If you were missing the atheist drama, fear not; the hate machine is still on and works like clockwork. As long as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are alive, armies of haters will still be there to twist their words, and keep the smearing campaign going on. (And, just like they are doing with Christopher Hitchens, they will keep on spreading lies about them after they’re gone.)
The thing is… this is about two things: hate and envy. These people think they’re the moral beacon of atheism and skepticism, so they can’t stand the whole concept of the Four Horsemen not taking them into account, or the fact that some people don’t hate Richard Dawkins just because he uses Twitter to tweet opinions — like is intended (was intended — sorry, my mistake).
So what’s new? Friendly Atheist‘s Hemant Mehta did an interview with Center For Inquiry’s new CEO, Robyn Blumner.
Mehta asked about the anti-Richard Dawkins hate, and why Blumner thinks this happens. She answered that, although Dawkins can say some things some people disagree with, the whining bloggers will throw him under the bus any time for click bait.
Here’s the interview (the part relevant for this post starts at the 30:30 mark):
https://soundcloud.com/friendly-atheist-podcast/ep-93-robyn-blumner-ceo-of-the-center-for-inquiry
That claim didn’t sit well with the people it was said about, so what did they do? They rage-blogged about how their rage-blogging wasn’t about click-bait. Roth, Myers, Christina and Benson took offense with what Blumner had to say about them. (I guess Blumner won’t be invited anytime soon to the NECSS echo-chamber. Or maybe they’ll invite her just to have her dis-invited for saying anything. Who knows these days?)
Actually, I do happen to think Blumner is wrong (or was being polite) about this. Hemant also seems to think that way.
None of the people who’re on the bandwagon to smear Richard-Dawkins do it for click bait. They do it out of hate. Plain and simple, visceral, old fashioned hate. They hate him being some kind of poster boy of free-thought (they think it should be them), they hate he’s actually famous and important (instead of having to do “regular jobs”, like Roth said), they hate his intellectual honesty and the fact that he stands for actual free-thought instead of their post-modernist and anti-Enlightenement obscurantism that they want to disguise as free-thought (and actually had a whole blogging network branded that way for that purpose).
They couldn’t give a damn about click-bait (“regular jobs”, remember?); they have an axe to grind — strip away what the atheist and skeptic movement got left of free thought, free inquiry and actual skepticism. And that starts by assassinating Richard Dawkins’ character.
