h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This forum is for discussions relating to the society... new memberships, conversations regarding the form and function of the society, etc. If you'd like to start a debate on a topic unrelated to the society, I'd like to ask that you open a new forum.

For new members, I'd like to add your general political/religious/philosophical leanings... the -ism that most approximates your leanings will suffice. Mine would be libertarian/atheist/secular humanist. This is entirely optional, of course.

Welcome, and fight nicely.

Afternoon. i have been lurking here, although have yet to post, but I'll answer your question anyway:

I'd describe myself as left-liberal (the English term, I'm not sure what the US equivalent is). I'm a member of the Liberal Democrat party, and also an atheist, and over the summer, when I have more time on line, I expect to get more involved in this.

Your classification system is a little too simple for my convoluted past

Whisky:-

political leanings:
Was slightly to the right of Attila the Hun (not my description) - rapidly heading left as age creeps up on me.

Religious leanings:
Agnostic with a long history of involvement with religious organisations

Philosophical leanings:
God only knows (See religious leanings)

Political:

Libertarian Leftist

Religious:

Secular Agnostic

Philosophical Leanings:

I have no idea. My political hero is George Orwell, if that helps.

Zag

Mornin'


Ste:

Political: Socialist (why beat around the bush, eh?)

Religious: Atheist

Philosophical: Scientist/Humanist

I suppose I should have put "humanist" under philosophy.

Politics: greenish, left-leaning (UK); rabid revolutionary communist (US).

Religion: Pantheist. [Lapsed (for 30 years!) Roman Catholic.]

Philosophy: Composite. I take on board what convinces me. Heavily influenced and impressed by George Lakoff's theories of metaphor and embodied minds.

Will that do?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Evenin,

Political:- Left/Liberal/Scottish Nationalist

Religious:- Atheist

Philosophical:- Humanist

This is tough. I don't suppose just Lawful Neutral will do here. Very well:

Two Bit Trigger Pumping Moron - Pro-choice Conservative Atheist Republican w/ Libertarian tendancies LN

Phew! Lots of humanists around here! If we're not careful, the humanist majority may start imposing democracy on us!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Welcome everybody! So many responses so quickly...

Whisky: If you could approximate where you stand right now, it would be helpful. I really have no idea where you currently fit on the spectrum from your description... left of Attila the Hun leaves an awful lot of spectrum available.

2Bit: I managed to work in "lawful neutral" after all.

Excellent!

and accurate.

Hello, I'd like to join.

inconsistant/rationalist atheist/skeptical-scientist-humanist

Oddly enough, I had an idea for something like this about a week ago.

Right, then I'll be...

Political:

Left.

Religious:

Non-believing Anglican.

Philosophical:

No idea. The only philosophical issue I'll take a stand on is free will. So Determinist?

Hello. May I join?
Political: Left of Socialism
Religious: Soliptic Agnostic Pedant
Philosophical: Quantum Mechanic Erisian/ Entropic Free Will

Welcome, guys.

Daneel: I don't think that's odd at all. I've already participated in more than one forum where the need for some alternative to Ask H2G2 had been suggested. I'm sure there were many more I didn't.

It just occured to me that the community has already created an environment where people can rationally discuss controversial issues on this site, and had success with it. So I took the model of the FFFF, and expanded its scope. And here we are.

It would be nice to get some religous researchers to join, to balance things out a bit.

There seems to have been a few less successful debate forums created in the past: A997437 being one of them.

Quick Administrative question...

- Do you let absolutely anyone start up a discussion?

I don't suppose it matters for the time being, but thinking about limiting the number of 'Active' debates might be a good idea in the future - if this thread ends up with 1/10th of the traffic of Askh2g2 the arguements are going to end up seriously watered down.

- Maybe an Idea for the future would be to have a thread for 'debate subject suggestions' and then have someone (or a group) start threads for these new subjects as and when older debates die off.

Perhaps we could have a little rules that only allows members to start new debates?

What about topical debates, though? Surely people will want to discuss things while they are in the news? This would mean new debates pop up all the time.

I think it's a bit of a non-issue anyway - the debates that most interest people will live on whether they're surrounded by a lot or a little.