Over the past few years I, and others, have posted various claims, assertions, arguments, and especially, melt-downs, by participants in the “Speak Your Mind” forums on Patrick Madrid’s Roman Catholic website. As the material was publicly accessible, it was a veritable gold mine of bad arguments, circularity, and, of course, with Art Sippo posting there, a treasure trove of wild-eyed Inquisition Era Roman Catholicism. We noted the obvious contradictions between Madrid’s “This is how we should do apologetics” and Sippo’s fire-breathing invective, and the sad job of the moderators to follow Art around, cleaning up his verbal messes. We noted that the moderators installed a filter that removes “aomin.org” from any URL posted there as well (a telling commentary on just how much, or what portions, of your mind you are actually allowed to speak).
Yesterday I posted something that was put up by one of the moderators which was directly in response to an argument I have made a number of times. I demonstrated the shallow nature of the argument and showed that it comprised a “non-response.” Evidently, that was “the last straw.” Not only did Algo get banned (based on some vague accusation of “copyrights” as if publicly posted messages are “copyrighted” and hence protected from fair use), but if you try to access the forums now, this is what you see (at least, as of the time of this posting):
Well, there you go! No more public access! That is the only appropriate way of handling the situation. I mean, we all know you can’t really speak your mind in the Speak Your Mind forums; we all know Art Sippo is an embarrassment to any thinking Roman Catholic advocate, but, for some reason, Patrick Madrid and his cadre of assistants can’t seem to get rid of him. So, this is wise: do as Tur8inFan has described it and “turtle.” Shut the doors and the windows and chit chat with each other. Then you can spout all the really bad arguments you want, and hey, nobody will be the wiser! Sippo can flame all the “prots” on the planet and only you will know! Very wise indeed! Of course, my suggestion would be to change the forum name out of respect for honesty to “Speak Your Mind As Long As It is in Accordance With Our Understanding of the Roman Magisterium.” That’s a bit long, but hey, we all have wide monitors now anyway, right?