If you have to ban somebody over religious differences, it is probably a good idea to wait until the debate about what constitutes a bad religion is over.

When you argue that religion provides a special path to the truth, you are not helping yourself by prohibiting your rhetorical opponent’s speech. You see, people who have a measure of truth can defend their position on the merit of the argument.

So when you shut them up with prohibitions, you demonstrate your ignorance more conclusively than any advocate ever could.



I appreciate your frustration. When Ronan dangled the carrot of “reasonable” religious “truth” in front of you, you got all excited at the prospect of an intellectual justification of religious truth claims. It is unfortunate this expectation had to be disappointed because Ronan misinterpreted the work of Peter Vardy, which rests on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I was the proverbial bearer of bad news who assumed that his Christian friends were tougher.

I regret that you banned me because I like those of you that I know and it pains me that you would embarrass yourselves and our community in that way.

It is doubly unfortunate since I found out about your ban when I posted the following comment that now languishes in your moderation cue:

The Book of Mormon is actually a lot stronger than the Vardy of this post. One can reasonably argue that something like the light of Christ empowers our imagination to capture the noumenon but that is something quite different from experience. The light of Christ would be a rational asset that makes properly sense of our observations.

Mormonism has considerable resources to be a force for good. We don’t need to misread Peter Vardis to find them.

For my part, I will continue to consider you friends, although I must admit that that would be easier if your actions would not contradict your words quite so obviously.