It seems to me that tomndebb’s conduct towards me in this thread is probably against the rules and against any code of conduct for moderators.
He won’t supply any arguments because he isn’t engaging, but has to point out that I am wrong, have “poor logic” and do not consider points raised against me. Though, he refuses to engage in a discussion, so he isn’t considering any points against his chosen belief.
Except, my “poor logic” and my position had been confirmed at every turn by those he claimed had pointed out my “poor logic.” He could not see that the point had already been won, and had to keep claiming I was wrong without being able to demonstrate his point. Just as previous critics had failed to demonstrate their point, and validated mine.
I don’t think he should have been there posting his opinion if he wasn’t willing to discuss it or supply arguments. What did he claim he was doing?
“Oh, no… I’m not here to discuss it, I’m just moderating.” He defends his meaningless attacks by falling back on his official duties. He doesn’t have to supply any arguments, he isn’t in the debate, he’s just moderating. While the posts themselves seem to me to be either trolling or hi-jacking…
Oh, right. Then he accuses me of hi-jacking.
He claimed not to be there to debate, but insisted on repeatedly stating his opinion that I was wrong and used “poor logic,” would not back up those claims and when shown that his position had already been falsified, I feel he threatened to sanction me from his official position.
Other quotes detailing his behavior have been posted here in the Pit.
Skimming over the thread in question it does appear you attempt to hijack the thread multiple times. You got called on it. This is proper and appropriate.
Tom chose not to engage you in more hijack. Also appropriate.
This is the place to complain about moderator action and so we are leaving this thread in ATMB and leaving it open. I think your Pit thread should probably be closed but I’ll leave that to the Pit mods to pass judgement.
He says, as a poster that he doesn’t want to engage you and thinks your logic is poor.
Well, that’s a bit snarky, but whatever, it’s a message board, and essentially a drive by. He has no obligation to engage you or to do anything other than what he did, as a poster.
As a moderator he seems to be saying that his job is essentially to stop you from hijacking and riling everyone up by harping on the logic of your argument.
As a moderator it doesn’t appear as though he is saying that you have poor logic or whatever else he claimed (as a poster). He’s just saying that you continually bringing the discussion back to your logic will eventually net you a warning.
That’s the way I read it, but I just skimmed the thread and your posts here, so I could be completely off.
More like not bringing it back to his logic, but rather ignoring everything the people he’s arguing with said, and merely repeating his original (already refuted) argument, in even more tedious detail.
He was not returning to the original topic, he was utterly ignoring anything anyone said on that topic, in order to repeat his tedious frothing on his own personal tangent away from that topic. There’s a reason the thread in question died. Everyone grew bored with arguing with a wall. Tom merely told him that. That was Tom’s only offense, moderation-wise.
I don’t disagree with the previous posters, but I also don’t like the whole “I’m posting as a mod. Now I’m posting as a poster. Ooops, mod again! Don’t talk to me that way. Now I’m a poster so I can slam you, but now I’m a mod again, so you can’t talk back!”
I think that there should be a rule that in each thread, a moderator can post either as a mod or a regular poster, but not both in the same thread.
I don’t think that’s worthwhile. The number of cases where it has the potential to be a problem are few, and IMO they would have been problem cases whether the moderator was a poster in that thread or not. As a moderator on another board I would find that restriction to be a big headache, and counter productive.
This is exactly the sort of charge I was defending myself against with tomndebb that he then told me to keep quiet about. He wanted to post charges like this without giving specifics, but didn’t want me defending myself.
Since we’re talking about the argument I was having with tomndebb that you claim was “already refuted,” you can show me where someone gave a reason for a moral instruction without giving a purpose for it. I didn’t see that.
And if that wasn’t done, then not only is claiming my logic is “poor” or “refuted” wrong, but, repeatedly posting it without being able to give specifics looks like the actual hijack.
Would someone like to explain how I can hijack a thread by defending my logic when it’s challenged?
If my argument made points pertinent to the thread, then the logic used is pertinent to the thread as well. Attacking it with points to demonstrate how it is “poor” or “refuted” is also pertinent… But attacking it with unsupported claims is not pertinent… as tomndebb himself admitted before telling me to stop defending myself.
He was the one who kept giving his opinion of my logic without supporting it. (Just as Cheshire Human has done now.) His was the comment that wasn’t pertinent. His was the hijack. Telling me not to defend myself from his charges was out of line. And indicates that he couldn’t really support his claim.
So you want an example of your poor logic, I will give you one.
You are equivocating on the word “purpose” - you are using two different meanings of that word and pretending they are the same usage.
An example of equivocation: yesterday, at lunch, I had eaten my sandwich and had a bag of chips I was not ready to eat. So I thought, “I will take my chips.” Then I remembered I had some medication, and I thought “I need to take my medication.” Both uses of the word take were as a verb, but they did not mean the same thing. In fact, they meant almost opposites, as one meant to eat the object, and one meant to not eat the object.
It the example just cited above, you use the word purpose. You state that the purpose of the universe defines morality. Then you turn around and challenge people to justify a moral rule without stating the purpose of that moral rule. But the thing is, those two purposes are purposes for different things. It’s like comparing the purpose for wearing a hat and the purpose for water being wet. They are completely unrelated, and have different supposed “purposers”, and one of them arguably doesn’t have a purpose at all. But you are treating them as if they are exactly the same thing.
That is the kind of failure at logic and reasoning that you are committing.
The purpose of the thread was to discuss the ideas from a specific video tape. Somewhere you diverted the topic to discuss the purpose of the universe, and how morality is defined by purpose. People tried to point out how what you were saying didn’t make sense, but you wouldn’t listen and continued to argue, while failing to make sense, and refusing to listen to what they were saying. That conversation as a whole was a hijack from the topic of the thread.
He gave his opinion of your logic only as an explanation for why he was chosing, as a poster, not to engage you and your arguments. From that standpoint, he may be right or wrong, but it his opinion to justify his action “I do not wish to engage you”. At that point, if he refuses to engage even to justify his opinion, your continued call for him to prove it is worthless. He doesn’t have to prove it, because he has chosen to not engage you. Your only legitimate response is to state once that since he does not elect to justify his opinion that you do not feel he is right. But then move on to discussing things with people who are engaging your arguments. Or better yet, get back to the topic of the thread.
This is a new one. No one has suggested this before, so no one else seems to have thought of it. There have been several objections already that didn’t pan out. Do you think your novel approach will fare any better?
No, actually, I don’t.
(Post 32)But since I see that people get away with murder and theft and they are better off, and I still say, “that’s just wrong,” I find I believe there are universal moral principals that apply to everyone. And that means I believe in a universal purpose, and that means I have to believe in something that set that purpose, (because this universe didn’t. No atheist I’ve talked to yet has confirmed that survival is the purpose, but that’s the only purpose this universe has set… (Post 40)Still, as you say later, and as I mentioned already, everyone gets to pick their own purpose… The most important thing is to fulfill the purpose you set for yourself… Morality has to be defined in terms of whether or not something fulfills the purpose. Think about what you have chosen as your purpose and priorities. Think about what fulfills that purpose…
*(Post 41)*Der Trihs: “That’s just plain nonsense. Morality has nothing to do with your “purpose”, if any. Morality is often outright inconvenient… And again, a god or gods is irrelevant to the existence of universal morality.”
*(Post 48)*Czarcasm: “Morality isn’t tied to the purpose of existence-it is tied to existence itself, whether it ultimately has a purpose or not.”
We were actually talking about either the purpose of individual humans, or the purpose of humanity in terms of a universal morality that applies to every human, (not the purpose of the universe.) And I specifically said the universe didn’t set a purpose for humanity. They seemed to understand this. Der Trihs said “morality isn’t tied to your purpose.” Something he then couldn’t demonstrate. Czarcasm said morality was tied to existence itself. Something that he should have been able to demonstrate without mentioning purpose at all, (but he couldn’t.) And when I showed the purpose behind his attempts, I tied it to individual purpose, since everyone gets to pick their own, unless someone has set a purpose for humanity. They understood this, which is why no one has attempted to use this objection before.
The phrase “universal purpose” typically indicates widespread (or “universal”) application. A purpose that applies to all humans, for instance. And doesn’t generally indicate the purpose of the universe.
We were discussing moral principles that may lead to a decent society. Which still has a good bearing on the OP. Don’t you think that knowing what moral principles create a decent society may have some bearing on what constitutes Christianity? In fact, where those principles come from has a bearing on what constitutes Christianity.
You don’t think this had anything to do with it?
Anyway, on PAGE ONE, I boiled their position down to a simple test. A test that still stands since your objection was just as meaningless as all the others. I told them to try to demonstrate their belief, (or change their mind if they couldn’t, and I said they wouldn’t be able to,) or I wouldn’t respond to their nonsense. I felt that they would attempt to justify their belief on their own, notice that it couldn’t be done without even having to post an attempt for me to rebutt, and we would be done with it… ON PAGE ONE. They, and others, including tomndebb, chose to continue to claim I was wrong without being able to demonstrate their position…
tomndebb got one thing absolutely right…
He has seen it before. He knows that people who argue as I do will never be swayed by anything he or those who agree with him can say in defence of their belief. He determined, much as you have, that that meant that I was the one being stubborn, that I was the one not listening, that I was the one who didn’t have a logical position…
What he didn’t take into account was that they can’t validate their belief. And that no one should ever be swayed to a belief by those who can not establish their position.
He didn’t recognise that it could have been dealt with on page one if they hadn’t stubbornly clung to a belief they couldn’t establish. He didn’t notice that I was the one who kept showing how my points related to the OP… saying things like…
"…But, it could certainly be argued that they were teaching a faith different than what Jesus was. That’s an issue of relevance to the thread… "
“The things you don’t like about religion are largely the idea behind this thread…”
“…It’s possible you haven’t seen what true Christianity actually says, you’ve only seen the bad example of people who say they are Christians and aren’t. Well, guess what? Christians don’t like that either. And that is the meaning of this thread.”
They weren’t doing that. So who wasn’t trying to get back to the main point, and who was still arguing points that were relevant to the OP?
He instead assumed I was the one who should change my belief. He made his decisions on who was being stubborn, who had the valid principle, who was hijacking the thread, among other decisions, based solely on who he agreed with, and not on any logic.
So, since no one could validate their position, and tomndebb still claimed I was wrong, (and as long as that situation holds,) and since they stubbornly refused to admit they didn’t have a valid position but tomndebb said I was the stubborn one, and since I was the one showing how my points were related to the OP and tomndebb still said I was the one hijacking the thread… It appears clear that tomndebb is incapable of determining who has a logical position, who is being stubborn, who is being relevent, who is hijacking, etc. That makes him incapable of fulfilling his duties as a moderator. It appears that he is incompetent. And that that incompetence lead to his corruption when he noticed that his posting of his opinion on my logic was irrelevent and he used his moderator position to try to silence my defence so that his baseless charge could stand… And that is the premise of this thread.