Richard Dawkins says he is a Cultural Christian

[YoursTrue]

Late in his life, he said his single biggest mistake was when he got involved in partisan politics when he cozied up to Nixon.

interesting. The whole thing is interesting and brings to the fore Jesus prayer, often known as the Our Father prayer -- "Let your kingdom come..." (No wonder...)

 

[YoursTrue]

That's not at all what he was doing. He was using sarcasm to make a point about how ridiculous it was for her to call getting politely asked out by a man "harassment" when there is actual, horrific treatment of women in Muslim-dominated countries that most feminists of that time didn't even acknowledge was a problem or just attributed to "cultural differences."

To be able to "digest" sarcasm from someone else, one must understand the concept. Not everyone can deal with it well.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Why did you leave out the details of the story? It wasn't just "a guy at a skeptic event asked her out." Other important details:

- it was 4:00 am and she had announced that she was tired and going to bed. IOW, anyone paying attention would have realized that an advance would have been unwanted.

- they had been out at the bar (so potentially, she was visibly drunk). IOW, she may have felt - or been - especially vulnerable.

- the guy followed her and waited until she was alone and wouldn't be able to immediately leave to "ask her out." IOW, he made choices to increase her vulnerability.

Definitely creepy, unwelcome behaviour.


Not any circumstance, but if you don't have good reason to think the woman's answer will be "yes," then you ought to know that there's a good chance that the advance will be unwelcome.

And when a woman is:

1) in a vulnerable position (e.g. she's alone, tipsy or both), or
2) has already indicated that isn't interested in doing what you want to do with her,

... then no, you definitely shouldn't ask her back to your hotel room for "coffee."

I didn't intentionally leave out details of the story, I just didn't know all the details and frankly I don't really care that much about the details either. I want to be clear, I don't condone any type of harassment of women at all. I still think Dawkins made a good point, I'll admit that he could have been more sensitive in his choice of words, yes. Still, even if you disagree with him on this particular topic, it's not a good reason to dismiss all of his great work. I don't agree with everything he says. I disagreed with him when he told Sam Harris that he thought meditation was a pointless waste of time, for example. Just because there are some instances where you disagree with him doesn't mean you have to lose all respect for him. The same principle applies in general.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

- it was 4:00 am and she had announced that she was tired and going to bed. IOW, anyone paying attention would have realized that an advance would have been unwanted.

Thank you.