Rule # fucking 3 isn’t condoning calling people names.

That might seem a little surprising, coming from a cunt like me, considering I’ve been known in the past for calling people any number of things (or describing them in highly unflattering terms).

In all seriousness, there doesn’t seem to me to be a whole lot of point in attacking people rather than attacking ideas or behaviour. Many people seem to have difficulty separating the two – and I’m not just ascribing such tendencies to the champions of religion and other various forms of woo. Many people (some of whom I highly respect) seem to make no distinction. To me it’s blatantly fucking obvious: you are not your ideas, and your ideas are not you.

An imaginary (kinda) example: I might say Ray Comfort spends a great deal of time and effort peddling retarded bullshit like his God creating bananas specifically for the dietary (and apparently homoerotic) satisfaction of humans. This is demonstrably true – or it was, until Ray realised how incredibly bloody stupid doing that actually is, given that the modern banana is the product of artificial selection by humans, and the banana pre-human-meddling was almost unrecognisable as a fucking banana. This does not make it an attack on the person, so much as it is pointing out how brain-rottingly shitty an argument is.

On the other hand, if one said Ray Comfort is a fucking retarded cockhead who has unnatural relations with yellow oblong fruit, that (whilst it might be funny) wouldn’t be really a very valid way to address an idea, and would be attacking the person. The distinction, as I say, is pretty goddamn obvious.

You may disagree – that’s your right, after all. But you cannot legitimately use Rule # fucking 3 to justify calling someone a fuckwit.

Fits with Rule #3: Creationism is fucking retarded

Doesn’t fit: Creationists are fucking retarded.

There’s a serious reason for the distinction, by the way, and I’m not just being arbitrary when I say it. The distinction is as blunt as this: Attacking ideas is fucking awesome. Attacking people is fucking stupid, and plays the irrationalist game.