@Richard Yeah, certainly not my highest quality question but I was just interested :)

The other thing with that kind of question is it turns the tables. It's not "what does doctrine X say" but X is an unknown instead - "which doctrines say Y?"

It's still focussed, and that's the important thing, but it's not focussed on one particular doctrine

Good questions are focussed, bad questions aren't. The focus doesn't have to be on a particular doctrine necessarily, but it does need to be sufficiently focussed for acceptance criteria to be inherently obvious.

That's my quota of intelligent sounding words for today

@Waggers I actually don't have a problem with the question. It's actually a doctrinal question (being that angels aren't physical beings that have been studied by science). However, it's not something that's divisive between doctrines. That's why I left it open.

@Waggers What I'm starting to see is that it's not about being focused but about being constructive.

It seems that the problem with doctrinal questions that don't specify a doctrine is that they are not constructive: They don't have an answer.

Non-constructive questions, don't really have answers.

@Richard for me focused is a requirement to constructive...but there are other criteria as well...

@waxeagle Yeah, I agree. I think we can't separate them out. It's just a matter of which one is our criteria.

@Richard yes constructive, being broader should be the criteria...

@Richard The more that I think about it, though, the more strongly I feel about that proposal.

the functional polytheism question is a strange bird. Closed by community now has 2 reopen votes and 1 delete vote....

@waxeagle Nice. Yeah, it's an interesting, philosophical question, but somewhat offensive.

@Richard definitely is. But I think its an important one. The answers there have been really good. No its not polytheistic. We all believe there is one truth and that we have most of it....sure functionally that may look like polytheism in the aggregate but its not in anyone's mind and if you look at the whole picture you might come out with a mosaic that is truth...

basically it gets to the heart of his other question "is there truth" and if there is who has it right...where the correct answer is ultimately "no one"

Yeah, it should probably be edited to be... less offensive maybe.

I considered it, but I'm somewhat predisposed to not help rpeg.

@Richard I might make a pass...

@Richard nor should you be, he should be on a short leash...

Yeah, I agree.

My only query about that question is whether it's on topic here. It's not really about Christianity at all but the nature of truth more generally

And quite separate to the question is the issue of rpeg's behaviour. He's using the comments to query the answers - not to improve them but to debate them