If Aaron gets kicked of the site, will the challenges that he has made still be assessed and struggled with exegetically? I just want the problem to be a behavioral one and not a sidestepping of his challenges…
rooof
I suppose the offered challenges could be re-offered in a neutral sense by another member here, and re-offered in a way that doesn’t refer back to the surrounding persons involved, after all the challenges offered sound like arguments that is common to most Damnationalist theologians, or else, to theologians of certain categories within the framework of that specific tradition. Such as the challenge, for example, that God doesn’t correct the impenitent sinner, or doesn’t evangelise pursuingly the impenitent sinner.
Administration, would this be a good option?
What you might do is present answers in a data base so that “damnationalists” can see how their challenges are dealt with. If all they see is that challengers are “excommunicated” it doesn’t look as if the universalist have answers but that they are angered by challenges. I am not saying that this is true, but to avoid the appearance that it is true… I am not saying that challenges have been ignored, but there may be some that could use further exploration.
I remain agnostic on this issue.
r
Hey roof, for the most part his “challenges” were only frustrations because he would never really listen to many of the answers given. I can’t tell you how many of my posts he simply ignored. There were times he would ignore answers and then act as if no answers were given. After all the discussion he said in another thread that he doesn’t think there is a single challenge to ECT in scripture. When a person argues like that, it makes me much more secure in my position since his position doesn’t seem to be an honest one. He was horrible at listening to others, arrogant in his approach to scripture, and he would offer many “facts” in areas where even the most learned scholars still say they are unsure. To be honest, he seemed to be very much like a troll to me. That doesn’t mean that his questions weren’t sometimes good, but most of his arguments weren’t very good.
Chris
Is this Aaron the famed “Aaron37” of yesteryear? Did he resurface as “Revival”? If so, why the ID change?
Yes it is.
agreed!
not one of his “challenges” was actually a challenge. to my knowledge, each of them was answered, and it was pretty much just him saying “what i believe is what JEsus taught, and what you believe is ‘foreign’ to the Bible” every time.
not exactly debate material. he wasn’t sidestepped, he was engaged on every issue.
Yes!
If there really is anything of any merit that hasn’t been dealt with many times before then a member could easily start a new thread so that folk could debate intelligently and reasonably. For me, I didn’t see one point from Revival that was novel or creditable.
absolutely.
roofus, knowing vaguely where you stand (hopeful but not wanting to believe in something merely for comfort?), i’m sure you’ll continue to add interesting things to discuss. you and oxymoron, actually…
but i really didn’t feel Revival/Aaron’s attempts to derail UR were particularly effective. certainly not as effective as he wanted to think!
Because he likes to operate as pseudonymously as possible, and thought if he came back as “Revival” people wouldn’t automatically diss him for being the same person as before.
Also, a lot of people had foe’d his account last time, so his audience for that account would be drastically reduced.
Coming back on a new pseudonymous account for those reasons isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if he had actually changed. And he didn’t complain about being outed immediately after not bothering to reveal he was really BornAgain/Aaron37 in his introduction. So, while it didn’t seem a good sign that he wasn’t forthcoming to the board from the outset, that might have only been a lack of understanding that he would have to earn trust on the board by how he behaved henceforth. Social ineptitude isn’t hostile intent.
He didn’t sneak back on either. (Well, actually, he did within a month of being long-term banned the first time, which was grounds for him to lose his appeal as he had already been warned. But we forgave him that, since it had been more than a year ago.) He asked ad/mod permission first and tried to convince us he had reformed. He had almost no evidence for this, but no recent evidence of malpractice on boards elsewhere (or rather, no evidence of recent practice at all that he was willing to show us or that we could find, whichever). So we gave him the benefit of the doubt.
It’s totally our fault he was on the board, and we’re sorry about that. I hope next time we’ll insist on more substantial evidence of public behavior elsewhere before we let him on.
Most of his challenges were assessed and struggled with exegetically, sometimes in great detail. I am entirely sure I wasn’t sidestepping his challenges when I answered them in great detail, for example (although I wasn’t active on all his threads), but he routinely sidestepped my counterpoints and counterchallenges.
While his most recent threads are currently locked, that’s to prevent people from dogpiling him now that he has no possibility of defending himself. The threads are still there, with allllllllll the discussion that was on most of them. (A few were so new that there was almost no discussion yet.) Members and visitors are entirely welcome to read everything he had to say, and everything his opponents had to say, at any time; and to pick up his arguments if they want. Although I recommend they do so with an eye to keeping in mind what was already said against them and proceeding from there.
Otherwise those people won’t be assessing and struggling with the challenges but merely dittoing them as though nothing had ever been said on the point. Which frankly was something Aaron routinely did.
(Also, only his most recent threads are currently locked so far as I know. Once I got beyond the threads active for the past seven days I went home for the night. I may or may not get around to locking the other ones, or other ad/mods might. That’s why I said “at our convenience”. The process is a bit tedious.)
For people who don’t know where the ban occurred, it was in this post of that thread. (There will most likely be an official statement posted later once we’ve chewed the matter over and decided how long his ban will actually be.) Considering that I spent a lot of time and work answering several of his challenges in careful and nuanced detail (including in that thread, by the way), and considering that I banned him for blatantly lying about charging another member with intentionally lying against God like Satan, I can say as conclusively as possible that the problem was a behavioral one and not a sidestepping of his challenges.
Having said that, I do admit I would rather be working on discussions with other non-universalists on the forum, namely Paul, Chris and Chad, than to be spending any more of my limited time and energy working on detailed replies to him. But that’s because they aren’t only more good-natured, they’re far more competent as challengers. (And besides I could always just ignore Aaron and work with them. I don’t have to ban him to do that.)
I for one am entirely in favor of both options (restating and re-presenting his challenges, so long as the restatements take into account subsequent discussions; and categorizing the replies to him somewhere, although that would take time and effort I personally would rather be spending elsewhere, including discussing challenges with other non-universalists.)
However, any non-universalists who think all they see is that “challengers” (plural) are excommunicated, weren’t reading his threads to begin with, aren’t noticing he’s the only “challenger” we’ve ever excommunicated, aren’t noticing why we did so, aren’t noticing we go out of our way to protect challengers (even when they annoy the board, the way we protected Aaron both times he was here), and aren’t noticing that we’ve banned more universalists than non-universalists for misbehavior on the board.
Which means such non-universalists probably aren’t going to be paying attention to a database of answers to Aaron’s challenges either. So, while useful for other purposes, I don’t recommend doing so to mollify non-universalists who think they only see “challengers” being excommunicated for being “challengers”.
I like having him around.
I don’t particularly enjoy debating with people who don’t debate. Which is why I quit after the first couple of attempts. As far as I could see, there was no point.
What has he done this time that warrants a ban? I can’t see that his insults to others were any worse than the post he complained about calling him evil and depraved? An unwillingness to engage the opposition is hardly a crime is it? If people didn’t reply to the threads they would wither on the vine (and that’s from someone who finds it hard not to wade into his threads 
)
Or am I missing something more serious?
Me too. I’m with you Cindy.
JeffA
Precisely
I think the underlying issue was that this Revival fellow has a considerable precedent in his earlier username incarnations, as being a fellow of ill repute and bad behaviour towards other individuals on the board - not in the gruff and rough sort of way that others are towards others in the heat of bitter debate, while maintaining some sort of respect for the opponent - but in a way that is fundamentally devaluing to the opponent, and constantly, consistently so without any good reason.
I would think it is one thing for a member to say that another is acting evil and depraved for winking, grinning, and defending to the teeth views that certainly are evil and depraved, and to say so only a few times after much goading and much patience spent; and another thing entirely for a multiple username individual whose reputation precedes him wholesale calling the whole group liars and devils after the manner of Satan himself.
But I suspect that is partly the case at least. The members were already being taxed to the limit of their patience, and when that patience began to snap it released various offenses like a bad case of Pandora’s box. But in this case, one is given the amount of stripes that fits their offense.
agreed!
i see no point in engaging with such an individual. i did my utmost not to, but sometimes was unable to help myself 
Jeff,
Actually, if he hadn’t lied about comparing AllenS to Satan and his lies, or even if he hadn’t lied about that in such a blatantly and immediately self-contradictive manner, I doubt he would be banned right now, by me or any of the other ad/mods. (Moderators also have authority to spot-ban up to a month; but the admin team has to vote on longer bans.)
Note: the problem wasn’t that Aaron called Allen an intentional liar (or even much more of an intentional liar than someone who told the truth); nor even that Aaron did so while comparing Allen directly and explicitly to Satan lying in order to tempt good people to sin against God. Although that would indeed be pushing it, as Aaron was doubtless well aware (and why he tried to claim he wasn’t doing so).
The problem was that Aaron flatly denied doing so, saying that we had misunderstood him (meaning the mistake was entirely the fault of anyone who thought comparing Allen’s “fables” and “lie” to Satan saying “you shall not die” in Genesis 3 was the same as comparing Allen to Satan and his lies); and then instantly went on to directly compare Allen explicitly to Satan and his lies again.
And he knew he was going to be in trouble about something there, Jeff, or he would have gladly clarified (which was blatantly obvious anyway) that he was calling Allen a liar when you repeatedly asked him about it, instead of repeatedly evading your question. He didn’t know you had resigned from the mod team a while back; he thought you were a moderator. And so instead of admitting what he had done, he blamed you (and the ad/mods in general by extension) for not protecting him from people calling him names. After an administrator (specifically me) had just gotten finished tagging someone else on the thread to protect Aaron!
We lean over verrrrrry far backwards allowing him leeway. Which (as you may recall, having been on the mod team at the time) was why last time he was around for about six months with forum members begging us in private emails to ban him as a troll, and basically quitting the forum rather than stay where he was tolerated, before he stepped over the line far enough that even we decided to drop the banhammer on him.
That isn’t the behavior of a leadership that nukes people simply for being annoying, or even for being foolish and annoying.
It’s possible we’ll decide he only has to be gone a month this time. (Or even that I banned him too quickly at all!) I wouldn’t personally lay any money on that, but it’s possible. I expect we’ll be discussing it this weekend.
I’ve endured so much vitriol over the years (at the hands of peace-loving atheists) that my hide has grown brown, thick and lumpy. My wife famously observed, “Why do you spend so much time arguing with people who hate you when you could talk to me? I actually like you!” Being compared to the devil himself barely registered on my Insult Scale. That being said, I think it’s probably time for Revival to take a break. I don’t think he was doing anyone much good, least of all himself.