Atheists turning to cult behaviour?

[Alex K]

Bullshit, Jenny A. Read up on the history how it played out

What is bullshit? What Watkins said happened? My reaction to it? What Dawkins did next?

First of all the name is Watson, so that gives me the impression you aren't excessively informed about the story, and yet your knee jerk reaction is that probably the so rational good man wassurely right, and the woman involved probably hysterical again. You may not have meant that, but that's exactly how it sounds, and it's the type of thing that triggers my rage mode. Anyways, I remember it happening roughly like that: in the end of a video that was about something else, Watson made a quick remark how she was approached in that damn elevator when she was alone and tired, and that it made her feel uncomfortable, and she advised maybe not to do that. Whether you agree with that is beside the point now, it was a very minor side remark in some video, I had watched the vid back then and had instantly forgotten about it. The frustrated male atheist internet however exploded with rage, and that's when the really nasty threats starte. After probably days of all the blogs going up in a flame war, this huge outrage was long about something else entirely, namely droves of people harassing her full time while she really didn't do anything. At that point, clueless Richard Dawkins comes barging in on some of these blogs or forums on his high horse of disinterested rationality, and decides to scold this silly woman for starting an internet war because of some harmless guy. To illustrate his position that her concerns are ridiculous, he wrote that ingenious "Dear Muslima" letter with which he both outed himself as a huge hypocrite on matters of activism, and also basically, though his ignorance, poured gasoline on the flames of these harassers. And that's that. I say that as someone who has all of this guy's books and have been a fan since before he wrote TGD, he's sometimes acting like a giant buffoon, and when he's criticised for it, his default explanation is that these people are either irrational, or out to get him. He wrote "There's a witchhunt, I'm not exaggerating", because people criticised him. That was a disgrace, too.