Richard Dawkin's new book warns against denial of scientific truth by ‘astonishingly vicious’ trans activists and other threats on science

Institutional distrust has certainly left a vacuum for a post truth culture/Trumpism to take hold whereby 'common sense'/emotional thinking has replaced deference to scientific rigour/method & expertise.

And Dawkins certainly has exploited the masses ignorance & vulnerability on such matters. The claim that 'Sex is not Binary' is cynically 'repackaged' into 'activists are claiming the the binary nature of the sex reproduction system isn't real' when in fact that's not the claim. As I said upthread:

"‘Sex’ is often semantically flattened into a binary model, for which individuals are classified as either ‘female’ or ‘male.’ A more expansive definition of sex is bimodal—with most individuals falling within one of two peaks of a trait distribution. However, even a bimodal model is an oversimplification, since ‘sex’ comprises multiple traits, with variable distributions. Individuals may possess different combinations of chromosome type, gamete size, hormone level, morphology, and social roles, which do not always align in female- and male-specific ways or persist across an organism’s lifespan. Reliance on strict binary categories of sex fails to accurately capture the diverse and nuanced nature of sex."

IE It's a deliberate conflation of the reproductive sex system with 'sex traits' that effectively ignores the ambiguity in outcomes or tail end distribution. In other words within the reproductive system there's capacity for variation that has real world implications on gender categorisations that Dawkins would know & conveniently ignores.

Actually I do think that the deliberate simplification of scientific concepts by science outreach people over the last one or two decades is the reason why so many people now are overly confident in their own understanding of science (while being completely oblivious to the things they don't even know they don't know) but sex is really this simple: two sexes, two types of gametes, evolutions way of increasing genetic variability and therefore more for natural selection to work on and to respond to changing environments. You either make viable gametes and produce viable and fertile offspring or you don't, evolution doesn't care about your feelings and convoluted ideas about sex and gender and rainbows and unicorns.

You're begging the question.

Also I think you're inaccurate in accusing him of misinformation, leastways with regard to the example you give. Giving one's opinion is just that: it's not a misstatement of any fact (obviously I don't agree with him but that's beside the point.)

His obvious expertise in such matters is why he's deliberately over simplifying the binary reproductive system by not including bi/multi modal sex distinctions.

I think that's a reach. He's a biologist, ie, better informed on some subjects than others.

Saying precisely what he’s saying now. He’s been outspoken on this for ages. He was stripped of his Humanist of the Year Award by the American Humanist Association for this stance back in early 2021.

Yabbut the point you're missing is RD is hardly a reliable source because he has form on oversimplification of issues such as religion, rape & the binary nature of sex that coincide with his propensity for grudges particularly against those who called him out for his misrepresentations.

The post above illustrates why. The idea that he just casually threw out an offensive remark about Christian parents has been taken to be true. When it wasn’t.

It’s perfectly fine to agree or disagree with Dawkins. It’s perfectly fine to disagree with him on one thing and not the other. What is not fine, in my view, is to disagree with him, or anyone for that matter, because what they said hasn’t really been read or understood properly.

I only intended to illustrate that it isn't necessary to agree with Dawkins on everything to think he's got a point about sex. It's hardly a point that needs illustrating. Isn't it obvious?

But it wasn’t a “remark”. He explained his view in an essay, not a “remark”. It almost predates the existence of Twitter.

And no one has said all of his thoughts should be taken as “gospel”. Where has anyone said that? He’s right about sex though. Don’t you think?

A remark can be wrong and obnoxious and extremely offensive and thought out all at the same time.

Just because he's Dawkins doesn't mean he's right all the time. Expecting people to nod along and give him the benefit of the doubt or never question his tone or content is demanding craven compliance.

He would laugh heartily at the idea that his thoughts should be taken as gospel.

Except it isn't purely semantic, and JKR had threats to her life.

This can be seen in the trans debate and which side of it most of the new atheists fell on.

Yes, he’s surprised that so called atheists and humanists have so easily fallen into line believing in a different religion, one they can’t see they are disciples of because there’s no God figure at the centre of it (yet).

It wasn’t an “obnoxious remark”. It was a thought out essay he wrote in 2006:

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150217191437/old.richarddawkins.net/articles/118" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20150217191437/old.richarddawkins.net/articles/118

But you are correct, regardless of this, it doesn’t change the fact that men aren’t women and Dawkins is correct for saying so.

Christians, particularly in recent times don't all necessarily believe in the 'miracles' part though, rather choosing to emphasise the value of Jesus' moral teachings as relevant to everyday life. I was raised this way as I raised my children so its inaccurate to characterise Christianity as a false belief.

The Thomas Jefferson bible famously omits all miracles performed by Jesus, as well as mentions of angels, the supernatural, and Jesus's resurrection. Jefferson compiled his own version of the Gospels by cutting and pasting passages to focus solely on what he considered Jesus's core moral and philosophical teachings, believing that supernatural events were not essential to the fundamental doctrines of his message. He aimed to create a guide for spiritual solace and guidance, focusing on Jesus's ethical instructions rather than divine claims or miraculous interventions.

So Dawkins clearly has form on propagating misinformation when it serves a personal or political outcome for him.

I think Dawkins himself has revised his thoughts on the fundamentals of this proposition. It rests on the premise that believing things that are untrue is always harmful and encouraging others to do so, especially using power corrosively, is harmful, and in the later case unethical. Therefore, raising a child in a Christian orthodoxy that requires the belief in things that can't be true is harmful and thus a type of child abuse - the severity of which can be debated. Logically that is a coherently sound argument.

Where Dawkins has modified his thinking , and indeed has had his word view shaken, is his observation of the extent to which Christian untrue beliefs seem to provide a psychological resistance to believing other untrue and much more harmful things - and becoming fanatical about promoting them. This can be seen in the trans debate and which side of it most of the new atheists fell on.

Perhaps read the article I linked for clarification of why Dawkins is considered a rape apologist:

"A woman was alleging that a man raped her when she was too drunk to give consent, and Dawkins’s immediate response was the mainstay of all conservatives: What if she’s lying? Plenty of Dawkins’s Twitter followers agreed with him. It’s her word against his, they cried. Rape accusations are serious business, they cried.

Yes, rape accusations are serious business. Actually, accusing anyone of a crime, especially a violent crime, is serious business. That’s why we have court systems in place that determine, to the best of their abilities, whether a given accusation is most likely true or false. We have this for virtually every crime. So why are Dawkins and his ilk so preoccupied about false accusations of rape in a world full of false accusations?

The “accuser-might-be-lying” theory inevitably pops up around every rape case. But false accusations of rape occur in only about 2 to 3 percent of cases. That’s roughly the same rate as false accusations of other violent crimes, according to the US Justice Department. Studies in the UK have yielded similar results, but the myth of the always-lying rape accuser persists.

Keir Starmer, England’s Director of Public Prosecutions, stated that rape investigations are “undermined by [the] belief that false accusations are rife.” Dawkins obviously fancies himself the king of reason, yet he buys wholesale into this frat-boy mentality. It’s reasonable to assume an accused person is innocent until proven guilty, but Dawkins is cherry-picking rape cases as the only focus of his doubt.

He clearly thinks of himself as someone who flies in the face of the status quo, a maverick who plays by his own God-free rules. The problem is that his perception of the status quo is completely wrong. It’s not edgy to suggest that rape survivors are to blame for their own rape. Victim blaming is the status quo. Courts, media, and the public at large have thrown at rape survivors every insane excuse you can imagine, from “You shouldn’t have been drunk” to “You couldn’t possbly have been raped because you were wearing skinny jeans.”
And Dawkins didn’t stop at questioning the alleged victim’s motives. He went on to compare being raped to driving drunk, with a couple more classy tweets in which he got both sarcastic and defensive of men: “…If you want to drive, don’t get drunk. If you want to be in a position to testify & jail a man, don’t get drunk,” and “Officer, it’s not my fault I was drunk driving. You see, someone got me drunk.”

In Dawkins’s mind, women seem to set out to “testify and jail men,” the same way that designated drivers consciously decide not to drink at a party. So if a woman gets drunk and passes out, that’s her fault for failing to better plan around her goal: testifying and jailing a man. "

Dawkins said that people who bring up their children as Christians are child abusers. So on his definition that includes me.

A completely obnoxious remark but one that has precisely nothing to do with his views on the scientific basis for the difference between the sexes, a subject on which he, as a biologist, is expert. If he was a philosopher too he might remind his opponents of Occam's razor.

Yes, my bad, I forgot to discern between which of the many non-sequitur links you repeatedly post 🤣

How genes influence behaviour? If you really want me to….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_genetics

To be fair, it's usually Tandora who comes out with this stuff. Different posters, same AI-assisted word salad. 🤭

Here you go again. Are you going to post the link to the article you’ve posted repeatedly about sex and behaviour? Go on, for originality 🙄

Social roles as in some people's natural inclinations don't necessarily align with societal expectations and norms dictating how individuals should act, think, and behave based on their reproductive sex category sex.

Inclinations are biologically influenced by genes & hormones.

Either way mate, nothing you’ve said on this thread is new or different in its nonsense to stuff you’ve said before.

Now that we’ve established you’re a broken record, how about a novel discussion about why Dawkins is wrong about what he’s said, not because of other things he’s said?