Is it acceptable to insult god in a user profile?

Question

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.

Answer 1

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:

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.)

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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 :-)

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

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.

Answer 9

Yes, of course it is acceptable.