The fundamental flaw in ALL of these monotheistic religions is distinguishing one flavor as "superior" to the others when all it boils down to is a pissing match over who must give fealty to whom. Show me a religion, ANY religion and I will show you the duplicity and outright fraud at its core within seconds. Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, Fundamentalist, Wahhabi, Shiite...all simply "teams" complete with fanatics and colors and logos and past "victories" and "defeats"...its all sick at its core and totally incidental to the advancement of human survivability in the 21st century. Back in pre-historic Palestine, I'm sure this was far more central to existence...and the Roman Empire made great use of religion even after the Caesars became Popes and ruled from the Vatican instead of the Senate...but now? Ancient relics of a species' adolescent mire, still holding sway despite its preposterous views.

There are NO SACRED COWS...NONE! Christians, Jews, Muslims, Jains, Druids, Wiccans, whatever you choose - they are all inherently deluded and harmful to humanity's long term future.

The day that 51% of all humans finally disavow these sad little fables and fairy tales in exchange for a more reality-based world view is finally the day we MIGHT have a chance to survive as a species...but that probability fades a little more every hour.

Pissing matches between followers of imaginary beings are by definition (to the same amongst us) ludicrous.

Shame Allah is so threatened that he can be knocked off his throne by a skinny 60-something English biologist.

BTW, same for YHWH or God or Jehovah or whatever you want to call it . . .

...He was disinvited for criticizing Islam.

I posted about this yesterday. It generated few replies.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029368766

A flagship station of the Pacifica network. They have done off the deep-end of left-wing political extremism.

Richard Dawkins can be a right arse, but the decline of Pacifica into wing-nuttery is quite sad.

It might have been one made by individual who consider themselves on the left. Islamism is a backward political force, and should be criticized and combated by progressives, in my opinion. I see nothing wrong with practice of an Islam that rejects tenets like death penalty for apostasy and "literal application" of the Koran.

Hurtful speech?

Truly if somebody questioning your faith hurts you, you should question your faith.

but Dawkins has a bit of a history in this regard. Here's a HuffPo article about it from a few years back, linking to a YouTube vid in which Dawkins says "I think Islam is one of the great evils of the world."

Dawkins has also made some pointedly misogynist comments, so he's no stranger to letting his mouth get him into trouble.


He can say whatever the hell he pleases, but it annoys me when high-minded moralizers in the media identify him as a spokesman for atheism, as if we're all created in Dawkins' image.

I asked Bob Baldock, the events coordinator at KPFA, about why the Dawkins event was canceled. Baldock said that, while there are “a number of things in [Dawson’s] writing that we have enormous admiration for,” KPFA objected to some public comments by Dawkins — in particular, remarks “about how Islam is the most evil religion on the planet” (apparently referring to the remarks quoted in an article in the Telegraph) and his statement, “to hell with Muslims and their culture.” I believe the quote to which Baldock was referring was just “to hell with their culture,” see this video starting at 3:30:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/07/24/left-wing-radio-station-kpfa-cancels-event-with-noted-atheist-richard-dawkins-because-of-his-harsh-criticism-of-islam/?utm_term=.4be2bf18c356

As the Ferret would say, nuttier than squirrels' poop.

Plenty of scientists are divisive asses, so that's nothing unusual in and of itself. Some scientists are outright sociopaths, some are outstanding humanists, and like everyone else, most are just people doing their work and doing their best to be decent human beings as best they know how.

What I don't understand is why Dawkins is revered by so many people like he's some sort of Holy Man of rationality. Simply replacing Holy Men with Scientists in your personal hierarchy isn't much progress.

No, I'm not denying Dawkins his right to speak or promote himself. But KPFA isn't obligated to participate in that.

Compare Dawkins to Penn Jillette. Jillette is extremely abrasive, almost universally so, but he doesn't piss traditional White Protestant bigotries all over the place.

I don't have a lot of respect for the kind of atheism that dispenses with gods and keeps all the other filthy baggage of the culture it decries. It's not just the atheists of White Protestant culture who are prone to this. There are atheists of all cultures who are unable to see the larger picture and are unable to abandon certain aspects of the religious cultures they despise; the misogyny, patriarchy, racism, antisemitism, homophobia... whatever.

I strive to be cognizant of the Catholic baggage especially. Catholicism is loaded with it. The first post I ever had hidden here on DU was some of that baggage spilling out. (And good riddance too!)

When I'm challenged about the baggage I still carry I try not to reflexively rationalize or defend it, and do my best to accept the criticism gracefully.

I'm an evolutionary biologist by natural inclination and some formal training. Knowing my way around huge timescales and having some understanding of the immensity of the observable universe leaves me incapable of most traditional "conservative" religious beliefs. It also helps in leaving some of the more pernicious Catholic baggage behind.

There's a reason the Creationist Christians like their universe small, a tiny bubble ruled by a petty and often inexplicably cruel god. In a universe like that then maybe they are significant by some outside measure. They don't have to take any measure of themselves (which is hard work) or rummage through the uglier closets of hate and ignorance in their own minds. God hates fags. I hate fags. Those stupid dinosaurs ran away from Noah's ark and their bones were buried in the mud. That kind of "thinking" is effortless.

It helps me with my own baggage to watch George Carlin too. I hope I'm never as cynical as Carlin, but I would like to be that funny.

I'm not anti-religious. I'm very much against certain aspects of various religions, including my own. I feel exactly the same about nationalism. Little baby souls don't choose which nations or religious traditions they will be born to, but a frightening number of people never cross the borders, or worse, fiercely defend their nations or religions with blind obedience.

KPFA cancelled a book event with Richard Dawkins when members of our community brought our attention to Dawkins’ abusive speech against Muslims. The speech we reviewed included assertions during his current book tour that Islam is the “most evil” of world religions, Twitter posts denigrating Muslim scholars as non-scholars and other tweets.

We serve a broad and diverse community, including many Muslims living under threat of persecution and violence in the current political context. Islamophobic rhetoric stokes that threat. While Mr. Dawkins has every right to express his views, KPFA has every right not to sponsor and profit from an event spreading them. That is what we’ve done.

KPFA’s events organizers notified Mr. Dawkins’ publicist at Random House when we first started considering cancellation of his event, and again once we made the final decision to do so, which was before notice was sent out to ticket holders.

We have since extended an offer to Mr. Dawkins to discuss this matter on KPFA’s airwaves, a forum where his assertions can be engaged and challenged, but KPFA will have no financial stake in promoting them. He has not yet responded.

https://kpfa.org/blog/statement-decision-cancel-richard-dawkins-event/