Comments, Discussion Forum, Chat, E-mail

Published by henderob July 13th, 2007 in General FSM news.

Here’s an update on FSM communications:

Comments
Referring to the comments you can leave at the end of posts like this one. These are not moderated or censored in any way. We get thousands of spam comments a day, so there’s always some sort of automated spam filter running to fight that. I’ve been hearing that a lot of comments are being wrongly marked as spam and that some users are being full-out banned. I’ve switched back to the old spam-filter, but this one has it’s flaws, too. A few hundred comments a week are held in a “maybe-spam” folder - and I don’t have the time to check it every day.

Comments are more likely to be held if they contain a lot of links, or if you’re making many comments a day. I know a lot of people here like to use the comment system as a type of discussion forum, and that’s fine, but the spam-filter will target you and there’s not a lot I can do about it. Without an automated-spam-filter, the comment system would be unusable.

Discussion Forums
The discussion forums are moderated by a very hard working group. Anything written in the forums is subject to the moderators discretion, but they are very fair. Anyone who feels targeted by the comment-spam-filter here is welcome to move their conversations over there. The discussion forums are built on a user registration system, so spam is not as much of an issue.

Chat
We had a live-chat system up for a couple weeks. It was popular but the server couldn’t handle it. I’d like to have a remote chat system set up. The one I’m looking at is around $50-$100/month. I’m looking for an advertiser to step up and sponsor it.

Emails
I get a lot of emails. I read as many as I can. But I’m still way behind. If you *really* need to get a hold of me, put something like **important** in the subject field and I’ll probably find it quicker.

911 Responses to “Comments, Discussion Forum, Chat, E-mail”

1. 901 - August 25th, 2007 at 11:43 pm - Commodore Angryy Says:
   
   

   you used 24 question marks, 23 full stops, but only 3 exclamation marks, i’m shocked at your lack of enthusiam thumper.
   as for the question, holy water is just as bland as the rest of the religion, they say that it has different flavours, like cherry coke, but you only really think you can taste it.
   and are you less likely to go to hell for drinking it? well, it’s amazing because, i’m sure if you actually sat there drinkin the holy water, the priest would say that you ARE going to hell. all very confusing really.

2. 902 - August 26th, 2007 at 5:22 am - ۞ Says:
   
   

   All, sorry for the long post, but our friend krony is still resisting the facts.
   .
   krony,
   So can we be clear on this.
   You said:

   Yes, that is the way it works.

   Quoting DPG:

   If that person is not a believer he/she will fry eternally on satans bbq according to christians. The good person suffering eternal horror is morally repulsive, nothing you wrote in your latest reply about sin convinces me otherwise.

   My emphasis.
   .
   That is my understanding of the broad belief of the Christian faith and supported by things including the “sermon on the mount” recognized as a defining speech of the movement.
   .
   I find it impossible to give you the benefit of the doubt. That would be to believe we have misunderstood “Yes, that is the way it works” particularly as you went on “Fair? Well, no I suppose from our eyes but I didn’t create the world either”.
   .
   You have definitely made a significant change in your position over the week whether you want to admit it or not. It is a depressingly common theological technique to ‘clarify’ things in to something completely different and insinuate the reader is at fault for misinterpreting the original statements. I really feel you are doing that here and continuing to ‘have it both ways’ as I shall explain subsequently.
   .
   NB: That seems to be OK (in theistic circles) even if advantage was taken of the original interpretation at the time. This really is a text book example of theists making a series of statements that are individually coherent but don’t stack up when examined from start to end. This sort of sophistry isn’t acceptable to me. Your beliefs have to make sense as a coherent whole, not a patchwork of incompatible ideas.
   .
   The trick you are continuing with (consciously or not) is that although Jesus (apparently) explains that there are degrees of punishment, all of them are terrible and we would count them all as torture and wrong. Mark 9:47-48 is quite clear (Jesus is speaking here):

   And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:
   .
   Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

   .
   It is clear to me that if you accept Jesus in to your life you are accepting that non-believers are sent to hell and tortured with fire for all eternity. The only moderation is that the level of torture is varied. That still makes God brutal, uncivilized and certainly unloving. It is frankly hilarious to excuse torturing person A on the grounds of torturing person B more. In my mugger metaphor God is asking to be excused wounding someone because he killed someone else!
   .
   You made what may be a revealing comment in that first post:

   I wish salvation was for everyone, and I don’t know why it is the way it is. I’m just glad there is a way at all.

   .
   Can you not see how you’re duped by the Christianity Sales and Marketing Department?
   Terrible News: Non-believers are damned. Great News: We can save you.
   I often criticize the church for poor marketing but this is textbook ‘creating demand’.
   Please. Throw off their nonsense and start understanding the world as it really is.

3. 903 - August 26th, 2007 at 6:06 am - DutchPastaGuy Says:
   
   

   @krony
   “As it appears I’ve worn out my welcome, I’ll leave with this…”
   .
   You’re welcome to stay as far as I’m concerned. I guess it would be fair to point out that apart from interest in the debate itself I do share a bit of ۞s agenda to use the debate to demonstrate how irreconcileable reason and christianity are. But if you feel you can turn the situation and show us all wrong then why should that discourage you?
   I would ask that you refrain from a number of debating ‘techniques’ that are disagreeable. Like not answering a question but posing a new counter question instead. Don’t distract attention from the issue please. And please don’t misrepresent my position, which I feel you just did in your latest post addresed to me:
   .
   “Peter, here’s where I’m struggling with our debate. I say God is good, you say he’s a tyrant, no problem with the back and forth establishing our positions on that.”
   .
   That is a distortion of my position. I said that your acceptance of the good side of god and excusing the bad was inconsistent. And that only accepting the bad and rejecting the good as misunderstanding was just as valid, ie also inconsistent . As I criticise you for your inconsistency, please don’t say then that I would advocate similarly flawed mirror reasoning. I called for consistency. If you say that the bad is our limited misunderstanding of god then don’t follow it up by saying you’re sure about understanding the good (and your personal, probably delusional, benefits of course are about as much as a drop in the ocean compared to all the death and suffering in the bible and in the world around us today). If you accept the good, then you should also accept the bad. So for the 6th or so time now: I put it you you that the god you worship has been responsible for more suffering, death, injustice, etc than all the tyrants of history put together (but not saying he is exclusively evil if he were real). Will you now accept that yes or no? If no, then please give me a reasoned explanation (no bible quotes please).
   .
   If you answer my question in a satisfactory manner then I’ll be happy to respond to yours about how I would go about it if I were god (hint: of course I easily think up dozens of more honest ways to go about it if I were omnipotent and omniscient, more later possibly). But as I’ve asked my question a number of times now I think it’s reasonable to say it’s your turn first.

4. 904 - August 26th, 2007 at 6:16 am - DutchPastaGuy Says:
   
   

   @۞
   Thanks for persisting and another refreshingly clear post. Ramen and a front row ticket for the beer volcano during your first three nights in Pastafarian paradise for that.

5. 905 - August 26th, 2007 at 8:08 am - Jean Bart Says:
   
   

   @۞ Aug 26th, 2007 at 5:22 am: ” It is frankly hilarious to excuse torturing person A on the grounds of torturing person B more. In my mugger metaphor God is asking to be excused wounding someone because he killed someone else!”
   .
   Or to say it in Shadok words:
   .
   “Pour qu’il y ait le moins de mécontents possibles il faut toujours taper sur les mêmes.”
   .
   “In order to have the least unhappy persons possible, you should always hit the same ones.”
   .
   The Shadok world is a pretty bizar one, but has its own bizar logic. Meant as an absurd animated cartoon series back in the sixties, its logic has sometimes less flaws than krony’s. Their math isn’t bad either…

6. 906 - August 26th, 2007 at 9:11 am - DutchPastaGuy Says:
   
   

   @Jean Bart
   “Their math isn’t bad either…”
   .
   I don’t know the cartoon you talk about. But going after christians for their math is slightly akin to picking a soft target. Look at the trinity. Three members in there, father, son and holy spirit. And these three form one. So 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. Oh well.

7. 907 - August 26th, 2007 at 1:28 pm - ۞ Says:
   
   

   DPG,
   It is important to remember that it is easier to do bad than redeem. So even if you accept the good God has done, it is very difficult for it to make up for his flaws.
   .
   There is also (as I recall) precious little good done since creating the garden of Eden.
   He threw a major wobbler over someone eating some fruit (he planted without fencing off), hello! That doesn’t excuse what Eve did, but I’m not sure the his reaction was appropriate.
   .
   After that he’s been a massive grumpy guts, scaring, killing, inciting genocide etc.
   Jesus does a couple of nice turns, but basically there’s a shed load of very very bad to make up for.
   .
   It isn’t duplicitous to say God is bad despite doing some good things. It is foolish to describe him as good given all the terrible things he has done, and according to Jesus and his followers, continues to do (supposedly).
   .
   It is pretty re-assuring that no such terrible monster actually exists!
   .
   People who read the Bible should find salvation in realising its a load of hogwash.

8. 908 - August 26th, 2007 at 2:21 pm - DutchPastaGuy Says:
   
   

   @۞
   “It is important to remember that it is easier to do bad than redeem. So even if you accept the good God has done, it is very difficult for it to make up for his flaws.”
   .
   I hadn’t gone into the issue of whether the good outweighs the bad yet. First I’ll see if krony is even prepared to admit god is responsible for a tremendous load of misery, whether it is made up for by other things or not. That should make for some, uh, shall we , ‘creative’ reasoning again.

9. 909 - August 27th, 2007 at 7:25 am - Darwin Says:
   
   

   krony,

   There is an interesting logical paradoxon here:

   1. God is omniscient

   2. Because God is omniscient, He should know all of your future decisions from the beginning of the world. Thus, you are kind of determined to behave good or bad, and to believe or not believe. In principle, He could send you to hell if you die immediately after birth (since he should know what bad guy you would have become otherwise).

   3. Since God obviously has a desire to punish, He closes his own mind (so to say; restricts his omniscience) to NOT knowing what you are about to do. Then He could pretend to not knowing your decisions himself, make his “judgement”, and throw you in hell, HA HA!

   From this paradoxon, I feel that omniscience and true decision-making (either gods’s or man’s) exclude each other.

10. 910 - October 20th, 2007 at 5:00 am - Justice and Love - Christian Forums - inthepursuitofgod.com Says:
    
    

    […] to be extreme, violent sick punishment threatened ? I had quite a lengthy discussion over at the CoFSM site with the atheists on this. Here’s an excerpt of that dialog… Posted by Peter (our Friendly […]

11. 911 - October 20th, 2007 at 6:26 am - ۞ Says:
    
    

    What is pingbaclk?
    Why is it advertising the pot of shit inthepursuitofgod.com?

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