I hate to have to break the fact to some of my detractors but even people you claim have the worst case of cooties in the history of the universe share a lot more in common with you than the odd idea or expression that you assert I've got in common with them. To think that associating an idea with such a person is the ultimate reason to reject that idea would mean you would have to give up just about anything you could possibly think. Just as an example, you share your atheism with such people as the scientific racists William Shockley, Francis Crick and James Watson. Not to mention such racists and homicidal mad men as Martin Borman, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and the various members of the Kim dynasty in North Korea.
It is, really, a kind of thinking I remember from about the age of nine. I remember another boy in my class made me so angry that I felt a tidal wave of hatred and, at its deepest moment, the idea that such a person could exist in the same universe was intolerable to me. But it passed. I may have realized that we shared the same air, in the same classroom. We were even bullied by some of the same bullies. While we were never friends and there were times I felt almost as angry with him, eventually, as I grew up a bit, I could even look on him as a suffering person, just as I was, who didn't have some of the advantages I enjoyed - even if size and strength were not one of those - and who I look on today with quite a bit of sympathy for his life that is blighted in a number of ways, some of those, I'm certain, from the bullying we both endured.
So, bunky, be my guest, grow up and you'll get over it. You can learn a lot from making the effort to sympathize with people you despise. There is nothing sadder than to look at some of your heroes in their 60s, 70s and 80s who clearly never did grow up and are just as nasty as a nasty 9 year old boy.
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