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Comment by rrf | Hacker News Reader

Alternate theory: The Internet is a dangerous idea – cf Raganwald last post. Religions would probably prefer to keep followers away from the web and in a place of worship, where there is more direct idea control; therefore would be less interested in devoting resources to developing websites. Second, I’d suggest that the average hacker puts reason before faith, so is less likely to believe in a supernatural creator.

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> Religions would probably prefer to keep followers away from the web and in a place of worship, where there is more direct idea control; therefore would be less interested in devoting resources to developing websites.

I think this is too cynical a view of religion. Most religious people I've known value truth as much as any atheist, and would know it if they were the subject of this sort of idea control. I know there are plenty of counterexamples, but I think we only see the worst side of religion through the media.

(fwiw., I'm atheist, and I've read Dawkins, but I don't get the whole "militant atheist" movement.)

Agreed. With religion, as with many things, people with loud extreme opinions make for good tv, and tend to be vastly overrepresented in the media because of it.

I'm not sure militant is the right word--seems like that would be adopting the nomenclature of the religious. I've never had an atheist knock on my door and try to convert me. I think the term militant comes out because believers sometimes find non-belief threatening in and of itself.

Most religions have, built into them, a meme for spreading (evangelizing) themselves. There is no such meme for atheism to spread itself. The idea is to put atheism on a more equal footing. Being open about atheism counters conformity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

I called it militant because Dawkins has used that himself (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_dawkins_on_milita...), but it may have been a bit out of context, because he seems to use it with a bit of irony intended (about 5:30 into the video).

On the second point, I agree that atheism doesn't have the same self-spreading mechanisms, but most religious people I know don't make any effort to convert other people either. They see religion as a personal thing, are respectful of other people's religion or non-religion, and do not try to push their belief on others.

Religion and the internet are interacting, but not just in the ways you think. For example: http://www.opensourcejudaism.com/ (NB: I'm not particularly well-informed about Judaism, but I heard Douglas Rushkoff talking about religion and internet culture, and that was one example. Just passing it along.) Authorities who want to keep those under their power uninformed of alternatives are in no way unique to religion.

Also, I'd wager that some religious hackers don't bring it up much because some hackers are really outspoken athiests, and it's a really tedious debate.

I don't agree at all with your first point. The internet is just a communication tool, albeit far more powerful than ones that have come before it. This means that it can be used to build religious organizations or proselytize just as easily as it could spread knowledge about secular humanism or whatever.

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