Heretics of freethought

Last week, John Loftus had to defend his promotion of Robert M. Price and Acharya S. About the same time, I saw a thread on Internet Infidels attacking Sam Harris. In both cases, the reason was for unorthodox opinions (from the point of view of your average nonbeliever). I think it's worth reproducing my responses here:

New Agers are definitely outside the skeptical mainstream, but I don't see why being a hawk [Price's heresy] should make one so. There are a few political positions where one side is almost entirely religiously driven (say, gay marriage). On those, the atheists can be expected to line up on one side. There's no reason, however, to expect "atheist = liberal" on every issue.

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[Harris] may be wrong on meditation and psi, but as far as I can tell he's a sincere rationalist. We need people like him speaking out for rationalism and breaking the taboo against criticizing religion. The proper response to these blind spots is refutation on those particular points, not ostricization.

Let's remember something here people: even intelligent, rational people can have false beliefs. Michael Shermer used to doubt the reality of global warming. Richard Carrier used to doubt the Big Bang theory. Let's not be so quick to excommunicate.