Formosa’s column worthy of debate

I was both shocked and appalled by The Cord’s recent choice to close the online comment section on the article entitled “Are faith and reason incompatible?” This choice stopped a respectful, polite and progressive debate about an article which raised an important issue, namely how Christians and Atheists can have a dialogue about issues of faith.

Commenters were addressing each other respectfully and having real back and forth on the issue while using quotes from each other and other works like the Bible. Anyone can see this on the comments that remain on The Cord website. Even if you do not personally wish to participate in this discussion, it would be hard to argue that a good debate on important issues such as morality and the meaning of life is important. The question that really needs to be addressed by The Cord is what is the newspaper for? Is it for promoting a unique forum where people have an opportunity to engage in respectful debate which promotes the seeds of understanding or a forum for one way communication from writers to readers?