A row he wasn’t even in?
Scott Locklin asks the question in “Twilight of the Skeptics” TakiMag (July 12, 2011), thinking of Rebecca Watson – you know, the Skepchick who was morally affronted by someone in an elevator after the bar closed, at a Skeptics convention:
Feminist harridans blasted Dawkins as an evil man-pig. Dawkins tried to fight back, but his rhetorical skills were not up to the task of arguing with fellow atheists. The New Statesman figures Dawkins is kaput unless he repents and begs forgiveness.
Background: O’Leary courted trouble with certain fellow ID sympathizers for defending Richard Dawkins when he blundered to the defense of some unknown drunk. (O’Leary has said in reply that she will dam well cover what she thinks people want to know.)
But hang on, this actually gets good.
Way juicier stuff from Locklin:
Our protagonist in this non-event: a self-declared “Skepchick.” The woman, Rebecca Watson, is also a feminist. She had given a sermon to a group of “skeptics” on their moral failures as sexists who notice she is a girl when she is at skepticism conferences. This sort of behavior apparently “sexualizes” her as a unique individual, makes her uncomfortable, and generally scares away women skeptics everywhere. This is a common sentiment among shy women who participate in nerdy sausage festivals such as the skepticism movement. It’s less common that said women also publish semi-nude photographs of themselves in pin-up calendars dedicated to the same nerdy sausage festival.
Maybe the Skeptics were updating their image to, say, 1993?
Dread of Doom Music:
The Skepchick has called for the head of Richard Dawkins. She dropped the big one, informing him that he is the most loathsome of creatures: the privileged old white man. Being something of a skeptic myself, I find it hard not to notice that young Anglosphere women are easily the most privileged people in the known universe. They’re so privileged that even pie-faced, cabbage-brained ones such Rebecca Watson may be able to ruin a world-famous author’s reputation.
That mustn’t happen. Dawkins is a gift to the ID community. We’ve got paid for writing reams and reams about him and his paltry views.
Inconveniently, Locklin (himself a believable skeptic) ignores Dawkins’ immense value to us, in representing Darwinism as Sunday papers’ toffery (which it is, but we never thought we’d get so much help presenting it that way):
I don’t think much of Dawkins. His ideas on evolution are laughable and mostly popularize those of William Hamilton. He is a decent essayist, and his hatred of religion makes him popular with certain kinds of over-emotional atheists, but otherwise, he’s the type of smug bigot who gives unbelievers a bad name. I find his searing hatred of religious people to be childish and disgusting. The fact that Dawkins is being undermined by fellow hater-atheists is delicately ironic. I suppose the more advanced religions kill their gods after all; atheism’s true believers are no different.
Yes, of course it’s nonsense. That’s the point. And no one at UD is responsible for Dawkins’s forced retirement from public life – if it happens. Maybe we can pull the idiot out of the fire somehow.
Follow UD News at Twitter!