Great thread. I comment here pretty infrequently, so it’s unsurprising I missed it the first time around.
I’ve been commenting here for something like 6-7 years. I came here mostly because of @swamidass ’ public critiques of Michael Behe, and I stayed for the epic arguments. I actually enjoy engaging people of different views, so that’s why I come. Early on, the moderation was horribly, unbelievably biased. Moderation has gotten much better and more fair, though I still think sometimes threads get locked early when the conversation goes the “wrong” way. But in general PS has done a great job genuinely trying to make moderation fair. But the improvement came too late for a lot of bigger names on the YEC/ID side who used to comment here more often.
I don’t know that I’ve really changed my mind on much because of this forum, other than clarifying the views of others for me. I came here largely after I made up my mind about such things, but I don’t think that’s different than most others. The purpose of engaging in argument with different points of view is to find errors in your own position and fix them. That’s why I come here. You’re going to have a problem if your goal is to persuade. Most people who will participate in any forum like this have already made up their minds and are beyond persuasion. Most of the value I get from the site is learning how to rhetorically present my position to a hostile audience. That is very helpful, because there are lots of people hostile to my position, lol.
I have used comments on this forum several times in papers I’ve written for my course of study at Biola University in the MA in Science and Religion program, particularly surrounding the Mere Theistic Evolution thesis. Also in regards to Josh’s debate with Behe, which I attended in person. I think it’s a good place to go to get some of the really serious, deep in the weeds, scientific arguments about some things in a way that is accessible to me as a layman.
Not sure how helpful I have been, but Josh did ask me to write an article for the site once, which I declined. I think it was a summary of Craig’s book discussion at ETS. I was writing up a critical review of the book for another site at the time, which is mostly why I declined. I’ve also had people here ask me for information on things before, since I am knowledgable about YEC. There are some points of agreement between YEC and some scientific materialists, particularly around biblical interpretation. YECs can generally agree with the scientific materialists that the Bible does say what it plainly appears to say. We only disagree on whether it is true or false.