In an interview a few years back with The Sun magazine, atheist bigwig Sam Harris had this to say about the comparable (de)merits of religion and rape:
If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion.
You can read the whole interview starting here.
And some people wonder why so many atheists have broken with Harris and the rest of the Old School New Atheist Boys Club to start Atheism Plus.
EDITED TO ADD: Hadn’t noticed that the interview was from 2006, so maybe this is old news to a lot of atheists. Still horrible.
New definition of “legitimate reason”: must appeal to Skytroll, a reason carefully spelled out and repeated ad nausem while taking care to read the trolls minds to ensure just the right phrasing and tone so as not to cause a troll meltdown. See also: “no I don’t want to date you”
See also “I’m not attracted to Russell Brand”.
Hitch “contributing to the oppression of women”? Nice one. That’s some Illuminati stuff right there.
Anyway, as Professor Harold Bloom has said, if you’re looking for artistic sublimity, personal politics will only poison your search. You have to suspend that, at least temporarily. Which I’ve already said.
And this thread has turned into a clusterfuck anyway. Like Hitch, don’t like him, I’m going to bow out from the conversation, and go finish the Arguably collection.
You’ve suspended a lot more than that Skytroll.
And it was only supposed to be suspended momentarily, not for a lifetime. Elsewise you become a fool, lacking in good judgement, driscretion and common sense.
Did anyone else read that as the arglebargle collection?
I give it less than 24 hours until he shows up again to say the exact same things, because he is our most persistent boomerang troll.
Wait, I need a convincing reason to NOT like Hitch?
No, I don’t think so. You’ve yet to give me a convincing reason to LIKE him.
Shaenon did better at giving convincing reasons to like him, when she described his writing. As did Pecunium. Because they actually described the things about his writing that worked. You used empty adjectives like “genius.”
And then you say it’s Illuminati stuff to see how entrenched sexism works to oppress females? Um… wow. That’s great.
Yeah. Come back anytime. In the meantime, try reading some classics or something. Read some Shakespeare. Develop your tastes a little. (I mean, Shakespeare wasn’t great on women…. but sometimes he was better than Hitchens)
Kind of sad when you consider the centuries in which both men lived, no?
(Random aside – I have visited the cottage where Shakespeare’s girlfriend lived. The doorways were very low. Since we have a lot of people who know a lot about history here – were people really that much smaller back then or was it just customary for doorways to be low? The guide told us that people really were that much smaller, but that seems unlikely to me.)
People have been getting steadily taller. A combination of better nutrition and fewer diseases/better medical treatment combined with improved sanitation. I think the nobility tended to be taller. Better fed, not overworked.
@Cassandra I believe it’s a nutrition issue? When we went to colonial villages and the beds and doorways were smaller than they are now, we were told that people back then didn’t have the same access to nutritious food, at least not reliably, and since childhood malnutrition stunts growth, people tended to be shorter.
Wiki answers says yes.
But also consider that people in that time were SHORTER than people a few centuries earlier (by average, of course.) Source.
Because height corresponds to healthiness;
There’s some interesting food for thought there.
Skyrimjob, why in the everliving FUCK would you come to a website you KNOW is populated mostly by feminists then try shit on someone for pointing out that women are systematically oppressed? It might be Illuminati-fucking level to you, while you theorise about why everyone sucks and you’re SUPER AWESOME for like, reading a book, but to some of us it’s actually our lives.
You’ve been given so many chances to back down from the high horse constructed of your own god damned stupidity, by people doing the exact thing they demand you do (i.e. point out exactly why they don’t like your hero), yet still you want more.
You are a whiny little self-entitled baby who needs to sit the fuck down and drink some wake-up juice. The world does not revolve around you, and this forum does not exist for us to fawn over your literary choices. If you want to talk about how Christopher Hitchens is the bestest author EVAH, go find a forum devoted to that topic, or start your own. I’ve had quite e-fucking-nough of the Skyrim Show. I don’t give two merry little fucks what you like to read, listen to, eat, drink, watch – none of it. And I don’t expect anyone here to give a shit about my preferences. If we find some that coincide, cool, but this is a blog for mocking misogyny and I don’t care to see you using your tired, blithering male-privilege to tell me and mine what we should like and what we should and shouldn’t be fucking offended by.
Take your nasty little tantrums elsewhere.
If you’re completely ignorant of this 101-level feminist theory, what are you even doing on this blog? How did you find it? Why would you stick around?
The reason I ask is because there were times where I had to duck, and I’m 5ft2, so I was having a hard time imagining the average man back then being shorter than me. Obviously nutrition makes a huge difference (when I lived in the UK I found that upper class people were on average quite a bit taller than the average person – I didn’t think of myself as unusually short until I went to boarding school with a bunch of toffs).
Because I’m almost certain that this is not his first outing here, although this has been a more successful sockpuppeting attempt than those he’s made in the past.
You think it’s Brown Baby?
Yep. Wasn’t sure until this thread, but all the tells are there.
Getting rid of him is like playing whack-a-mole, except the game never ends.
I suppose. Managed to resist a meltdown for a surprisingly long time.
I hope that it is him, because if not then there are two of them, and that’s just depressing.
Haha, I was just going to post that exact thing. Since you mentioned it, it is looking more and more like him. Who’s that other author he likes?
Well, he sure doesn’t like Bret Easton Ellis or Stieg Larsson, assuming I have the right troll in mind.
Huh, I actually like Bret Easton Ellis’ writing, even though he’s a massive douchecanoe.
Part of the reason I’m assuming it’s him is that historically speaking whenever we’ve had a petulant young man throwing a tantrum (complete with childish namecalling and YOU JUST AREN’T SMART ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND THIS THING THAT I LIKE) as a result of people not agreeing with him about something pop-culture related, it’s always been him.
I liked it as a teenager, not sure if I would still like it now.