Congratulations! If you can manage to get yourself banned from any and all other forums on which you participate, I think you'll find you have begun a new chapter in peace of mind and mental health – seriously.
Any forum with a Statement of Faith is obviously a minefield. The owners are attempting to promote and maintain a particular culture. To do so, the forum pretty much has to operate at the level of the lowest common denominator – which in the case of Christianity is some version of mindless orthodoxy. (As we have seen, however, even those "real Christians" at the lowest common denominator come unhinged and snarl at each other five posts into almost every thread.)
I was surprised – genuinely surprised – I wasn't banned at CB sooner. My posts and blog were clearly outside the boundaries of what the culture could handle. I originally thought it was actually a more enlightened forum but soon realized it was because the moderators are mostly asleep at the wheel. I was banned at ChristianForums.net for precisely the same reason – just simply, "We don't want your kind of thinking here. You're upsetting our faithful regulars with names like 'ForHisGlory'." Forums such as these can tolerate true goofballs - Flat Earthers and Young Earthers and whatnot - to some extent, but not someone who actually has the background and intelligence to be a challenge.
I've never been banned anywhere with any sort of warning or explanation. It’s always just a matter of attempting to log in and suddenly discovering I've been banned. At ChristianForums.net, I managed to get the personal email of the site owner and asked for the courtesy of an explanation. I got nothing but a snarky "Get lost" in response.
Internet forums – all of them – are inherently dysfunctional and toxic. I have friends who participate on what should be innocuous forums about things like photography, and they are EXACTLY the same as the most dysfunctional Christian forum. As I've said elsewhere, the JFK assassination forum, where we had to use real names, real photos and verifiable academic credentials, was and is among the worst.
In the first place, internet forums attract a certain personality type. They are not polite conversations among normal people. They just aren't. But the format itself is dysfunctional. The silly and always inconsistent "moderation" by suppose "moderators," some of whom are typically among the most blatant wackos themselves. The silly system of "rep points" and "post counting," conditioning participants as though they were Pavlov's dogs. (Wow, ForHisGlory has 77,939 posts and 112,000 rep points – she's a veritable forum goddess!) The silly and always inconsistent system of "reporting" offensive posts. The supposed "forum rules," which are typically honored in the breach and enforced largely on the basis of whether the moderators like or don't like the violator. None of it really works. It's inherently dysfunctional.
At the now-defunct, atheist-dominated Forum for Active and Critical Thinking Skills (FACTS), some of us on this side of sanity broke off and started an email list of people who seemed to have interesting things to say and could do so without coming unhinged. It wasn't perfect, but it was better.
My participation on forums has been far more sporadic over the past ten years than it used to be. I always reach a point of feeling slightly stupid and disappointed in myself for participating at all. Why am I doing this? Do I get anything at all out of it? Is it just mental masturbation because I'm bored and can think of nothing better to do? Can I really find nothing better to do with my time? The only justification that makes any sense to me is that I'm writing for myself, exercising my brain and organizing my thoughts – but I can do that without a forum.
Perhaps you'll find your niche at this place, although with only a handful of participants it already seems headed down the path of all forums – and I believe this is because they are all inherently dysfunctional and toxic. I actually do think you'd find enhanced peace of mind if you'd simply break free. The sheer number of threads you start does seem somewhat indicative of an obsession or addiction.
And that's all I have to say about that. If this is my last post ever on any forum, I'll be very pleased with myself. Although the Flat Earth forum does look like it might have potential, I must say, so maybe I'll just call myself ThinksItsRound as see how it goes for awhile, https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php … Or maybe not. (Wait, there actually is a participant called EarthIsRound, so maybe I'll have some kindred spirits!)
You will find Beloved O'Darby is the same way.
Maybe you should start your own and show us rubes how it's done.
