This is essentially the heart of the complaints by Sal, and Lizzie and co.
I say no, it is not. We have a situation here where Lizzie and Patrick can chose to remove any post they don’t like, for any reasons they create, without explaining why, and relegate it to a garbage dump section. And then they claim, that because technically someone could go into the dump and read the banished posts, that this is somehow ethical moderation.
This is absurd of course, because the post is then taken completely out of context, and it does not show what the post was in reply to. It really is just a smokescreen technique for the site to fight their war on ideas, without admitting they are practicing censorship.
They know full well it is unlikely to ever be read in guano, so what is the point of putting it there? It is simply so Lizzie can pretend she doesn’t censor, which is really a subtle lie. Barry admits that he is forced to ban some posters.
But there is one even bigger difference. Barry’s site is a content site! He has news, real news! His site is not predicated on comments, it is about providing information. It necessitates a certain amount of moderation, in order to maintain the stories as the heart of the content, not the invective spews of people like Richard or Patrick.
So whilst Sal and Lizzie complain about the moderation of Barry, let’s not be deceived by what they routinely practice here at TSZ. A long while back, I reposted the exact words of another posted who was espousing nonsense ideas. I reposted his lines to me, and my post was immediately put into guano by Alan, while the materialist was allowed to same the exact same thing. And just yesterday, when Sal was asking why Barry banned him, I said maybe Barry had more than just one reason for feeling Sal was a kook (clearly an on topic point and clearly within the rules). It was guanoed by Lizzie with no reply as to why.
Hypocrites. I personally feel this is worse than standards. This site was started as a hypocritical statement to Barry’s controlling of garbage at UD. Thus Barry’s methods are more ethical in my view.
fifthmonarchyman,
The first falls under ignorant or stupid, the second under both of those and demented.
We’re telling you the truth about our lack of belief. Refusing to accept that is not just grossly insulting but against the rules here.
So, how does being wrong about that affect the rest of your argument?
IOW, your presupposition has no bearing upon the procedures you employ to reduce your uncertainty regarding the contents of your fridge, or the conclusions you derive from same.
The rub is ,how do you independently and objectively tell which are objective and which aren’t. Please demonstrate
One can ground knowledge on anything, a book, a presupposition, feelings.
Perhaps you mean absolute knowledge,then perhaps.
Or perhaps the Truth of God is metaphorical, expressing in words the mystery of God and you are subjectively conflating that Truth with small t truth. You seem pretty invested in your belief.
Just did as I have done before. Provisionally
Fifth, please don’t take my comment maliciously – I quite like you, I just don’t have the tools to reach you. You seem a decent guy.
Only if by “decent” one means a person who passive-aggressively insults everyone he can get away with insulting by insisting that his superior Truth™ sense reveals to him that we non-believers are all arrogant and self-deceived.
Yeah, that’s “decent” alright.
God is no respecter of persons for the most part he uses the same methods to reveal stuff to us whether we choose to acknowledge his gracious gift or not.
The difference is not (generally) in the knowledge we receive it’s in the grounding of that knowledge.
In my opinion you have no grounds for claiming to know anything at all.
Knowledge is simply impossible unless truth exists. God is truth.
It’s the Christan God or absurdity as far as I can tell.
That is why I keep asking for you to share your grounds for knowledge.
IOW how do you know stuff in your worldview?
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Why, when you haven’t shared yours? All you’ve done is repeat that your god is somehow essential for anything at all to make sense, but you’ve never once provided the logical argument that supports that conclusion. What you do instead is ask other people to prove you wrong.
The burden of proof is yours and yours alone.
“That is why I keep asking for you to share your grounds for knowledge.
IOW how do you know stuff in your worldview? ”
You can use observation, combined with the observations of many others, building together in a cumulative way, and you can be probably correct. OR, you can Make Stuff Up, convince yourself you have a hotline to Truth, and be Absolutely Certain. But you cannot be BOTH correct AND certain.
I notice that even the most devout god-botherers look both ways before crossing the street. Such empirical knowledge, gained by observation, saves their lives in countless different ways from moment to moment. It’s only when their imaginary gods are questioned that they suddenly and totally forget WHY they looked both ways. NOW, doing so is “absurdity”, I guess.
The unassailable fortress of the true skeptic.
Where does the burden of proof fall, Mung?
Mung,
Yeah, expecting people to support their claims is just so unreasonable.
You remind me a bit of an “alternative medicine” proponent I saw interviewed a while back. He was asked why they stopped double blind studies on their miracle cures. His response was “Oh, we found out those never work.”
Which I’ll accept as your affirmation that your presupposition has no bearing upon the procedures you employ to reduce your uncertainty regarding the contents of your fridge, or the conclusions you derive from same.
I don’t respond well to personal attacks. Sorry.
Patrick,
If you would like to start a post about alternative medicine, you are free to do so. Please stop trying to derail this thread about you blatantly moving posts into guano and trying to censor debate.
This site is odd. An anomaly. Everyone demands reason but no one knows what that entails.
I’d be happy to collaborate with you in a thread on the foundations for rational discussion.
Personal attack? I would have though alternative medicine would be right up your alley. War on materialism and all that.
Thank you Richardthughes!
I just sent off my donation to UD. I appreciate the reminder.
Remind me to donate to the Discovery Institute too, please?
Anyone else you hate? Bernie Sanders, maybe?
He hates me.
Not sure where you got ‘hate’ from. UD and Discovery Institute are in that ‘Joe Gallien’ category.
Edits!
I’d be happy to make a donation. But people here might think you’re a quisling. 🙂
You are among the few that seem to care about the potential impact of the policy of Elizabeth and the other admins of allowing and even encouraging the publishing of private correspondence on this site.
Reciprocating Bill,
I love you bill. I even wrote about it once.
Shhh…not here!
Is this supposed to be a point of some kind?
Quantum Mechanics has no particular bearing on my choice of lunch special at the Cracker Barrel but that does not mean that QM is not valid and vitally important to fully understand everything that is going on in the universe.
peace
Your inability to specify any way in which your your presupposition makes a difference to your acquisition of ordinary provisional knowledge reflects its irrelevance to the acquisition of such knowledge.
A full understanding of everything that is going on in the universe isn’t required for the acquisition of ordinary provisional knowledge.
Is it your thesis that when people looked into the icebox prior to 1900 they didn’t acquire knowledge of it’s contents?
My point is not about the acquisition of knowledge but it’s grounding,
We acquire knowledge because God graisiuosly reveals stuff to us. That is true whether we choose to acknowledge his gift or not.
Jimmy’s money spends the same whether it appeared ex nihilo or dad provided it for him.
However if Jimmy was to claim that Dad was imaginary his allowance would refute his argument
You don’t need to know about quantum reality but quantum reality needs to exist for there to be milk in the frig
A full understanding of everything that is going on in the universe is not required to acquire knowledge but it is required to ground knowledge.
To know anything I either need to know everything of know someone who knows everything
peace
So, you agree that your presupposition is irrelevant to the the procedures by means of which we acquire ordinary provisional knowledge.
Gratifying to see evidence of self-awareness in your smiley.
Let’s give it a rest.
Isn’t this just gratuitous apologetics?
For you, acquisition of knowledge is something that you perceive of as requiring an act of God. Other’s don’t agree.
Why not stick to what we share, instead of repeately bringing in the apologetics?
A little disheartening to see no evidence of self-awareness in your response to the smiley
Consider it tabled until the “God is imaginary” meme resurfaces yet again.
peace
Not at all. it’s a response to the unsupported claims that are made so often here.
I would love that but alas it seems to be beyond the capacity of many here to just let it lie.
I just have a hard time letting the ever present atheist propaganda go unchallenged,
peace
Mung,
I’m up for that. PM me with your thoughts. I’ll start pulling together an outline in between holiday tasks.
Is it “atheist propaganda” to say that there are some things that human beings can know independently of God?
Is it “atheist propaganda” to say that it is possible for any human being to know anything at all independently of God?
I think that I, and perhaps others here as well, did not realize how radical your presuppositionalism is.
Mung,
I’ve consistently said that I believe there is an expectation of privacy that Sal violated. If you haven’t told the person you’re corresponding with that you might make their messages public, you shouldn’t do it.
Yes, That is exactly the lie the serpent told eve.
we all know how that turned out
peace
I’ve made a new year’s resolution, which I’m implementing a few days early, not to read any posts about moderation. I may read posts by Elizabeth or other moderators, but not by anyone else.
I invite others to join me.
Fortunately, there are other current topics.
Which verse?
OK, I’m closing comments on this one too. If you have more to say, say it in Moderation Issues.