Comment by _blrj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _blrj | Hacker News Reader

I tried explaining this to my friends who work for GitHub and Facebook just shortly after they offended me by bashing and making fun of Christianity without cause (no one brought it up, or anything remotely related to religion). I don't need to name them. They read HN and know who they are.

I chose to be offended because we're amongst other friends in a Skype chat who promote this sort of thing: environments where discussions and comments that would offend people should be avoided. I'm fine with that. Who wouldn't be? The the degree they promote this to is equivalent to what's in that CoC. It's well-intentioned, as mentioned in this article.

What I'm not fine with is them being hypocrites about it. That's when I choose to be offended. I don't speak ill of anyone in that chat, but to have such "progressive" individuals claim this is the environment they want, and to selectively choose what they want to apply it to is reasonable grounds to get mad.

My problem with these codes of conduct are that the people who promote them have repeatedly persecuted me, and even went as far as to try and deface me in front of my employers.

I think the concept of it alone is fine, but the people advocating for them have been nothing but offensive to me, ironically enough. The people advocating for this haven't been peaceful, respectful individuals. They've made personal attacks on me.

There is a slight difference. One doesn't chose to be black or be gay or chose what age they are. These are givens. One does however chose to believe in a religion. Also, blacks and gays and senior citizens don't generally have a habit of proselytizing and judging others morally inferior based on differences. Being blacks or gay or a senior citizens also doesn't require a world view totally at odds with manifest reality nor require financial support or political or even violent action. Some religions do.

To add, religion is an idea and ideas deserve no respect. It doesn't matter how much you choose to think that idea defines you personally.

One chooses to be a feminist. Fair game in your opinion?

Yep, fair game. Feminism, racism, whatever "ism" are beliefs. Not intrinsic characteristics. When people believe things someone else finds silly or repugnant and they are mocked... suck it up. Rough luck and too bad. Defend or ignore. Ideology and belief systems shouldn't be protected against mockery and there shouldn't be a free pass to not be offended on this. Unlike intrinsic characteristics.

I say this because it's part of my religion of free will. I really wish people would stop mocking my religion and oppressing me:)

I rather like your "religion" (at first glance it seems logically consistent), but I wouldn't personally espouse it except in the kind of company that might tolerate modest proposals :)

There is the "bootstrap problem", which is that what you're describing is more or less a truncated form of humanism - and that in itself is of course a belief system much in the manner of a religion (I guess, as you observe above).

Practically speaking, religion and belief are enshrined as "protected characteristics" for discriminatory purposes in most human rights laws. Right up there with age, disability status, sex, sexual orientation and so on.

Sure, "enshrined"... i.e, useful to the state. When not useful or maybe harmful, enshrining doesn't take place. Instead they send federal agents to burn your compound down. And thus it has always been.

I personally don't care for organized religion (nor organized much of anything for that matter). But this bias is irrelevant to the point. That is... belief systems are not the same as intrinsic characteristics of a person and don't in any way deserve the same respect. The comment about "my religion" was to illustrate a simple point. That is, it is practically impossible to respect and refuse to counter all belief systems. Which why would we?

Now, for a workplace where people need to get along, yes, there should be rules about not being rude. But that might include not mocking the kind of shoes someone wears or their preference in movies. Or their religion. But that's as far as I would take belief protections. Religion has gotten a special pass for far too long, probably because it has been useful to the state.

> One does however chose to believe in a religion.

That's a remarkable contention, and one which strikes me as flat-out wrong. One doesn't choose to believe in something; one either does or doesn't.

One either does or one doesn't because one chooses. Consciously or subconsciously it is a choice. Maybe there is a lot of social pressure in the choice, maybe the fact there is a choice isn't clear, but it is still a choice. Particularly in this day and age when one everyone can see there are many different ways of looking at things. One isn't born a Christian or a Nazi or an Anarchist.

That really doesn't make sense. One doesn't choose to believe something; one just does. There's no subconscious or conscious choice. Believe is something one does (it may even be that belief is the thing the brain does, but I don't know that I'd go that far).

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