Today one of my threads was deleted. Its the first time this has happened. I honestly felt it was a thread that would engage some of the folks I have had discussions with previously on atheism. Many times I have found that what I consider atheism is pretty far from what many religious, or spiritual people consider to be atheism. I am not hung up on label, I do tend to take a methodological approach to definitions, and that is apparently not the norm. So I made a thread titled,"Eureka, I am no atheist" today and it was deleted by a moderator the reason was "Baiting"

I dont have the original post, however my point was to post a video, this video called, " Rejecting Atheism"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0zSCpsOSSw

In it the maker of the video says that he is no more an atheist for not believing in the Muslim, or Christian god, then those religious people are Flying spaghetti monster rejectionists, or Pink flying unicorn denialists.

I really didn't think this post was anything near baiting, I wanted an honest dialog with many of the folks I have come to respect in these forums.

I have moderated many forums, and I know that its usually a very vocal minority that complain about topics, and they tend to take offense easily.

I think if any person really understands where I am coming from, they would realize this was not an attempt to incite.

I hope this thread is not deleted, I think that a mature conversation can be had about this topic.

Below I have included the correspondence from the Admin who I will not name, however I think he was very polite in his response, I just don't understand the reasoning and when I sent my reply earlier today I have not received a response, this bothers me given how long I have been on this forum.

Thank you.

Jeremy.

_______________________________________________________________________



I said

if it's an interesting or intriguing topic it will be deleted...
just fyi

Based on that 'baiting' logic, the 'creationism vs evolution', including the ludicrous '... is evolution compatible with the bible...' threads, should all be deleted. If those are not 'baiting', I don't what is.

With respect to the topic you are attempting to raise here 'Bushidobillyclub', let me try and paraphrase what I get out of it and tell whether I'm 'on' or 'off' track.

Boxing people into simple categories is a lot easier than actually engaging in an honest and authentic exchange with them.

In fact, when one is not interested in engaging in a genuine converstation or exchange, when one's 'purpose' is to push a point, and be right about it, no matter what counter argeuments are presented, one only finds agreers and disagreers, us vs them, a reaching or baiting exhange.

In the context of many of our exchanges on these religious forums, and we were to extend it to the political forums, the camps quickly become locked into 'us' vs 'them' dogmatic cat fight.

Throughout the religious forums, it is the 'christians' against the 'athiests'. As for th political forums, there seems to be nothing other than the 'moral majority right' and the 'socialist left'.

If I understand correctly 'Bushidobillyclub', you are suggesting that there is large rainbow of distinctions to be made between the too easy 'us vs them' one size fits all packaging.

That it is profoundly inaccurate to suggest that all christians are a bunch of fundamentalist proselytizers, and by the same token, it is equally misleading to label and lump all those whom do not fit the extremely narrow dogma of 'fundamentalism', a bunch of sinning atheists.

Before going on with this, I am on track???

Spot on, and better then I myself could have stated it, thank you voileazur!

Very interesting Video, thanks for sharing.

I'm going to try to download this video on dial-up.

It'll probably take me three days. If I succeed in downloading it I'll let you know what I think.

And yes, I don't see where the thread could be considered "Baiting" unless it had something to do with the video itself. I haven't seen that yet, hopefully I will someday.

maybe it was how the other post was stated?

i think this thread is a good one though. i can't watch the youtube.

Today one of my threads was deleted. Its the first time this has happened. I honestly felt it was a thread that would engage some of the folks I have had discussions with previously on atheism. Many times I have found that what I consider atheism is pretty far from what many religious, or spiritual people consider to be atheism. I am not hung up on label, I do tend to take a methodological approach to definitions, and that is apparently not the norm. So I made a thread titled,"Eureka, I am no atheist" today and it was deleted by a moderator the reason was "Baiting"


isn't atheism a belief that there is no higher power? am i wrong?

Free speech is limited here. I had thread deleted last week. I was given no reason for it, but I haven't lost any sleep over it.

I have had 3 deleted, they were not read just deleted.
They are cracking down on free thought.

I oppose nearly all forms of censorship. Only in extreme cases of national security or personal privacy do I support it.

Or if at some point Bea Arther ends up naked.

I am quite surprised this thread is up.

I've been around with the mods on this site.

In my experience, if they agree with your position the posted board rules are not enforced regardless of how many of them you break.

I once posted a list of Bible quotes in order to make a point.

My post was deleted.

I was also suspended for a week for pointing out in a general way that there seemed to be many posters who had difficulty with the written word.

Then just a month later a poster who violent and obscenely threatened me personally was left unpunished.

Anyone who thinks this site evenly enforces the rules is wrong.

I await my incoming deletion/suspension/banning as I am fairly sure it will happen just for telling the truth.

That would be a matter of world security.
If anyone should email it to you,
Take Weird Al's advice . . .

Delete immediately before someone gets hurt!
If you [see it], you'll wish you had never been born
Turn off your computer and make sure it powers down
Drop it in a forty-three-foot hole in the ground
Bury it completely; rocks and boulders should be fine
Then burn all the clothes you may have worn any time you were online!

Hey... I'm sure there are camps of folks just itchin' to see a little more of Bea.

And THEN there's Maude!

I'll be happy bury those people right along with their golden girls porn in that forty-three-foot hole.

The Mods are just like the rest of us, only... they feel some sort of special responsibility to be "right". This clouds the judgment and rash(ish) decisions can be made. Once made, those decisions are, perhaps, more difficult to reconsider publicly.

I'd love to see a mod change their mind and admit it to the rest of us.

We're ALL human.

Yikes... Golden Girls Porn?

Somehow, I don't think I'll sleep too well tonight.

Thanks a lot, Thomas!

Insert evil/maniacal laughter