Why not leave general as it is and simply add technical as a 4th section?

I’m not making an attack, but I think you’re asking a bit much. It seems that anyone who doesn’t give an answer that you personally believe is correct hasn’t given just a wrong answer. In your mind, they haven’t even answered the question at all.

I’ve seen countless people here answer your questions exactly as you’ve asked them to, only to see you shoot them down and accuse them of not answering the question at all. When you’re asked why you don’t believe that they’ve answered the question, you basically say that if they answered it correctly, they’d come up with the same answer you came up with.

Most people don’t ask questions that are that excruciatingly narrow when it comes to the Bible. You seem to believe that there is only one way to interpret it. Considering that there are an estimated 40,000 + Christian denominations in the world, each who formed because they had at least one disagreement in scripture with another denomination… It’s just not the case. You act like the bible is a cook book or a car manuel. It’s not considered that simple by anyone who has studied it earnestly.

Because they are no longer making any improvements to changes to the site. Your rant falls upon deaf ears.

Why would calling it “technical” be different than “general”? If you want a technical answer, you could post it in General and just make clear that you want a technical answer.

If you really want a technical question about Christianity or the Bible, you might try: http://christianity.stackexchange.com

@keobooks It seems that anyone who doesn’t give an answer that you personally believe is correct hasn’t given just a wrong answer.
It is not my personal belief or anyone else’s if the answer given is dead wrong indeed. Let me ask you this, if you asked someone, ”Go to those chairs across the room and bring me a blue plastic chair*”, if they went across the room and brought back a *red plastic chair, or maybe a blue metal chair, did they produce what you requested? Because what they came with was not what was asked because they simply choose incorrectly was that your personal choice to make the they chose not the chair asked for?

What if you asked how a certain leather was tanned. If someone said you ask the animal to take off their skin, then you mix white tempura paint with brown until it turns tan in color then sponge it on. Even if you do not know exactly how leather is tanned, you know it is not tanned that way, so why play like it is even if three or more people say so?

Most people don’t ask questions that are that excruciatingly narrow when it comes to the Bible.
The Bible has little to do with people holding to what the question asks, other people hardly ask about the Bible and still have a hard time keeping people from hijacking the question.

@Zaku Why would calling it “technical” be different than “general”? If you want a technical answer, you could post it in General and just make clear that you want a technical answer.
People do not understand how to answer specific questions, or answering it will go against their person peeves; they then descend to grandstand and hijack the question. If it we have purely technical questions there is only one way to answer it in genera. So they can’t try to hijack it with grandstanding an d soap box antics because they don’t like the outcome the question will lead. How to change drum brake pads is hardly room to grandstand something because there are only maybe three ways to do it..

Asking someone how can someone call themselves Christian and yet disobey a command in the Bible is FAR more open ended than “Bring me the blue chair.” That’s not even a question, by the way. The entire problem is that you ask questions that are open for interpretation—even among religious leaders—and you believe that there is only one simple “blue plastic chair” for an answer.

@keobooks Asking someone how can someone call themselves Christian and yet disobey a command in the Bible is FAR more open ended than “Bring me the blue chair.”
Well, that was my mistake; I did not realize I had to put the cookies in the floor before people knew which Christians were in play or the context of the faith.

The entire problem is that you ask questions that are open for interpretation—even among religious leaders—and you believe that there is only one simple “blue plastic chair” for an answer.
Because people want to debate or even believe hues or tints do not exist, the chair is the color that the chair is. The Bible says what it says, if people want to read into it, what they want that doesn’t make the book many less accurate. Again, there have been questions where the Bible was never mentioned and the answers never stayed on course with what the OP wanted, they were not my questions, so what excuse will you make for those?

Why not flag responses or redirect the question back to what you want? That’s what I do if I want information and the question has gone off course. As this question stands, it is pretty vague and meaningless.

@janbb Why not flag responses or redirect the question back to what you want?
It only works when you say something unflattering about gays. I don’t really like like flagging, this is the first year I even deemed it a tool to try to keep the bus out of the ditch when people got so far south the questions was losing its identity. I brought some insipid comments and such to the attention of the mods—not a thing happened, I might as well been talking to a coffee cup, a brick, or a slice of toast. I have tried in the thread to steer the conversation back to where it should be and it just promotes more grandstanding laced with half-truths of what I was thought to have said but never said. It is like it says general but it is just a slightly tighter version of Social.

That’s what I do if I want information and the question has gone off course.
Being your people I guess they listen better or at least more respectful when you ask them.

@Hypocrisy_Central Yes, I rarely resort to flagging either.

@Hypocrisy_Central: re: flagging. It seems that so many don’t “like” flagging, but I have found it very helpful when something goes off track in a General question. It’s just a heads up, after all, and the point in General is to stay close to topic.
Flagging helps to keep the site cleaner and more user friendly than so many.

And this is the cue of the user who justifies, again and again, their off-topic discussion, to discuss “free flowing conversation” and how narrow minded it is to limit the creative range of the responders.

@Hypocrisy_Central—I’m not going to examine every single question asked in General and carefully examine every answer. I just know that you specifically complain about this and I don’t hear anyone else complaining anywhere near the extent you are.

The only time I didn’t answer your question was when you asked a variation of the same question for the 7th or 8th time in a row in a very short amount of time. I think I said something like “knock it off with asking the same question over and over” and then when you asked me to give you a list of bible verses, I said I wasn’t falling for that trick again. I didn’t answer that question directly because by that time, I was extremely tired of getting told that I wasn’t answering your questions and in every other question I very painstakingly and carefully answered them. You refused to even call my answers wrong. They just weren’t even answers.

You’ve brought this upon yourself.

@canidmajor re: flagging. It seems that so many don’t “like” flagging, but I have found it very helpful when something goes off track in a General question
If nothing is done when you try it is like pointing to a speeder and telling the cop, ”Look at him speeding, the limit on this street is 20mph” and having the cop just look while he takes another bite from his donut. It only works if some tickets actually get wrote.

@keobooks I think I said something like “knock it off with asking the same question over and over” and then when you asked me to give you a list of bible verses, I said I wasn’t falling for that trick again.
As you just said ”I’m not going to examine every single question asked in General and carefully examine every answer.”; which apparently you have not been doing, unless it was a question of mine. I see it on my questions and I have seen it on others as well. It was not variations of the same question, it was a refinement of like topics because I had to keep placing the cookies on lower and lower shelfs because people acted as if they could not understand the context the question was asked and tried to split hairs on far-reaching interpretations, etc.

I didn’t answer that question directly because by that time, I was extremely tired of getting told that I wasn’t answering your questions and in every other question I very painstakingly and carefully answered them.
Even answers that were painstakingly pondered can be incomplete. If you asked someone how did they build that desk, and all they said was ”I took some wood and hammered it together”, they are technically right, but they are incomplete and did not truly answer the question in the context it was asked.

You asked about a set of verses in Romans (which you incorrectly numbered so badly that I had to google the passages to find them). I replied with the history of Paul’s interactions with the Roman people on a very specific sex act—men paying for temple prostitutes. I showed you how several different scholars said that this specific sex act was different from garden variety homosexuality with non-paying consenting adults and THAT is EXACTLY how those several different scholars justified accepting homosexuality in their theology. I don’t think I could have possibly been more painstakingly thorough in an explanation.

A few posts later, you posted the EXACT same set of verses and asked me the EXACT same question. And you said that I did not answer the question. Your question was how do people read those verses and still believe that homosexuality was not the sin you read it to be.

I TOLD you exactly how the scholars interpreted those exact verses in the specific way you asked. I told you that they saw it in a historical context. Now you might not agree with that answer, I can accept that. But no… You had to say that I never even bothered to answer the question. The only way I could have made a more valiant effort would be to build a damned time machine and go ask Paul in person—or probably take you with me since you wouldn’t believe it. Then you’d accuse Paul of not answering the question.

I don’t care if someone just disagrees with me, but what you do is beyond the pale of arrogance and jackassery. I took a lot of time and effort with your questions and you just slapped me and several other people in the face with it.

Just because you don’t like the answer does not mean that no answer was given.

@Hypocrisy_Central I didn’t see what went down on the other thread but from @keobooks‘s detailed description, it sounds like it’s time for you to do some self-questioning and soul searching (and perhaps apologizing.) If you don’t want any answers to your questions that deviate from your own narrow way of thinking, maybe another site would be more appropriate for you than a Q&A site.

@janbb [...it sounds like it’s time for you to do some self-questioning and soul searching (and perhaps apologizing.) If you don’t want any answers to your questions that deviate from your own narrow way of thinking,…]
It is not that hard. If someone says, for instance, a cookbook says that gluten causes super weight gain, and I ask them to point it out in the book, they should be able to find it. I am just asking them to back up what they are saying. If gluten never caused any weight gain but they are trying to use the experience of a plumber who gained weight after years of eating gluten, does not make gluten a catalyst of weight gain, why would I just buy it, especially if I knew more about nutrition than the person trying to tell me about gluten? If I would not just accept inaccuracies or incomplete arguments concerning other things than scripture, why would I concerning scripture?

You didn’t ask for the ONE TRUE meaning of those verses, you specifically asked how do people react or interpret those verses. I told you. I didn’t interpret the verses myself. I looked up how different scholars who studied theology and read those verses in the original languages interpreted them. Those verses have been interpreted that way by people with at least Masters degrees in theology when churches have decided to allow gay marriage or clergy.

Now answer my question. Don’t give me crap about cookbooks. Tell me exactly how I did not answer your question exactly as you stated it?

@keobooks Tell me exactly how I did not answer your question exactly as you stated it?
I am not sure which question, but I certainly must have left it too vague that people could not follow the context of what was being asked concerning a specific group of people called Christian, my apologies if you asked the question but I left it too open-ended as to be any useful good. If I attempt to narrow the alley so people can’t get lost in narrow doorways then people say it is too narrow in scope, as @janbb alluded to. But I guess it is the only way to keep people from not getting off the context and gist of the question. If it is not clear enough to have a path one cannot deviate off in to space with, it is my fault for giving too much rope and expecting people not to use it.

Thanks for not answering the question.

I think the site changed from what it originally was, when answering was for problem solving and not much else. Or so I understand, I wasn’t around then, so I’m not sure. But apparently. Debate and opinions and crap weren’t on the menu. But that’s what it is now. And for what it’s worth, it works, at least when flagged, or when caught by mods; General does not tolerate jokes, meaningless one liners or going off topic. Someone not agreeing with one’s opinion however, is not going off topic.
Also there is no real rule for how lurve is dispensed, as long as it’s not being exploited through a secondary account made by a user to boost his or her own account. That I know of, anyway. If someone wants to high five lurve their friends or just lurve answers they agree with or whatever, there isn’t a rule that says you can’t, nor was there ever.
I may be wrong about some of this, I will gladly stand corrected, if so.

He can’t even remember his own question I posted as an example right above janbb’s answer here. I said in the question that started out “How can Gays call themselves Christian when they aren’t following the will of God?” (paraphrased, but most people could figure out which question they asked on that much..) And then I showed his Romans 1 verse. Then I showed my answer. Then I showed how he asked again and said I never gave an answer. Later on in this question he couldn’t figure out which question I was referring to so didn’t tell me exactly how this wasn’t an answer.

My guess is that he wants to give these hardcore “gotcha” questions where there is no proper answer so he can look smug and think he’s got it in the bag. This may have been the case 10 -20 years ago, but it just so happens that many church denominations have very recently gone over all of the verses he posted in order to see if there was any Biblical reason to allow gay marriage or clergy. So there are a lot of interpretations of those verses online right now that demonstrate the thinking of the clergy in those churches.

Anyway, because he was expecting to blow people away and for them to have no answer, if anyone gives an answer, he says they didn’t actually answer the question. They just grandstanded and high-fived each other afterwards. It seems that even answers from theologians aren’t good enough for him. They probably aren’t considered real Christians in his mind because they “broke” his pet verses. (Or maybe they ARE Christians, but they aren’t the super kind of “believer” he is)

This makes me think. I believe he’s trying to ask questions that he believe has no answers other than “WOW! There IS no answer! You totally blew our minds!!!!” Is it really proper on Fluther to ask questions that you believe have no good answer and then reject every single answer because it’s not good enough?

Also, as an aside. I really hate the fact that he makes these claims that I (and others) am obsessed with lurve. I ignore it, myself. One day someone asked a General question about a holiday… Several people gave wrong answers and I gave the only right answer. Not only did I receive almost no lurve for it, I got tired of people giving all these incorrect speculations and getting lots of lurve. A few people said “Didn’t @keobooks answer that question with a link to back her up?” but nobody paid attention. After a LONG time, someone eventually posted that they read something somewhere and posted the same link I did. THEY got all the lurve and the thread ended. After that, I just ignored lurve. I have no idea how some answers are ignored and then someone posts almost the exact same thing and gets a ton of it. It’s all pointless.

It’s all pointless indeed, but perhaps HC does make a point about some people high fiving themselves with lurve and shit. Only giving it to people they like and such. Your example kind of proves that; you said you had the right answer on that holiday thing yet you got next to no lurve for it.
Not saying people don’t like you and all, people like you just fine I believe. Just saying he might not be entirely wrong about it sometimes.

You kind of have to see it from his side. Whenever someone insults him, that person gets lurve, and in most of his questions, his posts all remain at 0, mostly because people don’t like what he posts. Whether it’s fair or not or if he deserves it or not isn’t my interest, but the lurve thing does happen. or not, depending on how you want to look at it.

@keobooks This makes me think. I believe he’s trying to ask questions that he believe has no answers other than “WOW! There IS no answer! You totally blew our minds!!!!” Is it really proper on Fluther to ask questions that you believe have no good answer and then reject every single answer because it’s not good enough?
You are suggesting I take into account and answer I know to be wrong, and by my rejection of it I am actually saying their is another answer, I just don’t want to consider it? That would be like accepting the reason we don’t fly off into space is because the Earth is sucking everything to the center by suction or airflow, forget the force called gravity just because there is no real definitive understanding how it truly works in the sense of being able to create it, just believe it is suction because 20 other people agree with it. If you used Roman, or whatever incompletely or incorrectly you can always go back to the Bible and fine verses that will either back it up, or not.

The Bible backs up gravity?

^ It had no need to back it or dispute it, because the evidence is there, no matter what you choose to call it, a force holds man on this planet.

You were talking about gravity and it seemed you were saying, that the Bible will have verses that will either back it up, or not. So I was just curious.

^ From what I have read, and I have not read all of the Bible cover to cover because some parts I have not needed to read yet (I might have read it all, some parts I only read once and cannot remember if I read it until I read it again and it is very familiar), the closest thing I have read it said that the visible attributes of God are seen all around but man ignores them, I take it gravity is one of those attributes.

Well, I beg to differ. We do not ignore them. We study them. We try to find out what makes them work, and why.

I’m saying that you think the only correct answer to your threads is “there is no answer. You have outsmarted us. We are not worthy.”

The problem is that you don’t believe any alternative interpretation to your own can be true. I say that I’d trust a theologian from a reputable Seminary school over your personal interpretation any day. I don’t know anything about your theological studies, but my guess is zero education past Sunday school.

If the answer from a professional biblical scholar isn’t good enough for one of your answers, I’d say… Well I can’t say what I’d tell you, because this post would get moderated away if I said it.

@keobooks The problem is that you don’t believe any alternative interpretation to your own can be true.
I do all of the time, those who bring up points I have not concluded use the entire Bible or a good portion they have read, in context not select verses they feel support some aim of theirs while ignoring huge parts that would render what they are trying to twist useless.

If the answer from a professional biblical scholar isn’t good enough for one of your answers, I’d say… Well I can’t say what I’d tell you, because this post would get moderated away if I said it.
Whether I like a teaching or not, if it is not from the Bible or said in the Bible, then it is all for not, the Bible says to study to show yourself approved, and other verses that back that up, that one should know the Bible for themselves less someone lead them astray with strange doctrine. The Bible said let God’s word be true and every man a liar, so some people actually believe they have it from their own human understanding, but they missed as far from here to Sydney.

All for “naught”.

I think I must be missing as far as from here to Sydney too. My brother is one of the top religious scholars in the world but I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested in anything he has to say.

@janbb I’d love to hear what he has to say. That’s really cool.

@janbb I think I must be missing as far as from here to Sydney too. My brother is one of the top religious scholars in the world but I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested in anything he has to say.
Wonderful, since he is not on Fluther ask him to use any of the average used Bible translations, NESV, ESV, NIV, NKJV, etc. and find me a verse with two others to back that one up, where God says it is OK to Him, than man have sexual relations with men and women having sexual relations with other women. Clear cut verses in which no hocus pocus or misunderstanding through strange interpretation can muddy the water, but something unambiguous, I will await to see what he finds.

If he is one of the top religious scholars in the world you should be an avid follower of Christ, if not, why, you do not believe your brother and what he says about what Christ said?

And we must not forget the verses that deal with adultery, gluttony, anger, etc.

1. I wouldn’t waste his time.

2. I never said he was a Christian.