General Rules of Conduct

Be professional! Have respect for others; behave decently; think before you react; don't hold back; don't post personal information (name and email are fine if you have to); avoid posting twice; don't post commercial advertisements.

Spiritual Discussion Guideline

The followings are some of the very common responses that should be avoided in a spiritual dialogue, otherwise you'll be talking in a circular reasoning:

  1. Transformation, some call 'miracle'. Life experience that has transformed one’s life; which is too subjective.
  2. "You have to be a member of our group/people to be able to understand our concept" (this is too subjective).
  3. The 'most', 'est', or 'best seller'; As: "Our book is best seller, the oldest source, in history of mankind, therefore our book must be genuine/has not been corrupted" (this is too subjective).
  4. Factual information that is undesirable and impossible to confirm. In some cases due to not having anybody from each party in the dialogue who has been in the scene to witness. As: "Jesus (pbuh/Muslim) started helping his mother: milking goat and fixing the roof when he was a baby, at twenty-four hour old".
  5. Using BELIEF/FAITH format to reason, but not allowing others to do the same. (This is not fair; and usually the format leads to false reasoning and wouldn’t reach a common goal. BELIEF/FAITH shall be used to reach a particular idea that each party can agree only).
  6. Personal opinion or assumption to explain or endorse the verity of the scriptures that would be used as a base of reasoning.
  7. "If your religion can make you a good person, you’ll be fine" or "All that matter in this world are: if you work hard, pay your bill, love and provide the need for your family, be nice to other people, be on time for your meeting, keep your promise, take a good care of yourself and help the needy if you can. The world would be just fine and God would always love you."
 

Copyright 2004 The Acheh Times