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.
May I please have a kilo of peanut butter? And a half a kilo of toffee? It’s for science. Yeah, science.
This thing you are doing right now is a ‘splainy argument.
::puts on sciency hat::
What is needed here is a clear and objective and logical examination of the worseness of toffee vs peanut brittle. None of this emotional stuff about how it gets stuck in your teeth, either. I am pleased to see GrumpyOldNurse is offering this valuable service to science.
::takes off sciency hat::
Smarties are odd (the UK kind). I wonder if they predate M&Ms. I wonder this because the Mars brothers grew up tin the UK, and it affected how they made candy (including some terrific flops, because they didn’t understand their tastes were different from american tastes. Toffifay is one of the things they really liked, and it persists because of that. Apparently it lost money for years, and now just breaks even: I am pleased that they keep it, because I like them).
There is a great book about them (and Hershey) called The Emperors of Chocolate, by Joël Green Brenner Broadway Books, 2000 (Random House hardcover in 1999)
Stop Dawkinsing me. Help, help, I’m being oppressed.
@Kittehserf
You besmirch the honour of mint peas?? Mint peas allowed me to make quick meals containing multiple food groups when I was very very lazy AND they went in the freezer instead of on my one shelf of share house fridge space. Pasta and mint peas. Pasta sauce and mint peas with pasta. Pasta and pasta sauce with mint peas. And that is all before you factor in frozen corn. The. Options. Were. Endless.
This is WAY!
More seriously, I remember from pre-vegetarian days that mint peas and pork chops were very nice together.
I have very mixed opinions about Starbuck’s.
They overroast their beans. This is not a moral failing. They also (by and large) don’t clean the machines enough. That is a moral failing (some of it is that they have so much traffic they can’t keep up; this is also a moral failing; they could have more machines/staff to prevent this).
So that’s on the debit side of the ledger.
But they have been one of the major catlysts for american coffee becoming decent, so that’s on the plus side of the ledger.
They also treat their employees pretty well. If you work for them (full or part time) you get health care, and vacation. It’s been that way for at least a decade.
That’s on the plus side of the ledger.
They have a business model which involves trading on brand recognition. They will find a thriving local coffee shop, and set up nearby, trusting people will come to them. A fair amount of the time the established coffee shop will go under (because coffee shops are not possessed of huge profit margins. It doesn’t take much downturn to drive them out of business). Then Starbuck’s gets all the previous shops established business.
On balance, I think the debits outweigh the merits.
That, and I don’t like their coffee.
@ Octo
Way on brussel sprouts may be the one thing we can agree on. They smell like socks.
Argenti: Saying something is less wrong won’t fetch them. Referencing, “the name” might. Refering to the basilisk… might fetch them, but can also be used as a cantrip of banishment.
Dear kittehserf,
Please pick me for many sciencey things involving peanut brittle, and toffee, and Toffiffay, and salted caramel, and broccoli, and chocolate. But not lima beans. Or mint peas, because I am Canadian and thus easily frightened.
There are many good reasons that you should choose me. Really, there are.
Thank-you for your attention in this vital science matter,
Yours,
GrumpyOldNurse
Argenti: re the pen. There are two things…
First, I found it in the trash in front of my house.
Second, it is a Playboy pen, right down to having “The Bunny” etched in the nib.
So if he want’s one, that’s all I have. The actual maker is obscured, but I’d guess Schaeffer.
pallygirl is being oppressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!
::waves dangerous walking stick at AL3H::
Dear GrumpyOldNurse,
Rest assured, the Institute of Important Sciency Stuff has high ethical standards which preclude exposing its volunteers to toxic substances such as mint peas, Brussel sprouts, lima beans or grungy old Starbucks coffee.
Yours,
Head Logicker of Logical Sciency Stuff
Starbucks coffee is bad. Tim Horton’s coffee is worse. If you think this is an endorsement of Strabucks, please protect me from the other Canucks and their Tim’s lovin wrath!
It used to be that all coffee in the UK was worse than Starbucks. I sincerely hope that this is no longer the case.
Canadians are violent:
https://vine.co/v/M2v76tvi6b5
I’ve always found the question of how one of the most polite, apologetic nations in the world came to love hockey interesting. How do they train children out of apologizing when they hipcheck someone?
Why would anyone drink coffee in the UK instead of tea?
Also, I declare way on stick fouls. Those are not OK.
You’re fooling yourself! We’re living in a dictatorship! A self-perpetuating food autocracy in which the working classes are forced to eat toffee–
When I lived in the UK I never did, but this was not unrelated to the terrible quality of the coffee at the time.
@ pallygirl – he is a Very Bad Man. But, rest assured, he received a Very Stern Talking To by Emperor Harper. He will get the help he so sorely needs.
True story: When I was a kid, I used to believe that toffee was really just solidified coffee as candy.
Polite Canadians
What happens in the rink, stays in the rink (especially blood and teeth).