Hi comrades,
We’ve received some reports recently and so I’m making this announcement.
In our rules, Lemmygrad does not lean one way or the other towards religion. This means that in effect, we accept all communists no matter their religion or lack thereof.
However, this doesn’t mean we allow feuds or unprincipled criticism. This seems to come especially from our atheist comrades, who sometimes (from what has made its way to us) see it fit to remind religious comrades that religion shouldn’t exist.
While we appreciate that the criticism is about religion and not the particular beliefs of some comrades, this kind of discourse does not have its place on Lemmygrad as we effectively don’t lean one way or another and expect users to lean that way too.
edit: as such, this reminder also applies to religious comrades.
We’re very hands off with moderation and we’d like it to remain that way in a community as tight-knit as ours.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t criticize religion or atheism, as long as it comes in good faith and is done from a Marxist basis.
This principle also applies to other contentious topics that are prone to debate on our platform.
The point of contention is not necessarily debates surrounding religion but how these are carried out. Going to a post mentioning religion and saying “Religion is bad” is something we want to avoid and it’s different from having the occasional debate. In the former case it’s an unnecessary comment.
If religious users went to posts that mention atheism and said “you should believe” everyone would also quickly grow tired of it. But so far I (personally, I emphasize that) have not seen anyone behave like this. That’s the reason I specifically mentioned our atheists, however I reiterate that the reminder goes for both religious and non-religious users.
Essentially, religious and non-religious comrades shouldn’t be harassed over it and shouldn’t have to defend themselves over their beliefs. I’m personally an atheist, and I think all of our admin team is, so it’s not like there’s a hidden agenda to start promoting religion on Lemmygrad or anything.
Regarding bans, I’d like to point out they were temp bans for people that kept being “in your face” about their dislike – sometimes hatred – of religion, sometimes after repeated warnings. At this stage it constitutes harassment but we’re very wary of banning anyone permanently. Maybe we should start, because I believe you when you say you’ve felt harassed for talking about atheism before. Please keep in mind that we’re a small team of admins, and when posts reach over 100 comments (as it usually happens when there’s a big debate), we don’t have the capacity of moderating all of it partly due to our size, and partly due to the tools Lemmy has to moderate. In that case we rely on reports.
I’m also wary of simply deleting comments because I believe people should stand behind what they say and not have it washed away by a moderator so they can get away with it if they’re being harassing. In this case I think when making a report, users should point out that they want us to delete the comment if it targets them.
The links between all of us here is that we’re all communists and MLs. I assure you religious comrades know it’s a contradiction to believe in God. But they’re not the only group to have contradictory beliefs, all of us retain some idealism in some way.
There were two threads yesterday, one was specific question about religion, though you probably don’t mean this one, but the one about Hakim. I do think criticizing him for being religious is a valid point since most other answers also did praised or criticized him from the marxist point of view.
And going to post mentioning religion in a space like the “freechat” where there is no specific rule against it stated beforehand is also nothing inapropriate.
It would be inapropriate in a dedicated religious space, and also should have some guidelines like “no atheism”, not to mention that you can also critique religions broadly from not only atheist positions but from agnostic or even religious too, so “no heathens/heretics/apostates/witches/cultists etc etc”
I seen the modlog in the meantime and the harassing comment was deleted, thank you.
Absolutely.
Yeah i know, most “religious marxists” are actually pretty bad at either being marxist or being religious (or both), though that tend to sort itself out in time on one way or another, so i’m not too worried about it.
Also again, the entire point from my side is not shitting on religion, i don’t really need to, but to uphold the principles of marxism, because i once heard on reddit GZ, i kid you not, “you cannot be marxist if you’re not religious”, and the guy was absolutely serious and he was a mess, and it was not the only case, just the most extreme one. This moved me more than 1000 sermons from catholic hierarchs.
Anyway i did just created community about materialism, hopefully it works.
Idk if I’d phrase it this way lol
It’s a bit more complicated of course, but i think i have enough walls of text for a few days at least :p
How dare you, I demand a dissertation on this topic, now!!!
Has he ever commented on how he reconciles Marxism with being religious? If yes then I would like to see that though I don’t mean to imply that the burden of finding it should be on you. If you have a link to it then great otherwise no worries. If he hasn’t then it is not fair to ruminate on his religious bent considering he cannot defend himself. It is not something that crucial that needs to be criticised.
I feel like he said something about religious things maybe someday being scientifically measured like dark matter.
I don’t remember seeing if he outright stated the reasons, but several people in that thread commented about it so i assumed he had somewhere, i didn’t watch all his videos really. Looking at my post there i did not criticized him for being religious, just for wrong stance on Ukraine war. In the post above yours i meant that the angle of critique is fair, not necessarily that the critique itself is correct.
Obviously the burden of proof lies on the person making the critique, but it’s pretty weird to require person having to defend themself each and every time? How would we criticize anyone already being dead then?
True, if he continues just as he is now, it is a very minor nitpick.
Well I didn’t mean it for every time but it would be good if he had the chance to do it once. Otherwise we would be talking about someone else’s beliefs with very little knowledge of them.
Publicists are mostly being known for their writings (or videos or other publication).
“If religious users went to posts that mention atheism and said “you should believe” everyone would also quickly grow tired of it. But so far I (personally, I emphasize that) have not seen anyone behave like this. That’s the reason I specifically mentioned our atheists, however I reiterate that the reminder goes for both religious and non-religious users.”
Comrades are likely understanding this space to be a Marxist one and so they are making efforts to maintain that fact. We all attack outward libs here (or we should), some attack any liberal tendencies as well. I’m not saying the latter is justified, my point is to add context.
" But they’re not the only group to have contradictory beliefs, all of us retain some idealism in some way."
Based.