I'm not that commenter, but as a former Christian I must say that the most common Christian attitudes towards this sort of thing are highly irritating to non-Christians. Many Christians constantly bring up their religion and their terrible metaphysics* whether or not there was an invitation for them to do so, use their God to smack around people who don't behave the way they think they should, and generally lower the quality of any given discussion. Advice to pray to a God you don't believe in is useless advice. Imagine if I told you to sacrifice a lamb to Thor to cure your toothache.
* By terrible metaphysics, I mean to say that Christianity's incentive to act ethical, the judgment after death, also incentivizes people to disregard the world they actually live in, leading to unpleasant or even (counter-intuitively) unethical behavior. Some Christians also use these metaphysics as an excuse to treat non-believers like dirt. Not to mention taking the Bible as the infallible word of God that supposedly has all the answers, even though it's full of contradictions and blatant untruths.
FWIW, despite this comment probably coming across as quite hostile, I don't want to attack your faith. I'm just sick of the way some Christians choose to represent their faith in public.
This is a trait common to religious people. Society's secularization is still progressing slowly, and for a lot of people, their lives and worldviews are still attached to religion pretty significantly. I don't think this is a purely Christian trait. Embed yourself in Indian communities and listen to the conversations among us. Social life revolves around communal prayer and devotional singing, in addition to travelling to temples for services.
Personally, I see no showboating in the above comment. I see a sincere expression of something which helped, and I don't feel that it merits derision.
> Advice to pray to a God you don't believe in is useless advice.
Agreed. But the act of praying to a god is actually an act of belief (i.e., trust) if you think about it. If the god doesn't exist, it's pretty worthless, though ultimately harmless as an isolated act. I happen to trust in God's existence and the teachings of the Bible, though. So it would be callous for me to see someone have existential struggles and not offer my well wishes and personal experience in the same area.
I'd reply to the rest of your thoughts in more detail, but I'd rather not get too off topic. I will say that your concerns with the behavior of "holy people" and "orthodoxy" is also expressed in the Bible itself. And it's directly answered in very clear words. So in that sense, a problem with many "Christians" (1) isn't blind unwavering devotion to the Bible as much as ignorance about it, or a failure to practice its teachings.
I'll also say that Christian philosophers advocate for abductive reasoning in (a)theist philosophy. It's a subject and train of thought I recommend well-read people be familiar with.
There's a lot of depth and breadth on these subjects, but there aren't many places where Christians are allowed to earnestly share on these matters. I hope HN doesn't mind indulging well-meaning people like me from time to time.
(1) I will point out that there's no regulation on the word "Christian". The Bible recognizes that as well, specifically mentioning in several places that many people will claim Christ falsely.
I've often reacted with annoyance towards the attitudes and behaviors you describe.
I did find the above comment on christianity as an option fairly chill. Might just be my current state of mind. I found it interesting to know what he gets out of it and found it brought up in fairly good (hehe) faith.
> Advice to pray to a God you don't believe in is useless advice. Imagine if I told you to sacrifice a lamb to Thor to cure your toothache.
I'm atheist so to me it is as if it was your Thor example. It doesn't bother me though, I just disregard it. However, if I were depressed/stressed I could see it being irritating.
