I'm a former fundamentalist Christian who wrestled long and hard over this exact issue a few years ago. Allow me to elaborate:
There is a sizeable group of Christians who practice what is known as 'spiritual warfare.' Basically, this worldview sees the work of Satan in everything. Marital problems? "Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ." Financial woes? "Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ." Problems at work? "Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ." 'Binding' the devil apparently dispatches angels who 'subdue' the demons responsible for your problem. Just watch TBN for an hour and you'll see what I'm talking about. For the first few months of my conversion, this is the subculture I was in.
I remember one day visiting the FreeBSD website (this is after refusing to use a computer for 1 month because the Internet was obviously a part of Satan's diabolic ploy to entrap mankind), and closing the tab when I saw Beastie. You see, in that culture, there is a meme that certain objects 'attract' demons. Listening to certain songs invites demonic infestation. Watching horror movies practically guarantees it.
I vowed then that I would never use FreeBSD. Even though benchmarks showed superior stability and SMP performance than Linux, I couldn't knowingly invite demons into my life like that! By Beastie...Tux, here I come.
Thankfully, I deconverted a few months later. But I understand where she is coming from. If she was one the 'warfare' crowd, she'd probably have spent the entire night in fervent prayer, battling the 'forces of darkness.' My mom, for example, would NOT have stayed in that hotel. Wouldn't happen.
It's probably important to point out that the majority of religious people are not in quite as deep as you were. But they might still be a little bothered by it.
Are you really intending to imply that the majority of religious people would support eliminating the BSD daemon logo? Because that's obviously not true.
There are ~300MM in the US. If just 0.1% of them are nutty enough to pitch a fit over a cartoon character, that's still three hundred thousand nuts we have to deal with.
Meanwhile, the majority of US adults self-report as Christian. Most of these people are not nuts about depictions of demons, as evidenced by the fact that they aren't protesting DePaul (the largest Catholic university in the country) for naming their sports team "The Blue Demons".
I know you're a reasonable guy. I'm just trying not to have us lump hundreds of millions of Americans into the same bucket as the crazy person who can't stay in the hotel with the BSD daemon logo on it. It's an easy trap to fall into, especially in a place like HN, which suffers grievously from the base rate fallacy on this particular topic.
This could be better stated as "the majority of religious people do not have the same specific issues as you did". Recall that Christian Fundamentalism is a late 19th century movement, primarily in parts of the US and England, which has some unique doctrines that are rejected by the majority of Christians elsewhere in the world. Many of the rest of us are quite deep in our own religious traditions, but have no hangups whatsoever about cartoon devil logos.
What do you think would happen if you took a time machine back to the mid 19th century and walked around the villages wearing a prominent BSD demon on your clothing?
Not too much apart from some name calling. This was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution with the creation of the middle class and people had newspapers, travelled, and so on. IOW, beginning to be cosmopolitan. I think we might be surprised how much like us the mid to late 19th century people were.
If you want to change that to the mid 15th century with small villages, superstition and and witches, different story.
There is a sizeable group of Christians who practice what is known as 'spiritual warfare.' Basically, this worldview sees the work of Satan in everything. Marital problems? "Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ." Financial woes? "Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ." Problems at work? "Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ." 'Binding' the devil apparently dispatches angels who 'subdue' the demons responsible for your problem. Just watch TBN for an hour and you'll see what I'm talking about. For the first few months of my conversion, this is the subculture I was in.
I remember one day visiting the FreeBSD website (this is after refusing to use a computer for 1 month because the Internet was obviously a part of Satan's diabolic ploy to entrap mankind), and closing the tab when I saw Beastie. You see, in that culture, there is a meme that certain objects 'attract' demons. Listening to certain songs invites demonic infestation. Watching horror movies practically guarantees it.
I vowed then that I would never use FreeBSD. Even though benchmarks showed superior stability and SMP performance than Linux, I couldn't knowingly invite demons into my life like that! By Beastie...Tux, here I come.
Thankfully, I deconverted a few months later. But I understand where she is coming from. If she was one the 'warfare' crowd, she'd probably have spent the entire night in fervent prayer, battling the 'forces of darkness.' My mom, for example, would NOT have stayed in that hotel. Wouldn't happen.
Oh man, do I have stories to tell!
For tidbits on my experiences on HN:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062267 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=611122 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2202900