DiscussMormonism.com

With the recent MAD departure of The Dude, in addition to the linking of the Book of Mormon evidence thread, my interest was piqued in regards to just how many critics are left who post somewhat regularly over there.

I saw Tarski, CaliforniaKid, CKSalmon, phaedrus....are there other critics still hanging on by their fingernails?

Oh yes, of course addictio is back on the evidence thread, but I didn't count him because he hasn't posted in ages, and I don't expect him to hang around long this time, either.

The Dude left MA&D? If so, then he must've announced his departure somewhere.

What's the name of the thread in which he announced his intent to leave?

Dr. Shades wrote:The Dude left MA&D? If so, then he must've announced his departure somewhere.

What's the name of the thread in which he announced his intent to leave?

It's the Bill Hamblin thread.

First page...near the bottom.

solomarineris
kantgomo
Sethbag
Mighty Curelom
Abulafia
rhinomelon
johnny
It Occurs to me...

Heh, that's not many, is it?

I guess there are two ways they can feel good about discussions with critics. One is that the critics' arguments are genuinely weak, in which case it wouldn't matter how many critics there were, they'd be easy to pick off, like flies. But obviously that can't be engineered by the mods, so instead they're left with option 2. Ban so many critics that they represent a very small portion of the overall posting population on MAD, so that even if their arguments are decent, they're so outnumbered by believers, that it can still look as if the believers have the upper hand.

It's kind of like referees favoring basketball team A over basketball team B. They make biased calls in favor of team A all the time, but team A is still just too weak to beat team B. So the referees start benching members of team B until team A can
"win" just because they outnumber them.

beastie wrote:It's kind of like referees favoring basketball team A over basketball team B. They make biased calls in favor of team A all the time, but team A is still just too weak to beat team B. So the referees start benching members of team B until team A can "win" just because they outnumber them.

Your analogy gives too much credit to the apologists. They aren't even near the gym with their arguments. The mods have to slash the tires of the critic team bus before they leave school to make it anywhere near competitive. ;)

Bond...James Bond wrote:

beastie wrote:It's kind of like referees favoring basketball team A over basketball team B. They make biased calls in favor of team A all the time, but team A is still just too weak to beat team B. So the referees start benching members of team B until team A can "win" just because they outnumber them.

Your analogy gives too much credit to the apologists. They aren't even near the gym with their arguments. The mods have to slash the tires of the critic team bus before they leave school to make it anywhere near competitive. ;)

And those who make it to the court are bound and gagged.

Yes, and the referees justify slashing, bounding, gagging by claiming the other team is just sooooo mean, so poorly behaved, it's the only way they can assure their favored team that they will be safe from the vicious behavior of the bad team.

I guess they are saved from being embarrassed by the necessity of these actions by the same mechanism through which they continue to believe in the first place. It would be interesting for a sociologists to do experiments with "True believers" and a control group to see if the True Believers have a stronger tendency towards confirmation bias.