I am reminded of this comic.

I don't have a principled moral judgment of PZ Myers' trolling of the Catholics, or for that matter Terry Jones' trolling of the Muslims. As far as I can tell, both are polarizing, which isn't super-great; but it's probably a good thing for discourse in general if every once in a while some showman type — a Lenny Bruce, or even an Anton LaVey — makes a point of making some sacred-cow hamburgers. (An expression I recognize rests on a misinterpretation of yet another religious group's beliefs ...)

But censorship can also lend countercultural legitimacy to ideas that are plainly false. Take the case of Wilhelm Reich, for instance. I find his social critiques of sexual repression and sex-economy to be pretty well on the mark, and had he stopped there he would have made a major contribution to radical psychotherapy, sexual liberation, and (for that matter) women's rights. But bions and orgone are not real, and cancer is not caused by a deadly form of orgone radiation. The FDA burning Reich's books, and his death in prison, made him into a martyr, rather than a plain quack, to a lot of people. And that was a long time before the Internet and the Streisand Effect.