ALL MEMBERS READ - Moving Past Religion 101 and Staying on Topic

Originally posted by dbates
The Faith, Religion, and Theology forum exists as a place for member to discuss three important items.

• Faith - Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
  
• Religion - A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
  
• Theology - The study of the nature of God and religious truth; rational inquiry into religious questions.
  

thanks OP, though I do have to disagree to some extent... all three things mentioned are but a "belief" or set of systems.

1. faith: one either has faith in the self theology.
2. religion: all beliefs are considered a religion according to the dictionary.

the only determining factor is how strongly one believes (has faith) in their personal theology.

therefore only theology exist in this section and how strongly one believes in the self...

Question:
If the thread references text within the bible, is it appropriate to place the book/passage into historical context that might be outside of the "beliefs" of the poster, or are conversations to be left only within the guidelines of the OP?

reply to post by SorensDespair

I think that if it addresses some point of interest in relation to the original post then it should be fine. My real intent with this note was just to address the issue of all topics falling into a "There is no God" ... "Yes there is" type of argument.

reply to post by dbates


What happens if someone does not have past a Religion 101 education lol

reply to post by Unvarnished

It does appear that there are a lot of people who are either auditing the class, failing it, or just choosing to take it again for the lulz.

Originally posted by Occam
As a moderator on another website I have to work very hard to keep my own biases out of the functioning of the forum. I'm sorry but I detect a strong theistic bias in the first post in this thread.

Occam

Me too.

I find it quite interesting that most Atheist threads are started by Theists - - - to discredit Atheists.

But the OP's message (IMO) comes across as to protect Theists.

I do understand the points. Let's see if it evenly applies to all.

I appreciate this thread. Could someone please let me know what BTS stands for?

reply to post by jeichelberg

"BTS" was the old name for the section now called "Off Topic".
It stood for "Below Top Secret".

reply to post by DISRAELI


Thank you. I appreciate the response.

I think the OP is saying this...don't jump on a thread to hijack it without even reading the OP in the thread. If you are an atheist, then create a thread about the various beliefs in atheism. I mean, it would not be right for a theist to comment first with "you people are stupid because God does exist" and then give nothing more than that.

That type of hijacking does not add anything, it is designed to cause problems that you know you are doing. If you say "these are the reasons I do not believe in God" that is much better than just saying "God does not exist".

Justify your reasons by providing links to articles or videos, anything to promote research and discussion. ATS promotes the education of the members through research. ATS is more than a forum, it is an education site. It does not educate as an on-line school does, it educates through shared information, and in many ways we can see that threads are in essence peer-reviewed. The peers of an OP do review the information and theories proposed and present their own conclusions by their own research.

We may come to different conclusions many times, but if the research is presented, it is considered.

reply to post by MajorMalfunction


Actually, you do have a belief system. It is called satanism. To quote one of the great writers of the Reformation, Matthew Henry: "Atheism is the greatest folly."

You are stuck in something and don't even know it.

That a Creator exists is beyond obvious! It is glaringly obvious. Unless you are totally ignorant of science, current events, history, and the natural and material world in general.

Beyond those things, I will tell you this.

#1 You are in the middle of a great war between tremendously powerful beings. Beings who, all of them, are capable of things we call "supernatural" but are really only measurements and evidences of their multi-dimensional state. So called "spirits" are only from another dimension, which is something that even science is beginning to postulate.

# 2 Life is a test. A test that you are failing miserably.

Remember that in all wars there is propaganda [lies and disinformation] and covert activity. You have fallen for THE BIG LIE.

Remember that this life is only a second out of eternity. Get over it!

Remember the test. For us humans, this life is a test of simple faith.

I used to be very liberal, believing the Bible is a fairy tale. Until I started studying it. I would say that it is so simple and basic that even a small child can understand the only thing that counts. But the words are so deep that even the most intelligent [ Not the MOST intelligent but I am a little above imbecile with a 136 IQ] men can only scratch the surface because you have to understand each word of THE ORIGINALS to really get it.

Back to your atheism. Just for a moment "assume" the Bible is absolutely correct. Assume there is a great battle between the 2nd [or if you consider a separation within the Triune God, the 4th greatest mind] greatest mind in the universe [satan] and the greatest MIND of the universe. Don't you think the 2nd [4th] greatest mind is going to try to get you to not believe in the Greatest Mind? Simple basic propaganda.

If this were NAZI Germany or the current Iran they would say: "If you aren't for us, you are against us."

If you believe a lie, doesn't that put you aligned [believing] with the liar? You become a follower when you subscribe to the lie.

You have aligned yourself with a liar, satan, and that makes you one of his followers whether you want to be, or like it or not?

You are a follower of 'ha-satan' as he was called in the OT.

Good luck with that.

reply to post by dbates


have read, understand, looking forward to posting in this section..Please let me know if I need to move to batter forum in regards to my general posting

Originally posted by dbates
The Faith, Religion, and Theology forum exists as a place for member to discuss three important items.

• Faith - Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

Agreed that this is a good definition of what most people profess when they worship some deity or other. No logic behind it or material evidence.

Just wanted to add that true faith cannot be had unless it is backed up by solid evidence and proof. The Bible gives a very nice explanation of what true faith consists of at Hebrews 11:1:

(Hebrews 11:1) Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.

For example, I have faith the sun will rise tomorrow. Although it has not happened, and I have yet to see it fulfilled I have no doubt it will. This is based on evidence that I have. It has risen before every time in the morning, all throughout my life, and all throughout every other person's life who has ever lived on this planet and far back billions of years into the past. Is this faith based on something that has no evidence or logical proof?

God expects nothing less from intelligent creatures whom he endowed with reasoning ability. To use it to come to logical conclusions. And he has obviously wanted us to know him because he has proven himself. Some may scoff at the evidence, which is fine. That's none of my concern.

To those that say to those who have "faith" in God, that we cannot prove his existence. The same can be said back to you, you cannot disprove his existence. Either way, it is not incumbent on the worshiper to prove the existence of God. God himself will do that. And He does it in the manner He so chooses. To some he has proven his existence now. To others he will do so later during a resurrection. To this wicked generation he will do so eventually as well at the revelation of his son in kingdom glory. Of course at this one last instance in human history his revealing of himself to wicked people will not be to their benefit. Now, on the other hand, now is a good time, a year of goodwill.

reply to post by dbates


No matter what my religious affiliation is, let's say someone starts a thread on how everytime he sees a rainbow he is reminded of why god created it. How it reminds him of the covenant, the promise, that god will never again flood the world.

Now I come in and mention how rainbows are made by the sun shining through moisture in the air, and that rainbows have been around for a few billion years. Whether I am christian, jew, muslim or atheist, would my comment be unacceptable under the rules you have set forth?

reply to post by jiggerj

What's your actual intention of making such a reply? It could be a valid point but perhaps that's not the best time to discuss the natural properties of a rainbow. If someone said that they were reminded of the goodness of God every time they saw a baby smile would you interject that teeth were just made of calcium and the baby just had gas?

People who join discussion with no intention other than to disrupt the discussion are what we refer to commonly as trolls. Every time someone says they believe in a deity are you compelled to interject that there is no god? Equally true is the point that every discussion about atheism doesn't require my input to inform them that they may be, in my humble opinion, sadly mistaken. Let people have their discussions. Let the topics mature and move past the "There is no god"/"Yes there is" points or else every discussion is the same discussion.

Dear ATS Staff aka moderators,

It appears this thread is to address that there are problems being caused by the antics of the Religion and Theogy area. I would agree there are very serious problems in this area and ATS's moderators appear to have split and non-uniform ideas for dealing with the problems.

One of the most serious issues on ATS appears to be the systematic methods of the organized church types to attack content they don't like being developed and addressed on ATS. The method is they get several of their group together and talk about off-topic things running against the threads title and OP. What that method does is drive the on-topic submissions way down in the page count and so loads the threads theme with off-topic content that it turns readers off because the ATS moderators appear to no longer care about keeping a thread on topic and stopping the off-topic banter and bad behaviors being used to derail a threads content.

All that appears to be doing is driving up the ATS bandwidth with extranous off topic commentary and that would appear to do ATS resourses real harm. Do ATS moderator recognize what this group is doing? I think not, else they would address and fix the problems and there are many and they are obvious.

So, it does appear to me that the ATS moderator staff needs to all get on the same page about what they are going to do and share that with all the folks. Right now, when complaints are being made about these systemic thread disruption methods nothing is done, but previously something was done. It even appears there is now a split in the moderators thinking and a large failure to recognize a serious problem.

It appears that ATS, by the actions or inactions of its split personality moderation is in the mode of ignore and support all the offtopic banter running up page counts on threads, looking more like denial of service methods to flood content and drive up page counts to bury the lastest on topic thread content.

Is the problem that the ATS can't seem to see this happening on various threads, or that ATS has taken a swing into the realm for support of the ignorance of religion by allowing the systematic derailment techniques to go on to distrupt theads. Inquiring minds want to know, since you all are complaigning of the Religion areas problems, just how ATS thinks allowing the disruption methods is going to look good for ATS staff.

I know that I am not impressed lately with what the ATS staff is doing when I call highly specific attention to the problems and they do methods to sustain the problems rather than deal with the problem. If ATS can't handle the Religion and Theology area with consistend and needed moderation, then it is time to just literally take it totally off the ATS theme areas. ATS is going to have to get off the fense sitting and recognize where the problem is coming from that causes much of the grief. If ATS is going to allow the systemtic thread disruptions, then I think everyone is going to be very doubtful that ATS is about denial of ignorance.

I don't see that ATS has come to terms with fixing the problems in this zone of ATS, and there is a definite split in moderation and inconsistency. I personally, don't think the ATS staff is addressing the most serious of the ATS problems that burns up bandwidth and page count to allow thread's contents to become derailed with content that drives readers away from the thread. Such is blatantly obvious and consistent with denail of service attacks in many ways, but it appears ATS moderators have on blinders.

If this is the case, either come up to speed with a way to deal with the problem makers using those deliberate methods, or close the entire area for all time and get out of that discussion business as your image to deny ignorance now appears one of promote ignorance by inattention to the most serious problem.

reply to post by kinglizard


and it is happening again in the faith religion forum

Here's my take on it....I think of this thread like a Music Channel on the Web! Everyone has a certain taste. I myself would like to connect with people who enjoy the same Music once in a while, without the "You're style Sucks Bro"!

Not that i am against debate, but It would be nice sometimes without the 98% derailment factor : )