Well, BlogCatalog has finally banned religious and anti-religious discussions from their main forums. I say finally, because those discussions have made the place more than a little unpleasant at times over the past year. People are still free to take advantage of BlogCatalog’s group feature, however, and talk about whatever they want there.

I believe that life online is akin to life in the physical world, and that the rules of civil discourse that I learned before the internet existed should still apply. To me this includes the stricture in everyday life on talking about religion in groups where there are a variety of sensibilities but little or no common purpose. No good can come from such a group slugging it out over whether God exists or not, what Christianity really means, and so on—not in a public space where anyone can join in.

My students have been able to talk about religion and society on a wiki I set up for my Western Civilization course this semester, but that’s different. There the students have a common purpose, and I’ve only needed to remind them of it a couple times.