Why was the question about set-theoretic polytheism closed?

Question

I'm having trouble understanding why this question was closed:

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/41307/what-might-be-traditional-monotheisms-responses-to-set-theoretic-polytheism

To me, the question as originally written was perfectly clear. I might understand a close reason of too broad, though I would personally disagree, but I don't understand the current close reason.

Answer 1

Another criterion to consider, is "what would the accepted answer look like"? Ideally, Stack Exhanges can provide the asker with an answer that solves his/her problem (that's what the accepted answer button is for). I do not see this question as aligning well with with concept/aspect of the site, which is an additional facet of why it is closed beyond what virmaior has indicated.

Answer 2

I think it made and makes sense to close your question. The particular reason is always a hard one when closing certain types of questions, but as I commented there:

As written,your question is really long and seems primarily to mention what you're not asking. Can you whittle this down to just the question and make clear what the question is about philosophy specifically?

In its present incarnation, your question's title begins What would theism's response be, and I think we're already not in a great place there. There's a few problems here. First, this is asking us to speculate on the SE (in the broadest sense of speculate). Second, what we're being asked to speculate about is not the view of a particular philosopher or even necessarily a school of philosophy but "theism."

Moving to the body, you state:

And would the responses be naive or nominal, or would theism rise from getting beaten at its own game?

This seems to veer quite strongly into the personal philosophy close reason. Without even defining theism, we're being told we're about to read an impressive argument against it.

What follows is interesting but continuously reflects a few problems:

1. There's a lot about "theology" but it's not clear that this is philosophy.
2. There's a bit of sophistry about what theists claims in sentences like: "Theism's highest expectations for God (or Allah) are based on its characterizations of God. " (The sophistry is that theists are not operating under "expectations for God" but rather they believe "claims about God").

All of that to say, my sense was

• You have an argument you think is successful against theism.
• You posted it here to get feedback and/or to argue with people who disagree.

Maybe to reword that more positively,

Where is the question about philosophy that you want our help understanding? (i.e., where are you having trouble grasping philosophy and want assistance?)

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The SE format conversely is designed for questions of a different sort. The most successful model and the basis for the other ones is the tech question. "What's wrong with this MySQL query?" how do I use iterators? Is there a way to detect when a user navigates away using DOM?

Philosophy.SE tries to mirror that to some extent While there's some leeway, it is

1. primarily for people who are facing difficulty in understanding something within philosophy. For instance, "what is the point of the wax argument?"
2. limited to questions for which there is a correct answer, e.g. "is this argument valid or invalid? deductive or inductive in form?"

A major motivation behind this is that without these two guard rails, this becomes "interesting opinions.SE" which is a system with no guidelines for voting, contributing, or participating.

Answer 3

Why was the question about set-theoretic polytheism closed?

Because one moderator deemed it unclear. Only they can tell you "why?" in the sense of justifying their decision that it was unclear what Bridger was asking. Note that in the explanation below the question, only the one person made this decision:

"put on hold as unclear what you're asking by Joseph Weissman♦︎︎︎ yesterday"

We can speculate and other moderators may have some insight given their history of applying their privilege however they see fit, but aside from Keelan's comments below, no other moderators have weighed in. Only Joseph can adequately address your question as it was his decision. Even if he did, tho - I doubt it would be terribly satisfying in any sense of stated policy here. Such is the whim of personal opinion.

To me, the question as originally written was perfectly clear. I might understand a close reason of too broad, though I would personally disagree, but I don't understand the current close reason.

Agreed. "Not clear what you are asking" is simply not the case as the question clearly establishes conditions by which it may be answered and is clearly a "constructive subjective question"

Per https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask

Constructive subjective questions:

• inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”
• tend to have long, not short, answers
• have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone
• invite sharing experiences over opinions
• insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references
• are more than just mindless social fun

I guess we'll just need to get different moderators for this site.