Atheism’s sexual misconduct problem

[Anonymous]

This thread seems to have wound up the atheists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread seems to have wound up the atheists.

Yes we get wound up by nonsense. Especially offensive nonsense. Mea Culpa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe some of the people who’ve bought or read his book can chime in on what it’s like to follow him.

Has it affected your opinion of pedophilia?

I have read hs book, but don't "follow" him or anyone else. Atheists don't follow anyone -- that's a religious thing -- to be a follower of Jesus or Mohammed or the Buddha

I don't remember anything about pedophilia in his book - I remember that he was very outspoken about religion, as was Sam Harris before him and many others after that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe some of the people who’ve bought or read his book can chime in on what it’s like to follow him.

Has it affected your opinion of pedophilia?

This is groundbreaking and proves your point about atheisms sexual misconduct problem. Incredible work. Simply incredible. You are truly playing 4d chess. You quoted something for someone who doesn’t control anyone, and they said a things and now all atheists are pedophiles and you win the thread.

I was referring to people who’ve bought/read his book - his followers.

On DCUM his followers are all believers from what people have posted.

Nice. You keep trying to find ridiculous ways to claim that none of Dawkins’ 3.3 million readers is influenced by what he writes. Because…there are no atheist readers on DCUM…or, mumble, mumble…something.

(trigger warning)

I find it hard to imagine that somebody would rape a child based on what Dawkins said. According to an article from the Atlantic:

Referring to his early days at a boarding school in Salisbury, he recalled how one of the (unnamed) masters “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts.”

“I am very conscious that you can’t condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours. Just as we don’t look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today,” he said.

He said the most notorious cases of pedophilia involve rape and even murder and should not be bracketed with what he called “just mild touching up.”


It's completely sickening and innacurate but influential? To the extent that somebody would rape a child? I dunno I find that hard to believe.

Dawkins gives permission to people who were already thinking about molesting a child.

How do you figure? Do you have an example of people who take him as the moral authority on pedophilia the same way people take religious leaders as the moral authority on pedophilia?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread seems to have wound up the atheists.

I mean, personally, I'm amused more than anything at this whole thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe some of the people who’ve bought or read his book can chime in on what it’s like to follow him.

Has it affected your opinion of pedophilia?

This is groundbreaking and proves your point about atheisms sexual misconduct problem. Incredible work. Simply incredible. You are truly playing 4d chess. You quoted something for someone who doesn’t control anyone, and they said a things and now all atheists are pedophiles and you win the thread.

You keep avoiding the problem. Your careful wording or “doesn’t control anything” is obviously designed to sidestep the fact that he has at least 3.3 million readers and more listeners.

And you STILL haven’t condemned the quote. Disgusting.

Are all 1.3 million listeners aware that he said something pedophilia adjacent supporting? Does that one quote make him a legitimate pedophile. I mean has he been arrested for pedophilia? You really are on shaky ground with any of your assertions, so I’m just responding to you because it’s funny to converse with the poorly reasoned. It’s so exhilarating. Your so convinced you’ve proven anything, when really there has been no crime committed, no kids molested (like the ones with you church folks) and basically you don’t have anything profound to write about. It’s fluff. It’s air. And my man I am here to banter with you, no matter how serious you get. It’s like playing fetch with a tenacious little chihuahua.

Stop these lame derailing attempts already. Who the hell cares of Dawkins himself diddles little boys. Well, that would be bad, but it’s not the point. You keep trying to avoid the point.

Dawkins has a huge audience and he’s said repeatedly (Google interviews) that pedophilia is OK. You trying various ways to pretend he has no influence is pathetic.

Influence on who? The people who buy his books? Including some believers on this thread?

Why don’t they take responsibility for following him?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread seems to have wound up the atheists.

Because we don’t like lying trolls like OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread seems to have wound up the atheists.

Because we don’t like lying trolls like OP.

It’s funny they think you have they moral high ground over atheists. You don’t see atheists oppressing gay people, banning reproductive rights, denying medical care to gay and trans people out of “conscience” and basically fking up the world through endless acts in the name of religion. So not only do atheists not follow a perverted set of leaders like organized religion they basically would love for you all to grow the fk up and stop basing your reality on a bunch of dangerous fairytales. The end! Oh yea. Best.

[Anonymous]

Atheism's shocking woman problem: What's behind the misogyny of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris?
As a movement, New Atheism seems like it would be so compatible with feminism — and yet that hasn't been the case

But despite the natural and cozy fit of atheism and feminism, the much-ballyhooed “New Atheism” that was supposed to be a more aggressive, political form of atheism has instead been surprisingly male-dominated. The reason has, in recent years, become quite apparent: Many of the most prominent leaders of the New Atheism are quick to express deeply sexist ideas. Despite their supposed love of science and rationality, many of them are nearly as quick as their religious counterparts to abandon reason in order to justify regressive views about women.

Sam Harris, a prominent atheist author who has previously been criticized for his knee-jerk Islamophobic tendencies, recently came under fire when he added women to the category of people he makes thoughtless generalizations about. Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein interviewed Harris, and during the interview she asked him why most atheists are male. “There’s something about that critical posture that is to some degree instrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women.” He added, “The atheist variable just has this— it doesn’t obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men.”

It would be nice to dismiss Harris as an outlier, but sadly, pompous sexism followed up by defensive posturing is the order of the day for the dominant male leadership of the loosely organized world of atheism. In a lengthy investigative piece for Buzzfeed, Mark Oppenheimer demonstrated that the problem extends beyond sexist condescension. Instead, the bros-before-hos attitude of much of atheist leadership is quite likely serving to protect actual sexual predators.

While Oppenheimer focused on a number of prominent sexists in atheism, such as Penn Jillette and now-deceased Christopher Hitchens (who also was a fan of the “women are humorless” trope), he focused most of piece on accusations against prominent skeptic writer Michael Shermer. Oppenheimer quoted two named women accusing Shermer of sexually harassing them. A third named women had a more alarming accusation: That Shermer had taken her to his room while she was too drunk to consent to sex and had sex with her anyway.

https://www.salon.com/2014/10/03/new_atheisms_troubling_misogyny_the_pompous_sexism_of_richard_dawkins_and_sam_harris_partner/

The reaction to Oppenheimer’s story was swift and did much to support the claim that the atheist community protects sexual predators, much like the Catholic Church did during the priest pedophilia scandal. Richard Dawkins, possibly the most famous atheist in the world, immediately went on a tear on Twitter, blaming victims for their own rapes if they were drinking. “Officer, it's not my fault I was drunk driving. You see, somebody got me drunk,” he tweeted, comparing being forced to have sex with the choice to drive drunk.

When called out on it, he doubled down by suggesting that rape victims are the real predators, out to get men put in jail: “If you want to be in a position to testify & jail a man, don't get drunk.”

Atheists really don’t have room to criticize others on this issue.

[Anonymous]

Accusations of sexual misconduct[edit]
On August 8, 2013, PZ Myers posted a message on his Pharyngula blog at Freethought Blogs from an unnamed woman later identified as Alison Smith claiming that Michael Shermer had raped her.[20] Smith alleged, "at a conference, Mr. Shermer coerced me into a position where I could not consent, and then had sex with me." She also stated that "I reached out to one organization that was involved in the event at which I was raped, and they refused to take my concerns seriously," that "5 different people have directly told me they did the same to them," and that she was sharing this information in order to warn others. Myers later updated his blog entry with an account from another woman, who claimed that Shermer plied her with drink at an atheist event and "was very flirty."
Double standards[edit]
Assuming the above accusations are correct, did Michael Shermer need help to understand the distress involved?[21] Before the PZ Myers grenade exploded Shermer understood the harm rape and adultery causes. He wrote the following in Feb 2013.
“”How do we know that rape and adultery are wrong? We don’t need to ask God. We need to ask the affected moral agent—the rape victim in question, or our spouse or romantic partner who is being cuckolded. They will let you know instantly and forcefully precisely how they feel morally about that behavior.
—Michael Shermer[22]
Double standard suspected anywhere? Or perhaps the power of wishful thinking enticed him into the conviction that only forcible incidents count as rape.
Reactions[edit]
Bloggers in the atheist/skeptic/feminist community reacted quickly and took sides. It soon became the blogosphere's drama of the week, rehashing many of the divisions endemic in the atheist community since the "Elevatorgate" affair.[23][24][25][26][27]
Shermer denied any wrongdoing and issued a cease and desist order against Myers, threatening defamation action unless Myers removed the offending blog entry and issued a full retraction and apology.[28]
Shermer got legal funds without asking on a fundraiser page built by Emery Emery, the “Ardent Atheist”.[29] The fundraser included a rape joke with generous contributors offered a bottomless glass of wine, with Emery “who will not be drinking but keeping your glass full.” This was a reminder that one woman complained Shermer repeatedly refilled her glass. Myers also got an offer of legal help from Popehat who is experienced with online libel trouble.[30]
The fundraiser for Michael Shermer’s legal action raised a total of $8,289. Emery Emery stated that Shermer “has no choice” but to sue PZ because the post was still up. By August 9th, 2014 the statute of limitations in California ran out without Shermer suing Myers.[31] As of 2018 the rape allegation is still up.[20][note 2]
Things blew up after 11-Sept-2014, when NY Times contributor Mark Oppenheimer wrote a very long, detailed highlights-reel on the harassment campaigns being run within the atheist and skeptical movements, including naming three victims of Shermer’s alleged predations. This piece alone contains several bombshells which had not been public before Oppenheimer's article appeared, including:
The person in the “Grenade” post by Myers was Alison Smith, a known figure in the skeptical community.
Shermer has actively changed his story from what he reported at the time in his rebuttal statement:
Original statement: Two unknown people (one with “dreadlocks”) were upset that Shermer was talking with Smith and was preventing them from “getting into her pants”, so they started spreading rumors.
Later statement: Shermer and Smith had had sober consensual sex that night, initiated by a cold proposition by Smith in a bathroom.[32]
Ashley Miller apparently had a several-minute-long conversation with Shermer while he was actively massaging his thing through his jeans, and trying to arrange himself such that she had to see it and notice.
James Randi was aware of complaints, and because Shermer wasn’t violent, ignored them:
“”Shermer has been a bad boy on occasion — I do know that[.] I have told him that if I get many more complaints from people I have reason to believe, that I am going to have to limit his attendance at the conference. His reply, […] is he had a bit too much to drink and he doesn’t remember. I don’t know — I’ve never been drunk in my life. It’s an unfortunate thing … I haven’t seen him doing that. But I get the word from people in the organization that he has to be under better control. If he had gotten violent, I’d have him out of there immediately. I’ve just heard that he misbehaved himself with the women, wh

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer

Michael Shermer was supported by the atheist community after he was accused of raping several women.

Shermer got legal funds without asking on a fundraiser page built by Emery Emery, the “Ardent Atheist”.[29] The fundraser included a rape joke with generous contributors offered a bottomless glass of wine, with Emery “who will not be drinking but keeping your glass full.” This was a reminder that one woman complained Shermer repeatedly refilled her glass. Myers also got an offer of legal help from Popehat who is experienced with online libel trouble.[30]

[Anonymous]

OP, you’ve read his books, right? As a Dawkins follower, how has it affected your opinion of pedophilia -and- misogyny?

[Anonymous]

I think OP is secretly an atheist trying to rile things up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think OP is secretly an atheist trying to rile things up.

OP is clearly just trolling regardless of beliefs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Accusations of sexual misconduct[edit]
On August 8, 2013, PZ Myers posted a message on his Pharyngula blog at Freethought Blogs from an unnamed woman later identified as Alison Smith claiming that Michael Shermer had raped her.[20] Smith alleged, "at a conference, Mr. Shermer coerced me into a position where I could not consent, and then had sex with me." She also stated that "I reached out to one organization that was involved in the event at which I was raped, and they refused to take my concerns seriously," that "5 different people have directly told me they did the same to them," and that she was sharing this information in order to warn others. Myers later updated his blog entry with an account from another woman, who claimed that Shermer plied her with drink at an atheist event and "was very flirty."
Double standards[edit]
Assuming the above accusations are correct, did Michael Shermer need help to understand the distress involved?[21] Before the PZ Myers grenade exploded Shermer understood the harm rape and adultery causes. He wrote the following in Feb 2013.
“”How do we know that rape and adultery are wrong? We don’t need to ask God. We need to ask the affected moral agent—the rape victim in question, or our spouse or romantic partner who is being cuckolded. They will let you know instantly and forcefully precisely how they feel morally about that behavior.
—Michael Shermer[22]
Double standard suspected anywhere? Or perhaps the power of wishful thinking enticed him into the conviction that only forcible incidents count as rape.
Reactions[edit]
Bloggers in the atheist/skeptic/feminist community reacted quickly and took sides. It soon became the blogosphere's drama of the week, rehashing many of the divisions endemic in the atheist community since the "Elevatorgate" affair.[23][24][25][26][27]
Shermer denied any wrongdoing and issued a cease and desist order against Myers, threatening defamation action unless Myers removed the offending blog entry and issued a full retraction and apology.[28]
Shermer got legal funds without asking on a fundraiser page built by Emery Emery, the “Ardent Atheist”.[29] The fundraser included a rape joke with generous contributors offered a bottomless glass of wine, with Emery “who will not be drinking but keeping your glass full.” This was a reminder that one woman complained Shermer repeatedly refilled her glass. Myers also got an offer of legal help from Popehat who is experienced with online libel trouble.[30]
The fundraiser for Michael Shermer’s legal action raised a total of $8,289. Emery Emery stated that Shermer “has no choice” but to sue PZ because the post was still up. By August 9th, 2014 the statute of limitations in California ran out without Shermer suing Myers.[31] As of 2018 the rape allegation is still up.[20][note 2]
Things blew up after 11-Sept-2014, when NY Times contributor Mark Oppenheimer wrote a very long, detailed highlights-reel on the harassment campaigns being run within the atheist and skeptical movements, including naming three victims of Shermer’s alleged predations. This piece alone contains several bombshells which had not been public before Oppenheimer's article appeared, including:
The person in the “Grenade” post by Myers was Alison Smith, a known figure in the skeptical community.
Shermer has actively changed his story from what he reported at the time in his rebuttal statement:
Original statement: Two unknown people (one with “dreadlocks”) were upset that Shermer was talking with Smith and was preventing them from “getting into her pants”, so they started spreading rumors.
Later statement: Shermer and Smith had had sober consensual sex that night, initiated by a cold proposition by Smith in a bathroom.[32]
Ashley Miller apparently had a several-minute-long conversation with Shermer while he was actively massaging his thing through his jeans, and trying to arrange himself such that she had to see it and notice.
James Randi was aware of complaints, and because Shermer wasn’t violent, ignored them:
“”Shermer has been a bad boy on occasion — I do know that[.] I have told him that if I get many more complaints from people I have reason to believe, that I am going to have to limit his attendance at the conference. His reply, […] is he had a bit too much to drink and he doesn’t remember. I don’t know — I’ve never been drunk in my life. It’s an unfortunate thing … I haven’t seen him doing that. But I get the word from people in the organization that he has to be under better control. If he had gotten violent, I’d have him out of there immediately. I’ve just heard that he misbehaved himself with the women, wh

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer

Michael Shermer was supported by the atheist community after he was accused of raping several women.

Shermer got legal funds without asking on a fundraiser page built by Emery Emery, the “Ardent Atheist”.[29] The fundraser included a rape joke with generous contributors offered a bottomless glass of wine, with Emery “who will not be drinking but keeping your glass full.” This was a reminder that one woman complained Shermer repeatedly refilled her glass. Myers also got an offer of legal help from Popehat who is experienced with online libel trouble.[30]

Interesting. Thanks, pp.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think OP is secretly an atheist trying to rile things up.

OP is clearly just trolling regardless of beliefs.

+1. - OP is very excited about this thread - similar to the thread in which a longtime Christian poster (same person?) frustratedly said they were leaving the forum. Such people care more about getting attention than about being religious.

Piously espousing their religious beliefs is a way to get attention, either positive or negative - they don't care -- it's the attention that counts.