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.
What I have learned today is that there are people on Twitter who think in absolutist terms, to an extent I wouldn't have believed possible.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014
.@mikester8821 Yes, it is so obvious it is painful. But they aren't debating, they are emoting.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014
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.
https://twitter.com/somegreybloke/status/494045464308629505
https://twitter.com/markleggett/status/494044606342782977
https://twitter.com/endorathewitch/status/494071064008597504
Good lord. Look at Dawkins feed. Like every third tweet (or sequence) is something deplorable.
— 🦇VaginoplASCII🦇 (@nataliereed84) July 29, 2014
It seems that no matter what point Richard Dawkins tries to make, he only ever ends up proving that Richard Dawkins is a tosspot.
— Steph. 🏳️⚧️ (@EccentricSteph) July 29, 2014
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.
giulia tonelli
Except he also said it didn’t think it harmed any of his other classmates either. So either he thinks he and his classmates were somehow super hardy folk to not be effected, or that any normal person wouldn’t be affected either.
Psst, mods. Human-shaped trash cleanup on aisle 5.
I am so fucking angry and Dawkins and all the bags of excerement in this thread defending him.
I am so fucking angry.
Kitty, Giulia Tonelli and all the others making excuses for him.
Fuck off.
Otoh, everyone defending this shit could just link to their Facebook accounts, so that everyone else knows who to avoid from now on.
Hey Giulia? Survivors of sexual violence of all kinds are not some theoretical ideas to be tossed around and sliced and diced and ranked by importance.
We are real. Our experiences are real. Our trauma is real.
And it is none of your fucking business.
I stand will all other survivors and I am not interested in having non-survivors, who will use any excuse to treat us like shit, ranking us and trying to divide us.
Stop talking. Apologise.
Yawn. Kittehs, are you around?
BTW, I apologize to perfectly innocent kinds of trash like, say, coffee grounds and pieces of orange peel, for associating them with pedo apologists.
I second the request for a troll clean-up, they keep leaving their droppings.
Particularly when the latest troll clearly hasn’t read the previous comments in this thread, whcih specifically address how Dawkins tweets are problematic and how his later tweets don’t exonerate him.
Gosh, it’s like trolls don’t read as well as not understanding logic.
Emailed the mods account.
Yes, with claws out! Just popped back in between programs and saw this – thanks for the heads up, folks.
Pending David’s return, I’ve deleted the troll’s comments.
Troll: kindly fuck off.
Uh, Totoro, Dawkins did make a claim based on anecdotes and evidence free opinion. Then, when people disagreed with him, he claims that they “can’t think right” and are illogical. It’s a pretty standard tactic for people who aren’t really all that logical “If you disagree with my assertions, it’s because you just aren’t logical like me.” His first comment about X’s and Y’s was correct. But you see how no one is claiming that he is “endorsing” date rape? And yet he has straw-manned everyone who disagrees with his belief that date rape isn’t as bad as stranger rape. He’s basically saying, “if you disagree that date rape isn’t as bad as stranger rape, it’s because you think I’m endorsing date rape and can’t think.” This is poor reasoning. “I’m right because I’m smart, and if you disagree you just didn’t understand me because you’re not smart.”
No dude. Nobody is saying that you are endorsing anything. But you can still downplay the severity of something without endorsing it. You might not recognize why someone with as many followers as Dawkins making statements like this is so serious. But perhaps go on Twitter and read some of the comments from his defenders, and some of their ideas about rape. (ie: claiming that feminists want to make all regretted sex rape, that most date rape claims are lies, etc) Is Dawkins directly responsible for his followers using his comments to justify those opinions? When a religious or political leader makes incorrect comments about sexual assaults, and his followers defend those comments, members of the atheist/progressive community will have no problem blaming him. Why should an atheist leader (who is propped up as a leader by many of his fans) be held to a different set of rules? Because being an atheist is inherently special and puts you above regular people morals?
I don’t like having someone like this as the face of atheism. Ugh. I just hope my pushier religious relatives don’t find out about the things he says, because I’ll never hear the end of it.
” I have already apologized, sorry you haven’t noticed. I am sorry that you can’t even admit that there might be people in the world, some people, who may feel differently from you.
We are all different. We all feel different. I am different. Not all victims feel like you.”
Hum, “I’m sorry you are mean to me”, that’s some weird apologies.
/armchair distance internet psychological analysis mode on
Why, the comments that Dawkins makes about how people arguing against him are just stupid makes it sound like Dawkins has a massive inferiority complex and/or suffers from imposter syndrome.
/armchair distance internet psychological analysis mode off
Why would someone who truly believes they are intelligent, state their relatively higher intelligence as the fundamental premise as to why they are right and their critics are wrong? That’s appeal to authority, using yourself as authority. It’s a logical fallacy because it doesn’t support the premises as being true, or the conclusion as being correct – it tries to convince the reader that the existence of the authority causes these conditions to be true.
Anybody who can argue logically doesn’t do this.
Saying “I am sorry if you were offended.” isn’t an apology. It’s basically blaming people for being offended and apologizing on their behalf. It’s also often called a non-apology.
Dawkins, IntelligentGuy™. Same question applies as with NiceGuys™. If they’re so nice, why do they need to say so? Shouldn’t it be apparent? If Dawkins is so intelligent, why does he have to keep proclaiming it instead of demonstrating it?
Tell me, why do people still consider Dawkins a force for good?
I suspect the only ones who do read his books and want to make allowances because of those – they seem to be of the “he helped me escape religion” variety of gratitude, or the AsshatSmugmatheistDudebros who take his racism and misogyny as endorsement of their own attitudes, or the ones who are just totally fucking oblivious to any sort of social justice issues other than atheism.
* That should read as “the only ones who do [consider him a force for good] read his books” etc. Lackapunctuation didn’t help!
I think the only good thing to come of Dawkins is this Mitchell and Webb sketch. And it would be a lot funnier if they weren’t so gentle with him.
Shorter Dawkins: Apples are bad. Oranges are worse.* If you think that’s an endorsement of apples, go away and don’t come back until you’ve learned how to logic, beeyotch.
Personally, I’m baffled by the “endorsement” bit. Where does he get that from? Did someone actually accuse him of it, or is he just putting words at random into the mouths of his detractors to make it look like they’re accusing him of somethiing? A game of wankish Mad Libs that only he is playing against some invisible imaginary being, as it were?
(*or “red apples bad, green apples worse”? I dunno. I’m just a illogical emotiony feeemale.)
And yet, if I told that to a grieving family member of an MH17 flight passenger or crew member, I’d probably deserve the bloody nose.
Ah, so Dawkins uses a theft metaphor to describe the severity of different kinds of rape. Talk about a lack of awareness of male privilege. The problems with his discourses on atheism and feminism all stem from his privilege, as I see it.
I suppose I won’t be surprised by anything Richard Dawkins says these days. Even before I found out about his assholiness (see what I did there? Tee-hee), he gave me a somewhat skeevy feeling with the whole intellectual arrogance thing. Anyone convinced of being the most intelligent person they know is probably going to be written down in my book as an arrogant, self-centered prick who will not receive any Christmas gifts from me.
My brother admires Dawkins, largely because he feels grateful for getting help in escaping the religious environment we grew up in. It’s frustrating to discuss social issues with him, since he still believes in the validity of gender roles and other socially ignorant stuff. Still, at least he was taken aback a bit when I mentioned Dear Muslima to him, so maybe there’s hope.
If Dawkins was my relative, I’d disown him. Glad he isn’t, though. I bet he’d be that annoying uncle who’s convinced of his intellect and excellent verbal skills, when he’s really just in love with his own voice. He’d probably be the overbearing guy oblivious to his privilege, making crude sexist and racist remarks at family gatherings and generally making everyone around him feel uncomfortable.
Which, by the way, isn’t intended to absolve him of any wrongdoing. Men are always responsible for understanding their position within patriarchy, so if he is unaware of his privilege it’s most likely because he doesn’t give a fuck about women.
Dawkins did not make a logical case for why stranger rape is worse than date rape. He just presented his evidence free opinion on the matter and accused everyone who disagreed or was offended of being illogical.
Go ahead, explain how his tweets were “valid and formal reasoning.”
Because Dawkins is a man, a white man at that. Therefore his feelings are important. Women aren’t really truly human and so our feelings don’t matter and are irrational. All the Best Feminists™ know this.