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Originally Posted by Knalus
You mean you actually don't see the answer to that question staring you in the face? There are many skeptical and atheist women. But when the community is marked by asshats and ######bags like Dawkins and Hitchens, with their intentionally aggressive and angry message, why is there a question?
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Dawkins is far from aggressive and angry, he's quite mild mannered and he's very much to the point when he discusses religion. To many he's great, some people obviously don't like him, I can certainly see why he's not everyones cup of tea. Hitchens is a fierce debater and can be extremely funny. He's definitely one of my favorites in the movement, but again I can see why some would not like his approach; I think this all stems from religions long standing rule of being above criticism, which is no longer the case in many countries (thankfully.)
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Until the community is run and identified by less self-aggrandizing, belligerent individuals, you'll have difficulty growing your ranks with any individual other than young males who look at that aggression as inspiring. Too bad Carl Sagan is dead. I didn't particularly agree with him on everything, but at least he made his point of view palatable.
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I'm not sure how much you know about the movement, Hitchens and Dawkins are big in the movement, but are by no means representative of all of it. Neil deGrasse Tyson (agnostic), James Randi (the cute dwarf), Sam Harris (the atheist spirtualist), Bill Nye the science guy, Hehma Menta (the friendly atheist), Adam/Jamie (the mythbusters), Penn & Teller (duh), Lawrence Krauss (physicist), and mr nice bear Daniel Dennett (philosopher,) are just the tip of the iceberg, I've left out a lot I'm sure of the movements key players.
Thats to name a few, mind you the media loves to focus on Dawkins, Hitchens because media is all about ratings and those guys give sound bites that attract viewers. Within the actual humanist, atheist, skeptical, rationalists movements those guys while stars are far from being leaders or even the most respected. But I get that people who aren't active in this movement won't know this, I just thought I'd point this out for you outsiders.