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 agree, Dawkins has been horribly insensitive in the past, and he chose bad examples here. But I really don’t think the point he’s trying to make is a bad one: that saying “Y was worse than X” does not mean that “X is not that bad”. Look at his first example – Hitler and Stalin, by almost anyone’s estimation, are both awful. Grading the awfulness doesn’t make either one of them at all ok. He then talks about pedophilia and rape, which are all awful too. In the context of the Hitler-and-Stalin tweet, surely that’s clear?
All the examples that other commentators have brought up all make the same logical mistake that Dawkins is trying to talk about – “You said such-and-such an atrocity was worse than mine, so you mean I shouldn’t be so upset/traumatized/whatever” – but the thing is, it doesn’t necessarily follow, does it? Saying that the 1977 Tenerife air crash was the worst ever plane crash (it had the largest death toll) doesn’t make the passengers and crew on MH17 any less dead or the grief of their families and friends any less awful.
The other issue is of course whether you can say something was worse than another thing – and this is why Dawkins chose bad examples (particularly the rape example) because I’m not sure you can. It’s hard to have an objective scale to talk about it – though maybe some research will show, or has showed, that one is more traumatic than the other, or the trauma lasts longer. But think about it – if research did show mild sexual abuse of children produce more trauma over a lifetime than more severe abuse, wouldn’t the headlines say “worse”? And would that automatically mean “child rape not that bad”? Of course not.
You jeez come on. Dawkins gets called on his BS and then he whines, because he thinks he’s some Special Person(tm) who Is Never Wrong. Just like a bunch of other idiot cis-male, white atheists.
It doesn’t need a bloody professor to take down anti-evolution comments, because evolution is (1) not that hard to understand, (2) data points that fit with evolution are common and can be cited by anyone as the veracity of a fact isn’t affected by the seniority or maleness of the person making the claim and (3) oh yeah, I notice that since Dawkins has been very active there are now no anti-evolutionists. He doesn’t speak “eloquently” about problems with religion – he uses a sledgehammer method just like Sam “torture is okay so long as we like the people doing it” Harris.
Your second sentence does not agree with your first sentence. You’re also factually wrong. What Dawkins actually tweeted was:
“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”
He doesn’t get to score “badness” of rape for people. He hasn’t got a fucking clue in that area. He needs to Learn To Shut The Fuck Up. So do you.
Ya think?
No, ya don’t think. FFS, the only reason this type of BS statement is made is that the person making the statement is telling the person to whom the outcome occurred that they are overreacting.
You, Dawkins, etc don’t get to tell survivors that they are overreacting. You just should Shut The Fuck Up. You are not a nice person. In fact, you are a horrible person for telling survivors that their lived reality is wrong. That is what you are saying to people when this type of fucking “you’re overreacting” comment is made.
Fuck off.
That’s exactly why we don’t like what Dawkins said. He is talking over rape victims and telling them how to feel about their experiences. Go away.
Like he’s the only one to do any of that! Curiously enough, some people manage to do all of that stuff without being condescending, misogynistic, xenophobic gobshites who show they know fuckall about anything outside their field of biology. As a not-atheist, not-theist, I’d say he’s one of the worst faces movement atheism could have. Y’all need an oh-so-superior Oxbridge professor telling the plebs How It Is like you need a hole in the head.
Has anyone seen this grid, the Dawkins Murder Scale (via Pharyngula)? It’s an attempt to get it through to Professer Obtuse. Doubt it’ll work, of course, since he’s willfully obnoxious.
He possibly is useful to the atheist movement because he gives me the shits.
/bad pun mode off.
MichiganPerson: So, is Dawkins above criticism because “he is useful to Atheism as a movement?”
pallygirl, LOL!
Were I atheist, or invested in the movement, I’d have to tell him “STFU Richard, I have IBS, I don’t need you!”
You don’t get to rank the relative badness of parental death for other people. People exist in many different circumstances, relate to their parents in different ways, and feel differently when a parent passes away. Some will be devastated by the death of only one parent, while others will cheer when both parents are dead. You don’t actually get to rank that.
You (and Dawkins) don’t seem to grasp that you do not, and cannot, know the inner lives of other people. You assume that my inner life is exactly like yours, but that is only an assumption on your part. One of several problems with Dawkins’ “logic” is that it rests on premises that he does not articulate; one such premise is that he can know, objectively, the suffering of all other people and objectively rank them. This premise is not based in reality.
Fuck, Pigshit Dawkins Doubles Down:
Actually, it’s rather plausible that some people might find date rape WORSE than being raped by a stranger (let’s leave the “at knifepoint” out of it). Think of the disillusionment, the betrayal of trust in someone you thought was a friend. But my logical point remains unchanged
Plausible. Plausible. He’s still treating people’s lives like some fucking thought experiment. Like people’s actual lived experiences are just abstract ideas for his Lord High Logicness to consider.
Via Pharyngula
Of course, in Dawkinsland there are only two types of rape: date and stranger.
I am sadly unsurprised at the fawning over Dawkins by some in the atheist movement, and the leap to support his fucking idiotic (by any measure, logic or EQ) comments. They’ve just replaced one god with another, created in their image (cis-male, white). Dawkins can do no wrong, he’s omnipotent – pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
You know, when Rebecca Watson just commented in a gentle and reasonable manner about the behaviour she experienced in an elevator, there were howls from atheists about how she was so over the top, and wrong, and she must be wrong about her lived experience. Now we see Dawkins, again (he makes a habit of this shit), being misogynistic about stuff that is outside his lived experience, and the atheist dudebros leap to his defence.
And people wonder why atheism has a bad rap. Answer: it’s because the atheist shits are the loudest.
Dude thinks that if he dismisses a rhetorical trick as illogical, then he can use the rhetorical trick all he wants and it’s your fault if you get upset.
His subjective judgment on the relative badness of X and Y have nothing whatsoever to do with logic. Just because the d00d calls his particular brand of bullshit logic does not make it so.
He has had a generous number of teachable moments on the subject of misogyny. You would think he might have availed himself of the opportunities and learned something by now.
Sadly, no.
And at least one of his followers (Robert) takes this as an opportunity to trash-talk psychology, clearly not understanding the discipline at all: https://richarddawkins.net/2014/07/response-to-a-bizarre-twitter-storm/
The social scientist in me is wondering whether some of the manly STEM men are this bad at thinking about psychological harm because social science theories and findings are just clearly assfacts, so they can make up assfacts to support whatever idiot position they write.
Pro tip: if you think that psychology isn’t a valid science then don’t fucking rely on any arguments based on psychology (like, oh I don’t know, maybe psychological trauma for example). To use it as the basis of an argument, and then dispute later that it has any reality because it’s not a “hard” science is scientific fraud.
Mark Driscoll started off as a homophobic, sexist internet troll who targeted liberal Evangelicals? Shocked, I am, shocked! I had to get up and fetch a glass of wine to help me recover.
The sad thing is that, except for the more hostile tone and lack of biblical referents, the troll posts aren’t that far off from some of Driscoll’s Mars Hill sermons. :
thebewilderness – yup, it’s MansplainLogic, anything a man says about things he knows nothing about must be true, because penis.
The Pharyngula thread on this is interesting, to say the least.
pallygirl, YES to all you said just then. Never mind if you’re hit on when you’ve just spent time explaining you don’t want to be hit on; never mind if it’s when you’ve just this minute said you’re tired and going to bed; never mind if dude does it in an enclosed space he can very easily stop you escaping if you try, and a situation where women have been raped – oh no, you haven’t had pieces of your body cut out, so what are you complaining about?
Dawkins gets just about everything wrong he can, and don’t the douchebros love him for it.
And these guys claim to be objectively better than religious people? Cause uh I don’t necessarily *agree* with various religions, but at least most of their followers have some degree (in a great deal of cases a huge degree) of empathy and basic human fucking decency.
I haven’t seen that from Dawkins and his fanboys.
A few things 1) I’m gonna have to stand by the claim that he’s useful to Atheism because of his knowledge of evolution. He’s an expert in biology. Evolution isn’t simple and easy to understand. It’s actually quite complicated. But of course that doesn’t make him above criticism. He is by no means a god any more than some popular figure in the feminst movement is a god to feminists. And definitely Athiests can differ on whether or not they think he is a valuable voice or a liability.
2) Saying rape by a stranger at knifepoint is worse than date rape is not saying that date rape isn’t bad. It’s definitely clumsy, though. Just like saying having two parents die is worse than having one parent die. A person who said that would not be discounting lived experiences, though. Or telling people how to react. They would be making a generalization that, no doubt, has exceptions, but I think most would agree is true most of the time. I chose the parents dying thing because it was clumsy and didn’t require saying. A logically similar statement, without the offensiveness, might be “Heart attacks are worse than broken legs.” You’re not saying, “Don’t complain about your broken leg because heart attacks are worse.” You’re just ranking heart attacks as generally worse.
3) The level of rhetoric here is pretty intense. I offered a pretty tepid defense of Dawkins as a person and got a pretty heavy dose of “Fuck you. You’re a horrible person.” I think that feminism gets criticized (wrongly in my opinion) for having divisive rhetoric much like atheism does. As a feminist and an atheist, I tend to think its counter-productive in both cases.
wewereemergencies, yup.
Also worth pointing out as atheism seems to be getting called into question. I don’t have data on this, but I would be willing to bet my house to get $5 that atheists are more likely to be feminists than religious people.
If you’re read some of his work, it’s clear that Dawkins is no ally of ours.
LMAO. “Mild murder.”
I’m trying to figure out if there’s a non-weight-shaming “too big to fail” joke to be made here.
I refer you to the aphorism about heat and kitchens.
I know, right? Smelling salts, fainting couches, etc. But it’s worse than that: He already was a pastor at the time, and he was 31 years old. This wasn’t his angry college-kid days or anything; he was already “in ministry!”
Why wouldn’t you want to be divided from misogynists, racists, homophobes and the like? What’s to be gained from accommodating people like that? Are you trying to do the Big Tent nonsense?
Just what do you think non-atheists who actually give a damn about social justice issues are going to think about movement atheism’s attachment to its white-dude leaders who, when they aren’t actually harassing or assaulting women themselves, are minimising everything that happens to not-white-dudes? You think that’s a movement anyone with a conscience really wants to be associated with? There’s your division: including the abusers and their apologists and not caring if it drives away the people they victimise or dismiss. Who are, y’know, the same people feminism is supposed to care about.
Dawkins has a decades-long history of misogyny and racism, at the very least. Why should he get any sort of pass for being an evolutionary biologist? Is he the only one? Or the only one who should be listened to? What makes him so special even in that field?
If he’s half as smart as he tells us he is, he knows full well what he’s doing every time he talks about any sort of sexual abuse. There’s no excuse for his behaviour. He’s been called out often enough, and doubles down every fucking time.
@MichiganPerson
You aren’t getting it. The problem with Dawkin’s statements is that he is trying to judge the severity of other victim’s experiences on some “objective” basis. He is deciding for victims how traumatized they deserve to feel. Moreover, he is disingenuously saying that this is all a mater of “logic”, yet his statements are often used as derails to minimize the trauma of other victims and shame them for speaking their mind.
Gee, I wonder why!
Shut up, Woody.