While I spend a lot of time blogging against feminism, I don’t spend a lot of time discussing censorship. Most of that happens on my schizophrenic Twitter account. To be clear: I hate censorship almost as much as I hate feminism. I may disagree with you, but I’ll defend your right to disagree. In the manosphere, of all places, men should be tough enough to take public criticism without resorting to emotional outbursts and retaliatory censorship.
One of the reasons I refuse anonymity is because a man should put his reputation behind his words.[1] It is why I recently criticized anonymous leadership. As more and more of the ‘sphere gets attacked and censored, it is all the more important to stand up against those attacks and not cower in fear. The poem, “First they came …“, captures the why. If (when?) they come for me, they’ll have to ban a real person, not merely a site or an account.
We as bloggers should mirror each other’s sites. Release them (with our real names) under a Creative Commons license to permit copying.[2] In doing so, we can ensure that our works do not vanish and no one can take them away. Works can be combined into digests for easier distribution. And if the authors can bear it, a license that permits modifications would allow works to be built upon. These are such simple things to do, yet it requires each blogger to relinquish tight control over their work. During my Wikipedia days, I mostly got used to having others criticize, change, and delete my work. It’s not that bad.
[1] The Anabaptist needs no oaths because his word is his bond. This is integrity.
[2] I’ve done so on my apologetics blog. See the footer at https://grassrootsapologetics.org/. I have not done so here because I’m lazy, I self-host, and I don’t want my personal posts released under a CC license.
You wrote: “One of the reasons I refuse anonymity is because a man should put his reputation behind his words.[1] It is why I recently criticized anonymous leadership. As more and more of the ‘sphere gets attacked and censored, it is all the more important to stand up against those attacks and not cower in fear.”
Please define what you mean if you do not believe in self-defense if that is what you believe. I was reading one of your comments on another blog and I thought you mentioned that you don’t believe in self-defense. Do you believe a protest against censorship is a form of self defense on the principle of freedom of speech?
You wrote: “The Anabaptist needs no oaths because his word is his bond. This is integrity.”
I’m not sure I understand this either. If you promise to perform an action to another, whether in writing or oral, do you consider the promise a form of oath? In my view, if you never make promises or oaths then how do you keep your word to perform?
Or do you mean you refuse to make an oath to God, but will make a promise to men using your word, and that you don’t believe in a written promise to a man?
Please don’t be offended by my questions. I believe in unity and uniformity of all things biblical, and if I agree with you to a promise, whether in writing or not, it is an oath. I see no sin in unity and uniformity between two or more people who agree to the truth, and defend or uphold it. Is this an error?
Walt,
No, I agree with the Anabaptist position that all violence, but not all conflict, is wrong. We can, and should, stand up for mercy, justice, and truth. This probably means more, not less, conflict.
I think this may be merely a semantic difference.
It is based on Matthew 5:33-37. Our yes is our yes, our no is our no. This means that we always speak truth and may never lie in any context. God holds us to our promises, we need no special declarations.
An oath requires a witness or authority. We need no witness or authority, for God is our witness and sole authority. Invoking anyone or anything else (including ourselves) would be inappropriate. Invoking God explicitly would be to imply that there could be times when God was not witnessing our statements. Relatedly, requiring an oath would be to question one’s integrity.
So in short, every statement a Christian makes is an “oath” witnessed by God. No oaths (swearing on anyone or anything that you will uphold your promise) are acceptable. No lie is ever acceptable. If we ever speak a lie, we must repent.
Are we Christians? If so, we are literally representatives of God. For us to lie is to misrepresent God. For others to question our integrity is to question God’s authority. Both are significant sins. The seriousness is why Jesus mentions “the evil one.”
Derek
Pingback: Anonymity and the authority of God
One of the reasons I refuse anonymity is because a man should put his reputation behind his words.
That’s just an opinion. And a bad one. In many cases anonymity can provide against groundless attacks, which would result in just a waste of time and money. Throughout history many authors preferred to stay anonymous, which is well-respected. You should judge someones words on their implicit merit. If you’re unable to make that distinction, you’re mislead. Truth is truth, regardless of who speaks it.
Why? Humans legitimately appeal to authority all the time. Christianity itself is based on the authority of God, Jesus, and the congregation of believers.
Unless you are making a strictly deductive logical argument, it seems that both authority and merit are required. The fact that this is often self-authority still shows that authority is required.
Nonsense. We might respect the words of a coward, not the coward. Remember the heavy criticism of anonymous person behind the NYT op-ed criticizing Trump? The church fathers assigned authorship to many anonymous Bible works precisely because authorship and authority is critical.
You cannot compare the role of inspired Scripture, with the contributions people make on blogs, which they base not on authority but on arguments. The whole body of scientific knowledge is built upon the scientific method, which does not depend on an individual scientist, but on data and repeatability. Similarly, we judge arguments on their content, not on who makes them. Not looking at the argument, but at the person making the argument, assumes people with the right merit never err, and everything they say can be taken to be true. That is lame and bad practice.