Last night, I had an unpleasant experience on this blog. I sat down to check on it, like I do every day, and found no less than NINE comments on it awaiting moderation. And when I read the comments, I found several things noteworthy about them:

• They were all by the same user, named Michael.
• They were all on different entries, including some that were many months old
• They were all expressing Christian bias and attempting to engage me in debates rather than simply comment on what I had written.

Now, I don’t mind responding to one or two comments at a time. I don’t mind several people posting at my blog at the same time, for that means it is getting a lot of attention from the public. I also like answering questions from a Christian about my beliefs, or lack thereof, as an opportunity to explain myself. What enraged me was that this guy, by posting so many comments at once, came across as fixated on me to the point of cyberstalking, making me feel threatened. Plus, most of his comments came across as nonsense. He had no respect for my positions at all.

So I approved two of the comments and rejected all the others, and then disemvoweled one of those I had approved, a technique I had learned from biologist and blogger extraordinaire P Z Myers, and finally banned the pest outright from making further comments. I did this because I knew it would be futile to engage the bigot in battle, based on many previous experiences with people of his type, and did not intend to waste my energy in another endurance contest. Especially not on Halloween.

What did this guy do next? Rather than take the hint, he proceeded to locate my MySpace account and sent me a message there. I read his message, replied to him, and finally blocked him there too.

Still not understanding how deeply he had offended me, Micheal continued to send me comments, which were automatically listed as spam. At one point, he even agreed to leave me alone, but then broke his word the next morning by spamming me some more.

I have no interest in having a “dialogue” with someone who thinks he is so superior to others because of his faith that he claims a RIGHT to post comment after comment after comment on my blog, even before I have responded to any of them. I was disgusted by Michael’s antics, especially since a more productive thing to do would have been to create an entry on HIS blog about me and my positions, and invite me to see them with just ONE comment that I would have read, responded to by making one comment on his blog in return, and then both of us could have gone about our business. Instead, he tried to be a cyberbully. He denies that was his intention, but I don’t believe his denials. When you have absolute faith in something, you can justify almost anything, however despicable, to promote that faith. I’m not about to excuse such rudeness from anyone, whether Christian or atheist. Michael should have known better! He has NO IDEA what a productive dialogue is!