The First Evangelical Church of the Atheistic Promulgation of Richard Dawkins is having its first schism. Awwww. Isn’t that so cute. And guess what, poor widdle Dawkins doesn’t like to be called names. Poor thing. The Times Online reports:
Richard Dawkins is accustomed to provoking the wrath of religious communities, but now a schism seems to have opened up within the atheist community who make up his fan-base.
The split occurred after he announced that a discussion section on his website, considered one of the busiest online atheist forums, would in future be tightly moderated and “irrelevant postings and frivolous gossip” would no longer be allowed.
The change was scheduled for next month but such was the torrent of abuse after the announcement that the forum had to be locked down, deepening the rift between Professor Dawkins and his 85,000 online fans.
Writing on RichardDawkins.net yesterday, in a posting entitled “Outrage”, he said that there was “something rotten” in internet culture and pledged to rid his website of its abusive element.
“Imagine seeing your face described by an anonymous poster, as ‘a slack-jawed turd-in-the-mouth mug’,” he wrote. “Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, overreacting so spectacularly to something so trivial.
“Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical.”
Awww. Poor Dawkins. Some big bad bully atheist calling sweety-kins a mean name. Don’t listen to them Richie. Hey, you know what it’s kinda’ like though. It’s like when Dawkins hysterically called the Pope a stupid murderer. Remember Dawkins said:
“The Pope is either stupid, ignorant or dim. If people take his words seriously he will be responsible for the deaths of thousands, perhaps millions of people.”
Kind of ironic that Dawkins doesn’t like to be called names, huh?
The best part is that Dawkins’ followers are shocked…shocked I tell you…to discover that Dawkins sometimes paints with a bit of a broad brush. Because the atheist forum has been closed, his minions and even some website moderators have taken to other forums to denounce Dawkins’ tactics.
“A lot of people have lost respect for Dawkins after this, although I do still support the work that he does,” said Peter Harrison, a former moderator.
“Thousands of loyal, intelligent, rational forum members have been misrepresented as a bunch of foul-mouthed, vitriolic thugs by the man who so inspired them.”
Another former fan said: “It may sound ridiculous to those not involved with online communities, but I feel hurt and displaced. It was like coming home to find the locks have been changed. My respect for Richard’s work is still intact but my respect for him as a person is in tatters.”
So from now on, all those freethinkers shouldn’t be so free anymore, I guess. He said, “The forum is going to be more tightly controlled and will be under more central control. So it won’t be available for anyone who wants to sound off freely.”
Who is Dawkins to silence atheists? Who is he to put limits on people who voluntarily join his club? Next he’ll be telling them they have to be celibate or something.
So, in short, an atheist is complaining there’s no uniform standard of decency. Hey, chin up Richie and remember:
Sticks and stones may break your bones
But nothing really matters anyway.
February 27, 2010 at 4:34 pm
I can't imagine an atheist saying anything without evidence…. I AM SHOCKED that a 'bright' would sink so low as to put forth unsubstantiated insults!
February 27, 2010 at 4:42 pm
“The forum is going to be more tightly controlled and will be under more central control. So it won’t be available for anyone who wants to sound off freely."
Sounds like this generation of 'brights' has re-discovered Marx, Lenin and Trotsky
February 27, 2010 at 5:09 pm
"So, in short, an atheist is complaining there's no uniform standard of decency."
That's what I was thinking throughout. Who is Dawkins to impose his standard of morality on his minions? They're obviously just expressing some evolved tendency to be obnoxious and since that's the surviving characteristic, who is he to complain?
February 27, 2010 at 5:20 pm
This episode illustrates Dr. Dawkins' leftover Christian bias.
Just goes to show that leaving Christianity behind, at least the basic "be nice to others as they should be nice to you", has its consequences.
gbm3
February 27, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Of course they have schismed….despite all hysterical arguments to the contrary they ARE a religion and more so, they are both rabidly evangelical and rabidly fundamentalistic. Like most fundamentalisms, they were poised to shattered apart at the first sign of disagreement.
February 27, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Gotta love the first line. Yes, Christians are so prone to wrath, aren't they? I suspect that the small minority of Christians who actually pay any attention to Dawkins at all are more likely to pray for him than experience or expresss "wrath."
Now there IS another religion that is big on wrath…which one is it again?
Wait wait, it'll come to me…
February 27, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Certain constellations of atoms react badly to what other constellations of atoms are doing? The universe doens't care. Cthulhu will devour you all! Oh wait…
February 27, 2010 at 11:20 pm
On a slippery slope here, is Dawkins. Establishing standards, no less! Seems that goodness is in order with Dawkins these days.
Next he'll insist on Truth and, who knows: perhaps then on to Beauty?
Wence goodness old chum?!
February 28, 2010 at 12:16 am
If you haven't done so, you should go to richarddawkins.net and read all of Poor Richard's lament about how mean people have been. He lists quite a few more insults that have been posted about him and seems totally shocked that people would be so cruel to him, a "well-liked and respected person" (cough).
I guess he's not aware that this sort of abuse is constantly heaped on Christians, and particularly on Catholics, in a great many online forums and that the abuse comes from his co-atheists. I'm certainly not surprised that they eat their own as well.
I'd like to tell Dawkins what we're always told by militant atheists when we call for civility all around: grow a thicker skin.
February 28, 2010 at 8:50 am
Jehovah Dawkins has just issued HIS first and only commandment – I rule. Or did he just elect himself pope? Does anyone care to point out the irony, and hypocris? After we stop laughing our heads off, of course! ROTFL
March 1, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Oh, that's just too funny.
March 1, 2010 at 5:37 pm
I'm reminded of a passage from Tolkien's The Return of the King:
The big Orc, spear in had, leapt after [the tracker Orc]. But the tracker, springing behind a stone, put an arrow in his eye as he ran up, and he fell with a crash. The other ran off across the valley and he disappeared.
For a While the hobbits sat in silence. At length Sam stirred. "Well, I call this neat as neat," he said. "If this nice friendliness would spread about in Mordor, half our trouble would be over."
"Quietly Sam," Frodo whispered. "There may be others about. We have evidently had a very narrow escape, and the hunt was hotter on our tracks than we guessed. But that is the spirit of Mordor, Sam; and it has spread to every corner of it. Orcs have always behaved like that, or so tales say, when they are on their own. But you can't get much hope out of it; they hate us far more, altogether and all the time. If those two had seen us, they would have dropped all their quarrel until we were dead."