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From SaveTheWorld - a project of The Partnership Machine, Inc. (Sponsor: Family Music Center)
Contents
"Save the World" Club
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What This Is
What you can accomplish. This forum is designed so you can interact with others to develop consensus about facts, positions, solutions and strategies relating to public issues. And then act together using these strategies in order to implement these solutions - going beyond talk all the way to results. To "turn the world right side up", as Acts 17:6 indirectly puts it. Where God is not censored, but personal attacks are.
(This format is compared with others at FAQ#What_does_this_forum_do_that_others_don't?. If there is a better format, someone tell us and we may shut this down. There are more popular forums! But much depends on popularizing this much interaction across our land.)
How you can do it. The wiki software here is what Wikipedia uses. It allows people to not just comment after someone else's article, but to also edit someone else's article. The rules here invite you to edit, comment, debate, vote, and leave your name with links to more of your own information, in the very part of an article where it is relevant. You can submit your own original evidence or reasoning (which is prohibited at Wikipedia; you can only report, there, the statements or positions of some "mainstream" source).
When the information you want to add is unreasonably long, or would alter the direction of the article enough to render its title incomplete if not misleading, you can add a summary of your information with a link to all of it which you can post in a separate article on this site. If you want to post your information where others can't change it, you can post it on your own website and link here, or you can become a blogger on our sister blog, [www.Talk2me.Saltshaker.US www.Talk2me.Saltshaker.US]. Everyone is welcome to become a blogger there who will stay on a subject undistracted by spam, ads, porn, dirty words, etc. See Rules.
If your comment is like most comments after published articles, which very seldom address specific points in the article, you can leave it on the associated "talk" page where the rules about how to post are simpler.
Logical requirements for Consensus. Consensus is only possible between people willing to reason with each other - even when they disagree - respectfully at the least, if not in love. But Truth is only possible when bad reasoning - in ourselves as well as in others - is not respected or "tolerated", but patiently, graciously corrected. See [Rules#What_you_can't_do]
Consensus is only possible between people free to articulate their personal opinions and their reasoning, and to explain what most persuaded them - whatever it was - even when that turns out to be the Bible. Solutions are only possible when people can offer original ideas - because America NEEDS better solutions than have already been published!
Consensus requires lots of patience, lots of love, and lots of time. It takes lots of time to scrutinize new ideas, and to research novel claims. So much time, in fact, that it might require giving up as much as a whole TV show a week.
Urgency. The rules of this wiki aim at facilitating precisely the kind of dialog that America needs a lot more of. And not only America, but her schools and churches. In order to make our nation, and the world, a better place.
The Forum is a list of articles you can add to, correct, vote for, or just read. There are also suggested options how you can contribute in this format, and how to work with wiki software. Don't fear the funny code characters. They are your slaves.Rules explain the very little that you can't do. Basically: stay on the subject. No spam, ads, profanity, or personal attacks. What you can do: You can disagree. You can reason. You can quote God to give weight to your point. You can disagree with God and even God will reason with you if you will sincerely reason, Isaiah 1:18, so we Christians, not being better than God, will also; although gratuitous refusal to consider evidence will not make you persuasive. The mood of the rules is to make you persuasive and to encourage respect - not for error, but for each other, we all being victims of error, Galatians 6:1 - and for reason and intelligence, evidence and reality.
Tips are suggestions how to back up what you say in order to be persuasive, wherever you are trying to reason with someone who disagrees with you, and Scriptures that back up those suggestions.
FAQ explains why it is important that you register with your real name before you can post. It helps control spam, eliminates "trolls", and helps keep our efforts to reason with each other respectful so they can be productive. By the same principle that defendants in court can better defend themselves when they can "face" their accusers - know who they are, and be able to question them - discussion is more productive when people know who they are talking to.
Talk:Main Page is where you can propose changes to this page, the Main Page. This page is "protected" so that not everybody can change it, unlike almost every other page and article. Please "request an account" (upper right of the screen) so you can contribute. (Automatic account creation had to be disabled after thousands of spammers shut down this website with filthy, barely articulate posts. The process now requires not only that you contribute using your real name, but that the website administrator has your real working email address.)
Vision
A “Partnership Machine”. A “multitude of counsellors”, through which, God promises in Proverbs 15:22, goals that are agreed upon are reached.
A “Think Tank” which establishes facts with enough authority to bring “Political Reality” closer to reality – to help Truth become “politically realistic” again. A forum for healing national division.
A forum where the purpose of debate is not sport but results - to "turn the world right side up". Acts 17:6. Where people reason with each other even when they disagree - without "tolerating" nonsense - where wise people will love you for intelligently correcting them, Proverbs 9:8.
Where information is judged, not people. Where ideas can't survive just by being "tolerated"; they have to be proved true. Where unpopular truths have a better chance than popular nonsense. Where everyone may appeal to the highest principles they know in support of their positions - even Christians.
Why we call this "SaveTheWorld"
People with ambitious goals are too often ridiculed by saying "He thinks he can save the world."
Actually, not only do we THINK mere fallen humans COULD "save the world" if they wanted, but Jesus told us if we set our goals as high as mountains, He will have our back.
Matthew 21:21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. 22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
Jesus also told us specifically to save the world.
Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. 17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
So even though many have a tragically unrealistic view of how helpless they are, at least the phrase accurately describes our goal.
With these teensy qualifications:
(1) Our goal is a lot better than merely learning a few magic words that will get you into Heaven, because the Gospel (translation: Good News) is a lot more than that!It is about full life starting right now. And it is not socially or politically inert. It turns the world right side up.
Acts 17:6 And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also;
(2) Our goal is to help everyone achieve the good that they want. Unfortunately many want evil. Many more are so used to evil that they resist anything better, if anything better would be different.
But there are a few people who are tired of evil and are ready to work to turn evil into good. Our goal is to help them. And to join with God's effort to proclaim to the whole world God's readiness to help. And to strengthen faith for the "long train of abuses" that must come upon the world before the whole world will be tired of evil and ready for God's help removing it.
...all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. - The Declaration of Independence
This wiki is for people who want to accomplish A LOT. And are willing to WORK a lot.