Welcome, and thank you for coming here to share your thoughts at Thinking Christian.
We welcome respectful, thoughtful debate. The perspective I ask of writers here is that you treat others as persons, not as projects and not as foes to be defeated at whatever cost. With that in mind:
1. Opinions posted here are not necessarily those of the host.
2. Comments must be civil and clean, “family friendly,” as they say. Your opinion is welcome under what I call the “Starbucks Standard,” practicing the kind of courtesy you would give another person while sitting over coffee together. That means no personal insults or gratuitous character attacks on other persons.
3. You are welcome to comment on any topic raised in the blog entry to which your comment is attached. This is not the place, though, to share just anything that’s on your mind. Comments introducing tangential or completely new topics for argument may be edited or deleted. (This applies especially to material that is deemed to be mere advertising for other sites.)
4. Please try to make your comment a substantive addition to the discussion. (If you point to another web page to support your point, that’s fine, but at least make your point here so we can respond to it.)
5. Call it a pet peeve of mine, or simply call it writing in educated English: the word “God,” when used as a proper noun, is to be capitalized. The same applies to other proper nouns, such as names of religions.
6. Commenters are responsible for any personal information they reveal here, and waive all copyright privileges to their content. (This waiver of copyright does not apply to the original blog post or to comments by Tom Gilson, which are copyright © Thomas A Gilson as of the date of posting. Commenters may retain such copyright for any specific comment as the law allows by entering a copyright statement with the post, e.g, Copyright 2012 by –name–. Actual legal names are required.)
7. Consistent with guideline 3, and because it is not helpful to the topics brought up here, political discussion is strictly off limits. This applies to comments regarding political parties or candidates, and to specific pending legislation. It does not necessarily apply to social issues that may come up for governmental consideration. (As a representative of a 501(c)3 US nonprofit corporation, I have a duty to monitor this, and to use my best judgment to follow appropriate policies.)
8. If you criticize other content here–regardless of what perspective is being supported or criticized–be constructive in your criticism, and do what you can to support it with substantive evidence/reasoning.
9. There have been a few persistently unproductive discussions on this blog. I may decide to close off comments by one or more persons on those threads, just on the basis of their being unproductive. This applies also to “discussions” in which a commenter’s transparent purpose is just to stand and shoot at other people’s opinions, rather than to engage in productive dialogue. I reserve the right to determine when that is the case.
10. An intentionally different standard applies to those who name themselves followers of Christ. Persons who claim to be believers in Jesus Christ, yet bring manifestly false teaching on basic doctrines of the faith, and/or promote evil acts, are not welcomed into discussion here. (2 Peter 2; 2 John 9,10)
11. Violating these guidelines may result in your comment being deleted. Flagrant or repeated violations may result in the commenter being banned.
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