for anyone, kind of 'meta'

[Apostate]

Has this ng devolved into a proctored seminar of some sort?

Brief (I hope) tale on the subject: when I was just starting to read
and post to Usenet, I took up with alt.atheism.moderated. There were
some very bright folks posting there, from a variety of academic
backgrounds as well as from none, but there was an M.D. who was a
theist, and he'd turned the place into pretty much what I just
mentioned in my question above. He played the "we doctors have
to know a lot of science" card, and pretended to be expert enough
to pronounce on all the lines of research then current in the
area of abiogenesis, and had nearly everyone conned into not
challenging him on the science. It was like his classroom
(and he didn't know what he was talking about on the subject.
The charlatan actually touted for Behe.) It cheapened the
quality of the forum, since nearly every thread was 'his turf'.

Probably everyone knows that that ng has gone fallow. I doubt that
the above was in any way instrumental in that, but maybe it helped to
prevent a more vital group from finding a way to avoid the ignominy
of going silent.

Notice that my 'tale' is not intended as a parable; I don't expect
that there's much direct parallelism.

--
Apostate a.a. #1931
.sig currently undergoing maintenance
mail to X-mailto; Yeehaw = what BillG
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[Steve Kelley]

I don't think it has. I do wish there was more activity here. Other news
groups I have visited on the subject of religion were full of vitriolic
comments and personal insults. I, like Alan (I'm assuming), are looking
for a higher level of discourse.

--
Steve Kelley