Famed Atheist Richard Dawkins: Did He Profit from Family Slave Fortune?

What a ridiculous non-story smear job.

To harass Dawkins for things his distant ancestors did is a sign of desperation – if you look far back enough into anyone's family history you're likely to find someone who did something wrong. We can't hold people responsible for what their ancestors did in times when they weren't even born to influence them at all.

And not a single fuck was given by anyone with a lick of sense.

This is pathetic. Obviously they were scrabbling for an angle on the poll that his foundation released showing what the UK people meant when they called themselves christian. We need a pointless distraction they said.

The slave trade economically benefited whites in all the economies it supported, without ever leading to adequate punishments for those who carried it out, or compensation for those tortured through it. The idea that one could possibly single out a white person today, and pin all accountability for the slave trade on them, is ludicrous. The persons/people banging this drum just make themselves look idiotic when they allege that Dawkins has a "slave supporting gene." Logically, what would that even mean? That one is supporting slaves? This stupidity does not offer any convincing rebuttal to anything Dawkins has ever said. The petulant holy fool Adam Lusher who wrote the idiotic article about Dawkins has not done one thing to prove that his religion isn't a crock of manure.

pickings are slim?
Such utter bullshit!
Victor Stenger, Greta Cristina, Rebecca Watson, PZ Myers, Matt Dillahunty, Dan Barker, Ophelia Benson, Steven Pinker, Jerry Coyne, Bill Gates, Ayaan Hirshi Ali, Stephen Hawking, Debbie Goddard, Anthony Grayling and I could name twice the amount more of atheists being real role models in the world today.
Try to find a journalist worthy of the title, THAT is nearly impossible nowadays.

**the Telegraph reporter who wrote the article called him and quoted a Biblical passage about the Lord “visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” **.

Interesting when earlier in the article.

**a Telegraph article that mentions Dawkins’ great-to-the-fifth-power grandfather, Henry Dawkins, who owned some 1,013 Jamaican slaves before his death in 1744**.

So at least Dawkins is safe from God's punishment by a generation? lol

Slavery was common place thousands of years ago, the bible even ensdorses it. Ephesians chapter 6 verse 5 even tells slaves to obey their masters as they would Christ. It would be interesting to see if you could find people who didn't have ancestors that owned or used slaves, and probably very very difficult.

I would view the article with the contempt it deserves, and no more.

How could Dawkins be held accountable for his grandfather to the 5th degree? This is just grasping for anything to distract from Dawkins' message which just irritates the hell out of Christians whose leader, Jesus, never challenged slavery, nor did St. Paul when he wrote how a master should treat a slave. No New Testament Christians questioned the practice of owning another human being as property. This is why the Bible was used as evidence of god's approval of slavery, contrary to the abolitionist movement ideology.

Not only that but Dawkins is very adamantly against slavery and being an evolutionary biologist he knows that we all originated from the Cradle of Civilization. His organization has even made shirts that say, "We Are All Africans". Whoever started this whole thing about Dawkins stinks of red herring.

Coming from a poor background, I know of no slave owners among my ancestors. But I will go on the record to say that I am the grandson of a Klansman, a fact of which I am not proud. Should I be denigrated for the faults of my ancestors? Rational people would, one would hope, say no. On the other hand we have Christians, demonizing Dr. Dawkins for having a many times removed ancestor who held slaves at a time when their church actively supported the practice. I am sure we all have words to describe this reprehensible attack on a man of reason and science.

Charles Miller, Executive Director, Secular Coalition for Alabama.

Well, the intrepid journalist might have mentioned 'modern' slave trading was largely set up by god-fearing Dutch calvinists… whose church told them their coloured fellow men weren't actually fellow men but soulless heathen creatures, which could, therefore, be sold and abused freely…

Is this serious? it just makes me laugh! "slave supporting gene"? hahahahaha

Who gives a flying CRAP what his ancestors did. My ancestors used to live in trees. This isn't even news. No wonder the UK press is under fire.

Well, one of the most enthousiastic supporters of slavery, who also supplied the theoretical foundation, was actually John Locke – now considered the founding father of liberalism.

So maybe he had the 'slave supporting gene' too then!

The author of this snide, biased article should try honest, objective, meaningful reporting for a change.

Hilarious in a way to see how far a once respectable and trusted newspaper has fallen. Muck raking and ad hominems are now standard fare there. Still, it was originally set up to act as an organ to air a personal grevance so what can you expect? This gutter snipe reporting is now de rigeur in the age of Murdoch corrupted dumbed down media in the UK. Even papers he doesn't own have to follow the slide downwards.

Then there is the other culprit in this cack fest….The Daily Mail. Known in the UK as the paper that once supported Oswald Moseley and his British Black Shirt fascist movement, and ran Nazi-symapthetic news stories pre ww2. Once ran a headline of "Hurrah For The Blackshirts!"……ah what a short collective memory their reporters have.