Richard Dawkins opens mouth, inserts foot, mumbles something about “mild pedophilia” again
A young Richard Dawkins contemplates the beauty of the universe.
Apparently Richard Dawkins was worried that people might have forgotten what an asshat he is. So, helpful fellow that he is, he decided to give us all a demonstration of why he’s one of the atheist movement’s biggest liabilities, a “humanist” who has trouble remembering to act human.
Earlier today Dawkins decided, for some reason, that he needed to remind the people of the world of a fairly basic point of logic, and so he took to Twitter and thumbed out this little thought:
However petulantly phrased this is, the basic logic is sound: If I say that Hitler was worse than Stalin, I’m not endorsing either Hitler or Stalin. Unless I add “and Stalin was totally awesome and I endorse him” at the end.
The trouble is that Dawkins didn’t stop with this one tweet. He decided to illustrate his point with some examples. Some really terrible examples.
Yep, that’s right. He decided to do what comedians call a “callback” to some terrible comments he made last year about what he perversely described as “mild pedophilia.” And then he added asshattery to asshattery by suggesting a similar distinction between “date rape” and “stranger rape.”
Anyone seeing these comments as insensitive twaddle designed to minimize both “mild” pedophilia and date rape has good reason to do so. As you may recall, in the earlier controversy about so-called “mild” pedophilia, Dawkins told an interviewer for the Times magazine that
I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today.
He went on to tell the interviewer that when he was a child one of his school masters had “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts.” But, he added, he didn’t think that this sort of “mild touching up” had done him, or any of the classmates also victimized by the teacher, any “lasting harm.”
Huh. If Dawkins says that a teacher groping him was no big deal, I guess this kind of “mild” abuse shouldn’t be a big deal for anyone else, either, huh?
I’m pretty sure there’s some sort of logical fallacy here.
Given his history of minimizing these “mild” sexual crimes, it’s not a surprise that his crass tweets today inspired a bit of a twitterstorm.
Dawkins has responded with his typical petulance, and has stubbornly defended his comments as an exercise in pure logic that his critics are too irrational to understand.
If you take a few moments to go through his timeline you’ll find many more tweets and retweets reiterating this “argument.” Dawkins is not the sort of person to admit to mistakes. Indeed, he so regularly puts his foot in his mouth it’s hard not to conclude that he must like the taste of shoe leather.
But these recurring controversies can’t be doing much for his reputation. Indeed, they seem to cause more and more people to wonder why anyone takes Dawkins seriously on any subject other than biology. Even his critics on Twitter are growing a bit weary.
Seems like it. I’m beginning to wonder why any atheists — at least those who are not also asshats — continue to think of Dawkins as an ally of any kind.
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Posted on July 29, 2014, in atheism minus, patronizing as heck, pedophiles oh sorry ephebophiles, playing the victim, richard dawkins and tagged pedophilia, rape, richard dawkins, twitter. Bookmark the permalink. 938 Comments.
As to comments about the perspicacious comments of Dawkins: https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/324171554491596803
I read a bunch of the comments, to see if that inspired any conversation of merit.
Nope, or at least not in the first few hundred. The few people who put forth comments of actual inquiry are (more or less) shouted down with ridicule, as opposed to being treated as intelligent human beings.
And that is the real problem with Dawkin’s school of Atheism: it denies that people can be non-atheists and without being stupid.
Kind of like a fundy-preacher, who says, “It’s All TRUE, and I have shown it to you. Denial is wilful refusal to admit what you know (now) to be true.”
Me, I’m a weak theist (or perhaps an agnostic). The framework of my belief/theology is based on Roman Catholicism (because there’s no such thing as an atheist baby (nor a theist one). But if pressed, I don’t know if there is a god.
And, all in all, I don’t care. My moral framework is, actually, independent of deity (I realise this is in no way true for all theists, perhaps not even most).
Dawkins (and his ilk) refuse (sometimes with great hostility) to accept the idea of a critical theist. Some even refuse to accept a moral theist. And then (having insulted people) they pretend to be surprised when someone calls them on their shit (and some of their shit is crap like this).
/soapbox. Sorry for the rant, I got sidetracked.
I’ve taken/read philosophy, and a well built hypothetical is a boon.
You don’t really want to be talking about something like the morality of mass-killing if all you can use is real world examples.
Why, you ask, would you want to talk about it? So you can then apply the ideas/realisations/conclusions you came up with to real world examples: because they do exist, and how to react to them; individually, or as a group, is important; so that you can take a stand (or not) when the next one comes up, and that stand can have reasoned arguments to throw in the face of douchecanoes who say one is being “too emotive”.
@vaiyt: I’m visualising a mass of seething piranhas, under the floor. And the other lesson for me today was I had no idea how to spell piranha.
@kitteh: one interesting point raised in one of the Pharyngula threads was that these “hot zone” hypotheticals never address things that might upset white cishet males. I can’t recall the thread or the specific examples, but they were along the lines of (things not used as hypotheticals):
– females have higher earnings power than males
– females tending to be in jobs that accrue more respect, compared to males
– more crimes and harsher sentences for white collar crimes
“Can I pull up papers on how guppies will engage in color shift as the amount of shade/speed of water increase the amount of specular reflection (that is, guppies near the headwaters of a stream are posessed of tails far less gaudy than those downstream), or that sticklebacks have differences in size based on the depth/turbidity of the water they inhabit (so that speciating separation can occur in an aparently non-separated environment)?”
Are we using fish examples to explain evolution? Finally, a topic I could discuss all day! (If I wasn’t in a lull between being Pavlov to my brackish babies. I think the gobies are FINALLLYYYYY going in Puff’s tank, once I feed him, but he’s still miffed about being caught for their most recent play date [Unsupervised! Everybody played nice!])
On topic, zebra danios and leopard danios are the same species, different color mods, bred for aquarist aesthetics. Why are they capable of a wide range of stripe/spot patterns? Gonna guess the answer here is “cuz they’re inch long omnivores, not exactly not on the menu for larger fish”
More interestingly, some loaches look more like plecos than loaches — they can suction onto things with their fins. Wanna guess where they live? Rocky, fast flowing streams, where suctioning into rocks means not getting bounced downstream. (Note, should you ever see anything for sale as a plec that does not suction with its MOUTH, it’s a loach and requires a hell of a lot more dissolved oxygen than most aquarium fish…this is a sore spot of mine, as they don’t tend to survive in captivity when not given special care)
…I’m done rambling about fish, I have ones to feed :)
…I didn’t hit post? Oh. Well then! Puff’s no longer mad at me, and I’m thinking tomorrow on the introductions, seeing how it’s lights out soon. Also, DANCING LOACHES!! I have clowns again as of two days ago and I have no idea what evolutionary purpose their dancing could have, but it’s entertaining to watch (and probably to do, so maybe that is the point of it?)
“Me, I’m a weak theist (or perhaps an agnostic)… But if pressed, I don’t know if there is a god.”
I’m probably a slightly weaker theist (or stronger agnostic) than you are. But like you, I don’t know if there is a god. (I don’t even have an idea what a Supreme Force would be like if there is one.) And Dawkins doesn’t know either. What has always annoyed me about him is that he does not understand that “I do not believe that there is a god” is a reasonable position but “There is no god” is not. There could be a Supreme Force which is beyond the ability of human intelligence to comprehend. Dawkins is implicitly claiming that he possesses the supreme intelligence in the universe, which seems like rather dazzling arrogance. This is the same arrogance that leads him to believe that his way of thinking is the only valid one — that, say, his analysis of the relative turpitude of rape at knife-point versus date rape must be valid because he is pure logic not distracted by irrelevant emotions. His total disrespect for the emotional reactions of rape survivors is one result of this disrespect.
Prior to reading this thread, I would have agreed with Dawkins that knife-point rape is clearly worse. Having read the thread and listened to other people’s stories, I realize that my former views were lacking in empathy, so I have changed my views. I like to believe that that is what intelligent people do, but I doubt that Dawkins is capable of making that sort of modification. A bit of intellectual humility makes it easier to function as a human being,.
pecunium: see what pallygirl said below re the choice of topics for these hypotheticals.
Mind games, treating people – or anyone not a straight white dude – as abstracts, or fodder. It screams “I have no empathy”. I loathe it.
“I’m visualising a mass of seething piranhas, under the floor. And the other lesson for me today was I had no idea how to spell piranha.”
But can you spell pacu? (Their close, vegetarian, cousins)
Also, can I have an underfloor fish tank and a transparent floor? Maybe with a porthole so I can go swimming? (Yes, “swim with the fishes” is nothing like an insult to me :) )
On topic! Blarg, thanks Dawkins, you asshole. I really needed to be reminded that since I wasn’t threatened with a weapon it didn’t count. So I already texted pecunium a snip of this, because arg, and TW: all the rape apologia and fucked up psych attitudes…
Thanks Dawkins, I preferred thinking meds psych from hell was just a horrible person. Not that her inquisition about the exact nature of wtf happened, her BS about not knowing if I was malingering, deciding ON FIRST MEETING ME that I’ve got a personality disorder, her discounting that I could ever possibly be disabled…I really preferred thinking it was a combination of biases about what she said (I *am* young and smart, these are true, if completely irrelevant, so bias about young people and mental disability? Totally a thing she could’ve been having [that sentence made more sense in my head])
But thank you Dawkins, and the discussion you started…no, I was threatened with a weapon, no, I didn’t need medical treatment, yes, rapist EX’s does indeed mean I was dating them…so, not as bad as if I was held at knife point by a stranger. Then I’d have a cause for PTSD, as it is I must have a personality disorder and be exaggerating.
END TW
Thankfully, I found a lightening fast French proxy to watch QI. Less thankfully, I’m running out of ones I haven’t seen.
Pecunium, this could pose a problem, you may need to find something else to get me hooked on. Also, the pen from the guest book at your wedding, see your email, R keeps asking if you’ve gotten back to me, he REALLY wants to get himself a pen like that!
meant, “result of this arrogance”
Also, the fact that some religions have done tremendous damage and caused great suffering does not prove that there is no good; it just proves that bad people will claim that they know what god wants in order to advance their skeevy objectives.
“What has always annoyed me about him is that he does not understand that “I do not believe that there is a god” is a reasonable position but “There is no god” is not.”
Huh. Thank you for that. I’ve long felt like both a bad pagan and a bad atheist for going “idk, but if there is/are god(s), then I believe they’re like…”
But no, that makes sense. Because you’re right, I can’t know. Not the way I know I have ten fingers, and that trimming my cuticles and then playing in a brackish water tank was a Bad Idea (in non-aquarist — don’t put open wound like things in salty water), or that coffee is gooooooood. More like the way I know what my fish like, and how certain species tend to be “personality” wise (not just the empirical “territorial” type things, but that, f’ex, clown loaches are aptly named goofs)
And upside down catfish are weird. One just came up out of nowhere, if I didn’t know better I’d say that was catfish for “hey, I’m goofy too!”
GrumpyOldMan, yes to all the above!
For me, God/creator spirit/whatever is background. Years back, when I was first in contact with Louis, I asked him, and the best term he could think of was “a consciousness but not a personality”. That settled my questions on the subject; it was never of overrriding importance. Contact with those who’ve passed is much close to my heart.
Strikes me that the Great God Dawkins would be a seriously crap deity.
Putting Doug Spoonwood on moderation for being a dick in a discussion of rape.
Thanks, David!
Somewhere in my late teens I came to terms with the idea that I just couldn’t know whether there is a god and therefore I had to live with that uncertainty. Certainty is so much easier, but if you can’t have it, you can’t have it.
You can argue that the universe couldn’t exist without a creator, but then you have to ask, “What created the creator?” We live in a concrete world, and abstractions like eternity, infinity, or the ultimate source of the universe are just not concepts that our experience in this world prepares us to understand. I had to confront this problem when I was considering whether I could claim to be a conscientious objector. The law (as extended by the so-called Seager decision) stated that my objection to war had to be, in effect, the result of a belief in an external force that I felt compelled to obey and not of personal moral views. I decided that I probably did not qualify (though I did use a CO defense at my trial, which I now regret).
There’s something about this which I think hasn’t been pointed out yet. “Mild” incidents of sexual assault and/or rape are usually not isolated incidents, they’re part of a pattern of increasing severity of incidents, so someone who has been a victim of a “mild” incident is more likely to be victimized in the future, often in more aggressive ways.
It’s bad science to declare something 100% true or false. I’m pretty confident that there is no god because I haven’t seen any positive evidence for it. However, it’s impossible to disprove say, an uninvolved god, a god that purposely hides itself or a god that exists in an another universe.
If Dawkins says he 100% sure there isn’t a god, he isn’t manSTEMlogicking properly. I would say I’m 99 sure but leave room for evidence should any ever exist.
Yep to all the above. So if Dawkins and Harris are the deep thinkers of the atheist movement, it doesn’t say much for the atheist movement.
For me, it’s never been that it couldn’t – I was agnostic-bordering-atheist for years – and it’s never been a question I’ve been that concerned about. Writing off a fundamentalist take on Abrahamic religion, the one that fills so much of the news, was good enough (reading A History of God was a good eye-opener on how extremely limited such thinking is). On the “who created the creator” question, it always seemed slightly odd: nobody, we’re talking before time, I guess. But as I said, for me it’s a meh sort of thing, not my focus at all. I wouldn’t actually care if there wasn’t a deity (or deities): all that matters to me is that my loved ones are alive, and that’s something where I’m more than happy with my own experiences.
That’s another area where His Assholiness and his kind of uber-rational-sceptic-dudes irritate the hell out of me: it’s like “are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?” I’ll trust my own interpretations of my own experiences, not the so-called reason and logic from someone who plainly despises everyone not like them and sneers at any sort of feelings other than WITCHHUNT RAGE INQUISITION ORWELL BLARGHLE. (Because those feelings aren’t feelings at all, they’re totes rational observations, amirite?)
I’ll bet there are a hell of a lot of deeper thinkers than either of those two blowhards. Difference is they’re not being shitfaces as well.
Oh my, love this quotation:
From Sex and Privilege
As to Sam Harris — my FIL sent my wife a copy of his book “The End of Faith”, and I happened to open it to his diatribe against pacifism — he calls it “flagrantly immoral”. You can imagine that I had a teensy-weensy problem with that.
Roald Dahl HATED being caned. But oh well, Dawkins trumps Dahl, I guess, with his superior logics.
Also, I am so glad that Spoonwood is on moderation; I do not appreciate being used as a beating stick on feminism. (Hint: it wasn’t a feminist who raped me, and feminism helped me RECOVER from it!) I HAVE encountered a college professor who creepily went on and on about how men are extraordinarily difficult to rape, and I tried to speak up but was flustered and upset and just made an ass of myself, which I think he enjoyed. (He didn’t know I was male. Or a rape survivor. To him, it was all amusing hypothetics.)
He was a sexuality professor. With tenure.
Also, writeathon is OPEN! Make me write the stuff you want to read!
Just a tad!
Another good point about Dawkins:
Even if he had the logic right, or formal logic had anything to do with the subjects he chooses to slime on, this says a lot about him.
Which is exactly the suspicion I have about all these men pulling this shit – and part of why I would never, never want to sit in philosophy lectures or anything where professors think mind-games with people’s lives are
an entertaining pastimeterribly important hypotheticals.(Why yes, I’m being emotional about choices I would make.)
Well, since people have started going beyond just what an asshole Dawkins is on a personal level, I have to confront some of the statements made here. I mean, this isn’t a “theist/agnostic” blogs, so I think atheist rebuttals should be in order ;)
Making a case for atheism is not the same as saying all believers is stupid, just as making a case (e.g.) for Keynesianism is not the same as saying all neoliberals are stupid. I mean, this kinda is a core point, maybe THE core point, of this whole New Atheism thing (which, yes, isn’t really new and maybe not much of a thing anymore): There is no reason to be apologetic about one’s atheism. Atheists have some pretty good points in their favour, so why shouldn’t those be espoused?
That’s not much of an argument against Dawkins, considering he claims this is true for most theists and that this, ultimately, a good thing. So, no Dawkins very much does recognize the existance of moral theists. He just says that *as a system* theism tends to lead to bad things. That doesn’t mean theists, the *people*, are evil. I think you’re building up a strawman of Dawkin’s positions here. As much as he should never open mouth again on anything regarding society or women, his arguments in regards to atheism/theism are sound.
There “could” also be Russel’s famous teacup in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Of course there theoretically could be a god, and Dawkins even admits that (has anyone here even read his stuff?). But is indeed just a theoretical possibility. We do not pay close attention to the fact that there could be fairies and invisible unicorns all around us – we can’t disprove them, either, after all. Why pay any attention to that there could theoretically be a god? Might as well state “There is no god” – that’s as good as stating “There are no fairies”, a statement most of Euro-American society would have little problem with. (The neopagans here might disagree, of course)
Besides, as I’ve stated, New Atheism’s point is to not be apologetic about atheism anymore. So people should be able to say “there is no god” with the same conviction as people saying “there is a god”.
And what do you know, he never does. His position comes down ” ‘God’ is so improbable we *might as well say* there is no god”.
Dawkins has actually addressed most points raised as arguments here. It is relatively easy to accuse him of superficial thinking while being in, ah, somewhat of an echo chamber.
Though Harris is an ass with no good arguments, no logic and really poor rhetoric. I have to concede that. He always came off as not only unethical, but also simply stupid to me.
Well, then you might as well cut out the middleman and say the universe has existed forever.
But we do know that human senses, even the human intuition for logic can be faulty. Hence why scientists must adhere to such stringent methods to make sure no observation biases, no personal preferences or anything of that sort have crept into their work. Besides, I mean, we have valid mathematical proofs today that are too large for humans to grasp and have to be calculated by computers – basically, humans just have to accept their word. We have quantum mechanics, which run totally counter to human sense of logic, but the math checks out and it is supported by scientific observation. Just “personal experience” is not cutting it anymore, basically.
I mean, the whole point of the scientific method is to get away from personal experience and establish objective, or at least intersubjective, theories. In short, just because it’s your personal experience doesn’t mean it’s universally true. Which doesn’t only go for you, but also for me, and well, everybody.
Damn, LBT, that’s a tempting theme. For some reason I’m having a tiny sad at the moment and just think “Write about MR K!” which really isn’t something to ask. I’ll try to come up with a more reasonable idea.
I’ll look at sponsoring something when my new credit card gets here. Mine’s expired. Poop.
Octo, you’ve been asked before not to start in on this topic. Absolutely nothing good will come of it.
The fact that you take time out of your day to come here and comment at us? And are apparently reading the replies?
Right? Like the unexpected cartoon boomerang, he swings his fist out to hit someone else and it comes flying back into his face. Oh, thanks for sharing that image!
I felt the same way. I realize that there’s a time and place when it;s important to describe exactly what rape entails, especially when you have people denying that men can be raped at all. But I’m not sure the graphic details added anything to this conversation. At the very least, someone who actually gave a shit about male survivors would have offered some kind of warning.
That’s the point about it being Dawkins and his ilk – they don’t just make a case for atheism (and I agree, there’s a good case for it; I just don’t happen to go that way myself). They are asshats to everyone who disagrees with them. It’s the asshattishness, and as Dawkins shows, he applies it everywhere.
Except I’m not equating a creator with the universe.
I’m talking specifically about my inner life here, and interpreting things that happen to me. The assumption that people who don’t come down on the “it’s all imaginary” side are wrong, or uninformed, or not thinking about it, or engaging doubt, seems to underlie this. That’s incorrect. I have thought about it and come to my own conclusions and they are not what Dawkins or his fanboys would go for – and don’t believe for a minute they wouldn’t be dismissive of that. It’s about emotions, after all! It’s about trusting one’s own feelings after asking questions! Can’t have that, can we, Lord Dawkins? That’s what wimminz do.
Nobody’s arguing against atheism. I sure as hell am not; as far as daily practice goes, or thoughts on secularism and law and society, I am one. It’s Dawkins and the Asshats who are the problems.
And the aggressor is likely to escalate as well.
Warner Brothers really need to do a cartoon of Dawkins. It would be perfect.
Which comes back to the point of using a hypothetical at all. If the hypothetical isn’t embedded in any type of reality, then what the hell is the point? It’s not going to make people think through how they would act/think/reflect in the situation being examined, because it’s a purely hypothetical situation that will never happen. It is not a teaching moment, it’s a “I’m purposely going to upset people because I can” moment. Slow fucking clap at this point, because that is abuse of power by a teacher.
If Dawkins and his starry-eyed acolytes are going to stay purely in the realm of “but it’s only hypothetical”, then fucking use a hypothetical like purple space mushrooms on Venus, or something else.
The consequentialist test I was asked escalates in awfulness (from my perspective) from one scenario as a step function. It stops once the person doesn’t select the pure consequentialist position – because no fucking further information is necessary. If the person won’t divert the train, they’re also not going to push the person onto the tracks.
Leaping to the worst possible scenario straight away is pointless, because there are graduations in each philosophical position, and most people aren’t at the extreme end (who would normally only be the people subjected to the worst possible scenarios – because of the way they have answered previous less-bad but escalating scenarios).
Dawkins is just using this as an exercise in being a shit in philosophy. It is truly stunning how many disciplines he is proving himself to be a shit in.
LOL Dawkins should have this pasted over his keyboard:
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
He might even take notice of it. It was said by Stephen Hawking.
My wonderful colleague who retired last year, and who was my partner in library-crime, had two sayings that I adopted as my own:
“You are most dangerous when you think you know what you’re doing.”
and
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
She was fun to work with.
I inherited all her high-level permissions when she retired, which means now I am the person who is most dangerous when I think I know what I’m doing. :: cackles evilly ::
Those sayings are worthy of Pratchett – doesn’t he identify “It can’t hurt to try” and similar things as disastrous human lines?
If I were to write my autobiography, “seemed like a good idea at the time” would be the biggest chapter.
That was the most pathetic attempt at a “no u!” ever seen, Woody. Do try harder.
Doug really is a creeper, isn’t he? It’s the same as what’s going on with Dawkins, you can tell that he loves talking about this stuff precisely because he’s imagining how much it might upset people and can hardly keep his hand out of his pants at the thought.
You all would have liked her. She was very droll. The other thing I learned from her was the useful skill of how to talk to computer programmers which she was really good at (and which I am sort of better than average for non-programmers but not as good as her at).
I should recommend Pratchett to her the next time I see her — bet she’d love him.
p.s. I want to get a “seemed like a good idea at the time” tattoo.
“At least it can’t get any worse!”
-And-
“It sure is quiet around here.”
Those two phrases seem to presage disaster in my experience.
XD
Yes, exactly. I never had much benefit of the doubt to spare – I could never stand the man – but he’s a slimy internet troll these days.
Witness as Octo demonstrates what it is about the whole New Atheist, look I’m a New Atheist, see how clever I am! movement that annoys a lot of other atheists. Oh, look, an opportunity to splain! Which I know I’ve been asked to stop doing, but imma do it anyway, because I can! See how these exclamation marks indicate the fact that not only do I know that I’m ignoring people’s clearly stated boundaries, I’m reveling in doing so! See how much fun I’m having making other people uncomfortable!
It’s, like, meta or something.*
(Juvenile phrasing intentional, because everyone who disagrees with the behavior described above is just dumb and overly emotional, you see.)
Well, *I* didn’t. If you don’t want debate on this, which I can understand, you’d have to nip it in its bud… and not allow arguments from one side to pass but not the other. This would be understandable in a theists/agnostics blog, but this doesn’t seem to be what this blog is about.
Well, that Dawkins is an asshat is something that has indeed been sufficiently established. But concerning his atheism… well, the thing is, since he assumes there is most likely no god, the consequence is that theists are (most likely) wrong in his view. And he tells them that to their faces. Some people do find this to be incredibly rude. But personally, I find this no different than, say, a libertarian saying a socialist is wrong or vice versa.
Likewise, yeah, he’d assume you’re erring in the interpretation of your inner life. And maybe be an asshole about it and attribute that to your gender. But simply assuming somebody errs, as long as one isn’t an asshole about it, is no big deal. You’re also assuming he is erring. We all err on certain matters; none of us infallible.
Though, yeah, for the last two, three years, Dawkins maybe thinks he is…
Also, simply +1 to pallygirl’s last post.
“What happens if I press this button?”
Ah, the button… That’s one of the best.
Saying “I am an atheist” already lets people know that you don’t think there is a God, Octo. Going past that into “you’re wrong! let me tell you how wrong you are!” is basically “neener neener”, which is unlikely to make people like you even if they agree with you about the initial point, as you are demonstrating here.
I’m an atheist. I don’t go around saying “so you know I don’t think God is real, right? totes not real. not a thing that exists” not because I feel apologetic about it (I don’t), but because doing so would be pointless. It’s the same baseline good manners that I expect my religious relatives to exhibit by not reminding me that they think I’m going to hell at the dinner table.
Nobody said otherwise. That’s the whole point: that the ‘splainy assholes are the ones getting on everyone’s wick, regardless of the subject, and for me, that I do not appreciate some man telling me my emotions or interpretation of them is wrong, because he’s the Great Professor and I’m some irrational type who can’t Logic (and his fanboys would throw in “mentally ill” as well).
Oh, fuck you, you disingenuous blowhard. You’re not debating, you’re having yourself a good old-fashioned ‘splain.
Sparky: never say the “Q” word! That totally invites clusterfucks.
So I was talking to a guy about his cooking hobby, and how he wanted to learn how to make marshmallows using the original ingredients, which apparently involved beating an ingredient (not gelatin) for about 20 minutes to make it transmogrify into something else. We had a lot of fun thinking of other things that you could do that do: cream to whipped cream, egg whites to meringue. And then speculating about the number of times that same impulse ended well versus the number of times it ended badly. “Let’s just try hitting that thing for 20 minutes.”
Basic human impulses 101. XD
The takeaway is that I got to sample his caramels (get your mind out of the gutter, these were actual caramels!) and a jasmine tea-flavored candy he is thinking of marketing. It was pretty good.
Side note – there are people/environments where arguing about this stuff is welcomed and everyone loves doing so. It’s OK to have this argument in those environments, because everyone involved has agreed to do so and is enjoying themselves immensely. I have religious friends with whom I can have those arguments. Mr C’s family does argue about this stuff at the dinner table, and that’s OK because everyone involved is OK with it, and we all have fun debating (often drunkenly) until it’s time for everyone to go to bed.That doesn’t mean every family is like that.
Social skills, people! It’s really not that hard to figure out who (or which space) welcomes this sort of discussion, and who doesn’t. If you choose to ignore the “nope, this is not a welcome conversation” signals then you’re being a jerk.
Sigh… While I was thinking about caramels an argument about atheism broke out.
Can we argue about caramels instead?
p.s. What cassandrakitty said. Not the space for this.
Life-or-death arguments about caramels, however, totally welcomed. Come at me bro.
I had a perfect image of a dinner table with a trapdoor under it then, like the Dave Allen sketch where the priest in confessional shouts “No! I can’t forgive that, and neither can God!” pulls a lever and the guy confessing disappears.
It wasn’t me who made the first arguments. You’ll note that entire post of mine consists of quotes of what other people have said. I merely responded to arguments others made. Besides, *all* arguments are basically “let me tell you in what ways you are wrong”. I mean, literally so. Now sometimes people don’t want discussions and that’s fine. If we don’t want discussions about atheism, then let’s not have any… but people had already made arguments about atheism. It wasn’t me who started this discussion.
Also, except for that one quote about “who created the creator”, I didn’t even speak about god’s existence or non-existence at all. I was merely defending what I perceive to be the core-points of New Atheism. Is that suddenly a crime, while decrying New Atheism isn’t? Funny, has this blog become being about bashing New Atheism instead of mocking misogynists while I wasn’t looking?
@ cloudiah
Tell me more about this tea-flavored candy you speak of.
Especially when a person ignores it after kicking this shit up before.
cloudiah: salted caramel 4 lyfe!
Ah, so what you’re saying is “no, I have no social skills, nor do I do nuance”.
@cloudiah
:: giggles ::
“She started it” doesn’t really fly around here. Feel the temperature of the room, and adjust.
No. In fact, the pushback you’re getting right now is from a couple of atheists.
But please keep feeling oppressed or whatever.
And yes, let’s talk about caramels. Please.
Caramels, bras, recipes, anything.
Jasmine candy? Sounds good.
I can’t share any thoughts on caramels, but I bought myself a package of mint Milano cookies again and I finally realized what was missing in my life.
Yeah, just out of curiosity, in the current group that wants Octo to stop being splainey, do we have any theists? There’s an extra level of “dude, that ego” in attempting to splain atheism to a bunch of atheists.
And where do you see the difference? I was making my point. Others could have challenged it. That is how debates usually go, no? Or they could have ignored it if they didn’t feel like a debate. That’s of course fine, too. But to make all these disparaging comments about New Atheism and then expect everybody to shut up about it and argue against them is unreasonable.
You want me to shut up about New Atheism? Fine, if you do as well.
Caramels!
Marshmallows!
Tell me more!
::sits attentively at cloudiah’s feet::
Milano cookies come in mint? Do they still have chocolate, or has that been replaced by the mint part?
Has anyone here sampled the Talenti brand salted caramel ice cream? It’s spendy but oh my dog it is good.
The jasmine tea candy was like a not-very-sweet-but-slightly-sweet lozenge. I enjoyed it. I encouraged him to market it. He needs to work on some texture issues, because everything is coming out a little bit oily. He thinks he can figure it out, and will branch out into other teas later.
They still have plain chocolate ones as well. Speaking of Milano cookies… *grabs bag*
Shorter Octo – “Let me tell you how to Atheist correctly, atheist! You are atheisting wrong!”
Do piss off, dear.
Ally: still waiting on the bras or have they arrived?
I haven’t thought of making caramels before. I can’t do fudge, it turns into toffee. I’ve been too scared to try again even after forking out for a proper candy thermometer.