Allen is clearly out of line. It remains to be seen what position Josh will take on this.
Oh shut up Keith, for goodness’ sake.
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By the way, I’m blind in one eye and accidentally hit a wrong menu-command last night which took this thread off-line for about eight minutes. I restored it as soon as I noticed the change. Nevertheless, that status-change as well as the restoration remains indicated in the thread log. So if anyone is curious as to what happened, it was just a brief glitch due to my error.
Oh shut up Keith, for goodness’ sake.
And so Jon Garvey joins the moderators in promoting “open discussion” and “bridge building”. Too funny.
Allen has deleted two comments of mine. The second was addressed to Josh, and in it I pointed out that Allen is engaging in censorship and that Revealed_Cosmology, another moderator, is actually defending Allen’s action.
These actions are completely contrary to this site’s supposed purposes of promoting open discussion and “bridge building”. My question for Josh is: Do you approve of your moderators’ behavior?
Revealed_Cosmology,
I am quite interested in discussing the theology with you, particularly your point about “the deceitful heart”.
However, my comments are being censored by Allen. There is no point in proceeding unless and until I receive direct assurances from Josh that such moderator abuses will no longer be tolerated and that my comments will not be censored.
I hope Josh is willing to do that. Failing to do so would be a major mistake, given his stated goals for the site.
Suit yourself, but I fail to grasp the connection between deletion of your comments hectoring the forum host and a problem discussing theology with me.
A relevant message from Josh, posted on the “Atheist Back Channel” thread:
A moderation complaint from Keith’s came to my attention. I can not deal with now, but will soon. Please be patient.
It’s simple. In order for me to participate in an open discussion, the discussion has to be open. If my comments are being censored, the discussion is not open. “Oh, don’t worry, we only delete comments that are unproductive” is not reassuring in the slightest, given your tendentious interpretation of what is productive and what isn’t. As reflected by your reference to “comments hectoring the forum host”.
Jon, you are correct.
I must agree with Revealed Cosmology. Can we have peaceful conversation and learning here?
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Absolutely! But that isn’t going to happen if one side is censoring the other.
“Open discussion” requires openness on both sides.
And you will get one if you care to- on the subject of what truth was it that you found which led you away from Jesus and Christianity? Not however, on the bad motives and errors of our host, especially when he may be in a position where he knows something in confidence which impacts the question at issue.
Impugning the motives of others is easy to do. For example: I am beginning to wonder, are you afraid of telling us what “truth” you found that led you away from Jesus and Christianity?
Just an example mind you.
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Okay all, especially @keiths,
First of all, please have patience with us. We are all figuring this out, and most our @moderators are still learning how to work this system. There were better options than deleting the message, that they did not likely know of.
We can discuss this now, but let me tell you first what I did.
- I’ve undeleted any of the comments I could find that were deleted.
- I’ve moved the conversation under dispute to this thread.
- This thread is now unlisted.
- The prior thread is now closed, but I may open it in a second.
@keiths you have some concerns about fairness, and honesty, and we can address them here.
First of all, let me remind you we have different rules here than Skeptical Zone. In particular, I would like to invite you to read: What is Abuse of Anonymity?
At this moment, you are an anonymous commenter. There is more than one person (not me) who are personally at risk in this conversation. We have much higher standards for communication from people, in any conversation, that are personally at risk. You are trying to win an argument, but there are people here who could lose their jobs.
This not merely about politeness. We respect the risk that people have here, and want to be careful about pulling their personal views (which might have professional consequences) out into view in the context of an argument merely to prove that someone is right or wrong.
Okay, with that starting ground, What are your reamining concerns @keiths?
@AllenWitmerMiller thank you also for managing this in my absence. Thank you.
It is 50% theistic evolution.
Hehe, you hae a flair for the dramatic, but you have shown no such thing. I"m just saying you have to understand before you criticize. I can entirely concede up front that you, using a New Atheist hermeneutic, will be able to show errors in the Bible everywhere. Great. Has very little do with us. Who knows, maybe you will start claming Genesis includes a talking talking snake. What is the Serpent? (hint: its not a snake).
I got my hands full the next few days, but we should pick this up later. In the man time try your hand at this puzzle?
And think about joining us for this upcoming book club?
It should be fun.
That’s false. Common misconception.
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LCMS has pretty been a plurality of theistic evolutionists for a long time. It is not a new change.
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The official doctrine is not young earth creation, but that the genesis days are “ordinary” days, which does not tell you the age of the earth.
However, in Seminex, and in the lead up, there was an invasion of fundamentalism into LCMS, that is fundamentally contrary to Lutheranism. @Philosurfer is much closer to Lutheranism than the churches you grew up in, and rejected. They sound like “Fundamentalist lutheran”, which is not really Lutheran at all. One challenge the LCMS has is taking back that lost ground, and recovering their real voice.
This is approach heresy in Fundamentalism, which is bound to a type of “biblicism”, which grounds everything in the Bible. More honestly, in a particular hermeneutics of the bible. LMCS, at its best, rejects Biblicism, grounding everything in Jesus. From there, they can be confident enough hold other things loosely.
It is very similar to the way I personally came to a confident faith in Jesus. See here: http://peacefulscience.org/swamidass-confident-fatih.pdf.
I could not agree more. Thank you. It is missing. We need there to many more like you in the public square.
Any “scientific spirit” running through Lutheranism is there no thanks to Luther himself, who wrote things like this:
Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
And this:
Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom … Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.
Alright @patrick and @keiths and @moderators and anyone else who can see this thread (@jongarvey, @Philosurfer
First of all, @keiths, you knew I was out of town and unavailable. Railing against my integrity when it is known I have no time to respond is poor form. If you had given a couple days, I would have responded. I’ve admitted error several times in the past, often very publicly. There is no objective reason to believe I’m stubborn on such an inconsequential point.
Second, the reason that this thread was made private was because of a genuine safety concern. It should be obvious @Keiths that six day creation is a charged issue in LCMS, and we have LCMS professors on this site. I’m concerned about us, as outsiders, creating with our speculations any public messes that put them in jeopardy. So yes, there are statements of “six day” creation in LCMS doctrine (I never disagreed with that), but the situation is more complicated than merely this statement. There is a legitimate safety concern, because , and that is why this topic is now unlisted.
Conversation can continue here, if you like, but now it is at least off search engines, and not publicly listed, though anyone who knows of this thread can add to it…
Now regarding the @moderators. I agree that there was some newbie sloppiness here, and that is just because they are new to it. I’ll make a few observations, that I think might have made this progress a little smoother.
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If in doubt what to do, make the topic unlisted, and wait for me. Unlisited topics can trivially be made listed again. It is easy to undo this. Also, @keiths, if this happens, understand it is reversible. If you do not understand what is going on, just ask the moderators. Whatever is going on, you may not see the whole picture. It may not even be about you. You will still have access to the posts, and be able to engage as you see fit.
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Do NOT edit content of other people posts except in extreme circumstances. Except for helping people with quoting bugs, etc., I can only recall editing the content of comment just a few times, when there was potentially dangerous comments made by someone. Do not edit comments and leave moderator notes in a person’s comments, except in extreme situations.
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Do NOT delete substantive posts. Usually, just FLAG the post if there is a problem, which makes it systematic to have other moderators look at things too, and to undo changes if they are made.
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Use soft power often, but hard power rarely. In general, do not even use moderator powers. Explain our values, and why violating works against the interest of the party perceived to be misbehaving.
We have a great deal of shared values. We are building a community here, not merely a message board of strangers. I’m glad you can join us @keiths, and I hope that begins to answer your questions.