From: Ron House <house@usq.edu.au>
Date: 1998/01/27
Message-ID: <34CD6CED.4ED50ED9@usq.edu.au>
Newsgroups: news.groups
Rick Schaut wrote:
>
> Ron House wrote in message <<A
HREF="/profile.xp?author=34C7078A.FAFE564@usq.edu.au&ST=PS">34C7078A.FAFE564@
usq.edu.au</A>>...
> >My job as a proponent is
> >to answer technical objections to the proposal,
> >no more. If my little demo wasn't complete, so
> >be it.
>
> Your responsibilities as a proponent of a Usenet newsgroup strike me as
> being abundantly irrelevant to your responsibilities as a Baha'i.
This remark's implication for the matter under
discussion is profoundly opaque to me, as the
proposal on the 'table' is not my goodness as
a Baha'i but the question: TRB or not TRB?
The rules of this forum are that good citizenship,
but not the letter of the law, requires that a no
vote only be cast for technical reasons.
If you want me to:
(A) convince you to not vote no:
then I respond that Baha'is are expected to be good
'citizens', and therefore, as neither you nor anyone
else has suggested any plausible technical arguments,
a no vote just isn't acceptable for a 'good' Baha'i.
But if you want me to:
(B) convince you to vote yes:
then I simply point out to you that there are many people
in the world whose chief attraction to the Baha'i
faith is its adherence to Baha'u'llah's principle
of _INDEPENDENT_ search for truth, and that many
of these people simply won't consider any kind of
moderated forum to be free enough for their search
purposes. Quite a few people have independently
volunteered such a view during this discussion, and
I would suggest to you that not much purpose is
served by denying the fact. What you do with it
is up to you.
If I convince you of (A) but not of (B), then abstain.
That's the limit of what I intend to do here,
but you seem to want me to take some sort of
proprietary interest in the success of the
faith in the new NG. I have no intention of
taking up any such matter.
> >> You don't have the truth, and neither do I. The truth is only something
> we
> >> can discover together through consultation.
>
> >But what does the truth concern? This proposal?
>
> It concerns the possible effects that this newsgroup can have on undeepened
> Baha'is. Is this, somehow, not worth consulting about?
Not to me it aint. As I said, I don't care what
effect this NG has on Baha'is of any colour. I
just want people to be able to follow
Baha'u'llah's advice without interference by
wiser-than-thou moderators.
> This is complete non-sequitur. If I didn't have faith in the ability of
> Baha'is to answer our critics, would I be stressing the importance of
> consultation as to how best to answer them?
By insisting on some kind of input from me, you
show a lack of confidence in other Baha'is.
--
Ron House
<A HREF="/profile.xp?author=house@usq.edu.au&ST=PS">house@usq.edu.au</A>
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but
because people refuse to see it. -- James Michener,
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