I notice that Tiassa has suddenly dissappeared, after challenging the rest of us to fight.
Maybe the lesson to be drawn from that is 'Don't drink and post'.
I think the comments refer to the overall tone I see now in the forum, the mindless militancy, the shouting, the abuse, the absence of civility. But it is only from a few, unfortunately the shouting of a few can be heard easily above the normal voices of the majority. It simply generates a threatening and unwelcome environment.
There is a great deal of that on Sciforums.
But the religion forum isn't the worst place for that kind of stuff. Not by any means. The absolute shit-hole here on Sciforums is the politics forum. It appears to be a clubhouse for a well-established and highly-intolerant clique. Participants must conform or else they will be flamed a new asshole.
It's high-school all over again. (And I hated high-school.)
One of the things that I really like about the religion forum is that it attracts a wide range of opinion. There are/were theists like Jan, the sadly-lamented LG, our new Arne and Syne. There are atheists, a few of them very ascerbic lightweights (I won't insult them by naming them) and others not. And there are even unpredictable wildcards like Wynn.
There's no end of battling back-and-forth, sure. The controversy is what makes it interesting and what motivates people to post. I like that a lot better than I'd like some enforced orthodoxy where everyone just agrees on how superior they are to their absent and highly-caricaturized opponents.
The case for atheism around the world is growing in strength and the case can be made stronger if believers are not felt threatened or offended by thoughtless and unproductive atheist insults. And it isn’t necessary to offend believers to make your case. But it is also counter-intuitive to stay calm when faced with some of the more idiotic religious doctrines.
It seems to me that the best way to reply to bullshit is to just follow up with a better post that highlights some of the difficulties in what the other person said. But say it without put-downs and insults.
Human nature tends to favor an increasing defensive stance when threatened. Or IOW if you shout they will shout louder and so will you in response. Neither side wins.
To convince a fellow debater of your point of view requires subtlety, intelligence, and convincing reasoning, with civility and respect.
The issues we face from the evangelistic and dangerous doctrines of religions around the world is the need for effective opposition, and our primary weapons have to be reason, respect, and patience. War, insults, and militancy, are not reasoned approaches to anything and will almost certainly be counterproductive.
Well said, and I strongly agree.
We should always try to be friendly, compassionate and humane.
And as you suggest, it's in our interest, rhetorically speaking, to behave that way. If we want to have any hope of convincing an opponent in an argument to accept our views, we have to make that opponent
want to agree with us. That means that we have to listen to what they have to say and sympathetically address their concerns. And it most definitely means that we shouldn't turn the argument into an ego-battle in which agreeing with us is perceived by our opponent as a humiliating defeat. That will just guarantee that they will never agree with us, no matter how good our argument might be.
But that is what the tone of the religion forum currently appears to communicate - atheism as a brainless cult.
As I suggested up above, I think that's probably too strong. I like the religion forum.
One of the problems that Sciforums encounters on all of its forums is the fact that it's populated by laypeople with little formal education in the subjects that they are discussing. We see that every day in the science fora. Here on the religion forum, most of the people participating in threads are people off the street so to speak, people who might already have strong religious (or anti-religious) views of their own, but who have little formal knowledge of religious history and doctrine, and little experience in forming and critiquing philosophical arguments.
That's not a bad thing. I think that it's very cool that Sciforums gives regular people the opportunity to discuss interesting stuff.
But it does mean that we shouldn't expect people to be things that they aren't. This is never going to be a postgraduate university seminar. What it can be in a very lively and intellectually stimulating place.
Those of us who believe that we might be better prepared should perhaps behave as very subtle peer-counselors, leading by example in how to make points thoughtfully, persuasively and well. If somebody is intellectually shallow and abusive towards others, just put a visibly better post alongside theirs. The contrast should be obvious. They will find themselves in the position of having to raise their own game in order to compete, while the one who was being abused will have received emotional support.