Skepchick Warring with Dawkins Again

[Cormac]

Expect some incoming. In order to expose Dawkins as being Mysogynist General, Svan has been witnessing about his alleged dalliances with other women. LP's thread on Dawkins here is being linked to this nonsense.

It might come to nothing, since most of these people exist to whine rather than actually do anything, but I thought it worth alerting you.

So... I think Rebecca Watson is a poisonous attention whore who has not enlightened us to misogynist attitudes towards women, but has created a resentment towards a self publicising idiot who plays the victim so her credulous followers can create a phantom menace. She has harmed the A/S movement more than organised religion. Hatred of Rebecca Watson is not hatred of Women, nor is it anti-feminist. She would sell feminists down the river for 5 minutes on The Daily Show. she is neither a skeptic nor a chick. She is a grown woman who manufactures controversy out of nothing for pity points and cash.

She is more problematic than sexism in the A/S community.

[Cormac]

Pretty much, CES. I remember coming home during my freshman year and lecturing my father about the evils of middle-class money. The same middle-class money that was supporting me, BTW. He just laughed and told me I'd grow up eventually, which really pissed me off. Who was he, anyway? When it became painfully obvious that all I was doing at uni was drinking beer and chasing women he cut off the moola. Oh my, what a surprised and sorry little Maoist hippie I was. Suddenly I had to go out and EARN that money, and fuck me, I had to do all sorts of crap I didn't want to do in order to earn it. Changed my fucking tune in a heartbeat, I can tell you.

I keep hoping that eventually the Apelusters, Skepchicks and PZombies will grow up, but I'm far from sanguine about the possibility.

They'll not learn, because they have an unending supply of attention from the acolytes of idiocy.

[Cormac]

There is nothing "irrational" about Dawkins not wanting to share a podium with someone who has been a dick to him, or someone he believes to be beneath him.

Maybe. But it seems a bit petty and vindictive if you ask me. He could have just ignored her.

Or offered her coffee.

He'd have promoted her, and damaged his own reputation.

He was dead right.

(Or else he could have offered her another glass of wine).

[Cormac]

Fair enough.

These folks just irk me, though. They're like born again Christians, only not religious. They have come to Jesus, metaphorically, in terms of the beliefs they've adopted over the last couple of years, and now that they have seen the light they attack anyone who hasn't done likewise. They're like the 18 year old who goes off to college, becomes a vegetarian, and returns home at Thanksgiving to lecture his parents on the evils of eating turkeys, unable to fathom how his parents can be so stupid and evil as to think and act as they do (and he did, up until 2 months earlier).

Has nothing to do with the ethical issues around eating meat. Those same kids are the ones who, a generation or so earlier, might have lectured their parents about being racists, or before that, about denying women the right to vote.

I'm not saying kids are never spoiled and self righteous, nor am I denying the zeal that the discovery of new ideas brings, but that stuff has no bearing aver the rights and wrongs of the issues.

Dawkins shut down his forum and a bunch of spoiled brats went and bitched and moaned about the injustice of it all....

Not a comparable issue. The RDF issue was a case where people had invested a great deal of time and emotion, and were a legitimate counterparty to a dispute.

Watson has no such common ground with Dawkins.

[Robert_S]

For a number of reasons - not all of which I want to go into here - I am not all that surprised at this.

But on another level, I would not be too hard on RD. Anyone in the public eye as much as he is, with such a busy public schedule, is going to get a bit ratty from time to time.

Watson and her brigades have spent the last few years taking every opportunity to attack and smear Dawkins - and he is supposed to ignore that?

Fuck Watson. She is a despicable arsehole. I'd have done precisely the same thing as Dawkins. There's absolutely no way that I'd share stage with a venomous toad like Watson after what had happened, so I'd have withdrawn if they'd gone ahead with her. Their choice.

This was before most of that. It was right after Elevatorgate.

[Cormac]

For a number of reasons - not all of which I want to go into here - I am not all that surprised at this.

But on another level, I would not be too hard on RD. Anyone in the public eye as much as he is, with such a busy public schedule, is going to get a bit ratty from time to time.

Watson and her brigades have spent the last few years taking every opportunity to attack and smear Dawkins - and he is supposed to ignore that?

Fuck Watson. She is a despicable arsehole. I'd have done precisely the same thing as Dawkins. There's absolutely no way that I'd share stage with a venomous toad like Watson after what had happened, so I'd have withdrawn if they'd gone ahead with her. Their choice.

This was before most of that. It was right after Elevatorgate.

Elevatorgate was enough on its own.

[Robert_S]

For a number of reasons - not all of which I want to go into here - I am not all that surprised at this.

But on another level, I would not be too hard on RD. Anyone in the public eye as much as he is, with such a busy public schedule, is going to get a bit ratty from time to time.

Watson and her brigades have spent the last few years taking every opportunity to attack and smear Dawkins - and he is supposed to ignore that?

Fuck Watson. She is a despicable arsehole. I'd have done precisely the same thing as Dawkins. There's absolutely no way that I'd share stage with a venomous toad like Watson after what had happened, so I'd have withdrawn if they'd gone ahead with her. Their choice.

This was before most of that. It was right after Elevatorgate.

Elevatorgate was enough on its own.

At the time, I would have had mire sympathy.

I don't know nor care right now. She and PZ want to be the new big lizards but, as I've said before, something going wrong with the climate.

As atheism becomes more popular, the less of a monolithic movement it can be: Cats don't herd easily. As more people can find like minded others locally, the internet will be less of a necessity. As it becomes more mainstream, it will lose value as an in-group: No matter how popular Beiber gets and stays, his fan base will never be a family like the Grateful Dead's, or ICP's for that matter.

But even before that happens, we have the matter of the unknown folks, maybe just doing their last year in college who have intelligence, wit and charisma to spare and can draw a bigger crowd than any of our current crop.

[Cormac]

For a number of reasons - not all of which I want to go into here - I am not all that surprised at this.

But on another level, I would not be too hard on RD. Anyone in the public eye as much as he is, with such a busy public schedule, is going to get a bit ratty from time to time.

Watson and her brigades have spent the last few years taking every opportunity to attack and smear Dawkins - and he is supposed to ignore that?

Fuck Watson. She is a despicable arsehole. I'd have done precisely the same thing as Dawkins. There's absolutely no way that I'd share stage with a venomous toad like Watson after what had happened, so I'd have withdrawn if they'd gone ahead with her. Their choice.

This was before most of that. It was right after Elevatorgate.

Elevatorgate was enough on its own.

At the time, I would have had mire sympathy.

I don't know nor care right now. She and PZ want to be the new big lizards but, as I've said before, something going wrong with the climate.

As atheism becomes more popular, the less of a monolithic movement it can be: Cats don't herd easily. As more people can find like minded others locally, the internet will be less of a necessity. As it becomes more mainstream, it will lose value as an in-group: No matter how popular Beiber gets and stays, his fan base will never be a family like the Grateful Dead's, or ICP's for that matter.

But even before that happens, we have the matter of the unknown folks, maybe just doing their last year in college who have intelligence, wit and charisma to spare and can draw a bigger crowd than any of our current crop.

Yep.

Hold on. This is the second time I've reached a harmonious conclusion to a discussion this morning. Wait a minute! It is the Rapture!!!!11!!!!!

[JimC]

No, it's the rupture...

[Cormac]

No, it's the rupture...

I thought I'd felt something give way...

[Robert_S]

Rupture the Rapture!!!

Edit: Rupture the Rapture was a game that worked on old Macs. You had a fixed railgun attached to the roof of a VW bug and you had to shoot down ascending Christians, and catch them to use as fuel. Occasionally you had to dodge the hand of Jehoveh which would shoot lightening from its fingertip.

It went crazy on fast Powemacs.

[Cormac]

Rupture the Rapture!!!

Edit: Rupture the Rapture was a game that worked on old Macs. You had a fixed railgun attached to the roof of a VW bug and you had to shoot down ascending Christians, and catch them to use as fuel. Occasionally you had to dodge the hand of Jehoveh which would shoot lightening from its fingertip.

It went crazy on fast Powemacs.

Something actually cool associated with Apple.

[Robert_S]

Rupture the Rapture!!!

Edit: Rupture the Rapture was a game that worked on old Macs. You had a fixed railgun attached to the roof of a VW bug and you had to shoot down ascending Christians, and catch them to use as fuel. Occasionally you had to dodge the hand of Jehoveh which would shoot lightening from its fingertip.

It went crazy on fast Powemacs.

Something actually cool associated with Apple.

If someone still has an OLD old mac around: I'm talkin' pre iMac antique old: http://www.subgenius.com/bobapps/Rapture.folder.sit.hqx

[Audley Strange]

As atheism becomes more popular, the less of a monolithic movement it can be: Cats don't herd easily. As more people can find like minded others locally, the internet will be less of a necessity. As it becomes more mainstream, it will lose value as an in-group: No matter how popular Beiber gets and stays, his fan base will never be a family like the Grateful Dead's, or ICP's for that matter.

But even before that happens, we have the matter of the unknown folks, maybe just doing their last year in college who have intelligence, wit and charisma to spare and can draw a bigger crowd than any of our current crop.

People who are atheists love that line don't they? "Cats don't heard easily". Then they go on and herd and start claiming there is an "atheism" and start meeting up in little clubhouses and make rules, define the "other" and slowly try and develop a political and moral framework for their flock of True Atheism. Almost like they needed a religion or something.

[Robert_S]

As atheism becomes more popular, the less of a monolithic movement it can be: Cats don't herd easily. As more people can find like minded others locally, the internet will be less of a necessity. As it becomes more mainstream, it will lose value as an in-group: No matter how popular Beiber gets and stays, his fan base will never be a family like the Grateful Dead's, or ICP's for that matter.

But even before that happens, we have the matter of the unknown folks, maybe just doing their last year in college who have intelligence, wit and charisma to spare and can draw a bigger crowd than any of our current crop.

People who are atheists love that line don't they? "Cats don't heard easily". Then they go on and herd and start claiming there is an "atheism" and start meeting up in little clubhouses and make rules, define the "other" and slowly try and develop a political and moral framework for their flock of True Atheism. Almost like they needed a religion or something.

Yes, we seem to try to heard ourselves and each other. But we end up in smaller and smaller packs. So, we're either like cats, or we're too dumb to be fully functioning sheeple.