McGrath Consider that some people consider it an insult to them or indeed to "hard working scientist everywhere" when one expresses an opinion differing from theirs.

Which takes precedence? A lively debate on an interesting subject? Or avoiding certain topics so that people who feel so superior to others that they think it justified to carry entire idiosyncratic dictionaries in their head and to vilify others for not being able to read their minds, can continue to delude themselves.

Which is more unkind? Disabusing those who hold these notions which falsely color their warped perceptions or allowing them to feel falsely confident in their abilities to persuade , use logic or indeed, be witty?

The path that took us to the present argument is quite clear. Musket was losing his argument about "Atheism" being a word so he switched topics to "Akenaton is a raging homophobe." Akenaton then switched the topic to "AIDS is bad" Musket then tried to prove "Akenaton is a raging homophobe" by making the assertion that chlamydia is worse than AIDS, though I believe that his choice of diseases to compare to AIDS was heavily influenced by his ability to make a "Roman sounding" joke about chlamydia.

When Musket began to lose the argument that "chlamydia is worse than AIDS" Dr X, magically appeared to say that indeed "chlamydia is worse than AIDS because AIDS doesn't kill people, complications from AIDS kills people."

Its all clear as mud to me.