BookTalk.org

What are your thoughts on a Christian forum?

I'd like to hear from theists and atheists alike. State the pros and cons and your concerns. Stahrwe suggested a Bible forum and I'd like to have an open discussion about this right here.

I don't really like the idea of a forum for specifically discussing the Bible as plenty of Christians appear to not know a great deal about the Bible. I'd think simply a forum for Christians to socialize and discuss Christianity, faith and the Bible free from attack from those that don't agree with their beliefs.

Rationalizations don't pique my curiosity. It's only interesting discussing religious claims to figure out the epistemic roots of christians and creationists problems. They're as populous and bandwaggony as zombies. I think it was Stah bragging about how 20 million christians joined a single group on facebook. If we did devote a forum to it, I would suggest calling it something generic so that google wouldn't redirect the zombies here by the dozen.

Not a bad idea, Chris.

Most major newspapers, for example, have a comics supplement, so this is not without precedent.

My suggestion is for more than just a forum to discuss the Bible, I would like to see an area where Christians and people of other faiths too can discuss books.

This also gets to the heart of what Booktalk.org wants to be. Is it going to remain a small site with a narrow focus, or a major forum? In my opinion Booktalk.org has the potential to be big, but not if you keep running off your customers.

stahrwe wrote:My suggestion is for more than just a forum to discuss the Bible, I would like to see an area where Christians and people of other faiths too can discuss books.

This also gets to the heart of what Booktalk.org wants to be. Is it going to remain a small site with a narrow focus, or a major forum? In my opinion Booktalk.org has the potential to be big, but not if you keep running off your customers.

You need to consider that this site being big may not be Chris' prime objective (Chris - please correct me if I'm off base here). I think he wanted a place for intelligent people to have stimulating conversation. If the site becomes big but the conversation becomes focused on Brittany Spears, he won't have fulfilled his objective.

Compare it to our little local church. Membership would probably expand if they had lap dances, free cocktails and the game on a big screen tv after Sunday morning service, but I think that might conflict with their objective.

There are places for lap dances and there are places for prayer. This place is for "quality books, good people, great conversations". Whatever fosters that is a good idea, what detracts from it is not.

If a Christian (or any topic) forum can be added that fits into Chris' vision, it should be added. If it will conflict or detract from his vision, then it shouldn't. IMO

I don't really think that we need a separate forum for Christians specifically. We have a section for Religion and Philosophy and this is enough. We basically already talk about Christianity more than any other religion that I have noticed anyway.

I am open to reading the Bible from an academic perspective. I would not want to read it in this forum from a faith-based, theological perspective. The Bible is massive, however. And it has an extensive history and is a translation from other languages. We could spend most of our lives studying it and people do. I would be open to it but I think we should read texts of other religious faiths if we are going to do that as well.

seespotrun2008 wrote:I don't really think that we need a separate forum for Christians specifically. We have a section for Religion and Philosophy and this is enough. We basically already talk about Christianity more than any other religion that I have noticed anyway.

I agree that already having a forum including religion is the key point. Having a Christian forum would not be in keeping with the generality of the other forum categories. It would stick out as a specific, permanent topic. When I first joined, there was a forum called something like 'Atheism, Freethought, and Agnosticism.' That might be roughly comparable to the proposed Christian forum, but notice that that forum no longer exists. I'm strongly against the Christian forum idea. As for discussing the Bible, if it's to be done, let's find a book about the bible to discuss. We can't possibly discuss the entire Bible. It would be without any structure and the bible is way too long a book, anyway.

Without a doubt, discussion of various topics, including Christianity is permited here.

I would love to discuss various religious documents. Right now I am reading the Bhagavad Gita and attempting to learn Sanskrit, it would be a good book for analysis.

I think all religious books should be open for discussion equally, we could include the Qu'ran, the Torah, Dianetics, Book of Mormon, Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Vedas, etc.