User talk:Jcw

This is a meritocracy, and you deserve blocking privileges. They have just been awarded to you. Congratulations!--Andy Schlafly 09:55, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

Thanks Andy, much appreciated. I'll endeavor to use the privileges responsibly and to the benefit of CP. If I have questions about blocking policy or anti-vandal tactics, is it alright to ask publicly on your talk page, or is there a better venue? Thanks again. Jcw 12:50, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

Wow, your new privileges were just in time! Great effort a little while ago.

I'll mark your talk page here as "watched" and you can ask any questions about blocking here, or on my talk page. Looks like you already know what you need, however!--Andy Schlafly 13:51, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

Indeed, the vandals never seem to be far away... One question occurs at once: from the username policy, I'd assume that anyone with a clearly incorrect username should be gently blocked and invited to re-join. Is that something I can legitimately do, or should I leave it to the admins? Jcw 13:57, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

Please do block inappropriate user names, even before any edits. Note that it is necessary to unblock the option boxes in those cases in order to allow re-registering under an appropriate name.--Andy Schlafly 14:22, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

Ah yes, I'll be careful of that. Thanks for all the help. Jcw 14:29, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

Freyja

Can you explain why the statement 'The motivation for atheists to insist on falsely teaching that the Earth is old is to pull students away from God's immediate presence, and to turn them away from Jesus Christ' is factual enough to appear on the main page of 'Counterexamples to an Old Earth', while the additional statement 'The motivation for non-atheists to teach that the Earth is old remains unknown.' is only allowed on the discussion page? Both are equally uncited, contentious, over-generalized and irrelevant to the topic at hand. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by freyja (talk)

For starters, "non-atheists" is a meaningless term. Moreover, "non-atheists" are aberrations rather than the norm with respect to what constitutes science education. They are simply not representative of anything.--Andy Schlafly 19:49, 7 June 2011 (EDT)

Andy, I have to say I found Jcw's response somewhat more informative than yours. He must be as disappointed as I that you chose to delete it.

It's pretty clear what the term "non-atheists" mean. There is a set of people within the population who (I'm fairly sure you'd agree) are atheists. There must therefore be a set of people not in the set "atheists" (technically this is the complement of the set "atheists"). You may have a better name, but I think most people will understand that the term "non-atheists" applies to this latter set. It's fairly basic mathematics.

What confuses me more is that having asserted that the term "non-atheists" is meaningless, you then go on to use the term as the basis for further assertions. If "non-atheists" is a meaningless term then "non-atheists are an aberration" is a meaningless statement. I'm sure you're not in the habit of making meaningless statements, but in this case is does seem indicative of a somewhat incoherent chain of thought. -- Freyja 07:44, 8 June 2011 (EDT)