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.
How would you even discuss materialism then in the first place? You know, the integral base of the philosophy of marxism. How do you want to not mention atheism around that? Because every mention is always causing shitstorm, in effect we can't discuss atheism at all.
Even writing lenghty disclaimers about tactics and principles don't work, every time i have to flagellate myself that i'm not Varg Vikernes.
You already banned everyone but me and some lurkers which maybe don't want to tell anything because other than this part is a very nice space and most other communist spaces everywhere in anglo net also seems to have aggressive antiatheist moderation.
And i still remember last time where a person clearly needed some delicacy was banned and hounded off but people openly calling me, them (and Lenin) fedora reddit libs were not punished in any way. So pardon me if this post here seeming a little insincere. Maybe try that going in both ways and not alienating atheist comrades? Or maybe some more hands off, nobody is gonna eat anyone else here over this.
Materialism is explicitly saying "your beliefs are based on nothing but the material conditions". I don't even know how you can put this in good faith, marxism is certainly pretty blunt with it.
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.