Religion is not Python
I noticed that your Blogger profile says "Catholic tastes" for your favorite music. Are you a Catholic, and would you be interested in joining the recently formed Association of Catholic Computer Programmers?Firstly, I should like to point out that I am not a member of any church. I have no interest at all in worshipping anybody else's imaginary friend, though I try (with varying degrees of success) not to make too much fun of other people's delusional belief systems. I have my own to maintain. In this case I am going to make an exception. Without my really knowing why, this particular comment got right up my nose. I suppose, now I think about it, it's the shallowness of understanding that led the person to post the comment. Google has a lot to answer for.
Secondly, the word "catholic" in my profile is specifically used in the sense of "free from provincial prejudices or attachments", but apparently some Catholics don't appreciate that the name of their church has a broader (and far less exclusionary) meaning, dating back to the days when you were Catholic or you were on the rack, buddy. The Catholic church is so named because it was originally the "general or universal" Christian sect. Of course Henry the Eighth laid waste to that when he started the Church of England, and as far as I can see the Christian faith has more branches than the average oak tree. Whatever.
The Association of Catholic Computer Programmers (Catholics interested in software engineering best practices) appears to be a little schizoid. Are they a social network, a religious institution, or a movement? Some of the discussions are interesting, with comments like "I think we should start a project to benefit a charity of our choosing and put our collective talents as Catholic SEs to good use", which makes me wonder what skills Catholic software engineers have that I don't.
The same guy who started ACCP has started "a pro-life network", though apparently it have only four nodes so far. There's a pretty badge people can use "to identify themselves as being pro-life". Well, of course I am pro-life. Without life I'd be nowhere, and you wouldn't be reading this drivel now. In fact I find it difficult to understand how any living being can be anti-life, with the exception of the dysfunctional. But of course there's a hidden semantic trap there: the opposite of pro-life isn't really anti-life at all, it's "murderer".
The most revelaing thing of all to me is that neither the ACCP nor the above-mentioned network are prepared to do what enabled the commenter to make his or her comment in the first place. They require sign-up to make any sort of input to their site, while my blog allows anonymous comments from anyone (though as a spam reduction measure they aren't immediately posted). So the Catholic Programmers aren't at all catholic in their approach to discussion.
I know a lot of good Christians, but I don't want to join that club. Sorry. I suppose Jonathan can only hope there's no such thing as bad publicity.