[quote author=“Tenspace”]I’m really surprised the members here give him such a long leash. This thread was started in October; I just joined, and it seems ol’ Champ is the top contributor here.
How strict are the mods with regard to verbal abuse when frustration overrides reason and sanity?
I ask, because I could easily see someone less tactful than most, who would simply tell these guys like it is.
I started this thread after realizing the quantitative and qualitative (imo) impact the Champion has had on this forum. It seemed to me, as I traced through many exchanges that he had succesfully highjacked the forum. I was especially appalled at the futile attempts made by so many atheistic posters to “reason” with him. It seems many of those folks consider it a worthwhile exercise, if for no other reason than to bolster their own “convictions” I suspect.
Never the less, the time spent in interchanges with him, and now a growing number of faithers who seem to be colonizing this forum, is time not spent discussing the important issue of what to do about the dangers of religion identified by Sam.
I will add here that I’ve noticed a similar trend in the ideological debates that take place. I participated for a while in one on the death penalty. I tried to inject a little science into the discussion and it got nowhere. So it seems there are those who have faith in the supernatural and those who have faith in their chosen ideology. They like to argue, rarely if ever present any objective evidence for their positions and have shown no signs of being open minded (while, amusingly accusing some of us who do open mindedness for a living of being closed minded because we won’t just accept their claims as being true!)
But, what really bothers me is that in spite of all the evidence that this board has provided, that these people are not here to engage in honest intellectual discourse, a significant number of other-wise rational (or rationality-claiming) posters continue to succumb to the temptation of responding to them. There have been some clever challenges presented to these trolls, but if you look at the historical record here you will see that there has never been an honest, direct and evidence-based response. From the faithers you just get scriptures, and from the ideologues you just get talking points.
As to the intelligence question, I have weighed in on this with the observation that it is possible to be clever without being wise. And, indeed, from time to time you see cleverness in some of their posts. But I have never seen an ounce of wisdom.
I’ve resorted to the ignore function for a fair number of these folks as soon as I see a familiar pattern of behavior. As I said above, we seem to be drawing a growing crowd of them and my ignore list is getting longer. But it doesn’t really help in that the dynamic of the threads is still the same. I find myself reading fewer and fewer posts because they contain responses to the ones I’m trying to ignore.
Oh well. I must admit, I’ve writen this more for myself I suppose!
