Blog Comments Policy

It is our hope that over time our blog posts will become a place of active discussion on the academic study of religion and philosophy.  You are welcome and encouraged to participate in the discussions by posting comments on any posts that have open discussion.

However, this will be a place of civil discussions.  All comments will be reviewed before appearing on the site.

The review of comments will have nothing to do with your agreement or disagreement with the original post. They will be evaluated based on the following: Comments will not be approved if they are personal attacks (guilty of ad hominin fallacies).  Any material which violates or infringes on the rights of others, or which is threatening, abusive, defamatory, libelous, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, vulgar, obscene, profane or otherwise objectionable, contains injurious formulas, recipes, or instructions, or which encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any law will not be approved and will simply be deleted.  All approvals and disapproval of comments is at the sole discretion of the operators and editors of this site.

Discussing religion in an academic context raises issues that may not be so acute when the focus is on philosophy.

College Religion and Philosophy is not a place where the ultimate truth of various religions is discussed.  For instance, discussion submissions which claim Christianity is the truth while Hinduism is faulty if not satanic would be inappropriate here. This is place for developing an understanding of the various religions of the world.  All posts should be respectful of all religious beliefs and practices.  This is the nature of the academic study of religion.  This does not prohibit critical discussions, comparative analysis or even the raising of potential negative consequences of religious beliefs and practices.  For instance an argument which claims that Roman Catholic teaching on birth control leads to over-population in certain parts of the world might be an appropriate critical comment provided that some support for such a claim is provided.  Appropriate versus inappropriate comments often has to do with the manner and tone that such comments are made.

In addition, in the academic study of religion any proselytizing of a particular religion is not appropriate and such posts will not be approved.

The issues discussed here may result in very strong disagreements.  Participants are expected to be willing to respect those who have different views.  To insure that we can maintain our civility participants are ask to abide by these guidelines:

In any civil discussion it is best to speak only for yourself. The issues that are addressed on this blog are ones over which people, even within a single faith tradition, do disagree. So avoid statements like “Americans (or Christians) believe _________” or even worse “All Americans (or Christians) must believe ____________.”

Treat others engaged in the discussion with respect, believing that we all want to seek the truth and to do the good.

Read carefully what others write, so as to not misrepresent their positions.  This is a critical skill in college level discussions.

Focus on ideas and suggestions instead of questioning the motives, intelligence or integrity of people.

We are well aware that this is often not the nature of discussions on the internet or in American life, but we firmly believe that we will be better served when these guidelines are followed. Perhaps our discussions here can model a better way of doing things.