Presenting an Alternative View or Trolling?

Over the past month I have enjoyed participating in some internet forums about the National School Chaplaincy Program.

I had several motivators in doing this.

Firstly, I wanted to see what the detractors were saying - to keep up with the issues they thought would bolster their case.

Secondly, I wanted to put some of the evidence in support of the program before people, to offer an alternative view and at times to correct misrepresentations.

I also wanted to hone my skills in clarifying what the issues were and then responding in a coherent way.

I have been involved in several public forums as well as participating in a discussion page on Facebook.

My involvement on Atheists Federation of Australia forum on School Chaplaincy felt a bit like jumping into a fish tank filled with piranhas. People did not want to listen to an alternative view point and took great delight in referring to the things of faith in the crudest of terms. Some contributors were clearly intent on total disrespect for anyone with religious world views. And after a while, I found that what they wanted to say was filled with generalisations as well as utterly repetitive. They tickled each others ears with the same things over and over again.

I then got involved with with a GetUp discussion page on the NSCP. I found some of the same contributors making the same kinds of comments, the same kind of sweeping generalisations, the same kind of reluctance to engage with evidence that contradicted their point of view and the same repetitive droning on. But at least they were polite about it.

I have more recently been following a page in Facebook called "The High Court Challenge to the Constitutional Legality of the NSCP". Every day they would post links to various newspaper stories that were generally antagonistic to school chaplaincy and there would follow a litany of oooo's and aaaahhh's as people would join the chorus of outrage at the state of affairs.

Now I have to admit that the evangelical stance of some other school chaplaincy providers in Australia is a great liability in this climate and one or two stories recently have been a bit like giving away an "own goal". But I have consistently tried to offer evidence that chaplaincy can be done well, and that the program is wanted by schools.

On Friday, however, the administrator of the page decided that my close connection with YouthCARE meant that I was no longer entitled to contribute to the debate. My connection to the page was closed down, I became invisible (all my previous contributions disappeared) and even though I can follow the page I can no longer directly contribute to it.

I guess that says it all, really, in regard to the willingness of opponents to listen to alternative points of view.

Have you had any similar experiences?