69

Like always I hang around in Stack Overflow's chatrooms. Today, someone posted a link to his new "reloaded" user profile.

Along the lines I read in Arabic "god is a pig". So I asked him to remove it:

Me: I have a lot of respect towards you because of your knowledge but what you wrote there in Arabic is offensive. Could you remove it please?
OP: if it were in English, would it be equally offensive?
I will write it in Dutch because you ask it so kindly.
Me: yeah, I mean what's your goal? You're just seeding hatred
OP: It is an experiment.

After that, the user changed it to Dutch.

My question is: are such statements acceptable by Stack Exchange's standards? If not, should I flag one of his posts like stated here? If yes, could you state why?

My answers to possible questions:

  • This happened on SO, why don't you post it on MSO?
    • This happened on SO but I think it's applicable to all SE sites.
  • Why didn't you link the user or the chat conversation?
    • I want the user to remain anonymous unless he or she chooses to reveal him/her self. I will give the user a link to this question
  • Why do you care?
    • I find it offensive, not only to my religion but to any religion that believes in god. I posted this question to know what you guys and girls think about this. I live by the rules, so if it's acceptable by SE then so be it and I won't bother you again.
  • If you don't like it then move on.
    • I know that this is not a mosque/church/temple and that swearing is acceptable to a certain degree. But I don't see the point in insulting god, a religion or a race in a public profile. More over, it's not even built on arguments.
  • 7
    It is kinda nice of him to translate it in Dutch though :) BTW any link to the profile in question? – PeeHaa May 9 '14 at 14:35
  • 8
    +1 I don't believe an environment such as SO benefits from any religious reference; whether it's to represent your belief in, or hatred for, any religion. Of course, there are sub-sites dedicated to this topic of discussion specifically, but SO/SU/SF don't need to know. – Dan Lugg May 9 '14 at 14:37
  • 40
    @DanLugg: yet the user profile is the one place a user gets to express themselves. There are few, if any, restrictions on what you can put in there. – Martijn Pieters May 9 '14 at 14:38
  • 7
    @MartijnPieters Frankly, I don't care what you put in your profile, but I also can't understand how people rationalize putting anything except technological achievements and interests there (again, in the context of SO/SU/SF) – Dan Lugg May 9 '14 at 14:40
  • 40
    And that some find this to be offensive is still a subjective issue. I find it terribly easy to laugh random statements on user profiles off. At best, I think less of the user; e.g. it's their own loss. But it should not be the job of Stack Exchange to remove such statements, absolutely not. – Martijn Pieters May 9 '14 at 14:40
  • 7
    @DanLugg: I don't understand how people rationalise that you cannot put anything there except technological achievements and interests there. We are all humans, we all have interests and expression beyond the technical field! – Martijn Pieters May 9 '14 at 14:41
  • 7
    I never said you "cannot". Do whatever you want. But, I don't walk into a church and start talking Linux with the congregation for no reason. Consider that. – Dan Lugg May 9 '14 at 14:42
  • 7
    @DanLugg: That's a straw man argument. A church has an entirely different expectation, culturally, of how people behave there. This is not a church. – Martijn Pieters May 9 '14 at 14:43
  • 14
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigs_in_popular_culture see the section on religion and the numerous examples of pig or boar gods. – Bart May 9 '14 at 14:43
  • 11
    @DanLugg Is there something wrong with going to the church wearing a Linux T-shirt? (Because profiles don't "start talking" to anyone) – R. Martinho Fernandes May 9 '14 at 14:43
  • 3
    I seem to have found myself down the rabbit hole here. I'm not a religious man, and I think I'm rather hard to offend. Have fun :-) – Dan Lugg May 9 '14 at 14:44
  • 10
    Sounds like you're beung openly offensive towards those who believe in pig gods, oh which there are many. Your way is not the only way. Live and let live. – Lightness Races BY-SA 3.0 May 9 '14 at 17:55
  • 9
    I wonder how did you (the OP) know that god was insulted. Did he (or she) told you personally? – ypercubeᵀᴹ May 9 '14 at 18:12
  • 9
    As a Northern Irish Atheist (yes there is such a thing), I really do not feel it is OK for somebody to use this site as a platform to insult another's beliefs. One of the major draws of StackExchange is the fact that we are all, despite out differences, drawn together because of our love of technology/programming etc, and I find the fact that I can ask a question, and can receive an answer from somebody with a completely different worldview from myself, on the opposite side of the planet, or vice versa (maybe I can help them), to be an incredibly good thing! – JMK May 9 '14 at 22:41
  • 13
    It is no more possible to insult God in a user profile than it is to insult the Moon. Only people can be insulted, whether singly or on occasion collectively. Sure, people can say “The Moon is an ugly white dead thing” all they want, but I promise you that the Moon will not be insulted by these petty words. Plus remember what happened to Nietzsche when he famously said “God is dead”: God later said “Nietzsche is dead”, which pretty much put an end to that business once and for all. – tchrist Aug 2 '14 at 19:22
95

Wendikidd mostly nailed this, but here's the semi-official guideline:

  1. Generally speaking, your "about me" is just that—what you want to share with the world, and we try to allow users a good bit of freedom there.
  2. However, in the rare cases where what's there is likely to be truly offensive to large groups of seemingly reasonable people, we may not allow it.

Note that point 2 does not mean you should go out searching for offense; fear not—it will likely eventually find you. If you happen to stumble upon a profile that truly offends you, flag it for attention.

When in doubt, try to be at least as tolerant of someone else's statement or opinion as you want them to be toward you. (Hat tip to Sklivvz.)

In the interest of being slightly less hand wavy:

We will probably not allow:

  • Most terms or statements that directly malign (non-famous) individuals
  • Any terms or statements that imply something derogatory about a racial, ethnic, religious, gender or sexual orientation group
  • Things that are likely to be strong emotional triggers (like rape, suicide, etc.)
  • Statements that appear to be demonstrably libelous

We will probably allow:

  • Things groups or individuals would vehemently disagree with, but don't seem to directly malign them.

Note: this list is not comprehensive or absolute—I want to be clear that this policy is highly discretionary, and we'll make individual calls based on our desire to allow the maximum freedom possible without undermining our commitment to a community based on civility and mutual respect.

With regard to the OP's example:

This one's kind of hard, but if I had to pick a line for this type of content, and only when someone flags it as offending them—we are not policing this:

I'd probably consider the generic, "God is myth/crutch" to be reasonable, if controversial expression of one's personal belief. That said, I'd probably consider the same type of statements directed toward "Yahweh," "Allah," etc. to be more potentially problematic, as they are much more personally offensive and targeted to specific groups.

If you learn better from pictures: Our tolerance in different areas has a lot to do with how much they're in your space on the site, vs. the public space. Posts are very public, shared resources. Your username and avatar are (obviously) more about you, but they appear anywhere you post, so they're pretty public. Your about me is visible to the public, but in your little public corner of the site, so we're a bit more liberal:

Posts: professional clothes. User name: casual clothes. User profile: "Zardoz" - scantily clad, still not naked.)

  • 12
    Is it intentional that the arrow gets droopier as it progresses down the table? – jscs May 9 '14 at 19:52
  • 35
    @JoshCaswell, there's not much "intentional" about my drawings. Everytime I sketch something, a tiny part of Jin catches fires. – Jaydles May 9 '14 at 19:55
  • 1
    For Piglet's sake, then, put down the pencil! – jscs May 9 '14 at 20:00
  • 8
    Cargo shorts? Really? – hairboat May 9 '14 at 20:13
  • 13
    @AbbyT.Miller, all else being equal, cargo shorts are always superior to non-cargo alternatives. – Jaydles May 9 '14 at 20:13
  • 5
    So what does the next level (which is obviously chat) allow? ;) (+1 for free hand drawing, you obviously chose the wrong job!) – Shadow Wizard is Ear For You May 9 '14 at 20:27
  • @ShadowWizard, we have chat? I – Jaydles May 9 '14 at 20:32
  • Whoops, knew I shouldn't reveal the secret! :D – Shadow Wizard is Ear For You May 9 '14 at 20:37
  • 12
    -1 for not drawing this in red, +1 for the content – Sklivvz May 9 '14 at 20:49
  • 1
    Very nice! Especially love the image :D +1! – WendiKidd May 9 '14 at 22:54
  • Actually I still don't see as the picture doesn't contain that word anyway. – Martin Smith May 26 '14 at 20:42
  • 2
    Note that the word "Allah" is simply God in Arabic. Whether or not Christians speaking Arabic use Allah or God I do not know. – Tim Nov 19 '15 at 0:50
  • 2
    I'd probably consider the same type of statements directed toward "Yahweh," "Allah," etc. to be more potentially problematic, as they are much more personally offensive and targeted to specific groups Ever considered Christians when writing this statement? – dfhwze Oct 25 '19 at 4:25
  • 1
    @LuisReinstateMonica, that's not really my call these days. But if you want my opinion? Personally, I'd probably encourage the company to allow user profiles to include specific complaints or criticisms, but wouldn't expect them to permit blanket calls for boycotting the site, etc. on their platform – Jaydles Nov 7 '19 at 20:37
  • 1
    You use "We" but aren't in the company any longer. Plus this whole A is now so outdated after numerous occasions of censorship over profile content that it reads entirely like apologetic speculation now. It needs a full rewrite, disassociating 'you' from 'we' and be signed by current staff actually privy to current policy. (Which frankly looks like arbitrary disappearance of stuff without other trace than your own memory at any time is what you have to live with) – LаngLаngС Nov 15 '19 at 14:16
56

If it's ok to praise god in your profile (it is), then it should be ok to insult god in your profile too. This is a matter of people's personal beliefs, and as a Stack Overflow moderator I don't have the authority to tell you what you can or cannot believe. I can't even keep track of what people believe. Some people might honestly believe that god is a pig for all I know. Or a plate of spaghetti. Or a lovable cartoon lizard. (I may be alone on that last one.)

Anyway, my point is that unless someone is writing hate speech directed at other people (individuals or groups of people), I'm really not comfortable censoring what they write in their profile. Your beliefs are not you, they are your choice. We have to be accepting of other people with different beliefs, even if they are the exact opposite of our own.

  • 5
    Does it really follow in general that if it's ok to praise X in your profile then it should be ok to insult X in your profile? Consider X=[moderators, stack exchange employees, white people, black people, asians, women, men, waffles, republicans, democrats, muslims, zoroastrians, unicorns, etc.] – user-2147482600 Nov 14 '19 at 19:27
  • @user Of course not. Read the whole answer. – Bill the Lizard Feb 7 at 13:30
46

From what I've seen, the general way SE handles stuff like this is that you can put anything in your profile/comments/whatever until someone finds it offensive, at which point they flag it and mods decide whether it's something that could legitimately cause offense or not. You've got a lot of leeway in profiles, but things have been removed before; racism, etc. When something is very clearly offensive and someone complains about it, it does get removed.

The question here is whether or not this specific instance is offensive "enough" to qualify for removal. Personally, I don't think it is. It's someone expressing their opinion, which it seems to me they have every right to do. However, I am not the Grand Determiner of Offensiveness, and you've clearly stated that it does offend you. So I suggest you follow the above steps and flag them; the mods on the site in question can determine if they think a change needs to be made or not. (When we're not sure we usually bug SE staff to get an official answer.)

  • 2
    Most offensive things are someone expressing their opinion, no? All the others are just misunderstandings and can be cleared up unless one side goes ballistic. – R. Martinho Fernandes May 9 '14 at 14:50
  • 1
    @R.MartinhoFernandes Sure, which is why it's a judgement call. I think there's a pretty big difference between a personal attack and a statement about your religious beliefs. But just because it doesn't offend me doesn't mean it doesn't offend someone else, which is why I think flagging is the best option (and why, in my experience, mods tend to lean toward "well, someone found this offensive, so let's remove it" even if they don't find the content offensive). – WendiKidd May 9 '14 at 14:52
  • 24
    Some people find anything offensive. You can't remove every scrap of content that might possibly offend someone. – DeadMG May 9 '14 at 14:53
  • @DeadMG Also true. This is why we have flags, and mods and SE staff to make the final judgement call :) – WendiKidd May 9 '14 at 14:53
  • 13
    @DeadMG - I find that offensive. – Oded May 9 '14 at 14:59
  • 19
    You can choose not to be offended by it @HamZa. Saves everybody a whole lot of trouble, not in the least yourself. Thinking "nah, he's not" and then moving on is probably the easiest option. – Bart May 9 '14 at 15:08
  • @HamZa Well, that's the thing. SE's policy isn't "This is offensive, that isn't offensive, this other thing is really offensive..." SE's policy is "If you think it's offensive, ask the mods to look at it." So I'm afraid no one will have a definitive answer for you on that. – WendiKidd May 9 '14 at 15:09
  • I recently flagged a profile I thought was offensive (not to me personally, just in general) and this was the response: helpful - users are allowed to swear their head off in their about-me as long as they're not posting anything overtly bigoted or graphic – Stijn May 9 '14 at 15:44
  • 1
    Hopefully we can get enough activity on this question to produce a sort of de facto policy from the community that will serve in lieu of a definitive answer. +1 for "Personally, I don't think it is." – Nick Stauner May 9 '14 at 19:31
  • 3
    +1, this is a good description of how it works. @NickStauner, I provided a more definitive description of our approach (and some thoughts on this specific case) in a new answer. – Jaydles May 9 '14 at 20:03
  • @Jaydles: I saw what you did there. Thanks again! I wonder if that makes some of these comments obsolete (this one included)... – Nick Stauner May 9 '14 at 20:06
38

The real question here is why do you care? It's just some guys user profile. You don't need to look at it. It's not like he's posing it in his questions or answers.

Now I understand that you or any other person may find this offensive and it is well within your right to be offended. You may also ask him to change his profile politely if you are so inclined. However if he doesn't wish to change it there is ZERO reason to force him to. He's not harassing anyone so just ignore it and move on.

Ultimately life's much too short to spend any of your time worrying about this.

  • 2
    While I doubt that this would ever be the accepted answer, based on the position presented by the asker, it strikes me as the right answer. – KorvinStarmast Aug 13 '19 at 22:07
34

The point is: where does it end?

If someone likes unicorns should we allow others to insult unicorns in their profiles? What about spaghetti monsters?

There is a difference between pointing an insult to you personally, and pointing an insult to something you merely believe in, namely that in the latter case it's well within the boundaries of freedom of expression ("This idea blows goats") and not in the boundaries of personal attacks ("You blow goats").

You are not your beliefs :-)

Please do not take offense at other's display of religiosity (or lack thereof). Demonstrate tolerance. We all have equal rights to be wrong :-)

31

Other people saying things you find offensive is just part of living with other human beings. The fact that you don't see the point in insulting God is irrelevant. This user clearly does. And it's his profile.

Insulting God is no different to insulting Jeff or Java. It should not be treated specially. And if I wrote "Java sucks" in my profile, I think everybody here would let it go. So I'm going to conclude that this is no different, although not actually being Dutch makes it hard to judge exactly how offensive it is.

  • 7
    Never not make fun of religions. – Cat Plus Plus May 9 '14 at 14:53
  • 18
    I think that the fact you don't see the difference between insulting God and insulting Java or Jeff implies you perhaps don't understand people very well. – Joe May 9 '14 at 14:58
  • 12
    Or that he actually really values actual human beings a lot. @Joe Though I have no idea why he would be that fond of a programming language. – Bart May 9 '14 at 15:19
  • 6
    The translation from dutch to english is exactly the same. According to your reasoning, it would be acceptable to say "arabs/jews are pigs". Although we have the freedom of speech, I think one should respect others and their believes. Again, that's just my thinking. – anon May 9 '14 at 15:20
  • 9
    Really? Because it seems to me like you want to censor his beliefs just because you dislike them. As for the translation, I don't know what the original was, so saying that it's the same is totally unhelpful. – DeadMG May 9 '14 at 15:24
  • 28
    @Joe: Maybe it's not me with a problem. Religious beliefs are not special and anyone who thinks they are has a problem. There's nothing more inherently valuable about a religious belief compared to any other, and nothing more inherently offensive about disparaging a religious viewpoint than disparaging any other viewpoint. – DeadMG May 9 '14 at 15:26
  • 7
    Understanding people means, among other things, accepting that they might have values different from yours, and accepting their values as valid for them. Forcing everyone to have similar values to you is exactly why many people don't like religion nowadays, but doing the same yourself is no better. – Joe May 9 '14 at 15:28
  • 8
    Speech that is clearly tailored to be offensive to a particular group of people is not something I'm particularly interested in protecting. One could make anti-religious arguments all day and I would have no problem with it, but making statements that have no value beyond their offensive nature are less than worthless. – Joe May 9 '14 at 15:30
  • 4
    So wait @Joe. The values DeadMG expressed differ from yours? Yet you were upset enough about those because they did not align with your values, so you felt the need to express that in a comment instead of simply accepting it? – Bart May 9 '14 at 15:31
  • 4
    That's an excellent strawman, @Bart. Nice job. – Joe May 9 '14 at 15:31
  • 10
    @Joe: It's your belief that it's tailored to be offensive. I don't even know what it says and nobody will provide a translation, so it's hard to make a judgement, but it seems inherently hypocritical to assume here. – DeadMG May 9 '14 at 15:34
  • 5
    I don't think you understand what I'm saying at all. I'm not even taking a side on the particular case here. What I'm saying is that if you don't understand why some people might be extremely offended by it, then you don't understand people very well, or are projecting your values onto them and suggesting their values are not worth considering. – Joe May 9 '14 at 15:36
  • 7
    Well, yes. I think that a set of values which involves censoring everybody else isn't worth considering. And I think that if you have such a set, then that's a problem you should fix, not something where society should bend over backwards to accommodate you. – DeadMG May 9 '14 at 15:40
  • 4
    Any argument even vaguely to do with religion will never come to a conclusion where one side convinces the other of anything. You can write that my mother is a whore on your profile if you like, I won't care. Stand in front of me and shout it at me with malice and I will have another opinion, but the contents of SO profiles are not something I am going to get offended over, and nor should anyone else (but I don't expect anyones stance to change over some comment thread on the internet...). – OGHaza May 9 '14 at 15:40
  • 6
    Separate "offended" from "censor" a bit. The point I have, primarily, is that people are offended by certain things, particularly insulting their religion. You don't seem to accept that as a possibility. The choice to censor or not is a distinct discussion, and largely (as has been pointed out) is entirely up to the SE mods; if they would rather censor speech (risking losing customers) than allow people to be offended (risking losing customers), they may do so, or not. – Joe May 9 '14 at 15:46
19

Stack Overflow explicitly bans hate speech.

From the official code of conduct:

No bigotry.

We don’t tolerate any language likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion — and those are just a few examples. When in doubt, just don’t.

That seems like a pretty clear delineation. The only question at hand is whether this fits that description.

  1. To me, the fact that it was in Arabic – when it sounds like nothing else in the profile was Arabic and this is a non-Arabic speaker – really escalates this. I don't think that was an accident, and I think he only switched to Dutch because he didn't think he could get away with it anymore.

  2. It seems WAY too coincidental that he chose "pig" as his insult of choice, since Muslims consider pigs unclean. Pigs have been used in anti-Muslim harassment on several occasions worldwide (1 2 3 4 5).

If Muslims and/or Arabs were intentionally targeted, that takes this beyond an expression of opinion and into the realm of hate speech. He wasn't expressing his personal beliefs, he was attacking others for theirs. He went out of his way to offend a specific religious group. That's a clear violation.

I'm as wary of censorship as anyone, and I share Jaydles's opinion that people should be allowed to Zardoz-up their profiles in most ways, but I think this crossed a very clear line. I can't say whether switching to Dutch brings him back to this side of that line; that feels like a gray area to me. But the original version of his profile plainly breaks the S.O. rules as written.


Update: There are a lot of people arguing over whether hate speech should be allowed. This is irrelevant.

The question asks whether it is allowed, and the answer is no. If you have an opinion on the wisdom or fairness of that policy, I suggest you open another question. The only thing we should be debating is whether this is "language likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion." I wonder if anyone in here really thinks this person wasn't trying to do that.

  • 8
    It's pretty racist to assume that everyone who can read Arabic is a Muslim, or that you must be able to read Arabic to be Muslim. You are mixing up language, ethnicity and religion in one here. – Lundin Mar 21 '19 at 13:52
  • 4
    @Lundin - What on earth makes you think I'm assuming that? The question at hand is what this guy was trying to do, and whether he was targeting a racial, ethnic, religious, or other protected group. Arabs and Muslims are both in that list, so it doesn't matter if he was targeting all Muslims, all Arabic speakers, or Arabic-speaking Muslims in particular. If his chosen slur is based on a racist assumption, you should take that up with him. – Justin Morgan Mar 21 '19 at 16:58
  • 2
    "This guy" is just some sad troll that people should simply ignore. The point is, he is not targetting anyone. People are free to write in whatever language they like in their profile. It's pretty distasteful to bring in religion to a programming site, but it is allowed because it isn't targetting anyone. Users are allowed to express religious believes in their profile, if they must. There might be a problem that the word 'god' in Arabic is 'allah', I suppose. But people are allowed to think whatever they want as long as it isn't direct towards someone or a group. – Lundin Mar 21 '19 at 19:24
  • 3
    Bottom-line is people who run around feeling "hurt" because others don't share their own religion need to calm the f down. Religious freedom doesn't mean running around and analysing what those who don't share your religion say or think, and get offended if they don't say things you like. That mentality belongs in a dictatorship, not in a democracy. – Lundin Mar 21 '19 at 19:26
  • 6
    @Lundin - I think it's pretty clear that this was, in fact, targeting a specific group. This is what I illustrated in my answer. If you can show why it wasn't reasonable to interpret his behavior that way, be my guest. You haven't really challenged that interpretation, so I assume you don't disagree. Stack Exchange has a clear policy banning derogatory speech that targets a religion or ethnicity. That has nothing to do with me. If you have a problem with it, I suggest you take it up with them. – Justin Morgan Mar 22 '19 at 22:38
  • 4
    @forest - Why would you even feel the need to insert "fictional" in there? This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. The question of whether God is real is even less relevant than the question of whether the policy is a good idea. Note that I haven't given an opinion on those topics either, since my opinion is equally irrelevant. I've quoted the official policy and attempted to interpret its intent. Please restrict discussion to the facts and the topic at hand. – Justin Morgan Aug 19 '19 at 19:04
  • 3
    The answer is no? That's not what the majority of well-received answers here are saying. Anyway, this isn't the legal definition of hate speech. I gave an example a few comments above which clarifies this. "Muslims are pigs" is hate speech. "Allah is a pig" is not. – The forest of Reinstate Monica Aug 20 '19 at 4:12
  • 3
    @forest - The legal definition of hate speech, like so much of the noise in here, is irrelevant. This question is about Stack Overflow's policy, which is the only definition that matters at the moment. If you can make a sound argument why language likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion doesn't cover what the OP described, I suggest you do it. – Justin Morgan Aug 21 '19 at 18:30
  • 3
    @forest - The problem I have is with people wasting everyone's time by debating the existence of God, whether it should be acceptable to insult God, and any number of other irrelevant personal beliefs. THIS IS A FACTUAL QUESTION. Not a poll, not a religious debate, not a talk about how to make Stack Exchange better. The existence and wording of the policy is a fact. There's room here for opinion, but only about the correct way to understand what the policy covers. Opinions about the interpretation of language belong here. Opinions about values, or LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE, do not. – Justin Morgan Aug 21 '19 at 18:44
  • 2
    @JustinMorgan Others have already explained in detail why that doesn't cover what OP described. I'm not going to post a redundant argument. But as you say, this is a factual question, not a place for opinions. I think you should try to calm down a little, since bold and caps lock yelling isn't constructive. – The forest of Reinstate Monica Aug 21 '19 at 19:08
  • 2
    @forest Nope. Not one comment on this answer has even attempted to challenge that point. Many of the answers in here don't address it either. On the other hand, I challenge your statement that bold and caps lock isn't constructive. So far, it's the only thing that's succeeded in getting a rational response that doesn't waste everyone's time. – Justin Morgan Aug 27 '19 at 20:44
  • Bold and caps lock just looks immature. And by "waste everyone's time", you mean "which I disagree with". – The forest of Reinstate Monica Aug 28 '19 at 5:57
  • 1
    @forest - Oh, is that what I mean? Try reading it again. Maybe it wasn't bold enough. – Justin Morgan Oct 7 '19 at 18:31
4

Yes, of course it is acceptable.

  • 10
    I don't think it's acceptable to insult anyone or anything, even in the profile. – 3ventic May 9 '14 at 14:39
  • 26
    @3ventic you know what's coming, right? Soon someone will claim your stance against insults is insulting to them. – R. Martinho Fernandes May 9 '14 at 14:41
  • 1
    @R.MartinhoFernandes I never said anyone should be able to claim something as insulting. No single person should make that call. – 3ventic May 9 '14 at 14:52
  • 2
    @HamZa Because I do not see a single reason why it should not be allowed. – wilx May 9 '14 at 15:27
  • 9
    Firstly, you're wrong. Secondly, this answer adds nothing of value. You need to add a reason. All I learned from this is that someone, somewhere disagrees with the OP, and I knew that before reading your answer. – djechlin May 9 '14 at 15:37
  • @R.MartinhoFernandes and I claimed you stabbed me and murdered my mother and should be banned, but people don't take that seriously either. This does not mean every time person A insults person B and person B says person A insulted them that their claim is illegitimate, because sometimes people say other things. – djechlin May 9 '14 at 15:38
  • 12
    @djechlin "Firstly, you're wrong" followed by "You need to add a reason". Care to add your reason for stating he's wrong? – Lamak May 9 '14 at 15:49
  • 2
    @Lamak no, I don't. It's covered by several people in the other answers though, and in the original question. I'm just explaining one of the two reasons for my downvote. Feel free to downvote my comment if this bothers you though. – djechlin May 9 '14 at 15:52
  • 8
    @djechlin Well, comments can't be downvoted. And it doesn't really bothers me, just find it funny the way you were arguing about reasons and then just stating "you are wrong" – Lamak May 9 '14 at 15:53
  • 2
    @Lamak this is all consistent with the fact that if you're posting an answer you have a higher burden to justify your thoughts than if you post a comment. Posting why OP is wrong here is just writing an answer to the question, which is already done several times so would be silly. – djechlin May 9 '14 at 15:56
  • 8
    @3ventic wrong. MySQL. I insult that all the time. Totally acceptable. – Zane May 9 '14 at 16:10
  • @Zane acceptable according to yourself. My opinion isn't wrong purely because you (and few others) disagree with it. – 3ventic May 9 '14 at 17:38
  • 9
    @3ventic your opinion is that, an opinion. Some people will agree with it and some people won't, it doesn't means it's right or wrong, that's why it's an opinion and not a fact. And, come on, one can't insult anything?, like, anything at all?, even something that everyone can find repudiable. "War is the worst!", can't I say that? – Lamak May 9 '14 at 18:07
  • 17
    @3ventic but your original comment is indefensible. "I don't think it's acceptable to insult anyone or anything, even in the profile" By that logic if I wrote I hate watermelons in my profile it would be unacceptable. That doesn't make any sense. You really want any and all satire completely banned? I'm sorry dude but I'm having an impossible time wrapping my head around that. – Zane May 9 '14 at 18:10
4

My 2¢

For someone to go to Google Translate then write a drive-by offensive message in their profile just for the sake of trolling is a sad sad person. To have your life molded around the hatred of one particular thing that keeps you up at night thinking about it everyday. So much so that it's the thing you talk about the most, you tweet about the most. That level of devotion is one step away from starting your own church... again, sad.

God isn't a pig. God isn't a bear either. God needs to exist in the first place to be something.

Just being offensive for the sake of being offensive tells me that I don't like that person. However, me not liking that person(or your feelings of being offended) shouldn't override his freedom to write whatever they want. Being something intelligent, stupid, sad, offensive, or whatever.

  • 11
    How do you know God isn't a pig or a bear? I am presently imagining God as a omnipotent, bearded manbearpig...seems roughly as plausible as anything else. Al Gore was right about climate change after all! – Nick Stauner May 9 '14 at 19:37
  • @NickStauner I think choosing to write that sentence in Arabic on an English speaking website removes any benefit of doubt I might give the poster. – CodesInChaos Nov 17 '15 at 12:51
  • 2
    @CodesInChaos Writing it in Arabic does not make it any more or any less offensive. If the profile said that "Arabs are pigs", that would be offensive as it targets a group of people instead of a belief. The language one uses to express their belief should be irrelevant. – The forest of Reinstate Monica Mar 22 '18 at 23:58

You must log in to answer this question.
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/231334/is-it-acceptable-to-insult-god-in-a-user-profile/231362
meta.stackexchange.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2020-10
305223
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:CA6QCEDT7MOK6FR5OCKTVK6QORF5BMGP
<urn:uuid:93239547-b2db-4425-91c8-542ada4fa5cb>
2020-02-23T15:33:19Z
151.101.65.69
text/html
sha1:OGRVKWQNTMX6PKKOUMANKRFZ6ZJFPTZU
<urn:uuid:c63db9d5-e8c2-4703-bcae-2b8d0df86088>
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/231334/is-it-acceptable-to-insult-god-in-a-user-profile/231362
response
<urn:uuid:af402dcf-d00b-4603-8b5f-0266f8dcb94d>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2020-10
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for February 2020
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-238.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.16 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/