Does Arguing on Blogs Help Anyone?
It is hard to say if engaging in arguments like this ever bear fruit. Maybe they do and we never see it, but after months of investing my time I am tired of actively trying. I know that others will pick up the slack, as many already have. However, based on my experiences it seems like the medium does less to convince than it does to alienate. I could be wrong about this and next week jump right back into the melee, but right now this is how I feel.
Update, 9:15AM – So here you have postmodern and traditional reformed Christians debating 1) if the local church is homophobic, and 2) whether or not it is akin to racism. Then, because all posts on Chattablogs get listed on a public forum page, you get comments like this:
I am aghast at this post and at every comment. What in the name of all that’s holey is a “repentant homosexual”? How can you honestly, rationally label a personal attribute as “sin”?Being gay does not constitute some sociopathic disorder that only “repentance” can heal. It’s a simple biological fact. I don’t know about the exact differences between the race-related civil rights actions of the mid-twentieth century and the sexual-orientation-related civil rights actions of the late 20th and early 21st, as I am neither black nor gay. However, I draw a parallel with the aspect of being left-handed. Left-handed people make the world more complicated, you know? Why don’t you pray for all the left-handed to realize the error of their ways and to join the rest of us normal right-handed people?
I know there are Christian congregations where GLBT persons feel very much at home, but I think that in general, there is no reason for a gay person to participate in a Christian setting. One is likely to encounter either the directly inhospitable, or worse yet, the “love the sinner, hate the sin” type whose hypocrisy (backhanded compassion) is even more damaging.
Again, I ask the question, is this a healthy debate to have on the internet? Is it good for the Church? Is it edifying? Certainly one could argue that it is good whenever the truth is proclaimed, regardless of how it is received. On the other hand, must one not consider his audience? I am curious about how some of the people currently engaged in the debate will respond. What will they say to someone who does not believe that homosexuality is a sin to begin with?
it was kind of a joke, haze. or, at least, not an entirely serious thought. more playful than substantive, really.
and i wasn’t trying to imply that the french are more or less ethical than americans, that would just be silly. i just thought it’s kind of true that in this country, every confrontation ends up coming back to politics, as evidenced by the fact that you assumed i was *really* talking about liberal vs. conservative bloggers.
i do wonder what french blogging is like. if there is such a thing…
Proverbs 27:17 “As iron sharpens iron,
so one man sharpens another.” depends on whether being sharpened is a good thing or not, i guess.
i guess i’ve found some of these discussions helpful, and some of them more trouble than they’re worth. i definitely don’t agree that the purpose of an online discussion is to convince anyone else to do a 360 and join your camp cause they’re so obviously misguided and sheep-like that they’ll listen to anything; i don’t think that kind fo approach works in face-to-face discussions, so why would it for online debates? it seems like the purpose of any interaction with other people is to learn from others and find a way to express yourself more honestly. or fine-tine your ability to relate with other people. or carve out a space for dialogue in which you can co-exist with other people. or geez, just make you think more about what you believe and how that gets played out in the real world. i’m not expressing this right, but there’s definitely a reason we all keep going back for more discussions, and it’s definitely not because we’re converting scores of people over to our own very specific, very personal points of view on these subjects. or our personal views on these subjects which we cast as pure, unfiltered, unadulterated Truth.
and haze, if you keep thinking you’re going to crush other people’s lazy argumentation under the weight of your irrefutable statistical evidence, you’re going to keep pissing people off. which, i guess, is not the end of the world. some people were built to do that, i guess.
about that guy posting about left-handed people… i think that kind of comment should be helpful to people within the church. it gives you a pretty good idea of how the church is perceived by a lot of people: judgmental, hypocritical, and inflexible in its demands of people. that’s definitely a problem worth giving some thought to, right? that’s definitely not the kind of church Je
I think it’s very helpful Scott. There are people involved in that discussion anonymously who would never jump into a blazing twenty-something argument with such passionate dissenters. As far as me considering my audience, I get about 1000 hits per week and I knew that when I wrote it. They come from all over the country and the world. I am just writing what I feel pretty deeply about unapologetically. If I hurt someone’s feelings than you are right, I do need to consider my audience. But if you are saying I need to candy code my opinions so as not to do some negative advertising for the church, I disagree. Also, I feel like that post is very hopeful. I don’t know if posting about the pointless arguments on someone else’s blog on your own blog is necessarily helpful either. But maybe it is.
Wow Jerah, looks like someone harbors some bitter feelings. I don’t remember saying (or see in my post) that I was “thinking you’re going to crush other people’s lazy argumentation under the weight of your irrefutable statistical evidence”
Re-read please (what I wrote, not what you read). I simply said, someone can’t say things like, “the majority of military personal are below the national averages in education” or “minorities are extremely disproportionate” because you can actually link to census data that show the average education levels and minority statistics. If that crushes someoneââ?¬â?¢s argument, then so be it. But my statement wasn’t made the way you read it. A little knee-jerk there if you will.
By the way, if people get pissed when they make ââ?¬Å?factualââ?¬Â statements that are easily shown incorrect by hard numbers, Iââ?¬â?¢m not loosing much sleep.
wait, who posted that? i still can’t get on totten’s durn blog.
Haze, you’re not the first one to wonder where those kinds of comments come from. Jerah, I take back what I said a while ago about banning IP addresses. After observing you and Anna gang up on Illolibro, then act similarly here, the thought has crossed my mind. If you want to be respected and not “keep pissing people off”, then you ought to lay off the personal attacks.
Let’s see, I guess that I’m laying down some ground rules here:
ah, i should have prefaced that one with a “this is not in a bitter tone of voice” disclaimer. sorry about that, haze. i was using hyperbolic language online again, and i should know better. i didn’t mean to imply that you’re an unfeeling schmuck who bulldozes people who are trying to discuss stuff with you. i was responding to your comment about how those former friends of yours don’t talk to you anymore. cause i got the feeling that both you and scott were leaning towards the conclusion that online discussion about anything that’s not easily hyper-linked is pointless cause it can’t be quantified. and i think that’s wrong, cause we all obviously enjoy discussing things that are debatable.
if we start refusing to discuss anything that we can’t prove with “hard” facts and numbers, we’re going to alienate people (like your former friends). cause online discussions, like real face-to-face discussions, are all about relating to other people, right?
(does this put my whole post more in context? the comment to haze wasn’t a nasty aside, i swear.)
as for me and anna ganging up on illolibro, scott, i haven’t been able to access john’s blog for a few days cause i moved and don’t have internet access at home (and i can’t access it from work). anna told me that she had posted (and added she felt like she was too confrontational), but i haven’t read her posts or illolibro’s since… well, since the last time i posted, whenever that was. and i did not, at any time, attack illolibro personally. i was very careful not to, because the subject matter is so sensitive and we obviously disagree on some of it.
if you feel banning my IP address is necessary, go for it. i guess i was beign free with my language cause i figured discussing debate techniques was a pretty safe subject.
also (sorry for the 2 posts), the comment about it not being the end of the world if you piss people off was meant to be taken seriously. i obviously have a knack for it myself, and i don’t think God wanted us to all sit around agreeing with each other all the time. i think certain people (and haze and i might be two of them) were born with a knack for weathering confrontations. and, as with all gifts, it can be used for good or can be abused, right? that’s what it seems like we’re discussing here, how much confrontation is a good thing. and we’re negotiating, in particular, how much confrontation is ok on scott’s blog.
I appreciate your candor and, no, banning is not necessary right now. I just wanted to lay it out there as an option. I recently came across a comment policy, which I will probably follow (or something similar to it) once I move this blog to a new CMS. Think of it less as rules and more like expectations.
I think that #3 should be: Never disagree with Haze or he will crush your lazy argumentation under the weight of his irrefutable statistical evidence!
Don’t ban Jerah
. She adds spice. And anyone that I piss off that easily is always fun to have around.
I think it was the hippy comment that sent her over the edge (I get the vibe she’s a hippie chick). I really do like hippies Jerah. I got the old school Dead albums and bluegrass out the whazoo to prove it
. Hippies are better entertainment than the movies.
Seriously though, I look forward to her constant disagreement with any of my points.
Well, apparently the talk of rules has already run off one person. From Totten’s blog:
It’s not about censorship, really. It’s about civility. As the first rule on Shtuff’s said:
I know how passionate it can get, blogging and all, so I’m not going to ban anyone on a whim…especially people who are conscientious:
Apology accepted. I’ve done the same before, too.
and haze, i am most definitely not a hippie chick. i have an office job. i eat meat. i don’t smoke weed. i shower. i go to church. and some friends dragged me to a string cheese incident show and i hated every minute of it… (how’s that for disagreeing with every little thing you post:)
Jerah, It was Anna who posted that. If you can’t access his blog from work, then it sounds like the IP addresses may have been added to the MT blacklist. Whether it was intentional or not is the question. Do you get along with JQR?
It was just a joke. I’m glad to hear you shower and eat meat. We do have some things in common
.
But string cheese shows are some the best live shows around, so now we’re back to disagreeing.
By the way Scott, after reading that thread on the other blog…your comments were right on! I’m still surprised by the more prominent postmodern voices that have come out of covenant (I would guess that’s were a lot of these people are from).
As a side note (or actually the topic of this thread) I wasn’t trying to make light of the topic of civility. There should be standards, or everything turns into Crossfire or H&C…no fun for anyone.
i don’t even know jqr, but i’m pretty sure he has something against me. on account of i’m a flaming liberal and all. it’s interesting that i get blacklisted for my political tendencies. i’m not goign to complain, though, it keeps me off totten’s blog while i’m at work.
my husband’s studying some kind of semiotics right now, and apparently there’s an essay of roland barthes’ on pro wrestling (the WWF kind) that says that france’s version of WWF is all about ethics: the “bad guy” in every fight is bad because he cheats and doesn’t play fair (strangles the guys when the ref isn’t looking, etc). and while that happens in american WWF too, the emphasis is more on politics: the bad guy is bad because he’s a communist (at the time Barthes was writing the essay), or, these days, a liberal french wuss with a poodle…
and the good guy is an all-american hero.
all that to say, maybe blog discussions are more like pro wrestling than round-table discussions…
Oh my…Roland Barthes is terrible. I was forced to read “Camera Lucida” in college and it was the most convoluted piece of junk (I still have it as a joke about good books). I never knew someone could make photography seem utterly boring and stupid at the same time.
I thought your post was a joke at first…sad to say I guess you consider Roland Barthes’ opinion on the WWE (the WWF lost its name to the world wildlife foundation), and its relationship to how the ethics of the French are higher than Americans, as worthy to extrapolate something serious from.
I’m seriously laughing right now at that entire thought.
So are liberal bloggers the French wrestlers that are truly fighting evil, and conservatives the ones that are just creating enemies (ie. terrorists, atheist, UN…), and pitting themselves as the American hero?
I canââ?¬â?¢t believe that Iââ?¬â?¢m in a discussion involving Barthes, the French, and the WWE. As the great Don King says, ââ?¬Å?Only in America!ââ?¬Â
Yeah, I find that a lot of times when you are engaged in a persuasive argument it is easy for people to just circumvent or talk around any points you are trying to make.
What other people believe to start with, doesn’t affect what I believe. In other words, I’m not going to tailor how much of my faith and it’s principles that I will stand behind depending on the person I’m talking to. This postmodern move makes my head hurt. If you want to fashion Christianity into what you want, then go ahead. I just take the Bible at its word and go from there. Some will be convinced, some won’t. Actually many more won’t than will. The main problem comes when you want so many to accept a watered down version of what you believe, so you have good numbers, but the content of their beliefs may not make the numbers look so good in the long run.
And no…blogs don’t really convince many people. I don’t use it for that reason. I use it to express my views, and maybe get some insight into counter arguments, which do make a difference in face-to-face discussions. It think it is better for getting information around fast (Rathergate, the Reuter story about the Bush crowd booing Clintons heart surgery…both lies that the blogosphere uncovered) than for convincing. Kos and Atrios will never be convinced by Captain Ed or the Corner crew, nor vice-a-versa. But I like reading them just for fun…and to what lines of arguments people will be using (they’re a window into the sheeple).
Also, I need places to put Homer Simpson quote to enlighten other’s lives.
I have long said that some people really dont realize how public the internet is. I find visitors in my webstats that come for the wierdest reasons. I get several visitors a week from search keywords for photographic equipment that I have listed on my site.
I think that bloggers (and Christians especially) need to keep in mind that anyone, anywhere, at anytime could potentially be their audience. I have been forced by my conscience to pull a few posts here and there because I didnt want to offend my potential readers even though I knew my normal visitors would be rather amused by what I had done.
In conclusion…there is a time and a place for debate and the subject should definitly dictate where that debate should take place. I guess the hard part is exactly that…deciding when and where is appropriate.
As a side note, blogs are good for aguing numbers or statistics based arguments. With the ability to hyperlink to a number of sources and data bases, people just can’t throw around fake stats anymore. I ran into this during an argument about the education levels of our military folk and the race make-up of the enlisted. Old hippy-liberal friends of mine (from the pot-smokin, BC, college days) were trying to say they were the most uneducated reps of our national make-up and majority black and hispanic. With quick connections to the military census data, they couldn’t argue that point anymore (but they won’t talk to me anymore either). So the hard numbers arguments can be convincing, even if you don’t like the results, but the subjective “I believe that war is necessary at times” vs. “war is never justified”, or religious arguments won’t convince many.
Here is that link to that comment policy. For some reason I was having trouble posting it earlier.
Scott, what you can be convinced of is that you don’t have to do anything differently. That’s the important lesson to learn.
Can you unpack that a little?