I propose that there ought to be a way for the mods of a site to put up a prominent disclaimer that shows up on every page and makes it clear that the site does not offer professional services.
For example, on mi.yodeya, the SE 1.0 site that was the starting point for Judaism.SE, the header of e...
@Caleb and anyone else interested in an Infant Baptism discussion. If you guys are around tomorrow I'd love to get into it. I know @Flimzy posted a question about it.
God's name is written as the Tetragrammaton יהוה (YHWH) in the Old Testament. The name is not vocalized in the manuscripts and it's considered ineffable, forbidden to say aloud, by Jews. For that reason, the original pronunciation hasn't been preserved.
The two most commonly suggested possible ...
Most people seem to be lenient about shemos on digital screens in general (though Bar-Ilan does avoid displaying the Tetragrammaton.) The letters on the screen are just light, there is nothing really written there. But what about on a E-reader, like a Kindle or a Nook? For those devices, actual ...
I personally don't know what to believe about creation, I just don't have the expertise. Where I live, it seems believing in Creationism is thought stupid even by a lot of Christians.
@djeikyb I don't think it's like that at all. It's very hard to truly indoctrinate children. They'll nearly always start thinking for themselves, eventually. And that includes questioning what they've been taught, even if they find it sound in the end. (at least that happened to me wrt Christianity)
@djeikyb I haven't heard of Jesus seminar
Here in Finland some liberal priests don't believe in the resurrection for example.
There's a much larger bunch that doesn't really believe in sin. They might concede that sin exists, but don't really think any practical action could be sin.
But of course there are different degrees of liberality. I think people who really believe ~everything in the Bible but live a sinful life just for fun are liberals, too.
@djeikyb as we have a tax-payed church (big mistake IMO) they get to keep their jobs and write stuff. Nobody goes to the churches they teach in, etc. but they're there.
I think The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (the state church) is gonna fall apart soon as almost all bishops are liberal now and most believers don't really attend the church's services anymore but have gone elsewhere.
In English, "Thank God" seems to be an established phrase that is used in certain kinds of situations, regardless of the actual meaning. I can easily see how this could be misused. Then again, there are phrases such as "goodbye", originally meaning God be with ye. You can't always avoid saying go...
Wikis At Area 51 invited me to chat about CS Lewis' argument. I can't see Wiki so I'll just leave my text here for when he arrives.
I simplified the argument to this:
God can't exist because bad/cruel things happen (for no reason). But if god doesn't exist good and bad is subjective therefore my argument doesn't make sense objectively.
So my point was that even though his argument against god doesn't make sense, it isn't evidence that god exists.
@CiscoIPPhone we are managing a pretty good answer rate from what I've seen and the quality has been pretty good. But I'm wondering what % of these questions will still be on topic in a year
@a_hardin agreed. Like I said depending on the direction this site goes some of these may have to be revisited in a year or two and killed off. Its kind of the nature of SE sites sometimes, but its also not a bad idea to be forward thinking.
@a_hardin thats one of the hardest questions asked and an example of what this site can and should become.
I don't particularly think 40 questions / day is healthy. at least not with the size of the current expert user base to answer them properly. I'm seeing a lot of stuff fly by without proper answers.
@Caleb at some point we need to set a quality standard. Probably soon. If you don't meet the standard the answer should be deleted, CW'd or edited ASAP.
Does anybody want to weigh in from a different perspective with something about how you could just as easily argue that it's not fair that anybody should be saved? So far the only answer that even hints at that came from a troll.
@waxeagle Yes, I've been thinking about that. I still think that answers (or answerwers?) that don't claim to represent any particular tradition are not particularly useful. But there is much more to it than a simple rule.
I'm more worried about attracting people that can give expert level answers to questions about Christianity than people who's doctrine of salvation is modeled after that of batman saving Gotham.
@a_hardin Ha ha ha! The user that asked that has pulled in 745 rep for asking 1 question, giving zero answers, and voting 8 times (presumably to the 8 answers to his own question).
And yeah, too many questions and poor answers at the moment
Many answers are very rushed and don't even try to be definitive, more "here's the first thought/verse that came to mind when I read your question enjoy"
I'm kind of in the middle of it. I'm not attached to my version of the changed question, but I didn't think Peters were in the spirit of the original question, which I actually thought was ok in spite of Shog9's comments.
@Caleb your edit reflects the spirit of the question better than Peter's does. Just because he believes something opposed to one of the question's presuppositions doesn't make it a bad question.
There seems to be general consensus inside Christianity that in order to be saved, you must have faith, and that this faith has to be in Jesus Christ. Here is one verse sometimes cited for the necessity of having faith:
Hebrews 11:6 (ESV)
And without faith it is impossible to please him, fo...
How does the New Testament define a brother in Christ? According to the New Testament, what makes a human a brother in Christ? And also, according to the New Testament, which people are definitely not Christians, definitely not brothers in Christ?
I would want to have a set of key critical condi...
@Flimzy Yes I thought it was a troll at first too ... and indeed it is somebody with an agenda they are trying to convey with their questions and comments, but at least they are being reasonable about it I think.
You can reference To what extent does the Law of Moses still apply? to help determine if Exodus 22:18 is even still a command we should follow. I believe that it does not, so I do not believe we should be killing witches.
In fact, in Matthew 7:1 (NIV) Jesus says, “Do not judge, or you too will ...
The three uses of Law in Reformed1 and Lutheran2 theology explains this very well. One very important purpose of Law is to let us see our own unrighteousness, so that we could understand how dependent we are on the grace of God.
It was clear from the Old Testament that people couldn't strictly ...
@a_hardin dude... Don't even worry about that. I'm not gonna even bother sharing the numbers, because this site hasn't even been in public beta for a week... But trust me, it's getting enough traffic. Just do your best to ask good questions, provide solid answers, and you'll be fine.
@Caleb I felt the core of the question was solid, and was reasonably preserved through all edits. Mostly I just wanted to provoke discussion on it, since the questions I'd been pointing to Meta for that reason had been almost universally bad. But if you or someone else see a way to edit for further clarity, do so!
@a_hardin That particular issue is something I've worked through from a bunch of different angles. I live/work/minister in an Islamic country. People I help disciple often face the choice of being ostracized from their families for their choice to follow Christ. How they can still be honoring them when the families primary complaint is that they are dis-honoring the family name is a hard thing.
First understand the architecture of the temple. There were three chambers. A large courtyard where a very large altar lay. An indoor lobby where only the priests could enter after washing and finally the Holy room which only the high priest himself could enter.
The Holy room contained the ark o...
@Caleb Would it make sense to include that in your answer? I think it'd help establish that you are an expert that has thought through this a lot more than just to answer this question.
@a_hardin The comment you link from @JonathonByrd's troll is embarrassing in it's flippancy on this topic. It turns the commandment do do something good around as a justification to do something bad.
@JonathonByrd will. don't have the time or energy to go through them all, that was just to top voted one. Neither of the answers on that question have any refs and both haev 18 uvs each...
@Caleb I think I'm on record as hating those (from anyone). I want commentary. I realize that scripture is sufficient in some cases, but I feel like the vast vast majority of cases (especially because we are here) there has to be some kind of value added from the user.
@a_hardin I'm kinda meh at this point. If its an unformatted verse I use the quote for each 'graph. If its formatted user the code mark up on each line. Its a bit of a pain, but it works ok..
Area51 proposals and sample questions are not the final word on the scope of SE sites. Now that Christianity has gone into beta, what does it's scope look like? Are there questions related to hermeneutics being treated as on-topic? If so would this create a conflict if Biblical Hermeneutics launc...
@a_hardin I started work on a user-script for inserting verses the other day. I'll be sure and share when I get it working. I doubt SE is going to do anything official at least before we come out of Beta, so I figure we'll have to take care of ourselves in that department.
@Caleb It definitely needs to be discussed on A51 because quite honestly either BH will make this site useless or we will steal traffic from it. I don't think at this early stage its a great idea for the two sites to coexist...but I'm really not sure.
@waxeagle I know it's early in our beta but I think the issue needs to be thought about because BH has collected several committers (maybe attention we are attracting or people freed up now that they have completed their commitment here) and I have the same concern that both sites can likely not exist without damaging each other, at least in the early stages we are at now.
I'm not positive they can't coexist, to be honest. It might be wise just to keep BH on ice for a while until we see if Christianity.SE can fulfill the needs of those committed to it though.
@Shog9 I understand this. It makes more sense for the SE format. However this site has handled a number of questions that would be on topic there with varying degrees of success.
@Shog9 that would make sense to me. You guys obviously control when sites launch, but are users going to be up in arms when a site they committed to is delayed?
@Shog9 I see a possible eventual relationship between this site and BH.SE (provided both succeed) similar to SO and Prog.SE, but is that really a healthy comparison?
@Shog9 Good point. However that's part of my concern for it. I'm not sure the world needs another way to get answers from an "anything goes" perspective.
So we might actually want to launch it and see if it can gain enough traction to stand alone (with those rules)... But if it fails, we're back to trying to fold it into Christianity (where it will almost certainly do even worse).
and thats part of the trouble here, some of us want to see this site go in a more objective direction. Or at least some backup when answering subjective questions.
@waxeagle That would be ideal at this point; but it's going to take a concerted effort from the community to make that happen. The site already needs more moderator effort than any other beta I've been involved in - I fully expect the pro tems to face Progse-like challenges.
well, let's try this then: @peterturner - mind stopping in when you get the chance? Would like to pick your brain re: this site as a "programmers.se"-like partner to a SO-like BH... @marktrapp if you could somehow show up too, that'd be awesome.
Question: we have 7 questions tagged hermeneutics at the moment. How many of those have A. at least one answer that qualifies as good/great B. Enough validity to actually be a question on BH.SE C. Are written well enough to attract an expert
I have heard that some consider it the only sure sign of having received the Holy Spirit, which would seem quite important. By what justification do those who hold to this belief consider it necessary?
Proposal: Biblical Hermeneutics
Question: we have 7 questions tagged hermeneutics at the moment. How many of those have
at least one answer that qualifies as good/great
Enough validity to actually be a question on BH.SE
Are written well enough to attract an expert
We are exploring the ramifi...
@waxeagle How many issues have come up in questions, answers and comments across the site that somebody could turn into great questions for BH? If the beta opens I'll be asking questions until I hit the Q limit.
@wax made the comparison to Progse, where SO & progs share a general topic but with a different focus
user2334
16:57
Well, my personal thoughts, if you want to compare it to P.SE, is that the P.SE vs. SO relationship is probably the most damaging aspect of P.SE. If one lesson could be learned from it, I would hope it's that you don't want two sites, where one is perceived as the good site where good questions are asked and the other is perceived as the OT playground to not be too harsh on the people you don't want polluting the good site.
user2334
If the topics of BH aren't on-topic on Christianity, then that's fine (like Quant and Stats or Math and Physics), but having a second site launch as a better attempt for more constructive questions... eh, might as well just shut Christianity down
@Mark: Where did you get that perception of Programmers from? I certainly don't see it as a dumping ground for SO. It's a different site for different kinds of questions. Not "less on-topic" or "polluted," just with a different focus.
HardOCP has an image with an equation which apparently draws the Batman logo. Is this for real?
I have heard that some consider it the only sure sign of having received the Holy Spirit, which would seem quite important. By what justification do those who hold to this belief consider it necessary?
Proposal: Biblical Hermeneutics
Question: we have 7 questions tagged hermeneutics at the moment. How many of those have
at least one answer that qualifies as good/great
Enough validity to actually be a question on BH.SE
Are written well enough to attract an expert
We are exploring the ramifi...
