> Unlike backwards religious fundamentalists, the cute little devil hasn't harmed a single person.
Even if one doesn't believe in the Devil, surely it seems in poor taste to use as a mascot a mythological creature who is reputed to be the source of every single evil, cruel, horrible thing in all of history. It's almost as bad as naming a piece of encryption software 'felony.'
As a practicing Christian¹, I can honestly say the BSD Daemon never bothered me. It's kind of clever. Also, I have it on good faith (heh) that the FreeBSD developers aren't satanists.
Expressions like “speed demon” don't bother me either. The general concept of a demon is somewhat different from a fallen angel; I don't have trouble with demons being painted in a neutral/jokingly positive light, unless the demon obviously refers to the devil or affiliates (in which case “woo the devil is awesome!” makes me moderately uncomfortable).
¹ Odds are I could even get labelled as a backwards religious fundamentalist.
He's not the Devil, he's a Daemon. Which has been used as a mascot of many schools (in the US) as well. But let's suppose we stop using imaginary creatures as mascots, then we should also stop using real ones. GA Tech and other schools use the yellow jacket, a real creature (a wasp) that has killed people.
> poor taste to use as a mascot a mythological creature who is reputed to be the source of every single evil, cruel, horrible thing in all of history
Well ... what about Pan and Dionysus ? What about all other cultures in which there is no Devil representation that has a tail and horns ? History is long and the world is more diverse than you seem to realize.
Nothing, this was my point. The OP just implied that the small devil image of FreeBSD represents evil in the entire history of humanity which is false.
> the source of every single evil, cruel, horrible thing
and used Pan and Dionysus as a counter-example.
If you're saying 'well, Pan and Dionysus both have horns like the bsd mascot' I don't find that compelling either because the identifying characteristics don't line up (different types of horns, the tail, the pitchfork, and so on).
Both Christians and Muslims have been a huge source of actual (vs. childish imaginary) evil over the past 2000 years. Anyone who takes the devil seriously should stick to reading Harry Potter.
…Believe it or not, humans in general have been a huge source of actual evil throughout human history. You could probably reasonably argue that Christians and Muslims¹ have contributed enough good that in spite of their evil actions they've probably had a net positive effect on humanity.
Oh, and quite a lot of math and science dates back to Christian and Muslim scholars, so your last sentence is perhaps dismissive of the general intellect of religious folk. As someone rather appreciative of the work of Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Gregor Mendel, a variety of ancient Muslim scholars, and many more, I'm glad they didn't stick to reading fiction.
¹ Who I don't generally group with Christians (the religions, while superficially similar, are pretty different), but I don't have anything against them and I would not consider them “evil”, or at least not more evil than humanity at large.
Also, please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community at all, and that would be an entirely different forum.
Even if one doesn't believe in the Devil, surely it seems in poor taste to use as a mascot a mythological creature who is reputed to be the source of every single evil, cruel, horrible thing in all of history. It's almost as bad as naming a piece of encryption software 'felony.'