Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Politics. Religion. Valence issue. Why is this on the front page of HN? It shouldn't be; I flagged it.

I see no reason for your comment, specially when the guidelines are clear about these types of contributions.

From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 4th paragraph from the bottom

  > Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is 
  > inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, 
  > flag it by going to its page and clicking on 
  > the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) 
  > If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

I disagree with that section of the guidelines.

I disagree with you completely about this article not being suitable for HN, but on the other hand, I have to respect this approach to people quoting guidelines.

I disagree with drug laws, but that doesn't mean I can possess drugs without penalty.

You know that doesn't work since you had to tack on "without penalty". I doubt tptacek expects to be shielded from disagreement and/or downvotes.

Why do you have to do this? You remind me of a little boy in on the playground, who immediately yells "Im telling" the moment anything interesting happens. You don't have to agree with every post, just let it slide.

I'm not sure education counts as an entirely political issue.

It's obviously an area that interests the HN community quite a lot - there's a bias towards science and engineering here, and everybody interested in those fields should find the teaching of creationism in a scientific context to be abhorrent. So I think it probably warrants discussion when the education system adopts policies which are actively hostile to the fields many of us are involved in (or in this case, when there's a push back against it).

To be honest, I suspect this counts as a political issue in the US and isn't one in the UK. As this is a US dominated site I can sort of see why people don't want it debated here as it'll just upset people - which it appears to have done.

Ironically, religion doesn't play a very large part in day the day political life in the UK even though most of the country has an official established religion.

No, the problem isn't that it will "upset people" in the US. Virtually none of the readers of HN in the US see this issue as controversial.

And what exactly has evolution got to do with Science and Engineering? Name one advance in your own field that has been made by an evolutionist? And why do you find the teaching of creationism in a scientific context abhorrent? I think you are mistakenly confusing or conflating the theology with the science. The latter is based on empirical evidence, research, and peer reviewed papers, and as such cannot be disputed even by you. Science classes are for the teaching of science, not origins (especially not alleged 'evolutionary' origins).

When a government is trying to preserve our only tool to understand the world, well I think this is relevant. There are people fighting otherwise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AS6rQtiEh8

Reply on news.ycombinator.com