General Discussion

One thing to note is that the posts you've linked criticize or make fun of religious beliefs, but they don't call for violence, discrimination, or other injustice against religious people.

Despite their desire to be, Christians are not persecuted like they claim.

It is absolutely shocking to me the number of "I am an atheist but..." posts with crazy false equivalence arguments I have seen in the past several weeks on Lemmy.

There is no line. It's up to whoever runs each instance.

I know you're looking for a broad moral rule that applies here, but you won't find it. Federation allows us all to coexist.

So if an instance owner decided that a specific community has policies they don't like, it's totally fine for them to shit can them.

Religion is about what a person believes. LGBTQ+ is about who a person is.

If you want to hate people for who they are, do it somewhere that isn't Lemmy.world. If you don't want to see people posting about your belief, go make your own Lemmy server and defederate.

To OP: no, hate speech & discrimination against religious people is not acceptable nor allowed. The examples cited appear to not meet that threshold to the admins or moderators of that community. I would recommend discussing this with either group if you believe otherwise.

If you would like to discuss religion there are a variety of communities you can find here and for Christianity specifically, here.

While I think the topic of religious discussion across the fediverse could be interesting, I don't think this thread offers a constructive basis from which to have this discussion, and as such I am locking it. For those interested in discussing the topic on a more constructive basis feel free to make a new thread here, or for religion more broadly or Christianity specifically, whichever active communities you find in the linked search results.

Imo, you should be allowed to mock everyone, religions, LGBTQ+ or atheists

The moment you start giving special treatment to atheists and consequently inferior treatment to Christians you start threatening the basic tenets of freedom. Which in the long run could be very dangerous for a free society

To me, "This community does not affirm practiced LGBTQ+ lifestyles" isn't hate speech, but is anti-lgbtq, which is a thing the admins of lemmy.world are right to take action on if they're trying to cultivate an instance that is friendly to lgbtq folks.

I think that's why even though the community had additional rules in the sidebar about not condoning violence against lgbtq, and athiestmemes has content Christians find offensive, the admins deleted the community. It's clearly still a contested subject within the thread, but at the end of the day lemmy's general response to people that don't like the rules of their instance is to find another instance.

Something else to note is that there are multiple levels of shunning in fediverse. The admin in the thread deleted the community, but would still federate with a server that hosted it.

I fail to see the examples you give as hate speech against religious people.

If there was content like memes equating jews to lizards, going off on muslims being inherently violent, or saying all catholic priests were child molesters, I think you would have a case, especially since the last two are memes I would commonly see on Reddit's religiousfruitcake sub.

The first example you give just comes off an an edgy (lol I'm so logical. These ideas are the same)
The second is making fun of the placements of two signs
the last two are plays on the question "If god exists, why does he let bad things happen?" Which is a question that many atheists ask themselves.

Hate speech would be a call to do violence against religious people, or spreading stereotypes that perpetuate violence and discrimination. All I see here are mid to bad jokes.

Also, and this goes for any community here, just because a joke or meme offends you, doesn't inherently make it hate speech. I think a christian sub would be in their right to post memes poking fun at atheism.

Speaking as an Atheist and lapsed Catholic:

I agree completely. While religion has a component of belief, it is primarily an identity, that the vast majority of people are born into. Despite not believing in God, in many ways I still consider myself a Catholic (as does the church). The idea that religion is about your personal relationship with God and belief is a Protestant one.

There is a reason why religion is included among other protected classes, but political affiliation is not.

Atheist communities online have a sanctimonious tendency to consider their bigotry above reproach. It's how you get the slide of figures like Richard Dawkins into the right-wing on the coattails of islamaphobia.

There's a fine line between making fun of a belief and stereotyping an entire religious group. And some religious groups - like Mormons or Wahhabists - are deserving of most of the hate they get. But the Catholic Church is not as bad as many make it out to be and millions have been massacred even in modern times over anti-Papistry. Spreading the ideas of Islamaphobia and anti-Papistry kills people.

I think there's a gray area with State Atheist countries. I think the way, say, the DPRK handles it - with the complete outlaw of religion - is not the right approach. In China, religious minorities are protected under the law but not allowed to join the Communist Party, which I think is close to the right approach.

No, hate speech isn't okay. But your examples are not hate speech, so there's no problem.

The Fediverse is pretty radical. I'm an atheist also, an exmormon, and I think this might just be a misunderstanding.
The rule, "no LGBTQ+ content," I don't think is saying "no gay people." I am pretty sure it is just asking to avoid the topic, to prevent bigoted discussion from happening.
As fair or not as you want it to be, LGBTQ+ is a controversial topic for religious people, and I think it's fair to just put a pin in that discussion in your community. But what do I know?

Honestly, I love Lemmy as a platform and the idea behind it, but currently it really feels like an echo chamber when it comes to religious/political subjects.

As much as I hate to say it, I saw a much bigger diversity of opinions on Reddit.

I wonder where is the actual line of what is allowed and what is not on this instance

I'd like to know this too, because banning a community just because they don't want to talk about something - and that apparently offended someone, while allowing other communities free rein over content that could offend someone, makes me confused about how the rules are actually applied.

I think each user and place should do what they think is best. It sounds like you are talking about lemmy on this kbin magazine. Personally the ideal for me is everything allowed federation wise but the instance may not allow something based on how the maintainers feel but the thing can just find a home somewhere else in the federation. then me as an individual just blocks them if I don't like them.