Rules on discussion of religion

[Bohandas]

The rules about discussing real world religion are apparently a bit ambiguous. I always took it to refer to extant religions that are still practiced, but recently a thread about ancient mythology was closed on the basis that it fell in the realm of religious topics. I feel that if mythology is to be included as a banned topic than this should be explicitly stated in the forum rukes

[Maelstrom]

Agreed, if we start to close threads that delve into mythology, you might as well invest in red ink as the closure rate of threads will go through the roof, though moderators have repeatedly reinforced (usually here on the Board/Site Issues area) that any reference outside 'obvious' non-real world subjects (such as D&D Dwarves, being fictional vs Dwarves in folktales/myths, being quasi-religious due to their ties to a religious story) is verboten. But it is interesting to see a pattern develop where threads are closed *before* they go off into a no-go zone (and therefore are within the board rules), rather than scrub a thread or issue a warning to keep things on track ...

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The rules seem clear enough to me:

Inappropriate Topics

• Real-world religions (including religious reactions to gaming)
• Real-world politics (including political reactions to gaming)

In the same you understand that "Real-world politics" means any politics - modern, WW2, Russian revolution, etc., there is nothing to indicate that the rule only applies to extant religions. And even if it did, there are followers of Asatru and Odinism alive today, so the thread that was closed would have been in violation of the rules even if the rules only "refer[ed] to extant religions".

Grey Wolf

[Psyren]

You can talk about fictional versions of mythology, e.g. Thor in D&D, Thor in OotS, or Thor in Marvel. What you cannot do is go on to discuss real-world/historical Thor.

[Khedrac]

Also, there are a fair number of people who try to follow their best understanding of some of those "old religions" we might expect to be dead.

Case in point, about 30 years ago my brother wrote a letter to a UK religious newspaper which got published. The topic was something about teenagers and why they might have difficulties with their spirituality. His letter actually made it clear that he did not, but he still received over 100 letters that were trying to suggest religions (or versions there of) for him to follow.
One of these letters was extolling the worship of Odin and the Norse gods - so the religion (or a modern version of it) was still active 30 years ago; I doubt if it now dead.

Result: if you don't want to offend people by your discussion of their religion it is best to avoid all real-world religions (tbh some people will be offended by discussions of a fictional version of the religion); thus the Playground's rule of no discussion of any real world religon is an eminently sensible rule.

[Anymage]

One thing to remember is that the mod team has plenty to do in their own time, and can't go too in-depth into every post here. So if a generally okay topic (say, one of the comic threads) has a few posts about real-world mythology, those can easily slip under the radar. Every set of rules has a few instances where they get broken in the real world, and nobody notices because nothing comes of it.

If a topic blatantly talks about real-world mythology, though, that opens up a very tricky can of worms. If norse or greek mythology can be openly talked about, for instance, what's the status of the bible? History? Mythology? Unacceptable only because of how many people follow it now? The mod team has decided that it would rather not go down that road, so has decided that the safest path is to render the topics off limits entirely.

(Although trying to shadow mod is also uncool. If, say, people start talking about norse mythology in another comic thread about Hel, let the mods get to it on their own time.)

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: The line is real world (not allowed) vs. not real world (allowed). It's not about whether it's old or new, extant or extinct, controversial or agreed upon, or any other distinction you can think of. If it's about a real world religion (or politics), avoid it on this Forum. Give these things a wide berth.