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Things for new people to know in order not to look completely foolish while posting in RF

Quagmire

Imaginary talking monkey
Staff member
Premium Member
1. Not everybody here is a theist.

2. Not every theist here is a Christian.

3. Not every Christian here is a YEC who reads the Bible literally or considers it the infallible word of God.

4. Not every YEC here spends his off time standing on street corners yelling at passers-by that they're going to hell.

5. Most of our regular members did not get their world view, theology, or understanding of history out of a Chic tract.


Ok, post away.




 

Quagmire

Imaginary talking monkey
Staff member
Premium Member
Why wasn't this stickied 7 months ago. Why?!?!?

Because back then, new people creating threads like, "If you can't eat poisonous snakes while standing in a fire like your Bible (which was written by Emperor Khanstanteen during the council of Nike, btw) says you should than what are you doing in a religious forum" were still funny.

Too bad I'm out of frubals.

*grabs Phil's beer*
 
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Humanistheart

Well-Known Member
1. Not everybody here is a theist.

2. Not every theist here is a Christian.

3. Not every Christian here is a YEC who reads the Bible literally or considers it the infallible word of God.

4. Not every YEC here spends his off time standing on street corners yelling at passers-by that they're going to hell.

5. Most of our regular members did not get their world view, theology, or understanding of history out of a Chic tract.


Ok, post away.

What does YEC stand for?
 

Quagmire

Imaginary talking monkey
Staff member
Premium Member
Young Earth Creationist.

Glad we got that cleared up (didn't want the Yugoslavian Ecologist Consorteum on my case. Again).
icon14.gif
 

Apex

Somewhere Around Nothing
There was something similar to this posted on another forum I used to participate on, although much more detailed. Ill see if I can modify it slightly to more directly apply to RF. Some of its "laws" are quite entertaining.
 

Quagmire

Imaginary talking monkey
Staff member
Premium Member
There was something similar to this posted on another forum I used to participate on, although much more detailed. Ill see if I can modify it slightly to more directly apply to RF. Some of its "laws" are quite entertaining.

If it doesn't break too many rules, I'll see if I can make it a sticky.
icon14.gif
 

Apex

Somewhere Around Nothing
Post 1 of 2

The person who originally came up with these posted under the name Swart in case it is not that obvious. He gathered these from various places on the net, all religious discussion forums, mainly geared towards either Christianity or Mormonism or both. I have tried to alter them to make them fit RF as much as possible while keeping as much of the original content as I can. The blue are my comments.


Swart's 1st Law


To participate here you need three things:
  1. A Grip
  2. A Life
  3. A Thick Skin
If you don't have both 1 & 2, lurk but don't post. If you don't have #3, don't even bother lurking.

Swart's 2nd Law

Make it logical.

Many of the arguments on this forum consist of logical fallacies. It helps to have an understanding of common logical fallacies before posting. That way, not only are you less likely to make one, when some describes your argument as tu quoque, you'll know what they mean.

Swart's 3rd Law

References. References. References.

Did I say something about references? If you post something that isn't original from you, you MUST provide a reference. Otherwise you are plagiarising. If you are copying from a secondary source, simply pasting the primary sources is not sufficient. You must post the secondary source as well, otherwise it means you are attempting to pass off another persons research as your own.

You will find that Christianity, and Abrahamic faiths, are discussed here quite a bit more when compared to other individual faiths. So the following is still keeping within the spirit of RF.
CADAN'S THREE RULES OF DISCUSSING CHRISTIANITY ON THE INTERNET

1. Godwin's Law is incorporated by reference.
2. Whoever knows the most Greek wins.
3. In the end, it all comes down to ecclesiology.


Lee's Two Laws of Posting:
[FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]
  1. If you haven't read this forum for at least 2 weeks, do not post anything.
  2. If you don't understand the reason for the first law, make it at least a month.
[/FONT]Bowie's Corollary: [FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]
[/FONT]Make it a month, anyway.

Woods' Theory of Wisdom:
[FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]
[/FONT]A wise poster does not start a new topic until s/he has contributed something _of value_ to an existing topic.[FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]

[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]The origional of these rules contained this:
[/FONT]Bowie's Inequality Constant: [FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]
[/FONT]Utah != Mormon (Utah is not equal to Mormon)

This is the perfect place to incorporate Quagmire's OP.
Quagmire's Postulate:
1. Not everybody here is a theist.

2. Not every theist here is a Christian.

3. Not every Christian here is a YEC who reads the Bible literally or considers it the infallible word of God.

4. Not every YEC here spends his off time standing on street corners yelling at passers-by that they're going to hell.

5. Most of our regular members did not get their world view, theology, or understanding of history out of a Chic tract.

[FONT=Arial, Arial, Helvetica]
[/FONT]
The Law of Assumption of Peculiarity

Just say you've read a book or pamphlet on Fundamentalism, seen a movie, heard a tape etc. and you're itching to unburden yourself on this forum and prove to everybody else they're totally and utterly wrong.

Congratulations! You've just succumbed to the fallacy of an assumption of peculiarity. Remember that your source of information is what is known as a secondary source. Chances are that any secondary source has been hashed out on this forum within five minutes of publication if not earlier. In all likelihood, it's been discussed several dozen times.

So, to avoid the possibility of proving yourself to be a clueless newbie, check through previous threads to see what discussions have already taken place.

Remember: Google is your friend.

Swart's Laws of Thread Titles

Thread titles give away a lot. The first rule is to not make basic spelling and grammar mistakes. That sort of thing says a lot about what you have to contribute. Thread titles like "Why x-ians are stuppid!!!!11" is not going to attract much attention other than amusement.

The Second Law is not to talk with authourity about a subject you know little about. I was Presbyterian until the age of twelve before I was baptised as a LDS. That doesn't make me an expert about all things Presbyterian. Sure I can comment about my experiences, impressions, understandings at that time, however that doesn't mean I can tell a Presbyterian minister what they really believe.

The Third Law is to not post mindless thread titles. The Fourth is not to respond to them.

The Law of Charity

When presenting any material that is negative about another's beliefs. Be sure to present it in the most positive light. That way you can critique from a position of strength without being cast as polemic.

If you can explain the beliefs of another person to their satisfaction, then you are in a position to critique those beliefs.

Stendahl's Rules
(source: FAIRLDS)

These were written by Lutheran Theologian Krister Stendahl as a guideline for critiquing any faith different from your own:

Rule One: Ask Adherents what they believe, not their enemies

The first rule was that when you want to learn about a religion you should ask the adherents to that religion and not its enemies. Now that seems fairly obvious but it is ignored an awful lot.

Rule Two: Don't compare your best with their worst

The second rule was a little more interesting. Don't compare your best with their worst, which is often done. You know, we Christians believe in the ideal of loving everyone, but the Muslims, look at those terrorists in Algeria. What you do is take the worst example of the other guy's religion and compare it to the ideal, almost never reached in your religion and that's apples and oranges, right? If you are going to compare terrorists, you should compare Christian terrorists with Muslim terrorists. If you are going to compare ideals, you should compare the ideal in the other faith with the ideal in your faith. If you are going to compare your saint to something in their religion, find one of their saints and compare them. That's the only fair way to do it.

Rule Three: Leave room for Holy Envy

The third one, I think, is even more interesting. His principle was [to] leave room for what he called "holy envy." By holy envy, he intended the idea of looking at another faith and saying, you know, there is something in this other religious tradition that I really envy. I value it. I wish we had it. I can learn something from it.


 

Apex

Somewhere Around Nothing
Post 2 of 2

Peterson's Rule

(source: FAIRLDS)
Peterson said:
I remember going with a Muslim friend of mine to visit a chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. And this is a very educated man, obviously, holder of a doctorate, I think European educated, as I recall, and we got to talking about what I was doing there, that I was studying Islam, and so on, and he asked me, "Are you a Muslim?" and I said "No." And he asked me the question that I always dread, "Why not?" which can get you into a very awkward position. Well, I tried to answer it positively and said, "I'm a Christian, I believe in the divinity of Christ and, therefore, I can't be a Muslim."

He said, "How can you possibly believe in that? Everybody knows that God doesn't have a son. God can't have a son. 'He nether begets nor is he begotten'," he quoted from the Koran. And then he said, "And let me tell you something else. Is this what you believe? Do you believe that God had a son and that to buy himself off because he wanted to destroy and damn everybody, he had to send his son down and make sure he was tortured to death so that he wouldn't have to damn all of humanity?"

I said, "Well, that's not quite the way we typically put it but that's a relatively fair statement of the idea."

He said, "Well that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Everybody knows that's not true. It's absolutely inconceivable."

Well, what struck me about that was that religions often look silly to people outside. He said no intelligent person could possibly believe in a doctrine like that. Well, besides the fact that it was somewhat personally insulting, I thought, "But intelligent people have demonstrably believed in that doctrine, whether you think it's right or wrong." I mean, St. Augustine wasn't stupid. Thomas Aquinas wasn't stupid. Calvin wasn't stupid. Kierkergaard wasn't stupid. There are a lot of bright people who have accepted a doctrine much like this.
Does this approach sound familiar? Dr. Peterson makes an excellent point. Outsiders view particular religions as just plain silly, one that no person in their right mind would believe. But, in fact, there are many people--good intelligent people--who believe in that particular religion. I'm sure you have had times where you have asked yourself, "how can they really believe that? I just can't believe it."

So, what is Peterson's Rule?
So the principle that came to me on this was that if you are looking at a religious tradition that has a large number of adherents...then there must be something in it that appeals to different people.

Mormonism, for example, has clearly lasted long enough and has clearly appealed to a wide enough cross section of people that you don't have to concede that it's true to say there must be something there that appeals to people; bright people, practical people, highly educated people, uneducated people; all sorts of people in all sorts of cultures have found something appealing in this movement. The same is true of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity in general.
Here is the origional in case anyone is interested and for reference purposes.
 

Quagmire

Imaginary talking monkey
Staff member
Premium Member
Those are great, Apex. Problem is, any newbie who needs to read it probably wouldn't understand most of it.
 

cardero

Citizen Mod
Things for new people to know in order not to look completely foolish while posting in RF

Make sure to carefully read all of the thread so as not to duplicate a post.

Make sure to carefully examine a sub-forum so as not to duplicate a thread (with a six-month allowance).

No matter how much he insinuates, Angellous_Evangellous is not your Daddy.

Mrscardero’s birthday cakes may just be jpeg files but they are still fattening.

Lawrence is not a kid!

Before engaging Jayhawker Soule in debate, make sure he is well rested.

Don’t **** with Katzpur, that cat has claws.

If Zenzero infers you as friend, don’t fight it, you’ll be better off.

Contrary to popular opinion, Thief is always present when he posts.

Cardero is kidding in 83% of his posts (its the other 83% you have to worry about).

If you need to reach other planetary systems, Apex is our go-to shuttle pilot.

Painted Wolf is female and Wado means "thank you" in Cherokee.

Don’t bother impressing Sunstone for any frubals, he is most likely out of them.
 
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Kilgore Trout

Misanthropic Humanist
- Try not to use words. Whatever you think a word means, it doesn't. In fact, there's a good chance it means the exact opposite.

- Don't be clear or precise. You can't expect anyone to respect your posts if they aren't sufficiently vague and esoteric. A good rule of thumb is that if your post still makes sense to you, try again.

- Never admit fault. I mean, how smart can you really be if you admit that you may be wrong? Just be even more vague and esoteric.

- Intelligent posts and idiotic posts are primarily treated the same. They are both either attacked or ignored. If your posts are attacked and/or ignored, err on the side of caution, and assume your posts are idiotic.
 

blackout

Violet.
7. There are many kinds of theisms, and many greatly varying gOd concepts.
When speaking specifically about the christian gOd, please specify.
MANY of us will not make such an assumption, if you do not specify.
 

Autodidact

Intentionally Blank
Learn to use the quote function. There is a sticky somewhere or someone will happily give you a lesson.
Learn about same-faith fora and don't accidentally tread on one.
Google first, post second.
 
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