An Open Letter to Amanda Marcotte -Towards rising above our own pettiness in the debate on Truth.

The ascent of the happy human                                                                          [© 2015 Atani Studios]

 An old acquaintance of mine, a close friend in fact of one of my oldest friends, and someone I still have occasion to converse with in the digisphere, posted a preformatted piece of propaganda on the social media from fellow blogger Amanda Marcotte.

Atheists are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it … When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear you saying that the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literated people trying to figure out where the rain came from. This is not very reassuring if you’re trying to argue from a position of moral superiority.” ~ Amanda Marcotte

I’m not going to tell you what I think of Ms. Marcotte, lest you think I am resorting to an ad hominem attack on her but I will tell you what I think of what she wrote.

Giving and Volunteerism, Charity or an Expensive form of Entertainment? – Law of Reciprocity in action in the Blogosphere

Maimonides                                                                                                   -public domain

One of the joys of blogging, a rare joy around here, is receiving the accolades of ‘likes’ and ‘follows’ from your readers, the problem comes when a ‘like’ or a ‘follow’ seems to come from someone who might be either a sincere and interested reader or someone phishing for recruits into a multi-level marketing scheme – hard to tell which sometimes – we seem to have had both types today.  In particular we had that situation come up this morning over at the other blog.

It is considered good blog etiquette to stop by and visit the blog of someone new who has decided to undertake the formality of voluntarily subscribing to be pestered electronically by your blog – the Law of Reciprocity in practice.  There’s a URL for that now, who knew?   I followed the follower’s profile back to the KarenEllisBlog to see who my visitor was, find out what they are up to and see if they have anything interesting to say.  When I got there I found a great deal of information hidden by hind menu tabs about:  how to “Explode your blog with income”, her business, and all about her.  Fine, but I’m not interested in signing up for any newsletters.  I also found her, then, most recent blog article: Tipping Servers $200, Wouldn’t that feel great to do?.  Sounds interesting.