{"id":27130,"date":"2014-07-31T09:14:16","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T14:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27130"},"modified":"2014-07-31T09:14:16","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T14:14:16","slug":"ostracizing-richard-dawkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/31\/ostracizing-richard-dawkins\/","title":{"rendered":"Ostracizing Richard Dawkins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.spectator.co.uk\/coffeehouse\/2014\/07\/now-that-richard-dawkins-is-attacking-muslims-and-feminists-the-atheist-left-suddenly-discover-hes-a-bigot\/\" target=\"_blank\">Damian Thompson<\/a> points out that the &#8220;offensive&#8221; things that are getting people upset at Richard Dawkins are exactly the same sort of things they applauded when he was attacking Christianity:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u2018Richard Dawkins, what on earth happened to you?\u2019 asks Eleanor Robertson in the <em>Guardian<\/em> today. Ms Robertson is a \u2018feminist and writer living in Sydney\u2019. She follows to the letter the <em>Guardian<\/em>\u2019s revised style guide for writing about Prof Dawkins: wring your hands until your fingers are raw, while muttering \u2018Oh, what a noble mind is here o\u2019erthrown\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>For some time now Dawkins has been saying rude things about Muslims and feminists. This makes him a bigot in the eyes of the Left \u2014 and especially the <em>Guardian<\/em>, which is extraordinarily and mysteriously protective of Islam. As Robertson puts it:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>\u2018Sure, he wrote some pop science books back in the day, but why do we keep having him on TV and in the newspapers? If it\u2019s a biologist you\u2019re after, or a science communicator, why not pick from the hundreds out there who don\u2019t tweet five or six Islamophobic sentiments before getting off the toilet in the morning?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Note how <em>The Selfish Gene<\/em> and <em>The Blind Watchmaker<\/em> \u2014 masterpieces of lucid thinking that advanced humanity\u2019s understanding of evolution \u2014 have become mere \u2018pop science\u2019 now that their author is upsetting the wrong people.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to deny that Dawkins\u2019s \u2018secular fundamentalism\u2019 \u2014 as liberal commentators now describe it \u2014 makes for an embarrassing spectacle. When enraged pensioners pick fights with total strangers, one\u2019s natural reaction is to go and sit somewhere else on the bus.<\/p>\n<p>But Dawkins was just as offensive when his target was Christianity; it\u2019s just that the Left didn\u2019t have a problem with his description of Pope Benedict XVI as a \u2018leering old villain in the frock\u2019 who ran \u2018a profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution \u2026 amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>As I said at the time, that article \u2014 in the <em>Washington Post<\/em>, no less \u2014 \u2018conjures up the image of a nasty old man who\u2019s losing his marbles. It\u2019s not very nice about the Pope, either.\u2019 But Dawkins has not become any crazier in the intervening four years; he\u2019s simply widened his attack on blind faith, as he sees it, to include Muslims and feminists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Damian Thompson points out that the &#8220;offensive&#8221; things that are getting people upset at Richard Dawkins are exactly the same sort of things they applauded when he was attacking Christianity: \u2018Richard Dawkins, what on earth happened to you?\u2019 asks Eleanor Robertson in the Guardian today. Ms Robertson is a \u2018feminist and writer living in Sydney\u2019. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28,11,16],"tags":[447,360,130,47,238],"class_list":["post-27130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media","category-religion","category-science","tag-atheism","tag-christianity","tag-evolution","tag-islam","tag-offensensitivity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-73A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27131,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27130\/revisions\/27131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}