Traffic has been steadily dwindling on this forum lately. It isn't dead, but new topics don't come up often these days. So I thought I'd make a thread to thank RGT for my time here. I'm not leaving or anything, but I wanted to make the thread before all the regs are gone. I haven't mentioned any names in this post, but know that there are plenty of you I have come to respect for your intellect.

I don't know how many know me these days, but I came over from SMP when we did the RGT / SMP - split because some people didn't like theology and religion debates / quarrels in the science forum. In my opinion that actually greatly diminished the quality of SMP. It was never a very good place for mere discussion, debate was what made it interesting and the split killed that. So I tagged over here.

I began here as a fairly typical (intellectually) combative atheist, but over the years I have mellowed fairly drastically. I don't know if it is just growing older or if the debates have affected me, but these days I'm happy simply if people are open and accepting towards modern society and its methods of attaining knowledge. Once you have that, I find that it doesn't matter much if people are very religious or not. I served with a former missionary in my squad, I wrote my bachelor's thesis with an ordained priest and one of my most interesting colleagues is a hardliner Lutheran - and they are all exceptional people. Over time you realize that you can't simple assume that core beliefs about a god / not a god is in itself stupid, it's what you do with that belief that makes it stupid or not stupid.

One thing I have done here, however, is learn. They say teaching others is the greatest form of learning, and that's just plain BS. The greatest learning comes from not wanting to look dumb. And when you have a forum dedicated to debating and discussing the very fabric of the universe, there is plenty of opportunity to look like a complete moron - which means there is an awesome opportunity for personal growth. I'm not going to say everybody seizes that chance, but I think a lot of the posters on this forum have. Personally my time here has left me with a much greater knowledge of philosophy, history, religion (duh), law, political science and logic - to name only a few. I thank all of you for the debates that forced me to learn.

Yeah, I'm going to brag now. People like us, who bother tackling the width of these subjects - for no reason than our own intellect - we are renaissance men. And that's a dying breed in modern society, where we tend to specialize more so than broaden our horizons. And I don't think you can understand the world well without being multi-faceted.

If there is one lesson learned I would most of all to bring up, it is this one: Statements should matter. Debate is interesting, but it can corrupt us when we start to worry about losing face (which we all do from time to time, we're human). Still: Points should not be made to "win" or make it impossible to lose. Losing face hurts like hell, but statements have little value when they carry no meaning that can be assessed. If you want to be an intellectual, you have to go out on the limb and you will look like an idiot from time to time. Anything else is just posing.

In short: Thanks to you all, and hopefully you'll all happily debate a lot in long good lives (and afterlives, in case I'm wrong)!

If you want to share your RGT history, feel free.

I was thinking about this the other day, I fell into RGT after the split with SMP, thinking I actually understood stuff and was surprised to find the arguments I gave credence to didn't really warrant it. I came here as a Christian of sorts, transitioned to a largely deist account of god then gave up any notion that god was knowable and as such found the question became largely uninteresting.

However the arguments gotten into by the same group of people tame_deuces refers to piqued my interest and I'm approaching the last year of an MA in philosophy spending time on questions that are unknowable but remain interesting in ways that god isn't. I've learned a ton, a lot down to posters here and some down to following up myself, there are/were posters here whose arguments and approach are among the best I've read across a number of forums and I have probably 50k posts in my internet history.

I'm not sure why the split but given the posters in RGT have posted better philosophy than SMP during my time paying attention to the two forums I reckon philosophy should have come across as well. That said Original Position did nothing to discourage off topic philosophy here.

There's posters I actually miss here, ones I think helped me a lot and ones I hope are doing well in their endeavors but such is the nature of forums that I'll just have to hope this is the case.

This.

I didn't really start reading RGT until well after the SMP split but it's always been amusing how this forum can attract both the most absolutely ridiculous posting and the most erudite and thoughtful posting at the same time. The former is standard for religion forums I think, but the latter is rare.

I don't remember either, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were too many atheists in S-land that simply assumed they knew they were right and didn't want to deal with these ideas that were different from theirs. Or maybe Sklansky started too many threads in this area and this was a way to try to isolate them.

When he posts, Original Position is the most content++ poster here, and has always done it thoroughly, carefully, and clearly.

My views have definitely changed over time. My life is broad enough that it's not just what has happened here (I hope that true of everyone), but in many ways an important element of that is the result of being here. There are a lot of "standard Evangelical apologetic" that I now understand are significantly weaker than what I thought of them when they were presented to me.

My faith remains intact in "roughly the same form" (meaning that the application of faith and its impact on my life is still fitting the same types of functions as it has before), but there are things that I say to describe it have changed. In many ways, it's far more precise because I've had to think about it carefully. Part of that is also tied to the general life transitions that happen over 7 or so years, as I just have a much larger range of experiences in my life that have required interpretation and understanding.

A surprisingly large number of thoughts I've read or had on this board have found their way into other conversations, most often drawing on the analogies that have been put forth for or against various types of positions. And I've definitely learned a lot of history and philosophy along the way, because in order to come up with better/stronger arguments, I've needed to do some research and read up on a few things to understand them (and their corresponding counter-positions) at a deeper level.

Lastly, cheers to Uke - For all the noise I've enjoyed with him, he's one of the people that has most directly challenged me in the most ways.

This forum was always the butt of jokes, but it was underestimated.

Its the only forum ive ever been a reg in and for sure learned a lot from many good posters, and bad ones. Thanks everyone for putting up with my bad reading and writing and general oddness.

Your oddness is kinda cool and your reading and posting sound batair. What I have appreciated about RGT is that the better posters often try to defend positions they don't agree with when the arguments against them are poor. This is a credit.

And tbf while I swerved some of the Aaron \ uke_master \ tame_deuces debates they were often pretty decent and I reckon I benefited from all three posters. well named has assumed the position of my favourite poster now that Original Position and zumby are largely absent but I've a lot to be thankful to RGT for in general, years have helped as well.

Yes, this is an important thing.

It's one of the cool wisdoms of math (and logic in general I suppose, it's certainly true in computer programming)... the best is to be right for the right reasons, the second best is to be wrong for the right reasons, the second worst is to be wrong for the wrong reasons but the absolutely worst is to be right for the wrong reasons - because then you risk never seeing your mistake.

"Right" in this sense when we debate the (fairly) unknown is of course up for discussion, which makes it even trickier. Even more important then, to use sound method.

Thanks for the replies all, I appreciate them!

IMHO you are all great posters and Original Position is a top notch mod for this tough sub-forum.

Thanks.

I dont like to name names and we had our differences. But Original Position very good choice as forum mod. RGT was lucky to get him as a mod and poster.

Indeed, OrP has an impressive formal background and dignified grace to back it up. That keeps a lot of egos in check, I think.

I'll refrain from commenting on specific posters (I'm not good with that sort of thing), but all who have replied in this thread I think are very good ones - and I don't say that to be polite.

One other thing I appreciate about this forum is that bad arguments are treated like bad arguments, no matter which side you're on. There's a lot focus on the argument itself and not the conclusion.

When the random atheist drops in and makes some dumb argument about religion (usually some blanket statement that would be seen to false with just a little bit of reflection), it's not as if the other atheists feel compelled to defend it and are very often part of chorus of criticism. Similarly, when religious people come in and make bad arguments, you see the same thing.

I'd also like to thank you guys. As some of you may know or remember, I joined this forum not long after realising that I had become a de facto atheist, and the couple of years spent arguing with (and learning from) all of you, was tremendously helpful.

I'm going to add as much to this thread as I've added to the forum. (Read: not much except to say you guys are the best)

Well, I've said this before, to general laughter and skepticism, but finding this forum was literally a life changing thing for me. I steamed in here full of opinions, thinking I knew everything and expecting to find idiots that I would blow away with my insightful views.... (I don't mind if you laugh at that bit because I do too now, whilst cringing) and the first thing that surprised me was that other atheists were disagreeing with me. It took me about 6 months until someone (I forget who) recommended that I do a course on 'How to reason and Argue' and that's the thing that changed me.

Learning simple things like how to construct a logically valid argument (might still not be very good at it but at least I know what it is), or avoid fallacies, or be more certain before even opening my mouth, changed me. I now argue much less than I used to because I know that I can't disagree with someone's view until I fully understand it. So these days I find myself either staying out of conversations because I know that they're much more complex than the other participants realise, or because I'm asking questions and we never really get past that point. I find that I can no longer argue with people who don't understand even basic Logic because they can't understand the mistakes they're making or know enough to point out my mistakes. As someone who has been very argumentative in the past, this is a significant thing.

I've greatly valued the minds I found here, to learn from, to use as sounding boards for my views, to be able to have a conversation about contentious topics without it becoming unpleasant and personal, mostly. I stopped arguing with Zumby and OrP a long long time ago and started to use them to figure out why I was wrong (Not always successful because I often wouldn't understand their arguments, so the conversation would fizzle out while I tried to figure out what they were saying). But I'm massively grateful for the effort they put in, and to everyone else who tried to explain why I am wrong about things.

Zumby changed me when he said 'when you're more scared of being wrong than of appearing to be wrong.....', a piece of advice I very much took to heart. I'm much less likely to blurt views now.

So, I know I'm not particularly respected here, or considered as one of those who helped others (unless they learned something from me sticking my neck out and getting schooled) but I thought I'd add my thanks anyway. Posting here has had more impact on me and my life than all the other forums put together, and my daughter just got an A* in her Religious studies exam thanks to the level being way lower than what I've become used to here... so thanks y'all.

I was the same. Im sure a lot of atheists were

Congrats to your daughter MB

Grazi She does well in most subjects but I was definitely able to help her understand the religious arguments and some basic things about how arguments are constructed because of what I've learned here. I tell people about this forum all the time, I just don't mention my username

Thanks guys, I think you all are a pretty solid group as well.

I started posting after the split and stayed mostly in SMP, and I hold your conspicuous abstentions partly morally responsible for the collapse of the philosophy content there. That's a joke, I don't believe in moral responsibility. But seriously zumby what gives, how were you entirely? largely? absent from the 1800 post durkadurka free will thread?

I don't remember exactly but I think I was mostly over my militant atheist phase when I started dabbling here; what I appreciated the most has been the quality of the ethics threads here and I hope it continues. Sadly the only thing I do anymore on this site is spit hot takes in politics. Do you guys know that you've lost some exceptional Islamic theology scholars to Politics Unchained? I mean there's some 3 sigma Quranic hermeneutics going on there these days.

Be sure to stop by for Taqiyya Tuesdays in Politics Unchained.

Is it better than Mu'tazila Mondays?

I'm not really into rationalism. I prefer Fusus al-Hikam Fridays

I was going to murder your joke for a second time but my computer died mid post, not tempting fate a second time.

I think it's overdue to revisit a bigotry + "Islam is inherently incompatible with Western civilization" thread here. I'm only interested in reading the thoughts of the contributors who have posted itt anyway.

Seems like it's a difficult topic to say anything too profound about, but that's never stopped me before.

I'm in.

I was thinking of starting a thread: Your Top Ten Garbage Can Religions; but a fit of better judgement tied my hands. A: Your Top Ten Twit Brained Atheists* would be fun to round out the Bigotry but again - probably not useful for a positive discussion. Good for some hate filled ranting through. That never goes out of style.


Why in the name of God, Smrk, do you waste your good talents in the Politics Forum? Did your brain spring a leak?

* The public popular ones, not the individual posters that contribute here.