Please do not take HN threads into religious flamewar hell. We don't want it here and we ban accounts that do it. This post was particularly flamebaity.
I'm sorry if it came across as "flaimbaity". It's a sincere question. Weighing the benefits and costs of things is a common thing to do when considering whether to do those things, and in this case, I just can't help but feel that they completely brushed over that aspect. But I will read your link.
If you say it was a sincere question then I believe you, but it didn't come across that way - I'm afraid it came across as snarky provocation.
We're trying for a forum in which people exchange ideas thoughtfully and respectfully. Especially when the topic is divisive (as religion always is), it's deeply necessary to err on the side of the latter. Hopefully reading the site guidelines will clarify that! Note this one:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Any normative claim that suggests an individual or group is morally less-than or unworthy of participating in society if they don't wholly affirm or adopt a specific worldview. Consider contemporary discourse surrounding gender identity, the legitimacy of the nation state, border controls, and other political wedge issues.
Information control has been one of the chief concerns of our social institutions, because certain ideas have been deemed unfit to even be considered in our discourse because we're concerned that exposure alone is enough to potentially corrupt someone who might otherwise be a moral and decent person.
The thoughts we allow in polite society are always bounded, and it is always painful for those outside of it whether they're coming from a priest, a teacher, a parent, a corporate bureaucrat, or a government official.
