Lizzette Reynolds + Commenter

The Austin American-Statesman has an interview with Lizzette Reynolds, the Texas education official with the itchy keyboard finger involved in the Christine Comer case.

She still thinks Comer expressed an opinion in her email. The only sentence in the email expressing an opinion is the first one; it says, "I thought that you might like to know that Barbara Forrest will be speaking..." Everything else is completely factual.

Lizzette Reynolds' email expressed plenty of opinions, including the opinion that Comer's email was "an offense that calls for termination." Well, Lizzette, I have to quote your own words from your interview when I say, "I realize that people have their opinions. If you want to do that, Yahoo is free. Get a Yahoo account."

After the jump, I look at an anti-evolution commenter on the Reynolds article.

This is completely unrelated to Lizzette Reynolds, but I found it on the same page. One of the comments on the Reynolds interview is full of standard creationist babble, so I had to reproduce it here for evisceration. It comes from commenter David, who says,

What are you evolutionist-types afraid of? Is your “theory” so flimsy that you must censor all other talk or discussion about origins?

How did it all begin?

The Theory of Evolution cannot account for that - it can only account for an evolution of the species. True enough. The biology and zoology seem to point to that.

But what about beginnings? What if one wanted to start an intellectual discussion on beginnings. Or purpose? Or telos? Where would they go?

Science or philosophy?

If Philosophy, then it is clear that the Theory of Evolution is not robust enough to handle the question of origins.

Pro-evolutionists: Stop the censorship. Let the discussion being. (sic)

In a modern pluralistic state, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Shame, shame, shame.

Let all sides talk and then let the intelligent minds think for themselves.

I'll take care of the easy one first. Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. Absolutely not a single thing. Evolution presupposes replicators with differential abilities to survive or replicate based on their characteristics; once those things exist, evolution predicts the general pattern one would see. It has zero to do with how those replicators came to be in the first place. Zero.

That takes care of about half the nonsense in this comment. Before taking down the other part, I have to switch off my irony-detector before my head explodes.

Chris Comer was fired because of a phantom opinion she expressed about an evolution supporter.

...and we are censoring them?

You have the audacity to suggest that the supporters of evolution will not allow a discussion to take place on the very same website where an interview is being conducted about a woman who was fired for allegedly supporting evolution. What nerve you have. What nerve and absolute ignorance. Aside from the fact that your argument is crap, you post it on a page about a series of events that would turn your ideas over and give them a good spanking if you would only take the time to read and understand them. The mere suggestion that Chris Comer might be breaking the delicate and sacred neutrality between solid science and the logic of a four-year-old is enough cause for her to lose her job, even though she didn't do any such thing. But we are stifling debate. We aren't allowing both sides to be heard.

Well, sir, I've let both sides be heard. I have reproduced your words in my arena. I can only hope that you follow your own advice. "Let all sides talk and then let the intelligent minds think for themselves." Please do think for yourself.