Welcome to the BioLogos Forum! This is a place for gracious dialogue about faith and science. If you are unfamiliar with BioLogos, you are strongly encouraged to visit BioLogos.org to learn about our mission and beliefs.
For a quick guide to the Discourse software used by the Forum, click here.
Please review the rules and guidelines for gracious dialogue before you post. Feel free to message the moderation team (@moderators) with any questions you have, or if you need additional assistance using the forum software. We look forward to your participation!
Expectations for Gracious Dialogue
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”-Colossians 4:6
At BioLogos, “gracious dialogue” means demonstrating the grace of Christ as we dialogue together about the tough issues of science and faith. Whatever your stance on evolution and Christian faith, we welcome your gracious, thoughtful contribution. The Church desperately needs to learn how to discuss these important issues with charity and humility. We hope it can begin here.
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Participate with an aim to gain deeper understanding about orthodox Christian faith and/or mainstream science, and constructively explore the relationship between them. Users whose participation in discussions seems primarily focused on promoting unorthodox religious beliefs, idiosyncratic ideas about faith and/or science, or anti-religious sentiments will be asked to take their proselytizing efforts elsewhere.
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Focus on discussing other people’s ideas, not on evaluating their character, faith, communication style, or perceived “tone.” Please avoid attributing beliefs, motivations, or attitudes to others.
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Contribute thoughts that are relevant to the topic at hand, and avoid intentionally steering a conversation off-topic.
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Assume legitimate Christian faith on the part of other people, unless they identify otherwise. The purpose of discussions here is not to judge the legitimacy or efficacy of anyone’s faith or lack of faith.
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Be willing to learn from the perspectives and expertise of others and respect the diversity of your conversation partners. This includes being sensitive to differences in educational backgrounds, faith traditions, cultural contexts, and levels of English language fluency.
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State your case and then respect other people’s right to agree or disagree. Avoid repeating the same ideas over and over because you have failed to convince everyone to accept your viewpoint.
Defining “Science and Faith Dialogue”
The BioLogos Forum exists as a place to help foster gracious dialogue about the harmony between science and the Christian faith. By that, we mean:
- We welcome any conversation about mainstream science (ie. not pseudoscience) here on the BioLogos forum.
- We welcome conversations about the relationship between science and Christian beliefs, ethics, or practice.
- We welcome conversations about the relationship between science and Bible interpretation.
However, we do not want to host threads and topics that are simply theological in nature or generally related to the Bible or church. There are a number of reasons for this, but principally, theology is a broad subject and not all of it is relevant to the mission of BioLogos.
For the purposes of clarity, here are a couple of examples of topics that would not fit into the above criteria and how they could be improved.
Example 1: Is the Bible the Word of God?
This topic would not meet the above criteria because, whilst an important topic related to Christian belief and practice, it does not explore any relationship to science. A better topic would be “How do we understand Biblical authority in light of scientific advancements?”
Example 2: How should we interpret Revelation?
This topic is about general Bible interpretation, not science and Bible interpretation. A better topic would be “Does a person’s interpretation of Revelation affect their attitude toward climate change?”
Please be aware that topics that do not fit within this scope may be deleted or moved to a private message by the moderators.
Open Forum or Education Forum?
Almost all threads belong to one of the categories above. Anyone is welcome to respond to a post or start a discussion thread in the Open Forum. New content from the BioLogos website will be shared in the Open Forum by a staff member. Please note that the Education Forum is dedicated to educators who teach the scientific consensus on issues like the age of the earth, evolution, and climate change, and people who support them. It is for encouragement and networking, not debate. Posts by users who do not respect the purpose of the Education Forum will be deleted.
Starting a Discussion
Anyone is welcome to start a new discussion thread. Opening posts should have some relationship to the intersection of Christian faith and mainstream science. Try to include a question or conversation starter that invites others to interact. A specific topic or focused question will generate more interaction than a long, rambling essay full of general observations. Please avoid posting long manifestos about your worldview, as these do not invite conversation. All topics should include also be tagged appropriately. If you cannot find a tag that fits your topic, it may be that it falls outside of the conversation we are hosting here.
Links to Outside Content
Any thread that begins with a post intended to direct traffic away to a different website will be deleted as spam. The point of this Forum is to foster conversation here, not point to other conversations or content elsewhere. Please do not put a link to your own blog or website in the first post in a new thread. It is acceptable within the course of a discussion to include links to support your claims, document your sources, provide more detailed information, or alert other people to content of interest. These will be evaluated by the moderators on an individual basis. Users who appear to be participating in discussions primarily to promote their books, blogs, or other published material will be asked to take their advertising elsewhere.
Politics and Religion
Please note that we do not host discussions that are primarily political in nature. If a politically charged topic is mentioned in passing by others in the course of a discussion, please do not take it as an invitation to argue for your personal political views on that topic. Also, since this is a Christian discussion forum, we expect that basic Christian presuppositions like “God is good” and “the Bible is true” will not be constantly challenged by those who do not share those presuppositions. People of all beliefs are welcome to discuss evolutionary creationism here, but this is not the right place for debates on God’s existence or the general merits of the Christian faith.
Private Messages
If you would like to interact with another user on a specific topic but suspect it is not of interest to the majority of other users, please make use of the private message system. Although private messages are not moderated, they are accessible to the moderation team and the same expectations for gracious dialogue apply. Anyone found using the private message system to intimidate, harass, or demean another user will be blocked from the forum. Please report abuses or instances of repeated unwanted contact to the moderation team.
Disclaimers and Terms of Service
In order to maintain an environment of gracious discussion, moderators may delete or edit posts. Users may be “silenced” temporarily or permanently at the sole discretion of the moderators. Moderators do not preview new posts in any way before they are published, so the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for the content posted by the community. Views expressed on this forum represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the BioLogos Foundation, which can be found here.
You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.
We have a Terms of Service describing your (and our) behavior and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use this service, you must agree to abide by our TOS.