I'm sorry - I've asked for specifics to support your arguments, you can provide none. Instead, you continue a mindless tirade.
SacredStar? It wasn't me who had a problem with her, but people like you who appealed to have her postings on the Christianity board restricted. I acted then, and I'm answering your claim that I never listen.
Even now, you accuse me of not listening, but you aren't saying anything - you're going round and round in circles, throwing out criticisms and complaints in an off-hand manner, and refusing to specify or justify any of them when raised.
Then you wonder why your anger is perceived as wanton and unwelcome.
Bandit, why are you still posting here if you obviously have such a low opinion of IO?
Well, I'd not only like to get my own two cents before this thread closes, but also to give Brian a reason to keep it open, because I have a few things to say.
Taking into consideration what people are saying here about the banning of SacredStar, I don't think that in the long term, or in terms of the Big Picture, that the banning of SacredStar was a good decision.
I personally don't like the idea of a person being banned just because he attacks or makes remarks that aren't favourable to a particular religion, especially when the reason for banning was because adherents of that religion were complaining about that person and vehemently called for his/her removal.
I don't like it because 1) I don't necessarily agree with the people who are complaining and 2) it suggests that a religion or its adherents can't take criticism.
By point (1), I would like to say that Christianity isn't monolithic. Was I complaining about SacredStar? Not all Christians are the same. With point (2) it makes me uncomfortable that if adherents of a religion can't explain their beliefs in a way that allows them to maintain their dignity, the solution is to ban the person asking for the inexplicable or exclude them from one's native forums. What would this say about my religion?
If a person should be banned, it's because they're not serving or pursuing a constructive agenda. In the case of SacredStar, if he/she demonstrated any intention of learning, he/she should not have been banned despite how threatening, insulting or offensive his/her remarks to Christians.
Moreover, if the Christians calling for the banning of SacredStar weren't willing to help SacredStar learn or educate him, then their agenda wasn't constructive either. The argument that SacredStar won't listen isn't necessarily reasonable. It assumes that the Christians trying to explain things are the best people around for explaining Christianity. What I mean is this. SacredStar hadn't talked to every single Christian on the planet. SacredStar's hunger for answers was not being satisfied because the responses were inadequate.
I personally do not believe that administrators and moderators should yield to the intimidation or bullying of the adherents of any religion. This is ideological hegemony. Are we going to give up democracy or civility to terrorists and criminals?
To me these complaints are most frequently those of fundamentalists. We all have our varying definitions of fundamentalism, but my concept of fundamentalism is a phenomenon where adherents of a religion feel threatened by anything different to their own ideology. They see life as a cosmic battle against all those who do not conform or adhere to their ideology. Anyone who is not for them is against them.
Christian fundamentalism sees religion in terms of theology, not in terms of the social and political. The trouble with theology is that it is not grounded in real-world entities, real-world influences and phenomena, but in imaginary concepts. The Christian fundamentalist sees orthodoxy in terms of loyalty to these imaginary concepts, not to real philosophical ideas and virtuous thought and action in the reality of the social and political. Christian fundamentalism begins with one's imagination, rather than starting in the reality of the social and political.
The reason why I speak of the social and political is because when you understand the reality of the social and political, you will realise that non-Christians aren't really opposed, by definition, to Christianity. What Christian fundamentalists perceive as a threat isn't really a threat in reality. Not socially or politically anyway. They perceive a threat simply because of their theology and theology is driven by imagination.
The rational-minded Christian starts with the social and political (the real) and progresses to the theological (the imaginary). The fundamentalist has it backwards. Christian fundamentalists see imaginary enemies. When someone disagrees, they feel attacked. They develop a persecution complex. They believe that the world hates them. But alas, the world doesn't really hate Christians. It's just a perception.
I have to admit, that yes, I'm trying to make up a straw man here, but IMAO, those Christians who complained did so because they felt their religion was under threat because their theology was being violated. It wasn't because they were being threatened socially and politically. It was because their imaginary reality was being violated.
If I may state this without unsettling people, I'd like the say that I believe that Bandit was, in the past, a part of this fundamentalist phenomenon.
Was the banning of SacredStar a good decision? In my view, it wasn't in the long term. If I am correct about the goals of CR/IO, the banning of SacredStar were not compatible with those goals. The Christians who called for his banning were not thinking rationally.
If I could use an analogy, I'd say that the Christians who called for his banning were like an unruly, uncivilised mob. If the authorities in any society consistently give in to mobs, it will probably lead to chaos in the cities and the general decline in the level of civilisation there.
Ok, that's the secular view. But I could also provide a religious one, more in line with Christianity itself.
To me, the Christians who called for the banning of SacredStar were just like the people who called for Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus called some of the Pharisees snakes and vipers. These Christians were very much like those vipers with their legalistic approach to theology, their persecution complex, their hatred and sense of being violated.
Ultimately, the old Bandit was a viper.
