The latest atheist thought police

I promote science, rationality, and truth on this blog, but I rarely mention the skeptic-atheist organizations that claim to be doing the same thing. They are overrun with leftist intolerant kooks.

I previously attacked Richard Dawkins for wanting to fire someone for his personal beliefs, but he is a reasonable man compared to the other leftist-atheist-evolutionists.

Philosopher of pseudoscience Massimo Pigliucci writes about the latest controversy:

If you are following at all the skeptic / atheist / humanist / freethought movement(s) (henceforth, SAHF), last week has been an exciting and/or troubling one for you. First, the announcement that the Richard Dawkins Foundation had merged with (or taken over, depending on whom you ask) the venerable Center for Inquiry, up until then the chief remaining operation established by one of the founding fathers of modern skepticism and humanism, Paul Kurtz.

Then, a mere six days later, the organizers of the North East Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS), likely to soon become the major skeptic conference in North America (given the apparent demise of The Amazing Meeting), dropped a bombshell: Dawkins was being disinvited — probably a first in his career — on grounds of yet another obnoxious tweet he had thoughtlessly sent out to his 1.35 million followers. ...

The video linked to in the tweet, and which Dawkins clearly endorsed, can be found here. It is an egregious, unqualified, piece of racist and misogynist garbage. Please, pause reading this post for a couple of minutes and see for yourself. It’s simply horrifying.

Then again, this was not an isolated incident. Dawkins had racked a considerable number of similarly embarrassing tweets over the past few years. Here is a sampler, ranging over such light topics as abortion, rape, pedophilia, and Islam (of course!). Use Google to find many, many more.

To me, this just seems like the Stalinists purging the Trotskyists. Leftists cannot stand one of their fellow leftists deviating from their political dogma.

Pigliucci cries "racist", but denies that there is any such thing as race. The video makes no mention of race. I can only assume that he is projecting his own racial prejudices.

It is baffling how these folks can call themselves the "freethought movement", and then spend most of their time banning each other for being divisive.

The video brilliantly mocks Islamism and feminism, and their not-so-obvious similarities. Yes, it distorts their beliefs somewhat, I guess.

A reader writes:

As for scientists denying free will, I concur in part. Many of them have no free will whatsoever, as they are prisoners of their own groupthink, confusing political consensus with scientific comprehension.

Do these people really not have the ability to watch a silly satirical video and think for themselves?

If they say that they do not have the ability, maybe I should take their word for it. They want an enforced groupthink, where no one dares go against the hivemind.

Twitter has just announced that it will more actively block tweets like this:

With hundreds of millions of Tweets sent per day, the volume of content on Twitter is massive, which makes it extraordinarily complex to strike the right balance between fighting abuse and speaking truth to power. It requires a multi-layered approach where each of our 320 million users has a part to play, as do the community of experts working for safety and free expression.

That’s why we are announcing the formation of the Twitter Trust & Safety Council, a new and foundational part of our strategy to ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter. ... We have more than 40 organizations and experts from 13 regions joining as inaugural members of the Council.

Those organizations and experts are mostly leftist social justice warriors who believe that safety means protection from exposure to offensive political opinions.

Twitter is a big disappointment. So is Facebook. The apps are obnoxious and the companies are run by creeps. The public never should have let one company control everyone's web page, and another company control everyone's public comments. Couldn't anyone devise a more open system, like email?

Actually email is being taken over by Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo. They are the only ones with the resources and know-how to control spam. At least we have 3 choices, until Yahoo goes bankrupt.

Update: Dawkins has suffered a damaging stroke. Pigliucci backpeddles, but read the comments where he has to be corrected on several points.