@Nathaniel Its a bit easier to rack up the votes as a new user as when an old question is bumped, it is rarely one I've seen before... but yes, I vote a lot.

Not nearly as much as edits though, relatively speaking. I'm already up to #2 all time in number of edits, behind only @curiousdannii

@ThaddeusB Edits or flags?

Oh, I see where you are looking. I wonder what the difference is between that and the number that shows on your profile.

@Nathaniel Profile ones don't include tag-only edits

Are flags query-able, or if that information private?

@ThaddeusB I don't think flags can be queried, though I'd imagine you could tell pretty quickly where you rank just by looking at 10 or 15 people's profile pages

I bet you're second in that category too; nice.

@Nathaniel :)

I need to come up with something clever to say to get the Auld Lang Syne badge. :)

That works for me :)

Figured it might :)

@Nathaniel I just remembered there is a badge for 500 flags, which only 6 people have... Confirmed #2 in flags behind @curiousdannii

@ThaddeusB Ah, good point; yeah that makes it easier to check.

Goodnight all, and happy new year!

Who was #1 in rep during 2015? Was that you?

@ThaddeusB stackexchange.com/leagues/139/year/christianity/2015-01-02

@curiousdannii I always have trouble re-finding those things, thanks. And yes, @Nathaniel was #1.

@fredsbend Would it be worth answering and saying that it's entirely appropriate to try to poke as many holes as possible in Christianity (as long as the questions remain scoped and on-topic)?

@curiousdannii Not just legal, but moral. And yeah, that frequently comes to my mind when looking at certain Mi Yodeya questions, usually the ones that get on HNQ.

@fredsbend A real answer would have to be from a halachic Jewish perspective. That's what the question is asking for. The question is not "Does Christianity.SE allow Jews to post at its site?" but "Does Jewish law and tradition allow Jews to post on Christianity.SE?"

My general sense, though, is they simply don't like questions that are in any way related to Christianity over at Judaism.SE. Despite disclaimers, even questions asked by Christians about Judaism seem to be viewed as suspect. That's especially so if the question seems likely to have applications to Christianity rather than to Judaism, and it seems that the questioner is interested in the question due to its application to Christianity.

IOW, they're not interested in supplying the background in Judaism for Christian practices and beliefs.

And even that question, which is basically about whether Jews are allowed to answer questions about Christianity at a site focused on Christianity, seems not to be of enough interest for anyone to provide a real answer. My sense is that they just don't like Christianity, and don't really want to talk about it.

Why were all the comments on this post deleted? Can a mod please get a screenshot for me? I think my last comment still applies and would like to re-post it.

@curiousdannii The last comment was "So I'm guessing that you think that their flexibility on *-millenialism means that they don't care about the second coming, judgement day and whether resurrections are bodily or not. Well I don't see how that's at all a logical conclusion.", which is arguing the validity of a point.

I think you have a point there, but the comment chain was not going anywhere. That discussion should be brought to chat. In general, any disagreement of the contents of a post should be brought to chat if it starts to turn into a conversation in comments.

However, here's the screenshot as requested

On another topic, directed to those voting to close What defence can be made for Christian anthropocentrism?...

@curiousdannii CC @El'endiaStarman - you over-state the case. Surely there are sites (or other things, like TV shows or types of entertainment) that your religious leaders would advise you to stay away from because they're bad for you? For exampe (example, not equivalency), I'd expect porn sites to qualify. How is this different? (I have to comment and run, but chat works asynchronously.)

@David It simply seemed awfully broad to me. As I said in a comment there just now, I could certainly supply an answer from a Swedenborgian perspective that would be on-topic as the question is currently worded. I simply had the impression that such questions with many possible answers were not very well accepted here.

@curiousdannii And yet, it is common among fundamentalist Protestants to disallow "fellowshipping" with more liberal Christians, let alone people of other religions.

When I was president of a local Council of Churches, and attempting to get all of the local churches, including the evangelical ones, involved in the annual Thanksgiving ecumenical service, I had to use the line of argumentation with one of them that it was an evangelization opportunity for them, because otherwise their higher-ups would not allow them to participate due to their restrictions on fellowshipping with people they viewed as non-believers.

I was successful in getting them to participate. However, the local Unitarians, especially, did not appreciate their evangelizing at all. ;-)

@curiousdannii I think there's a reason that kind of Judaism has less than 20 million followers worldwide.

@LeeWoofenden That's probably the real rub right there. They don't want to help Christians do their Christianity.

I suppose I can't blame them.

@MonicaCellio Perhaps both religions spend too much time on that topic.

Your objection doesn't invalidate the original premise: Wondering whether all our interactions are moral or not, no matter how benign and insignificant, makes for a miserable life.

@LeeWoofenden ^^^

@fredsbend the faulty part of the premis is "wondering about...all" and "all the time". The vast majority of questions that come up in day-to-day life are easily resolved and never make it to a Q&A site.

As for why Judaism has <20 million people, in large part because (a) we don't recruit and (b) we have stringent requirements for conversion. We, unlike most forms of Islam and Christianity with which I'm familiar, do not believe that you have to be "us" to be right with God/saved/merit a good afterlife/etc.

@MonicaCellio Certainly there are immoral places to go, like porn sites, but what I really pick up more on is the amount of detail that goes into these moral decisions. It's worth noting that I in particular don't really fit into most broad categories of Christianity. I'm not "fundamentalist" like many/most evangelical Protestants, and I'm not as "liberal" as many/most liberal Christians.

My view on morality is basically "sin = anything God doesn't want you to do", and God probably doesn't want you to do A, B, C, etc.

@MonicaCellio Yes porn is definitely almost universality considered sin among Christians. But I was specifically thinking of the questions on Judaism.SE about interacting with non-Jews: can we participate in a Q&A site? Can we buy from eBay? Etc.

There are some very small Christian groups which behave similarly, cutting themselves off from society, such as the Exclusive Brethren, and they're sometimes considered to be dangerously close to a cult. I know that most Jews don't cut themselves off completely like that, but the fact that the question needs to be asked is sad, I think.

"Bad company corrupts good morals" - there are definitely times when we should be cautious about who we hang out with, but it should be a wisdom issue, not a black and white legal issue.

@LeeWoofenden Not cooperating in ministry events is a very different thing from not patronising someone's shop because of their religion, I think.

@David The answer started out as a straight out rant. It's been significantly improved, but it's still very incoherent in my opinion. But thanks for the screenshot!

What's with this spate of questions about Catholicism, heaven and desires??

@MonicaCellio I, for one, don't think that the number of adherents in a religion is in direct ratio to its level of possession of "truth" anyway. As a Christian, I sort of think it's nice that Christianity is the biggest religion on earth. But to my knowledge, the truth is not subject to democratic vote or to demographics.

Besides, I happen to think that the vast bulk of Christianity is almost completely wrong in its doctrines. So the big numbers don't really mean that much to me when it comes to assessing the "truth" of Christianity.

@MonicaCellio Oh, and I don't think you have to be Christian to be saved, either. That's one of the things I think the main body of Christianity has been totally wrong about historically. In fact, the most popular post on my (Christianity-based) website is one that says that people of all religions can be saved: If there's One God, Why All the Different Religions?

@fredsbend I don't blame them either. But I find it somewhat disappointing. I find that Jewish commentary on the Hebrew Bible is often far superior to Christian commentary in focusing on what the text actually says, and means.

Christian commentary tends to read everything in light of the New Testament and in light of the particular sect's particular doctrines. That's not necessarily bad, but in my experience it often involves completely missing the point of the text as it was originally written.

I would love to be able to ask questions of Jewish scholars and rabbis about the text of the Hebrew Bible, both for my own information and as part of my own paid scholarly work. But a) I don't want to ask them to do something that's distasteful to them, and b) so far I haven't had much luck when I've tried, anyway.

@curiousdannii Nevertheless, this evangelical Christian church had a general ban on fraternizing with Christian churches that didn't share their particular angle on Christianity. And they weren't just some little hole-in-the-wall church. They were, in fact, the biggest Protestant church in town.