You can say the same about fiat too.

Just calling money fiat is like calling people "infidel" :D

Bitcoin maximalism has immediate parallels to religious doctrine that regular currencies do not.

1) Divine creator whose existence is impossible to prove

2) A holy book: (whitepaper) that's taken as absolute truth and therefore doesn't require any revisions or updates. Proposed changes to core beliefs create split factions (BTC v BCH, Old v New Testament, or the Shia-Sunni split in Islam).

3) Monotheism: Belief in the primacy of Bitcoin blockchain over all other competing chains, and warning of divine punishment for apostates (NGMI).

Well before bitcoin, I never felt comfortable with dollar bills stating "In God We Trust" on the back.

They were actually introduced to dollar bills (and mandated on all money) relatively recently: in the 1950s, as a symbolic effort to oppose communism.

Fiat is the best fine tuned PoS system we have.

Is it perfect? No.

Is it ages ahead of Bitcoin? Yes

Which is why even though I don't believe in the bible I would be happy to own a pallet of fancy ones to hawk.

I don't believe in crypto. But I know plenty of religious zealots to sell it to. So I'm happy to own it. My bet is it isn't a dying religion.

I admire the honesty around investing in the unsophisticated.

Think about whole institutions created to indoctrinate people roughly from birth to remain unsophisticated.

The other institution may prevent your birth. Which is worse?

Sorry?

I assumed you were talking about religion, so I named atheism.

You did not name atheism you made some weird statement about 'the other institution' and how they would prevent births, which makes zero sense at all. Women should have the right to choose what they do with their own bodies, atheists and religious folks alike and those that have no horse in the race should stfu because all they are doing is telling other people how they should live, something that unfortunately is very common.

That's one way of looking at it. But pro-lifers don't see it that way, so I was just presenting another point of view. I don't think telling them to stfu is productive.

The term 'pro-life' is about as flamebait as it gets so you'll be doing your arguing with yourself on this subject from here forward.

Many people self-describe as pro-life. It is not 'flamebait' for most people and neither is pro-choice.

> The other institution may prevent your birth. Which is worse?

You're mixing worldviews in your rejoinder.

For an atheist, Atheism not preventing "your" birth as there is no soul ("you") waiting in the wings to prevent. No you to prevent until personhood after birth.

Rather, to an atheist, it's enabling the filtering out of unfortunate humanist futures. No child need be brought into unwantedness, disease, insufficient support, or other misfortunes. As there is no supernatural providence (no God to provide), logically, one should not bring forth future humans into a lack of providing.

The atheist assumes the mother is best qualified to evaluate this choice, and thus to make it. The atheist further presumes the mother is the person most affected by this choice (there is no other "you" yet), and thus has greatest right to make it.

To be clear, many Christians hold the same view as this example atheist, particularly those who think living is defined by knowing, and being dead by not knowing:

"For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten." – Ecc. 9:5

Roughly, those who believe there is no separate soul hanging around before or after an independent body by-and-large have no problem with holding a woman has a right to choose.

> To be clear, many Christians hold the same view as this example atheist, particularly those who think living is defined by knowing, and being dead by not knowing

And there are many Christians who regard support for abortion within the faith to have been influenced by atheism.

I just think it's an interesting question that has no easy answer. When does life begin? Clearly, the fetus is alive. Saying they "don't know" doesn't make sense to me because it's not like I remember my first year outside the womb either.

Are you aware that a secular scientific approach to sexual health results in far fewer abortions? Chiefly proper sex education and freely available contraceptives to minors.

Okay. The topic was birth, not sex ed / contraceptives.

You must have missed the point.

If the goal is to reduce abortions, then the pro-life strategy is less effective than pro-choice.

Pro-lifers can be pro-sex ed and pro-contraceptive. It would be your misunderstanding if you assume those must all go together.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell, let alone generic religious flamewar hell, Satoshi help us.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

On the one hand in a cynical and sarcastic way, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

OTOH sha256 proof of work mining is a billion dollar industry and the Bitcoin mining hashrate just hit an all time high after a long protracted bear market.

Miners are in the black, price will follow

Edit: a word

I wonder if people made similar observations when commodity money or paper money were invented...