Friday, March 28, 2008

Thinking Christian blog blocks my comment

Tom Gilson closed the comments at his Thinking Christian blog post about P.Z. Myers calling in to the presenter line on an "Expelled" event conference bridge, preventing me from posting this comment:
The claims of "Expelled" about individuals who have allegedly been persecuted are bogus--Gonzales was denied tenure because he wasn't publishing research, Sternberg wasn't persecuted at all, and Crocker simply didn't have her contract renewed (and deservedly so--she was both a bad teacher and was making horrible creationist arguments, as has been documented with her PowerPoint slides online).

On the other hand, Chris Comer really was removed from her position as Director of Science at the Texas Education Agency for simply sending out an email announcing that Barbara Forrest was giving a talk about "Creationism's Trojan Horse." The ID advocates have no case of persecution that approaches that in severity.
He also deleted a link that Norman Doering included in a comment, and banned Norman from his blog. Norman's comment was this:

Tom Gilson wrote:

The connection between Darwinism and the Holocaust is not a lie when it is understood the way thoughtful people have presented it.

Feel free to present that “thoughtful way” here:

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2007/04/if-hitler-was-darwinist.html

But Tom deleted the link because clicking on the link first gives a content warning from Blogger. Norman's post is well worth reading, as I pointed out in a comment on Tom's blog that made it under the wire before he closed comments:
Tom: It’s too bad you deleted Norman Doering’s link to his blog post. It’s actually a quite interesting post about how the Nazis actually banned writings promoting Darwinism, and how it was creationist Edward Blyth’s ideas that led to eugenics. Norman also points out multiple passages from Hitler’s _Mein Kampf_ which look more like something written by a creationist than an evolutionist.
By the way, Gilson claims that P.Z. Myers "crashed" the conference call. In fact, he was invited to attend, as was the entire Panda's Thumb blogging crew--just not to be a presenter on the call.

9 comments:

Physicalist said...

Well, I can see why he might delete Doering's post; Christians are likely to consider the title "Blog from Hell" and the atheist death gif to be worse than pornography. But your comment seems to be purely informative (and right on the money), so that's just another example of creationists sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling "la la la, I can't hear you."

I think Raven posted a nice list in the comments of Pharyngula a while back of people who have been fired, assaulted, or harassed for not being creationist.

Eamon Knight said...

I just read that thread at "Thinking" Christian (note scare quotes). What do you expect from a blog that gets endorsed by Josh McDowell.

Not a single thought in sight anywhere -- just sycophantic praise for Mathis' poor excuse for a flippy-book cartoon.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I've read that article from A blog from hell and just had to wonder,
When Hitler ordered such books to be burned, it's obvious he wanted to include Darwin's Origins of Species book in the burnt pile as well. Great post the author gave.

Eamon Knight said...

I see that (Non-)Thinking Christian still hasn't re-opened comments. Of course the only reason (according to him) that he closed them is because he wants to babysit his blog to make sure he can delete Bad Words as soon as they are posted. That's fine, in that he has the right to control his own space. However, controlling outlinks is going a bit far. And considering that Norm's blog is fenced by a Google scare-screen first, you'd think Gilson could allow his readers to make their own choice, no?

normdoering said...

Jim,

Have you had your comments deleted from any other websites? I have, sites like Uncommon Descent (at least a few years ago), Ray Comfort's blog, and Free Republic.

I've got a new post on the subject.

Lippard said...

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any that have actually deleted a comment, as opposed to refusing to allow a comment through moderation. Another that has refused to allow a comment through moderation was Bob McCarty.

Lippard said...

Another which just came to mind is Bill Muehlenberg's blog.

normdoering said...

Hi Jim,

I now have a comment awaiting moderation on Bill Muehlenberg’s blog, in the post called "Whatever Became of Sin?"

It has been awaiting moderation for almost 24 hours.

Text of comment follows:

When is something a sin?
It seems obvious at first, but when you think about it there really isn’t any clarity to the concept. For example, Vox Day has a post here:

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2007/02/mailvox-sharpening-knives.html

called “sharpening knives” where he says “killing every child under two on the planet is no more inherently significant than a programmer unilaterally wiping out his AI-bots in a game universe.” And if ordered by God, he would do it. Is such murder not a sin if it’s is ordered by God?

Is sin just disobeying God?

If so, then which version of God’s rules you buy into determines what is and isn’t sin.