Poll: Should I Delete the Creationist Comments?

by Clay Burell · 2009-03-23 10:21:00 UTC
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I've got an ethical dilemma I'd love to hear your thoughts on. I wrote a post a couple months ago about a petition I'd made to thank two Texas legislators for standing up to creationists in the Texas Board of Education who are trying to undermine evolution in the state's science standards. The comments thread turned into a 185-comments-and-counting back-and-forth between the scientifically literate and the fundamentalist illiterates who insist Genesis is a science textbook that should be taught in schools. And I'm tempted (no serpents involved) to delete the comments from the evolution-deniers. I'm also conflicted about it, though. Let me give you my "why I should," and "why I shouldn't" delete reasons, and then ask what you would do.

Why I should delete: I don't want to be a party to disseminating their views on this space. If some poor soul were to be convinced by some of the distorted logic of some of the evolution-deniers and convert to fundamentalism because of that thread, I'm partly responsible.

Why I shouldn't delete: The debates on that thread are fascinating. A doctoral thesis could be written on logical fallacies, the anthropology and sociology of religion, on and on, found in that thread. Many fundamentalists - you know, the people who are more comfortable disputing an Einstein or a Darwin than they are their humble neighborhood preacher - flocked to the post in droves to offer every creationist talking-point ever created by human folly.  And many knowledgeable people took the trouble to rebut every one of their points with careful arguments, reductions to absurdity, and many links to further resources. In that sense, the thread is a good resource for defenders of science. (Wildly popular science blogger PZ Myers from Pharyngula pointed to the post, and over a thousand of his readers visited, with many joining the debates. Darksyde on Daily Kos pointed a good number here too.)

A third option: I could just de-vowel the fundamentalists with this nifty tool, in a bit of poetic justice that makes their conceptual gibberish textual.

Please note: I'm talking about science here, and fundamentalist literalism that confuses it with faith. This isn't about religion, beyond the simple defense of keeping it out of science classrooms.

So what would you do?

Poster by the mad LOLscientist

Clay Burell
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