A Christian Overreaction to An Atheist Group’s Existence

“The only person that would die for you are the men and women of the US Armed Forces and the Lord Jesus Christ.  ”

And not all those Armed Forces people are religious, and jesus didn’t die cos he’s a god dontcha-no, so what point was being made there.

Or I could see the religious groups counter with their own emailing. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Also it would be nice to know what the subject header of the email looked like. Was there a standard reference that the email was generated from the school’s system? 

We’ll see – normally the way these go is that the religious folks have used the program for quite some time without controversy. Atheist group uses the same method, uproar ensues, and restrictions / bans / shutdowns follow.

See the Ft. Worth bus ads, school kids backpacks, billboards being refused, etc. etc. etc.

I love this blog and respect what you do, Hemant, but I think I disagree with you about this, it isn’t newsworthy. We shouldn’t be surprised or indignant to see negative responses to spam. The atheist group was wrong to send it, the school is wrong to sell the student email list and two wrongs don’t make a right. What’s NOT wrong is for people to say so, even if they say it for religious reasons.

I wonder what will happen when our club sends out our mass email with the first line reading… “Do you know that 100% organisms are born atheist, including you?”

It’s a university group emailing university students, under a program approved by the university. Calling it spam is stretching the definition. 

Two things still astound me, one that Christians can’t wrap their heads around the idea that someone doesn’t worship _something_, the “atheists are self-worshippers” trope is just old hat.

I think this can legitimately be called spam, but I doubt most of the complainers would have said anything if a Christian club had sent a message announcing one of their events.

SPAM has three basic criteria:

1) sent in bulk (check)
2) unsolicited (check)
3) indiscriminate (check)

this mailing meets all three basic criteria, hence, SPAM.  Whether or not the university approves it is a moot point… SPAM SPAM SPAM.

Call me anal or old-fashioned, but having to deal with SPAM and spammers everyday at work makes me rather pissy about the practice.  It’s just bad form.

50,000 emails and only 23 replies were bad enough to blog about? I really don’t think that’s an overreaction.

A) This isn’t SPAM.

B) The University owns all the email accounts that these were sent to, so the offended parties have no actual right to complain.

I work at a university that uses List-Servs to great effect.  I organize my own, have access to University wide one managed by other parties etc.

The fact that university in question here charges student groups to use one of their default [all student] lists is rather troublesome though.

1) sent in bulk (check)
2) unsolicited (check)
3) indiscriminate (check)

These three criteria also describe ‘Broadcast’ mail which is perfectly acceptable and common practice within private networks for relaying information. Just today our HR department sent out reminders of the upcoming Benefits open enrollment period…. to all 60,000 employees. Last week my ISP sent out emails to all their customers informing them of system maintenance. By this “basic” definition this is all SPAM.

For the sake of clarity a fourth criteria needs to be added.

4) fraudulent

Since the distribution list was not illegally obtained and the email does not employ deceptive tactics to evade filtering it is not SPAM.

Quite. These criteria are necessary but not sufficient to call something spam. Also, the email was not indiscriminate. It was deliberately sent to a very specific group: students at Wisc.

I also attend UW-Madison and I’d like to note that AHA is not the only “religious” group to have used this service.  The campus Muslim group has used it in the past and I seem to recall having received emails from InterVarsity (a Christian group) in the past as well.  It is possible to opt-out of these emails (I didn’t see this one since I did actually get tired of receiving university-wide emails not related to my academics), so I’m really not sure what these people are complaining about.  Don’t want to see it?  Opt out.  Not hard.

Apples and oranges.

Your employer is paying you to read email, it is part of your job function.

With regard to university, students pay tuition and (in the case of public universities) tax dollars are used as well.  In other words, we pay the university for our email addresses.  And while there is probably something in the TOS allowing for these types of mass mailings, they are still, in principle, SPAM. 

Strictly speaking is isn’t spam because of the student/university relationship; the students by enrolling have given the university permission.   Whether it is wise for the university to use this permission for other than university wide important messages (e.g., we have a flood in the main library and need all the help we can to rescue books) is another matter.   BTW I wonder how many complaints the religious groups got when they sent out notices.

I’ve also spent a significant amount of my time dealing with spam as a sysadmin.  A supervisor of mine once lost his job largely because of his inability to check the spam flood.  And when I receive an email from a ‘reputable’ company that I have no relationship with, I’m quick to scream.

That said, if you have a relationship with an organization, you have a need to communicate.  Sending an email is orders of magnitude less resources for everyone involved.  The alternative is that they print X copies, put stamps on them all, and drop them in the mail.  It might save the US Postal Service, but it’s a massive waste of resources.

And all THAT said, I didn’t notice anyone complaining about email in general from the University.  They just don’t like THIS (godless) email.  So while the spam argument might be valid for you, it’s got nothing to do with the Christian Privileged.   

Actually, they pay me to regulate and maintain all electronic
communications. A responsibility which includes protecting against SPAM.
(around 1 – 1.5 million emails blocked per day, that’s a lot of ‘oranges’)

As for your explanation, people ‘pay’ for an education, anything else is
a ‘right to use’. Email addresses, specifically the domain (what
appears to the right of the ‘at’ sign in the address) , is owned by the
business, in this case the university. They alone define what is
acceptable use of their property. As long as the distribution and email pertains to University or student  business (which covers a broad list of topics ) the ‘broadcast’ is typically covered by the TOS. Which means this group is well within their rights unless they become abusive of it, like resending the emails needlessly.

I don’t see how you guys are calling it spam. I get emails all the time about clubs and events on campus. It informing you about whats gonig on.

It isn’t spam, but even if it is, these Christian kids clearly weren’t offended for that reason, but by the content.

And they absolutely love this line:

All will bow down and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord

and use it at every given opportunity. They get off on the drama.

Oh for fucks sake. At the college I went to, official campus groups are required to send mass emails informing their fellow students about their meetings and such. It’s not that hard to delete emails without reading them either. I suppose it’s just more moronic theists who can’t handle the fact that we atheists exist. All the more reason why groups like AHA are necessary.

Well, we have only 40,000 students here, MOST of us are “touchy-feely liberal” but out of 40k, there’s bound to be a few nut-jobs who insist on sending a rebuttal.

I totes won’t miss being blocked by the Gideon Bible folks on the way to class, or being called a whore by one of the preachers waving a bible while his wife and kids are out in the sweltering sun all day.

What these comments really seem like is a defense mechanism. They’re offended because someone has a different belief system than they do. If they were really firm in their belief, they wouldn’t be afraid to challenge it or feel the need to have their faith reaffirmed by the whole world. These comments were more than just being upset about whether it was spam or not. They were upset about the message.