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I think it is because we realize the futility of arguing about religion and stay clear. Also, news.yc tends to be more respectful of people in general; just as

• jacoblyles 18y ago
  The guidelines of hacker news say that any topic that piques one's intellectual curiosity is allowable. In that light, I am disappointed that the moderators have decided to mark dead anything that has to do with religion, since Hacker News is one of the few sites where the populace has the intellectual maturity to handle the topic. For example, there was a recent high-quality comment thread on a religious topic that got my synapses firing (you might need show dead on to see it): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469620 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469620 Now the article was admittedly of low quality compared to the discussion, so maybe that is why it was dead-ed. Then again, maybe pg just fears that allowing religious topics will eventually erode the overall quality of Hacker News. Dead-ing topics is certainly his prerogative. However, I would prefer that he make such policies explicit. As something that is part of the life of most people on earth, it seems to me that we ought to try to understand religion if we also want to understand our customers, bosses, relatives, and leaders. It seems to me that an intelligent study of religion should be undertaken by any intellectually curious human.