As a religious person, I find keeping religion out of normal discourse has been very counterproductive for both religious and non-religious people. I understand that the discussions are more prone to conflict and uncomfortable feelings, but they're nonetheless key to understanding other people and diversity of thought.
Keeping religion (and agnosticism and atheism) out of things produces the same problems we see with the 'Majority Illusion'.
I have nothing against discussing religion online but I think it is mostly offtopic on HN.
Edit: see also my reply to GPs answer to me
I understand that's surely not intended, but it's nonetheless the consequence of making religion off topic.
Would it be better if I said something like "keep attacks on religion out of HN"?
It's the stereotyping that really sticks out to me. It would be flagged or downvoted (justifiably!) if someone called women irrational or told homosexuals that their lifestyles should be kept private.
I'm convinced that the double standard here just doesn't register for most of the HN community, and almost all the English speaking world besides. I said something to raise awareness of the problem.
I think the difference here is that in one case one would be inferring a belief system from membership in a non-belief-related group, while the other would be inferring a belief system from membership in a belief system.
I don't think it's a double standard to treat those things differently (though there are corners of HN that get wildly out of control in either of the aforementioned cases).
This is related to a current problem in the US left, where tolerance of belief has to compete with intolerance of abuse, and sadly, belief often wins at the expense of the abused.
For context: did you read the comment that started this thread? I and others originally read it as a fairly broad patronising attack against all religions before the author came back and explained the intention. (and I still think it could have been written a lot clearer to begin with. )
So back to the point of creating tools for productive discussion, is there some solution to the problem that will allow us to communicate ideas without the offense and without the verbosity?
I'm not sure we can get there in one HN thread, but consciously addressing linguistic gaps would be worthwhile. When particular words have enough overloaded meaning to cause confusion and conflict, we need to find new words.
For the record, I'm for healthy (respectful) dissent. A lack of dissent is poisonous for all parties. But outgrouping is also poisonous.
Isn't HN supposed to be a place for civil discussion between people who disagree?
If you write off arguments you disagree with as "tiresome" and "beating a dead horse", especially on something as basic as "what is evidence", then you're providing a strong negative counterpoint to the original proposal - do people even want a place where people can agree on facts and then disagree on the results of interpretations of those facts? Or do they want, as you seem to want, to retreat into their comfortable social network of people who all agree on the same unwritten body of pseudo-facts?