Left Behinders aside, there are many Christians here who very often debate specifically religious issues. I suspect that giving them their own forum would encourage those debates. It would also provide a more on-topic place for proselytizers, and non-religious SDMBers would be less likely to get into pissy little flame wars with them. And if the Left Behinders show up again, they’ll find a much more complex audience for their particular viewpoint.
Since religion is usually such a sensitive topic, I suspect that we only see, in general, the worst of what religious people have to say: the left behinders, ARG220, etc. I can’t think of a genuine theological debate that I’ve seen here, despite the fact that it’s an important topic to many of the regulars (as part of the LB assault of the last few days, Ayesha ‘confessed’ to being strongly Christian). They could also have religious threads without non-religious posters sniping from the sidelines; a ‘home-ground’ advantage, as it were.
For moderator, the most level-headed of all of us: TomnDebb.
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.
I guess everyone is sleeping so I’ll try this. As far as I can tell the board had only a couple of forums - people asked for a few more to take care of religious debates and maybe the BBQ Pit might have come along at the same time.
I think the religious debates were to go into the Great Debates (and David offered to be the monitor?) and clean up the General Questions for the real business of the board.
Well, something like that…
I can’t find the old threads, I usually open up a thread that has a reference to an older thread and then Next Topic my way through. SAD, isn’t it!
So the fix is already supposed to have been put in place. It just doesn’t seem that way. Maybe changing the descriptive blurbs below the forums’ names might help.
Now let’s see if someone will correct this?
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
I just read the blurbs under the forum names again and it just looks like misuse. Read the blurb and then look at the first 10 topics in each forum - what do you think?
It gets down to a question of how fragmented the board might become. While theology is surely a broader subject, I doubt we want to get to the point of having a forum for debates about gun control. Would gun control debates belong in the Crime Forum, Politics Forum or perhaps the Sociology Forum?
Frankly, I think the board has a good mix of subdivisions right now. I’ve visited boards with higher degrees of fragmentation and they seem to be lower traffic boards - I suspect there’s some effect of the fragmentation.
One of the things I found out on this board was how many sincerely religious people there are here, in what one could reasonably assume was a bastion of secular humanism and rationality.
Religious debates in Great Debates tend to have the same character: religious position versus non-religious position, disolving into quotes from the bible and the scientific method, and mutual accusations of ignoring each other’s posts. I’ve yet to see a calm (or at least productive) discussion of doctrine or belief.
It might not be that busy, but a theology forum would permit religious OPs to be discussed as religious issues, not as scientific proofs. It would provide a place to put proselytizers - let the religious handle the religious, who are a much more knowledgeable and understanding bunch when it comes to witnessing. It would also provide a reason for closing threads like those the LBers started in Great Debates, and a place to send them; I’m certain the Attack of the Left Behind would have petered out pretty quickly if the only audience available was ARG220 and TomnDebb, who were able to speak to them from a more authoritative position.
It might also make debates like the Evolution/Creation threads a little more manageable. If you come to Great Debates, expect to be armed with science, or at least logic. If you come to the Theology forum, you’d better have read your bible (or Book of Moroni). It would set the terms of debate a little more clearly.
Fragmentation is a valid concern, and to that I’d simply say that the moderators shouldn’t be afraid of closing a low traffic board and folding it back into whichever forum spawned it.
Having said that, maybe we’d better make Phaedrus moderator of the Conspiracy forum…
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.
I still think its a good idea. Great Debates seems to have about 3 times as many religious oriented debates as it does other kinds, such as the death penalty, gun control, etc., and the non-religious debates seem to get a little lost in the shuffle. A separate forum for the debate of theological issues would make it easier to debate other important issues in GD. Most of the religious debates currently in GD seem to turn into believers-defending-their-beliefs-from-non-believers threads. A separate forum might make it easier for those so inclined to debated the relative positions of their faiths without a need to justify themselves to non-believers.
And, hey, it looks to me like there are quite a few religious people who could use a place to debate openly - the LBBB certainly doesn’t encourage it (although they say they do).
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Is “Christmas in Schools” a religious issue or a political issue?
Was it a rant that belonged in the Pit, a cry for sympathy that belonged in MPSIMS, or a genuine call for open debate from all interested parties. Read it & decide for yourself. My opinion is well known, but not un-biased. (Although it did generate some really good discussion towards the end - thanks to Spiritus Mundi for that.)
A lot of religious questions have factual-type answers (the gospel of St. Thomas comes to mind) - I’m not quite sure why they are currently in GD, rather than GQ.
My point is that there may already be too much confusion about the appropriate forum for a given thread. Adding more fora would most likely add to, rather than resolve, this confusion.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
I think we oughtta just have a whole forum devoted to spam. That way if the LBBB’ers see fit to dump on us again, we can just exile them to the “Spam Forum,” where anyone can say anything, as long as they’re selling something.
Check out “The Atheist Religion” and “The Atheist (Non)Religion, Part 2.” Both of those have been pretty calm, reasonable discussions between people trying to understand where the others are coming from.
Otherwise, though, I think those who have brought up examples of why it’s not a good idea are right. Where does creation/evolution go? Where does prayer in school go? There are too many crossovers. Yes, there are an awful lot of religious threads right now, for obvious reasons. I suspect things will get back into the usual cycle, with a combination of religious, political, weird science, recreational (like, “Who is the best athlete?”), etc. in a short while as things settle back to normal.
It’d be like Krispy denying the existence of UFOs!