I endorse Zach’s point (@ 44) and I strongly advise you to address it with the seriousness that it is due. As for my polticial convictions, etc. it should be apparent to anyone who has read my comments here and elsewhere online that they are secondary to what I know and regard as sound mainstream science, especially with respect to biological evolution and anthropogenic global warming. But of course, maybe this doesn’t matter to you since you seem to have poor respect for, as Zach has noted, “intellectual honesty or integrity and an eagerness to pass an ethical judgement over minor disagreements”.

You may choose to contend otherwise, but there is fundamentally little difference between a New Atheist troll such as yourself or a creo troll. Hate to state the obvious, but it has become all too obvious ot me.

Some brief history is in order. I linked you to a conversation that you had become a subject of in the interests of honesty. When I objected to your responses, you ignored my objections and proceeded to repeat yourself. I responded with sarcasm and dismissal because sometimes, it is merited.

I’ve looked over many of your old comments. Many show a marked inability to see distinctions, and more worryingly, they show signs of obsession. Further, you do not appear to have any respect for intellectual honesty or integrity and an eagerness to pass an ethical judgment over minor disagreements. All of these things taken together, there does not appear to be a practical difference between your comments and the comments of a troll.

I sometimes agree with you, but when I do, I feel that the agreement is coincidental, coming from an entirely different set of principles and treatment of relevant information.

Hence, I repeat. I’ll treat you as a troll. If you say something worth discussing, I’ll be sure to discuss it, but don’t act as though you are entitled to my responses.

You come across as a would-be witch hunter. It’s not pretty, and instead of shooting me an angry response, why don’t you weigh and consider the charge?

Your latest is sanctimonious nonsense (@42). Would you reach a similar conclusion if I said I was a Deist who espoused Leftist causes and positions?

Well, you would do well not to misrepresent what others have said. I didn’t say that you have no place in any discussion, I said that you (and everybody who shares those characteristics) have no place in any discussion if you let you political convictions trump facts and logic. Hints of which you have demonstrated sufficiently many times to make me think it’s the case, but I give you the benefit of doubt. For why are we having discussion if not to determine what is true? And how is this going to happen if people put other things above what’s true?

Your latest post merely confirms the worst suspicions of TB (@ 27) and Zach (@30). Didn’t know that you are another moderator, along with Chris and Sheril, of The Intersection blog. If I truly had “no place in any discussion”, then I am sure Chris and/or Sheril would have taken the steps necessary to remedy that.

This isn’t Pharyngula, GM. I fully expect you to try to engage those of us critical of your Pharyngulite behavior by doing so in a consistently cogent and rational manner. If I am interested in reading the “verdict” rendered by a “prominent” New Atheist such as PZ Myers, then I’ll read it directly from him, not from an acolyte such as yourself.

Have a happy and safe Fourth. It’s time to stop feeding one New Atheist troll.

As I said in the post below that one, can we discuss the validity of what is said, not whether someone sees as bigotry or not? And do it with arguments that have some substance to them?

As a Conservative with strong Libertarian leanings

You are saying it in such a way that one can’t escape the feeling that this seriously influences your thinking about things. If that’s the case, then you have no place in any discussion

I left the Lutheran Protestant Christianity of my youth at a very young age, and was, by the time I entered college, such a skeptic that I became the only skeptical member of the college chapter of the Campus Crusade of Christ (while retaining a belief in a single Deity, from the vantage point of Deism). Another relative left the same faith as an adult, converted to Sunni Islam, and served for a time as a US Army chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where, regrettably, he was accused later of committing treason simply for seeking more humane treatment of the Muslim terrorists imprisoned next door at Camp Gitmo.

I will agree that there are many people who have been manipulated and lied to by their religious leaders. But I have also seen much good come from those who are devoutly religious. As a Conservative with strong Libertarian leanings, I would suggest that you could substitute “liberal” for religious in your peculiar line of reasoning (@ 36) and obtain a similar set of results.

Some of the most rational people I know are those who are religiously devout, including a favorite uncle who is a retired Methodist minister. Some of the least rational are those whom one might describe as “Militant Atheists” (also better known as “New Atheists” or, most recently, as “Affirmative Atheists”.).

I strongly disagree with GM’s bigotry (@36) with regards to religion, since there are well-meaning, quite religiously devout, people – including some who would be regarded as XIan evolution denialists only – who have arrived at our agreed conclusion that we need to look beyond the preservation of single species, but instead, whole ecosystems. Maybe he needs to tone down some of that rhetoric, but I’m not optimistic that it will happen any time soon.