if your pastor baptized an infant, there would be a great hue and cry, no? show me from history, where the mythical “true” Christians you believe existed in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries that were not Catholic, show me where they preached against the Catholic practice, give names, dates,etc. your silence will tell all!!No question on personal information.
There are more ways than one to get information out of people. Just like you're doing in posts 985, 989, 996, 997 and this one. I though you had been warned about that. Perhaps I was mistaken.
This is a religion forum and it is perfectly natural to ask someone where they stand on a religious point. For example, to ask metmom on her stand on infant baptism makes sense in a debate ON infant baptism. To ask her her stand on the Trinity makes sense in any discussion on the Trinitarian nature of Christ.
There's a difference between ASKING for information and PRESUMING information and asking someone to deny or confirm it. It falls into the category of the *Have you stopped beating your wife yet?* kind of question.
My silence on an issue does not mean I either agree or disagree. I see presuming my answer based on my *silence* is an underhanded way of trying to manipulate information out of me. Finding out information by the process of elimination (as I see this as being) rather than asking would IMO, qualify as finessing the guidelines. I will not play those games.
One is an honest inquiry, the other taints the image others have of that person for someone who is not familiar with the discussions. I've made my positions very clear in the past. A lurker would not necessarily know that and come to erroneous conclusions about what I believe. It leads to confusion and misunderstanding.
To ask her her stand on the Trinity makes sense in any discussion on the Trinitarian nature of Christ.
If that were the what the discussion were about in the first place, yeah. However, to throw it in to the mix for NO good reason makes it a red herring and of suspicious motive.
I am not the only one on the receiving end of that kind of behavior, hence the courtesy ping to others who have been involved.
As for said mentioned poster, to ping or not to ping, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler to ping out of courtesy or not to ping as per RM's instructions......
I'll let the RM decide.
But if you ask a poster what church he attends or what religious group he belongs to and he declines to answer, you must leave it alone. Continuing to badger that poster for personal information even by presuming his group membership and therefore beliefs is not only making it personal, it is flame baiting and trouble making.
It will not be tolerated.
One Freepmail complaint last night was that because some posters have said Catholicism is Satanic then therefore Catholics are justified in intentionally falsely accusing metmom’s group (presuming she even has one) and her by extension of believing in Kolob or "oneness” or anti-Trinitarianism and so on.
But the two accusations are not equivalent. And even if they were, two wrongs do not make a right.
When one belief spawns from another, it is common for both to condemn the other in the harshest terms, e.g. anathema, apostate, cult, demonism, Satanism. And those harsh condemnations often become part of the group's holy writ, doctrines or teachings.
In the Bible, for instance, both Jesus and the Pharisees accused each other of being Satanic. It happens frequently in "town square" type religious debate.
If a poster is at a loss on how to repond to such harsh condemnations he should read his own holy writ or the writings of his religious authorities and find on how they dealt with it because they most likely did.
And if a Religion Forum poster cannot deal with such harsh condemnations then he is way too thin-skinned to be reading much less posting on “open” Religion Forum threads.
If the Pharisees had knowingly falsely accused Jesus of believing in the Egyptian god Ra because he would not answer their questions, then there would have been equivalence to the behavior on this thread.
On this thread, an equivalent would have been if some non-Catholics here accused your faith group of believing in Xenu – an obviously false claim which can have no purpose other than to flame bait or make trouble. If they had done so, they would have been instructed to leave the thread.
So far, two posters have been instructed to leave this thread and have been pinged here as a courtesy (do not respond on thread but by Freepmail.)
I have been patient with you, Cronos, because you are an oldtimer and usually cooperative. But you continue to ignore my warning to stop accusing metmom of believing in Kolob etc. Knock it off or leave the thread.