where is this coming from? [LWN.net]

where is this coming from?

Posted Apr 23, 2007 19:29 UTC (Mon) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link] (1 responses)

Bruce M has long had that in his .signature. It's not really any more annoying than a lot of other signatures, but perhaps a different account should be used to send official project notices.

where is this coming from?

Posted Apr 23, 2007 20:15 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

I am not offended by it, being a Christian and all.

In effect all he is saying is that backups will save your data like Christ has saved your (spiritual) life. So it's not realy bad or anything like that, even if it's ment in a flippant way (which I don't realy care if it is even, but I wouldn't be suprised either if he is actually serious).

where is this coming from?

Posted Apr 23, 2007 20:27 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Bruce Momjian has had that in his signature for ages. I do notice it, but it doesn't particularly offend me. I'm not Christian, but if Bruce is and wants to proclaim it in a one-line sig, that's OK with me.

where is this coming from?

Posted Apr 23, 2007 20:32 UTC (Mon) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link]

Yeah, I noticed that when I read the announcement email as well. I'm not offended by it per se, but I considered (and consider) it highly inappropriate - the guy's religious convictions are his own business, and nobody else cares about it or wants to read about it. It'd be different if this was a private email, but if he's acting in an official capacity for the PostgreSQL project, he should refrain from this.

where is this coming from?

Posted Apr 23, 2007 20:45 UTC (Mon) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] (19 responses)

Why would you be deeply offended by that?

Everyone to his own backup system, right? Not much harm in advertising the one you prefer, as long as it isn't done too blatantly.

(Personally I don't think a backup will save my hard drive when it dies.)

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 23, 2007 21:54 UTC (Mon) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link] (17 responses)

"Why would you be deeply offended by that?"

maybe by the inference that I'm going to hell for eternity. this added to the morass of other messages such as if I think evolution is true then I'm immoral and I'm contributing to the decay of my nation and I'm even responsible for the shooting at Virgina Tech, etc, etc - which I hear incessantly.

you're right, maybe I'm too thin skinned. but as others have said, there's a difference between personal email and that sent under a project's heading.

btw, have emailed Bruce on this. he told me he did not know his email was going out as a pg announcement.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 23, 2007 22:18 UTC (Mon) by dark (guest, #8483) [Link] (6 responses)

I've always wondered about that phrasing, "if evolution is true". Evolution is a process, how can it be true or false?

I guess it's a shorthand for some more complicated phrase, but I also guess that different people are using it as shorthand for different phrases, leading to lots of confusion when they try to debate it.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 23, 2007 23:05 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (5 responses)

Actually, I'm not sure that is a good argument. The magical conversion of mice into Cinderella's horses is a process, but it is false. Or better worded: it cannot happen. Likewise, the evolution of one species into another, or the whole "all 'specieses' turning into other 'specieses'" process might not really happen on Earth.

I don't see what other phrases you had in mind? Scientists agree that species turn into other species, they just are not sure about the actual mechanism. Christian fundamentalists say that god made all species like they are today. I think both positions are quite clear.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 24, 2007 6:50 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

"Christian fundamentalists"...

Some do.

People also claim that Adam and Eve got thrown out of eden because they ate a apple (or even that there was a mention of a Apple anywere in book of Genises), that the bible says the universe is 7k years old, that you'll burn in hell if your not a christian, that a microchip under your skin will be the sign of the devil, that dinosaurs are a trick of satan, that god will strike a guy on TV down unless you give him all your money, and all other sorts of ingnorent stuff.

None of it has anything to do with 'Christian fundamentalism' or anything in the Bible. All of that crap has about as much to do with Jesus as the Tooth Fairy or somebody saying Doublemint Gum will help you a date up with a couple good looking twins.

The whole thing is kinda silly. For people who beleive all of this is just self delusion and are getting offended over a one-liner at a bottom of a email should just ignore it. The guy's faith is harmless to you or anybody else. (unless your _that_ paranoid that you think that he may come after you with a shotgun or meat cleaver or something because your a unbeleiver) It's like getting pissed off because some kid is excited about meeting Santa Claus.

There are bigger things to worry about.

Personally the stuff I find deeply offensive is crackers on TV taking advantage of trusting senior citizens. Promising them that if they mail them their social security checks then God will cure their arthritis or help their granddaughter fight cancer. I don't know why anybody allows those vultures to operate, much less sell them TV time to steal people's money with lies and broken promises. Anybody who gives them air time are passive participants in a gigantic con. It's disgusting.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 24, 2007 22:55 UTC (Tue) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]

You mean doublemint gum won't help me date a whole bunch of good-looking
twins? Drat. And double drat. That's this evening's plan all shot down.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 25, 2007 6:23 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (2 responses)

None of it has anything to do with 'Christian fundamentalism'

I am sorry, you are wrong. According to the wikipedia, Biblical inerrancy is one of the fundamentals in Christian fundamentalism. This means that the Bible is completely accurate, including the "historical" and "scientific" parts. There are other sources for this stuff.

or anything in the Bible.

It has everything to do with the Bible: "the Holy Spirit did so inspire, guide and move the writers of the Holy Scriptures as to keep them from error".

All of that crap [...]

You are including in that "crap" some beliefs which are central to a few billion people. Just last month the Pope (née Ratzinger) said that "Hell exists and is eternal". Your comment looks like a good way to arouse hyper-sensitivities.

I agree that the one-liner that originated this thread was not very important; it was just unusual (and a bit amusing) to see such a thing in a press release.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 26, 2007 7:21 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

""I am sorry, you are wrong. According to the wikipedia, Biblical inerrancy is one of the fundamentals in Christian fundamentalism. This means that the Bible is completely accurate, including the "historical" and "scientific" parts. There are other sources for this stuff.""

I _am_ talking about Bible Inerrancy.

NO WERE in the bible does it say that the world was 7 thousand years old.

NO WERE in the book of genesis is there _any_ mention of _any_ apple _anywere_. (even though mistranlatiosn like to stick it in there) Nor does it say anywere that Adam and Eve were the originaters of the human race.

Neither was the galaxy _created_ in the beginning book of Genesis.

In fact in several places Bible references times that Pre-date the events in the garden of eden.

People are told what is in the Bible and they beleive what they are told as gospil. But what people are told is in the Bible is not realy what is in the bible.

Think about what you read about computers and 'internet chat rooms' and technology in common newspapers and mass media. Notice how innacurate it all is? Notice how people just beleive what they are told because they don't know better?

Multiply that by a thousand and you get Chistianity.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 26, 2007 22:57 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Sorry for being so arrogant before. As our favorite editor requested, let's leave the discussion for another time and another venue if you want; interesting as it is, and your point of view is quite new to me, it is way off-topic :D

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 24, 2007 14:40 UTC (Tue) by bmomjian (guest, #44864) [Link] (3 responses)

I just found out this thread existed. I would rather not have had any of my signature at the bottom of that email, not because of the Christ mention, but because there is no reason to have my name, company, and web site at the bottom of something that is supposed to come from the community, and I didn't even write that email --- I was doing it for someone else. FYI, I have exchanged private email with ccyoung already.

8.2.4, 8.1.9, 8.0.13, 7.4.17, 7.3.19

Posted Apr 24, 2007 15:09 UTC (Tue) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] (2 responses)

To something more constructive, why does PostgreSQL have so many versions? Five seems a bit excessive, any good reason for that?

8.2.4, 8.1.9, 8.0.13, 7.4.17, 7.3.19

Posted Apr 24, 2007 15:58 UTC (Tue) by bmomjian (guest, #44864) [Link] (1 responses)

We keep patching older versions because some people don't want to upgrade.

8.2.4, 8.1.9, 8.0.13, 7.4.17, 7.3.19

Posted Apr 26, 2007 9:12 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

There is *nobody* as conservative as DB users. I know some people who are still using Oracle 6 (obsoleted over a decade ago) because it still works, so why upgrade...

Of course this is a nice big advantage for free software because PostgreSQL users don't need to pay anyone anything or engage in licensing hassles whether they upgrade or not.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 24, 2007 15:02 UTC (Tue) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] (5 responses)

On the risk of insulting people, I dare to say: You must be an American.

Here in Europe we're apparently much more relax about this. Here religious people acknowledge that a process like evolution exists (because it's silly to deny it), but might have their own ideas about how it all started and have ideas about how it's guided. Evolution has nothing to do with religion.

If I'd be religious I'd be raving proud about the smart ways everything is done, I wouldn't scorn or deny it. Evolution is a very powerful and simple mechanism, which is hard to explain and make clear, because humans can't fathom the scale on which it works (millions of years and billions of subjects). To understand how all life came out of nothing to what it is now you need to understand chemistry (e.g. RNA, amino acids, proteins), probability, the nature of complex systems and the evolution process.

Of course it's much more convincing to explain that complex things come from something even more complex and unexplainable, than to explain complex things from simpler elements by which they're caused.

But hey, even if it happens that we're all wrong and go to hell, it surely is much more fun there than in heaven.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 24, 2007 15:26 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (4 responses)

Here religious people acknowledge that a process like evolution exists (because it's silly to deny it), but might have their own ideas about how it all started and have ideas about how it's guided.

It's silly to believe it.

Darwin observed adaptation, and made the incorrect inference that this predicts evolution. His entire "theory" is based on a false premise. Believing in evolution is like believing in the Easter Bunny.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 24, 2007 16:28 UTC (Tue) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] (2 responses)

Sorry, you're a bit unclear, so I don't know what you're trying to say (partly because I'm not really sure what exact meaning of 'believe' you're using here).

First, evolution theory progressed quite a bit since Darwin, as we know a lot more now.

Of course it's silly to "believe" in evolution. Knowing that it exists isn't. Where and how exactly is a different topic of course.

I don't know anything about Easter Bunnies, but either they exist or not. Should be easy to validate.

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 24, 2007 19:49 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't know anything about Easter Bunnies, but either they exist or not. Should be easy to validate.

Not really. There are no easy way to prove that anything exist. But if the theory can not predict something we, sadly, should reject it. That's the difference between evelution theory (was used many times to successfully predict a lot of things) and Easter Bunny theory (hardly any usefull facts were predicted).

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 24, 2007 20:26 UTC (Tue) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link]

I expected some nitpickers to jump at the opportunity I gave, but didn't expect this one. :-)

hyper sensivity

Posted Apr 24, 2007 19:41 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

It's silly to believe it.

Of course. Just like with any scientific theory. You use theory to predict something - and if it predicts things correctly more often then not... it's good enough to use.

Darwin observed adaptation, and made the incorrect inference that this predicts evolution. His entire "theory" is based on a false premise.

100% irrelevant. Even if theory was written by drunken boar who listened to tooth fairy and it has no basis at all but this theory can predict usefull facts - it's good theory and must be regarded as such.

Believing in evolution is like believing in the Easter Bunny.

How many oil fields were found by using "Easter Bunny theory" ? How many medicines it gave us ? When the answer will be "as much as evolution theory" - it'll be Ok to compare it with evolution.

The fact of the matter: science is not interested in "absolute truth". It tries to collect usefull facts and usefull theories - and if one theory (evolition) is simple and predicts a lot of things while another (creationism) is complex and does not predict many usefull facts then it's not even a contest. When we'll have better theory - this one will be obsolete, but so far I'm yet to see anything better.

where is this coming from?

Posted Apr 24, 2007 0:29 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Personally I don't think a backup will save my hard drive when it dies

But the data will be saved, and that's what really matters. Put your spirit into your software, and it will outlive hardware (and "meatware") failures.

I do agree that the line was unnecessary in the announcement, and I can imagine that it can offend someone, but let's not turn lwn into another kuro5hin.

where is this coming from?

Posted Apr 23, 2007 20:53 UTC (Mon) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, to be fair, Cthulhu does not make for a good backup system. He tends to just eat you.

where is this coming from?

Posted Apr 24, 2007 22:59 UTC (Tue) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]

I dunno. He backed up his Necronomicon database onto a mad arab's brain.

where is this coming from?

Posted Apr 23, 2007 21:53 UTC (Mon) by ed_avis (guest, #20596) [Link]

But what if your life is not a hard drive? What then?

I prefer the formulation: If your life is a hot dog, Christ can be your ketchup.

Remember the golden rule...

Posted Apr 24, 2007 7:16 UTC (Tue) by dion (guest, #2764) [Link] (3 responses)

As someone who lives in a country that's pretty close to Atheist <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Denmark> two things are somewhat puzzling to me:

1) That someone would ever go around telling strangers about their religion.
2) That anyone would care enough about people doing #1 to be offended.

If you are religious then I'll be slightly less uncomfortable if I don't have to read about your personal convictions, but if it makes you happy then feel free to include them anyway.

If you are not religious then please ignore the religion that sometimes seep though to your screen, it's all pink unicorns and FSM to you anyway so it's not like it matters.

Live and let live and all that...

Remember the golden rule...

Posted Apr 24, 2007 14:34 UTC (Tue) by JamesErik (subscriber, #17417) [Link] (2 responses)

Dion,

To explain point (1), I would draw the analogy of someone cured of a terminal illness who tells strangers about how his little-known doctor can cure them, too. In its purest manifestations, Christian evangelization is a labor of love for one's fellow man. Many of those strangers will not believe or will question the teller's motives, as we've seen in this thread and elsewhere in life, but I can assure you that in the great majority of cases I have personally observed, sincerity and love are indeed at the heart of the teller's actions. In my personal experience, authentic, loving, compassionate Christians are a joy to be around. I hope that one day you have such an experience, as well.

JamesErik

Remember the golden rule...

Posted Apr 24, 2007 17:54 UTC (Tue) by dion (guest, #2764) [Link] (1 responses)

Sorry to go even further off topic, but I guess that train left a long time ago...

I've known several christians and most of them are quite nice people, but I've met some of the kooky ones too, on the whole I'd say that on average christians are no more or less authentic, loving, compassionate and joyous to be around than other people.

The evangelization bit is highly annoying when it comes in the form of idiots that go door to door and argue their case or take up space on the sidewalk handing out fliers, but what people do with one or two lines in their .sig is their own business.

I once saw an .sig proclaiming that the sender was gay, which is fine by me, but it just feels a bit weird to have some total stranger tell me about his sexual habits, I guess it's about the same way I feel about knowing that someone adheres to a certain religion.

To continue your doctor analogy I guess the militant atheists feel that the doctor is a quack and that there is a danger that someone might be taken in by the ruse.

Remember the golden rule...

Posted Apr 24, 2007 23:34 UTC (Tue) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

(continuing off topic, sorry)

The part where the whole thing becomes perceived as hostile goes like this.

- You get told often about the religion other people follow. Strangers, incdental life people, and so on all tell you about their religion.
- These people expect you to agree with them and also follow their religion.
- Upon learning that you do not follow their religion, a common reaction is indignation, or contempt. Other reactions include compassion, enthusiastic preaching, pity, but many preclude the legitimacy of your path.
- Eventually your perception becomes that as a non-follower of religion, you are a minority whom the the majority population looks upon with some variation of marginalization.
- End product: people who bring up religion out of the blue are mounting an attack on your worldview, your character, your integrity.

I'm not saying this is the way things should work, or that this is reasonable. I'm just answering your sort of posed question as to how this all works.

At least in the United States, the atheists are a sort-of opressed minority. If you look at national level opinion polls, you'll find that atheists are among the least electable groups, more so than women, african-americans, and even open homosexuals. Speaking as a gay atheist, I certainly get into far more trouble as an atheist than as a gay man. It's positively bewildering the low degree of acceptance atheism has, at times.

You rightly point out that taking of offense by default is not really productive. It's a kind of perpetuation (and in some cases creation) of marginalization. Be careful of these traps, lest you make life poorer for others and most importantly yourself.