I censor, but not arbitrarily. I censor stuff like gossip about my private affairs, lies about objective facts, and comments that do not address the issues at all but contain nothing but scoffing. And I never ban any commenter — I consider all comments on a case-by-case basis.

I have formally complained to the Texas Education Agency asking that Schafersman not be allowed to serve again on a TEA committee unless he agrees to stop his arbitrary censorship of visitors’ comments on the Houston Chronicle’s Evo.Sphere blog. Evo.Sphere is not a personal or independent blog — Houston Chronicle staffer Eric Berger set it up, advertised it, invited Schafersman to blog on it, made the decision to moderate comments, and has checked the blog for comments awaiting approval.

There is no inconsistency there — there were unanswered questions but I had no burning desire to get answers to them. I just didn’t think that the questions were that important.

–Is it any wonder that this?:
“often I don’t get responses from people.”–

That’s one of the big reasons why I often don’t bother to ask questions.

“There are still a lot of unanswered questions:”

and then this:

“Also, there are other questions:”

but then this:

“I did not attempt to get answers because I already knew all that I wanted to know.”

Is it any wonder that this?:

“often I don’t get responses from people.”

I thought it was unnecessary to respond on your blog because you link to this post and comment thread.

– I find it interesting that I at least attempted to get some answers…the same can’t be said of you, thus far.–

I did not attempt to get answers because I already knew all that I wanted to know.

You are lucky that you got answers — often I don’t get responses from people.

If you want to respond to my blog post, please do so at my own blog.

Other than that, I find it interesting that I at least attempted to get some answers…the same can’t be said of you, thus far.

The gist of it is…what you see on the voter’s guide is how they do in fact phrase the questions to the candidates.–

There are still a lot of unanswered questions:

It appeared that you asked only about the 2008 Voter Guide and not about the 2002 and 2006 Voter Guides — you said, “I browsed through your voter’s guide for 2008 before the election this year and had a question about how the voter’s guide is created.” Also, you did not specifically ask if the question titles (what you call “summaries”) — e.g., “creationism” — were included in the questionnaires that were given to the candidates. And as I pointed out, even if the title “creationism” was included in the 2002 questionnaire given to the candidates, the candidates might have thought that the word was not part of the question, and if they did think that it was part of the question, there was nothing they could do about it because they could only give stock answers to the question. In his response to you, Don McLeroy himself said, “Voter guides leave little wiggle room sometimes; they will put you in a box and you have to choose which box in which best represents your views.”

Also, you said on your blog,

–Plus, as one can tell by viewing old voter’s guides from the Free Market Foundation, candidates do have the opportunity to expand on their views or to decline answering certain questions. They can also explain why they are declining to answer certain questions. –

What? How do the old voter guides give those opportunities to the candidates?

Also, there are other questions:

Was the “creationist” label that the 2002 Voter Guide supposedly attached to some (actually most) of the candidates a significant issue in the 2002 election? Did these candidates make an “uproar” objecting to this supposed label?

Also, as I pointed out, the 21 candidates listed in the 2002 Voter Guide gave the following responses to the “creationism” statement: “Strongly favor,” 12; “Favor, ” 4; “Strongly opposed,” only 1; “U” (I presume this means no answer), 2; and no response at all to questionnaire, 2. So only one candidate went on record as opposing the statement.

Also, I think that back in 2002 a lot of people did not know what the term “Intelligent Design” means (some people still don’t know or pretend not to know). And it was the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover decision that made ID a dirty word.

IMO those who say that they favor the teaching of “weaknesses” of evolution but oppose the teaching of ID are being disingenuous — ID is regarded as one of the major “weaknesses” of evolution. However, IMO those who say that (1) ID is just part of creationism and/or that (2) all scientific or pseudoscientific criticisms of evolution belong to ID are also being disingenuous.