{"id":1488,"date":"2015-10-06T06:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/?p=1488"},"modified":"2015-10-05T21:29:17","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T02:29:17","slug":"richard-dawkins-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/2015\/10\/richard-dawkins-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"So you didn’t like what Richard Dawkins tweeted?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n

You know there’s a bashing<\/a> Richard<\/a> Dawkins<\/a> trend<\/a> going on<\/a><\/strong> within the atheist blogosphere \u2014 most of it is Horseman Envy<\/a><\/strong>, but even some people who are not jealous have joined<\/a> the Dawkins-bashing frenzy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The guy can’t even tweet a fact<\/em> without having a shitstorm coming his way<\/a>. A common request is the ridiculous and patronizing idea that Dawkins should leave Twitter.<\/p>\n

This I don’t get: why would anyone try to get Dawkins off Twitter? Everyone’s entitled to not like what he says, but to have him run his tweets by a handler or asking him to leave Twitter is just absurd \u2014 he is supposed to change the way he tweets because you<\/em> don’t like how he does it or what he says?<\/p>\n

No one is forced to follow Dawkins, no one is forced to like, fav or RT what he tweets and no one is forced to agree with him. I disagree with all kinds of people all the time on Twitter and I don’t go about asking them to give up their handles or to have them chaperoned<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Hemant Mehta<\/strong> has conveniently summed up<\/a> everything wrong with the have-Dawkins-leave-Twitter crowd:<\/p>\n

For people who don\u2019t follow Dawkins on Twitter, which I do (and have for a long time), here\u2019s how he tends to operate: He\u2019ll ask questions he doesn\u2019t know the answers to. He assumes people won\u2019t take him out of context. He thinks they\u2019ll try to educate him if he\u2019s wrong (and not simply get offended by what he says). He retweets just about anyone who praises him. He doesn\u2019t always bother looking things up for himself, hoping someone on Twitter will just point him in the right direction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what’s wrong with asking questions you don’t know the answers to? Is Dawkins supposed to be a dick and start only asking questions he knows the answers to?<\/p>\n

And what’s so wrong about assuming people won’t take him out of context? The wrongdoing is taking someone out of context, not being on the receiving end of such a behavior.<\/p>\n

And he retweets anyone who praises him, so what? That’s his prerogative \u2014 it’s his<\/em> Twitter after all.<\/p>\n

If you don’t like what Richard Dawkins tweets, or what he thinks, or how he sums up long thoughts in 140 characters, or you are too dumb to figure out the obvious<\/a><\/strong>, block him or unfollow him<\/strong>; but tone-policing him and trying to shut him up or have his Twitter closed or PC-approved amounts to censorship and that’s more of a bullies’ thing<\/a><\/strong> than a self respecting skeptic’s.<\/p>\n

By the way, if you liked this post, I invite you to follow me<\/a> and Richard Dawkins<\/a> on Twitter.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The guy can\u2019t even tweet a *fact* without having a shitstorm coming his way. A common request is the ridiculous and patronizing idea that Dawkins should leave Twitter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":1489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,196,9],"tags":[34,45,58,316],"class_list":["post-1488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atheism","category-philosophy","category-secularism","tag-censorship","tag-free-speech","tag-richard-dawkins","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}