Spiritually speaking, is it a good answering strategy to judge the motives of a questioner?

Bruce you are renowned for not only asking questions about such topics as Darwinism, homosexuality, and Islam (and I do not dispute they are all valid questions) but also wearing your heart on your sleeve (that is, for all to see.)

I love your questions partly I agree with you but particularly because I know they will provoke a predictable response from anti-social minority factions who have an axe to grind. It does not take a Rhodes Scholar to work out that you are touching raw nerves with your probing questions and it is not unnatural for the insecure to want to retaliate in the best (sometimes only) way they know how.

Is it a good answer to say you have bad motives to ask about these topics? Far from it, those answers invariably range from the ridiculous to the sublime; either by trying to deflect attention from the true core of the subject or by smoke-screening the issues or, quite simply, by mud-slinging at you.

Nobody can say with any credibility that they know anothers' motives for asking a particular question in any given topic, but I personally believe your motives are pure and true in encouraging others to think about who they are, why they are here and where they are going in the context of sin versus God's plan for our lives.

Limiting inquiry to rule some topics "off-limits" is a useful tool for those who don't want to be challenged to examine themselves or are too afraid of the truth to allow any other opinion to permeate their lives. There is none so blind as he who will not see and so, like an ostrich, they stick their heads in the sand and think "what I don't know can't hurt me"

What benefits do motive-judging respondents gain? Smug self-righteousness. Remember Matthew 5: 10-11 "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."

God bless <)))><

interestingly enough I did an experiment on this with another user account I had, by asking "only atheists" or "only Theists" and then asked something random, like how many pairs of socks or the regularity of bowl movements you have and gave the detail that I was doing an experiment on atheism/theism and to trust me it is relative. Funny enough people found the craziest things to pick at to say that I was somehow insulting them or making implications.

Whether or not it is a good thing, it all comes down to if you know how to ask something correctly that will be more difficult to judge the motives of. for example if I ask

What should someone do if they find out their boy friend cheated on them?

people will assume I am in the situation, how ever if I ask it like this:

How would you most likely react to being cheated on? Would you think your reaction would have negative consequences?

is going to get less people judging the asker's motives.

No, it's not good, and I don't like the way many people in R&S are answering in such a disrespectful way. It is said that if people treat you disrespectfully, they disrespect themselves. Maybe that applies to them and there is a good reason for that! If they act disrespectfully all the time, the nice people won't want to be around them. They can only make bad friends if any at all.

Evaluating others often is a good idea, but reporting one's summary assessment to the subject of the evaluation usually is a bad idea. I sometimes try to figure out why a person has asked a question, and then I use my admittedly somewhat speculative impression to decide what extra information I should provide. I do not generally give to an asker my opinion of why he asked a question unless I first have the decency to provide what I intend to be an informative answer.

I have read many of your questions and the answers to them. Perhaps I am easily amazed, but I must say that often I am amazed at how many people give you nothing more than a fecklessly accusatory bit of condescending mockery. Usually such blathering is a response to a substantial and clear question to which the clearly correct answer would be just plain disliked by the respondent. It appears that they prefer to mock you rather than admit your implied position is correct.

I think it is spiritually, intellectually and socially harmful to one's own well-being to provide to an asker only a ranting review of his motives. It especially is bad to use such a free-standing review to apply schoolyard taunts referring to falsely alleged stupidity and idiocy. I find it especially self-destructive to accuse another of being a Catholic in a tone that implies the accuser thinks that is something bad.

I think we all should keep in mind one of the nicknames of Satan. He often is called "the Accuser", because Satan often speaks about God's faithful believers with nothing more than accusatory allegations. To do so almost always is to be ONLY destructive, which is, of course, the standard goal of Satan. I am not saying that all who merely accuse are acting as conscious helpers of Satan, but they generally help Satan, even if they don't intend to do so.

I think people who just hurl trash at others ought better to ponder why they have so much useless trash in their own minds, ever ready to be presented destructively. I try to accept accusations and take them into consideration, but I like them to come with relevant content. If I am accused of being against abortion because I am Catholic, the accusation is at least accurate, but it is irrelevant to a question I might ask about the scientific definition of a fertilized human egg being the beginning of a new human life.

To attack the motives of a person in a discussion might sometimes be reasonable, but only as a supplement to a substantial contribution to the discussion. Accusations almost never, if ever, should be the only message. To join a discussion imposes on one a reasonable burden to at least attempt to be a contributor who improves the productivity of the discourse. Discussions are merely harmed by mere blathering about how blah blah blah someone might be.

I am Roman Catholic, which I realize makes some people hate me.

Upon those pitiful haters I pray for God's grace to fall in abundance.

May all people come to at least recognize in others their human dignity.

Peace be with you.

In writing, it is hard to judge a persons motive, mood, etc. You simply can't tell if someone is joking, serious, etc. sometimes. We all have the option to ignore answering questions.

Some questions look like sincere questions at first. Then when you click on the question and see what else the questioner has to say, you can tell that they really just wanted to insult people. Yes, I pay attention to the smaller text when deciding whether to answer a question or not.

Yahoo Answers' Society & Culture section is really more about exchanging bon mots than it is about gaining knowledge. As to negative judgments, hot-button topics inevitably cause heated exchanges in an open forum setting like this.

only if the asker is atheist. Its best to know when someone is being stupid by accident or on purpose. Guess which one the atheist is. John 3:16 God Bless

you know bruce, for the most part, in this section, no matter what the name of it, you are still dealing mainly with the "world", and so unless you want to be taken to be crucified , if I were you, I'd just ask the questions, and don't bother with "attitudes" of the answerers. Anyway who gives a fat rat's------------- about what they think.

they gain nothing

"Forget the motive and answer the question or, don't answer it" (- Birdy)

You could be wrong about the motive and an argument could ensue. NOT good for R&S