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.
I think the broccoli will… it’s just questionable if it’s worth a perfectly good pizza.
I vote for way on broccoli. Can we include way on brussel sprouts as well? Or at least path.
Octo: Making a case for atheism is not the same as saying all believers is stupid
Good thing I didn’t say that. What I said is Dawkins, and movement atheists like him do that.
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.
Really… this is one of the things he has said about theists:
Let us remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation.
There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point. […] Somebody else must be responsible for my well-being, and somebody else must be to blame if I am hurt. Is it a similar infantilism that really lies behind the ‘need’ for a God?
So he’s pretty much said that Theist are less than able to form their own moral structure; that they are intellectually infantile.
He’s also said that belonging to a religion is to support evil, ispo facto, so his qualifiers to the absolutes don’t cut much ice with me.
Let me quote the man himself: The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism – as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion.
And the problem with systems is they are systems. Systems tend to lead to bad things; because power centralises. A lot of the, “X religion did Y atrocity” is conflationary correlation.
his arguments in regards to atheism/theism are sound. we disagree. I’ve read him. I seen what he says about religion. His comment on Theology shows either a basic ignorance on the nature of a broad stream of functional analysis, and philosophical thought, or a callous (and intentionally dismissive) disregard for the intelligence of those who study it.*
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.
Because he doesn’t stop there. He has said the world will be better off when Religion is dead and buried. He is hopes to “correct” people’s thoughts about something which isn’t actually any of his business; his right to swing his fist ends where my nose begins.
He is well within his (moral) rights, to rail against instrusions of religion into his life, he has no right to wish to curtail the expressions in other people’s private lives.
So people should be able to say “there is no god” with the same conviction as people saying “there is a god”.
Straw man. No one is saying Dawkins, et al, are wrong to so state it (I am in a poly relationship. We have one Catholic, one Jew (moderately observant Egalitarian Conservative: her argument is the ban on polygamy has expired, and so; as an Egalitarian, it’s fine for her to have two husbands, but I digress) and one Atheist. I don’t give a rat’s ass what you believe, but in the same way I am rude to street-corner preachers, because if I need to “find” god, I’ll go looking for him, I see no reason to give the prosyletising atheist any more slack than I give the Jehovah’s Witness, or the Morman Missionary, or the Tony Alamo Pamphleteer.
Because telling me what my belief about deity should be is not the same as telling me what ones belief about deity is.
It’s an important distinction.
And Dawkins says rather more than that:
“Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.”
And the Richard Dawkins Foundation has (recently even) published calls to ban the teaching of religion in “secular” schools (which is not the same as gov’t run) schools, e.g. Harvard (which isn’t, actually a secular school, having been founded [like Yale] as a school of divinity, i.e. to teach ministers).
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”.
And I’ve said my piece.
*and if he’d had any respect for theology he’d have avoided this mistake: Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. […] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis.
The fundamental issue with Jesus and the powers in place in Judea was that he (and the other Pharisees [yes, Pharisees, Jesus arguments were Pharisaic, the counter arguments in the Gospels are Saducean] and so were in keeping with one of the major stripes of Jewish thought at the time. But I digress.
@cloudiah
My two experiences with Godiva are their salted caramels and their liquer chocolates (that were too good for this world and apparently discontinued now) and I fell in love with both of em.
Also straight Godly: salted caramel chocolate cupcakes
Re: Wine gums. I remember wine gums being my consolation prize. Anytime I was too broke in secondary school to go for the crunchies or the sour jelly tots, I’m grabbing the wine gums. Ahhh memories
Cloudiah: Has anyone here sampled the Talenti brand salted caramel ice cream? It’s spendy but oh my dog it is good.
No, but if you can get Jenny’s Salted Caramel, it’s right tasty.
Is Doctor Bob’s (in Pomona) still in business? If they are, you should go. Superb ice cream, and wonderful milkshakes.
I really like the New Zealand Ice Cream Company’s strawberry ice cream. Lovely stuff.
WAY! What is it good fay? Absolutely nothay!
I have not tried that ice cream but I am strongly wedded to the rosewater and coconut. I got a sample of the raspberry today, I may need to change to that next time just to mix things up a bit.
And Richard Dawkins: you’re trying too much to be a cool dad
This is starting to bring back memories of cheap wine and pig Latin, when I was young and broke.
Does anyone else remember Asti Spumante (which we just shorted to spew-mante) and Chardon (http://www.topshelfliquor.co.nz/estore/style/9414024310464.aspx#.U9st_LFq1C0). They were around $5 a bottle when I drank them and were like alcoholic fizzy drink.
I seem to have missed an argument that went like this:
People: Man, the obnoxious thing about New Atheists is how they’ll launch into a ‘splainy debate about how they’re right at the slightest provocation.
Octo: You’re complaining about New Atheism! That means that I get to defend New Atheism! New Atheism is good because if God created the world, who created God? Did you ever think of THAT??
Argenti: I apparently did the weird skip-a-page thing and want to apologize for seemingly ignoring pecunium’s comment. And now I’m going to refrain from saying more about it, lest I cross the line on wishing harm on others (her, not him, of course).
Given where the thread has gone, that was a bit confusing.
It’s ok now. Harm isn’t merited (says me, the one affected).
pallygirl: 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.
What went wrong? Did it crystalise? That usually means there was something to form a seed. It’s amazing how clean you have to get everything, and how critical the temperatures of the equiment are (the pan one pours into ought not be too cool).
Cassandra: Also, rosewater and coconut are two of my favorite ingredients, so yes, let’s add them to all of the things and see what happens.
When were in Kuwait, waiting to cross the border into Iraq, there were the most amazing ice cream bars. The Aladdin was a mild mint, and the Princess was rosewater. Those were the ices wrapped around the ice cream (like a 50/50 bar).
I loved the rosewater, which was fine because the orange/mint were more popular, so I could eat lots.
WWTH, have you ever encountered Jaffa Cakes? They’re another orange/chocolate combo, with a spongy cookie on the bottom.
I prefer the raspberry jaffa cakes. Those with an espresso, or a latte… yum!
pallygirl: Asti (and pro-secco) are nasty. For some reason Italians make their sparkling wine taste like mold.
This is wrong.
If you don’t think making wine taste like mold is wrong, go away until you have learned how to think.
RE: Food discussion
I love broccoli, steamed with garlic salt and coarse ground pepper. Lima beans are of the bad. EVIL. Just like Brussels sprouts.
Sparkling cider with mint-chocolate milanos is the best way to celebrate anything, ever.
In food related news, a kitten is trying to steal my coleslaw.
Now I’ve got Cheap Wine and a Three-Day Growth playing in my head, thankyouverymuch.
katz, pretty much! 😀
I think I got the temperature too hot for too long, so the sugars didn’t chain(?) right. My stovetop is really old and all four elements suck. One, bless it, just does “off” and “all the fire from the pit of hell”. I just can’t face another half kilo of toffee.
Is this a sign that the kitten (hopefully all the kitties) are better now?
But if someone had a kilo of peanut brittle, that would be worse.
@ contrapangloss; you are completely correct about broccoli and lima beans. You are, however, completely wrong about Brussels sprouts. But, since two outta three ain’t bad, I am willing to entertain a detaunte, instead of just declaring way.
How do you feel about salted caramel?
Don’t you try to Dawkins me, katz. 🙂
Salted caramel? That sounds almost as bad as salting popcorn, instead of sugaring it…
Just because a kilo of peanut brittle is worse, doesn’t mean katz is endorsing half a kilo of toffee.
@katz
What even is “‘splainy argument”, and what makes the previous arguments against New Atheism… not that?
Salt and sugar are both acceptable additions to popcorn. And caramel. As is chocolate.
Hey, I never said that having half a kilo of toffee wasn’t bad! I just said that a kilo of peanut brittle would be worse! Go away and learn to think.
(But don’t actually go away.)