A little historical context here... Even through epinionatedannie's hate list, the atheists on SU have been all about free speech, no matter how much we disagree with what is said. A number of atheists have been pursued by Christians on SU, often only for the fact that they have reviewed atheist websites on their SU page.
The group was started by AnswerMan partly because there was no place for religion to be discussed by both parties. For some reason, theists don't tend to come to the A/A boards despite numerous open invitations, and we tend to get kicked out of even religious boards that are supposed to be about discussion.
Through all this, we've remained mostly passive.
(I only say mostly because absolutely nothing is absolute...)
But this signals a breaking point, in my mind. I don't know whether others feel the same way, but taking down an entire group for religious differences -- and what's more, destroying the possibility of a place for those differences to be discussed -- is a step over the line. If this goes through, I don't think I'll be coming back to SU.
See my thread on hate speech we have people advocating death to all islam under the X-Ian banner as rabid neocons yet this group gets deleted. Really wtf?
It really is getting ridiculous. I know of a few groups that were killed because of questionable TOS violations, but the ENTIRE reasoning behind killing this group is that it was "Misleading".
The accusation is that every thread title is mocking other forums. Whether there is such frustration that people are mocking doesn't override the fact everyone of the threads reached a maximum forum temperature that is a cool breeze compared and quite hospitable.
Sure the threads started by being dismissive but by the second page it was a nice gathering of minds.
Name one group where an atheist would feel comfortable enough to share amazing experiences that they attribute to the brain rather than God?
You can't deny that the group is greater than the sum of its parts.
The part that REALLY pisses me off is that discussion on this issue is being restricted in the core forums. Barry has deemed himself judge, jury, and executioner on the matter. He's actively suppressing all threads in the core forums that bring attention to this matter (because THOSE forums are the ones that have an almost universal following) and forcing these issues into the "private" groups.
Yes, the initial threads were "questionable" and some were downright offensive - the most radical of those threads were hidden, so you can't tell what AnswerMan and the Mods are doing to keep the peace.
Yes, much of it was satire. Yes, many people considered it a "honeypot" to lure in Christians. No, SU rules were NOT broken. AFAIK, no Christians were actively abused, spammed, or invited under false pretenses. (I could be wrong, I can't speak for everyone)
I have yet to find a place where Christians/atheists/Creation/evolution can be discussed in an intelligent, normal manner. This group however was not the only one asked to close due to similar type conversations.
8: The issue wasn't his role as moderator, the issue is his combined role of judge/jury/executioner. That's a lot of power for a single individual.
When he uses that power to suppress reasonable discussion on his decisions, it looks poorly on SU. This isn't a case of a locked thread - he made this decision, and refuses to pubiclly acknowledge it. He's HIDING the threads, not even giving a final response and locking them, as is done on other issues.
I've googled for stumblers who thumbed the group, and aside froms its members, I found ONLY ONE STUMBLER who had anything negative to say about the group. He didn't even comment, just tagged it with "Atheism" and "Hatred"
You'd think that there would be a significant uproar about this group, that it was "so offensive" yet the WORST that was ever said about it (to my knowledge) was a tag by a single individual, and the idea that it was "Misleading"
THAT warranted the its deletion? How about "Change the description of the group to clarify that ALL people are welcome, and not just Christians"?
Everything I'm seeing says that 30 people were tossed out of a group because one person (maybe two?) was pissed that the group catered to Atheists as well as Christians.
Kibiyama