Posted on 04/23/2006 8:01:06 AM PDT by Religion Moderator
Hello everyone. Pleased to meet you. I am your Religion Moderator.
I have been asked by several posters to let you know any special guidelines which apply to posting in the Religion Forum on Free Republic. Here goes…
First, you should know that all moderators have authority on the Religion Forum and we are individuals and therefore what is tolerable to one may not be tolerable to another. However, I have general responsibility for this particular forum and spend most of my time reading your posts and moderating the conversations. And I do hold Religion Forum posts to a higher standard.
The previous Religion Moderator is still with us and other moderators who have served as Religion Moderator may also appear on thread with this handle. In other words, you cannot be sure that I am the person who posted with the handle. However, most of the time, it will be me simply because I’m reading all of your posts.
A few guidelines:
Threads which are devotional or church-like in nature (such as daily mass readings) will be protected from challenges to doctrine, etc. Reported challenges will be pulled. The titles of the threads should be clearly designated so other posters and the moderators will know.
Threads which are not clearly designated are open to challenges, like a public square.
Posters should remember they are not “preaching to the choir” on open threads – and take care to be respectful, clear and concise in their arguments. Passers-by will value your demeanor as much – or more than – the actual substance of your post.
This is very important: meet the offensive challenge to your doctrine on the open thread, do not mash the abuse button. I will not remove a challenge simply because it is offensive to your beliefs. If you cannot defend your own confession, then you are better off avoiding the open threads and leaving the reply to someone else of your confession.
Always argue the issues – theology, philosophy, history, etc. – and never make it personal.
If I see the conversation turn personal, I will intervene by pulling posts and/or posting a warning. If the misbehavior continues, posters may find themselves having to log back in – or they may be given a time-out to cool down.
In the extreme, the threads may be banished to the smoky backroom, locked or pulled. And a hot-headed or defiant poster may be banned.
Banned posters who try to sneak back onto the forum using a different handle are nuked. Trolls are nuked.
I have no tolerance for potty language simply because it inflames other posters and results in unnecessary abuse reports that moderators then have to process. It is a waste of everyone’s time and doesn’t help the poster’s image either.
Whenever I see a profanity – or a reference or acronym for a profanity – I will remove the post. If your post was pulled and you remember using such a word, just rephrase and repost and everything will be fine.
As with all threads on the forum – hatred and any suggestion of racism or violence will be pulled. Posts which are just plain tacky may also be pulled.
Calling an author a liar is permitted – calling another poster a liar is not.
Attributing motive to an author is permitted – reading the mind of another poster is not.
Poking fun at a confession is permitted, but be careful when poking fun at another poster. If he doesn’t think it is funny, I won’t either.
Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it. It all boils down to being respectful – phrase your challenges as if you were the recipient, i.e. think Golden Rule.
Sorry for the delay. I’m not a general philosophy buff so my knowledge of them is no more than Wikipedia.com deep.
Objectivism is at least a hundred times more comprehensive. As the ideological foundation for probably more than 100k people, and dozens on Free Republic, it functions identically to a religion. It had hundreds of campus and community organizations and a book twice polled by Readers Digest as the second most influential, behind the Bible. It guides people through understanding the nature of the world and of our conscious. It defines good and evil and outlines the hierarchical ethical framework. And like libertarianism, but with a solid moral foundation, it promotes capitalism as the only moral economic system.
I’m not able now to discuss this in detail, but a very brief overview (so brief that it’s a little misleading) can be found here: Introducing Objectivism
As I understand the purpose of these open devotionals, they enable people to reaffirm their beliefs among the like minded in a confrontation free environment. Objectivism’s a unique atheistic ideological fit for Free Republic, but the religious moderator apparently has other concerns. I’m a guest here; it’s his show.
Do you have devotionals for your minister? (Don’t answer that. I don’t care.)
Dear elfman2,
In that most religions are explicit about the need for some element of faith for their explication and practice, and I'd always been under the impression that most Objectivists would deny that faith is necessary for seeing the logic of Objectivism, it would seem to me that it's pretty easy to distinguish Objectivism from religion, at least through the understandings of their respective proponents.
Do you think that Objectivism requires an act of faith for belief?
Thanks,
sitetest
Informative bump.
Sounds very reasonable. Thanks.
I like your guidelines (argue the issues, or criticize the article's author, but don't get personal with the freeper). For the record, I never use my evolution ping list in the religion forum, because I don't regard science as a religious (or anti-religous) subject. On the other hand, I think creationist threads belong in the religion forum, but not everyone agrees.
I post all "my" threads about science news in the news forum. That also goes for school-board controversies, and for news of litigation or legislation involving the teaching evolution. I don't ping my list to what I regard as purely creationist threads, because no one joined my ping list to debate theology.
Sometimes, alas, science threads get heated up and is dumped into the backroom, often because some regard such threads as religious (or anti-religious). I think such views are incorrect, but let's not debate that here.
I suppose our paths will rarely cross in your official role, unless you are patrolling outside of the religion forum.
I really want to give a thanks to the former Religion Moderator he/she did do yomens works to tame this forum!
I am excited to hear your voice and new blood here and sure all of us faiths will benefitf from your presents!
On the other hand, perhaps some of the crevo threads would not have been banished to the backroom were they held to the higher standard.
Thanks for the ping!
True. My personal preference is that offensive posts should be pulled, and misbehaving freepers admonished, or even told to stay off the thread. I like that better than moving the whole thread, often with no warning -- because getting dumped into the backroom punishes the innocent along with the guilty. But I guess moving the thread is easier, and mods are busy. You're the mod, so it's your call.
My pleasure!
Yes! Click on the bookmark feature on the front page (Just after the article) and it will be saved to the bookmarks that are accesible on each person's profile page!
Or the Religion Mod, could post it to his/her profile page.
Just a couple of suggestions. I already have it bookmarked.
I think that faith and proof are at opposite ends of a continuum, and I'd plot the postulates on which Objectivism rests much further from faith than those of the religions that I’ve encountered.
Objectivism’s comprehensive ideological system has identical social and phycological functions to those of religion. But even if it was taken on faith much more than I give it credit for, it would be inconsistent with the definition of religion .
Respectfully
Dear elfman2,
Okay. Thanks.
Then by the definitions that you accept, an Objectivist devotional might not fit all that well into the Religion Forum. In this case, in describing it as a philosophical system, the Religion Moderator seems to be accurately describing it.
I'd be interested, by the way, with being pinged to an Objectivist devotional, should you decide to post it. As well, whether it enjoys any officially-"protected" status or not, I give you my word that I would observe only, not disrupt.
sitetest
You have ministers? Who/what does one worship or pray to (as in a devotional)? I would have thought Objectivist devotional would be an oxymoron, yes?
"It takes the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price to explain more fully why we would have perished. We would have perished because of the fall of Adam; we being unable to save ourselves either from his fall or our own sins."
Not true ...Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:You know ... a thorough knowledge of what's in the Bible ... would demonstrate that you need no additional texts.
Ephesians 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
It strikes as particularly clear ... that many who say that the Bible is not enough ... really don't know all that the Bible contains.
Sounds more philosophical than religious. Of couyrse, Pythagorianism had a religious aspect However, you might make a claim to be like with certain atheistic versions of Buddhism. But, as you say, we gotta go by the rules. It's their ball.
You only have a portion of that talk Quester
Excerpts from the talk
Why a Savior Is Necessary, and Why Only Jesus Christ Could Qualify ~ Robert J. Matthews was dean of Religious Education at Brigham Young University when this devotional address was given on 4 December 1984.
There is no other book in all this world that tells us as clearly about the mission of Jesus Christ as does the Book of Mormon.
Whereas the Bible tells us WHAT happened,
the Book of Mormon and other latter-day scriptures tell us WHY it happened.
The Bible writers also knew why, but the Bible has not come to us in its original purity and clarity, and thus the Lord has brought forth these other records in plain terms so that we might not wander in darkness and oblivion.
The Lord wants us to know about the greatest truths in the history of mankind.
I remember a discussion in a class many years ago when I was a teenager, when one of the students asked the teacher--this was not here at BYU--what would have become of our spirits if there had been no redemption by Jesus.
He said, "Well, I do not know what would have happened to our spirits, but I give it as my guess that, if there were no atonement by Jesus, we would still go on to whatever degree of glory we had merited, but we would have to go there as spirits without bodies because Jesus brought to pass the resurrection, and if there were no resurrection we would have no bodies."
None of us in the class knew enough about the gospel to know whether that was the right answer or not.
But sometime later, on my mission, I was reading 2 Nephi and I realized that if Jacob had been in that meeting that day he would have said, "Now wait a minute. This is what the atonement of Jesus does for us.
It not only brings the body forth from the grave, but it redeems the spirit from what otherwise would have been an endless, miserable condition with the devil." Or, to say it in other words, every man, woman, and child, everybody who belongs to the family of Adam, would have become sons of perdition had there been no atonement by Jesus Christ.
Jacob, knowing that and having commented upon it, then says these words--which we have already read but need to read again:
O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster;yea, that monster, death and hell, which I call the death of the body, and also the death of the spirit. [2 Nephi 9:10]
And so, when we sing and think and read and talk and meditate upon the coming of the Son of God into the world, we need to think in terms of what he did for mankind, all mankind, both as to the resurrection of the body and in bringing them forth out of what would have been a most miserable and gloomy existence.
Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).
You see that when we understand the alternative, it gives altogether new meaning, and additional meaning, to his words.
There are so many passages, we could not read them all right now.
Other than thinking you need to defend the Bible which all the LDS embrace with love and is a part of our LDS family scriptures known as LDS standard works, We are all very much aware of the battle down through the ages of remaining intact, that is why the all knowing Lord has preserve his Word with an other testament for Jesus Christ and both the Book of Mormon and the Bible testify of one an other!
After their resurrection, Jesus Christ will issue the final judgment to all the inhabitants of this world. The Lord will deliver to every person an individually tailored reward based upon how that person used their agency during mortality. The Savior will consider not only the absolute decisions that were made, but the surrounding context as well. People with more knowledge and privileges will be held to a higher standard than those without such advantages. Based on their final judgment, everyone-except those who committed the unpardonable sin-will be assigned to either the celestial, terrestrial, or telestial kingdom. Each of these kingdoms has its own rewards, privileges, and responsibilities associated with it.
In the Celestial Kingdom-the highest degree of glory, people have the opportunity to enter into the exalted state of Godhood.
Latter-day Saints believe that hell is the miserable, but temporary, state of disobedient spirits in the spirit world awaiting the resurrection. All those who reject the gospel of Jesus Christ will be sent to hell to be cleansed from their sins. As soon as a person has paid the full price for his or her sins, he or she will be released from hell into a state of glory [or happiness]. The degree of glory depends upon the type of life that a person lived while in mortality. The Telestial Kingdom is the lowest of the three degrees of glory to be inhabited by God's children in the afterlife following the resurrection. Only those who have committed the unpardonable sin will remain unredeemed in hell.
The Prophet Joseph Smith explained, "No man can commit the unpardonable sin after the dissolution of the body, nor in this life, until he receives the Holy Ghost" (TPJS, p. 357). To commit the unpardonable sin, a person "must receive the Holy Ghost, have the heavens opened unto him, and know God, and then sin against Him. After a man has sinned against the Holy Ghost, there is no repentance for him…. he has got to deny Jesus Christ when the heavens have been opened to him, and to deny the Plan of Salvation with his eyes open to the truth of it" (TPJS, p. 358; cf. Heb. 10:26-29).
I meant to ping you to Post #139
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