Biocurious

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Richard Dawkins was hacked [updated]

Posted 17 June 2008 by PhilipJ under &

On Twitter, anyway. Twitter is a venue for “microblogging”, or posting, in 140 characters or less, some commentary. That Richard Dawkins signed up for an account at all is interesting, but last night his account was evidently hacked by a self-proclaimed Christian to try to reach some of Dawkins’ followers. Before it gets cleaned up, here’s a screenshot of the page as of this morning:

Richard Dawkins' hacked on Twitter

If that’s a bit too small to read, here it is reproduced (in non-140 character-limited form):

While I still have 1700 of you paying attention, I just wanted to say: Whatever you believe, respect others beliefs. It’s not wrong to be kind to people who don’t believe the same as you. You don’t have to be militant atheists. People who claim to be Christians can be hypocrites, but they’re just people, and all people make mistakes. Try to be good to one another. That is my message of peace to all of you. Love one another. It’s ok. Consider that being hostile towards others has never won any followers. Richard Dawkins is just an old man trying to leave behind a legacy. Just like I, a Chrisitan do not follow Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, don’t be mislead by someone just because they share your belief system. It’s easy to be against people who are different than you, but try not to be like that. Take the high road, unlike RD.

Very strange. I don’t find Richard Dawkins to be particularly hateful towards people who are religious, even in The God Delusion (despite the somewhat inflammatory title).

If you want to see what happens next, you can follow Dawkins’ on Twitter here.

Update — Nothing to see here afterall. Commenter Mark pointed out that this was a fake account to begin with. That makes the whole thing even stranger.

  

  1. Mark    17 June 08    #

    Seems to have actually been an impostor. Had me fooled with references to book talk in Edinburgh, to his assistant Josh, &c. Cf. http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=48137&p=1008649&hilit=twitter&sid=9511ee92896f250fa84609529176a2d2#p1006345


  2. luke Quinton    17 June 08    #

    This guy is pretty interesting. He’s busy apologizing now to all of the twitter-ers, and sort of politely bantering back and forth with them. Pretty clever.


  3. Robin Edgar    18 June 08    #

    “I don’t find Richard Dawkins to be particularly hateful towards people who are religious, even in The God Delusion (despite the somewhat inflammatory title).”

    You might want to do a bit more looking into what Richard Dawkins says about religious people and religion. At least some of what he says can be justifiably defined as “hateful” but, even when his words are not outright “hateful”, Richard Dawkins exudes contempt for religion and God believing people. He is incredibly condescending and regularly makes statements to the effect that atheists are more intelligent than religious people. I dare say that he comes across as an Atheist Supremacist if I may coin that phrase.


  4. PhilipJ    18 June 08    #

    I’ve done my fair share of Dawkins reading. I don’t find I disagree with too much of what he says, and I certainly don’t find much of it hateful.

    In fact, the tone of your own comments at the link you provided seem far worse than anything I recall Dawkins writing. Either way, thanks for dropping by.


  5. Robin Edgar    18 June 08    #

    I suggest that you look beyond Richard Dawkins’ books and read some interviews that have been published or watch videos of interviews etc. Richard Dawkins can be very offensive and should not be surprised if people respond to his offensiveness by being a bit rude about him.


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