Dicky Dawks defends paedophilia

[Shit Good Nose]

IIRC there are still some states in America where 21 is the age of majority, so even if you are 18+ you are still legally classified as a minor.

True, and it's not just in America either.  Also worth remembering that in some developed countries the age of consent is still as low as 14/15, whilst go a bit further afield and you're looking at younger still.

This is why I'm glad I've always liked older women (Mrs Nose is older) - never in any doubt then.

[touchingcloth]

I'm not sure that the comparative saves it in this case. "More of a laugh" wouldn't work either.

Yeah I don't think it saves it, it's just one example of many which Dawkins could have chosen or corrected himself to if he was interested in not being misconstrued. I think if most people caught themselves saying mild and paedophilia in the same sentence they'd quite quickly clarify they weren't suggesting that any forms are mild in absolute terms.

He could have used the superlative. I do only the mildest mincing.

[thenoise]

Yeah I don't think it saves it, it's just one example of many which Dawkins could have chosen or corrected himself to if he was interested in not being misconstrued. I think if most people caught themselves saying mild and paedophilia in the same sentence they'd quite quickly clarify they weren't suggesting that any forms are mild in absolute terms.

He could have used the superlative. I do only the mildest mincing.

It's the shock that gets the attention.  Teaching kids about Jesus is worse than paedophilia ZING!!!!!  TAKE THAT CHRISTIANS!!

Actually I was talking about theological abuse leaving children with lifelong crippling guilt.  And by paedophilia I actually meant a 16 year old touching his girlfriend's bum on the day before her 16th birthday.  AAAAAHAHAHA your assumptions were a fallacy and I win again by the power of my science!

Like usual, his actual 'point' is banal.

[touchingcloth]

It's so disappointing seeing the saggy faced Gervais he's become if you've ever read The Selfish Gene. He's the absolute textbook example of why being an expert in one field doesn't necessarily give you credibility in other ones. And they let Russells Brands on Question Time.

[ZoyzaSorris]

Yes he was an absolute hero of mine from selfish gene - ancestors tale. Absolute genius stuff. Then things seemed to take a slow then rapid decline into monomania very sadly.

[touchingcloth]

The neoatheist stuff is all a big circle jerk. He probably expressed scepticism about god a few times, started getting TO RIGHT MATE GLAD SOMEONE IS SAYING IT and got addicted to the big fish in a small pond feeling.

The God Delusion was actually what made me start to call myself an atheist/agnostic rather than a lapsed Christian who sort of held onto a vague and toothless belief that maybe god was real, but in hindsight I realise that's just because it was the first overtly atheist thing I had read rather than containing any novel insights, unlike The Selfish Gene which is a singularly brilliant book.

[dissolute ocelot]

Yes he was an absolute hero of mine from selfish gene - ancestors tale. Absolute genius stuff. Then things seemed to take a slow then rapid decline into monomania very sadly.

His original thinking about evolution seemed to peter out around ''The Extended Phenotype'' in 1982. He then went through a phase of good popular-science things in the 80s and early 90s (The Blind Watchmaker, RI Christmas lectures etc), before turning his attention to shouting at clouds. You have to wonder if he realised he'd never be a great scientist and decided that rather than do research or work in academia, he'd achieve immortality by being as obnoxious as possible.

[ZoyzaSorris]

The extended phenotype was his real contribution to science, for sure, but he had a real genuine genius for synthesising the current state of the field and writing about evolution, it'd be really hard to deny that for anyone who knows what they are talking about. Sadly the anti-evolutionists seem to have eventually driven him a bit mad. A waste. Still, to have produced contributions of the stature of the selfish gene, extended phenotype, blind watchmaker, climbing mount improbable and ancestors tale to the human oeuvre still keeps him overall in the high lifetime score bracket.

[Pancake]

we don't look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism

I do!

[Blue Jam]

You have to wonder if he realised he'd never be a great scientist and decided that rather than do research or work in academia, he'd achieve immortality by being as obnoxious as possible.

I think that would be a good summary of James Watson, a scientist who had one big break (thanks largely to nicking someone else's data) and who has been dining out on it ever since, being obnoxious and rubbing people up the wrong way as much as he can along the way.

Dawkins had a great way with prose and was a good speaker and he probably genuinely has done a lot to further public understanding of science. With The God Delusion he perhaps realised there was more mileage in the whole Skeptic/Atheist movement and then it seems he started playing to that whole New Atheism crowd with his cringe-making "Dear Muslima" letter and everything since.

Maybe he just ran out of ideas. And maybe he hasn't been the same since his stroke. Whatever, people reading Dawkins' books is preferable to them being taken in by frauds like Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk.

[touchingcloth]

It's so self defeating. Dawkins brought me to atheism and the Skeptical movement, but with Dear Muslima he also pushed me away. I started calling myself an atheist around the same time as I started to call myself a feminist, and that letter was prompted by something Rebecca Watson had said, who was a host of the Skeptics' Guide podcast and used to speak quite a lot about sexism in the movement. Stuff which I would have assumed was unobjectionable to anyone with a brain and half a sense of decency. Both of which I assumed Dicky had, and yet..,

[touchingcloth]

For anyone unfamiliar with the Muslima stuff, here is what Watson said about some harassment at a conference, where she had been speaking about sexism in the Skeptic community:

All of you except for the one man who didn't really grasp, I think, what I was saying on the panel, because, at the bar later that night — actually at four in the morning, we were at the hotel bar, four a.m. I said I've had enough guys, I'm exhausted, going to bed, so I walked to the elevator, and a man got on the elevator with me and said "Don't take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting and I would like to talk more, would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?" Um, just a word to the wise here, guys, don't do that. I don't really know how else to explain that this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I'll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at four a.m., in a hotel elevator with you, just you, and I, don't invite me back to your hotel room right after I've finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualise me in that manner.

This prompted Dawkins to write an open letter thus:

Dear Muslima,
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and... yawn... don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with. Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep"chick", and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so... And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.

It shows what a shithead he is when you compare the response he gave to people who said careful now to his comments about mild paedophilia:

X is bad. Y is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of X, go away and don't come back until you've learned how to think logically.

Mild pedophilia is bad. Violent pedophilia is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of mild pedophilia, go away and learn how to think.
 
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.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

It's also worth noting that Dwakins only penned that ridiculousness after Watson had spoken publicly about the barrage of hateful emails she'd received for daring to tell men "please don't hit on me late at night in an enclosed space" and PZ Myers blogged about the whole mess.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Elevatorgate

[touchingcloth]

Writing that letter was the actions of a total cunt. Fair enough - to an extent - if Watson had suggested that she had experienced the most awful and harrowing assault, but she was speaking very much in a "careful, now" manner. A respected Oxford professor writing a letter making the most facile of points and starting "Dear Muslima", the fucking state of that.

[Ray Travez]

...

[Blue Jam]

It's also worth noting that Dwakins only penned that ridiculousness after Watson had spoken publicly about the barrage of hateful emails she'd received for daring to tell men "please don't hit on me late at night in an enclosed space" and PZ Myers blogged about the whole mess.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Elevatorgate

It's also worth noting that Watson was hit on just hours after giving a talk in which she mentioned harassment and not wanting to be hit on at conferences. You can't blame her for reacting to "Hey, nice talk about not wanting to be hit on, want to discuss it back at my place?" with an eye-roll and a need to vent.

Elevatorgate also happened while a schism was developing among organisers and regular attendees of The Amaz!ng Meeting. After Watson and other female attendees reported being groped and harassed at TAMs they approached DJ Groethe, president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, about how he wanted to encourage more women to attend, telling him he needed to reassure women they'd be safe there first. His response was to blame them for a drop in women registering to attend by daring to talk about their experiences, and to ask if they couldn't just pipe down with their "misinformation":

https://skepchick.org/2012/06/why-i-wont-be-at-tam-this-year/

Over the past several years, I've been groped, grabbed, touched in other nonconsensual ways, told I can expect to be raped, told I'm a whore, a slut, a bitch, a prude, a dyke, a cunt, a twat, told I should watch my back at conferences, told I'm too ugly to be raped, told I don't have a say in my own treatment because I've posed for sexy photos, told I should get a better headshot because that one doesn't convey how sexy I am in person, told I deserve to be raped – by skeptics and atheists. All by skeptics and atheists. Constantly.

This is quite obviously not a safe space for me or for other women who want to be free of the gendered slurs and sexual threats and come-ons we experience in our day-to-day lives. But apparently, DJ thinks I am lying about that, since apparently my feeling that the freethought community is not a safe space is "misinformation." I should apparently put on a smile and pretend it doesn't happen, because by reporting on my treatment, I am creating "a climate where women — who otherwise wouldn't — end up feeling unwelcome and unsafe."

She didn't really need Dawkins chiming in with "Dear Muslima", did she? What a prick.

[Shit Good Nose]

I'm sure I must've mentioned this on here before, but as it's appropriate to this discussion...

I used to be a right hard-line atheist (although I've never suggested that mild nonceing should be overlooked, as I hope you all know) and Dawkins was someone I always looked up to and who made me feel superior to all those idiots worshiping their fictional ghosts in the sky, but since moving to where we live now about 15 years ago my attitude has completely changed.  There is a really strong local christian church community here (bearing in mind we live in a rural large village/small town, we have two separate active churches which are a bout a minute's walk from each other and another one about five minutes walk from those and two more about twenty minutes walk from there) and a lot of locals are members.  Most of the schools around here are either church schools or have a lot of church involvement, so you basically can't avoid religious types.  But you know what?  They are, without exception, all REALLY lovely people.  Yet I've met so many cunt hard-line atheists in the same time period that it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.  I still don't believe in god or anything like that, but my tolerance and acceptance of people who do has increased massively, and they're all (well, the ones we know) tolerant and accepting of me too, which gives me pause for thought when it comes to my previous leanings.  Any mention or appearance of Dawkins now is met with an eyeroll and a sigh.

JWs can still fuck off though.

[Thursday]

Christians can really fall all over the map politically, they can feel it's their place to judge anyone with what they perceive to be a "deviant" lifestyle (like uh... being gay) while there's other who believe they should show everyone love and support and no judgement no matter what. Who get involved in helping the local community. People can have such wildly different experiences with Christians.

[touchingcloth]

I'm sure I must've mentioned this on here before, but as it's appropriate to this discussion...

I used to be a right hard-line atheist (although I've never suggested that mild nonceing should be overlooked, as I hope you all know) and Dawkins was someone I always looked up to and who made me feel superior to all those idiots worshiping their fictional ghosts in the sky, but since moving to where we live now about 15 years ago my attitude has completely changed.  There is a really strong local christian church community here (bearing in mind we live in a rural large village/small town we have two separate active churches which are a bout a minute's walk from each other and another one about five minutes walk from those and two more about twenty minutes walk from there) and a lot of locals are members.  Most of the schools around here are either church schools or have a lot of church involvement, so you basically can't avoid religious types around here.  But you know what?  They are, without exception, all REALLY lovely people.  Yet I've met so many cunt hard-line atheists in the same time period that it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.  I still don't believe in god or anything like that, but my tolerance and acceptance of people who do has increased massively, and they're all (well, the ones we know) tolerant and accepting of me too, which gives me pause for thought when it comes to my previous leanings.  Any mention of appearance of Dawkins now is met with an eyeroll and a sigh.

JWs can still fuck off though.

My parents are fundamentalist Christians: intolerant of gays, believers in a young earth. They're REALLY lovely people with that aside, but I'm slightly intolerant of religion because of it's ability to turn otherwise lovely people into gay haters[nb]Largely because fear of eternal torment in the afterlife means if you believe the people telling you there's an alternative of eternal paradise, you might also be scared of the consequences of ignoring what that person says about the gays.[/nb].

I called myself a Christian during my mid-teens, and most of my friends were from a church youth group, so reading The God Delusion was a bit of a leap of faith for me. When it opened my eyes to religion being a fantasy, I was angry with myself for having ever believed in it, and angry at the missed opportunities I had had because of it. I became a hardline cunt atheist for a bit, watching sneering atheist videos on YouTube, arguing with creationists on the internet.

All this was happening around the time the TAM schism Blue Jam mentioned was going on, and I realised that many of the atheists were as cuntish as the religious people they were complaining about. There's definitely a place for engaging critically with religious people who want to push their beliefs into the public sector through education, gay rights, access to abortions, etc., but I think the YOU STUPID BOLLOCKS GO AWAY AND LEARN TO THINK approach of Dawkins is really only going to entrench people in their views. It worked for me at the specific age and specific stage of doubt I was at, but it's not a great way of starting a conversation with someone and finding some common ground.

I'm very glad I never decided to go to TAM London, because the organised atheist scene, like you, leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth.

On the bolded bit, Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World is a great book which makes the case for why people might want to treat their beliefs critically, and he does it without patronising believers and calling them shitbrains.

ETA - Thursday's post came in while I was typing, and my parents are a good example of their post.

[Shit Good Nose]

Christians can really fall all over the map politically, they can feel it's their place to judge anyone with what they perceive to be a "deviant" lifestyle (like uh... being gay) while there's other who believe they should show everyone love and support and no judgement no matter what. Who get involved in helping the local community. People can have such wildly different experiences with Christians.

Oh yeah, absolutely, and the same can be said for atheists of course.  I'm just saying that the local christians here (which actually include two pairs of gay dads [only one pair married though]) have taught me not to assume they're all going to be bible thumping god squaders, just like how all atheists are not paedo supporting Richard Dawkinses.

[Jumblegraws]

Oh yeah, absolutely, and the same can be said for atheists of course.  I'm just saying that the local christians here (which actually include two pairs of gay dads [only one pair married though]) have taught me not to assume they're all going to be bible thumping god squaders, just like how all atheists are not paedo supporting Richard Dawkinses.

In Dawkins's defence, hasn't he always at least paid lip-service to the idea that you shouldn't make assumptions like that?

Religion's weird. One of my sweetest, most caring friends is also my most religious. It's odd to think that she believes I'm going to suffer eternal damnation when I die (not that she would ever say so without me asking directly) and that she's more or less content with this. I'd like to think that the fact that our friendship endures is an example of how nice and fluffy acceptance is, but I sometimes wonder if it's really just a convenient hypocrisy on both our parts.

[Shit Good Nose]

In Dawkins's defence, hasn't he always at least paid lip-service to the idea that you shouldn't make assumptions like that?

Yes he has, but he's not done much of it himself over the last few years.

[touchingcloth]

We probably shouldn't not assume that Dicky definitely isn't not a paedo, but by the opposite token you also shouldn't not be never tempted to not assume that he definitely isn't not a non-nonce.

[Shit Good Nose]

We probably shouldn't not assume that Dicky definitely isn't not a paedo, but by the opposite token you also shouldn't not be never tempted to not assume that he definitely isn't not a non-nonce.

Tl;dr - "hiding in plain sight"?  Not not allegedly, obvs.

[touchingcloth]

On the subject of paedophilia, Richard Dawkins is a non-certain man.

[idunnosomename]

a man? in the clouds? having sex with children? haha! nonsense

[Shit Good Nose]

a man? in the clouds? having sex with children? haha! nonsense

He just does it in the confession booth.

[idunnosomename]

and in nazareth c. 3 AD or BC whenever the fuck He was conceived

[thenoise]

It's odd to think that she believes I'm going to suffer eternal damnation when I die (not that she would ever say so without me asking directly) and that she's more or less content with this.

Are you sure she thinks this? A lot of them dont, you know. And as for the 'ghost man sitting on a cloud' nonsense, it doesnt make you look smart to be deliberately ignorant about the concept of God. I would have thought most educated people know what 'God' is. Hint: you dont have to believe in it...

Hardline atheism is a slippery slope towards popular evolutionary psychology, which is a slippery slope towards thinking it's your God-given right (um... Dawkins appointed right?) to chat up women in lifts at 4am etc.
On the other hand, C of E were more likely to vote Brexit than any other demographic. Maybe all that niceness and community work wears them down? Maybe if they let out all their natural nastiness now and then, like ranting at strangers on the internet or harassing young women in lifts at 4am, they might be a bit more compassionate and sensible politically?

[chveik]

you'd think those supposedly smart scientists would take some of their time to undertand how religion really works. but they prefer manufacturing some kind of conflict with religious types. it's no suprise the skeptics turned out to be so morally bankrupt