Eccl 12:12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. (KJV)

Prov 13:16 Every prudent man dealeth with knowledge: but a fool layeth open his folly. (KJV)

Overview

The arrival of cheap home computers, Intenet access, powerful Internet search engines, and software that allows anybody to run a chat-room or a bulletin-board, and anybody else who wants to can contribute. There are many of these sites that are related in some manner to the activities and membership of the Seventh Day Adventist church.

An fairly extensive list of the sites where active discussions take place can be found at this site, and by visiting there you can see the range. There is everything from extremely 'conservative' to extremely liberal groups.

Before I take you on a quick tour, I would like to give you a few words of warning.

1: First, and foremost, anyone can publish anything on the Internet. Your hardest problem is going to be determining the truth from the error in what you encounter. Consider, for instance, the information presented at www.brisinst.org.au/resources/brisbane_institute_sailing.html - even main stream encyclopedias get their facts wrong. Your only protection is a solid background of information from reputable sources.

2: People are basically anonymous on the Internet. You will encounter some lovely people that you wished lived or worked right beside you. You will also encounter liars, cheats, and malicious/vindictive people who hide behind innocuous facades but who delight in stirring up trouble. People can be very nasty to each other on the Internet, writing things that they would never say in a face-to-face meeting. Somehow the lack of physical contact reduces the normal social barriers. You will notice that such impoliteness never achieves anything, except maybe annoying someone enough that they leave the conversation.

The quick tour

The remnant-online.org is a calm, conservative, forum that restricts many of its discussions to people who are SDA church members. To achieve this calmness, its administrators (Richard Meyers being the foremost) keeps things relatively main-stream, erring on the conservative side, SDA. Unlike many other such sites, it does not have an eccentric air.

At the other end is the www.atomorrow.com site, where you will find a fairly small membership from both ends of the spectrum - avid creationists and evolutionists, people with wide-ranging views on Ellen White's writings, and many opinions on directions the SDA denomination should move in. The participants tend to be polite in their statement of their own opinions, and tolerant of the opinions of others - although always ready to discuss them.

The www.ClubAdventist.com forum seems to have the largest membership [although membership in general in these forums can fluctuated widely and relatively quickly]. Conversations range widely, with most views being expressed generally middle-of-the-road SDA ones, and there is usually a pleasant tone [although, again, this can change over a matter of weeks or months at any given site]. This is a more social site than some of the others - sort of like a Saturday night conversation might run.

The conversations at www.online-adventist.org tend to be sharper - with a certain amount of name-calling and unpleasantness sometimes cropping up. This site is one where I tend to hang out, because I am interesting in the discussions about creationism/evolution, how to understand the Bible, various views on EGW, and a certain amount of pseudo-science crops up which brings up scientific fact finding that intrigues me.

There are a couple of other interesting looking ones that you may want to take a closer look at , www.adventistinteractive.org/toc.htm, where they have restricted many of the discussions to current or former SDA members, and www.maritime-sda-online.org, where a calm and well-moderated group of SDA+friends hold a quiet conservative-to-middle, not liberal, discussions.

If you want to see what a more unusual site looks like, try www.everythingimportant.org, where some more extreme positions are fervently presented.

There is one newsgroup - alt.religion.christian.adventist - where anything goes and there is a very obnoxious and not-at-all-representative-of-SDA-members, free-for-all going on all the time. If you don't know what newsgroups are, this one is not worth finding out for!

Why?

There are lots of reasons that may be motivating you to participate.

1. Are you looking for support? Friendship? You are probably in the wrong place. Investigate your local church and community instead.

2. If you are looking for information about spiritual matters, then you will get a range of responses depending solely on where you go. Everyone from extremely conservative SDA positions, to radical atheists populate these forums.

3. Information, and misinformation, about the state of the SDA church can be found. Very often the first information about a genuine scandal within the denomination, and the first wrong information, gets propagated through these forums. The General Conference has not yet learned the value of having employees monitoring, building solid reputations for speaking the truth, and providing correct information into these forums.

4. Some people are here just to argue - they certainly get that!

5. A chance to influence? Personally I have stuck around partially because I don't want to see the forums completely taken over by the conservatives and the eccentrics. Moderates and knowledgeable thinkers are the two least represented groups on these forums, because they don't see anything in them worth their time.

6. A challenge? You will certainly be challenged!

7. Evangelism? Forget about it. Everything we know about evangelism says that public argument does not work - go and become active in your local community, make face-to-face friends, let people see Christ through you.

If you decide to post...and you don't want to do it just to be obnoxious, then there are some simple ideas that may help you.

1. Insults and criticisms don't achieve anything. When you the target, the best thing is to completely ignore them, or simply provide more facts backing up your position.

2. Don't put in long notes - people don't read them, and will classify you as a crank for posting them.

3. Find out and obey the rules of the forum you are in - they range widely. The administrator has paid for the right to kick you out.

4. Remember, the Internet is open to everyone - and much of what you read is false.

Finally

The Internet is just a tool. It can be used for good or for ill. If nothing else, this tour should have exposed you to the wide range that makes up the pool of people interested enough in the SDA church to hang around the forums. That, alone, to me is worth the price of admission.

Bevin R Brett is from Brookline, New Hampshire