The Upper Room

6:55 AM

@JonathonByrd I need to question God. How could I otherwise claim to know him in any sense, when everyone is pushing different ideas about God to me? 1 Thessalonians 5:21

3

7:38 AM

\o/ Outspoken!

9:19 AM

\o/ Electorate!

10:00 AM

@JonathonByrd you have an outstanding suggested edit here. Maybe you should be the one to handle it.

;)

11:33 AM

and now it's gone

thanks @JonathonByrd

@JonathonByrd there's another suggested edit now. I think @BeatMe's edit was much better than the one in queue now.

12:23 PM

@dancek I was just ducking in here to ping Byrd again about that new edit...

Oops. Sorry about that. Just approved it. Should've checked chat first.

I like the more neutral wording of the edit. It seemed legitimate to me.

12:41 PM

@dancek This answer got flagged as not an answer. I tried to edit it a little bit to emphasis the bit that addressed the topic at hand since I personally think it's a valid answer. Since I kind of put words in your mouth you might check it over.

@Caleb it's not a very good answer, agreed

@Caleb thanks for the edit, it's better than it was

I wouldn't have minded awfully much had you deleted it.

Aaaa, but I think it hits at the essence of what God wants from us more poignantly than any other answers there. I think it is an answer, it just needs some a little developing.

@Caleb yeah, I originally meant to work on it but then for some reason I didn't

I might look at it at some point, but can't now

@Richard, did you decline my edit?

@BeatMe You can see who declined the edit in the history.

12:56 PM

I can't see that

It wasn't me, but I didn't do it because it was a jolting post script and a list that quite possibly was not the kind of thing the OP had in mind. That's why I left it to him to decide if that's what he wanted to say or not.

Your edit was better off as a comment anyway.

Well, it seems like a pretty good addition to the original question because it was mentioned in a answer that he did not cite specific events

I think SE is working on adding decline reasons by the way to help this process.

@BeatMe .... and the link was to a highly biased site that Jonathon may well have not promote as a reference. May of the things on that list have very clear context that are quit likely NOT the kind of thing that he wanted to target in his question.

additionally I can't shake the feeling that @JonathonByrd already makes up his mind before asking questions and just asks them to be reconfirmed, but ignores answers that are helpful but not according to his expected answer ;)

yes, thats the point ;)

best observed in christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/1410/… where he accepted my answer after he edited in a <h1>yes</h1>, but chose to deaccept it after we removed that heading

Waggers

1:39 PM

@caleb Thanks for your help on improving christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/3033/… - I wasn't sure how much I'm allowed to quote under fair use

2:01 PM

@dancek congrats on the first gold badge on the site!

3

@dancek Ooh, yeah! Nice!

2:20 PM

good morning

@JonathonByrd Hey there!

@a_hardin @Richard thanks! Gonna start voting answers more now... It was a bit difficult to find unvoted questions in the end :)

@dancek Yeah, I bet. We don't have too many questions yet!

@Richard yeah, given that 5% of all questions are my own and there were ~770 total, and some were closed...

(and it's 600 required)

Q: Can God create a stone so big that even he could not lift it?

-1

Simple question Can God create a stone so big that even he could not lift it?

questioning-god

2:34 PM

vtc

how do you get 27 comment flags?

@a_hardin Hehe. It's about reputation. You start with five and it increases according to some algorithm.

ah

closed with no diamonds... the community at work :)

2:50 PM

Good job community, way to VTC! That is THE classic example of not constructive and you got it with no mods in 20 minutes.

Don't be afraid to downvote as well. If you closed because it was a duplicate or it needs work or something it might not need a dowvote, but when somebody deliberatly asks a non-valuble question just for the fun of it it's ok to downvote along with your VTC.

Downvoting in this case helps with some auto SE filters that kick in that lower the number of posts an OP can make if their previous things were low quality.

I also voted to delete, but community seems to be lagging...

@dancek Not very many people can do that.

I think only the 4+k people can do that without a 2 day waiting period after closure.

Yeah. 4k at the moment

@Richard oh.

@Caleb 2k also gets you there. That must be the 2-day limit.

3:37 PM

There take that @Richard.

I have to admit I cheated tho. The first paragraph was a character-for-character copy paste from a FB comment I'd left on somebodies wall post about Christians and yoga.. They later came back with some objections which I tried to answer. Those I have just tried to edit to fit the SE format, but it might be a little rough since there was a lot of terminology thrown around before I stepped in again with the second half and my editing time is limited at the moment.

Also things on FB are very hard to find after about the first week. That was almost 9 months ago and I only found it because it got linked to in an email.

@Caleb Nice. I really like that answer. It seems to hit at the heart of the matter.

Thanks for the post!

@Richard I'm going to ping a couple of the other people from that thread that had good things to say on the matter and see if I can't get them to pitch in here too :)

4:32 PM

Ooh. I got question #777

@Richard lol

4:54 PM

anybody else stand in the bathroom and preach to themselves on the word of God?

2

no.

;) I do sing, if that helps.

I have a really good sermon about the two things that you're commanded to do. Even tho I'm not a pastor or preacher I like to practice it. lol

Waiting for the day that God gives me the opportunity.

A: Why doesn't the Catholic Bible include all books from Septuagint?

I think this is the second most researched answer I've ever posted:

0

Unfortunately, we don't know why each book was rejected. However we do know that many of the books were rejected because of their mysterious origin. St. Augustine Contra Fastum Manichaean source St. Augustine wrote "We reject....the apocryphal books which are so called, not because of any ...

And yet it's not a long answer...

5:14 PM

My rape question is slowly crawling back from -5 votes

You can totally tell that those Christians that don't understand why God would use rape in His judgement, are the ones that hate the question.

I think that brings up another very valid question

God tells us that we replace Him, the real God, with created things

this could very easily be suggesting that we, in today's culture, have replaced the one true God with our own imaginary God.

Would asking "what are the attributes of God" be closed for any reason?

@JonathonByrd Do you mean "What is the list of the Attributes of God" or "What are people referring to when they discuss the Attributes of God?"

5:30 PM

I mean what are the attributes. so probably what is the list

either way I wouldn't vtc since I think it'd be a good contribution

5:43 PM

books.google.com/…

@MarcGravell you are free to edit. The meaning should stay in line with the primary question. "Why does God use rape?"

6:00 PM

@JonathonByrd List questions aren't good. However, Wikipedia has a list, if you want it.

Attributes of God

The Attributes of God in Christian theology are those characteristics of God revealed in the Bible. Classification Many Reformed theologians distinguish between the communicable attributes (those that human beings can also have) and the incommunicable attributes (those that belong to God alone). Donald Macleod, however, argues that "All the suggested classifications are artificial and misleading, not least that which has been most favoured by Reformed theologians - the division into communicable and incommunicable attributes." Many of these attributes only say what God is not - for exa...

Wow. One-box for wikipedia. nice.

nice, just as I suggested moving it to chat, I got a link to automatically move it to chat!

@a_hardin :) I noticed that! I don't know when that link appears, but there's some criteria (after the third post, I think).

A: Does God love unconditionally?

6:27 PM

Can someone clean up our comments on this answer?

5

No, God does not love unconditionally. In fact, God hates the wicked. Hosea 9:15 NIV 15 “Because of all their wickedness in Gilgal, I hated them there. Because of their sinful deeds, I will drive them out of my house. I will no longer love th...

and possibly leave the link to chat

@a_hardin Yeah, we can do that. If you flag it, we'll probably leave it around for a while and then remove those comments later. (Since he mentioned that he can't chat at work.)

user2334

@Richard RE: this answer. Come on man: if you don't know the answer, that's fine, but it's not unknowable or mysterious.

@MarkTrapp Aah, excellent. I wasn't able to find an answer on any of those books! I'll delete my answer.

user2334

6:42 PM

@Richard Thanks: it's just that Christianity has an expertise problem; I think it's probably better to let a question sit with no answer for some time than to provide just anything. Personally, it took me some time to research the answer, and to see 4 upvotes for "This has no answer" is a little disheartening.

@MarkTrapp Yeah, I spent a bit of time researching. The closest I could get was the quote from St. Augustine that said they didn't like many of the books because of questions of authorship. (I almost left my answer for that quote alone.) But, I couldn't find exact reasons. I'll have to bookmark that Catholic Encyclopedia!

@MarkTrapp You probably won't like this answer. :P christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/3184/…

user2334

Well now that's just a crappy question. Like asking "What's God's favorite ice cream flavor"

Maybe so. But the reason for creation is right up there with the meaning of life, imo.

user2334

And something that's not going to be answered on Christianity.SE

Q: What does the Bible say about the purpose of our lives?

Ooh... speaking of which...

Nope... I can't do it. "What's the meaning of life?" is a good question, but I just can't quite bring myself to write it...WEll... let me try again. OK... here we go:

0

Christianity, as a religion, must answer a handful of critical, core questions (such as the question of evil). These questions are core to our human experience and questions that everyone will have to face at some point in our lives. This question is also one of those questions: What is the pu...

theology

7:11 PM

@mark not sure if you saw it, but I actually had a question answered by a priest. Which was pretty amazing in my opinion, I wish he'd stick around and answer more stuff.

@richard if that question isn't closed then there ain't no justice. christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/1

@PeterTurner Aah, thank you! I'll close it as a duplicate.

@PeterTurner I figured someone had asked it at some point, but I couldn't find it in my searchings. So I went ahead and asked. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

@richard, well I don't fault you for asking it again. I think the original question could use a little boost.

It's getting harder and harder to find non-duplicate questions...

@PeterTurner I knew it had been asked, but couldn't find it

heheh, that's because you both closed my question in favor of a duplicate. It was kinda hard to ask questions in the early minutes of the site. I was the only non mod registered here for like 2 hours.

Well there's hardly any questions about any particular saints. You might not care about 'em but they're all on topic right?

7:22 PM

Yeah, totally on topic.

@Richard lol

@Richard Go surf the atheist websites so that we can begin to teach them the WHY's to all of their answers.

7:41 PM

We need to get our "Questions per day" up. 12.7 is starting to get low.

user2334

@Richard 12.7 is high, despite the Area 51 guidance. Most betas are lucky to get 5

user2334

The number of questions isn't really as important as the quality of the questions received. 4 that are really awesome are worth more than 30 mediocre ones

user2334

@PeterTurner Link?

@MarkTrapp That makes me feel a little better. I know DBA.SE was closer to 6-9 or so when it went live.

A: What is the Little Office of Our Lady in connection to the Scapular Devotion?

5

The Brown Scapular devotion is one thing, and the Little Office of Our Lady another. To practise the Brown Scapular devotion, and benefit from Our Lady's magnificent promise, one must be enrolled in the Scapular by a priest and persevere in wearing it. On this website you will see the difference ...

7:50 PM

@MarkTrapp I didn't eve know there was a "worrying" level That definitely makes me feel better.

Beofett

@Richard your stats seem pretty excellent for so early in the beta, imo

@Beofett Yeah, we tend to drop off on the weekends, but given the subject matter, that doesn't surprise me much. ;) I think we're doing alright, but we really need to hone in on more specific, expert level questions.

Beofett

@Richard aye, but you'll get there soon enough. Don't be worried if your numbers drop off a bit as you do. You've already got more avid users than other sites that have been in public beta for months

@marktrapp christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/2925/…

Oh thanks @a_hardin

8:06 PM

@MarkTrapp a nice answer there on the Septuagint question, thanks!

user2334

@a_hardin @PeterTurner interesting: definitely want to see more of that

user2334

@dancek No problem!

8:29 PM

can diamond mods see who voted what?

user2334

@dancek No they can't.

@MarkTrapp weird... because the data is available to everyone on non-beta sites, I think, in data.stackexchange.com

I'd think it would be useful sometimes, but of course the privacy aspects are important too

user2334

@dancek You can't see it in Data, either. Do you have a specific query you're thinking of?

@MarkTrapp I haven't tinkered around, but the votes table has userid

user2334

Moderators have special tools to deal with suspicious voting patterns, but beyond that, it's not something moderators need to handle disputes

Flimzy

8:34 PM

woot, I just got Civic Duty

user2334

@dancek Ah, in that table, UserId is empty except when the VoteTypeId is 5, which corresponds to favoriting. Favoriting a question is public.

@MarkTrapp It can't be, how could the Sportsmanship badge tracked if it were? It seems empty when I run queries, so maybe it's hidden from data.SE

oh, and of course the software has to know who voted what in any case

user2334

@dancek Right: they anonymize that table before publishing it. It's filled internally

@MarkTrapp I see. Makes a lot of sense.