laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (02/12/85)
Rich, I have a new theory for you to consider. Do you remember about a year ago (maybe it was 2 years ago) in which I proposed that what you believe are objections to all religions are actually objections to *exoteric* religious practices and beliefs, perhaps all primarily exoteric religions, but not actual objections to *esoteric* religious practices and beliefs? [For those of you not reading this newsgroup a year ago, I can post definitions if you are interested.] We didn't get very far. From my perspective, what happens is *this* -- you post a followup to some article. In it you slam certain exoteric beliefs, practices, or (sometimes) believers. There are a lot of Christians out there. They don't like having their beliefs slammed. They send a reply. You followup that reply...and so on, and so on, and so on... This process is likely to continue. However, nothing much happens -- as you know since you reposted the article from Gary Samuelson as a capsul from the past. I think that this is a problem. There seem to be people who think that arguing sides of the Christianity/Humanist debate (flame?) is a lot of fun. You claim to be enjoying it. The problem is that there are 2 groups of people that I know about who are not enjoying it. The first group are the Christians who want a nice forum to discuss Christianity with the implicit assumption that Christianity is true. They don't want to have to defend their beliefs from what they consider your attacks. The second group is comprised of people who think that both sides of the argument are seriously flawed. This includes the believers of primarily esoteric religious practice, but may not be confined to them. I am in this category, and so is Tim Maroney (hi Tim! If you have been sending me mail it hasn't been arriving) and I know that there are others. It has been my experience that it is possible to have long mail discussions with Christians such as Gary Samuelson without having an argument/debate. It has also been my experience that it is impossible to do this in net.religion. I used to believe that this was because posters to net.religion were in part interested in grandstanding on their soapbox for the amusement of their friends and fellow believers/unbelievers. Now, however, I think that this is not the case. I think that the problem is that net.religion is viewed as a battleground. Nobody shows up there unless they are gunning for bear, since they expect to get an argument fought tooth and nail. This means that otherwise calm and reasoned people resort to unreasoned ad hominem attacks and flaming (all's fair in love, war, and net.religion) and people who will not resort to these tactics either never post or stop posting. I would like to try to do something about this. Since you tend to provoke (maintain?) such arguments, moving you is a simple way to test the theory that it is the presence of arguments which continues the arguments. The theory may be wrong, but if it *isn't* it would be nice to do something. net.religion.christian.flame anyone? or net.religion.no.arguments? how about net.religion.comparative? Laura Creighton utzoo!laura