As you pointed out yourself, most people involved with the site at the beginning were atheists. That is because of association with a group of people who were mainly atheists from the beginning. But they did not all agree on politics.
As a consequence, discussion of politics was discouraged because it would lead to contention and disagreement among those original people.
Discussion of religion, in the sense of disparagement of religion, was not discouraged, since it would not lead to contention and disagreement, given that the original group was atheist.
But in the early years, mentioning religion without directly saying it is false or bad would almost always be heavily downvoted, even if you did not assert that it was true. That happened without there being an official norm that you could not do that, simply because of the large proportion of atheists. The only exceptions (in the early years that is) were for people who favored religion but presented themselves as having basically something like a dhimmi status in relation to atheism. That of course got rid of most people interested in discussing religion, but a norm like the politics one was unnecessary, because of the presumed agreement on atheism.
But you are right that the difference was accidental, and based on the original group characteristics. If the original group had contained a mix of religious people with diverse religious views, the site would likely be that way to this day, and direct discussion of religious topics would be discouraged in the same way that politics currently is. It has nothing to do with what views are reasonable. Some views on religion are more reasonable than others, and some views on politics are more reasonable than others, but for most people, the views that they hold on these topics are not principally motivated by reason. That applies to both religion and politics, and it applies to people on Less Wrong almost as much as to ordinary people.
Thank you for clarifying a history of the site and the community. I expected something of that.
But I wasn’t sure how much the local community is resistant to biases (and how it is confident in that), so the original question was perhaps a bit indirect.
mentioning religion without directly saying it is false or bad would almost always be heavily downvoted, even if you did not assert that it was true
So I am glad that I haven’t been heavily downvoted yet. Religion is false, of course :-)
That doesn’t really happen much anymore, if at all, for a number of reasons, the most important one being that everyone has stopped reading this site at this point.
As you pointed out yourself, most people involved with the site at the beginning were atheists. That is because of association with a group of people who were mainly atheists from the beginning. But they did not all agree on politics.
As a consequence, discussion of politics was discouraged because it would lead to contention and disagreement among those original people.
Discussion of religion, in the sense of disparagement of religion, was not discouraged, since it would not lead to contention and disagreement, given that the original group was atheist.
But in the early years, mentioning religion without directly saying it is false or bad would almost always be heavily downvoted, even if you did not assert that it was true. That happened without there being an official norm that you could not do that, simply because of the large proportion of atheists. The only exceptions (in the early years that is) were for people who favored religion but presented themselves as having basically something like a dhimmi status in relation to atheism. That of course got rid of most people interested in discussing religion, but a norm like the politics one was unnecessary, because of the presumed agreement on atheism.
But you are right that the difference was accidental, and based on the original group characteristics. If the original group had contained a mix of religious people with diverse religious views, the site would likely be that way to this day, and direct discussion of religious topics would be discouraged in the same way that politics currently is. It has nothing to do with what views are reasonable. Some views on religion are more reasonable than others, and some views on politics are more reasonable than others, but for most people, the views that they hold on these topics are not principally motivated by reason. That applies to both religion and politics, and it applies to people on Less Wrong almost as much as to ordinary people.
Thank you for clarifying a history of the site and the community. I expected something of that.
But I wasn’t sure how much the local community is resistant to biases (and how it is confident in that), so the original question was perhaps a bit indirect.
So I am glad that I haven’t been heavily downvoted yet. Religion is false, of course :-)
That doesn’t really happen much anymore, if at all, for a number of reasons, the most important one being that everyone has stopped reading this site at this point.