Hate speech on BioLogos Forum?

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I want to let Biologos know that BioLogos Forum is being used to post incendiary hate speech against the 25% of Americans who are atheists, agnostics, or nothing-in-particular. We live in divisive times with mistrust of science, secular institutions, and the general non-religious public. The BioLogos Forum shouldn’t be used to post incendiary hate speech at the non-religious. Can someone at PS, help me in having this post and/or poster removed from the Biologos Forum and ask BioLogos to moderate their forum better to stop bashing of non-believers. We are just over a month from an insurrection by Christian Nationalists on the temple of our secular government - the US Capital. BioLogos shouldn’t tolerate such divisive speech on their forum, especially at this time when sensitivities run high.

Never listen to those who dont love God, there is no truth in them. They are lovers of self and sin and will only lead you into darkness. They have made themselves enemies of God and they despise Jesus who died to deliver us from sin. Jesus alone has the power to save you from sin and the wrath of God. There is no truth inn them, run from the counsel of the wicked, they are enemies of the cross of Christ. The counsel of the wicked is death but the word of Jesus is Everlasting Life.

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This is misdirected in so many ways @patrick.

BioLogos could care less what you or I or anyone else here thinks of this.

It isn’t hate speech either, but some very tone deaf and ham handed statements that is, certainly, insensitive to non-believers.

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Tomato, tomahto? The tone is vicious enough that I would characterize it as hate speech. Why wouldn’t you?

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It is often helpful, in deciding whether something constitutes hate speech, to imagine the same words being directed at another group that has frequently endured persecution, such as Jewish or Black people.

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More likely to be insensitive and out of touch with how to communicate in a pluralistic society. Best response is education, not permabanning.

I think @Patrick might have a bit of a chip on his shoulder wrt to Biologos, and admittedly BioLogos does resort to permabanning.

Besides, BioLogos doesn’t care at all what we think so the whole discussion is moot anyways.

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Seems to me that makes the issue how to respond to hate speech, not whether it’s hate speech.

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I’m not sure it’s much worse than how I see many (not all!) atheists talk about Christians on the internet.

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Biologos moderation is their perogative, but this particular poster seems to take it as his ministry to sermonize like a street preacher and dump as many Bible verses as possible, and has sent many topics off the rails. One of my replies to him went…

…by your posts I am reminded of this pithy piece by Piet Hein

As Pastor X steps out of bed
he slips a neat disguise on:
that halo round his priestly head
is really his horizon.

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BioLogos professes to the ideals of grace and graciousness in discussion. By allowing speech that others find offensive should be reason enough to remove.

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Supposing that’s true, how is it relevant?

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It’s relevant cause we have to apply the same standards to ourselves that we apply to others, and that example is a way to give some empathy to their trade offs.

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True, but until you apologize for you last round of false accusations against BioLogos, you are not really a credible critic of them.

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Several problematic assumptions in that.

  1. You suppose that “ourselves” in my case includes some random atheists you have encountered on the net.

  2. You suppose that the standard should be based on what some random atheists say, such that anything “not much worse” is not hate speech.

I’m going to reject both of those assumptions. I’m not claiming the random atheists as my people and I’m not using them as a standard for hate speech. (I can’t, of course, not even knowing what statements you’re thinking of.)

I’m not sure what you mean by “their trade offs”.

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I’m talking about how we handle aggressive atheists on the forum, without at all claiming that all atheists are aggressive.

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This atheist doesn’t consider it to be hate speech. Perhaps I am desensitized to being viewed in such a manner, but I feel much more pity for that person than I do fear of being discriminated against or harmed.

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Once more I ask how that’s relevant.

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But can’t you also feel pity for a virulent antisemite or racist? They are, after all, in a pitiable state. How would that prevent you from interpreting his statements as hate speech?

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The council of the wicked is death

This isn’t inflammatory language? Sounds to me like Christian Nationalist speech at the Capitol.

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Why would there be specific standards applied to atheists and not to Christians on the forum?

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I’d hope you’d handle them the same way you handle aggressive Christians (or aggressive Jews, Mormons, Moslems, Jainists, etc).

But like John, I can’t see how that is relevant to whether you determine what qualifies as hate speech elsewhere.

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