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Here Phil denies a site policy of bias against religion.

Here Geoffrey has deleted a pro Plantinga answer.

This one is even more extreme: it's more broad spectrum than Christian and was accepted by the questioner at the point it was deleted!

It will be good if you folks decide your stance where philosophy of religion and materialism/naturalism/scientism/ positivism/etc clash.

Weird addendum: 3rd eg. above: The acceptor sees a deleted accepted answer. The answerer (me) only sees deleted but not accepted.

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    I've also had one of my critical-of-religion answers and a Meta answer deleted by a moderator (and then restored after I enquired about that), despite both having been well-received by the community. You might be drawing some questionable inferences here about why your answers were deleted. I suspected mine was deleted due to a pro-religion bias, but maybe those are just mistakes or someone being a bit too prone to deleting things (I don't have too much of a problem with a mod being prone to deleting comments, but they should generally let the community judge answers, except e.g. spam).
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Sep 10 at 0:13
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    For what it's worth, both of your answers have negative scores (at least at the time of writing). I don't have as much of a problem with mods deleting answers with negative scores - the community has spoken, and they didn't like those posts. Although it is fair to consider at what point it's appropriate for a mod to take action on such posts. I don't think things should be deleted just because they have a negative score, at least not if it's a mild negative score of -1 or -2 like those, although some reasons for downvoting might also warrant deletion, like an "answer" that isn't an answer.
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Sep 10 at 1:07
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    @NotThatGuy I think negative score generally isn't a reason for deletion. I'm not sure if there's a network-wide policy but this english meta post is what I've observed. I try to upvote something if I disagree with it but I think it makes a good argument for that position, downvote something if I think its argument is substantially wrong, and I'd only like to see things deleted if they're not answers or don't make an argument at all. (That's just my metric, though.)
    – Kaia
    Commented Sep 10 at 18:12
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    I will say; when I write answers I tend to try and phrase them as "if you accept xyz", or "one argument advanced by so-and-so", or (if it can't be helped) "in my view..."? I've found that's helpful when talking about philosophy, since otherwise it's easy to come off as combative. I suspect that's especially useful if you're advancing an "unpopular" opinion.
    – Kaia
    Commented Sep 10 at 18:29
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    @Kaia The FAQ (about high-rep users not moderators) says non-answers and extremely low quality answers can be deleted (high-rep users are able to vote to delete negative-scoring answers). The Meta SE FAQ says non-answers (including comment answers) and spam should be deleted, but not ones that are simply wrong. (Rude answers are also deleted, but generally via flagging.) But site-specific guidelines may go beyond that.
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Sep 11 at 1:31
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    @Kaia Yeah, I was just adding some relevant links.
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Sep 11 at 17:51

7 Answers 7

Reset to default
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I will offer a different perspective:

I think none of the moderators does have a bias against religion. Instead, in both cases there have been flags (1 rude or abusive, 1 not an answer) that were used inappropriately.

The reason that both flags went through even though questionable probably is the same reason we hold elections: It is hard to do more than a cursory glance at the plausibility of the flags at the moment, even though flags like these (approval, ie. marking as helpful leads directly to deletion) should be handled more carefully.

As I already wrote in my comment you linked in your post, do not hesitate to flag and ask for reevaluation in cases like these.

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    If you were to just do a cursory glance for answers that are flagged as rude or "not an answer", I'd vote for leaning towards dismissing the flag and not deleting it, for less obvious cases.
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Sep 10 at 19:16
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    @NotThatGuy This is what I do, actually: Either I leave them for later given there is no time or take the time to be (reasonably) certain I do the right thing.
    – Philip Klöcking Mod
    Commented Sep 10 at 19:19
  • I'd hope every moderator would do that.
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Sep 11 at 1:22
  • See my clarifications re bias
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 11 at 2:42
  • I agree with Philip that there is no bias against religion. However, some questions about religion are tendentious. Some assume knowledge about particular religions - the Sutras, Christian doctrine etc. Some demand an explanation of atheism as if it were a religion.
    – Meanach
    Commented Sep 14 at 6:05
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It is appropriate for questions about the philosophy of religion to be asked on this site. Philosophy of religion is a well-established branch of philosophy and many prominent philosophers have contributed to it. Some of those philosophers have been pro-religion and some anti.

As long as questions and answers about the philosophy of religion conform to the site requirements, there should be no bias either way. As with any other subject, posts should not push a personal point of view. They should be constructive, fair, well-reasoned and well-sourced.

Posts may cite a sacred text or tradition, but they should not appeal to its authority. Philosophy is distinguished from religion by its dependence upon reason and evidence to the exclusion of authority, whether sacred or secular. There are no heretical opinions in philosophy, only outliers.

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  • Sounds good +1. Except the last 2 words! Outliers here could be canonical there... The world is a bit bigger than the anglophone- Atlantic coasts. I wish there were more of William James' Varieties of religious experience ou here
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 10 at 5:36
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To me it would be dishonest given an audience that is likely 90% Christian to say that all religions are equally welcome, and that by opening up a forum to religious questions, all religions will be equally represented. Instead what would obviously happen with such an audience would be that a forum becomes a Christian forum under a figleaf label "philosophy". Still this can have merits and risks, Christian activists would love nothing more. But it would still be dishonest.

We are not spammed by Muslims proclaiming Allah is great, we are not spammed by Judaists praising the Torah, by Buddhists or Hunduists citing Vedas, first nation members citing traditional chants. But we do get spammed a lot by Christian fundamentalists. See this answer and comments a sample: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/116409/30526

Q: let’s assume that a God does exist. From this premise/axiom, how would it logically follow that objective morality exists?

A: No need for assumptions here. God exists.

C: refrain from declaring existence of gods.

A: Absolutely not. No honest person who claims to love wisdom can deny the reality of the God who gave us life, Who is the Source of all wisdom. You can learn about Him in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon. The Fall happened. There is nothing to blame God for. Knowledge is knowledge. Knowledge is permissible.

I am not saying the questions linked in the Meta-OP are as blighted as this one, but allowing religious contents that fit just as well in Christianity or Hermeneutics just invites such spam.

With the given audience, the best results of being diverse and equal is to be very strict about removing religious content, which will be 90% spam of Christians essentially asking "I believe in god so much, who else?" With answers being "Me, me, me, I believe even more!", which is just people advertising themselves online anyway, and not useful content for a Q&A site.

And this background noise reminiscent of "Onward Christian soldiers! Marching as to war," we do not invite other opinions from other faiths,but it rather depicts this page as being a Christian recruitment site.

So I would prefer clear rules that asserting any religious truth is inadmissible as pushing personal beliefs in both questions and answers, and questions that fit into Christianity or Hermeneutics should go there.

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  • I disagree some but agree more with this. Overall +1. As someone who is no fan of democracy, I don't believe in pushing equality unrealistically. In this case equality of religious affiliation. Christianity is special not so much in the 90% but in the fact that it is the most proselytizing. To that my response would be like narrow spectrum antibiotics are preferable, we should prefer narrow spectrum solutions — Evangelism not tolerated — rather than religion disallowed. Evangelism is after all spam!
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 13 at 2:49
  • BTW your answer is a very valuable addition to the discussion. Pls undelete!!
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 13 at 2:50
  • I saw another answer containing it, so no value added
    – tkruse
    Commented Sep 13 at 15:02
  • Currently it's just my (marginal? fringe??) view. If you add, it becomes a plurality
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 13 at 15:23
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    I don't think "Refrain from declaring existence of gods" is actually policy, is it? It's totally possible to ask a good question/answer that involves Christianity, and if the answers are bad (as that one is) they should be downvoted, and if the questions are duplicates/not questions they should be closed.
    – Kaia
    Commented Sep 13 at 17:11
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    "if the answers are bad (as that one is) they should be downvoted". Right, and when the forum is swarmed by fundamentalist Christians like the one cited, I assume you think they will adopt a balanced approach to voting? I am not sure if pushing personal beliefs in answers is actually as as much against the rules as doing so in question, but seems to they would have to be, else anyone can ask an open question and then push their beliefs in some answer.
    – tkruse
    Commented Sep 13 at 19:55
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    Consider Islam stackexchange where it is routinely claimed that homosexuality is a disease to cure, maybe by forced marriage. Those are "philosophic answer according to the Quran", would be claimed. It's not against the rules there. I don't see how we could want that shit here.
    – tkruse
    Commented Sep 13 at 19:57
  • "I would prefer clear rules that asserting any religious truth is inadmissible as pushing personal beliefs in both questions and answers". Does that include asserting that there is no God (a personal belief and considered by most believers a "religious truth" claim)? Or are some animals more equal than others?
    – Matthew
    Commented Nov 6 at 21:54
  • No, same for all. But in a forum called philosophy, philosophy will be treated other than religion. As opposed to a forum called Christianity, as an example. Respectively assertions will be treated differently in both such forums. Not sure how you want to animal-farm this. But I am against proclaiming there is no god here as much as proclaiming any religion to be true.
    – tkruse
    Commented Nov 6 at 22:17
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I am a Christian, and of course, it is enough for me to believe something simply because God said so. Many things in the Bible I believe without any evidence beyond God's own word. For example, it's not like we can send a spaceship up to New Jerusalem to verify that the first foundation is made of jasper!

However, that said, I believe the Bible contains many statements and arguments that are high-powered philosophy in this context when taken on their own merits. I.e., if you read a lot of the writers in the Bible, many times, they are not arguing "because God said so," but instead, are using evidence, logic, and arguments. To speak from a secular standpoint for a moment, the fact that the writings of Solomon or Paul or John happen to have been canonized doesn't mean they aren't still ancient writings, or that they can't be quoted philosophically. In my opinion, if one reads their writings objectively and with careful thought, I think they would see the philosophical brilliance of their works.

I would submit that the following are not statements of religious dogma:

  1. To quote an argument. I.e., if Paul makes an argument about how, if there is no resurrection or afterlife, there's no good reason not to have as our greatest aim in life simply to eat, drink, and be merry, for to morrow we die (I Corinthians 15), then quoting that argument is not a statement of religious dogma, but a reference to a philosophical argument.
  2. To cite a conceptual resolution. I.e., if two concepts seem to be at odds--such as how God can be loving, and yet not communicate more "visibly" or "strongly" to us--and the Bible contains a clean conceptual resolution to them--then citing it is not a matter of religious dogma, but a matter of conceptual synthesis.
  3. To illustrate. I.e., if there's an example of the idea under discussion illustrated in the Bible, such as how Moses learned from his father-in-law that delegation is often better than trying to do everything yourself (Exodus 18), using it is not a statement of religious dogma, but an illustration. It would be similar to citing another item of history to illustrate a point.
  4. To cite highly explanatory statements. I.e., if the Bible contains an elegant concept with higher explanatory power in the context of the question than a competing axiom, then citing it can be helpful when it is included as part of a broader overall argument with logic.
  5. To cite historicity. Sometimes people simply trace back where a concept came from, or who believed it first, etc. And so it can be helpful to show how a concept has been around for a while, and that doesn't necessarily make it a statement of religious dogma.
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  • I +1 you here on meta because I think we could use more diverse religious viewpoints. I probably wouldn't on the main site for a similar answer because I don't believe religion needs to be cognitive or even should be. See. I'm not a Christian but if I were I'd likely be fideist, Ockamian not thomist
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 9 at 12:17
  • "I believe the Bible contains many statements and arguments that are high-powered philosophy" - a perfect example that by allowing more religion, we won't get more philosophy, but more self-righteous narcissist zealotry. What the zealots believe about the bible does not matter any more than what the followers thought of the words of Charles Manson or LR Hubbard.
    – tkruse
    Commented Sep 12 at 16:45
  • This is true but over the too @tkruse. In India it is universally accepted (and non cynically) that religions are successful cults, cults ate unsuccessful religions. As any engineer will affirm, orders of magnitude are not just changes of number but of the phenomenon itself. A belief system, call it cult religion or whatever, that started yesterday and has a few thousand followers is not comparable to one that has subsisted thousands of years and has billions of followers. More substantive issue
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 13 at 2:59
  • There's nothing wrong with quoting the Bible, particularly in questions of a theological nature, however: 1) To secularized thinkers (even other Believers), the Bible carries no more weight than any other historical document 2) Only quoting the Bible and not the philosophical canon is a sign there is no appeal to peer reviewed sources. That's what I was trying to get across earlier. That unless you appeal to the philosophy of religion along side, then you have nothing but religion. To insist upon thhat's not anti-religion so much as pro-philosophy.
    – J D
    Commented Sep 13 at 14:21
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Once upon a time, I asked a question, pretty much a reference-request question, about an obscure, mostly Jewish proposition, except I felt like the proposition was the kind of thing that would "naturally" occur to lots of other people, so maybe there would be in Leibniz (or wherever) an example of such thinking. The question was of course closed as off-topic [EDIT: I double-checked, the closure is given as because the post is not focused, not because it's off-topic], but since then I've watched questions about philosophical analysis of the Trinity go through, or questions about specific New Testament passages, etc. and I'm not thinking to accuse this SE of antisemitism, say, I don't think that was the problem (not consciously/non-systemically,X that is), it was probably more how I wrote my post, but still...

... still, anyway, we can't have Christian supremacism here. It's a blatantly morally false position, and it's off-putting to non-Christians to deal with propaganda like, "Why is Christianity so much more impressive than every other religion?" and such-like.

Incidentally, we had a well-educated user contributing for a while here, by the name of Frank, but AFAIK he left because there were so many theism-related posts here, and it wasn't that he was against theism in and of itself, but his experience online in general was that theistic questions tend to degenerate into undecorous debates. To be sure, in philosophy, we will quibble about the most obscure/random little things, so if Frank wanted to avoid Sayre's law, he would've had to abandon this SE regardless, but I do want to bring up his sentiment to showcase how there can be a reason to be extra-careful about religiously-based posts (either questions or answers) that isn't an anti-religious reason.

XIn terms of systemic racism, on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if the SE network as a whole has to grapple with that. The requirement that we post in English might be construed along those lines, although I myself am not sure about that (if it's just a "lingua franca" issue).

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  • If it's Frank Hubeny you've in mind — he was certainly balanced and widely read — this is his last post — in short one of the hundreds of casualties the of Monica Celio
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 15 at 12:58
  • Normally I don't tend to vibe with tkruse antitheist positions but I find I agree with this sibling meta post. To wit If christians are evangelizing (ie spamming) way more than others, the "anti spam" filters directed against that need to be correspondingly and ie unequally beefed up. However this ignores the elephant in the room — everyone here is a Christian, the Christians of course but also atheists, jews, seculars, marxists... As Rabbi Sachs to Dawkins Richard you may be an atheist but youre a Christian atheist.
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 15 at 13:16
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    Likewise to an oriental like myself all here (well lets say 90%) are christian. If that is incomprehensible (some seem to get offended) I could say at greater length: A native of the erstwhile Christendom
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 15 at 13:36
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    @Rushi that's just more Christian supremacism, in a possibly even more nauseating form: "Everyone already secretly is on my side!" Well, I should go ahead and declare that every Christian is really Jewish and atheistic, that every Muslim is really a Hindu, and so on and on, while we're at it we can wipe out every last distinction between beliefs there is and declare everyone to believe in everything. Why not? (P.S. not Hubeny, some guy who just had "Frank" as his username.)
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Sep 15 at 13:44
  • @Rushi I mean Jesus claims that whoever isn't for him is against him, but also whoever isn't against him is for him. Well, what on Earth does that even mean? I don't really know, but I do know that I am myself against him, now, for that he failed to accomplish the only thing he was supposed to do, because he was deluded into thinking that the passion would accomplish his (human) purpose. And so instead of saving the world, he has nearly damned it. So don't I think of him as my, and humanity's, enemy, then?
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Sep 15 at 13:56
  • "everyone here is a Christian". Fuck off, hard.
    – JonathanZ
    Commented Sep 15 at 14:07
  • Kristian but you neglect the immediate next verse, why?? And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Spirit it shall not be forgiven him To an oriental it's crystal clear: Jesus is not interested in personality cults, around him or anyone. Instead he proclaims the universal atman (holy spirit)
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 15 at 14:34
  • @JonathanZ You a fan of Torquemada?
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 15 at 14:36
  • @Rushi somewhere else he makes salvation depend on whether you deny him in front of God's throne, he tells people to throw away everything they love to follow him, etc. Now they say you can infer anything and everything from a contradiction, so I suppose from this contradiction you can get, "Everyone is a Christian," if you like.
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Sep 15 at 14:37
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    Well clearly for you there's a great deal of emotion on these matters. My earnest suggestion: Don't take it all personally. If it could be at all meaningful I suggest you study the Bhagavad Gita. In many ways Krishna makes extreme ultimate statements v much like Jesus. Yet somehow the cultural matrix in which it is embedded makes it at least possible if not easy to see that Krishna is not speaking about himself but about foundational principles.
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 15 at 14:46
  • Once you grok that you would see it's the same for Jesus. Eg I am the Resurrection and the Life translates to The I-Am principle (YHWH in Hebrew, atman in sanskrit) is the Resurrection and the Life
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 15 at 14:47
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    @Rushi you are telling me, on the basis of a theory of interpretation of the Bible that I don't believe in, to interpret the Bible in a way that I think is factually mistaken. Why would I do that?
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Sep 15 at 14:49
  • I am telling you religion does notbdeal in facts. It deals in emotions attitudes orientations
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 15 at 14:51
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    You make my point better than I @JonathanZ. What you call "philosophy" I (along with much of the world) calls western/Christian philosophy
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 15 at 15:08
  • Kristian: You don't need to "go east" to escape the personality cult view of Christianity. The gnostic gospels of Thomas and Judas can also take you there
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 15 at 15:09
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It seems that users are clearly biased: there are poor answers (by my lights- few or no citations, little charity, etc) that recieve many upvotes. But this is on both "sides" and extends to more than just questions on theism.

For the most part, I have seen the mods as typically fair. In my mind, this is just an instance of the generally poor level of philosophical discourse regarding religion anywhere.

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If you were to just do a cursory glance for answers that are flagged as rude or "not an answer", I'd vote for leaning towards dismissing the flag and not deleting it, for less obvious cases.
Notthatguy comment

I agree with @NotThatGuy.

My elaboration:

Rude should be deleted if rude — this is straightforward.

"Not an answer" OTOH is anything but straightforward because — especially in soft subjects like philosophy — it tends to get used for posts that have a slant outside the "kosher/acceptable perimeter" of the flagger. The big issue is that wrong flags incur no penalties. To wit: For questions and answers the vote system works straightforwardly. For egregiously wrong flags (and VTC) — eg. I dont like your face, your name etc — nothing happens beyond being ignored.
So bad flags get acceptabilized.
So there is a flag glut.
So mods start rushing through them in a less than satisfactory way

Note: Since this is my question and it can be construed as a complaint against the mods when in fact it is a complaint against malfunctions in the system (I dont believe the mods individually push their biases) Hene this answer here

Subject wise it should more appropriately be on the threads re. comments (which IMHO are wrong headed)

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  • You are banned from flagging if you raise too many declined flags. Although there are no automatic negative consequences for "bad" close votes or delete votes... but one could potentially run into a suspension for misusing those things.
    – NotThatGuy
    Commented Sep 11 at 5:14
  • @NotThatGuy As far as I know (close-)votes dont count as flags. One of the major factors that make the democratic process towards quality that works on other sites fail out here is that people misuse VTC as a costless downvote. Look at this just closed question. Two closer-voters clearly agree that the the philosophy described is approximated by Wittgenstein. And they close it. If Wittgenstein is not acceptable philosophy on a philosophy site... What does one say?
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 11 at 5:28
  • Ok @NotThatGuy: Made a meta question on it
    – Rushi
    Commented Sep 11 at 5:41
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    @Rushi -- the closed "question" is clearly a statement of belief, and an endorsement of a personal philosophy. Its final summary "question" is prototypically "amirite?" as described as being unacceptable in our guidelines. Here it is: "Isn't it basically self-proving, and all other approaches are self-defeating?"
    – Dcleve
    Commented Sep 13 at 20:31

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