Things would not have gotten to this point if you had been enforcing civility on this forum, Simon. There's no way you haven't noticed Viviane's thousands of argument-baiting posts. S/he has been injecting toxin into this community for quite some time, and it has been building up. I know that you are only one man, but that's where a moderation team is supposed to come in handy. Someone saw fit to ban Viviane once before under his/her previous user name (an erstwhile moderator?), but apparently the same behavior is now tolerated that was once considered unacceptable.
I don't believe EdenOne should quit the forum over this. But I do believe the problem goes beyond Viviane, and extends to anyone who drops into faith-based threads to deposit mocking remarks which are designed to poke at other people. This is a pattern of behavior which has been allowed to proliferate here, and it's 50% of the reason I no longer post here (the other 50% being free time). For anyone to hide behind the idea of "only attacking beliefs, not the person" is to pretend that people do not hold certain beliefs dear, that they do not have sacred cows. Some of the people here once became violently ill when they started to realize that they were not in "the truth"; are you really telling them that beliefs are just a superficial thing like a piece of clothing that one can take off and exchange for another; that attacking their beliefs is a considerate way of speaking to them?
We have had numerous threads on this subject of rude posters, and they have often been started by agnostic/atheist posters who were not personally offended by other posters directly, but took issue with what was happening. I participated enthusiastically in one of these threads, arguing for the kind of moderation that is commonly employed on other forums (i.e., a rule about being civil to each other). Finally you, Simon, made a post where you clearly stated that you were in favor of mocking foolish beliefs, and I realized that I was wasting my breath, and lost a lot of my attachment to this forum. Since the personality of any organization comes from the leadership, there's no way that civility can be enforced when the leader(s) do not will it.
Your personal journey away from religion, which started over a decade ago, has been given precedence over the concept of running a tolerant forum for people who are just now learning the truth about their religion and figuring out how to cope. Any discussions over science and philosophy should naturally take a back seat to the needs of people who are in such a vulnerable place and can use the help of others who have been there. And yet the message this forum sends on a daily basis is that it is inappropriate to even consider passing through "Christianity" or "spirituality" as a phase on one's way out of the cult. That is not a sympathetic way to run a forum.
I know it's not pleasant to have random posters popping up telling you how to do your job. And you only have so much free time to manage disputes between people. And I don't think it's necessary or fruitful to require posters to apologize formally. And I see that you have asked Viviane to be less argumentative in the future. But please don't act blind-sided, as if this all came out of nowhere, when Viviane and other posters have been antagonizing people for years and multiple threads have been started over this issue. The community is trying to tell you something here. Please listen to it.
