Slightly back down now, given his now implying all criticism of him is just as bad as rape threats, and totes just like being killed or imprisoned or having your free speech rights suppressed by the state.

Dawkins is practically a parody of himself at this point.

Thank you. I have added that to clarify. I had meant “the whole scoop” link to inform people of that. But I can see some might not follow it.

Yeah, but that’s actually just more of the usual (Alex Gabriel nails this point, amusingly). So that doesn’t move my opinion marker. That he does those boneheaded things is already a factor in my estimation of him.

What’s more alarming is his now implying all criticism of him is a Witch Hunt and Thought Policing and just as bad (!) as threatening people with rape.

Facepalm.

Sure. But now people can’t honestly claim that criticizing Dawkins’s dumb tweets (or his irrational blacklisting of Watson) is “the same thing” as the harassment and abuse and belittling garbage he just denounced. Because basically Dawkins just said so.

Criticism is fine. But that shit isn’t legitimate criticism. It’s bullying and childishness. The bullies and children had until now been claiming Dawkins was on their side. Now they can no longer claim that. He’s very definitely against them.

(On this matter.)

Right.

(I have left this thread up in case anyone else was confused and didn’t get that far on their own.)

Oh no, that was deliberate. My link to Gabriel wasn’t about the Dawkins statement (I linked to Christina for that); it’s about the context of the behaviors the statement addresses.

(Yes, amazingly, there are still people who don’t know that. Like Dawkins himself, apparently. Until recently.)