I will continue pursuing conversations to help me understand what the biggest concerns are and consider what could be done about them.

Also, forgot to mention: “the others”, “us others”, (or just “me” if I should be speaking for myself), could do well to learn how to present our ideas in ways that would have people interested in reading and understanding them, instead of following the approach of forcefully whacking everyone coming within range with a meme-bat.

So… we agree from a progressive perspective this blog could be considered a good contribution, and a worthwhile exercise for progressives to read. A more conservative perspective is a more tricky consideration, so we can talk about that.

First there’s the question of me sharing my ideas and views. If my ideas and views are wrong, or evil even, sharing them might be considered the “spreading of evil”. However, my views are what they are, and honesty is a good thing, so I will be sharing them if I want to. There could be some good ideas with regards to improving how I share my views and what I comment on and how I do it, and I will continue to strive to improve in that regard, but that’s probably something best discussed based on specific examples. So, moving on to what’s really the concerns here:

Taking my blogging as a given for this paragraph, the next consideration would be for those reading. Some reading it could shake their head, maybe marvel at how far lost I am , and maybe learn a useful thing or two about “the other”, and move on. No evil there, just honesty in interactions between diverse people. Others, however, could feel they’re actively experiencing harm with regards to their spiritual lives as a result of reading certain things on this blog. Let’s suppose in such instances we could consider it a case of “evil has been served”. What could I do to help reduce that?

My primary focus is to try to have everyone as informed as possible with regards to what they’re letting themselves into. Thus the idea: if a newcomer comes to this blog, I can try to present them with a warning with regards to what they can expect here. That would leave it up to them to decide whether it’s something they are prepared to read or not.

Similarly, there’s the interesting psychological phenomenon of someone leaving a comment experiencing themselves dragged into a conversation no matter who responds — versus if they didn’t comment in the first place, they would more easily ignore discussions or topics they really don’t want to read or think about. Thus my idea to implement some features that would help people define (for themselves and for others) what conversations they are interested in, what they want to read, who they want to talk to, where they draw the line, etc. It will be there to help out, a psychological aid, even if functionally everyone could still comment on everything. Pipe dream? This part will require a bunch more work on my part, so it will take time.

Now the interesting dynamic tension I have here: my concern is largely about “totalitarian ideologies”. This blog exists largely to challenge totalitarian ideologies, as I consider them “evil” (to some degree, i.e. for a certain understanding of the word “evil”). Most of the examples of people refusing to read ideas conflicting with their own comes, in my opinion, from something of a totalitarian ideology. (Over-simplification? Nevermind, bear with me.) Thus, helping such people to *not* read this blog would kinda be me working against myself then? The reason I’m prepared to do this: I would like to encourage conversations with people that specifically *are* interested in learning more of the other side, of people that differ from themselves. (Those that don’t want to seek, cannot be forced to find.) Thus, helping people that want to “not read” is meant to help find and focus on those that are more open to understanding humanity’s diversity. In addition, enabling people to read and interact only with as much as they feel comfortable with, instead of having the “all or nothing” kind of involvement that seems typical (to some, e.g. to me), is *supposed* to encourage participation from those that are interested in only limited participation, and would otherwise just steer clear.

I’ve digressed a bit, dumping my general thoughts around this matter. Getting back to the “how to limit any evil possibly caused by this blog” question, let me know if there are more ideas. The warning seems to me to be the most useful first step, a good low-hanging fruit. I will invite others to contribute to the warning, those with conservative views that consider this blog particularly dangerous, they can write a short piece that I will then include in the warnings. I’ll write a warning blog post when I next have time (I’m hoping tomorrow, as this weekend could be quite busy for me) which can then serve as context for further discussions as to how it could be improved or what words of warning could be added. And of course, it will surely remain something of a compromise in both directions, as I would consider myself bending over backwards to the point of breaking my back as
“allowing evil”.

And thanks Kenneth! I hear ya.

For example, an old idea of mine is to conceptually separate two “regions” for conversations: a “pub” and a “dark back-alley”.

The Panda’s Thumb has a similar system…anything out of hand is not banned, simply moved off blog. Seems to work quite well.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, I don’t think this blog is evil…for any given value of evil…

@Michael

If you don’t follow such a view, my comments will of course be complete bunk to you, so just smirk and move on to your answer to the question from your own worldview.

This seems a bit defeatist. Your beliefs are clearly of value to you. Why not defend them?

I’ll attempt an answer from a Christian point of view (in which evil is opposed to good as defined by the revealed Word of God – Jesus Christ). If you don’t follow such a view, my comments will of course be complete bunk to you, so just smirk and move on to your answer to the question from your own worldview.

From a conservative (strongly biblical) Christian point of view, one might legitimately argue from scripture that this blog falls under the ‘food sacrificed to idols’ category of sin. Paul argued that because the idols were dead and the food was not unlawful in itself, the food sacrificed to idols could legitimately be eaten by a believing Christian without any issues in theory. In practice however, the socio-religious implications are massive. Eating the food might cause a ‘less mature’ Christian who saw you doing it to fall into sin, either by judging you, or by rebelliously trying it themselves against their own conscience. I have heard this argument used to manipulate people about everything from not getting tattoos to not joining a cell-church. The same argument might come up against this blog. A reader may worry that a ‘good christian boy’ might read your blog and spontaneously transform into an atheist! Oh my!

This is of course a massive stretch of the meaning of the text, but people tend to feel fine about stretching their holy texts when ‘necessary’.

On the other hand, from a more progressive, post-modern view, one might argue that faith requires the possibility of doubt. In other words, ignorance is not faith. Neither is faith positive confession. The true believer is not intimidated by Darwin or Dawkins, or even Fred May, not because they are necessarily wrong, but because even if they are right, so what? Thus, one might argue that reading this kind of blog is good for a Christian’s faith.