Yeah, I get that a lot

Fancy a date?

It’s unfortunate when people take offense at things that were never meant to be an attack in the first place, but even worse when others take it upon themselves to be offended on other people’s behalf. Is there anything more nauseating?

As for Dawkins, I’ve met him, seen him talk in public a couple of times and on video dozens of times. He’s unmistakeably and unambiguously a *gent*.

Gould occasionally got caught up in his own rhetoric and Dawkins was right to take him to task for it. Billions of others claim to know things they can’t possibly know (such as the existence of a god) and Dawkins is equally right to ridicule it. Such beliefs are by definition unreasonable and there is no imperative at all for we unbelievers to respect other people’s unreasonable beliefs.

Damn, thought I was hiding that quite well.

You’re running the risk of sounding precious, sensitive, querulous and uptight.

Dawkins style can be combative, bellicose, pugnacious and contentious (okay, enough of that), but more often he is the soul of erudition and less often, usually in extremis, responding to some downright silly woo (you know – homeopathy, reiki, catholicism, that sort of thing).

For example, consider the difference between me saying, “Your views are mistaken” with “Your views are wrong, illiberal, incoherent and eccentric”. Those four words all mean different things, but it’s a much more aggressive way of disagreeing. One suggests a possible dialogue where people may be persuaded; the other looks much more to be about bludgeoning into the ground people who disagree with you.

I’m not surprised if people extrapolate from that stridency to making misjudgements about Dawkins’s views, especially as his stridency gets reported much more often than people read his full views I suspect.

It may be wrong, but it’s not surprising. (And I don’t think any of the above is specific to his views being often expressed about religion. Indeed, from what I remember of his scientific writings in his spats with Stephen Jay Gould, he often had a similar style.)

James: it’s quite possible to be robust and a liberal, as you frequently demonstrate

I read Sandman as a teenager (I own the Vertigo Tarot – it is very pretty), so I suppose the answer must be yes.

Loving the google ads here – one for the Conservatives, one for an astrologer. Creaky old superstitions with no evidential backing really are taking hold in this country…

And, sorry, yes, I see

“Is there any risk we might consider all my caveats firmly in place now?”

Yes. I was agreeing with you. I thought I was just stating the point you made in a slightly different way. My intention was to suppport what you said.

I can’t help it. Mobs baying for one thing just make me uneasy, whether it’s healthcare based on great lumps of rock whirling through space (as the late great Douglas Adams put it) or the unconquerable triumph of reason. I cannot but remember what people did during the French Revolution in the name of reason, for example. It’s always a danger sign when someone tells you to “examine your attitudes” as someone did above. “Or we will lock you up and re-educate you” is the silent bit I hear following it.

So when I depart from my principle and find myself coming over all uncompromising and Richard Dawkinsish, I have to have a very good cause.

And, as I said in the original piece, this is a good enough cause.

And, as I also said in the bit that you quoted, astrology is bollocks.

And, as I also said in the bit you quoted, we shouldn’t be paying for it anyway.

Is there any risk we might consider all my caveats firmly in place now?

“I suppose the wider point I should have drawn out was whether I should be snorting at this story and calling complementary medicine as a whole bollocks or whether I should bow to diversity of lines of enquiry, open-mindedness etc. But, since it’s my money paying for this bollocks, the answer is clearly yes, I should be calling it so.”

I’d put it slightly differently. Since there is no evidence that astrology works, it’s not a question of being ‘open minded’. We shouldn’t have to pay for something that is indistinguishable from bollocks. Personally, I call things that are indistinguishable from bollocks “bollocks”.

Others might say I’m being closed-minded but a) they would be wrong (my mind is quite open – show me evidence that it works and I’ll change my mind) and b) that isn’t the issue anyway (since it’s clear that we aren’t getting value for our money on this software, the money should not have been spent.)