Somebody purporting to be Richard Dawkins apparently made some rather idiotic comments on Pharyngula of the “people have it worse than you, so how dare you complain about your own situation” variety, and Jen McCreight rightly excoriates him (or his impersonator) for it. For reference on these remarks, see this.
Whether that was actually Dawkins or not, I think there’s a pretty obvious take-home lesson: nobody, however fiercely they might like to proclaim it, is on the side of rationality and immune to bigotry simply because they might be a loud proponent of skepticism on a subject where most people reject it. Their courage and eloquence on such matters does not make them infallible. They’re as susceptible to bias as anyone else, only they come pre-packaged with an iron-clad resistance to any suggestion of non-objectivity and therefore become, ironically, decidedly anti-skeptical about their own skepticism. Humility should be skepticism’s best friend, not its nemesis.
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