Are you kidding me?
"Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think."
"Mild pedophilia is bad. Violent pedophilia is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of mild pedophilia, go away and learn how to think."
"Mild date rape is bad. Violent date rape is worse."
Dawkins might as well say "I'm a genius and an atheist, your emotions are irrelevant."
Regardless of point being made, Rape and pedophilia do not have 'degrees'. One touch is enough to severely alter someone's future.
Internet comments sections tend to be the favourite soap box of Atheists who inevitably suffer the same intellectual arrogance as the religious fanatics they so enthusiastically persecute.
An open mind is a wonderful thing. It seeks possibility, it desires revelation, it tests all and upholds the good. Whether religion or science, the open mind has one objective: to find answers.
The closed mind is fanatical. It is so obsessed with its own perception that any conflicting belief system becomes the enemy. Bitterness seeps and drips from the soul, evil starts to have 'degrees', insensitivity to how others feel becomes justified and in essence, humanity is slowly replaced with a robotic contempt for all opposing ideas.
Christian fanatics, Muslim fanatics, Jewish fanatics, Atheist fanatics - there is no difference, the loss of humanity is the same. When your belief system becomes more important than humanity itself, you have lost your way.
Love, peace, joy, acceptance, security <-- That's the stuff that makes us tick and the only stuff that will create a future worth living in. Only tyrants and fools refuse to acknowledge human emotional needs. We are emotional beings - without those pesky feelings we might as well be robots.
You can sing the praises of scientists, biologists, doctors and mechanics all you like but if the future they are creating is not focused on a safe, emotionally secure environment for our kids then what the heck is the point?
If the objective is not happiness then what is the point?
I have no desire for an advanced technological society if it has no humanity.