Smugger Camp

[pyat]

In the Invisible Unicorn Challenge, any child who can prove that unicorns do not exist will win a £10 note - which features an image of Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory - signed by Dawkins, Britain's most prominent atheist.

This is undoubtedly where Eustace Clarence Scrubb went to camp.

Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

1. My first experience with Dawkins was him talking about a community of Chasidic Jews in NYC. This sounded to me a lot like "ha ha, look at the backwards parochial Yids and the way they cling to their silly god and silly traditions while We, of course, know A Better Truth." I've heard that one before, certainly. Not to mention it read as "hey! Let's go gunning for the widely disliked ethnic minority!" It established Dawkins in my mind as pompously self assured, bigotted and just plain mean-spirited.

2. An atheist summer camp, in which children are taught Correct Beliefs and even participate in contests to disprove imagination and wonder, only further entrenches my impression of the man as pompously self assured, bigotted and just plain mean-spirited.

3. I believe that atheism as a philosophy can offer a lot of hope. The world is a bright and glorious place, ruled by no fearsome god, in which amazing and wonderful things may spring into being at any moment thanks to mechanics which make sense. However, this sure sounds like the opposite approach to atheism, in which we are told that the world is instead limited and petty and that we should take care to believe only what is of course rational. It's a very Victorian atheism indeed.