I was careful not to make any assignments. In fact, my intention was to construct that post as an example of attacking ideas, not specific people. It’s up to you to decide if you’re up to reading such things.
The button is there for a reason. If you refuse to use it then don’t expect much weight to be given to your complaint. The mods don’t read everything and we all need to be additional eyes for them.
Perhaps we can tell religious belief from claims of scientific fact, and realize that they should be treated differently out of respect?
Ah, but they aren’t futile. I almost never participate in those discussions, but I enjoy reading them. In fact, my long track record of reading such debates has had a deep impact on how I think about God, my own spirituality and the foundations of my morality. They’ve even helped better prepare me for conversations with people about life – particularly my mom, who is a deeply religious critical thinker.
Over the years, informed by these boards and my own life experience, I’ve shifted from Christian to unsure to atheist. And I’m really glad of it. I’m grateful to be able to read what passionate people on both sides hold as deeply, undeniably true because it forces me to clarify my own thinking.
And being a big girl, I am fully capable of both understanding where the insults come from AND determining whether they serve the attackers well.
As for this:
Unless a moderator specifically states that they’re acting as a moderator, they’re acting as regular posters. And regular posters smart off a lot.
Well I realize that as well. But GD isn’t really the forum for it going by the rules stated in the stickys. Again, moderators are pretty much beyond reproach here other than out and out pitting them for thier actions.
I suppose, but respect is subject to interpretation pretty much. Why one thing and not the other? The number of people who beleive in each?
I thought these posts hit the nail on the head so spectacularly that they bore repeating.
Uh huh.
sigh
No, it’s because statements of religion involving blind faith cannot, by their very definition, be verified by evidence, while statement of fact can.
Well I don’t, but you did make the statement. I suppose you just brought it up for shits and grins. Again, this what I am talking about. Even thinly veiled, such statements really carry the same weight. I find it surprising that as an adult you feel it is appropiate to beat around the bush like that. This is after all the pit, and if you have something to say you should pull up your britches and just spit it out unless your are trying to teach me a lesson in which case I don’t need one. Your words are exactly what I am refering to.
The thread In question was very closely monitored by a moderator and I’m sure if you go over it will find that to be the case. So using the report post feature was in no way necessary.
As for the button and the weight of my statements
I don’t usually wander around in GD, but taking religion and making it a taboo topic on a sub-board about debate and fighting ignorance strikes me as a baby+bathwater situation.
lekatt is probably a poor choice to use as an example for your argument simply because he’s proven to be so polarizing. Myself, I don’t see why he hasn’t been banned. He’s a serial hijacker, to the point that he’s essentially been given his own blog in GD so he won’t pester others. Religious debates can get heated, yes, but without that particular poster involved, they generally don’t get quite so head-slappingly irritating.
Well NDEs can’t be verified either. By thier very nature they are the same as religion. I take it you don’t feel that way.
Omegaman, I like you as a poster, but I have to disagree with you on this subject. The religious debates in GD are one of the reasons I joined this board in the first place, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from reading them. Thanks to those debates, I have a better understanding of how both Atheists and Fundamentalist Christians feel about things and why they believe or disbelieve the things they do. I don’t participate much any more, in part because some posters have made such debates tiresome, but I’m still glad they’re there.
Lekatt’s an interesting case. He’s as firmly rooted in his beliefs as any Bible-Thumper out there and as inclined to dismiss any evidence to the contrary. I should know. I tried to tell him about an acquaintance who had a very scary NDE once or twice, and he dismissed that, too. On the other hand, knowing that his beliefs are very firmly fixed, I find him easy enough to overlook. Tomndebb’s idea for how to handle him looks good to me.
We cannot all believe the same thing. The set of beliefs which are the greatest thing in one person’s life could easily be the same set which would ruin another person’s. Just look at attitudes towards homosexuality alone. Thanks to GD, I can get a better idea of why something I see as trivial matters so much to someone else, and maybe, just maybe, I can explain to someone why I don’t think it’s a waste of a perfectly good Sunday morning to sit, stand, and kneel* in a large stone building for a few hours. If this purpose of this board is fighting ignorance, the religious threads in GD have been a tremendous success for me, because they’ve fought a great deal of my ignorance.
*I’m Episcopalian. The sitting, standing, and kneeling is what you might call “Anglican Aerobics.” 
You’d think so, but that’s certainly not the case with a lot of people here. They’d like to moderate every slightly snarky or out-of-the-ordinary opinion off the board until all that’s left is people posting what day of the week it is in MPSIMS.
For one to have an NDE, one must first be ND-this is a statement of fact and requires confirmation of some sort, and not only has he refused to provide any verification of said ND, he won’t even say what he was supposedly dying of. According to his own accounts, he self-diagnosed he was dying after waking up in the middle of the night.
How is it different than me stating " God is real" ?
For the last fucking time-one is verifiable, the other isn’t. If you are incapable of understanding this just say so, but if you ask this question again as if an answer hasn’t already been given, my answer is going to be “Go to hell.”
Great! Then allow me explain to you where you’re missing the point.
"What a spectacularly bad idea, Omegaman."
Clearly I am attacking the idea, not you.
"All claims should be open to the light of critical examination."
This is where I express my reasoning in support of the previous statement. It’s not about you.
"This is how ignorance is fought…"
“This” is a reference to the previous sentence: The light of critical examination is how ignorance is fought. Notice that nobody in particular (and not even religious people in general) was being called ignorant. It is a general statement with which I had hoped you would agree but it’s not about you.
"…and overly fragile egos should avoid the arena."
Again, not about you. This is a continuation of my argument: Rather than shut down debate let’s discourage attendance by those who are easily offended.
"If you feel enforcement of improper comments is poor…"
Okay, now I’m addressing you - or more accurately, your problem that you have related. The complaint is about rule-breaking behavior. This is different from the circumstances where I suggested fragile egos not participate.
"…use the red “Report bad post” triangle more often."
And here I present my solution to the problem. The assumption that you will continue reading the debates is clearly implicit in my proposal. So obviously the “fragile ego” bit isn’t a description that I have assigned to you in my mind.
"But don’t create a protective special status for some beliefs."
A simple closing statement in support of my opposition to your idea. That was my complete post.
Notice that I did not attack you but I did vigorously express my opposition to your idea. Since we’re in the Pit: You’re a feeble-minded moron if you can’t help confusing the two things.
Politics too. Lets ban that.
And, for the exact opposite point of view, I never read those discussions because I find them so tiresome. (Which is not in any way to invalidate Beadalin’s experience, of course.) So I would strongly object to ending religious discussion in GD because it is so nicely corralled over there, and I think it it were stifled the bores on both sides would not be able to resist peeing all over the other forums.
You keep missing the point, and it baffles me, because you seem like a pretty bright guy. I’ll bold it. Lekatt claims that NDEs can be verified. It is this claim, along with his refusal to provide evidence, that results in the grief he gets. If you are asserting that they cannot be verified, you are pretty much saying what everyone else is saying. Only we add “put up or shut up,” which AFAIK is perfectly acceptable in GD.
As to whether not being verifiable makes something “the same as religion,” well, that’s another thread. The short answer is no, it doesn’t.
Let’s just ban everything that’s greatly debatable. That way, GD will be safe for, uh…