I would support that decision.  When the media attacks religion, it shouldn't be an open door to join the media and claim that religion to be the church of satan either.

You're right, of course.

I apologize for my part in the flamewars.  They're unnecessary.

I could not agree more.

I wish there were some way to keep people from turning media bias stories about various religions into arguing about what religion is the right one also.

"Constantly attacking (peaceful) religions rather than politely sharing your own shows lack of faith " DB

First it was no name-calling,now no ripping on people's religion.

What about calling people's girlfriends ugly?

Were you talkin' to me?'Cause I think you were talkin' to me.---Hispanic dude on Seinfeld

Matthew,

The tough topics will always be the ones where the separation of church & state at issue. Abortion, Faith-based initiatives, Social conservatives opposing Fiscal conservatives, Poverty, etc...are going to be main topics of discussion in the upcoming election cycle. Where do you start drawing the lines in the sand on how to discuss and debate without offending someone's beliefs and morality based in part on their religion? It will be interesting to see what you will come up with in your decision. Limits on comments to a topic would be interesting...say your piece and move on so to speak, allowing one rebuttal to a comment. Allowing more diverse commentary from all types of POV's. Solutions to problems.

Syrius

"...the dire consequences to society when people begin to believe that by
renaming someone to erase their humanity opens the door to the
devaluation of everyone's life..."-dscott

I respect your decision, I just feel that it is unfortunate that the people that are respecful of other peoples POV and religion, have to be punished because of a few with short tempers and tendancy to flame whenever their position is challenged.

Some folks can dish it out but cannot take it

That's OK with me.

I will say, however, that we need to respect a distinction. One of the liberal media's biggest biases is against religion. So, logically, it would go against this site's mission to simply overlook it when liberals attack religion.

I've said this before, but please forgive the repetition. If you're going to post something, you owe your fellow readers the courtesy of explaining yourself, instead of just tossing off political farts. And when you feel the media has unfairly insulted your religion, it seems to me that you owe your readers an explanation of why it was an insult. But leave it at that. If the media distorted your theology, explain what the truth is ... but don't "sell" it, at least not on a website. There's a distinction between explaining and proselytizing.

When Matthew said above that we should stick to the religious issues instead of attacking religions, that sounded right to me. 

First of all Obama did not got to church on Sundays for 20 years.

He went to Anit-American Political rallies every Sunday for 20 years,that just happened to be held in a Church,presided over by a pastor impersonator, going by the name of Wright, and who happened to be Wrong.

As far as discussing religion or religious issues, I agree with with who ever said we should simply ignore the wise guys and they will have to choice to leave or talk to themselves while we go on as if they were not here.

Should I be on anoter thread???

There are far too many dumbo comments from national political figures,
far too many apologies and far too few “no comment at this time”… its
ridiculous, its juvenile and its plain dim-witted. Now Jesse J mouths
off about BHO… then apologizes. Why do this at all? Is he complaining
or worrying that BHO is not socialist enough or “class warfare” enough
or not enough of a “victim worshipper”? Have no worry, if elected,
especially with a democrat (secular socialist) dominated congress he
will revert to his true strident secular socialist self as shown in his
voting record. Why should JJ worry a minute?
Maybe its all because BHO is not beholden to JJ or is half-white. Maybe
BHO actually opened the #1 sore of the black folks , (76%) fornication
families. Its at the core of many many problems but apparently noble
men (the Revs) like JJ don’t waste much time on that #1 problem. No
money in demanding marriage licenses and promoting real Daddy behavior.
Too busy running around the country looking for “marching and money”.
Who can say when hearing the blabber from the race hustler year after
year? Maybe he feels less relevant. Hint: He is fading fast anyway…
hey, its been 44 years since the CRA!
Well, at least I lived long enough to hear JJ actually apologize to
someone other than the wife he committed serial adultery against (we
assume he apologized for his “outside family”). What a guy.

Doug Schexnayder, Ph.D. (theconservativecrawfish)

my tag line?  we all meet our maker someday.  a reminder to myself first of all.

In the End, God will Speak   

I have noticed that folks who live out on the libertarian West Coast and up in the North seem to be of the opinion that Politics and Religion are separable; in the South and the Mid-west they never have been separate, and are not separate to this day. For us, they are just two different sides of the same coin of society. 

This is exactly why the Founders of our great nation, in thier wisdom, chose not to open that can of worms by either establishing a state religion (like Britain), or banning religion altogether (like France tried to do).  They chose the best option, leave it up to the individual, keep it free, and keep the government from taking sides.

The idea that "religion" causes the flame wars is the same as the old
argument that guns cause murder. And I don't think that anyone believes
that flame wars are going to magically disappear if discussions about
religion are banned.

Even by discussing a ban here on the main thread, you make religion a political issue, and in effect, choosing to ban religious discussion would be discrimination. Suppose we substitute another group to apply a ban to. Suppose someone were to propose a ban on discussing feminist issues here on NB, or a ban on discussing racial issues, or a ban on discussing gun ownership issues, or a ban on discussing money related issues, or a ban on discussing death penalty issues; do you see how ridiculous that sounds? 

Politics and Religion are forever intertwined, and since
Religion is so deeply rooted in American Politics, I think it foolish
to attempt to dispense with it and not expect a negative unintended result for NB. 

Let's clarify the issue by seeing what is or is not a religious issue for discussion:

See if you can answer these current events questions:

1. 19 devoutly Moslem hijackers killing nearly 3000 people by crashing 4 jets into 3 buildings and nearly hitting a 4th as a way of expressing their faith in Islamic jihad is not a religious issue.  [True or False]
2. Prohibition of prayer in public parks and public schools is not a religious issue. [True or False]
3. Whether or not churches will be required to perform same sex marriages is not a religious issue. [True or False]

If you answered "False" to any of those questions, then you believe that religous issues are political issues.

The truth is that religion is the biggest political issue of all and every political discussion is on some level also a discussion involving someone's religious beliefs, and if you ban religious discussion, inevitably someone will start a discussion about religion and you are going to have to enforce the ban and punish them, and discriminating against someone based on his or her religious beliefs is illegal. I don't think NB wants to open that can of worms either. The lawsuit would be front page news in the left wing biosphere and a media circus would ensue.  I can see the headlines now: "Conservative Blog Bans Religious Speech". Can you see how ironic it would be if a first amendment protected news blog were to ban first amendment protected religious speech?

There is a solution to accommodate religious discussion so that it does not become a disruption to NB.

1. Keep religious debates separate as they are now, and enforce rules of order. 
2. Don't let people get away with insulting each other on the forums. Give the creator of any forum topic the power to "kick" a person out of his topic if that person gets out of line.This would allow the creator of the forum topic to police his own discussion, instead of just flaming back at the other poster(s). 
3. If two (or more) people (one of them being the person who created the forum topic) start a flame war that becomes little more than an exchange of insults, and the topic creator doesn't stop and doesn't kick the other flamer out but just keeps the war going, then an NB editor or moderator should lock the forum topic. But the rule should be that the topic is only shut down if insults are exchanged, not legitimate religious debate on religious or political issues, or scriptural or legal interpretations.

I don't see any reason to blame religious discussion for certain individual's habit of being rude, condescending, insulting, and/or abusive in the forum.

Most of us who engage in religious debate on occasion are perfectly able to converse and debate without being rude or insulting to others.  Those who cannot manage to do that, should be sanctioned as individuals. Collective punishment is not the solution, it just creates hidden resentment and people would start to abandon NB. 

The bottom line is a ban would hurt sales of NB stuff and Clicks on NB ads.  I think it much better to let them argue any topic they want, including religion, so long as they play nice, all while those NB sponsor's ads are running on their screens.  Really, how can you complain about that?

---
Sen. John McCain (2003):
"...I am proud to say that I was born in your country"

I would be more than happy to see religious discussion sidelined here.

But I must say that I like seeing NB uncover the cluelessness of the media towards religion.  What I don't like are the flame wars and the borderline hostility people show one another based on religion. 

(That, and it is fun, encountering Leftists that will, for example, quote the Bible to me in a bid to justify their Socialism, only for me to tell them that as an atheist, that justification matters not to me.  If only I could be plugged in to their thought process at that point!) 

Res tantum valet quantum vendi potest.

The notorious race baiter has fallen into his own sick once again. So ... where's the obligatory Al Sharpton march, for that matter where's the Secret Service? If a white guy said he'd like to cut Barrack Hussein Obama's "nuts" off homeland insecurity would accuse the guy of making a terroristic threats.

How many times does Jesse Jackson need to apologize to prove to the American people, once and for all, that he will forever be a sorry excuse of an extortionist?