unspeakablehorror | A Criticism of The Contamination Theory of Ideas

I think one thing that's really important is not to use specific individuals' combinations of beliefs to prove that one particular belief they have is evil simply because they hold it in combination with some other idea that is evil. If one were to apply this consistently over all of the billions of individuals in existence, I highly suspect that the only thing it would 'prove' is that all ideology is evil. This is why I can't accept arguments of the form 'this person believes this evil thing, so this other thing they believe must also be evil', even if I agree that the first listed item is, in fact, evil.

Are some ideas almost inevitably intertwined? Absolutely. But it is not enough to say that their combination in an individual or even a group proves this to be true. It must be demonstrated on a deeper level. I think it is fair to expect people to be able to criticize the idea itself rather than constantly relying on guilt by association.