On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 02:49:05PM -0400, Devin Jeanpierre wrote: > >> This was a technical discussion, and calling the bible a joke was not > >> necessary at all. It creates a hostile atmosphere. > > > > I disagree. It was not an attack on any person nor group of people. If > > we are to be required to avoid jokes not directed at people, then *that* > > is an atmosphere hostile to open friendly discussion. > > Well. It wasn't directly an attack on people exactly. It did mention > believers directly. It could certainly be _interpreted_ as an attack > (and was interpreted that way), and that's really all that's necessary > for a hostile environment. > > I'm not saying we should censor ourselves exactly. I've always been > opposed to harsh _rules_ about what's appropriate and what > isn't. But I do think it's important to consider others' feelings. > Just because it isn't an attack, doesn't mean it can't hurt peoples' > feelings, and I think hurting peoples' feelings is something worth > going out of your way to avoid. > > Anyway, if it was a joke before, it isn't when somebody starts calling > some "group of people" "organised conspiracies to support and protect > child molesters". > > > The person who wrote the “bible is a joke” intended it as a flippant > > remark. Countless other flippant remarks pass through here all the time, > > making jokes at the expense of some idea or other. Christianity will not > > be an exception to that. > > That doesn't make it right. Is it OK to make fun of arbitrary ideas as > "jokes"? I don't think so. It seems, again, hurtful. Especially when > the idea is totally unrelated. It's like we're having a discussion > about dynamic typing and somebody blurts out "Hahaha, static typing is > almost as dumb as Cartesian Dualism". The best case outcome is that > nobody cares. The worse case outcomes go down to hurt feelings and > flame wars from dualists. > > > But the topic of keeping this forum safe for technical discussion > > entails that it must be safe for *any* idea to be the butt of a joke, be > > it a religious text or the Zen of Python, and that is very much > > on-topic. > > It obviously isn't "safe" to joke about any topic, seeing as it caused > a derailment and new thread. >
Sometimes it's just not appropriate to joke. Save them for the dates. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
