Post #1992876
2026-05-04 19:08 UTC
Since becoming an outspoken atheist Dawkins began spending more and more of his efforts criticising other people's religious belief. He turned his critical ability outwards.
And, consequently, he battled a lot of invective in the other direction. He became increasingly defensive about what he himself believed and why he believed it. And defensiveness is the enemy of critical self-reflection.
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Replies (1)
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@Tattie@eldritch.cafe 2026-05-04 19:08
Elevatorgate was perhaps his most iconic failing. Rebecca Watson challenged the Western atheist community to look at their own unchallenged patriarchy, still being enacted outside obviously patriarchal religious structures. Dawkins could have taken this moment to think "hey, yes, actually there's a lot of work I still need to do to truly dismantle the sort of thinking I was raised within" Instead, he threw what can only be described as a hissy fit, named Islam as the only force of patriarchy worth bothering about, and held Watson as some sort of "enemy within" atheism, showing exactly how us-vs-them, paranoid, and binary his thinking had become. 4/