All I have had a good time over close to 20 years posting on this site. I have worked through plenty of cult recovery. I have called out all of the areas in the BITE model where TWI enslaved people.
It has now come to the point where I feel that a Christian viewpoint is no longer welcome on Greasespot Cafe. It is fine to me if people in working through the trauma of the cult operation leave Christianity.
However it is not fine to them that I remain Christian. I cannot call out faulty logic without moderation and hypocrisy with leaving the posts attacking Christianity unaltered but removing the Christian perspective posts.
So for that reason this will be my last post on this site. Those of you that have my email please reach out.
Best wishes in your lives developing a post TWI healthy life logic and development.
Once again, the notion that "a Christian viewpoint is not welcome on Greasespot Cafe" is untrue and contrary to the overwhelming evidence. Dozens of posts and threads expressing Christian points of view remain on GSC unchallenged, unedited and unmotivated, including hundreds of posts by chockfull.
"It is fine to me [chockfull] if people in working through the trauma of the cult operation leave Christianity." Again, the evidence suggests otherwise. This current controversy arose after chockfull changed posts from expressing his/her views to criticizing non-Christians on a personal level, accusing them of bias, egotistism and seeing the Word through "dung-colored glasses." The notion that "deconversion" could even be a topic of discussion was scorned by chockfull. This is far from being "fine" with people who leave Christianity. It would be more accurate to say "fine with people who leave Christianity as long as they don't discuss it or examine it."
This is not a new phenomenon on GSC. It's happened before. It's what led to the separation of Doctrinal into multiple sections where people could anticipate different "ground rules."
Mark Sanguinetti, an unapologetic Christian, often comes onto the atheist forum, expresses his Christian point of view, and lets the readers decide what to do with it. His posts are almost never moderated because he doesn't attack people.
"However it is not fine to them that I remain Christian. I cannot call out faulty logic without moderation and hypocrisy with leaving the posts attacking Christianity unaltered but removing the Christian perspective posts."
This is categorically false. Chockfull has been posting as a Christian for decades without that being a problem. However, his/her definition of "calling out faulty logic" leaves something to be desired. Chockfull does indeed challenge views that are expressed. And chockfull's challenges are addressed. That's where the problem lies. Chockfull appears to think he/she has the right to "point out faulty logic" without having to suffer the indignity of rebuttal. When rebuttal, chockfull gets personal and way off topic. The deconversion thread became about my actions as a moderator involving other people, not because it was relevant to the discussion, but because making it about ME draws attention away from the topic.
Those posts should have been deleted immediately. They were not. That was my mistake and it will not be repeated.
To be clear, the moderation of Chockfull's posts on the Deconstruction thread had NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS/HER EXPRESSION OF CHRISTIAN VIEWS and ecerything to do with making sure the thread remained on topic.
Moderators cannot help it if certain posters find the atheist subforum more interesting than the conversations they are [not] initiating in the doctrinal section. Nonetheless, the blanket branding of non Christian views as "egotistical" and the constant derailing of threads to make them about people instead of topics cannot and will not be tolerated if healthy discussions are to continue.
If you want to leave, feel free. But you are welcome to return any time.
But neither you nor anyone else will be permitted to come on this page to lie about other people, including Christians.
You were given chance after chance to stay on topic, but you repeatedly came back and attacked people instead of ideas.
Your attacks on people were the only posts that were moderated.
If you don't want to be part of a forum that insists you treat ALL posters with the same respect you demand, then leaving is your call.
Replies to this post have been hidden for the time being and it is locked to future comments for now. They were coming in too rapid fire succession to handle any other way.
i will review things this evening. I cannot right now because of, well… other things I need to do.
- Modgellan
In other words, everyone take a breather. Christians and non- christians are both still welcome at GSC. Gots ta go for now.
This thread is now unlocked and the original post and one reply have been restored. You all are welcome to continue provided comments stay within the rules for GSC.
A bit rich coming from a 'moderator' to say people ridiculing, mocking, attacking other posters will not be tolerated...what a joke ! I think of Oldsman, Mike and others who have been pilloried to the post office and back...this forum does indeed seem to be becoming as 'one eyed' and 'clicky' as twi ever was...just saying...
See Allan? Allan, say hi. So anyway, Allan has been given multiple warnings for [checks notes] more than four years to knock off the politics, but he keeps coming back and posting politics, only to get more warnings. With me so far?
Cool, so Allan, who by the way is Christian, got another "one more time and that's it" warning in January, and he came onto a thread in the atheism forum two months later to complain that I'm an atheist (the post is still there), which would be FINE if the thread were about me being an atheist, but it wasn't. So we asked [not demanded. Just asked] him to stay on topic and his reply was to post a video. About politics.
And still he wasn't banned. Nope. He was invited to talk it out, let's work this out, we don't want you to leave, but you're constantly violating the no politics rule, man. But he declined to have a real discussion.
So naturally, we... warned him again.
Now he's here to talk about how intolerant I am.
He's HERE. Not banned, still. Not restricted. Not on moderator approval. Still posting freely.
He was invited to talk it out, let's work this out, we don't want you to leave, but you're constantly violating the no politics rule, man. But he declined to have a real discussion.
And Allan! You're still here? Aren't you Christian?
Actually, I am still here, but rarely posting.
What I do is simply check in briefly a couple of times per week, and gaze at the “All Activity” page to see if anything outstanding is going on.
What I see is boredom, in all the trivia forum posting.
And I also see grappling for a some kind of post-TWI and post-GSC perspective on life and living and even God. …pretty much where I was at 52 years ago, before my first twig, experimenting with all sorts of religion.
This thread got my attention, as I have been noting the recent years of deaths, retirements, and no-shows that are such an extreme stark contrast to 20 years ago.
I no longer grapple with finding strategies to enlighten you folks to the easy possibility of getting back to the greatest Light to shine on humanity since the First Century.I am totally satisfied with the small group of GSC grads that have privately formed relationships with me over the years, most of whom left GSC long ago.
To the topic at hand, I want to thank both Pawtucket and YOU, Raf, for your extreme dedication to free speech, even to the point of REPEATEDLY standing with me, defending my right to post in GSC, in spite of immense pressure from many others to ban me.
My hat is off to both of both of you for resisting the emotions of the crowd back in the early 2000s, and an atmosphere of the most glaring hatred I had ever seen.
The set of several times you, Raf, stepped into the “Absent Christ” thread last year to shame the logic of a crowd gone mad to reason, was a paragon of fair unbiased journalism ethics.
I was very fearful before and shortly after posting here in 2002, due to the crowd’s hatred, but management here consistently fought that off, and things finally got civil… most of the time.Kudos also to any other mods who adopted these excellent standards that Paw and Raf established.
Christians always say and do this, and never say and do that.
Atheists always say and do this, and never say and do that.
both statements are lies
a good "rule" or thing to consider is never say always and never say never
so.... whatever....
Since you brought it up here I will clarify it here, though it's really not on topic here...
ALWAYS is an adverb. It modifies a verb. Not a noun.
To say something ALWAYS happens is to say whenever you have a occurrence or circumstance, A, you will have a corresponding occurrence, B.
So let's say A is "atheist admits he doesn't know something about how life appeared on the planet.
Given A, it is a rhetorical certainty that some believer somewhere will come out and say "You're just saying I don't know because you refuse to admit the answer is God. CHECKMATE!"
The more people involved in the conversation, the more that rhetorical certainty becomes a mathematical certainty.
Note that the ALWAYS applies to occurrence B, something that always HAPPENS, verb.
It does not modify the noun "believers" or "Christians." It does not say ALL CHRISTIANS DO THIS. Because that would be silly. Lots of Christians don't do that.
But lots do. And there will always be someone who does. You can count on it.
So by applying the ALWAYS to believers instead of to the occurrence of a believer saying what some believer always says, you completely changed the meaning of my comment.
Now, you could have handled this by saying "you shouldn't say always. Not all believers do that." And I would have replied "That's not what I meant to say, but I can see where you might think that. Let me edit the post to add clarity."
And it would have been over.
Instead, you said... let's see...
"you obviously have no clue to what other people think until you ask then shut-up and listen."
Those were your words. "Shut up."
After demanding to be treated with a respect you were not willing to show. "I grow tired" you said before accusing me of something YOU READ INTO my post that I never said.
I specifically attributed that behavior to "the Ken Hamms of the world." Are you a Ken Hamm? No?
Then lean in close... I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT YOU.
Despite your rampage, I still managed to see your point and I went back to the original post and added some modifiers to make it even more clear [as if limiting it to the Ken Hamms of the world wasn't enough] that I was only talking about some people and not a single person on GSC, much less all Christians everywhere.
Now, if you had asked instead of joining the Let's Pile On Raf cult, we could have resolved this a lot more amicably.
Let's assume we can all do that moving on.
[Added later]
By the way, there is such a thing as hyperbole. Most people in casual conversations recognize that always doesn't mean always and they never take it literally because there are always exceptions.
It's like when people say Raf always hides pro-Christian posts when 99.99 percent of their pro-Christian posts are still on the site. Obviously they mean I delete MANY pro-Christian posts. Not that they have ANY examples that don't flagrant violate gsc rules. That one's literal, by the way. Not any examples of any post anywhere on this site that was moved or moderated strictly for espousing a Christian point of view.
It always rains whenever I wash my car. ALWAYS?
A watched pot never boils. NEVER?
You are on a message board, not an English mayor's doctoral dissertation.
You would never jump down someone's throat in person for saying always when he meant often.
That's not what happened here. But if it were, there would be nothing abnormal about it except the overwrought response.
Mike gives me too much credit for rules that I had nothing to do with establishing. He also glossed over my role in making this place so inhospitable to him when he first arrived. For which I don't think I ever apologized. Nor will I. The Raf who did those things had a completely different worldview at the time. An apology would be meaningless.
Nonetheless, thank you, Mike.
[P.S. As much as many here would no doubt like for Mike to get lost, no one to my knowledge has asked moderators to ban him].
See Allan? Allan, say hi. So anyway, Allan has been given multiple warnings for [checks notes] more than four years to knock off the politics, but he keeps coming back and posting politics, only to get more warnings. With me so far?
Cool, so Allan, who by the way is Christian, got another "one more time and that's it" warning in January, and he came onto a thread in the atheism forum two months later to complain that I'm an atheist (the post is still there), which would be FINE if the thread were about me being an atheist, but it wasn't. So we asked [not demanded. Just asked] him to stay on topic and his reply was to post a video. About politics.
And still he wasn't banned. Nope. He was invited to talk it out, let's work this out, we don't want you to leave, but you're constantly violating the no politics rule, man. But he declined to have a real discussion.
So naturally, we... warned him again.
Now he's here to talk about how intolerant I am.
He's HERE. Not banned, still. Not restricted. Not on moderator approval. Still posting freely.
About how intolerant I am.
Should be good.
Neither I nor others have mentioned anything about threats real or implied of being 'booted off' GSC...and tbh it would hardly be a 'life changing' or devastating occurrence would it now :)....it was merely mentioned that there are posters on here who are very skewed and abrasive and insulting to others who post with a differn't view point to theirs...be honest now...GSC aint no 'all embracing' 'bipartisan' fest of forgiving disillusioned former cultists lol...and really, those particular posters should know better having lived through the abuse of twi.
These abrasive posters... are they the ones who accuse those who disagree with them of having massive egos, seeing the word through sh!t-colored glasses, or being responsible for Satan's takeover of America because they don't support your favorite political party or candidate?
Or is your disdain for the guy who says "knock that off, GSC has rules and you're violating them"?
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modcat5
Once again, the notion that "a Christian viewpoint is not welcome on Greasespot Cafe" is untrue and contrary to the overwhelming evidence. Dozens of posts and threads expressing Christian points of view remain on GSC unchallenged, unedited and unmotivated, including hundreds of posts by chockfull.
"It is fine to me [chockfull] if people in working through the trauma of the cult operation leave Christianity." Again, the evidence suggests otherwise. This current controversy arose after chockfull changed posts from expressing his/her views to criticizing non-Christians on a personal level, accusing them of bias, egotistism and seeing the Word through "dung-colored glasses." The notion that "deconversion" could even be a topic of discussion was scorned by chockfull. This is far from being "fine" with people who leave Christianity. It would be more accurate to say "fine with people who leave Christianity as long as they don't discuss it or examine it."
This is not a new phenomenon on GSC. It's happened before. It's what led to the separation of Doctrinal into multiple sections where people could anticipate different "ground rules."
Mark Sanguinetti, an unapologetic Christian, often comes onto the atheist forum, expresses his Christian point of view, and lets the readers decide what to do with it. His posts are almost never moderated because he doesn't attack people.
"However it is not fine to them that I remain Christian. I cannot call out faulty logic without moderation and hypocrisy with leaving the posts attacking Christianity unaltered but removing the Christian perspective posts."
This is categorically false. Chockfull has been posting as a Christian for decades without that being a problem. However, his/her definition of "calling out faulty logic" leaves something to be desired. Chockfull does indeed challenge views that are expressed. And chockfull's challenges are addressed. That's where the problem lies. Chockfull appears to think he/she has the right to "point out faulty logic" without having to suffer the indignity of rebuttal. When rebuttal, chockfull gets personal and way off topic. The deconversion thread became about my actions as a moderator involving other people, not because it was relevant to the discussion, but because making it about ME draws attention away from the topic.
Those posts should have been deleted immediately. They were not. That was my mistake and it will not be repeated.
To be clear, the moderation of Chockfull's posts on the Deconstruction thread had NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS/HER EXPRESSION OF CHRISTIAN VIEWS and ecerything to do with making sure the thread remained on topic.
Moderators cannot help it if certain posters find the atheist subforum more interesting than the conversations they are [not] initiating in the doctrinal section. Nonetheless, the blanket branding of non Christian views as "egotistical" and the constant derailing of threads to make them about people instead of topics cannot and will not be tolerated if healthy discussions are to continue.
If you want to leave, feel free. But you are welcome to return any time.
But neither you nor anyone else will be permitted to come on this page to lie about other people, including Christians.
You were given chance after chance to stay on topic, but you repeatedly came back and attacked people instead of ideas.
Your attacks on people were the only posts that were moderated.
If you don't want to be part of a forum that insists you treat ALL posters with the same respect you demand, then leaving is your call.
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Modgellan
Replies to this post have been hidden for the time being and it is locked to future comments for now. They were coming in too rapid fire succession to handle any other way.
i will review things this evening. I cannot right now because of, well… other things I need to do.
- Modgellan
In other words, everyone take a breather. Christians and non- christians are both still welcome at GSC. Gots ta go for now.
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Modgellan
This thread is now unlocked and the original post and one reply have been restored. You all are welcome to continue provided comments stay within the rules for GSC.
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Allan
A bit rich coming from a 'moderator' to say people ridiculing, mocking, attacking other posters will not be tolerated...what a joke ! I think of Oldsman, Mike and others who have been pilloried to the post office and back...this forum does indeed seem to be becoming as 'one eyed' and 'clicky' as twi ever was...just saying...
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cman
Yeah Allan, I see your point. The same talk some accused others of, they are actually doing it.
I don't let it bother me anymore. Just ignore it best you can.
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Raf
Ask Mike and Oldiesman what they think now.
And Allan! You're still here? Aren't you Christian?
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Nathan_Jr
He said ‘one eyed.’
Reminds me of that charlatan.
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Raf
Oh, Nathan, you got here just in time.
See Allan? Allan, say hi. So anyway, Allan has been given multiple warnings for [checks notes] more than four years to knock off the politics, but he keeps coming back and posting politics, only to get more warnings. With me so far?
Cool, so Allan, who by the way is Christian, got another "one more time and that's it" warning in January, and he came onto a thread in the atheism forum two months later to complain that I'm an atheist (the post is still there), which would be FINE if the thread were about me being an atheist, but it wasn't. So we asked [not demanded. Just asked] him to stay on topic and his reply was to post a video. About politics.
And still he wasn't banned. Nope. He was invited to talk it out, let's work this out, we don't want you to leave, but you're constantly violating the no politics rule, man. But he declined to have a real discussion.
So naturally, we... warned him again.
Now he's here to talk about how intolerant I am.
He's HERE. Not banned, still. Not restricted. Not on moderator approval. Still posting freely.
About how intolerant I am.
Should be good.
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Nathan_Jr
Oh, Irony. Back so soon? Bless your little heart.
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Rocky
Constantly or repeatedly?
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Raf
Touche! Repeatedly would have been the better word!
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Rocky
My perspective is that words matter. Yet, sometimes I can be too picky. I'm thankful for the kind hearted way you took this one.
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Mike
Actually, I am still here, but rarely posting.
What I do is simply check in briefly a couple of times per week, and gaze at the “All Activity” page to see if anything outstanding is going on.
What I see is boredom, in all the trivia forum posting.
And I also see grappling for a some kind of post-TWI and post-GSC perspective on life and living and even God. …pretty much where I was at 52 years ago, before my first twig, experimenting with all sorts of religion.
This thread got my attention, as I have been noting the recent years of deaths, retirements, and no-shows that are such an extreme stark contrast to 20 years ago.
I no longer grapple with finding strategies to enlighten you folks to the easy possibility of getting back to the greatest Light to shine on humanity since the First Century. I am totally satisfied with the small group of GSC grads that have privately formed relationships with me over the years, most of whom left GSC long ago.
To the topic at hand, I want to thank both Pawtucket and YOU, Raf, for your extreme dedication to free speech, even to the point of REPEATEDLY standing with me, defending my right to post in GSC, in spite of immense pressure from many others to ban me.
My hat is off to both of both of you for resisting the emotions of the crowd back in the early 2000s, and an atmosphere of the most glaring hatred I had ever seen.
The set of several times you, Raf, stepped into the “Absent Christ” thread last year to shame the logic of a crowd gone mad to reason, was a paragon of fair unbiased journalism ethics.
I was very fearful before and shortly after posting here in 2002, due to the crowd’s hatred, but management here consistently fought that off, and things finally got civil… most of the time. Kudos also to any other mods who adopted these excellent standards that Paw and Raf established.
Bravo
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cman
Christians always say and do this, and never say and do that.
Atheists always say and do this, and never say and do that.
both statements are lies
a good "rule" or thing to consider is never say always and never say never
so.... whatever....
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Raf
Since you brought it up here I will clarify it here, though it's really not on topic here...
ALWAYS is an adverb. It modifies a verb. Not a noun.
To say something ALWAYS happens is to say whenever you have a occurrence or circumstance, A, you will have a corresponding occurrence, B.
So let's say A is "atheist admits he doesn't know something about how life appeared on the planet.
Given A, it is a rhetorical certainty that some believer somewhere will come out and say "You're just saying I don't know because you refuse to admit the answer is God. CHECKMATE!"
The more people involved in the conversation, the more that rhetorical certainty becomes a mathematical certainty.
Note that the ALWAYS applies to occurrence B, something that always HAPPENS, verb.
It does not modify the noun "believers" or "Christians." It does not say ALL CHRISTIANS DO THIS. Because that would be silly. Lots of Christians don't do that.
But lots do. And there will always be someone who does. You can count on it.
So by applying the ALWAYS to believers instead of to the occurrence of a believer saying what some believer always says, you completely changed the meaning of my comment.
Now, you could have handled this by saying "you shouldn't say always. Not all believers do that." And I would have replied "That's not what I meant to say, but I can see where you might think that. Let me edit the post to add clarity."
And it would have been over.
Instead, you said... let's see...
"you obviously have no clue to what other people think until you ask then shut-up and listen."
Those were your words. "Shut up."
After demanding to be treated with a respect you were not willing to show. "I grow tired" you said before accusing me of something YOU READ INTO my post that I never said.
I specifically attributed that behavior to "the Ken Hamms of the world." Are you a Ken Hamm? No?
Then lean in close... I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT YOU.
Despite your rampage, I still managed to see your point and I went back to the original post and added some modifiers to make it even more clear [as if limiting it to the Ken Hamms of the world wasn't enough] that I was only talking about some people and not a single person on GSC, much less all Christians everywhere.
Now, if you had asked instead of joining the Let's Pile On Raf cult, we could have resolved this a lot more amicably.
Let's assume we can all do that moving on.
[Added later]
By the way, there is such a thing as hyperbole. Most people in casual conversations recognize that always doesn't mean always and they never take it literally because there are always exceptions.
It's like when people say Raf always hides pro-Christian posts when 99.99 percent of their pro-Christian posts are still on the site. Obviously they mean I delete MANY pro-Christian posts. Not that they have ANY examples that don't flagrant violate gsc rules. That one's literal, by the way. Not any examples of any post anywhere on this site that was moved or moderated strictly for espousing a Christian point of view.
It always rains whenever I wash my car. ALWAYS?
A watched pot never boils. NEVER?
You are on a message board, not an English mayor's doctoral dissertation.
You would never jump down someone's throat in person for saying always when he meant often.
That's not what happened here. But if it were, there would be nothing abnormal about it except the overwrought response.
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Raf
Mike gives me too much credit for rules that I had nothing to do with establishing. He also glossed over my role in making this place so inhospitable to him when he first arrived. For which I don't think I ever apologized. Nor will I. The Raf who did those things had a completely different worldview at the time. An apology would be meaningless.
Nonetheless, thank you, Mike.
[P.S. As much as many here would no doubt like for Mike to get lost, no one to my knowledge has asked moderators to ban him].
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cman
I hope you come around sometime.
Some of us do not subscribe or buy into the circle-jerk games being played.
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Raf
Posters disagree with Raf = righteous indignation.
Posters agree with Raf = circle jerk.
And I'm the hypocrite.
Ok.
P.S. the issue you raised was fully addressed in detail.
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Nathan_Jr
Someone said “GSC grads.”
A gloveless concept.
Reminds me of that charlatan.
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Rocky
Many people say...
IMO, it's absurd to frame people coming to GSC and then no longer needing it in TWI terms.
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Raf
Please save criticism of Mike's positions for another thread. It's off topic here.
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Allan
Neither I nor others have mentioned anything about threats real or implied of being 'booted off' GSC...and tbh it would hardly be a 'life changing' or devastating occurrence would it now :)....it was merely mentioned that there are posters on here who are very skewed and abrasive and insulting to others who post with a differn't view point to theirs...be honest now...GSC aint no 'all embracing' 'bipartisan' fest of forgiving disillusioned former cultists lol...and really, those particular posters should know better having lived through the abuse of twi.
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Raf
These abrasive posters... are they the ones who accuse those who disagree with them of having massive egos, seeing the word through sh!t-colored glasses, or being responsible for Satan's takeover of America because they don't support your favorite political party or candidate?
Or is your disdain for the guy who says "knock that off, GSC has rules and you're violating them"?
Just checking.
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cman
always true
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