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Richard Dawkins

The Tweets of a Dick

In 2006, if you had asked to any self-professed rationalist/atheist who was the person he or she admired the most, 2 out of 3 the name Richard Dawkins would have surfaced. That same year Wired magazine published an article titled 'The Church of the Non-Believers', in which Dawkins was listed among Sam Harris & Daniel Dennet as one of the undisputed leaders of a growing secularist movement, commonly referred nowadays as the nu-atheists.

Fast forward to 2013, and things have changed dramatically. The author of 'The God Delusion' is not only frequently accused of bigotry & sexist views by the opponents of nu-atheism, but he has even managed to become a public embarrassment to many people who share his distaste for religion. Last Thursday Dawkins wrote this on Twitter:

The 'logic' being here, I assume, that Muslims have nothing to show for themselves in the last thousand years or so after they gave us algebra, since obviously a Nobel prize is the most rigurous way to gauge contributions to society; also, that the scarcity of Muslim recipients of the prestigious award must be somehow directly correlated to the nepharious influence of Islam –never mind the myriad of different economic, social & political circumstances that might stiffle a nation's support to scientific research. Cogito Ergo BUM!

And like an ancient biblical plague, the backlash came in hard & fast: "As an atheist and a secularist who wants religion to be a private matter, I despair of Richard Dawkins being a figurehead for non-believers," wrote columnist Owen Jones on his Twitter account. He followed up at his column on The Independent:

As a non-believer, I want the atheist case to be made. I want religious belief to be scrutinised and challenged. I want Britain to be a genuinely secular nation, where religious belief is protected and defended as a private matter of conscience. But I feel prevented from doing so because atheism in public life has become so dominated by a particular breed that ends up dressing up bigotry as non-belief. It is a tragedy. And that is why it is so important that atheists distance themselves from those who undermine our position. Richard Dawkins can rant and rave about Muslims as much as he wants. But atheists: let's stop allowing him to do it in our name.

Yet Dawkins, following the usual tactics he relies on when being challenged, keeps insisting his Tweet was not fueled by bigotry but by "exasperation at hearing boasts of (a) how numerous Muslims are in the world and (b) how great is their science." And his (still many) sympathizers have gone out on his defense claiming he was 'only stating a fact' –It's another fact that Mexico has less Nobel Prize winners than Trinity College(*) as well; no doubt Dawkins would blame the Virgin of Guadalupe for that.

But is that fact(oid) the proper way to support rationalism & the defense of the separation between church & state? or is it more likely the latest example of the current Islamophobic trend sweeping  Europe, where aging white citizens are watching with dread the non-stopping influx of young immigrants, arriving every day to France, Germany & Spain from poor countries in Africa & the Middle East? Something which has prompted the re-emergence of far-right ultranationalist movements –read: Fascists— the likes of which might be all too  happy to have someone like Dawkins on their side –they sure hate burkas as much as he does!

Whatever path the nu-atheists decide to take in order to improve their image & move away from the polarization provoked by their most vocal spokespersons, one thing is for sure: With those kind of Tweets, Dawkins will not be receiving a Nobel Peace Prize any time soon.

 

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(*) Hmmm, I wonder what that college's name stands for…

 

  1. A Muslim a Mexican & a Scouser Walked into a Nobel Prize Bar…
    Ooer!

    I actually thought this was a rare example of Greg at his most withering.

    But since it’s you RPJ I can only say to you what I was go’n’o say to him…

    Beautiful beautiful beautiful!

    …also…

    Very funny!

    The cosmic joke here of course is Richard Dawkins effectively identifies the Nobel Prize as the bench mark he sets greatest store by yet the Nobel Prize winners’re voted for by various committees and one of the things said of those committees for a long long time now is they too often show signs of partisanship ie if your face doesn’t fit you’ve no chance of winning.

    In which case instead of using the Nobel Prize as some sort of scientific survey of cultural plausibility maybe Richard should be asking why so few Muslims’ve won it.

    Put it this way if a Muslim or a Mexican’d used Sellotape to discover graphene they’d’ve probably been lucky to win a Blue Peter badge never mind a Nobel Prize!

    1. Thanks
      Yeah, we usually live it to Greg’s capable hands (and keyboard) to cover these topics, but I had a couple of hours to kills & ever since yesterday I’d been meaning to make a comment on Dawkins’ latest SNAFU 😉

      Put it this way if a Muslim or a Mexican’d used Sellotape to discover graphene they’d’ve probably been lucky to win a Blue Peter badge never mind a Nobel Prize!

      Good point. Also, he should also ask himself why there’s such a disparity on the number of women who have won the award, compared to the number of men.

    1. Yes
      And even though they (the atheists) hate it when you point that out to them, the thing that makes it a religion is the certainty they exhibit in thinking they’re right & everybody else is wrong.

      1. Why generalize like he does?
        You should all realize that there are atheists (like myself) who read this site and greatly enjoy it.

        Please don’t generalize like Dawkins has done, because it makes you look exactly as bad as it makes him look.

        Additionally, I take the view of supernatural phenomenon much the same way Sagan talked about. I’m pretty sure it isn’t real, but if there was evidence that convinced me otherwise I would be an idiot to ignore it. That being said, I’ve yet to see anything to convince me that there is, or needs to be, a godlike creature to be accountable for the wonders of the universe.

        Chris

        1. Atheists frequenting TDG
          [quote=chrifive916]You should all realize that there are atheists (like myself) who read this site and greatly enjoy it.
          [/quote]

          ??? I’d guess that there are many of your religious persuasion that frequent this site. I’m not sure what prompted you to state the above.

          No matter how you try to tell yourself otherwise, there is a significant difference in mindset between the person who expresses “Nah . . I’m not into religion” and the one who proclaims “I am an atheist.”

          1. It is curious to me that many
            It is curious to me that many people automatically associate the paranormal with “God.” The paranormal is as much a phenomena with a scientific explanation as anything else that manifests in the physical world. Of course there are plenty of hard boiled scientists who also believe in “God” though it is usually not the Biblical one. Einstein comes notably to mind here. this attempt to dichotomize science and the paranormal looks silly by now. The evidence for the paranormal is now overwhelming, but one does have to actually look.

          2. — The evidence for the
            — The evidence for the paranormal is now overwhelming, but one does have to actually look. —

            The majority of the info on paranormal events I’ve read about (as posted on this blog) almost always seems to have a rational explanation that doesn’t need supernatural reasons.

            Saying it is “overwhelming” is an extreme exaggeration.

          3. Paranormal
            [quote=emlong]It is curious to me that many people automatically associate the paranormal with “God.” The paranormal is as much a phenomena with a scientific explanation as anything else that manifests in the physical world. Of course there are plenty of hard boiled scientists who also believe in “God” though it is usually not the Biblical one. Einstein comes notably to mind here. this attempt to dichotomize science and the paranormal looks silly by now. The evidence for the paranormal is now overwhelming, but one does have to actually look.[/quote]

            What exactly is a ” scientific explanation”? If you mean an explanation deemed valid by current mainstream science – no it has no such thing. The canon of current mainstream science has materialism as one of its core beliefs. The whole point of the paranormal is that materialism is invalid.

            What do you mean by “hard boiled scientist”? Few of the greats are of the pedestrian materialist mind that most lay-people seem to think is a definition of scientists.

            Science – as commonly viewed/practiced – is but one method for seeking knowledge.

          4. I was responding to the use
            I was responding to the use of generalizations regarding athiesm by red pill junkie, and how they mirrored the generalizations by Dawkins.

        2. Generalizations
          Hmm. I suppose I did fall into the fallacy of painting all atheists with the same broad brush with that comment. My apologies.

          That said, wouldn’t you admit that by the content of your last paragraph, that you would fall more into the agnosticism category?

          And yet I’ve encountered several comments written by nu-atheists, who characterize agnostics as pathetic undecided apologists, and attack them for that. That I find bothersome.

          In any case, I hope that taking my latest comment aside, you managed to find some value in the general aspects of the op-ed.

    1. What? Mainstream western science is bigotted?
      Oh say it isn’t so. I mean, look, it’s full of third-world technologies given full credit to the white mostly-male europeans who absconded with the knowledge and published it as their own, and our encyclopaedia are overflowing with animals, places and things that surely did not dare to exist in anyone’s mind until someone properly white placed them in the Great Books Of Learning.

      So they surely wouldn’t dare bias their awards to those of judeo-christian extraction, would they? could they? and it probably isn’t significant that there are so many Chinese, in general I mean.

      By the way, I haven’t looked lately, but is it still true that the index of most undergraduate psychology textbooks fail to mention *any* non-white psychologists with more than a passing lip-service?

      Then again, perhaps Mexico just isn’t taunted by the empty success of some scoring white-euro award that would only evaporate in graft payments anyway, and perhaps they simply apply themselves humbly to the problems at hand, never bothering with useless citations or, dare I say, press agents?

      1. Mexico
        No, the reason we have so few Nobel winners in Mexico is because there’s never been a commitment to support Science & research in this country. That’s why Mario Molina had to emigrate to the United States, in order to continue his research on the effects of CFL gases on the ozone layer, which earned him the Nobel prize on Chemistry some years ago.

        And of course after that, he was pleaded to return to Mexico, where the authorities now treat him like a rock star 😉

        Bottomline a lack of Nobel awards can be attributed to many factors, not just one as Dawkins was alluding to with his unfortunate Tweet.

  2. A person who doesn’t believe in God is an agnostic
    Agnostic: 1 broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god.

    An atheist is a person committed to the religion of the non-existence of a deity.

    1. “What exactly is a “
      “What exactly is a ” scientific explanation”? If you mean an explanation deemed valid by current mainstream science – no it has no such thing.”

      That’s what I mean – you haven’t looked very deeply.

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