Atheism, skepticism, Rebecca Watson, Richard Dawkins

"If you get on an elevator with Dawkins and you refuse to have sex with him, his first thoughts are about slicing up genitals." 

---Stephen Colbert's Wikiality, the Turthiness encyclopedia

http://wikiality.wikia.com/Richard_Dawkins

One day many years ago, I was driving out to the coast. I got behind a line of Citroens, mostly 2CVs and Traction Avants. It was the local Citroen Club out for a drive.

I told a guy about it. As a joke, I suggested he start his own club for Chevy Corsica owners. (Not much of a joke, I know.) He said he didn't want to hang around with fellow Corsica owners.

Perhaps it was ironic that owning a car like a Citroen that nobody else has would be an opportunity for social interaction while having a Corsica, owned by millions, a favorite fleet and rental car, would leave you socially isolated.

Or maybe that's the way it should be.

Look at the atheists and skeptics. They don't believe in mind reading, ghosts or religion, which, by itself, doesn't seem like much basis for the community they've managed to form.

Now vast numbers of them have launched attacks on one of their own, Rebecca Watson, for daring to advise against hitting on women in elevators. Even Richard Dawkins joined in the attacks.

First Dawkins wrote some sarcastic crap, which was stupid. Sarcasm is a tool of teenagers arguing with their parents, not intellectuals making thoughtful public statements. Then he defended his statement by saying that the guy hit on Watson using words, and she turned him down using words. What's so terrible about people using words? Unless it's Rebecca Watson using words to explain that she doesn't like being hit on in elevators.

Apparently for a large number of atheist and skeptic men, rape threats are the preferred mode of discourse.

Even when they don't disagree with women they make rape threats. Not just against women but against young girls. Watson wrote about a 15-year-old girl who posted a picture of herself holding her birthday present, a copy of a book by Carl Sagan, on an atheist bulletin board. The girl was instantly subject to a barrage of obscene and perverse messages. They clearly understood that this was a 15-year-old. One said, I don't call it kidnapping, I call it instant adoption. Another quipped that blood was a sexual lubricant.

This movement, if you can call it a movement, is full of scum. Next time Christians want to debate atheists, they can just read messages from atheist bulletin boards. If they debate Dawkins, he'll probably defend it. "Those are words!"

It could be that simply not believing in mind-reading or astrology is scant basis for social interaction. The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal was able to narrow their focus---they don't believe in it and they want scientific investigation.

But if you have too big a tent, you're going to get a lot human garbage in there.