On 1/7/15 2:48 PM, Kent James wrote: > I'm curious why you are singling out Gerv here, when Ben's comment "as > an atheist" could certainly be interpreted as "all other religions are > false". Doesn't belief in no God mean that you believe that those who > believe in God have false beliefs?
The difference is that: 1) Ben didn't syndicate a post to planet dedicated to his atheism and telling everyone how great it is (nor has he done this over and over for years) on Planet. 2) Ben didn't comment on the religions of other folks at all (outside of the immediate scope of discussing Gerv's post). There is a difference between a self-identification, "I am an atheist," and acting as a proponent, "I am an atheist and your views are all wrong, let me tell you about my atheism and how wrong you are." No one condemns Gerv or others simply for identifying with their faith (I hope). People have all kinds of beliefs and others have all kinds of opinions about them. So, sure, by saying you have a particular viewpoint, some folks could construe it as condemning other viewpoints but, without explicitly saying that, it is simply "This is my thing (and I'm not talking about whatever your thing might be)." The latter is the polite view in a pluralistic society or group where people have viewpoints that are fundamentally in conflict yet still need to work together and get along day to day. I, for one, do not care one bit whether or not Gerv or anyone else is Christian, Muslim, an Atheist, or whatever. It is a pluralistic society and I'm quite happy about that. I would rather not to have a religious discussion in the context of my *work* and with people that I am required to work with. This goes for divisive politics as well. I don't care if you're a Republican or a Socialist (or whatever) but within a work context, unless we are close friends discussing things, I'd rather not hear about your political beliefs and have you trying to convince me to join your political party or vote a certain way. That's what I do with friends over drinks after work hours. Clearly, there are fuzzy lines around a lot of this because Mozilla as a project has views that some would consider inherently political. As far as I know, we don't have any that are religious. Also, there is some kind of spectrum being someone saying "I am a Democrat" and trying to convince you to sign a proposition form for the state government for a cause. This goes to religion as well. > My point is not to criticize Ben, but to point out that limits on > stating what you believe are always very subject to the biases of those > doing the censoring. Except no one is censoring. People can post whatever they want on their blogs. The changes requested are for people to not send everything they post to Planet by default and, basically, not to send divisive things. The question is of what it is appropriate to send to your fellow project members and coworkers in a feed that many follow because of their jobs. People have asked Gerv to stop for years. He doesn't and we have a variation of this conversation in places at least annually. People (including me) have gotten annoyed about it because it is perceived as being extremely rude and uncivil to fellow project members. I'm actually resigned to the idea that Gerv is never going to stop doing it because he's not stupid (at all) and is not unaware that it pisses folks off but (I assume) feels that it is necessary to do anyway. > TL;DR Why can't we agree to disagree on topics and page down instead of > censoring individual views of Mozillians." Because I open my planet feed and see someone evangelizing their religion to me. I'm not interested but I need to read the feed in order to keep up with the overall Mozilla community. Al _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
