Remember that very promising Global Atheist Conference to be held in Melbourne in February? Sadly, I just got word that the event has been canceled. I hope you didn’t reserve your flight already!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Act of God? Anything for your travel insurance to wriggle out of a ticket refund.
Great. All the shitheads will be dancing in glee, sure that they caused this to happen.
Well, darn, I had never heard Dawkins speak in an Australian context before, and I was so looking forward to the videos of him explaining that since the aboriginal cultures there believed in the supernatural, it was perfectly acceptable to wipe them out and no that’s not racism it’s a total coincidence that I’m advocating destroying yet another group with brown skins go away I’m a thought leader.
@ 3 The Vicar
Oh, fuck off. Dawkins has never said anything remotely resembling this. You’re as bad as Mick Nugent painting lurid portraits of PZ as some violent psycho.
Criticize what people actually say by all means, but this “satirical paraphrasing” is fucking bullshit. Go fuck yourself.
Silentbob – nicely put
@#4, Silentbob
In a sense you’re right. He only gets defensive after the fact (and often relies on proxies to defend him), and he usually merely implies that it’s okay to wipe out brown-skinned people, helping to give cover to those who want to do so, by suggesting that there’s something worse about their religious beliefs than about those held by white people. To be more accurate, I would have had to have him seriously criticize the aboriginal cultures, characterize them as self-destructive and unsustainable, and then have him go on to have a widely-publicized lunch with some key figures in Turnbull’s government, and then a few days later he would start getting defensive when people pointed out that he was once again punching down along lines which, surprise surprise, happen to match skin color. So, yeah, okay, the comment wrong — usually, with Dawkins, the possibly-unconscious and super-entitled racism using atheism as cover is separate from the possibly-unconscious and super-entitled defensiveness and unwillingness to admit even the slightest wrongdoing, and he leaves the justification of genocide as an exercise for the reader.
Fuck of indeed. When did Dawkins advocate wiping out the brown people? I’m pretty sure he was/is opposed to the Iraq was as well as the other militarized adventures of US and other countries.
Damn it. I would have blamed autocorrect for spelling errors of “of” instead of “off” and “was” instead of “war” but I typed it in the computer.
The Vicar clearly thinks it’s edgy and transgressive to baselessly libel an icon of science and atheism.
thecalmone@9,
It’s entirely irrelevant whether Dawkins is “an icon of science and atheism”. Attributing repellent views to anyone who (whatever their other faults) has not expressed them, and which are not reasonably extrapolated from what they have said (as in this case) is itself repellent – and exactly what I would expect of the Rev. Mr. Self-Righteous.
Dawkins has plenty of repellent views, and he has made racist comments before. KG is correct, no matter his faults in other ways, saying he condones genocide or the like is just wrong. Just as I won’t say that Ken Ham is a pedophile, since I have never seen any evidence of it, even though I wish he would just fuck off, go home to Australia, and never speak in public again.