Dear 3sum,
I apologize for not noticing this thread sooner- I don’t often check this section of the forums, and the thread title didn’t immediately suggest it was something to do with me.
I moved your threads to the Rant House because they suck. I hope this helps.
Uccisore
“I can’t remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you’re saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it’s not literally illegal to express.” – Float Text
Edited twice to add content.
I saw that, but I only somewhat agree. Free speech is both a body of political theory and a doctrine of US Constitutional law. If by free speech, someone really means “the goals of this site require that ideas such as these be expressible”, that’s a legitimate argument that should be taken into consideration (and which I try to take into consideration). But even the theoretical notion of a freedom of speech is no coextensive with the set of possible linguistic utterances. Some things can be said which only the most radical (and impracticable) conceptions of the freedom of speech would protect.
In this context, penis antennas is one of them.
But if a large portion of the world believes in the virgin born god child who came back to life, WHY is it so weird to hear that somebody believes in a penis antenna? It’s all about childhood indoctrination - you can make children believe anything if an authority teaches them about it while they’re young. Teach a child that a penis is an antenna and they’ll believe you.
Actually, that’s just one of the points of my thread. The main point is that the reasons the Christian authorities give for not employing women in higher ranked positions are so insufficient, laughable and just overall bad that they might as well say “No penis, no higher position in our religion’s hierarchy. Fuck you for being born with a vagina”
The point is that the idea isn’t any less absurd, it’s just that one of them is indoctrinated into children’s minds while they’re young and the other isn’t, and once a person is indoctrinated with an idea in childhood (no matter how absurd), it’s hard to let go of it.
If the majority of people believed in penis antennas I can assure you we’d have presidents trying to appeal to masses by saying how they speak with the almighty daily by receiving his signals and instructions with their penis antennas.
No, my notion of free speech is radical, but not that radical. All I’m saying is that if ideas are about equally absurd it doesn’t matter how many people believe/not believe them and we should have equal rights to discuss those ideas.
Still butthurt? 
I’m not American so I don’t care about the first amendment. However, that’s a shitty quote. I want the freedom of DEFENDING MY POSITION of a penis being an antenna, that is the issue. I can come up with arguments for the penis antenna, but I’m not allowed (and by that I mean that my thread was moved without anybody even successfully criticizing my ideas).
I’m thinking of freedom of assembly too. You could have a forum where you aren’t allowed to say the word ‘shit’, or talk about politics, or endorse Catholicism, or whatever, reason being the initial founders of the site wanted a place where they aren’t exposed to those things because they hate them or because they work against some other goal of the site. It seems to me that creating a space in which certain kinds of speech aren’t permitted isn’t a restriction on free speech, but an expression of it. Or maybe we just embrace paradox and say it’s both.
That’s too bad. Though, being American does not require caring about the first amendment either.
I thought it was funny.
But, no one criticized it, according to you. What’s to defend it from?
They just moved it to the rant house… You can still defend it from there…
Penis Antenna!
Even ignoring the US Constitution aspects, the rest of the arguments hold. This is still ultimately a group that can decide to stop listening. If what 3Sum was posting was stopped by moderators, it is not a freedom of speech issue, because he is still allowed to speak, just not necessarily on the religious board on this topic. Freedom of speech, legal or otherwise, does not stop consequences, it can result in what you are saying being banish to another form. Even if the subject is Penis Antennas… Which is a fun collection of words to say… Penis Antennas… It could be a great punk band name… Penis Antennas…
This is similar to a demand that a radio station must broadcast anything that any caller says on the air as long as it is legal.
But frankly, someone expressing hatred for Jesus at the same time as claiming to be Christian and expressing hatred for religions while demanding that he be able to preach his own “religion” is stretching the prospect of integrity way past common sense.
…and could probably be classified as “hate speech”.
Newspapers must print 3Sum’s ideas on the front page, otherwise his freedom of speech is restricted. 
So basically my idea doesn’t deserve to be classified as a religious idea because a large portion of the world doesn’t believe it, that’s what your argument boils down to, and that’s quite disappointing and discriminatory towards the minority, an excellent example of democracy being misused.
You know what’s fun, though? Nobody even managed to decently criticize my idea. Sure, somebody did point out that my claim was without evidence, and I admitted to that, but so are almost all religious claims. Nobody managed to find a flaw in my reasoning and the data I provided so far supports my idea.
But then again, if the only reason my thread was moved to Rant is because I’m the only one holding that belief then nobody should even be allowed to present an original idea in the religious section. And, AFAIK, people DO present original ideas in the religious section, even when they’re the only ones who believe in them.
So, if it’s not the fact that my theory is inherently more absurd than any other and therefore unworthy of being a religious idea (as I think you’ve conceded, if you haven’t, I’d like to explain what exactly is it about the idea of a virgin born son of god walking on water that makes it so much better that my idea isn’t even allowed to be presented in comparison). And if it isn’t the fact that it’s only believed in by me (or are you willing to argue that any idea which is believed in by only 1 person is undeserving and goes to The Rant House), what else is the reason to throw my thread in Rant?
That if offends people? So if an idea offends a group of people it’s justified to reject it immediately just on the grounds that it’s offensive? What if I told you that men are, on average, stronger than women? That’s a fact, but it’s bound to insult a lot of women.
IMO the real reason it got moved is because it offends people, which I hold to be an insufficient reason. And the reason it offends people is that it makes fun of religious reasoning and makes religious people use normal (atheistic) reasoning to disprove my theory (such as pointing out that my theory lacks evidence), but they’re afraid to use normal reasoning because they know it can easily backfire and I can point out that their beliefs are held without evidence too. Basically, whatever argument they might have against my theory I can use against their beliefs too, so they’re powerless. And the fact that it lowers their belief to the level of something they consider ridiculous (a penis antenna) and they can’t give a good argument against it is what hurts the most.
What I did in that thread is just a minor version of Flying Spaghetti Monster. It uses religious people’s own reasoning against them. They put forward the ontological argument, you point out how glad you are that they proved the existence of the Noodly One, for who is Greater than His Noodliness? And please note that this is not pure mockery, this points out a relevant problem with the argument by making fun of it (in this case, if you haven’t figured out, it points out the problem with defining greatness).
All you did was increase the amount of dumbness pollution in the world. And you are still increasing it with this thread.
You’ve yet to show you understand the reason it was moved, explained clearly to you. But if you want to think penis antennas are just too edgy, go for it. It doesn’t reflect badly on anyone else.
No. I moved your thread, and I already told you why. It has nothing to do with how many people believe what. Threads expressing ideas only believed by the person writing them pass the muster all the time.
Your thread was moved because it was shitty. In my subjective opinion, and, if you’ll notice, in the subjective opinions of everybody that replied. You created a Rant House thread, I put it where it belonged. If you were trying to provoke a serious conversation with that thread, you failed.
Now what?
I saw the reasons you guys listed for it being moved, addressed them all and showed why I think they’re insufficient and weak and therefore end up being discriminatory.
I don’t consider a subjective opinion a sufficient reason to discredit an idea, especially on a philosophy forum where people should know better than to go “ooh, me no likey, this no good”
I’ll paraphrase from this video, in which a Pastafarian woman fights for her Flying Spaghetti Monster given rights: youtube.com/watch?v=o1OfWSgJZHw
‘As a member of a religious minority, I am keenly aware of discrimination. Many people find my religious views laughable; in fact, you may find my view laughable yourselves. In the words of Isaac Asimov, one man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh. However, as Peter Cameron has said, one man’s nonsense is another man’s sense. I ask that, regardless of your own beliefs, you show your commitment to equal rights’
What you consider to be sufficient doesn’t matter. It’s an issue of authority.
Also, no one discredited your idea. It was simply moved.
You’re grasping at straws. Stop embarrassing yourself.
Well, then put the thread back into Religion if that’s how you feel about it. Oh, wait.
See, what you consider doesn’t matter, because it’s not your forum. If you want a thread to stay in Religion, you have to make a thread that the people who run the show want to have there. Anybody else in this thread could have created a post about penis antennas, and made it in such a way that it didn’t need to be moved to the Rant House. It’s not merely the subject, it’s the thread. You failed to make a thread that deserves to be in the Religion forum.
There are threads about the Flying Spaghetti Monster that are made and stay in the Religion section. You made a shitty thread. Case in point, your thread about the Problem of Evil got moved to the Rant House, not because Problem of Evil threads don’t belong in Religion, but because again, you made a shitty thread. Yes, one of the ways in which your penis antenna thread was shitty is that it was based on a shitty idea. You also presented it in a shitty way, and you have a history of being shitty in general whenever discussing religion, which is why everybody who replied in the thread said ‘What a load of shit’ and in at least one case ‘take it to the Rant house’.
Hey, if that’s the reason why my thread is in The Rant House, ok, it’s just that I myself consider that a pretty shitty reason (as you would put it), more accurately, it’s weak and obsolete. Seriously, who the fuck uses that kind of rules in modern ages? North Korea? Westbro? Pathetic and lame, but then again, as you point out, I have no power to put a stop to it, right? So whatever.
I made a separate thread asking why is my PoE in The Rant House. And how exactly is it shitty? Is it because it points out the inescapable flaws in religious reasoning? Is it because I rejected calling a being that causes and allows suffering of billions an omnibenevolent being? You’re just mad that you didn’t manage to prove me wrong and it’s so obvious that you’re not even trying to be objective and impartial and only intend to get revenge because you lost all relevant points we argued about. Pathetic for a moderator, really.
Highly unlikely. One guy made thread in which the main point was something like “How can atheists create children if they’re only going to suffer and die”. I consider that extremely offensive and, moreover, it’s downright stupid and the answer is obvious for anybody capable of making basic observations about the world. What I’m wondering is, if I made the exact same thread and replaced “atheist” with “apenisantennist” would it still be left in the religious section?
The reason your thread is in the Rant House is the entire post I wrote above, not the one sentence you quoted. Your thread sucked.
So basically because you don’t like it. Ok.