Richard Dawkins opens mouth, inserts foot, mumbles something about "mild pedophilia" again

Holy fucking shit. Read this grotesquery from Dawkins.

TRIGGER WARNING: “rational” detached discussion of whether X action is worse than Y in child abuse. The whole thing is full of him thinking real human beings are thought-experiment fodder, and how reprehensible it is to have any feelings about that or want to be no part of it.

Are there kingdoms of emotion where logic is taboo, dare not show its face, zones where reason is too intimidated to speak?…

Some students are capable of temporarily accepting a noxious hypothetical, to explore where it might lead. Others are so blinded by emotion that they cannot even contemplate the hypothetical. They simply stop up their ears and refuse to join the discussion….

My friend sometimes poses this very question, and he tells me that about half the students are willing to entertain the hypothetical counterfactual and rationally discuss the consequences. The other half respond emotionally to the hypothetical, are too revolted to proceed and simply opt out of the conversation….

There are those whose love of reason allows them to enter such disagreeable hypothetical worlds and see where the discussion might lead. And there are those whose emotions prevent them from going anywhere near the conversation. Some of these will vilify and hurl vicious insults at anybody who is prepared to discuss such matters. Some will pursue active witch-hunts against moral philosophers for daring to consider obnoxious hypothetical thought experiments…..

I believe that, as non-religious rationalists, we should be prepared to discuss such questions using logic and reason. We shouldn’t compel people to enter into painful hypothetical discussions, but nor should we conduct witch-hunts against people who are prepared to do so. I fear that some of us may be erecting taboo zones, where emotion is king and where reason is not admitted; where reason, in some cases, is actively intimidated and dare not show its face. And I regret this. We get enough of that from the religious faithful. Wouldn’t it be a pity if we became seduced by a different sort of sacred, the sacred of the emotional taboo zone?…..

When a show-business personality is convicted of pedophilia, is it right that you actually need courage to say something like this: “Did he penetratively rape children or did he just touch them with his hands? The latter is bad but I think the former is worse”? How dare you rank different kinds of pedophilia? They are all equally bad, equally terrible. What are you, some kind of closet pedophile yourself?…..

But then I quoted Sam Harris to the effect that “Hamas publicly says they’d like to kill every Jew in the world” and I went on to raise Sam’s hypothetical question: What does that say about Hamas’s probable actions if positions were reversed and they had Israel’s military strength? Sam’s suggestion that this contrast might actually be demonstrating restraint on Israel’s part, unleashed a storm of furious accusations that he, and I, relished the bombing of Gaza’s children.

I also quoted Sam as saying “I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state.” So of course I, and Sam, got vituperative brickbats from Israel and from American Jewish interests. I summed up my position on the fence (linking to an interview with Christopher Hitchens) as follows: “It is reasonable to deplore both the original founding of the Jewish State of Israel & aspirations now to destroy it.” But I swiftly learned that emotion can be so powerful that reasonable discussion – looking at both sides of the question dispassionately – becomes impossible…..

Some people angrily failed to understand that it was a point of logic using a hypothetical quotation about rape. They thought it was an active judgment about which kind of rape was worse than which. Other people got the point of logic but attacked me, equally furiously, for choosing the emotionally loaded example of rape to illustrate it. …..

I’ve listed cannibalism, trapped miners, transplant donors, aborted poets, circumcision, Israel and Palestine, all examples of no-go zones, taboo areas where reason may fear to tread because emotion is king. Broken noses are not in that taboo zone. Rape is. So is pedophilia. They should not be, in my opinion. Nor should anything else.

I didn’t know quite how deeply those two sensitive issues had infiltrated the taboo zone. I know now, with a vengeance. I really do care passionately about reason and logic. I think dispassionate logic and reason should not be banned from entering into discussion of cannibalism or trapped miners. And I was distressed to see that rape and pedophilia were also becoming taboo zones; no-go areas, off limits to reason and logic…..

They are afraid – and I promise you I am not exaggerating – of witch-hunts: hunts for latter day blasphemers by latter day Inquisitions and latter day incarnations of Orwell’s Thought Police.

Source

Shut up, Woody.

The more I read, the more I think Dawkins really gets off in his straw-Vulcan way on triggering people. As was pointed out on Pharyngula – about 50% of students don’t want to take part in those professors getting their rocks off talking graphically about rape hypotheticals, because they get all emotional about them – what’s the odds those fifty percent are the students who face a high chance of being raped at college?

Shut up, Woody.

Woody: When you said Dawkins wasn’t an ally of yours, I thought you meant because he was an asshole, not because he hasn’t outright said he’s an MRA.

Hence my mistake.

Anyone else see this as a real possibility?

http://i.imgur.com/964Fl3t.jpg

I can easily see him arguing with a swan.

Shorter Dawkins: “Sure, it’s bad that people threaten to rape and murder you every day. But someone TOLD ME TO SHUT UP!!!”

Woody: Ok. That’s nice.

I really don’t care.

Anyone else see this as a real possibility?

http://i.imgur.com/964Fl3t.jpg

I can easily see him arguing with a swan.

An opinion piece in the Guardian described him as an old man shouting at clouds. Maybe that’s why Dawkins and the swan rumble: the swan refuses to see reason and admit that the big cumulus cloud to the north looks like a bouncy castle.

Why is Woody still here?

Woody’s upset ‘cos Pauly doesn’t love him.

Maybe if Woody shook his pompoms a little more vigourously?