Ultimately, the mindset that leads to this coddling of over-sensitive Muslims is a vestige of white supremacy. Robust and open discussion of Islam allowed here, for anyone who is interested. Notice how much different the discussion is when censorship is not used to protect ideas simply because many people hold those ideas to be sacred.
Well, I certainly wasn’t losing the debate. I wasn’t participating at all.
But the debate was anything but. I’d say it was becoming a train wreck but with thirty pages behind it that was a question long answered.
We’re currently very hyped on the issue of violence and Islam. Fine. But if there’s no real debate going on it’s a waste of time. That’s why I encouraged everyone to take a step back, take some deep breaths and begin again in a few days.
You are free to debate pretty much anything in Great Debates and Elections provided you remain civil and you actually debate. Simply repeating assertions and not responding to other poster’s debate points isn’t debating.
Exactly what I was thinking. :D:D I guess everyone was waiting for page 31 of the thread to start making their well thought out arguments and debate points.
That’s clearly not what what was happening, especially in the thread you closed yesterday. Other than a few posters, notably including certain moderators, it was a lively and robust debate. The points I was making were in response to ignorant assertions by others. I mean, if people keep like tomndebb keep repeating ignorant assertions, of course there refutations will be repeated.
I challenge you to back up your claim that I* was not responding to other poster’s debate points*. I clearly was, to a much greater degree than is the norm on this message board.
Don’t use this forum to restart the debate in the thread that was closed. If you do so, this thread will be closed as well.
[Moderator Note]
ATMB is for civil discussion of moderation issues. Don’t make insulting personal remarks in this forum. Further remarks of this kind will be subject to a warning.
I had hoped to participate in that thread, as it’s a topic I’m interested in, But haven’t been able to discuss civilly. I’ve seen it fail and turn into a train wreck on other boards. I didn’t get to the end, and don’t know how the op here was debating, but there were certainly people in that thread who were unresponsive and repetitive and not debating.
Well, damn. I was going to reply to the same post by Jonathan Chance by saying something like “we don’t want to encourage self-effacement amongst the moderators.” One of us is clearly on the wrong page.
What is clear is that there is no place *anywhere *on this forum for one of the greatest debates of our day, and that coddling the sensitivities of a particular minority to criticism of ideas sacred to them, and protecting the self-congratulatory ignorance of the regressive defenders of those ideas, is of a higher priority than a free and open exchange of ideas.