[Serious] Future of the Forums (Discussion)

[Losty]

I wonder if some sort of sign up list would be an option for people who don’t feel comfortable doing monthly donations.

Like...I don’t know maybe post a list Jan-Dec and as people claim months just add their name next to the month? I don’t know if I’m making any sense lol. What I’m trying to say is like, I will volunteer to pay the difference after Patreon donations for March. Maybe someone else could do June. We have to have at least 12 people with $11 to spare.

[BrokenQuill92]

I wonder if some sort of sign up list would be an option for people who don’t feel comfortable doing monthly donations.

Like...I don’t know maybe post a list Jan-Dec and as people claim months just add their name next to the month? I don’t know if I’m making any sense lol. What I’m trying to say is like, I will volunteer to pay the difference after Patreon donations for March. Maybe someone else could do June. We have to have at least 12 people with $11 to spare.

I don’t have very much but I can give maybe 5

[Losty]

I wonder if some sort of sign up list would be an option for people who don’t feel comfortable doing monthly donations.

Like...I don’t know maybe post a list Jan-Dec and as people claim months just add their name next to the month? I don’t know if I’m making any sense lol. What I’m trying to say is like, I will volunteer to pay the difference after Patreon donations for March. Maybe someone else could do June. We have to have at least 12 people with $11 to spare.

I don’t have very much but I can give maybe 5

Well, maybe someone else has $6. If you can only afford to do $5 as a one time payment, it still helps.

[SteelCurtain]

I would like to donate, but require privacy, for...reasons. How can I do that

Patreon. You have a nym there just like here.

[SteelCurtain]

Turns out convincing my husband that a monthly donation to an atheist website is an acceptable use of his funds is proving harder than I had anticipated. I’ll keep working on him. 🤨

How about that it's something that makes you happy?

Say you'll do one less bottle of wine per month. (We know that won't really happen wink wink)

[SteelCurtain]

I can't make monthly payments on some sort of auto-pay, so if I could make a lump sum donation through an intermediary, I could manage that. Just don't spend it all in one place.   I will note that the last time I made an online donation to a forum, one of the moderators took the money and made all kinds of excuses about the money disappearing. Once bitten...and not saying that it would happen here, btw.

That's very unfortunate. Sucks that someone burned you that way.

The money that comes in here goes straight to server costs, domain, etc. We're well off enough financially that $40+ isn't tempting.

Except when SteelCurtain stealses the funds...

[Atomic Lava]

I just recently joined but this place is alright in my book. There seems to be lively and civil discussion that occurs here 99.9% of the time. And that is incredibly hard to find on the internet these days. I tried Reddit and that was a major F No from me. That place is a dumpster fire. I would gladly pitch in a few bucks a month. However, it is really up to the admin as to what the future holds. Good forum though.

[Prof.Lunaphiles]

I don't really come to the forums very often anymore. I want to say there are multiple reasons for that, and yeah, work has been keeping me busy, but the main reason is that the forum is just not very fun for me anymore. . .

So I guess I wanted to have a discussion to see where the community stands, and what they want to do. If you want the forum to continue, with the same staff team at the helm, we need funds to make that happen. Alternatively I might be open to selling the forum to someone who has more of an interest in it. Or, if people have a similar attitude to me, we could simply let the forum die and move on; we made it 11 years, maybe it's time to move on.

I'm not going to make any snap decisions like owners at other forums; you're not going to suddenly wake up one day and find that everything is closed and have to scramble to find somewhere else. However something has to change, and I want the community to decide what that should be.

- Tibs

I apologize for being new to the Atheist Forum - I have been at the other atheist forums that have decommissioned over the past 18 years of my participation and monitoring.

I believe that the 'atheist' forums decommission, because of the memberships' progressive lack of interest - nothing is accomplished. Nobody learns anything new, or trustworthy to accept as leading toward a better path of society. Some forums have tried setting up discussion areas designed to deliberate issues to their just conclusion, but it does not work.

In 2002 when I first entered an atheist forum, Atheist Network, my immediate ambition was to find enlightenment to understanding why society is so chaotic. to my surprise, I found atheists to be in a state of chaos, and I had to research it all on my own.

It is a contradiction for atheists to claim that they are the guardians of reason and critical thinking, and then claim that atheists are all very much different in opinions about things. The usual euphemism is that "gathering atheists is like herding cats." And then atheists will charge theists to review their dogma, or whatever. The point is that there are only a handful of reasonable opinions about any particular issue, and it only appears to be too numerous to list, because atheists are not willing to accept the possibility that they are wrong about some things (definitions to words significant to atheists), that were established in a less sophisticated society. And of course, in the situation of forums, such reversals will offend and possibly alienate members to discontinue their memberships.

Don't get me wrong - I do not believe in the existence of gods - I am an atheist.

I believe that there is a way of deliberating issues in forums like this, and that developing the system to achieve such a goal is what atheists should be working on before the theists do it first . . .

Atheists suggest that Galileo was wronged by the Church, but how does one convince people who have long believed the world to be flat without being able to prove otherwise with visual proof, or actually sailing around the world??? For some reason atheists think it should have been easily reasoned by the Church officials and that it was their responsibility to announce the new ideas to the peasants.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The point is that there are only a handful of reasonable opinions about any particular issue, and it only appears to be too numerous to list, because atheists are not willing to accept the possibility that they are wrong about some things that were established in a less sophisticated society.

The only thing atheists are required to be in agreement about is their lack of belief in gods, societal issues don’t enter into it.



Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Atheists suggest that Galileo was wronged by the Church, but how does one convince people who have long believed the world to be flat without being able to prove otherwise with visual proof, or actually sailing around the world??? For some reason atheists think it should have been easily reasoned by the Church officials and that it was their responsibility to announce the new ideas to the peasants.

The shape of the Earth had nothing do with Galileo’s trouble with the Church. It had to do with 1) his contention that the Earth moved round the sun, 2) his rather crabby attitude, and 3) his inability to know when to shut up.

Boru