Whilst I completely understand why you would find it inappropriate, I'm struggling to see why you would find it insulting.

Can you elaborate?

Insulting is not the right word. I'm not sitting here mad or anything.

But I often see people labelling disagreements over things like licenses or editors or programming language as "religious" disagreements, with the implication that this means "driven purely by thoughtless adherence to a group and/or authority".

Clearly, religion sometimes works like this. But consider people like mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal, or literature professor and theologian C.S. Lewis, or any number of ordinary Christians I know who do think critically, including about their theology. Being religious does not necessarily mean holding a position uncritically, being hostile to those with whom you disagree, or being able to acknowledge partial agreement and gray areas.

On the other hand, non-religion can also display the "religious" tendencies people are trying to deride by using this term. Some people are so fervently allied to the Republican party, or Marxism, or environmental causes, or conspiracy theories, or atheism, or white supremacy, or feminism, or any number of other things, that they're unable to consider opposing arguments.

Unthinking herd mentality is neither inherent nor specific to religion.

Do you consider "religious" appropriate? I see the point that theology originally means something like the study of God.

Au contraire, I find religion to be extremely fitting to the free software - open source debate. Richard Stallman himself is very sympathetic to theological analogies for technology debates, calling himself Saint IGNUcius.

https://stallman.org/saint.html

From that page:

Warning: taking the Church of Emacs (or any church) too seriously may be hazardous to your health.

So at least that page is absolutely not evidence that Stallman is sympathetic to theological analogies (the fact that he is joking by making a theological analogy indicates the opposite).

Invoking an atheist like RMS doesn't help matters, even if he may have a lot of wisdom and experience in the licensing wars. Conflating an argument over a particular licensing debate in 2018 with deeply-held religious beliefs that may have existed for thousands of years and even inspired actual religious wars (where thousands of people, or even millions -- might as well loop Godwin's law into this debate -- actually died in horrific ways) would certainly appear to be insulting to those who are religious (and many who are not) and might take your irreverence more seriously than it was intended.

I think you're overblowing the potential for offense and committing the sin of assuming it's other people and not you that will get offended. If some religious person is offended by the characterization, I welcome them to articulate why. I'm highly spiritual myself and have interacted with many very religious people, and I can say that most of them relish the opportunity to think about worldly things using religious framing.

> I'm highly spiritual myself and have interacted with many very religious people, and I can say that most of them relish the opportunity to think about worldly things using religious framing.

Would they “relish” your using the term “theological” in the way you did in your original comment? Be honest.

Well, they certainly wouldn't take offense to it like a atheist / materialist would at the idea that a debate they care a lot about might be framed that way.

"We've killed lots of people for much less, so mind your manners!"

Wow I'm glad we don't live like that anymore. If using a word in a way that totally suits its literal meaning and most of its connotations is "insulting" enough to help forestall a return to that, bring on the insults! Here's one: RMS believes in free software more deeply and authentically than anyone in this thread believes in God.

Lighten up.

http://wiki.c2.com/?HolyWar

Thank you for this!

> To join the Church of Emacs, you need only pronounce the Confession of the Faith: There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels.