From: kazi@brahms.udel.edu (Zunaid Kazi)
Subject: Re: On futility of religious palavers. Was Re: Religious Tolerance and
Keywords: Religion, Futility
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 04:55:01 GMT


In article <1ehl0cINN2nv@CURIE.SYSTEMSY.CS.YALE.EDU> ahmed-shakil@cs.yale.edu (Shakil Waiz Ahmed) writes:
>
> [Stuff from my original post deleted to save space]
>
>That's strange.  Looking back at the last few religious discussions, I
>count more participants in each of them than I do in any of the other
>recent threads.  To conclude from that that religious discussions
>invite the widest participation is a statistical reality.  I agree
>about the heated exchange of unyielding opinions, but I do think they
>involve many more than just two people.

Setting aside the CFV for soc.religion.islam.ahmedia, I would say that 
most of the religious threads, are usually generated by net vermins
who wish to start a flame war, are between two or three people: the
originator and a number of defenders.

I am of the opinion that, though the CFV discussion appears to have 
swamped SCB, it initially served its purpose. As a prelude to the
actual voting it is essential that a discussion is carried out in news
groups where the issue is thought to be relevant to the subscribers.

Unfortunately the problem arises when these discussions quickly degenerate
into an exchange of unyielding opinions. AT this point readers have 
made up their mind as to how they would vote, and any further discussions
serve no useful purpose except to further rancor and flames. That is
when I wish participants would realize that further discussion is
futile. No one is listening to what the other is saying, no matter
how pertinent or rational one might be. That's when *I* consider the 
discussion to be serving no more useful purpose. IMO, unfortunately,
most threads on religion end this way.

>What bothers me is the tendency of certain individuals to conclude
>from their own lack of interest in religious discussions, that this is
>true of the net community as a whole.  Obviously, if this were the
>case, the flow of articles on such matters would stop, and the host of
>email messages that each participant gets from others would also
>subside.  Since that isn't happening, we can only conclude that there
>*are* people who are very much interested in these "debates," whatever
>the reason may be.

The interest or lack of interest isn't the issue here. The issue is
the relevance to the pertinent news group. I am sure the participants
would receive supportive emails. But there has also been a host of
postings on SCB questioning the relevance of some of the discussions.

I agree the whole issue is murky. When does a relevant discussion
cross over to irrelevancy? 


>> There might be occasional interlopers but the whole thread 
>> revolves around these people who will not budge from the preset 
>> opinions they hold. These discussions are futile since, even if one 
>> participant is rational, no one else has any willingness to listen 
>> and try to understand different viewpoints. The term discussion
>> is an obvious misnomer here. One might call such stuff "An alternation
>> Tirades". =)  
>
>I do agree that the participants are often unwilling to listen to or
>understand different viewpoints, but you seem to be sidestepping the
>factual basis on which many of the arguments rest.  Clearly, if someone
>presents erroneous material which could be generally misleading to the
>readership, and someone else can present the real facts from all the
>right sources, then regardless whether the original poster sees the
>point or not, many readers will indeed understand and not be misled by
>the distorted "facts."

I partially agree here. As I mentioned in my original post that a lot
of these discussions are generated by people who post distorted
and baseless anti-(choose a religion; though in SCB case it's usually
ant-Islam) articles. There are netlanders who might not be aware of
distortions and it makes sense to post rejoinders. But what happens 
is that then the original poster might ignore whatever rejoinder
that might have been posted and rehashes the whole thing by saying 
that he has not been answered. And the cyclic process continues.
I am sure after the few initial cyclic perturbations unenlightened
netters have enough facts at hand to come to a decision about the
factuality of the arguments. I feel that sometimes its best to
ignore obvious baits, as most netters recognize them as such.
Otherwise the unending tedious repetitions continue since the original
poster never does come up with anything new.

These are *my* opinions only and in no way I am assuming that I am
speaking for anyone else.

- Zunaid Kazi
  kazi@cis.udel.edu