Topic: Smear attack against Richard Dawkins

[Sordid]

I can't believe I actually read the entire thing, and I can't believe an editor would let that pass as journalism.

Same. It was completely laughable. "There is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity"? So I guess they're going to dig up a three hundred years old corpse, or what's left of it, and put it on trial?

[Ravenhull]

The Guardian has a story about this sympathetic to Dawkins: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/19/richard-dawkins-disbelief-slave-trade-ancestor?fb=native

If his version is true, then the reporter in question had a serious axe to grind in this case:

Dawkins said a reporter had called him and named a number of his ancestors who he said were slave owners.

After the reporter quoted the biblical verse about the Lord "visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" Dawkins said he ended the conversation.

However, he said the reporter rang back and suggested Dawkins may have inherited a "slave supporting" gene from his distant relative.

[Johnny Slick]

"I can't help wondering at the quality of journalism which sees a scoop in attacking a man for what his five-greats grandfather did. Is there really nothing more current going on?"

[JuniorSpaceman]

There's stupid, and then there's really stupid, and then there's repeatedly dropped on your head when you were an infant stupid.

And then there's this.

[Rai]

I think I'll just spend my afternoon making personal apologies to all pigeons I encounter on the way home because my rat-like ancestors consumed a large number of their theropod ancestors' offspring back in the Cretaceous. Shame on me.

[Neon Genesis]

After the reporter quoted the biblical verse about the Lord "visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" Dawkins said he ended the conversation.

Wasn't there some Jewish dude in the NT who healed this sick guy that everyone thought was being punished for the sins of his parents and said Jewish dude said that was rubbish?

[Eternally Learning]

I'm pretty sure that somewhere in my ancestry I've found a couple relations that by this writer's logic means I have to make reparations to myself. 

[Beleth]

The Guardian has a story about this sympathetic to Dawkins: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/19/richard-dawkins-disbelief-slave-trade-ancestor?fb=native

If his version is true, then the reporter in question had a serious axe to grind in this case:

Dawkins said a reporter had called him and named a number of his ancestors who he said were slave owners.

After the reporter quoted the biblical verse about the Lord "visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" Dawkins said he ended the conversation.

However, he said the reporter rang back and suggested Dawkins may have inherited a "slave supporting" gene from his distant relative.

Wait... both the Telegraph version and Dawkins' own version have Dawkins, not the journalist, quote Numbers.

[DK]

Wait... both the Telegraph version and Dawkins' own version have Dawkins, not the journalist, quote Numbers.

You don't expect the Granuaid to get everything right do you?

I read a rather excellent take down on this blog yesterday about the rather weird goings on.

It also quotes Dr Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, about reparations to the descendants of slaves (what with the Anglican church once owning slaves and all) :

However, he added: “While it sounds simple to say … we should pass on the reparation that was received, exactly to whom?

“Exactly where does it go? And exactly how does it differ from the various ways in which we try to interact now with the effects of that in terms of aid and development and so forth?

Oh, and by all accounts, the Torygraph has in the past argued against reparations and were annoyed when Tony Blair apologised for Britain's role in the slave trade. So, as long as you're not Dawkins, you shouldn't feel guilty about it.

[JuniorSpaceman]

Marsh from Merseyside Skeptics has also weighed in

[jomike]

the Torygraph

 

Dawkins surely has arrived as a Major Public Figure when editors know they can whip up a controversy & jack up ad revenue just by launching an attack, however ridiculous.  They oughta pay him royalties, for cryin' out loud.

[Neon Genesis]

So is this Dawkinsgate?

[Desert Fox]

Curious, why do you think that Dawkins is more hated than Hitchens seemed to have been?
Some of the things that Hitchens wrote / said were harsher than what Dawkins has said / wrote.

[Neon Genesis]

Because Hitchens is dead now and Dawkins isn't?

[Johnny Slick]

I think it's in large part because Hitch was something of a professional troll while Dawkins is a renowned scientist in his own right who "hates on" (not quite the right descriptor but we'll go with it) Christianity and Islam in his spare time. I will say that I, personally, enjoy Dawkins a whole lot more than I liked Hitchens even though he (Dawkins) came out on totally the wrong side of his big debate with Stephen Jay Gould on gradualism vs. punctuated equilibrium.