The FSM flair was removed. Why?

> Thibault said: I'm sorry my fellow Pastafarian, we decided to remove all flairs related to religions, to avoid tensions - something they tend to create.

Well my religion is smile like there was no problem. Will the smile-smiley now be removed?

@MillenniumBug said in #11:
> Well my religion is smile like there was no problem. Will the smile-smiley now be removed?
May your ":)" find it's storage room in heaven!

@thibault said in #2:
> I'm sorry my fellow Pastafarian, we decided to remove all flairs related to religions, to avoid tensions - something they tend to create.
>
> That includes the icon of the Holy Pasta, our sacred Flying Spaghetti Monster, who boiled for our sins and keeps the planets in orbit.
>
> May you be touched by His Noodly appendages. R'amen
>
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichess#/media/File:Thibault_Duplessis.jpg
Thibault, that was bloody great right there. Making a joke for your response to a formal question while still being formal at the same time.

lichess.org/account/preferences/display#showFlairs

flair can be edited in account preferences on top. looking for the french name for bishop chess piece.. I need to hear the dingeling sound and would enjoy this reminder about myself next to my user name. Good for the zygomatic tone, and the obligatory grain of salt required when reading my stuff (for me too). If the french bishop piece name was translated it would be something like Buffoon, or Court-jester. I think any circus jester iconic pic would work. Now, which category....?

@four_legs_good said in #1:
> This morning I set the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my flair.
>
> Now I log in again and I don't have a flair anymore. Worse, the FSM is no longer in the list.
>
> What happened?

It got stuck on the ceiling?

@dboing said in #16:
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
It has some kind of fictional religion to it... Or maybe it's not fictional?

@alexObby21 said in #17:
> It has some kind of fictional religion to it... Or maybe it's not fictional?

quote from the Wikipedia (that part is not fiction, the article, and there is a website).
> It originated in opposition to the teaching of intelligent design in public schools in the United States.

Which is mainly backed by religious groups, to push aside the more scientifically developed (and evolving itself) theory of evolution. What is science to do in front of such willful ignorance propagation intent? Science is about sharing some critically debatable information across the many of us, and across generations, with testable hypotheses formulations adapted to accumulated data.

If that is not enough to make school programs, in a modern school system, see the difference between propagating religion or their cosmogony beliefs systems, from teaching scientific common knowledge, then I guess, they might have to use the same argument types. I am not sure that it is a possible discussion unfortunately. So for me it is a comic relief disappointment creative outlet, in vain.

Some of this is fictional at some level. Either that church itself is not believing in what it is proposing, and then it is a fictional religion, and therefore not a religion, or the belief they propose is a fiction, which I could not talk about, and would not either.

@dboing said in #18:
> quote from the Wikipedia (that part is not fiction, the article, and there is a website).
>
>
> Which is mainly backed by religious groups, to push aside the more scientifically developed (and evolving itself) theory of evolution. What is science to do in front of such willful ignorance propagation intent? Science is about sharing some critically debatable information across the many of us, and across generations, with testable hypotheses formulations adapted to accumulated data.
>
> If that is not enough to make school programs, in a modern school system, see the difference between propagating religion or their cosmogony beliefs systems, from teaching scientific common knowledge, then I guess, they might have to use the same argument types. I am not sure that it is a possible discussion unfortunately. So for me it is a comic relief disappointment creative outlet. I think the world needs such grain of salt.
>
> Some of this is fictional at some level. Either that church itself is not believing in what it is proposing, and then it is a fictional religion, and therefore not a religion, or the belief they propose is a fiction, which I could not talk about, and would not either.
So we're connecting it to a real religion?

Difficult discussion. religion susceptibility is an unfortunate unbalanced communication problem, one has to err on the side of prudence.

Religions, in general, do not promote debate or self-doubt (or not outside their framework), and even if the thing in question is purely a parody creative form, one can count that there be a few believers with more literal views that would be feeling discomfort about seeing this. I do agree that chess ideas are more important and that we can all let some topics slide in different directions while having chess at least as common ground of thinking.

Sad fact for critical thinking and constructive discussions, but lichess might be wise to submit to this. The world is still dominated by such mind sets, even if there are individual versions, and even ecumenic attempts, often it is in the essence of religions to also want to have a space of dominance and implementation. Internet might be hard place to let those forces deploy. So let's make lichess having its own more chessy debatable things.. There are beliefs to debate there too... enough even.

I was glad personally to see the existence of this. Not sure of far this can be pushed and be effective communication about its original intent.