What is a "divisive" Question?

Question

Questions from Krishraj Rao continue to polarise the Stack Exchange community and to be systematically voted down and put on hold for reasons that are not clear to me. My guess is that there is institutional bias and prejudice at work here.

This question has been edited to be more appealing to the members of the community, but is still described as "divisive", though comments with negative comments have been left in place.

Why is this question divisive?

What is it about a question being "divisive" which is a bad thing?

@CrabBucket says "I do think it could be rephrased though to make it less contenious. Would you be willing to try to do that to stop it provoking negative reactions or drawing negative answers and comments? "

What is wrong with contentious questions?

Answer 1

This and other Buddhist sites, be they in the Q&A format or discussion format, really don't have a good way to deal with people who are borderline hostile to Buddhism as a project-- this goes for both the Christians who want you to drop this religion and pick up theirs, and for areligious atheists that think all religions are parodies of the worst of what religion has to offer.

The later group-- people trying to make religion compatible with modern life, may have legit questions. How do we salvage the good parts of Buddhism once we realize that we just can't muster the faith to believe the impossible? But these people's questions look a lot alike the people who have already made up their mind that religion and Buddhism is all garbage.

This is even true for some critical academics like Glenn Wallis-- He's a professor at a Buddhist University, translated Pali texts, but with his Non-Buddhism project, somedays I can't tell if he wants to reform Buddhism and make it compatible with modern world views or if he just wants to burn it to the ground and replace it with French philosophy and poetry.

If the subtext of a hypothetical problematic question is "You guys are a bunch of infantile, superstitious, right wing, reactionary, nit wits, am I right or am I right?" Then we can't help them with that question. It is the job of an Atheist/Anti-Religion Stack Exchange to win converts to that world view.

If the question is, "I am literate, have a college degree and am incapable of belief in the hells, the afterlife, or belief in the ability of Buddhas to literally fly by meditation alone...yet my life is chronic bouts of depression and suffering, how do I follow the Buddhist project, can the suffering end?" Well, that is a question we should be able to answer-- if the traditionalists want to come up with a good argument for faith, let them. If the secular Buddhist can explain what the "good parts" of Buddhism are, then that is so much the better.

Answer 2

I edited the question and for the record, I don't want to silence any user on asking questions. Our biggest challenge here on Buddhism.SE has been to receive enough questions. It's our only underscored area on Area 51. (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/45110?phase=beta) So more questions are good! In fact, we at one time were only receiving on average 2 questions per day, so this 5.6 per day is significant improvement and any user who contributes good questions helps us to meet the criteria needed to graduate to a full site.

Yesterday I edited 3 of Krishnaraj Rao's questions; two which had been closed and were subsequently re-opened with the edits and the 3rd which you've linked above. In the question linked above, there was a good question in there but phrases like "Other than unquestioned faith in the infallibility of ancient texts, is there any basis for...." may be interpreted as provocative as it implies a simplistic blind faith. Removing "unquestioned" and "infallible" didn't change the question, from what I can see, but it did remove the words which may be seen as mocking, disdainful, critical, or even trolling.

It's a democratic site. If people feel a question is mocking their tradition, practice, belief, are they going to upvote it? Not likely.

There is nothing wrong with skeptical questions, but a certain level of sensitivity that one is being skeptical of things others hold dear would be appreciated. Krishnaraj Rao has not objected to edits made and I take that as a good sign that we can find a balance here between people who see Buddhism from a scholarly PoV and people who know what they know from the experience of living and practicing Buddhism.

Be well. :)

Answer 3

My guess is that there is institutional bias and prejudice at work here.

For your guess to be true (and I'm broadening here what you may be referring to as "institutional"), the 7 or so downvotes would have to correspond to some majority of users. Yet, 7 is not even half of the top voters of this month.

Naturally, as per how this site works, it is irrelevant if the 7 are the most active, if they are the moderators, or any other "prominent role". So I interpreted "institutional" as "the whole community".

This question has been edited to be more appealing to the members of the community, but is still described as "divisive", though comments with negative comments have been left in place.

I can only speak for myself: I think it's current form is fine.

Why is this question divisive?

Maybe it wasn't sufficiently clear of provocation¹.

Other than unquestioned faith in the infallibility of ancient texts, is there any other basis for modern Buddhists to believe in Buddhist Cosmology? What If so, what is that basis?

While the above can be seen as a perfectly objective question, it also may not: it leaves room for a person to understand that modern buddhists (e.g. a reader) have unquestioned faith in the infallibility of ancient texts and, moreover, unquestioned faith in the buddhist cosmology -- furthermore, possibly spiraling to the idea that general faith in the texts are uncritical, and so on.

IOW, it might be read as:

"I know you all have unquestioned faith in the infallibility of ancient texts and buddhist cosmology, but do you have anything else to show why it might be true?"

Yes, certainly the original text did not say that. It seems what matters is how it's patterns create reactions that are known and could have been avoided.

A good objective text is not just one that is, by itself, objective, but one that minimizes any chance for a reader to misfocus and drift away from the subject at hand.

The bulk of his question is about evidence for cosmology. He could have avoided all the trouble by asking precisely and only this: if there are empirical evidence for the buddhist cosmology and what writings are there of gurus confirming its reality. That's all a user looking for such information would be required to say (unless he wants to say or imply more than that?).

Answers "based on faith" are easily implied that it is not what he is looking for. No need to further add words that risk implying problematic things. Specially when humans, with diverse nationalities, age, education, background and mood are reading and voting and specially when this user has had troubles to be understood before. And really, I think that's all there's to it.

What is it about a question being "divisive" which is a bad thing?

I'm certain that it's not the essence of the question that is drawing such a negative reaction. It's likely the perception of some users towards another user and his way of expressing himself.

What is wrong with contentious questions?

Not much, if the contention is limited to their subject. @ChrisW has pointed out how one of his question is the second most upvoted on this site: Is rebirth a delusional belief?. That's a pretty contentious question, no? Notice how there is one downvote on it. Notice how even a user who would not be inclined to upvote did so because he praised the research behind it.

There are many people here willing to address skeptical questions and respect them but I guess there aren't many who are interested in untying nots of questions that might be saying more than what they should.

---

¹ However, the larger number of downvotes might be better explained by the context: previous questions posted by the same users, and how other users have been reacting to him

Answer 4

What is wrong with contentious questions?

I think the definition of Right Speech as per the Eightfold Noble Path may be cleary useful to identify what is right, unharmful and useful speech (or debate) and what is not. An excerpt from the elaboration on Right Speech as given here :-

Five keys to right speech "Monks, a statement endowed with five factors is well-spoken, not ill-spoken. It is blameless & unfaulted by knowledgeable people. Which five? "It is spoken at the right time. It is spoken in truth. It is spoken affectionately. It is spoken beneficially. It is spoken with a mind of good-will."— AN 5.198

I personally think that for an academician or philosopher, debates and contentious issues are bread and butter. They thrive on it for intellectual satisfaction or for the satisfaction that comes from showing superiority by winning a seemingly intelligent argument.

A practitioner of the Buddha's teachings on the other hand sees no point in them, as a debate can just be to build up one's ego, fame or for other worldly gains for which he has no interest. The time available as a human being in this life is too precious for him to be wasted away in such futility. One of the members here has beautifully highlighted what's wrong with futile debates here. I have used the link to his answer here, since his thoughts totally echo mine.

The beauty of Dhamma and the Buddha's teachings is that irrespective of the situation (undesirable in this case due to futile debates) or the kind of experience one is having due to a person or occurrence (unpleasant in this case, since a few are being hurt), one can not only choose to stay unharmed without blaming a particular person or situation for one's unpleasantness, but also on the contrary use the unpleasant and undesirable situation totally to one's own benefit as an opportunity to cut the bonds of aversion and continue sprinting on the Noble Path.

In this spirit, this opportunity (the current unpleasantness in the forum) seems to be the right one for novice practitioners like me to work on the qualities/parmis of Uppekha, Khanti, Karuna and Metta for all stakeholders. And I'm inspired to do this by the tolerance shown by senior members of the forum who have been upholding the spirit of the Buddha's teachings.

The following comment of mine may be unnecessary but I'm too tempted to close with it:- Those touching on unnecessarily sensitive subjects, should really ponder if they would have dared to do so on forums of certain other religions, where there is very little tolerance and democracy. It really is a downside of the humans isn't it that we take democracy and freedom for granted till we are made to realize otherwise. :-)

Answer 5

My explanation of divisiveness: we appear to have a kind of heightened/orientalized standard of politeness versus westernized/modern traditions of exchanging views. And there are three types of temperaments:

1) Some people's belief-systems being relatively robust, they don't mind people questioning, probing and poking around. Possibly, they actually enjoy the stimulation and challenge, and like to shake things up themselves. Their view is possibly that the Truth (whatever that is) needs no protection, or that it shines brighter with some intellectual friction.

2) But there are others, who are like, "Who gave you the right to come in here and ask uncomfortable questions about our beliefs? Our beliefs are ancient and venerable, and you are off-limits. You are too ignorant to ask questions. Go play in the preta realm. Leave us to discuss in peace."

3) And then there's a third set whose response is protective. They are like, "We personally don't mind your questioning, but hush, speak gently, you are hurting and offending the elders."

So, one question, and three ways of experiencing it. That's divisive.