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Atheist Right Winger Kills At Holocaust...

Hello everyone,

(There is self-promotion below but it is for a valid point.)

I was surfing the net the other day and I seen the following article.

http://northerngleaner.blogspot.com/2009/06/athiest-right-winger-ki...

I responded on my blog with the following:

http://loveatheism.com/?p=435

However, I am now feeling like I did something wrong. To seek out one individual and to post an article solely about this one person does not seem like something any of us should do. Is it ethical to basically call out someone else even if that person was posting discriminatory comments?

I really would like to know how everyone feels about this because I am not sure if this is right? If the person was in a high profile position than I would understand it because the position comes with certain obligations. However, this is not the case in this situation. What do you think about people who are posting individual blogs on the internet? By posting the blog must they then be held to an ethical standard?

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Permalink Reply by Father Nature on June 15, 2009 at 3:28pm

You were completely justified in posting your response to the ignorant and bigoted original post by Gene Redlin. Blog posts, by their nature, don't have to meet ANY standards...ethical, factual, or otherwise. All we can do is call bullshit when we see it. In the long run, hopefully, the fittest ideas will survive.

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Permalink Reply by Jared Lardo on June 27, 2009 at 6:55pm

Your response to that guy is totally justified. He is an idiot and he's wrong. Any sort of self-censorship would stifle the freedom of the marketplace of ideas. It may be a bit daft to respond to a bigoted idiot's blog on yours, but, then, what he said in the first place was daft.

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Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on June 27, 2009 at 11:16pm

The core of the matter, and don't ever expect a theist to understand this, is that rabid theists and rabid conspiracists/personality cultists are indistinguishable from one another.

If you remove all reference to god(s), spooks, heroes/idols, and dogmatic credos, and simply use the template of their language and reasoning, it would be interchangeable for all. You just fill in the appropriate blanks.

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Permalink Reply by Jim C. on July 6, 2009 at 8:56am

The main reason to post something like this is to show folks like Redlin that his assumptions and assertions won't go unchallenged. To sit silently is to give tacit approval to this kind of rhetoric.

He has made claims that have no basis in fact and you called him on the carpet for it. You've done nothing wrong in that. Whether he's high profile or not doesn't enter into the equation. If he didn't want critics and critiques, he should have written it in a paper diary and locked it away.

No matter what you write, he's going to continue on his own deluded way. But maybe someone on the sidelines will read what you have written, weigh both sides of this and realize that yours was the more rational and well considered stand on this issue.

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Permalink Reply by Johnsky on July 14, 2009 at 2:09am

Yeah, you were justified.

Unfortunately, and I'll put it bluntly, there will always be idiots.
I know he may be wholly incorrect, bigoted, and even intentionally deceitful, but there really is nothing that can be done about these people.

The best we can hope for is that the fundamentalists of two groups step on each others toes enough that they become their own targets. It's happened may times through history... it's bound to happen again. And like we always have, we need to preserve our rationality.

Let them spend their time growing ulcers. You've got better things to think about than his idiotic ramblings.