A pathetic move by a Christian forum...
 

This Christian web-forum has more than 250 sub-forums, organized in various categories. One of these categories was called "Theology" and it was open to non-Christians for debate. After all, who can debate Christian theology better than a non-Christian? This policy had existed for as long as I have been a member on the site which is a couple of years now.

They have recently declared that the Theology section of the site is now Christian only and all non-Christian posts (whatever that means) will be removed and the user reprimanded.
The following is a somewhat typical view of the policy change by Christian forum members:Not all Christian members feel this way but I think they are the minority. Because of this, I think it's probably a prudent change but I also think it's pathetic. Do they feel that their position is so weak that it cannot withstand debate? ...and what kind of debates are they hoping to have now?

I liked the site because it had a lot of lively, intense and engaging discussions that were conducted with a maturity that rivaled the TFP (with only a few exceptions). I have learned a lot from this site and I will miss it...

They don't want to be challenged on their beliefs. They want to close the doors, lock the windows and have limited discussions.

Tell em you converted and give em hell.

I believe it's their perogative to attract and increase their membership as they need to.

This is an important thing to understand. It's not about free speech or censorship. It's about attracting and retaining the community and members you'd like to attract and retain.

I can see their point. To play devil's advocate (HA! I roll me), if I was running, say, a board about how much I love PCs, I wouldn't want the MAC people to constantly argue with me that MAC is better and PCs crash all the time. I understand that non-Christians can debate theology, but perhaps the Christians just don't want to hear the arguments, because to them, they make no sense. I'm a catholic, and I actually believe in God and all that. I will listen to an atheist all day long, and understand his points and see his logic, but I will still believe in god, so in the end, it's just a waste of time for me. Even if he is right. Many Christians are closed minded, and frankly, many Christians are the most un-christian people I've ever seen. There are also many who are open minded, but have heard all the arguments and are so strongly rooted in their faith, their faith takes care of the answer, so the arguments are moot.

It's not that they (I'll be nice and say most of them. There are those pussies who hide behind religion to keep them from dealing with and acknowledging their sad and pathetic life) are afraid you will shatter their faith with your waterproof logic, they just want to debate on their own terms.

That Terral guy seems like a dick.

LOL, I'm still a member there. This should be interesting.

they're going to die a slow death if they close their doors to outsiders.

its their choice i guess, if they wanted to 'take their ball home' and play alone. fruitful discussions and citicisms will increase their faith in their belief if they can prove what they believe holds true

I wouldn't be surprised if they lose members. Looking at the site, IMO it is unecessary to have so many sub forums - I mean, a separate forum for every type of music, for every sport? Come on.

This type of forum should be available to non believers as well.

Actually, as an atheist in practise and a technical agnostic, I LOVE hearing the arguments of theists, etc. The further they push the argument, the firmer ground that my opinion (not belief!) rests upon.

When you stop listening to, acknowledging and debating the points of your opposites, you've lost. Always. I can think of no exceptions.

THERE WILL BE NO DEBATE.

( heh, except for the debate, of course ;) winky! )

Not true. Having been raised a Catholic by Brothers of the Holy Cross, the fine brothers that founded and run Notre Dame University, they teach critical thinking, questioning authority, and debate. I met many people from St. Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, who are also extreme critical thinkers. There was no shortage of debate about the many decisions from Vatican I to the Council of Nicea and the affect on the modern Roman Catholic Church.

I'm going to make a simple assumption that they just got tired of trolls, plain and simple.

I feel like, whatever, it's their board, if they want to say this is a Christian-only area, so fine. Still, it does seem more than a bit defensive of them.

I belong to some discussion forums on spirituality, magic, and the occult (that's my professional area of interest), but at least they are open to anyone joining, even if the anti-religion rhetoric does fly a bit thick for my tastes. Why anyone not a Christian would want to join a Christian group perplexes me, unless we're talking about people who are religion professionals with an expertise in Christian thought, looking to discuss ideas with their subject populace....

How could teaching critical thinking not put an agnostic on firmer ground?

Genuine question, not trolling.

Why do you assume? This is a recent occurrence so all the pre-Christian-only-policy threads are still there. You can go take a look and see how much trolling happened.

Also, did you miss the part where I'm a member of this site? If trolling were a problem, do you really think that I'd bother starting a thread here about how "pathetic" this action is? There was little trolling. Just some hard questions and intense discussions.

Ironically, I remember when the only part of the board that was open to non-Christians were the debate forums. After some complaints were made they decided to open up the rest of the forums (personally, I think they realized they could make more money that way). Now they've decided to close off the debate forums and everything has gone 180°...
-----Added 2/10/2008 at 02 : 23 : 43-----
No one is saying that they don't have the prerogative to exclude whomever they like. I'm simply saying that excluding people who disagree with you from your debate forums is weak and pathetic...

Well, it's no fun debating with non-Christians about religion in general and creationism in particular, so I'm on a Christian forum...

Same went for me at my Christian university (and in fact, it was a contributing factor to why I left the faith, as did several others who attended there)--all of my professors encouraged as much critical thinking as possible, and forced us to question everything we were reading and writing and thinking about as part of the Christian community. The biologists were all evolutionists, and the English department (mine) was known as being the most liberal on campus. I had, and still have, a great deal of respect for my former professors at that university, even if I myself have left the fold.

That said--the words of that Terral guy in the OP are completely out of line. Those are the kinds of Christians who disappoint me deeply. I know, obviously, that they are not all like that... but jesus hussein christ, get the fuck over yourself already and come down from that highest of all horses, already. If there are many people like him on the forum, well... why would you *want* to be a part of that place, anyway?

This is the internet way of covering your ears and screaming "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALA!"

Still, it's their forum. Let them do what they want.

I'm an atheist, but I am in no way an antitheist.
I respect that people are making whatever decisions.

But an atheist going in there just to argue really is just trolling. So they really have every right to close the doors to non believers. I'm not gonna get in their way.

Guess they just want to plat with their own friends. It's difficult debating a christian since their arguements always come back to faith and how can you really debate with someone on something that isn't there? That's always their fallback point. Door closed.

If I understand, it's a Christian forum about Christian theology. After a period of time, they've changed a policy. No big deal.

Should you find the need as a non-Christian to debate Christian theology, it's a big internet out there. Get hopping and find a forum that'll have you. You could even start a thread here at TFP about Christian theology (if there's not one already).

how does this forum define christian?

Maybe you haven't been reading this thread but let me tell you what you're doing here. You're suggesting that someone going to a debate forum to engage in debates is trolling...

I didn't go into their music forums and tell them that their gospel music sucks. I went into their debate forums and debated them on issues relevant to the forum topic; sometimes Christian apologetics but mostly origins theology, i.e. creationism...

I wouldn't call that trolling...
-----Added 2/10/2008 at 07 : 23 : 38-----
It's surprising how seldomly they actually fall back on "faith." I could have sworn that it was the cornerstone of their religion but few Christians like to admit it. Even fewer creationists admit it either so there's plenty to debate over...

I think there havebeen several threads here on religion.

Personally, I find it disappointing when drive by posters put up something like, "good luck with your fantasy sky God".

It shows about as much intelligence as, "he said it, I believe it, that settles it"

It happens here about as often as any place. I don't know why some atheists have a jones for this kind of thing.

Thoughtful debate is always welcome.

I was very pleased to hear Bill Maher on Fresh Air a couple of days ago. He has a new movie out on how certain religious aspects are hurting the world. Expecting him to give out the usual flying spaghetti monster stuff, he said his belief is, "I don't know".

It depends on what you mean by a "big deal."

If Halx suddenly decided to ban any posts he felt were too "right wing" from Tilted Politics, you probably wouldn't defend it by saying "after a period of time, Halx changed a policy. No big deal..." Your response would probably be closer to "what the hell?"

Many members have been debating in those forums for years and now half of them have been asked to leave and never come back. What the hell? Again, what kind of debates are you expecting to have now?

I didn't start this thread 'cause I'm hard up on Christian sites to "troll" on (see some of my previous posts). I thought this about face on policy was interesting and I wanted to share it with a forum I respect.

I've tried starting similar threads here but they're not too popular. Either people already agree with my viewpoint or they're afraid to disagree with me...

For example, this thread seemed rather lively until I posted in it. Afterwards, it died very quickly. This one died immediately after my post despite being quite active just before. People don't fear God, they fear me!

Anyway, my point is that it used to be a quality site and I will miss it...
-----Added 2/10/2008 at 07 : 49 : 42-----
These kind of comments infuriate me and they're ubiquitous on YouTube...

They're vacuous statements. They manage to say nothing while still using up bandwidth, storage and screen realestate...

Are you trying to say that they hardly happen anywhere? If not, do you care to share some of these with us? Perhaps I'm exercising selective memory but I haven't seen such a thread here in many years, if ever...

there must be a pretty narrow definition of christianity at play there because questions of belief itself--you know, pascal, kierkegaard---should be fundamental to a theological debate, and if you are going to allow that, then you have to allow the possibility of unbelief--because it follows---for pascal, belief is a Problem; for kierkegaard, both belief and expressions that refer to it in any meaningful way are Problems. they'd have to exclude the entire tradition of negative theology by extension, and the internal problems within christian theology to do with the relations between finite beings and an (or the) infinite that frame them. they probably would have difficulty with aquinas at the level of the ontological proof---so the forum seems more an applied forum than a philosophical one---so i wonder what they mean by the word "theology"....

It's popped up in threads about how we converse with each other, and there was Pastor Tim who left TFP because of those types of responses to his threads.

If theirs is in fact a debate forum, it's pretty sad in this day and age to see this sort of behaviour. Even if it's a forum and they make their own rules.

How very Christian of them /sarcasm.

I can't believe with all their subforums they don't have a Titty Board. Screw them, I'm staying here at TFP

"his is the internet way of covering your ears and screaming "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALA!"

Still, it's their forum. Let them do what they want.

I'm an atheist, but I am in no way an antitheist.
I respect that people are making whatever decisions.

But an atheist going in there just to argue really is just trolling. So they really have every right to close the doors to non believers. I'm not gonna get in their way."

+1 from me. I couldn't have said it better.

It sometimes does. A good friend of mine solidified his agnostic beliefs with the same religion classes that we all had to take, jews, mulsims, atheists, all of us had to take it as part of the required curriculum for graduation. For me it moved me further away from the Church because I didn't agree with the dogmas. It didn't change my belief is "sky god" because well, I just don't know and I'm not willing to bet the farm on nothing existing, I'll take a safer bet on something existing and living a better life because of it. win. win. pascal's logic I think someone mentioned to me in another threac.

knifemissle, my apologies at the assumption, but it is the only thing I can do based on little to no information. If you aren't part of the staff there you may not know any of the inner workings of the decisions that are made, the day to day amount of spam and moderation that comes into working behind the scenes. Because of my exposure here, I have to assume that it's greater than zero.

But again, it's their sandbox and they can decide how to play within those confines. We've changed and shifted over time here, not to drastic degrees, but even the roles of staff have recently changed from enforcer to content creator and discussion maker. More involvement and less observation/referee.
-----Added 2/10/2008 at 10 : 51 : 43-----
yes. that's a testament to the people here who say "i'm open minded and respectful, but only within these confines"

I'm always reminded of how the BDSM community looks down on plain vanilla sex folks because they aren't open minded enough.. and I'm like, Hellloooooooo... why are you doing what you don't want them to do to you???

this sort of reminds me of the time that I was engaged in a discussion with a Baptist Pastor.

we went back and forth a few times and I asked him what he would do if a kid dressed all in black, claiming to be a satanist showed up outside the door of his church. He said he would ask the kid to leave. I found that rather odd considering they are supposed to be spreading their message to everyone..yet they seem intent on only spreading it to people who already know the message and agree with it.

the website is merely controlling it's userbase because they are either unwilling to challenge themselves or they just don't believe in any other possibilities. It's a sad occurrence, but it's well within their rights.

Frankly, I think it's a bunch of fluff (religion) but I'm not going to dog someone because that's how they believe. Everyone is entitled to their own belief set and it all boils down to what gets you through life.

I went through the whole church thing as a child. I was first in the Episcopalian church, then was shoved into Christian school and the Baptist faith.. needless to say, I think you all know the road I chose and how I believe on those issues.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts on this matter.

*nods*

Thanks.

Oh, and as for Pascal's wager... he was only thinking of one particular God. If you factor in everyone's gods, the odds look a little less favourable to any one position.

But hey! If you need/want/like the idea of a sky god to help you live your life... groovy. (it's the dogmatism they tend to bring with them that i'm against)

All we need to know is that Jesus is watching YOU!

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/0506watchingyou.gif

these are Christians we're talking about here. It's not like there aren't a whole lot of them. I think they'll do just fine ;)


Why? They want a place to talk about Christianity. Why should they have to put up with a bunch of jackholes in there evangelizing atheism? The same atheists, I might add, who probably get royally pissed when a Christian shows up to spread the word on their college campus.


I used to post on a Honda-oriented board. We finally closed the damned thing to non-japanimport owners because the chevy and ford guys kept coming on to tell us how much our cars suck. It's not that we didn't appreciate the diversity of opinion (dumbassed though it may have been), it's just that we didn't need to read that every day.

Why don't they just have a "Theology (Christian believers only)" subforum and a "Theology (open discussion)" subforum? I expect that the believers only rule allows the discussion of the finer points, which is worthwhile, but they could still allow a section to argue the broader points as well.

I agree. I'm guessing they wanted the forum for the discussion of Christian theology. If your aim is to keep on the topic of theology, it should be assumed that "atheology" is off subject.

Theology for many is looking into the nature of God and human divinity. Atheism is another thing altogether.

Okay, how about some more information...

Apparently, the forum was purchased by new management. The forum went through a radical software change some time last year so I'm guessing that's when the purchase was made? Here's a post from a moderator in one of the threads concerning the new policy:I'll let this post speak for itself...
-----Added 2/10/2008 at 02 : 35 : 07-----
You people make me sad. Are my posts so boring that you scrolled through this thread, saw them and thought to yourselves "nah, I bother reading this. It's like he'd have anything to say about these points..."

Why didn't the board just create a non-japanimport forum specifically for those kinds of discussions for people willing to engage in them?

Suppose you already had a forum specifically for debates between the merits of Japanese cars and domestic ones and then you pass a policy to forbid anyone supporting domestic cars from posting to said forum. That's exactly what's happening at Christian Forums...
-----Added 2/10/2008 at 02 : 42 : 30-----
Indeed, that's also my question. It looks like the answer is "we just don't want to talk about that stuff," which is funny 'cause no one forced them to read the debates forums. There was plenty of traffic so if the content was so objectionable, why did they keep coming back?

but that's what the most interesting part about forum communities are... sometimes they disagree with the direction that is taken by new management and they pick up their marbles and go play somewhere else and start a new forum.

How is this any different than catering to your PROFITABLE market? So there is some people who were serviced as well, but the new management decides they don't want to play with those folks anymore and would rather put their resources to better use in a different direction.

That's the beauty of this all. We get to see what we want to see, we don't like it, we can change it, turn it off, vote with our feet, etc. But as the proprietor, they have a slightly different view, they can change the menu completely and cater to a whole new crowd of people, all because they want to.

I always felt that the most interesting part of forum communities are the conversations...

To what are you speaking? Yes, they're doing what they think will be most profitable for some criteria of profit. Do you think anyone was disputing that?

I'm saying that this particular change they're making is lame. They used to welcome having their beliefs critiqued and challenged and now they're saying they don't. The origins theology was probably the most educational forum in that whole site and they want to change that. I can only imagine what it's going to be like, now...

It's like they're against education. I'm not saying this isn't what the market wants, I'm saying that market is pathetic...

Do you have a point anymore? I'm trying very hard to see what you're getting at but you don't seem to be saying it. I can summarize your last paragraph as "the beauty of all this is that you can do what you want and so can they." Is that really the beautiful part? Are you sure there wasn't something more specific you were trying to say?

Incidentally, I could have sworn we've had a conversation about Pascal's wager but I can't find that thread so I'll just remind you that's it's rather flawed reasoning...

If you don't like something you get to feel free to no longer participate. No matter how lame you find it. In fact, with the democratization of the internet you are even free to start your own forum at little to zero cost to pick up the slack of market that they aren't willing to service any longer.

In summary, you find their christian forum to have taken a lame turn. Great! Rock up and start your own forum and fill the void that they have now left.

What? You can't convince others to go to your new and improved forum? You don't have the participants who will provide the conversation, discussion, and debate? So it's an even lamer forum with format but no meat within it.

Short of lumping you into the market you've now labeled pathetic, because my point is to not flame you or put you down in any manner, but you are part of their market in some capacity. You get to decide if you wish to continue to participate with them, or not. It's really that simple.

Yet, you want to voice the opinion that it's LAME. Great! Now what. People here are saying that a different opnion than yours. Did you want people to also decry it and call it lame? Or did you want discussion and differences of opinion?

Why in the hell should we pay for the traffic for domestic jarheads to come in and insult the cars the board is centered on? It's a Honda board. Not a "Honda Plus Whatever Any Asshole Off The Street Feels Like Talking About" board.

Same with these guys. they're running a Christianity board. If you want to push the atheistic belief, go find an atheist board.

If you want to have an atheist/Christian showdown, then find a board that caters to it or start your own.

Is it really that simple?! Wow, I can't believe I've made it out to be so complicated...

Oh, wait, I've made no attempt to make it out to be complicated or even grand. To what are you responding?

If you're suggesting that "people here are saying a different opinion than" mine (that extraneous "that" made no sense), that's fine. I welcome that, as can be evidenced by my prolific responses, and I wouldn't mind a response to those responses, etc... It's called "conversation" and I enjoy them.

It looks as if you're complaining about something but I honestly can't discern what your point is...

knife, you appear to be arguing that any particular board should have a dissenters' subforum. Please correct me if I'm not understanding you.

Why should they? Just because you think they should?