantX
Am I right in thinking (from your domain) you are Danish? I'd be interested in
whether you're right or not in that assumption. Because It's common thought to
me that northern European countries are generally more agnostic anyway (I
suspect because the Roman Empire/Holy Roman Empire never really touched it)

~~~
mixmax
Spot on. According to this site:
<http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_atheist.html> it's the third most
atheist country in the world.

------
aero142
This argument is fun but not much more.

"Why don't you have any children?. This seems strange to me."

"Well, there are billions of children in the world that are not yours, I just
have one less than you. We're basically the same."

The difference between having no children and one child is big. So is the
difference between believing in no gods, and one God.

I think the original argument is useful to point out that there are billions
of people who don't believe in your particular God, and that it isn't that
strange to not believe.

~~~
dionidium
I disagree. The point of the argument is that the same reasoning used to rule
out all the gods you don't believe in can be used to rule out the god(s) you
do.

Your analogy isn't equivalent in that way. Thinking through why you don't
believe in Thor might help you reveal a double-standard or inconsistency.
Thinking through why you didn't -- what? -- give birth to all the other
children in the world is nonsensical.

~~~
aero142
I think there are two points. The conventional use of this argument is the one
you are talking about, and that is why I said at the end of my post that it IS
useful for that.

However, the article specifically says “So, I guess we're not compatible,
huh?”, meaning that we can't get along because we are different. And the
response to that is “Of course we are! I like you a lot. And we do agree on
519 of the gods, so we'll just not mention that last one.” My response is that
zero to one is a big jump. Darek seems to be a "lets all get along" kind of
guy, and that is great, but this quote doesn't justify that.

------
huherto
Interesting. Knowing a little bit of English/Spanish you can guess the origin
of most of the days of the week.

* Sunday/Domingo - Sun/?

* Monday/Lunes - Moon/Luna

* Tuesday/Martes - ?/Mars

* Wednesday/Miercoles - ?/Mercurio

* Thursday/Jueves - Thor/Jupiter

* Friday/Viernes - ?/Venus

* Saturday/Sabado - Saturn/?

~~~
martythemaniak
Interestingly, Bulgarian (and by extension probably all Slavic languages)
don't follow this model.

(translations based on word roots)

Monday - ponedelnik - "after no work"

Tuesday - vtornik - "second"

Wednesday - sryada - "middle"

Thursday - chetvurtuk - "fourth"

Friday - petuk - "fifth"

Saturday - subota - from Sabath

Sunday - Nedelia - "no work"

~~~
yan
Russian is very very similar save for Sunday, which is "voskresenya", which
roughly translates to (i think) "the resurrection." "Nedelia" translates to
"week," but I've never thought about it as meaning "no work" which it almost
also does in Russian.

~~~
jarek
Knowing Polish and learning Russian had me do a couple of double-takes on days
of the week. We call Sunday "niedziela" and the week "tydzień". I guess
identifying Sunday with the week makes some sense, and one of the languages
just switched it around at some point.

I always thought of "niedziela" as coming from "nie dzielić" / "не делить" /
"no dividing/separating", though it doesn't really make sense as name for the
day.

------
TomOfTTB
This just makes me sad to be honest with you.

The idea that “we believe in 519 out of 520 Gods” means anything shows a
fundamental misunderstanding of religion. You may not like the beliefs of some
religious people but the point of religion is the beliefs. It’s not that a God
created the world it’s that a benevolent God created the world and left
teachings which lead to benevolence.

On that note I’d point out that he’s wrong about learning something too. The
web is a wonderful place and you can go out and learn things but the problem
with the Web as opposed to a person is the web doesn’t challenge your beliefs.
He took the most superficial point imaginable out of a serious conversation
and pursued it. So while he learned something useless he missed the much
deeper contradiction in the statement he was so enamored with.

~~~
ErrantX
I think the point is very simple and very elegant. It's not about God, it's
about the fact that humanity (and our history) is a lot more subtle than most
people really compute (I came to that realisation myself not very long ago).

The beauty of it is that the religious conversation didn't matter too much -
it was just that the clever rhetoric device (the Norse gods) was the avenue to
a wealth of information. It is there for the taking but never actively taught.

So, the point is that you can pick up any passing point of interest and
satisfy your craving for it like never before. Then half an hour later move on
to something else.

And you will still have those Norse gods/weekdays lined up as a party trick...

~~~
ErrantX
No? So Sivers' message was just about religion then? ;)

------
alanh
Posted on a Friday? Madness!

~~~
inferno0069
They were on a date -> Love god -> Friday!

------
Alex3917
"You and I are almost identical in our beliefs! If history has named, say, 520
gods, you don't believe in 519 of them, I don't believe in 520 of them."

This argument comes from Dawkins book The God Delusion. It's clever, but also
kind of dumb. Trying to discredit contemporary religion based on what people
believed 2,500 years ago is like trying to discredit science based on alchemy.

~~~
roqetman
That would imply that the current view of god(s) is more advanced (in a
provable way) that the old view of them. To an atheist, this is nitpicking.

~~~
VictorHo
Many major religions are monotheistic by definition. The entire premise is
that only 1 true god exists.

Saying we "agree on 519 of 520 and disagree on 1" is a non-statement. The
first person's belief in that 1 by definition precludes his belief in the
other 519.

~~~
hugh3
I think many people may be missing the point.

The point of the argument is to challenge people to question whether the
existence of their god is any more plausible than any of the other thousands
of deities whose existence has been postulated.

It works well against Christians or anyone else whose god has specific and
well-defined properties. It doesn't work against deists since their "god" is
sufficiently poorly-defined to be more plausible than Thor.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"It works well against Christians"_

No it doesn't.

It amazes me how often I hear Christians say "this argument works well against
atheists" and then make an utterly stupid argument that none of the atheists I
know would take seriously. This strikes me as much the same -- it's an
argument that atheists _think_ should work well against Christians, but that
most Christians will think is stupid and misses the point.

~~~
pyre
It works well against the argument, "How can you _not_ believe in God?" The
belief that 'belief in God' is a given is equally stupid.

------
Psyonic
The story was good, I'm definitely happy to live in a time with such easy
access to information, but as for the actual argument, haven't we all heard
this before? That doesn't diminish it, but I'm surprised by how new it seems
to many people. It's been argued forever. I'm sure it goes back much further
than this, but here's a passage from 2005's "Sense and Goodness Without God"
([http://www.amazon.com/Sense-Goodness-Without-God-
Metaphysica...](http://www.amazon.com/Sense-Goodness-Without-God-
Metaphysical/dp/1420802933/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3991836-2050562?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183299102&sr=8-1)):

But if the idea of a god is inherently illogical (if the very idea is self-
contradictory or meaningless), or if it is contradicted by the evidence, then
there are strong positive reasons to take a harder stance as an atheist – with
respect to that particular god. For in this sense, even believers are strong
atheists – they deny the existence of hundreds of gods. Atheists like me
merely deny one more god than everyone else already does – in fact, I deny the
existence of the same god already denied by believers in other gods, so I am
not doing anything that billions of people don’t do already.

------
mcantor
Interestingly, "Sunday" in Japanese is expressed with the kanji for "sun" and
the kanji for "day". It's obviously pronounced differently, but the literal
meaning is the same as the English phonetics.

~~~
ktf
That's true for Monday as well, which I've always thought was cool:

月曜日 = Monday

月 = Moon, 曜日 = day of the week

------
DanielBMarkham
Derek makes the same mistake many make when dealing with deities -- he
personalizes them.

My guess is that the ancients viewed deities as categories of things we don't
know -- hence the 6 zillion gods. Over time, organization set into religion
and people began anthropomorphizing the gods.

Judaism moved "categories of things we don't know" from a multiple choice to a
single entity. Then organization set in again with the anthropomorphizing.

It's a mistake to take this to zero -- the assumption that we know everything
and things we cannot prove are not worthy of consideration. Having a deep
understanding of the huge amount of unknown in the universe is a critical part
of a balanced life. To say you don't believe in one person's personification
is to miss the point entirely.

------
limist
Reframing is just a fantastic psychological tool/technique, and is the logical
follow-up to Einstein's maxim that "The world will not evolve past its current
state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation." This
example by Sivers is brilliant.

------
psnj
I've always found this an interesting topic, and once in a while it's
interesting to discuss it with someone who believes in a god.

Sometimes I wonder how much we choose what we believe, especially when it gets
down to this bottom-of-the-soul (or "soul"), meaning-of-life stuff. When
someone is incredulous at the fact that I don't believe in any sort of god, I
've said: "Let's try this: for the next sixty seconds, I'll start believing in
God, and for the same sixty seconds, you have to stop believing in God. Are
you in?"

Naturally, it's not really possible for either person to do this, but
sometimes it promotes interesting discussion about the nature of faith — _why_
can't we do this, etc, etc?

Of course, a lot of times it just pisses people off too.

------
jz
_Now you can start to dive into any subject with some whimsical web browsing -
an alternate to watching a TV show_

Wow, I just had a discussion with my wife about giving up cable TV but keeping
cable Internet for this reason. My argument was during the 1/2 hour of a silly
sitcom, I can become knowledgeable with just about any subject of my choosing.
And even if I want to veg out, I can still find most shows on the web.

Her counter argument was the cable box + remote are easier to use than hooking
up a computer to the TV, which is what we currently do.

~~~
mkramlich
... until the iPad came along. ;)

------
johnthedebs
I think a lot of people are missing the point (although the comments are
really interesting...keep those up).

One person is just trying to say to the other that their different beliefs
don't make them very different people. Based on the second person's reaction,
I'd say their beliefs _don't_ make them that different (in this case).

Someone mentioned that this argument came from Dawkins' book; this seems like
a small twist on that argument to make a different (and demonstrably valid)
point.

------
zokier
There is one "error" in that discussion imho. Even if Thursday is named after
Thor, it doesn't mean that Thursday was dedicated in celebration of Thor. And
on the other side, Easter isn't named after Jesus. So I'm not following how
Thursday and Easter are even remotely related.

edit: of course this is just nit picking, and is not really relevant on the
big picture.

~~~
joubert
easter is named after a month in the germanic calendar named after the goddess
Ēostre

------
ktf
I can't believe nobody has brought up the Flying Spaghetti Monster:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_spaghetti_monster>

------
gcv
George Carlin put it best: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o>

------
fuzzythinker
I love that guy's responses! Though when I do something similar (not quite
same level as him), my friends usually give me the weird look..

------
pbhjpbhj
Reddit was down?

------
mkramlich
My minimum requirement for believing in any particular god is if I can have
lunch with them. Can I call them, invite to a party, and they actually show
up. Etc.

~~~
hugh3
Does this apply to people as well?

~~~
mkramlich
Nope I believe Linus Torvalds exists even though I don't expect to have lunch
with him. I have _higher_ standards for gods. Unlike most of the planet.
Unfortunately.

~~~
hugh3
It still seems a little unfair. If Thor flew across the sky right now, brought
thunderstorms to the desert, Mjolnir-ed the Space Needle, appeared on
television shaking hands with Conan O'Brien, and rebuffed your lunch
invitation on the grounds that he has a thumb-wrestling appointment with
Quetzalcoatl, you still wouldn't believe in him?

~~~
joubert
but he won't. and neither would any other deity. they're just made up.

~~~
hugh3
Now now, that's a skepticism failure. A proper skeptic should acknowledge that
it's very very unlikely that Thor exists, but that there is a small nonzero
probability that he _might_.

~~~
joubert
Yes, technically you are correct. But we think in terms of absolutes all the
time in order to live in this world (e.g. The statue could wave it's arm, but
it is such a remote possibility that we can discount it for practical
purposes.

------
coolio73
Aren't all these atheist/theist debates better housed on reddit with all the
other dreck and stale debates the host? Hacker News is for news, not for silly
things that just make people waste oxygen arguing about them.

------
drats
Hacker News?

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I agree that it's not Hacker News, but it is intellectually engaging, and
there are lessons to be learned ...

Conflict resolution, finding common ground, agreeing differences that exist,
but don't have to matter, and the observation that today we can invest all of
3 minutes to discover stuff, then decide whether we want to know more.

When I was 22 I moved country, and I knew _nothing_ about where I was going.
Encyclopedias told me very, very little, and after days, literally days, in
the library, I still knew almost nothing.

Today I can spend 5 minutes on the 'net and know more in that time than I
could've found in days of diligent, comprehensive, but above all _boring_
research.

Read with the intent of learning - not all lessons are obvious, and some are
worth more for having found them, rather than being given them.

~~~
ABrandt
I think its been particularly interesting growing up during this transitional
period. I'm 21 now, but I can remember up to about the 6th grade when card
catalogs and encyclopedias were still pushed on us at school. But the internet
was coming into its own during this period as well. These parallel
environments have given my generation a unique perspective of the web. We've
essentially grown up together--perhaps there's a psychological connection here
that can explain other behaviors.

