A New Comment Policy
I hate what I’m having to do, but I’ve put up a comment policy. It’s a short set of guidelines that I think are mostly common sense, but you know what they say about common sense these days — it’s not so common.
This was precipitated by my newest friend Ray, a person whose comments have lately become obnoxious. I want to briefly mention this, on the blog, in the interest of transparency. I do not expect everyone who reads Ocellated to hold the same opinions that I hold. While I wish that they would, I’m a little more realistic than that. What I do expect is a certain level of discourse when someone doesn’t like what I say.
Ray is a young earth creationist. We’ve had one or two friendly arguments. To Ray’s credit, he was respectful. Nice even. No name calling. No threats of fire, hell, and damnation for not sharing his views. He doesn’t understand much biology though, and after trying to civilly have the discussion, I grew tired of the whole thing. There’s no sense in arguing with someone who’s mind is completely made up and who is not willing to learn about the subject they wish to argue. I left a comment saying I was no longer interested in the discussion, and I expected that to be the end of it.
Well, the short and the sweet of it is that Ray has been going back through the old posts, leaving the same argumentative comments elsewhere. A particularly poignant example of what caused the comment policy and me to moderate his comments can be found in my annotated analysis of a creationist textbook. I made a joke that my wife and I were so desperate to find her a job that she was even looking at private schools. Ray’s first comment provides me all the proof I need to see that he’s not even reading my posts before commenting…
It’s not desperation to trust in scientific observation – evolutionists are not doing that. They speculate with dating techniques based
on very doubtful assumptions rather than accept the testimony of the only person who was actually there.
See? This has absolutely nothing to do with the post. This is the kind of thing that I simply won’t ignore. It falls squarely into the realm of an internet troll.
Ray, you’re welcome to keep reading and keep commenting where you think appropriate, but I really don’t see eye to eye with you on, well, anything, so if I don’t seem excited to debate your latest silliness, you’ll understand. However, if what you’re really interested in is arguing with everything I say, feel free to get your own blog and argue away. I’ll even link to it from here, and anybody who wants to read it can. Otherwise, play nice, okay?