Richard Dawkins - request for discussion on Identity

[MrsMidClegs]

"In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as.

Discuss."

twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/1380812852055973888?s=21

. They found a reliable sex based size and density difference in the nucleus, It could be reasonably considered a primary sex characteristic however they also found a statistically significant contralateral relationship between straight and gay subjects and expected INAH3 size.

By definition it could only be a secondary sex characteristic if it is not actually involved in reproduction.

Sorry forgot quote marks.

Probably not much of a surprise but Jerry Coyne (whyevolutionistrue.com) came out to support Dawkins:

whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/04/13/the-friendly-atheist-is-not-so-friendly-damns-richard-dawkins-as-transphobic-for-equating-transexualism-with-transracialism/

Yet again it's striking how elements of the atheist movement are so keen on burning of the heretics.

What a monumentally stupid thing to do. We have a humanist organisation punishing someone for wrongthink and the ACLU punishing people for wrongspeak.

Lunacy.

"Crowd-sourced McCarthysm". What a fantastic and incisive description.

I forget that the US has form for this type of witchhunt. Their self-image as a tolerant democracy is belied by the strand of their DNA which is conformist, authoritarian and insular.

Yet again it's striking how elements of the atheist movement are so keen on burning of the heretics.

Isn't it just. Not so rational after all.

It's the problem with taking beliefs and making them part of your identity. It often goes wrong at that point, at least because when people express contrary beliefs you take it as an attack on you personally, on your very being.

Poor old Richard. Well, he's demonstrated that he was right - not merely You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as but if you even have the temerity to wish to discuss this.
He's never been afraid of controversy, I hope this will encourage him to engage more with the subject.

Every time I think maybe I'm overestimating the authoritarianism of this ideology someone goes and proves me wrong.

Well, good. Dawkins is a man with a big audience. Let's see how this all plays out.

Also, Thanks Adhom for the info on brains, I somehow missed that you'd posted all that! Very interesting, I will look into further.

To mangle a quote from a well-known series of books:

Dawkins is good at standing up to those he perceives to be his enemies (ie religious people). Will he be courageous enough to stand up to his friends?

It will be interesting to watch.

I can't seem to attach a screenshot but that AHA tweet has some ratio. 253 likes to 1.2k comments. It seems their followers aren't very impressed.

Sunlight. That's what incidents like this result in. Sunlight shining brightly, showing people who know nothing of what has gone before, what is happening now.

Oh, yes. Interesting to see the ratio.

@PaleBlueMoonlight

. They found a reliable sex based size and density difference in the nucleus, It could be reasonably considered a primary sex characteristic however they also found a statistically significant contralateral relationship between straight and gay subjects and expected INAH3 size.

By definition it could only be a secondary sex characteristic if it is not actually involved in reproduction.

Palebluemoonlight. Very true. I hadn't thought of that. I will revise my rationale. Thanks

Rupert Sheldrake might be having a quiet chuckle somewhere....

Solidarity with Richard Dawkins.

By coincidence I'm reading one of his books at the moment, The Greatest Show on Earth. Fascinating stuff. He's obviously a man who likes a debate and is clear of his convictions.

Re the humanist tweet - some of the replies are getting many times more likes than the original. Good.

I had a great chuckle at the news this morning. It is fantastic sunlight on the gender dogma that must not be questioned. 21st century blasphemy. Lots more people will start asking questions.

I get the sense she has such a strong sense that her judgement is right (which it is) that she knows in the longer term her reputation will only benefit from her current stand even if there is a period of people hating her first. She will be remembered for her courage and decency over and above HP, I think, because she has been really brave.

I think JKR has taken a really principled position on this, and seems to be a money-where-her-mouth-is person as well - but I will say that my sense of her previously was that she was herself very much inclined to be woke, in the sense of othering and really disparaging, bordering on cancelling, viewpoints that she didn't agree with.

I've wondered if this whole experiences has made her look at all of that differently. Not that she owes me an explanation, but I do find myself wondering. There are people and activists who disagree with silencing on issues like this but don't seem to get the problem with it in other areas - for them it's all about the fact that in this instance, they are right.

My gut feeling is that she's insightful enough to see that but I'd be interested to hear her talk about it.

@Abhannmor

Rupert Sheldrake might be having a quiet chuckle somewhere....

Yes, I live RS. He is a big crazy but he is not afraid of weird ideas.

this looks interesting, posted by Dawkins on Twit: journalofcontroversialideas.org/page/135

There's something darkly amusing about all of this - it was easy for Dawkins's acolytes to pour scorn when the opposition was safely othered "faithheads" who were quite clearly not "people like us".

So much harder when the people with the irrational beliefs are the ones you'd always thought of as being on your side. A lesson for us all.

I wouldn't be surprised SmokedDuck. I can relate to her as I was more woke than not at one point and as I have thought about some things more and seen cancel culture in action, I have become more open minded and tolerant to different perspectives than mine. It's a good job I don't have the same scrutiny as her because my simple changing my mind based on learning more information might be framed as being a hypocrite in the public eye.

Yes, that's why I wouldn't want to be accusatory, it's not like many people don't have experiences of suddenly seeing things differently in a wider perspective. The whole wokeness/identity politics/"left' progressive culture seems to be creating this experience for more and more people.

I'd hate to be in the public eye being criticised for such a change. But - I think it might be something worth having a little more public awareness about. In a way it seems to me that it's a bigger issue than gender ideology.

Yes Smoked Duck and of course Dawkins thinks his books should be burned. It is a very interesting state of affairs to put it mildly!

As others have said, fascinating and ironic in equal measure. Heading down a number of rabbit holes and I found this interesting opinion piece:

The intellectuals were succeeded by the activists. Early Internet Argument Culture disappeared and was replaced by something more familiar.

The atheists of Early Internet Argument Culture were not New Atheists. The term “New Atheism” didn’t really catch on until about 2006 when Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion; Early Internet Argument Culture was just a prelude to the main event. Post-2006 atheists were brasher and more political. They were less interested in arguing with religious people about the minutiae of carbon-dating; they were more interested in posting about how stupid carbon-dating denalists were, on their own social media feeds, read entirely by other atheists. The concept of the Internet as magical place where you could change other people’s minds had given way to the Internet as magical place where you could complain to like-minded friends about how ignorant other people were.

slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/