My letter was published two days after I submitted it. According to the circulation numbers, tens of thousands read it. The woman to whom I responded, an expert on Atheism, Agnosticism, and Christianity, contacted me with appreciation for having cited her approvingly. She never questioned my description of Agnosticism.
My diary on Tuesday consisted of that letter. I didn’t budget enough time for participation. I hosted an event and left the party early. It was because of the few diaries I’ve posted, none have attracted much commentary, and I assumed this one wouldn’t either. Maybe the buzz words "Atheism" and "Agnosticism" attracted attention.
The troll tag came early, so I saw it. Alarming it was, definitely more so than gathering a lot of comments. Should even trusted users have the ability to condemn an entire body of work, as opposed to individual comments? It was one of the most popular suggestions on Hunter’s meta thread as the community prepares for the next version of Kos. Later McJoan admonished the troll-rater, who had immediately outed him/herself, by which time I saw the tags were returned to their original, so I don’t know which came first. While I appreciated that, I remained (and remain) surprised at so much response. In all the time I’ve been here, not very long but long enough, I don’t think I’ve seen but a handful of diaries with hundreds of comments that weren’t recommended to the top of the list to sit on the front page in perpetuity. Or at least until they finally got knocked off by the diary which displaced them.
I didn’t intend to create controversy, though there’s nothing wrong with having done so. The woman who wrote the letter I replied to – and maybe I should have printed it, since it wasn’t terribly long and was certainly in the public domain for having been published elsewhere – defended Atheism as a philosophy divorced from its political context. She rescued it from its political associations, since any Atheist who happens to come to power cannot help but govern or rule influenced by Atheism, which has a deeply tarnished image worldwide while any admitted American Atheist would have a hell of a time getting elected here. Then I contrasted the literally Godless religion (is a Godless religion, a contradiction in terms, therefore not a religion, and can this entire diary be troll-rated for suggesting otherwise?) with Agnosticism, since I’m an Agnostic, or thought I was one, have been approaching life as one for decades, until someone told me actually I’m not, and someone else said your definition is your own.
Maybe there’s another category, then. There’s: there is no God; there’s: God is an unprovable commodity; there’s: since God is a belief at best, I don’t know whether I believe in God or not. That would make me something beside an Agnostic but I’d still get to be a coward for declining to come down on either side while bona fide Agnostics would get to be as brave as Atheists. Maybe my position has a name; if so I’ve never heard it.
But the point is not to relitigate the issues of that diary. Concurrent with it was a meta diary asking the simple question, Can we praise the dreaded election spoiler Ralph Nader without risking almost as much ridicule and ostracization as had it been George W. Bush, the devil incarnate, or let’s split the difference with Karl Rove? Nader was a hero to the left and especially the far left before his self-absorption made the perfect the enemy of the good, and even as I say that I wonder if someone is going to be insulted at the implication that Al Gore is merely "good" and troll-rate this diary for such heresy even though the diary is more about punishment than it is about Agnosticism or Ralph Nader.
We don’t watch what we say here; we watch how we say it. I’ve read it many times. You can interject an unpopular opinion, but do it with respect for the community. If you don’t, we rate you accordingly. That sounds reasonable in spite of the fact that, as with a jury making its judgments, those judgments are as valid as the diverse experiences forming them are not objective. It takes twelve to condemn a defendant, and two to hide a comment, which is more than fair, considering that the consequences of a court verdict are much more than six times the fate of a troll. This rambling essay is not heading toward a climax, I just realized. It’s just restating the issue a lot of people raised before I did: do we pounce too quickly and too eagerly on any divergence from the consensus? It’s been discussed many times but deserves reassessment.
Of 114,000 odd registered users, I wonder how many are long gone. Since the vast majority chooses not to flame out, the best measure is a guess at best. There is a certain degree of orthodoxy here, as indicated when McJoan’s sanction of the troll abuser added a qualifier: even if s/he is a bit of a provocateur. Restrictions become not worth the frustration, I suppose.