Posted by drwinn on: 03.23.2006 /
To all you conversationalist, we have created a straight forward conversation board and would like to invite you to take your longer conversations there.
Just click here and you will be taken there via a new window. Or, click on the link to the right.
Comment by: drwinn
1We invite you to please move your longer conversations to the discussion board.
Thanks
Comment by: Eliza
2Umm, different sections for “An Atheist Point of View” and “A Christian Point of View”? A big strength of this site is conversations including both points of view…
Could you explain more, then, about how you see this working toward that goal? Thanks!
Comment by: Jim Henderson
3Ignore those and create your own category. Those are simply “placeholder” titles
Comment by: Ir
4I signed up but I won’t be able to post until my account is activated by someone (drwinn?) sending me an e-mail that I need to respond to. I expect the other people who’ve signed up are in the same boat since there are a few people on the memberlist but none of them have posted anything yet.
Jim, Eliza is referring to the subforums (subfora?) which on most boards can only be set up by the administrator, not by us users. What we can do is start individual threads within a subforum. Assuming drwinn is the one who needs to set up the subfora, I suggest something along the following lines — and anyone else feel free to disagree, change, add their own ideas here:
1) Under Welcome, put “introduce yourself here”. Asking for opening thoughts may encourage people to post their first questions there which would be better placed in a different forum.
2) A forum entitled something like Common Grounds Virtual Cafe — with the description “We know what divides us. Let’s get to know each other here and find out what unites us. This is the place to share a virtual Starbucks and chat about life, the universe and everything that isn’t a point of contention because of our differing religious viewpoints. Please keep it debate-free.
3) A forum entitled something like “How I reached my current beliefs/nonbeliefs” or personal testimonies” with the description: share how you came to your current beliefs/ non-beliefs. Please be respectful of what people share and if you want to debate them on anything they said, invite them to the debate forum where you have started a thread with the question you want to ask them (but which anyone is free to contribute to).
(This could be combined with the ‘welcome’ forum, maybe - since some people may post their story in their first post anyway)
4) Sell/Debate Your Viewpoint forum with the description — here you can debate the reliability of the Bible, the origins of morality, creation/ID versus evolution to your heart’s content. Please keep debates in this forum out of respect for those who aren’t here to debate.
5) Life without God forum — this is a forum for people who have no belief in God to talk about the specific ramifications of that with other people who have no belief in God. Here you can be open about about the frustrations of being the least trusted minority in the U.S. or you can ask questions for which you’d like answers from others who share your viewpoint. People who believe in God: this forum is not primarily for you. The only reason to post here is if you want to offer support/suggestion/advice which you are sure will not offend a person who has no belief in God. Comments by people who believe in God which are deemed potentially offensive will be relocated to another forum at the discretion of the admins/mods.
6) Life with God forum — this is a forum for people who believe in God to talk about the ramifications of that with other people who believe in God. Here you can ask for prayer or ask questions for which you would like answers from people who share your viewpoint. People who have no belief in God: this forum is not primarily for you. The only reason to post here is if you want to offer support/suggestion/advice which you are sure will not offend a person who believes in God. Comments by people who have no belief in God which are deemed potentially offensive will be relocated to another forum at the discretion of the admins/mods.
7) Off The Map Questions and Comments — post your questions or comments about what Off The Map does. OTM staff would like to hear your opinion and they’ll answer your questions here.
In general guidelines we could suggest: feel free to start a topic on anything you wish to discuss. Please be respectful of other people’s topics and start a new thread if you want to take a discussion in a new direction. Please be civil in all forums. If you find yourself getting angry at what someone has written, take a 15 minute cool-down break away from the computer before responding. You may be blunt in the Life forums which is for you.
I suggest if we have moderators that they can move thread segments and split threads to keep things on topic but that they do not delete posts unless it is established that there is a need for that. Maybe we can try unmoderated and see how it goes.
Comment by: drwinn
5Ir,
Thanks for the great suggestions. They have been incorporated into the discussion board.
You should have received an activation email with a link for activation sent to the email address you used when you registered.
Comment by: Ir
6Hey cool - wow, thanks!
Ok…I just found the activation e-mail in my ‘bulk’ e-mail folder - so much for ’smart’ filtering :)
Am running out the door - will try it later.
Comment by: Jim Henderson
7Ir
Who Are you??
Where did you acquire your facility for expresing complex relational processes so well in writing?
Comment by: andy gr
8I’ve just been to a betting shop. A pastor said I had to.
He asked all of us on the Church Council to spend twenty minutes in a betting shop. He suspected that what we’d feel at a betting shop might be quite similar to what someone not used to church might feel at worship.
I’m glad I went. But it wasn’t easy to work out what to do. First, because (even when I deliberately looked lost and in need of help), nobody noticed I was there. Second, because although there were three leaflets on offer, one was a request for customer feedback — “WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!” (which I’ve now filled in and returned), one was a “decimal odds converter” which I’m sure would be useful if I understood the concept of decimal odds, and one was about a gambling addiction helpline. Gambling addiction? I didn’t even know how to gamble yet!
So I went up to one of the two assistants (I could tell who to speak to by their badges) and introduced myself as a first-time visitor. “You can bet anything from singles up, horses, dogs, football or novelty,” she said without eye-contact - and got on with counting her betting slips. This didn’t help much, so I stood where I was for a while, hoping she’d say something else. She didn’t, because she’d spotted another customer she knew the name of and was chatting to her. The thing was: she was a perfectly polite, pleasant person, who didn’t realise that I couldn’t speak her language.
Atheists (especially those not brought up to be familiar with church): was my experience of a betting shop anything like your experience of church?
Comment by: andy gr
9Oops - sorry, I meant this as a comment on the “another atheist goes to church” thread - could someone move it for me?
Thanks!
Comment by: TXatheist
10Andy gr,
Yep, it’s awkward going somewhere you’ve never been. I went to church as a kid so I knew basically what to expect when I was a xian as an adult.
Comment by: Ir
11Jim wrote: Ir
I’m still trying to figure that out, Jim ;)
Life?
I find that I get a lot of on-the-job practice just by living my life and paying attention to how people interact.
I have a fair amount of discussion board experience also. (Nothing professional - just ‘in my spare time’ stuff)
Anyway, thanks! :)
Comment by: Eliza
12Ir, Ir, Ir…what would we do without you? Are you sure you’re not a goddess?
Comment by: Lisa W.
13Ir clearly rocks.
Comment by: Ir
14Eliza, no, I’m just a discussion board addict! :)
I was doing quite well (for me) until I found OTM…oh well ;)
Thanks Lisa!
Comment by: Daz
15The following is from a blog entry by author Michael Prescott. I think there’s some truth in this for all of us.
“Blogging is for losers
And who should know better than me, right?
But it’s true. Or at least it’s sometimes true. Blogging is for losers.
Let’s face it. There’s something about an electronic soapbox that is just not healthy. It promotes narcissism and egocentricism and general idiocy. At least, it certainly has done so in my case.
Before I started blogging, I never thought that anyone cared a fig about my off-the-cuff observations and opinions. And, of course, nobody does. Nor should they. My opinions are no more valuable than anyone else’s. Often they are of no value whatsoever. And I knew this.
Then, about nine or ten months ago, I got my very own blogging platform. And slowly but inexorably I began to change. I started to think that my opinions matter. That I am important.
“People,” I would say to myself, “NEED to hear MY TAKE on _________ [fill in the blank with any issue] … and they need to hear it RIGHT NOW!”
Which is just nutty. Who cares what I think about, say, Hurricane Katrina? It’s not as if there aren’t fifty thousand other people out there with opinions on the matter, and most of them are better informed about the subject than I am.
To be honest, even I don’t care what I think about Katrina. The stuff I wrote about Katrina when the flooding was in progress seems overheated and feverish to me now, all of three weeks later.
The thing is, it’s addictive, having an oratorical platform from which to spout opinions to cyberspace. Admittedly, only a few people are actually reading my opinions - but it still feels like I’m “making a difference.” With every new post I publish, I’m puffing myself up just a little bit more, inflating my ego, and pretending that my shoot-from-the-lip pontifications are of lasting significance. What would the world do without me? Heck, I’m not just important; I’m indispensable!
You know the story about the fellow driving past the graveyard, who points to the rows of headstones and quips, “There they are - all the indispensable men.”
It’s good to have a forum to toss out ideas and opinions, as long as I don’t abuse the privilege by posting every stray notion that comes into my head. Well-considered, thoughtful commentary is good. Daily preening before the mirror of my laptop’s monitor is bad.
An example of how to do it right is Iowahawk. He has a satirical blog site, and he posts his elaborate and trenchant satirical pieces only when he’s got something good to offer. As a result, he doesn’t post daily. He may not even post weekly. He posts when he’s written something that’s actually worth posting. What a concept!
I’d like to try this approach. So I am going to exercise a virtue rarely practiced on the Internet - restraint. When I come up with some idea or observation that seems genuinely worth sharing, I’ll put it here. But the vast majority of the harebrained, half-assed opinions tumbleweeding through the arid corners of my mind don’t fall into that category. They will be relegated to the unpublished obscurity they deserve.
In other words, the format of this blog is changing. Following the lead of the old communist who excused the Soviet show trials and purges by saying they would result in “fewer, but better Russians,” my new motto for this site is: fewer, but better posts.
Quality over quantity. Less is more. That’s the idea, anyway.
Who knows? Maybe I can start a trend.”
Comment by: Daz
16P.S. his site is
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/
Comment by: Daz
17On more quote from M.P.
“Here’s the thing about arguing with people. What we’re really trying to do, when we engage in argument, is to manipulate others. We’re treating people as objects - as hunks of clay that can be shaped and molded by our eager fingers. And what is the desired result of all this manipulation? It’s to make other people into carbon copies of ourselves. We want to make them our clones.
There is something sociopathic about this. Sociopaths, after all, are known for their tendency to treat other human beings as objects. And many of them are also known for their ability to manipulate and control others.
Just stating the facts as we see them and letting other people draw their own conclusions is one thing. But sustained argument almost always entails more than this. It involves bludgeoning the other person over the head with one “logical” argument after the next - and often, such arguments are only superficially logical, mere verbalistic stratagems. Look at the way lawyers manipulate juries, or the way politicians juggle statistics and “studies” to prove anything they like.
There is something ugly and dangerous about argument. We shouldn’t want other people to be our clones. The way to respect people is not to turn them into copies of ourselves, but to go our own way and let them go theirs.”