Vanamail (on the Adam & Eve thread)

Issues & Complaints
1

We have a new member who has made some interesting contributions, but they also are having some misunderstandings about the rules (found under FAQ in the upper right menu). Hopefully they stick around, but a thread was getting disruptive, so I needed to pause their account until this is sorted out.

I’m willing to discuss my use of the moderation tools, but, according to rule #6, that discussion is to be in the “Issues and Complaints” section, not within the thread.

Rule 3f applies directly to vanamali’s difficulties in accepting the feedback of other members; “Disagreements should be kept, as much as possible, to the issues at hand and not become overly personalized. To take but one example, pointing out a person’s lack of scientific qualifications when discussing scientific issues is on-point, but referring to someone’s political beliefs is not.”

Clearly, other members were addressing vanamali’s lack of qualifications for interpreting scripture and showing no scientific evidence that they had correctly surmised the intentions of the authors of the Adam & Eve story. In response, vanamali claimed to know what those member’s thoughts were, and accused them of lying about their religious beliefs. No one said they couldn’t make up an interpretation, only that the interpretation had no basis for being the correct one, i.e. the one the authors intended. Yet, vanamali continued with a strawman argument that their free speech rights were infringed.

This became repetitive, rule 3h.

Statements made by others were rejected, misquoted, or ignored and more personal statements were made. Rule 4.

It’s rare that someone who engages in this type of posting changes course and switches to respectful discourse. That is, using things like “I statement”, such as, “I get the sense you are influenced by religious beliefs”, or, “I’m feeling attacked.” Or just asking instead of accusing, such as, “Do you consider yourself an atheist?” or “Do you think there is more than one possible interpretation of the Adam & Eve story?”

This thread is for discussing the above. I hope it goes well, starting tomorrow morning at 10:00am (I think that is Central Time, US)

2

to put a fine point on this, notice that I did make any moderator comments for days on this thread. if someone has an idea, no matter how out there, that’s fine, post it. if someone responds by saying the idea lacks merit, that is also fine. That is a comment on the idea, not the person making the comment.

When someone says their comment proves they are not an atheist, and that they are lying or “hiding” behind a qualifying a phrase, then demands they “admit” something, and brings communism into it for who-knows-why, then the conversation has shifted away from a scientific, reasonable inquiry about the idea.

There is a difference between debate and dialogue. CFI threads can fall along that spectrum, but the rules encourage dialogue. If a debate becomes too much about the participants and not the idea, those rules come into play.

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I have a feeling vanamali has little experience with in-depth dialogue/debate.
It is interesting because he deserves credit for attempting to interpret the bible in atheist terms.
I certainly would not want a fellow atheist to be muzzled or banned. IMO, he needs more experience . Perhaps he can gain that here on CFI. That would be a good thing.

4

It’s funny how, until I see someone else write a name, sometimes, I don’t realize I’ve been misspelling it. I hate it when people misspell mine.

1 Like
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He still needs to follow the rules and he wasn’t doing that.

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In case you were having trouble this thread, @vanamali