Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

Lawrence Krauss seems almost dumber than Dawkins

Like, his pushing of rationalism as a lifestyle leads to him saying all kinds of awful stuff but would that be redeemed if he was also capable of coming up with practical, helpful contributions?

selfish gene is an excellent book btw

He did write it 40 years ago though. But, yes, at least he wrote that.

oh sure, i just brought it up because there was an invitation to defend him

i met him a couple of times as an undergrad. he seemed already v febrile, but without twitter he was less strident.

@RichardDawkins Jul 17
A pleasure to be invited to @JulianAssange_'s birthday party in the Ecuadorian Embassy where he is confined.

Bet that party's going to be a fucking barrel of laughs.

My favourite Dawkins-on-Twitter exchange:

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/553558509770801154

this one is pretty great too https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/489474739942207490

when will he address this crucial question?

An appetite for subtitles.

how in the heck is he so easily trolled

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/625958161678209024

"I don't even get the joke"

Not something to be proud of dude.

the joke is hilarious i lol'd

are you there gord? it's me, richard

do you have any plans? because i'm open

https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/645635366607687680

Apparently it's very important that Ahmed not be given too much praise for his clock.

Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher & .... Sarah Palin.
The Mod Squad

Hey I don't read Salon much anymore, but this article is very good. Plenty of whackjobs in the comments too, for the broken record.

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/21/the_despicable_backlash_against_ahmed_mohamed_its_nothing_new_for_white_america_to_see_the_gifted_other_as_its_greatest_threat/

For some reason he just can't seem to leave it alone:

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/669098728662409216

"some reason" = loves attention, is quite racist

imo the people who pride themselves on "logic" and "correctness" as opposed to subjective claims are really into obsessing over a select few issues. almost seems like he has some emotional stake here.

some reason = 15 million dollar claim widely publicized yesterday, not that hard to figure out

he doesn't need to opine on it, though. for some reason, he thinks he really needs to.

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 1h1 hour ago
@CraiggyPops It was a clock but he didn't make it. He took it out of its case and pretended he had made it.

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 1h1 hour ago
@Sean_PFerris @CraiggyPops If it was re-assembly you'd be right. It wasn't he took it out of its case and did nothing else to it at all.

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 5h5 hours ago
@BanTigerTemple It was a clock but he didn't make it. He took it out of its case and put it in a box. With what motive?

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 5h5 hours ago
@Apocalypse_End He made nothing at all. He took a clock out of its case and pretended he'd made something

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 6h6 hours ago
@Mukhtarishaq2 He didn't make anything. He opened a clock, took out the innards and put them in a box so they looked like a bomb

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 1h1 hour ago
@CraiggyPops It was a clock but he didn't make it. He took it out of its case and pretended he had made it.

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 1h1 hour ago
@Sean_PFerris @CraiggyPops If it was re-assembly you'd be right. It wasn't he took it out of its case and did nothing else to it at all.

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 30m30 minutes ago
@lyonsnyc No. He took a clock out of its case and put it in a box. He didn't enhance it in any way. What motive could he possibly have had?

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 4m4 minutes ago
@bbeennyyJ @lyonsnyc You mean you still haven't heard the news? He did NOT tinker, he took a clock out of its case and put it in a box.

i think dawkins is genuinely suffering from dementia

With what motive?

Ah, a couple repeats in there.

Finally a courageous voice to stand up to a 15 year old who built a clock

RAAAAAAACIST!!!!

He didn't build a clock. He took it out of its case and pretended he had made it. (xp)

Dental plan
Lisa needs braces

mh otm, people who wear their hard-on for logic on their sleeves are the worst, completely impossible to have a discussion predicated on the idea that they're having an emotion.

It's reasonable to assume that Dawkins' knowledge of electrical engineering is exactly zero, and the fact that it might involve some skill* to rehome a clock in a pencil box must be resisted at all cost as it takes the discussion out of the (quite large) space where he feels free to pontificate.

* not necessarily a lot! It was a school science project not an application to NASA.

i do think the whole clock thing is weird and not what it seems, but who cares? dawkins, apparently. he cares a lot.

lol @ Bagels

Xpost Yea. If it's this obvious it's a repurposed clock...then it's p obv not a bomb.

Also ain't like the fucking kid filed the lawsuit.

how'd it get built? how'd it get built? how'd it get built???

Lol

I think he just has too much free time. Needs a new hobby.

Hear there's a lobby for some hobbies

the reporting about the kid "inventing" or w/e else is crappy journalism, the actual story is about a kid who is curious about electronics who was shuffled into the police for no justifiable reason

fixating on whether the kid is actually skilled is a red herring. dawkins seems to want to imply the kid isn't actually that smart, or that the kid's family sent him to school with an electronic device to see what would happen. even if the latter is true, the system's reaction was still completely wrong and dawkins has big old blinders on for not realizing it's the sort of profiling he'd be up in arms about if the kid was an atheist or even just white.

hope everyone has made all the blind watchmaker gags

but who watches the clock kid?

I wonder if he showed this level of tenacity and obsession with uncovering the truth when he was at alleged rapist Julian Assange's birthday party?

did he actually try to uncover anything or just tweet the same hypothetical question constantly

Dawkins isn't the only one saying all this stuff though. Seems like most of the internet turned on this kid and the family. The most reasonable criticisms are the ones that at least feel like the 15m is disproportionate if nothing else. There is something really odd about Dawkins being so overly invested in this story. At this point he is probably kind of desperate to PROVE he was "RIGHT" from the beginning?

he seems kind of monomaniacal and semi-coherent in a way that, truly, signals some kind of dementia to me

But isn't that how the majority of people in his age range sound by default when using Twitter?

even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day

have any of you read his god delusion book? I sure haven't, and have no real motivation to do so after his complete asshattery and inherent lack of understanding of cross-sectional anything his public persona communicates