Originally a comment by Gem Newman on Follow, peasants.
They’re still pestering our group to join. The group’s organizer finally got fed up and said that we wouldn’t, because a lot of these guys were “gross”. That prompted this response from them:
Gross thoughts? I don’t understand.
Is there anyone else in your group I could speak with?
I’ll put it this way. In the last month I’ve traded more than 400 emails with group leaders.
They don’t normally have this much unexplained anger.
I mean, come on, really. How can you be a serious person and have so much hate for all three luminaries? Keep it to one, please!
I’d had enough at this point, so I had to chime in again:
Hey, you can talk to me, if you want. I founded the Winnipeg Skeptics five years ago.
While I would have perhaps phrased things a little more diplomatically, I’m certainly no more interested in having the Winnipeg Skeptics associated with Dawkins, Harris, or (especially) Shermer than Ashlyn is. Given what they’ve said recently, and the reaction that we’ve seen in some quarters of the various secular communities, you can’t possibly be naïve enough to be surprised when some people don’t respond positively to your “luminaries”.
As I said, you can talk to me, but you probably don’t want to. I may have started the group, but Ashlyn is the group’s organizer and leader, so talking to me won’t get you anywhere.
You should also probably learn to take “no” for an answer.
This apparently annoyed them a little, because they fired back:
Hi Gem,
I already marked you as a no.
You are a smart, evidence-based person, right? So I have to tell you that you have your facts wrong.
You are the one who is naïve. From the thousands of groups that I have reached out to, and have traded email personally with about 400 of them, yours seems to be the only one shaking with loathing about the academics who have done so much for the secular movement.
Perhaps you’ve fallen victim to groupthink, the idea that your tiny community of friends represents the viewpoint of the world. No one’s going to take you seriously with that attitude.
The fact is, if you are open to facts, that Richard Dawkins personally has more Facebook followers than the whole secular movement put together, and while some people have their concerns, we generally love him. You are the one in the minority.
Hey, facts are facts, I guess.