rowdyhawk10 said:Look, I honestly think the idea that only believers should be allowed to post here is completely baseless and, frankly, unacceptable. Agnosticism and atheism are legitimate stances on religion, God, and morality just as much as any faith. People who believe in God don't have some kind of exclusive ownership over this subforum; it doesn't belong solely to them. If we actually restricted the religion forum to only believers, it would turn into nothing more than a tedious church service where one specific group just sits around endlessly lamenting about their predictable fantasies.
We’re never going to let that happen—not because we won't fight it, but because it's simply not an option. Honestly, I think outbursts like that... "What are you even doing hanging out in a religion forum? You're an atheist."Just a heads-up: we’re going to have to start handing out warnings and bans more strictly moving forward. If you spot any posts that cross the line, please report them immediately so we can deal with it. Thanks for keeping things civil. 🙂
steelskipper5 said:Look, I feel like I made my position pretty clear on this one: I'm calling it exactly what it is—hate speech.
If you’re struggling to figure out how to make the rules apply equally to everyone, then you aren't dealing with a technicality—you're dealing with someone's bias.
Look, let's get one thing straight: the Religion section isn't some kind of dedicated religious forum. In fact, the whole of Forum.us isn't a religious platform either. Because of that, we need to make sure everything stays strictly religiously neutral.
If we decide that believers get a free pass to be intolerant or use hate speech just because they’re "standing by their faith," then we aren't actually talking about freedom of expression—we're creating a loophole. If you allow people to bypass basic civil norms and US laws simply by wrapping those views in religious doctrine, then true equality is dead. We wouldn't have it in our social fabric, and we certainly wouldn't have it under the law.
The rules themselves are straightforward enough. They’re clear, they make sense, and there shouldn't be any confusion about what's allowed. The real headache is that people just don't bother following them, and to make matters worse, it feels like the moderators pick and choose when to actually step in. It’s pretty selective enforcement, if you ask me.
I can't really bring myself to talk about Politics. I stopped wading into that particular cesspool a long time ago; back then, there was just way too much hate speech being tolerated for me to bother wasting my breath or my sanity on it, especially as someone who isn't part of that specific crowd. But if you want to talk about Religion, I'm all ears.
If I were to step up and claim that one specific group of believers is evil, immoral, or depraved, I’d probably deserve a 500-point deduction for hate speech. Honestly, I’d hand those points over to myself if I could—the moderators here on this forum can vouch for me; there have been plenty of times when I’ve actually flagged my own posts, along with everyone else, because I just couldn't sit by and watch the trolling and insults spiral out of control before they stepped in to clean things up. But when some believer turns around and says that atheists are evil, immoral, or depraved? Nobody says a word. It’s like it's perfectly acceptable. That double standard needs to end.
I actually flagged one of those posts where they were making that kind of claim. Now, I’m just sitting here wondering if I'll actually see them get banned anytime soon. Based on how things have been handled around here lately, I’m betting I won't see much change.
Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is here. But if you wouldn't mind walking me through your reasoning, I’d definitely appreciate the breakdown.
I’m still relatively new to this scene, so I haven't quite caught up on the long history of bickering between atheists and believers here. That said, just for the record, I really don't care for it when religious folks start labeling atheists as evil, corrupt, or immoral. Just wanted to get that out there.
To be honest, I recently voiced the same sentiment—that atheists should probably stay out of religious discussions—and Shady ended up deleting my posts because of it. Look, I’m not complaining; I get why it happened, and I actually laid out my reasoning in the thread.
During a recent debate about atheism, someone sent me a link attempting to define what atheism *isn't*—listing all these things it supposedly doesn't represent. But honestly, at its core, atheism is simply the individual's rejection of the belief in God's existence. That’s it. It’s just a stance that can form part of someone's broader worldview or their general outlook on life.
So, why am I advocating for atheists to step away from religious discussions? First off, this forum functions as a space for institutional beliefs. A huge chunk of our posts and topics could easily be categorized under "alternatives"—things like discussing Christ or Buddha as states of consciousness, for instance. Secondly, since atheism is defined by the negation of God's existence, it doesn't actually make any positive assertions. If you aren't asserting anything true, what kind of meaningful debate can we even have?
Since atheism isn't a faith, it lacks creeds, confessions, institutions, canons, or formal organizations. It has nothing official. Compare that to Christianity, which possesses all of those things. Consequently, these debates almost always devolve into atheists attacking Christianity and Christians playing defense. It becomes a loop of: "The Bible is just a collection of myths and political maneuvers," "God is a fabrication, a criminal, or a tyrant," "Jesus never existed," "Christianity was born from a clash between Jewish and pagan influences," or "The early Church misrepresented Jesus's actual intentions." It’s always the same cycle.
What is the actual point of these arguments? If this forum is meant for discussing institutional religion, then the dialogue should focus on those institutional beliefs—which is fine, whether coming from believers or non-believers. What's missing is a discussion about the differences between us; instead, we get people who are part of an institutional belief system debating the very nature of institutional belief itself.
It’s like I mentioned in a post I deleted earlier: how can someone who doesn't believe in any of this (an atheist), or someone who isn't sure (an agnostic), or someone who finds the whole thing nonsensical because it defies common sense (a rationalist), have a meaningful conversation with me? I believe in God and the supernatural. To the "okay" atheist or agnostic out there: just say what you think. Say it's nonsense, say it doesn't exist, say you don't believe it, and then move on from the thread. If I were an atheist, that’s exactly what I would do.