Suppose you liked talking about the NFL and every time you went into a football thread you could count on a handful of people posting “The NFL sucks! Football sucks! Anyone who watches football might as well be watching Sesame Street, it’s on their intellectual level! Bill Parcells is Satan!*”
Can you see how that might decrease the amount of fun you would get from reading and participating in threads on that topic?
*-I might be inclined to agree with that last one.
Ah, see, that does make more sense to me, thank you. I suppose if enough theists are driven away for any reason, the quality of the debate from the perspective of an outsider is going to be necessarily reduced, yes. I just wish perhaps the theists would be more tenacious in that case, rather than blaming it on the goofballs and goons.
Whenever someone brings up the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny or the Invisible Pink Unicorn in a theological discussion then you know someone will claim it’s an ad hominem attack because they don’t have a rational response to the argument.
Personally no, it just doesn’t bother me – if anything, I come here to see how people who disagree with me think, and if it’s just noise I’m good at scanning past it – but I can see how it would reduce the fun for a hypothetical person, sure. I just don’t see how it’s not solved by ignoring the disruptive parties.
Because that isn’t the case. There used to be more in the way of interesting debate here, there still is intersting debate elsewhere … so, if asked, the truthful response is not “I am no longer interested in the topic” but rather “the topic has become less interesting, here, on this discussion board”.
You need not agree, that’s your prerogative - but it isn’t like I’m the only person saying it.
I read it and edited accordingly. I do not think this is the solution.
… and tomndebb. I wonder if he was “bothered emotionally” when he noted the very same issue:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9720195&postcount=163
So we can compare the God of the Israelites to… Zeus? Odin? Ahriman? Brahma? Whatever the Bahai’i call their god? Diego Maradona?
Please select all that apply.
That wouls be horrible! Perhaps you can show us an example of this sort of abuse happening regarding religion threads in Great Debates?
I’m specifically excluding the possibility that it’s emotional because you all say it’s not. Why are you even bringing that up? Are you calling me a liar? What evidence do you have that I’m lying? I asked the question in that way because I was looking for an answer other than the one which I’m told is incorrect. If I thought it was actually correct, why would I be bothering to ask anything, especially if I knew you’d never agree?
Anyway sure, add tom to the list. I’d be happy to ask him some questions about his statement too, like what he thinks, given that he acknowledges that much of the opposition was reasonable and intelligent, would be a way to reduce the “hostile environment”? Did he choose that term intending to imply that there’s something wrong with making what he admits were points worthy of consideration in any discussion on the board? Did he mean to say that if the trollishness weren’t there, the reasonable atheists wouldn’t chase off the theists? I think there’s a lot to be clarified in the statement you linked to before it can be fully understood.
Because the thing is, you are put in the position of defending the premises that the thread rests on. For instance, your example of the doctrines of salvation…that’s a good one. We have people from many different theological points of view who could weigh in on that. However, if someone challenges the premise that there is a god and an afterlife and a need for salvation in the first place, then you are put in the position of going back to defend those premises, rather than discussing the topic. Essentially, all the participants have to accept those premises in order to have a robust conversation about it. If half the participants want to go backwards, it’s like dragging dead weight, trying to move the conversation forwards. It’s much harder to ignore those kinds of questions and challenges than you might think, because it’s not so obvious that they are being “disruptive.” After all, they are more or less on-topic.
Do you think that you’ll ever have anything to contribute to these discussions other than “OMG CITE!”?
Yes, this is the Pit.
I don’t lump all atheists. I make efforts regularly to separate atheists and have even taken to an atheist rating system that I believe LilShieste devised, based on Eddie Izzard’s ‘Executive Transvestite’ sketch. Sentient Meat for instance is an executive atheist. Der Trihs is a gutter atheist.
As far as that thread. It wasn’t about all atheists. I said that over and over again. The fact that people keep saying that it is shows me that there is a major point of cognitive dissonance on the atheist side where you are not even allowed to clarify your point. It doesn’t matter that I clarified my point dozens of times in that thread and others, I am still responsible for the perception of others who sought to reinforce the meme. What happened there was that I was the one being pigeonholed. People thought my argument resembled an argument they’d heard before, so I was responsible for that argument, when the accusation is that is what I was doing. It wasn’t what I was doing. I was talking about the relationship of cultural organizations to moral pedagogy. Many of the executive atheists understood that. I cannot be responsible for people who willfully ignore my clarifications.
That thread is very useful for me now. It definitely separated the wheat from the chaff amongst atheists. Though a lot of the chaff now follows me around from thread to thread harassing me.
Yeah, he generally covers up his inability to debate with that. ]
And yet, you did it in Great Debates when you started that thread.
Huh. I wonder what would happen if someone categorized all theists in that manner. Ohhh, wait…
Well that’s a lovely justification wrapped up in a philosophical argument after the fact. And quite honestly, I would’ve been more than happy to participate in the thread had you actually made that clear from the outset. It’d be nice to have more philosophy in Great Debates. But you didn’t. The entire reason you had to spend half the thread defending yourself was because your OP was so inflammatory. You’re intelligent enough (from what I can tell) to know that it would be viewed the way it was. If you are going to insist that atheists be thick skinned enough to look beyond the condescending tone to the underlying questions of morality in an agnostic/atheistic society, then why must atheists be so careful as to not step on theistic toes when making their arguments?
Well, considering I didn’t even participate in the thread, I’m not sure where this comes from, but I’ll take you at your word that you’re being harassed.
So if somebody claims that some atheists are dragging down religion threads, it is improper to say “Where is this happening?”-I must take said poster at his word? Why don’t you just give me the whole list of things that atheists are not allowed to question?
That does sound frustrating, but it also doesn’t sound like those people are doing anything wrong or against the spirit of this board, which seems to be what you’re claiming. If it’s not an obvious disruption, then either it’s trolling, so you should report it, or it’s a legit post and the problem is simply that this isn’t the right board for those unbeliever-exclusive discussions, not that it should be but something broken is preventing it.
All that said, is there any reason, under the rules, that a thread can’t exclude certain classes of posters? Is a thread in which only women are asked to post allowed, for example, and could mods intervene if a man posted?
By the way, maybe it’s that my atheism is a very recent development after years of faith, but I do find serious theological discussions about any religion interesting; my questions shouldn’t be taken to mean that I don’t agree it would be nice if such discussions could occur, whatever the reason they don’t.
Can we compare your deficiency to that of a widow? An orphan? A feral kitten? A person who’s never been to Spain? Care to select all that apply?
I anxiously look forward to the end-of-year Atheist Poster Awards Ceremony.
Perhaps we could have little statuette trophies based on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, with God reaching down to Adam and Adam giving him the finger.
Well, I never said that people were doing something wrong, I was just trying to explain why religious debates aren’t fun for me. I personally think it’s a leap to consider it trolling, but I also think that it’s perhaps bad manners for people to come into a thread that clearly has these underlying premises and start challenging them. If someone wants to start a separate thread challenging them, that’s fine, but why not let the silly little theists have their fun? As far as it being against the spirit of the board, I don’t think I’d take that leap, either. As a matter of fact, IMO, the challenging and antagonistic nature of these conversations are very much within the spirit of the SDMB.
I don’t know, but I’m not usually in favor of more such rules.
I appreciate that, and I know there are atheists around her who make very valuable contributions to these kinds of threads.
Can you see your house from up on that cross? This claim was bullshit the last time you brought it up (when you were so successfully Whoooshed), and it’s bullshit now.
Well Bryan Ekers may not follow me around crushing, but you certainly do.