You can read Mark Twain’s Creed here, where he spells out what he does and does not believe:

http://philosophiesofmen.blogspot.com/2012/01/mark-twain-and-god-almighty.html 

ummm… ok … 1910 minus 2010 equals … negative 100 … so the book should have been published in 1810?

that can’t be right

That is one component for sure, and the main component as I see it.

A more superficial level is piety. It’s what encodes that “special” and controls language. Mocking or using foul language at that very concept is of course also rude but it’s a surface battle and it’s the one where the one offended has an easier time to brand it as rude. After all it was mocking and used foul language.

It’s actually hard to really address the whole concept without rejection both restrictions. Piety encodes so much that criticism is hard to impossible. And mockery is one of the most direct way to show that the emperor has no cloths after all.

So I would in a sense concede that yes, some people are rude. But it’s about the control of people’s ideas, not about maintaining a pleasant world. In a pleasant world one could say that the emperor has no cloths without that causing indignation.

I have used the fact that Twain was a brilliant atheistic polemicist in many a debate that claims that the “rudeness” is new. Not at all, outspoken atheism is as old as people not being afraid to say what they think.

As long as we’re in the minority, atheists will always be considered rude. This made me think of the old story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, often referenced by atheists. Reading more about it, I had forgotten that the tailors of the “new clothes” told people that only the unfit or stupid would be unable to see them. I always assumed the people in the story were silent because they didn’t want to appear rude or disagree with the Emperor, that it was all peer pressure.

According to Wikipedia, Hans Christian Anderson added the kid pointing out the emperor was nude at the very last minute, while the story was at the printers; it was based on his own childhood experience.

In 1872, he recalled standing in a crowd with his mother waiting to see King Frederick VI. When the king made his appearance, Andersen cried out, “Oh, he’s nothing more than a human being!” His mother tried to silence him by crying, “Have you gone mad, child?”

No doubt his mother thought he was being rude.

Um, no, Hitch. It’s about the topic, not about you, and you are certainly not the only person I’ve tangled with on the topic. You just happened to be the one who brought up “rudeness” this time around. It could have been, Aj, for example, who said what you said and I would have responded just the same.

Hitch: “I do not expect him to be accessible to argument. He apologizes sexism against women and stereotyping of atheists and has over years of arguing never moved to an empathic position.”

I’m tempted to accuse you of lying, but I’m afraid that you actually believe what you say. If I want to be cynical, I could accuse you of suggesting that it is perfectly acceptable to fabricate or confabulate claims of a “chorus that cheered and jeered,” but not to point out that it is a fabrication, or that it is okay to quote-mine someone to give the misleading impression that someone is agreeing that someone else is a “tw*t” instead of contradicting it. If you want to spout further falsehoods, I suggest you do it somewhere else.

Well, that and even if I hadn’t already dealt with what he said, his failure to reply to the matter of the definition of argumentum ad Naziium meant that any further discussion would be irrelevant anyway.

But the quick summary:

Basically he promotes the idea that the new atheists brought it upon themselves that they are negatively stereotyped. You should consider his remarks in that context.

I do not expect him to be accessible to argument. He apologizes sexism against women and stereotyping of atheists and has over years of arguing never moved to an empathic position.

I would basically recommend to ignore him. He’s here to troll me.

More like, let’s not lump in laudable wit from Twain with less laudable stuff. The “New Atheists” are a mixed bag, and we don’t need to use the cachet of Mark Twain to make them look better than they really are.

Now comparing the New Atheists to Robert Ingersoll would be near perfect, as they share common flaws as well as a common brashness.

Greg: “Perhaps you ought to reread what he actually did say.”

It’s obvious that Dawkins was comparing Eugenie Scott with Neville Chamberlain and calling them both appeasers. It’s also obvious that Dawkins believes that Eugenie Scott (and the NCSE in general) is appeasing theistic evolutionists, and it’s conventional wisdom that Chamberlain appeased the Nazis. If you can’t figure out from all this that Dawkins was saying that the NCSE is appeasing theistic evolutionists like Chamberlain appeased the Nazis, then it’s not me who has a comprehension problem.

The “argument ad Naziium” isn’t as narrow as you suggest, but rather is about overblown comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis in general.

Then I suggest you check the link that was supplied in the article you directed me to. (I checked it to make sure my understanding of the fallacy was correct.)

To be brutally honest, it couldn’t be considered a logical fallacy if it was something as loose as ‘overblown comparisons’. An overblown comparison, after all, is not a logical error.

What Orac said was quoted above. The contrast between what he said and what you claimed he said should be evident.

I have double checked it, and it certainly is not evident. Bear in mind that I was also using your own link between Moran and Dawkins.

(Yes, Orac is referring to Larry Moran in this paragraph rather than Dawkins, but he points out that Moran got the argument from Dawkins, and the underlying folly of it is the same for both.)

I suspect the problem, here, however, is the point addressed at the start of this post. (About the definition of argumentum ad Naziium.)

True. Comparing, say, Obama to Hitler (as some Tea Partiers have done) is indeed bad in the same way any analogy or reference is bad. But then, so is a comparison of theistic evolutionists to Hitler–and that’s what Dawkins did.

No, he didn’t. Perhaps you ought to reread what he actually did say.