Richard Dawkins Hangman

April 7, 2013 By 18 Comments

I don’t know what inspired this game, but I can’t say I didn’t play it 13 times in a row.

(via @lereveeveille)

Filed Under: General, Science 18 Comments
About Hemant Mehta

Hemant Mehta is the chair of Foundation Beyond Belief and a high school math teacher in the suburbs of Chicago. He began writing the Friendly Atheist blog in 2006. His latest book is called The Young Atheist's Survival Guide.

  • Mackinz

    I seem to have killed Mr. Dawkins several times over…

    Does this make me a closet creationist?

    • mcrotk

      No, but calling him Mr. Dawkins does.

      • http://itsmyworldcanthasnotyours.blogspot.com/ wmdkitty

        Or it could just be a respectful form of address when one does not have a personal relationship with the person in question.

        • Mackinz

          This is exactly it.

          I have nothing but respect (okay, maybe some questions) for Mr. Dawkins, even though I lack any form of personal relationship with him.

        • mcrotk

          I meant for calling him Mr Dawkins as opposed to calling him Dr Dawkins or Prof Dawkins, not as opposed to calling him Richard, as you seemed to have assumed. And the reason I said this is that atheists usually seem to understand that this is what you’re supposed to call professors (if you are going to be formal), whereas usually if you hear (or see) someone call him Mr Dawkins, it’s a good bet that what follows is going to be some sort of creationist attack. My joke stemmed from you apparently being a counterexample to this rule.

          Here’s one example: http://doubtingdawkins.com/

          Another was at theGlobal Atheist Convention in Melbourne, when, after many kind questions, someone asked from the back “Mr Dawkins….” and I thought, ‘here it comes…” and sure enough, it was someone announcing their faith and trying to nail him with some question about the evolution of DNA (which he of course provided a wonderful and informative answer to).

          I’m not sure how old you are, but hopefully not yet in college, because if you’ve been referring to your professors as Mr (or Mrs or Ms or Miss), I assure you that they have not taken it as a form of respect.

          • http://itsmyworldcanthasnotyours.blogspot.com/ wmdkitty

            No, we were usually on first-name-basis in my college classes, so…

  • John Small Berries

    Win or lose, both scores remain at zero. Programming error, or subtle commentary on the creation/evolution debate?

  • A3Kr0n

    It’s a trick!

  • JohnnieCanuck

    Doesn’t take much to repurpose this. Just change the title to anything you want.

    Save Pope Francis from the Atheists!

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Hugh-Kramer/1217598709 Hugh Kramer

    Don’t know how well Hemant did, but using his base of 13 tries, I managed to kill Richard Dawkins twice :(

  • Rain

    Isn’t that how Kirk destroyed an alien robot on Star Trek once? I think he told it a double negative and then th robot went into a logic loop and self-destructed. This is the power of the double negative to wreak havoc.

    • http://twitter.com/WCLPeter Rob U

      Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve seen that one.

      Now I’m going to spend a week trying to remember the name so I can find my old Columbia Record Club tape set that I bought when I was a teen, 2 episodes at 20 bucks a pop – I was young and a fan, and watch it. Of course you can never watch just one episode of Classic Trek, they’re just too good, so now I’ll be embroiled in a week long quest to find this particular episode.

      Of course I haven’t used a VCR in years, I don’t even know if the tapes work! But I think its time I dust them both off and give it a shot. :-)

      Thanks for memory.

      • Rain

        “The Changeling”, although I horribly misrepresented the plot. NOMAD actually says “non sequitur” three times, which I never knew until just now! Probably because I never even heard of non sequiturs until the internets came along.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZwVCjhq3YI

    • http://itsmyworldcanthasnotyours.blogspot.com/ wmdkitty

      Ah, a Logic Bomb!

      (Scroll down to “Live Action TV” — almost all of it is Star Trek examples.)

      • Rain

        Wow I had completely forgotten about all the other computers Kirk destroyed with their own logic, lol. That was a good series. The other ones just don’t live up to the original series.

  • Michael

    I think the compulsion comes from it not giving you anything but a new game when you win.

  • http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/ Kevin_Of_Bangor

    My 2nd one was the word agnostic. Found that amusing and like John Small Berries stated. The score remains the same even when you do win.

  • James

    I know I’m not the only one who looked up frequency of letters in the English language to gain a slight advantage on this game. Stats work. Hemant, I’m looking in your direction…


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