hedrick@topaz.UUCP (The Moderator) (11/09/86)
Several readers suggested that I should summarize various moderatorial judgements, so that you know what I am doing. Since you can't see what I have not published, you have no way to evaluate my judgements. I have also been called on to clarify something I said in a postscript to pez's posting. First, let me summarize what I have not published. I have not kept counts, but I have passed on well over half of what was unambiguously intended as a posting to this group. For a while, I passed all of it on. However recently, enough debates have started that I have had to start looking carefully at my criteria of acceptance. I have a feeling I am forgetting some articles in the following list, but this will at least give you the flavor of what I have been doing. 1) There have been a number of articles which appear to be a result of rerouting net.religion.christian so that articles sent there become submissions to mod.religion.christian. In general these have been crossposted to more than one group, and are responses to things that readers of mod.religion.christian would not have seen. I have normally not published them. I can tell when something is mailed directly to topaz!christian. I will always interpret this as a posting. If you simply post to mod.religion.christian (and your software does the right thing -- most will bounce it), I suggest that you say something in the beginning to make it clear that you intend a posting to mod.religion.christian, since I can't necessarily tell these items apart from automated rerouting. 2) I have gotten a few messages to me directly (i.e. to hedrick, not christian). Unless they said something to make clear that they were intended as postings, I treated them as invitations for personal debate. 3) I rejected two responses to Mike Sellar's reply on baptism for the dead. These were by the same two people that had replied to his original posting. I judged that they did not represent much new material. (It was a very close decision as to whether to post Mike's response. I don't want to say flatly that each person only speaks once on a given topic, but it may come close to that.) 4) I chose to interpret two comments on my moderatorial policy as personal communications rather than articles. I will however say something more about these below. 5) I have just rejected a respone from Paul Zimmerman to Harwood's comments on maltheism. Personally, I think much of what Paul says is justified. Harwood's comments assert as "obvious" things that are obvious only to Christian faith. However I am not inclined to want this group to get into the endless point by point responses for which net.religion.christian was so famous. The only criterion I have been able to come up with to prevent this is to reject postings that simply comment on previous postings, but do not introduce significant new substance. I am attempting to do this consistently independently of viewpoint, as you will note above. The danger is that this may allow fallacious, erroneous, or misleading postings to stand. If someone came up with actual facts, this would be new substance, and would pass. However in most cases, the things that would be pointed out as errors are of a type that will come as no surprise to anyone. Christians see evidence of God's handiwork when they look around. Others do not, or see it in a negative light. Christian writers commit what may be considered a logical error when they put forth their own perceptions as if they were objective evidence. I think this problem is well enough understood on all sides that point by point critiques of every posting are not necessary. However I will comment that so far I have not seen a response on the maltheism/theodicy issue that would be convincing to a non-Christian. If the two people who responded believed that their responses would be convincing, then we have a wider gap than I thought. Whenever there is a lull in postings, I will say something of my own on why I think it unlikely that Christians will ever be able to say anything on theodicy that will be helpful to non-Christians. Now for the promised comments on the two notes about moderatorial policy. I made some comments at the end of pez's original posting about the use of "whorship". First, I realized when it was too late that Paul probably had not intended that posting for this group in the first place. So there is no reason that he would have attempted to follow the standards of this group. (His posting was quite mild compared to what goes on in the groups he normally participates in.) I am attempting to encourage civility in debate. This implies that things will be said in the least offensive manner possible. For example, it is inherent in Christianity to believe that people are sinful. So now and then someone will say something that implies that the reader is sinful. Some readers have taken offense at this. As long as this is simply an inference from a statement about the human race as a whole, I don't see any way to avoid it without actually removing some of the subject matter that this group is intended to discuss. But I would not allow an article that addressed another person with "Sinner, you ..." Nor would I allow one that implied that it is only because of a reader's sin that he didn't accept what the author is saying. (From a Christian perspective this may even be true, but it does not encourage understanding, and is very unlikely to accomplish anything.) The problem I have with "whorship" is that it appears to me to be derived from "whore". (I realize that no derivation was given explicitly. This is why I mentioned the possibility that someone might suggest a meaning that was not an ad hominem attack.) Now I realize that Paul believes Christians are being used by an evil God, but this implies that they are doing so for gain. This is an ad hominem attack. The two correspondents with which I discussed this pointed out various passages in the Bible where this sort of thing and worse was said about pagans. I can only say that what is appropriate to a prophet of God in 700 BCE is not necessarily appropriate on Usenet in 1986 CE. God may be able to see into the hearts of men, but I cannot, and I doubt that any of the people posting on this group claim to either. Furthermore, there have been definite changes in standards of appropriate discussion in the last few centuries, and these have moved in the direction of ruling out personal attack. Authors participating in these discussions will be assumed to be, and expected to treat each other as, people of good will. Postings referring to modern pagans as whoring after false gods will certainly not be published (nor will loaded language that is far milder than that).