The fact that attacking someone over their ideas is not a good thing. You can hold them to account, hold their ideas up to scrutiny, and even go ahead and agree to disagree. What happens is that the discussions rarely stop at that point, and devolve into warfare (be it guns, fists, or flamewars.) The religious and the right wing are more guilty of it, but there are also examples on self-described "atheists" where that happens to (like many fo the Maoists, or the Ayn Rand types who have a fair amount of nonsense mixed in with their Athiesm.)
Note I say self-described the same way I would use "self-described" Muslims, Christians, and Jews that seem to love killing people, but leap right over all the scripture where they are told what they are doing is wrong. Humans abuse ideology, and ideology, which is why the extreme types on all sides wind up doing the same things, and exhibiting the same traits, overr and over.
Just because myths and memes are wired into our brain chemistry as opposed to our digestive system does not mean that the brain's by products will be any more or less useful and smelly than feces, that great substance that embodies filth and disease, but can also fertilize fields if you use it right. They key is to take this shit we are ALL mired in, and rather than fling it like monkeys, focus on whatever fertilezes the crops.
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