Last Wednesday I developed an addiction to forums on Christianity.com. That addiction was short-lived, though, because they are a little censor-happy over there. This is an excerpt from their Terms of Service:

Do not make statements either by posts or posting URLs to other Websites which advocate activities, beliefs or teachings contrary to those of Christianity as articulated by the historic creeds, as understood by Evangelicalism, and as interpreted by ChristianBBS.com/Christianity.com its sole discretion.

I noticed early on that a lot of non-Christians were complaining about the Terms of Service in threads related to creationism, and in threads with titles like "Attention Atheists, Skeptics, Agnostics, etc!!!!" Apparently we're only allowed to make restricted replies in such threads. Yesterday I responded to a thread on abortion. I linked to a site called ReligiousTolerance.org. Specifically, my link was to a page on that site which contains a long list of Bible verses with pro-choice interpretations of them. You can read them here. Because the Christians kept insisting that "God says abortion is murder," I and others simply asked, "where and how did God say that?" This morning I was sent this message by one of the moderators:

One of your post in this thread has been removed for violations of TOS #17. Please do not post links for Religious Tolerance again. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please e-mail them to the site producer at community@christianity.com Thank you, His_child, moderator

I forwarded this message to the rest of the moderators, noting that they were censoring a site which promotes religious tolerance, has a pro-life news ticker on it, and consists of Bible verses. I ask if they were out of their minds. There response was (paraphrasing), "yes." So, in conclusion, Religious Tolerance is an activity, belief, or teaching contrary to Christianity. I guess that shouldn't be very surprising. I might still participate in some of the fora over there. They're a little too fun at times. I get to come in contact with people who believe things like this:

DanielGordon: Hey Genesis being right is a whole lot more likely than science being right! Genesis is not false in any way, if it was then it could be said by someone not Christian that Jesus wasn't real or such. Science is Mans understanding of how the world works outside of God our Lord. Yes I know it isn't true for all scientist but it is true for most of them. The Bible is from our Lords understanding and knowledge. If we can't fit the Bible and science together then it means that science is wrong, since the Bible is NEVER wrong! But if you just say sure anything is possible then I'm just wasteing my time.

or this:

[Sir Goric:] OK lets try this again. I started a thread the other day that wound up just being an arguement... What I want is to hear from Christian Scientists or those that have Scientific facts on creation. Im not looking for scriptures, but actual scientific data on why the earth had to be made just a certain way in order for life to exist. In the previous thread, I received one responce of what I was looking for. Im hoping that I will do better with this one. Here is an example of what I received and what I am looking for. [reply from user named "science":] "Christian Scientists" are followers of Mary Baker Eddy.

I'm also participating in a discussion with a professional theologician/apologeticist who has invited atheists to ask their "tough questions." My main question, as yet unanswered, was for him to provide a formal definition of "God." This exchange, concerning what we can know a priori, is typical:

[Theologian:] A priori reasoning isn't empirical either, but it does tell me that something cannot come from nothing. So on that, it it hard for me to think that Darwinian evolution is true. That doesn't mean that Christianity is true, but it does remove the latch from the door that many atheists think is sealed shut. [Me:] Strictly speaking, a priori reasoning doesn't tell you that something cannot come from nothing. That is at best an axiom, a premise, or an assumption. A priori reasoning also doesn't help resolve the worries of Cartesian and Humean skepticism, which are, roughly, that experience is illusion, and that cause-effect relationships can never be inferred. The fact is that virtually the same a priori difficulties exist whether the universe has a god or not, and whether there is evolution or not.... Because everything which occurs must occur at some point in time, the origin of time itself isn't something that can occur. Reasons like this are why physicists say we can't reason about the origins/predecessors of the big bang. Our reasoning just isn't adequate. [Theologician:] The classic a priori examples are 'All ravens are black' and 'a bachelor is an unmarried male.' We know these things a priori, that is, from all the cases we've ever seen, there seems to be no reason to think otherwise about future cases... What I am saying is that based on the a priori reasoning against something coming from nothing , I have yet to see one case of it happening otherwise.... Do you have a case where something comes from nothing? Let's not quibble over nuances of a priori reasoning. [Me:] You ask me not to quibble over a priori nuance; but this problem contains nothing but a priori nuance! You claim to have never observed "something coming from nothing," but I doubt that you have ever had the opportunity to observe "nothing." Even theoretical physicists find it difficult to define "nothing." Even a vacuum is full of activity, including the spontaneous generation of particle/antiparticle pairs. We must therefore conclude that either (1) the vacuum is "something" (in which case we have no model for "nothing"), or (2) something can come from nothing. My real point is that we have no actual experience with "nothing," so your conclusion must genuinely rest on a priori assumptions. [and so on...]

If anyone else is interested in joining this discussion, the full thread is located [here]