Can we talk about the group rules? [View all]

[gcomeau]

A couple things are bugging me, wondering if it's just me or if this applies to anyone else.

1. The "safe haven" aspect of this group.

Although anyone is welcome to participate, the DU Atheists and Agnostics Group is a place where atheists and agnostics can engage in frank discussions about the effects of religion on politics, free of debate about the existence of a deity or deities.

Am I the only one who has always felt that the way that's defined is just a little... off for this particular group of people? I think it's safe to say the majority of atheists are atheists in no small part due to a respect for principles of skeptical inquiry, and generally we have no particular great need to be "protected" from people challenging our positions. Rather the opposite, bring it on. I'm all for an area where we can't be blatantly trolled or constantly mindlessly evangelized or anything and if that's where the safe haven protections extended and then ended that would seem about right... but no challenging the premise of the non existence of a deity? Really? Isn't that more the kind of environment that those with dogmas they can't rationally defend need to cocoon themselves in?


2. The whole Interfaith Group issue

Any and all discussion of the Interfaith group is prohibited in original posts and replies to original posts... ... Please respect the safe-haven nature of the Interfaith group, even if you don't agree at all with what they're discussing.

Can someone explain to me how posting *outside* a group can possibly constitute a breach of their safe haven? Would they not also have to be *outside* that haven to read any such posts and thus, one would think, having no reasonable expectation to be sheltered by it? Since when did the establishment of a safe haven group suddenly create posting restrictions about the subject on *the rest of the board outside that group*?

(Please note how I am not discussing the interfaith group or anything occurring inside it, but rather the rule in this forum that applies to it. I don't read that group, don't visit it, and have no particular intention nor inclination to post about it... but the fact that such a rule exists here in this group is jarring.)