The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Obsolete: Forum will be read-only from March onwards

Facebook? My impression of Facebook is that it is for teenagers talking about nothing and soccer moms setting-up play-dates for their children.

Perhaps my impression is wrong. I’ll have to look at the Facebook group.

Well, strictly speaking FB is for posting “hot or not” college girl selfies in Boston. (That’s how it started anyway. :wink: )

It’s okay for social interaction and news sharing, so it could (theoretically) take up the slack for that part of the forum. The technical/reference things will go somewhere else.

Thanks Jason for helping things run so smoothly. :smiley:

I tried FB for a short while and found it to be pretty worthless and time-consuming; no going back to it for me.

Dang, I’m gonna miss this place. I thought of it like ‘Cheers’ without the beer. We had our personal barstools, we had our Cliffs Clavinss and our Norm!!!s and Frasiers’ - it was a place to get out of the ECT ‘rain’, belly up to the bar and see some old familiar faces, and some new ones too.

Golly! I wonder what Cheers character - I best Identify with :question: Actually, I’m more akin to Hawkeye, in the TV series MASH. :laughing:

But while I like to clown around (it’s liking the historical Christian, Holy Fool’s tradition and the Coyote, Native American character)…I am very serious, regarding theology, philosophy and science. And hanging out here, has helped shaped and crystallized my worldview.

I’ll probably not get to the Facebook group. But I’ll continue to:

Be active on social media
Continue growing in theology and philosophy
Continue to perfect my writing style
Continue with the languages of Latin American…the popular languages of Europe…and the strange world of Chinese Mandarin
Continue to work with homeopathy, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine and spiritual healing

Some nice, fun folks here. We should have a going away song? :laughing:

This has been a great asset to my journey into, around, over, under and sometimes through the concept of Hell. Thanks. I can’t hide on Facebook though so I’ll miss this place.

Facebook? My impression of Facebook is that it is for teenagers talking about nothing and soccer moms setting-up play-dates for their children.

Perhaps my impression is wrong. I’ll have to look at the Facebook group.

I’m on FB and i’m up to 1,700 friends but it’s because i have a business and it allows me to get inexpensive publicity. Most of the discussions on my page are either political or funny posts or misc posts.

Yes, the lack of anonymity is awkward. However, it is possible to make a false name account with a different email address and set all settings to private, just so as to participate in a group anonymously. :slight_smile:

Glad you both brought this up. It was something I almost created a post on a few months ago. Figure I might as well add my two cents on the matter.

Why do you need anonymity? In my experience, when someone doesn’t use their real name, it both causes potential deception and the user themselves to act in a way with no real consequences to their reputation. Such people, I have to wonder, are probably living a double life. With exception to death threats, I can’t see a reason a Christian would need to hide behind a handle or false name.

The downsides I see when someone decides to obscure who they really are:

  1. Allows them to act in an extreme immature way with no real consequences. People will say rude things that they would never say in person to someone else.

  2. Typically will cause more trollish behavior.

I typically only truly respect people that use their real names when it comes to serious topics. I am sorry if this offends, but it is the way I have felt for a very long time. If you can’t be honest with who you are, then why should I take you seriously? You can post something rude and mean, then create a new account and do it all over again. Now, just because I don’t respect it, doesn’t mean others won’t. And, who cares if Gabe Grinstead respects you or not? :slight_smile: Probably won’t lose any sleep over it, or rather, you shouldn’t. :slight_smile: But it is more for me to to ascertain the worth of someone’s posting or opinion. Do they have courage to actually post this so others that know them might see? Or are they unsure of themselves on the matter and are just fishing for other opinions before they decide? I see it as fence sitting, so to speak.

People use fake names for good reasons - sometimes. It could be they attend a church, have friends and relatives, etc. - who are not universalists. And they don’t want folks to criticize, belittle them, etc.

I started out using my real name. Then I noticed most folks had pseudonyms. Then I said I should get in the groove. I couldn’t find that many Holy Fools and P-Zombies, to hang out with - on social media. Here I can introduce everyone, to Holy Fool, Zombie and P-Zombie culture. Like they say: When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Actually, the move to a Facebook or LinkedIn group (or Yahoo group), is a good idea. You don’t need to worry about technical issues, like:

The server being down
Someone hacking the system
A now software release needs installing
Etc.

And you probably don’t need to pay for hosting. The downside is you are constricted by any FaceBook, Yahoo or LinkedIn rules and regulations. But that normally, should not be an issue.

I guess I just did not know that this forum was that expensive. JP is the only remaining mod as far as I can tell - where are the others?
Like I said, FB is not for me, I’ll have to find another Forum - any suggestions?

Well, Dave, you can view a list of 10 top hosting services at webhostingbest10.com/best-shared-web-hosting-services. Much depends on the bandwidth that is being used. Although there might be much stored data on this forum…I don’t see that many participants - in an active thread. Of course, you need to also run analytics - like Google Analytics, And AWSTATS, which is a great tool - for reading the web server logs.

I did run a self hosting website once - for a client. Most servers are run using LAMP (i.e. Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). Which is all open source. And you can install a self hosted WordPress. Which is a great tool for creating articles. But the same self hosting service, can run things like PHPBB. And it wasn’t that expensive. Even in self hosting services, they do backups and restores for you. But you usually have to fix data base problems (i.e. MySQ) yourself. If you created the database record.

I guess I just did not know that this forum was that expensive. JP is the only remaining mod as far as I can tell - where are the others?
Like I said, FB is not for me, I’ll have to find another Forum - any suggestions?

Yes thenarrowpath.com Steve Gregg the host is the best bible teacher i’ve ever heard. He usually is pleasant but recently he was over the top in an exchange with Paidion over the topic of God’s character. He also has a daily radio show and topical lectures on the website.

On Facebook groups can people have long, in-depth, serious discussions as on a message board? Or is everything swiftly shunted aside by the latest thing?

On Facebook groups can people have long, in-depth, serious discussions as on a message board? Or is everything swiftly shunted aside by the latest thing?

I’m on FB and as far as i know you can. I don’t know about all the separate threads.

It has been a pleasure and I will miss it. Grace and peace Y’all!

Thanks for all the feedback! Some good points have been raised here (particularly the drawbacks of Facebook) and on a Facebook post about the changes. So I’m now discussing some possible alternative ways forward… (e.g. BBpress) but nothing has been decided yet :slight_smile:

I used to be on facebook. But when some people with whom I had excellent exchanges on a Christian forum, also posted on facebook, they were very rude in their behaviour. Many other people posted only small talk. I can’t stand small talk. So I managed to get off facebook.

I have posted for years on “The Narrow Path” hosted by Steve Gregg. But recently Steve’s disagreement with me concerning the character of God took a bad turn. I felt personally attacked and ridiculed. So I stopped posting on that forum.

So unless there’s “some possible alternative” as Alex indicated, it appears that I won’t on any forum. For I doubt that I will find another Christian forum where the quality of posting matches either “The Evangelical Universalism” forum or “The Narrow Path” forum.

I haven’t posted in ages but after mention of this on another site, I have to let everyone involved with this project know how much EU has meant to me in my growth in so many ways.

I’d like to mention @Sobornost, @Pog, @Jason, and @Alex especially but there are so many others who have commented here that I’ve learned from. The format here which allowed longform posts and thoughtful responses and conversations is something I really miss. When I think about it, this forum was crucial in my intellectual and spiritual journey and I will always remember that.

I am saddened by the thought that all this wonderful discussion, thought, and even battles might no longer exist for me or others to see in the near future. Shoot, I would even pay to have a CD with the archives on it and try and figure out what to do with that given that CDs deteriorate. I suspect this nostalgia and appreciation for historical records comes from recent reading of Samuel Pepys diary. :slight_smile:

In any event, kudos to all involved in this and God Bless. The site has been more influential than I think any of us will ever know. (And don’t forget the CD archive idea)

Steve

I realize that I’m a bit of a Luddite when it comes to ‘social media’ - I don’t like it much. This is the only Forum I felt comfortable with, and I don’t tweet or FB or insta-anything, as every experience I’ve had with those things was fast-paced, shallow, insignificant - compared to the more leisurely, deeper and more significant exchanges here.
And I think EU is a significant topic that should be treated as such - as well as the other topics here, including cats. :slight_smile:

I saddens me to think that a topic as necessary as this one will be losing its foremost platform, and the thought of all the accumulated insights that will be lost, from the past and into the future, is really a shock.

Participation has slowed down for the nonce, and for some reason most of the mods have given up - perhaps time constraints - and some of those who stimulated us with their take on the arts, or fantasy and other types of fiction, music etc. have gone away as well, so the forum is not as well-rounded as it once was - and that is a shame. I wish those folks would come back and make contributions. Plant some seeds. Get things rolling again.

But if wishes were horses, all thieves would ride. I’m not real sure what that means though… :slight_smile: