The Upper Room

10:28 AM

@fredsbend You are dangerously ill-informed. Please stop strewing racist garbage.

Q: Where can a Moderator Candidate post an extended statement?

11:38 AM

@TRiG OK, I'm curious. Why would you disagree with mandatory critical thinking (psychological self-defense) and basic science training for young children?

Does Elisha speak?

0

Where's the best place? I may start typing one here as an answer, then move it to a better place when I get a better answer. Thanks,

discussion election

11:59 AM

@justbelieve There are many ideas which I quite like in theory, but which a bit of reading suggests are rather more problematic in practice. Communism, for example. And the extent to which the State should interfere in childrearing is, actually, a very tricky issue, fraught with danger. All extremes seem horribly wrong, but getting the balance right is very very difficult.

That said, I've not fully read the backlog of that discussion yet, so perhaps your proposal is not quite what I think it is.

pterandon

Generic comment about David Stratton's "Pastor Advice" question. Yes, it is dangerous, and probably enough reason to stay banned. But in other fora, I've done that many times, because it allowed for anonymity on my part-- I didn't have to tattletale to or on the pastor.

@TRiG Just leave it at teaching kids critical thinking skills (e.g. logical fallacies), how not to get conned, and the basics of astronomy and geology knowledge as early on as possible (certainly as early as churches and parents start indoctrination). Psychological self defense really.

David Stratton

12:24 PM

@TRiG - re christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/12234/… Thank you for those links. I tried posting that from a new Android tablet with only an on-screen keyboard. Not the most user-friendly of experiences. I'll take a true PC with a keyboard and mouse (don't care about the OS) any day.

@DavidStratton that answer you just flagged is a spammer, go ahead and hit the spam flags with any more links to that site you come across

David Stratton

@waxeagle - Will do. Thanks!

@TRiG Have you seen Political Compass? It separates left/right and Authoritarian/Libertarian into two separate axes. This makes it easier to think about poilitical orientations

@pterandon generally my philosophy on it is: "I feel like getting advice from this site would be hit or miss and I'd rather users go to someone who is (in theory) more reliable and trusted"

doesn't have to be a pastor, but it should be someone in real life rather than a bunch of ghosts in the machine

and I say that as someone who will go very far out of my way to avoid talking to someone if I can figure it out online

1:32 PM

@justbelieve Yes. I believe other, more sophisticated, tools also exist.

2:27 PM

@justbelieve That may or may not be a good place to draw the line. Trouble is, you're making a judgement call about where to draw it without explicitly basing it on something transcendent and absolute. Next person to start drawing lines might therefore be dealing with different "truths" and drawing the line in a much scarier place.

so ... here's a question that's pretty clearly opiniony: christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/17648/…

and, it's an interesting question that folks could potentially provide good answers for based on their tradition's general guidelines for understanding of scripture.

@svidgen it's definitely borderline truthy. I haven't closed it partially because that first answer is pretty darn good.

question is, are hermeneutics questions really a good fit for the site? should any and all "what does this scripture mean?" questions be phrased with respect to a tradition? ... "does tradition X have an interpretion for this passage?"

no they are traditionally a terrible fit for this site unless the interpretation asked for is a doctrinal/denominational frame.

However, we do have some excellent questions/answers that are truth based. The only real problem with them is that they are the OP's version of the truth and may or may not reflect actual truth.

@waxeagle Looks like a reasonable analysis, to be sure. But, is it Christianity? Or is it just a good, reasonable opinion about a passage?

@svidgen that's a great question. If it's the second we have a site for that :)

(it does reflect what I believe main stream protestants believe about the passage, but I'm not 100% sure about that even)

(and I have a soft spot for the awesome question title)

2:43 PM

@waxeagle What would you recommend as the best course of action for these types of questions? Flag as off-topic? Flag as opinion-questions? ... or VTC as either of those? ... (The goal really being to get it moved to hermeneutics.)

@svidgen off topic would be correct if you want it shipped over there. I usually check with the mods over there before I send anything and I haven't seen them in a while (the active ones are on vacation right now).

@TRiG Web-surfer-facing tools? Just link to the sites... :)

@waxeagle Whelp. I haven't really been one to flag things in the past ... but, these sorts of questions are starting to bug me. ... I'd love to address them over on hermeneutics if ever my children let me sleep again. But, they often feel really misrepresentative here. ... so ... I think i'll start flagging more liberally (by which I mean, I think I'll start flagging things)

but, i'm late for a meeting ... so i'll start flagging things later

@svidgen that's great. We really do need folks to flag things, though in your case I want you to cast a close vote first if it's a question.

3:19 PM

@justbelieve I think they exit. I vaguely recall them. May do some digging at some stage.

5:20 PM

@TRiG So, in the two-axes framework (corp-vs-individual X, authoritarian vs libertarian Y), you actually "quite like in theory" the idea of left-wing authoritarianism (communism), but think "a bit of reading suggests" it's "rather more problematic in practice"? I'd personally go with left-wing libertarianism if I had to choose between these two :)

5:46 PM

And yet, when I hear Libertarians talking, I usually make the rage-face.

I don't think Political Compass is a perfect tool, lets put it that way.

@TRiG the typical libertarian I know is right leaning though

@waxeagle Yeah. The terminology's quite messy, actually, and is different in different parts of the world. I'm probably a liberal, of some sort, but that's a word notorious for its many many definitions.

@TRiG yes, not only is it different in different parts of the world, but it's A. completely flipped depending on time and location and B. changes over time.

@waxeagle To translate that into Political Compass terminology, you're saying that a downward lean is statistically correlated with a rightward-lean (see @TriG's graph)

@justbelieve Among modern American young white males, anyway.

5:51 PM

@TRiG right

@TRiG aka "tea party conservatives"

(though the age gap is pretty wide in that group)