At First Things a few days ago, Joe Carter was growing somewhat exasperated by the reflexive tut-tutting from all sides against Pastor Terry Jones' plans (now apparently definitively canceled) to burn copies of the Koran. The Ten Commandments are pretty clear as to what God thinks of false religions, Carter noted.So he proposed a thought experiment:

Imagine that you (a devout Christian, Jew, Mormon, Hindu, etc) are shown a button and are told that if you press it, all knowledge of the Koran will cease to exist. Every text version across the globe will instantly disappear and any passages that were memorized will be forgotten. Muslims will not otherwise be affected other than their having no recall of the words of Allah as collected by Mohamed.Would you press the button? How would you justify your decision? Would your decision be different if you had to make it solely based on the teaching of your faith and not on received cultural assumptions?

Over at PoliticsDaily, I thought about his (intriguing) thought experiment, and thought not.Discuss, if it merits such.