They still have both the comments that I wrote yesterday. The one in particular that I was talking about was the one that started “That radioactive decay rates could have been much greater in the past was one of the conclusions drawn by the RATE project…”
They did delete another comment by someone else that also pointed out flaws in their arguments, though it was shorter and more snarky in tone – the first sentence described their position as “pseudoscience” but then gave a short but clear explanation of what was wrong with their arguments about distant starlight.
I’m guessing here, but it looks like my post got kept mainly by virtue of the fact that it was tl;dr.
Did you link to the right post, because when I follow your link above, the only comment by you I can see is “Carson Hoy I thought Christ was the foundation of our faith? (1 Corinthians 3:11).” There is nothing about RATE. Or maybe you are looking at a cached page?
I can still see the comment when I log on through two different browsers. However, I’ve been able to get to the relevant page through their mobile site when I’m not logged in. I was able to see the comment there yesterday. It’s gone today.
I know some forum systems allow you to stealth delete comments like that (it’s known as “hellbanning” on Hacker News), but it tends to be used only as a measure of last resort, for persistent trolls, and many experienced forum moderators think it’s generally a bad idea.
I didn’t know Facebook allowed you to do that. If it’s the standard way that comments work on Facebook, then it’s really, really weird. On the other hand, if it’s an optional feature that Answers in Genesis are using in this case, then it’s really, really underhanded.
OK I’ve done a bit of testing on Facebook to see how comments on pages work. It seems that this is the default behaviour.
When you moderate comments from other users on a page, the option you’re given says “Hide comment.” This makes the comment in question visible only to the user concerned and their friends, rather than the general public as a whole. You are then given a further option to delete the comment outright. No indication is given to the commenter that their comment has been hidden.
I don’t think we can read too much into this. They’re just using Facebook’s default option, but Facebook’s default option does make you look like you’re being underhand about it, and they probably just haven’t thought through the implications of it properly.
Just something you should be aware of if you ever have to moderate comments on a Facebook page yourself.
For the record, here’s the full text of my hidden comment:
That radioactive decay rates could have been much greater in the past was one of the conclusions drawn by the RATE project, run by the Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society from 1997 to 2005. They said that decay rates must have increased by a factor of a billion or more during the Flood. This would have accounted for one of their key findings of incontrovertible evidence (based on fission track studies and a study of existing radiometric results) that more than a billion years’ worth of radioactive decay had taken place since creation.
They highlighted a couple of sticking points with this hypothesis. One was that the amount of heat generated by this much decay in this short a time would have been enough to raise the earth’s temperature to 20,000 degrees centigrade or more – enough to boil the oceans and evaporate the surface of the earth. They said that neither conduction, nor convection, nor radiation, could have removed this amount of heat fast enough, and that therefore an exotic alternative solution would have to be found. They also said that any such solution would have had to cool some materials more than others in order to avoid the oceans being frozen over.
Regarding FB commenting on AiG and Ken Ham’s FB page. I infrequently comment on both. I try to make simply logical points in a very respectful way. Despite this I have had my comments removed after some period of time. More often the replies to my comments are removed as they were last week on Ken Ham’s FB page. I have several friends that are blocked completely from those page. I don’t know how but I seem to be blocked from following AiG or Ken Ham. I have “followed” them several times only to find that I there posts never appear in my FB stream and I have to go to their page to see their posts.
I understand the need to censor their pages. FB comments can become completely unproductive. What bothers me there is that they are far less tolerant of Christians that don’t agree with them than they are of atheist. Ham’s page in particular seems to take any atheist comments but blocks other Christian comments like mine. By doing so they promote the us vs them dichotomy leaving the true followers no other options.
I can’t be sure but I’ve been watching for quite a while. BTW, ICR has a more open policy but that is partly due to lack of staffing and they just can’t keep up with the comments. Creation Ministries International is quick to jump on any critical comments. Their usual tactic is to say “Dear X, we have hundreds of well-researched articles on our website that address these claims. We ask that you refer to those and should you have further questions we ask that you use our contact page to address them before commenting here.” Then if I comment further the comments are removed since I didn’t follow their advice.
I do think that a few comment here and there that show that there are Christians out there that think about these topics and can provide rational responses is important for the FB audience to see. At the very least it opens up future doors should I run into people - which has happened - that have seen my responses. Its a ice-breaker that leads to more productive discussion.
Very interesting thread! I read through it all. My two cents:
I got permanently banned from AIG simply for asking a series of respectful but pointed questions. Basically, they couldn’t answer them, so they deleted them. I tried to make them as innocuous and information seeking as possible. But it was as if they feared any of their followers thinking about the questions.
@Martin_Mayberry, I wish I could help you to discover something that took me far too many years to figure out: Assuming that my “heroes” were vigilant in checking their facts and always were honest in their arguments eventually created some serious “crises of faith” when I was forced to realize that they had lied to me. It was extremely painful. I had long assumed that if someone held to the right doctrines of the faith and were zealous for the Great Commission, they SURELY couldn’t be fudging the facts or dishonestly quote-mining. I also thought, “Pastor Smith is a genuinely godly man. Therefore, God would never allow him to be fooled to where he believed the wrong things and supported the wrong people.” I was very wrong on that simplistic presumption.
I hope you have a less traumatic serious of experiences than I had. I saw “the dark underbelly” of some major creation science ministries and its has greatly disturbed me to this day. Obviously, sin is not unique to any particular type of ministry or non-ministry. But it took me a long time to fully grasp the ways in which I had allowed myself to be misled.
Checking the facts for oneself can be a very slow process. But it is sometimes the only way to know who and what to accept as reliable. Meanwhile, be wary of a “us versus them” mentality. That was probably my greatest error.
P.S. The more I checked Stephen Meyer’s footnotes, the more discouraged I became. The factual errors in Darwin’s Doubt continue to horrify me. His reactions to factual challenges, disturb me even more. We all are vulnerable to the human error of being overly dogmatic in fields entirely outside of our expertise. Richard Dawkins say such foolish things when he “preaches” about philosophy, theology, linguistics, and history. Stephen Meyer shows the same kind of shortcomings when he addresses biology, physics, paleontology, and virtually everything else in fields of which he has no training or expertise. Dawkins’ errors don’t impact the reputation of evangelicals. Meyer’s errors do.
Martin, I do wish you the best as you research the facts.
