Yeah, no problem, Gurdur.
animist wrote:John wrote:On these grounds, which I think are quite reasonable, Think Humanism is not open to "people of all worldviews". For example fascist or members of the white supremacist group The Western Guard would not be welcome. Furthermore, I would regard it as logically incoherent to suggest that Think Humanism is open to fascist and members of The Western Guard as long as they are interested in humanism, secularism, free thought and I am assuming you would not make such a suggestion.
From this second post of his, John is apparently of highly anarchistic views. I just wondered, is he at all correct in this hypothetical example of an extreme rightwing (even racist) poster who managed to avoid discourtesy? Would such a person be welcome on TH? Obviously they would not be welcome to him!
Yes, as I said to him, he seemed to be arguing for anarchy. His response wasn't to deny it but to berate me for failing to reference where he'd "said such a thing", thereby neatly avoiding the point. LOL.
I have replied to John's last email. I'm afraid I got drawn into responding to just about everything he said, which made my response very long. But, in answer to your question, animist, my reply to him included the following paragraph:
When I say “People of all world views are welcome to participate in the discussions and general socialising that takes place at Think Humanism, including people of religious faith, but all users must abide by the rules, which are set out below,” this is exactly what I mean. If members of the group you mention are able to put across an opinion, present an argument or just socialise with others without breaching any of the rules, they are welcome to join up and register. There is nothing logically incoherent about this. If I excluded from the forum people with opinions diametrically opposed to those of humanists, I would be doing a disservice to all those who join hoping they are going to be engaging in a battle of ideas with a view to sharpening their critical thinking skills, which is one of the reasons people join internet boards.
'Welcome', of course, doesn't mean the same as 'like' or 'sympathise' but, as long as they keep to the guidelines for participation, I'd hope I'd be able to treat them with the same fairness as anyone else, however disgusting their views are.