The StumbleUpon “Holy Trinity” group has been threatened with deletion – not because it has violated SU’s Terms of Service, but because there have been complaints that the group is “Misleading”
The group is owned by an Atheist who was banned by group owners while attempting to discuss core Christian beliefs in other SU groups. He created the group to have a place for anyone to discuss these issues without fear of being banned.
The group was immediately populated by the owner’s friends, who instigated a mostly respectful, if somewhat satirical, discussion on core Christian beliefs.
Discussion on its deletion has been banned in SU’s “core” forums – threads in help.stumbleupon.com and sponsors.stumbleupon.com have been hidden, and Stumblers have been warned to NOT post on the issue again.
Active threads are available in the SU Atheist/Agnostic Group and the thread has been Dugg
The group is scheduled for deletion today.
Edit: As of 5:30 PM, EDT, SU has killed Holy Trinity.
Again, I urge Christians and Atheists alike to DIGG The Story
As a Christian, I expect to find relevant and uplifting information when I stumble Christian themes, not someone’s idea of satire.
No, my beliefs won’t break under someone’s idea of a prank, but if they want to do what they are doing then I say find another category for it.
Thank you RivalArrival. This case of injustice toward StumbleUpon members (even sponsored members) by Unchrist-Like Christian staff should be stopped. Atheists should no longer be banned for having different views.
This is clearly due to Christians whining. Those who do not want people of other faith to discuss THEIR religion and god, even in civil social discussions abiding RULES set forth by stumbleupon & forum leaders.
The only reason I payed StumbleUpon for Sponsorship was to own a group when I can speak free. It looks like StumbleUpon hired the wrong person, with the wrong attitude to be a staff to moderate forums. Is my favorite place on the web going to the dogs ?
Active threads….
In Atheist/Agnostic Forum,… more
In Holy trinity,… more
AnswerMan
As a Christian I find the idea closing this group, which had the effect of allowing one atheist to share a special childhood experience, absolutely ridiculous.
Matt,
You visit a new restaraunt. You don’t like the food. Do you:
A: Inform the manager and refuse to pay
or
B: Form a mob of dissatisfied patrons, come back that evening, and burn the restaraunt to the ground.
The situation here is that some people were annoyed that they found, (amidst the honest discussions) some satirical statements. Instead of discussing it with the group or the group-owner, they went and complained to SU. An SU staff member used those complaints as justification to shut the place down.
It’s still up as of this post, but the threat of its deletion still stands.
I still want to point out that the satire allowed people to unwind to the point of expressing more positive ideas than they normally would.
When people are in their element they’re more friendly.
Nobody ever said the group (neither has any other discussion group) was going to be some form of reference.
This is nothing but censorship. We that hold Atheist views need to be a little louder.Eventually someone will hear us.
It deserved deletion. It’s easy enough to file things under their proper categories. That’s how stumble works. If everyone did it like “Holy Trinity” did, there’d be no point at all.
How about I make a couple of hundred or so “atheist” groups that just ridicule atheism, or, perhaps, don’t pertain to atheism in any way (since I know you guys love to argue), and file them under atheism? It’s about being honest. It wasn’t a Christian group and we all know it. It was an atheist group. File it under “atheism”. SIMPLE.
Apart from religious preference I find the idea of SU filtering MY ideas apalling and verging on propaganda. I think people should be able to express their ideas, whether I like those particular ideas or not. This is a cornerstone of civilization.
I will be looking at SU with different eyes now.
Bleh!
Wake up people, Stumble Upon is NOT deleting the group for expressing their ideas.
They’re deleting them for being deceptive in the group name.
I am an atheist, but don’t think anyone should stoop to a misleading group name in order to lure people to their group.
That’s horrible, and the group should be banned.
lol christians
Ratty: If you were able to read the posts in the group, you would understand that although many of the posters were atheist, the forum was primarily oriented around the POSTIVE aspects of Christianity – Love thy Neighbor, Love thy Enemy, let He who is Without Sin Cast the First Stone.
Yes, there were a few people who ridiculed the idea, and a few had made some quite offensive posts, (which were censored by the owner and the moderators within minutes, if not seconds) but overall, the tone of the group was TOLERANT of Christian beliefs.
As far as making a hundred or so “Atheist” groups, more power to you, even if your primary purpose is to ridicule Atheists. It relates DIRECTLY to Atheists, and would be of primary interest to Atheists.
The discussion DID revolve around Christian topics, and thus SHOULD have been of interest to certain Christians.
Do you join Militant Islamic groups? Photogrophy groups? Bizarre groups? Kink groups? If you don’t join them, WHY NOT? Do you not find them interesting?
This is the first time that I know of where the claim “It violated the SU Terms of Service” was NOT part of the decision to delete the group.
The ONLY reasoning behind the deletion was that the group was a couple complaints that the group was “Misleading”
I challenge you to show me SU blogs thumbing down holy-trinity.group.stumbleupon.com. The review page is still active.
I Googled for people who thumbed down the group – I found only 1 person. ONE PERSON.
There were roughly 30 people in the group at the time it was removed, including at least 4 Christians.
Gojo: Christians do not have exclusive rights to the phrase “The holy trinity”
The group was open to everyone. the ONLY reason it was primarily populated by atheists was that it was
1. Very young – less than a week
2. The Owner was an Atheist and announced it first to his immediate friends.
Several Christians joined the group before it was killed, yet I can only find evidence of ONE person (other than SU staff) having ANY sort of problem with the group.
The group was intended to be a location where Atheists and Christians alike could discuss the issues WITHOUT racking up Ban points. Even respectful atheists in other Christian forums are often subject to arbitrary bans, solely at the group owner’s whim.
This group was having none of that. ALL ideas regarding Christianity were permitted – not just the ones that appeased the group owner. EVERYONE with any interest in Christianity was welcome.
The 86 on this site doesn’t seem to have worked right away – I got here through StumbleUpon, after the Shunning was supposed to have started. I don’t know enough about the situation to have a real opinion, but if people are honestly being civil to one another here it seems a shame to cut the site off from SU’s service.
Many people’s only model of Atheists, however, is Madalyn Murray O’Hare, whose basic mode of “discourse” was to have her say, and then interrupt, ridicule and shout down anyone with whom she disagreed. And she was a most disagreeable woman – not because she was an Atheist, but just because of her basic disposition. She was like an opposite gender, opposite ideology Rush Limbaugh, if that isn’t too disgusting an analogy. I found it nearly impossible to listen to her boorish ranting and smug bullying back in the day. Of course, if she’d been more polite, it’s entirely possible she’d have been ignored, so there’s that to consider.
Anyway, good luck to you.
I’m an Atheist and I like SU because I can select topics I like to see and when I hit the stumble button I know I will see sites pertaining to what I selected. If a group is being deceptive with their name then the whole ideal of SU is compromised. I think the group should be deleted and reorganize under a more truthful name.
BadSanta: The group was called “Holy Trinity” and its focus was on Christianity. If it had been used to compare and contrast ancient Roman and Greek mythology, you might be right. If we were talking about torturing kittens, declaring jihad on infidels, or playing fantasy football, I would agree with you.
However, the focus of the group was the discussion of CHRISTIANITY. The ONLY difference between “Holy Trinity” and “Apologetics”, “Jesus Christ”, or any number of other SU groups was that HT was owned by an Atheist.
The discussion was, at worst, satirical, and at best, glowing in its tribute of Christian Virtues. Several atheist members declared their support for issues like who to love (Family, Friends, Enemies), who to hate (nobody) and what to despise (much of what Christians refer to as Sin)
It was, and would have remained, a place where ANYONE could discuss Christianity without being threatened with a ban from a group owner.
The only difference was the religious beliefs of the owner and the initial moderators. We had JUST started recruiting Christians to the group. 4 had already shown up. Intelitary Milligence, a Christian who posted above, was one of those 4, and came in because he was a friend of the group owner. We hadn’t gotten past the immediate, word-of-mouth circle when the group was deleted.
Tell me: If a Christian were to start a group to bridge the gap between Christians and Atheists, who would be the first members? As soon as that Christian’s friends heard about it, they would likely join, just because the owner was their friend.
Now, if you had stopped by a group that had content you didn’t like, would you join it? Or would you thumb it down and go on?
I asked above what a person would do if he didn’t like his meal at a restaraunt: Would you refuse to pay, or would you burn the place to the ground?
Anytime a ban is placed on something it is compartmentalizing which in certain terms is a representation of segregation. Every group that ever existed has had to put up with the same thing whether it be paganism,gays,skinheads,etc. I do not agree with all forms of belief but regardless of preferences the right to believe in whatever someone chooses,the practices of that belief and the right to speak about it is an unalienable right.Most of my poetry is controversial and addresses deep raw emotional things that many are afraid to express. Will they decide to ban me for trying to express myself?
People know what my ‘work’ is all about and have a choice whether or not to read it.
Technically all belief systems are somewhat misleading in some form or another.Alot of the biblical interpetations have been either lost when being translated or have been twisted around to suit the people using scriptures as a means to control a certain group of people. They even got the correct interpetation of Moshev (Moses) mixed up when they converted the Aramaic over into Masoretic text. Enough said: I myself am an ordained minister and still advocate the rights of others to believe in what they choose and to enjoy expression of those beliefs.
BadSanta,
I have one more thing to add to RivalArrivals Response, “Intelitary Milligence, a Christian who posted above, was one of those 4, and came in because he was a friend of the group owner……”
Intelitary Milligence, a Christian, was one of the four allowed group moderators when it was taken down.
AnswerMan
To Matt Keegan
Well I’m not sure whether or not this is right, if you go to any book store, in the Christian section there is stuff for Christianity and against it (and I work at a book store so I know what’s there). There is room for both opposing views there should be no place where only one side is shown, especially when it is wrong IE religion in general
God is but a set of rules , and no one can rationalize to a person who beleives in a set of rules….cuz the person aldready has the answer to the discussion .
To a relegious person all discussions are based on god as a set of rules .. which holds which is good and which is bad … so his sole discussion is to ridicule other and make them abide to these rules .
This is further confirmed by the fact that all relegion have a set of rules in the form of a holy book (eg:bible, quran) and thus can see that there cannot be god to them without a set of rules .
But the necessity of such a theory as god to have been proposed is because .. man found that difference of thoughts cannot lead to advancements or prosperity …. and hence unity of thought in whatever it maybe like in bible , quran is necessary for the prosperity and advancements .
[...] group Deleted for Religious Differences? StumbleUpon group Deleted for Religious Differences? The StumbleUpon “Holy Trinity” group has been threatened with deletion. The group is owned by [...]
[...] don’t know which was a bigger letdown this week, StumbleUpon killing a group over religious disagreement or Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron making complete asses of themselves under the guise of Proving [...]
saying that it must be deleted because it has the “wrong name” is ludicrous. the internet is all about inventive naming. should twitter be renamed because it’s not about birds? microsoft because it’s not micro, it’s huge? come on, guys! this does reek of censorship and i don’t know whether anyone has brought this up here yet but i wonder whether this has also something to do with the upcoming deal of selling stumbleupon to ebay.
Apparently, if this group had been named “Anti-Holy Trinity” it would have been fine. Even though that wasn’t accurate.
Similarly, discussions about whether or not one likes dogs should be named “pro-dogs” or “anti-cats” so everyone knows for sure what the hell they’re about to read, lest their sensibilities be offended. God forbid you just name the topic “dogs.”
Thus does SU lose any chance of me paying for membership.
[...] On The JesusMyth [...]
[...] though it is still always geared toward your interests. My only criticism of them would be their banning of a the Holy Trinity group. Freedom of speech is what the internet is all [...]