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

@Abhannmor

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!

I didn't know that, but it does not surprise me. Sheldrake has argued against scientism quite a lot, and that is really Dawkin's belief system.

That's a wonderful find, Nauticant.

I couldn't possibly measure up to it in my own writing, but I absolutely 100% agree with the authors' observations, and I really, really, really miss obsessively debating carbon dating, addressing quote-mining of Darwin's On the Origin of Species and linking to Talk: Origins.

No-one discusses any more.

It's a long article but well worth reading for anyone wondering "how did we get here?" PotholeHellhole. I heard about slatestarcodex.com some years back but it's only been recently that I've found my interests are overlapping with their commentary.

Incidentally, down in my atheist community rabbit holes there is the most startling amounts of hatred of gender critical views, much more than I'd expected.

At some point post 2007, I remember that I stopped hanging out on atheism boards, because I felt discussion had taken on a tribal tone, and it was more like a local football derby than a debating club.

(I took up reading fan-fiction instead.)

In the parlance of today, I'd say we had an influx of people for whom outspoken atheism was a luxury belief (most atheists on the internet, especially those who didn't care about doxxing, lived somewhere it was safe to be an atheist) to denote their social status.

Back then, I just said they wanted to be fashionable, and to be seen as intellectual and scientific types. Identifying as an atheist at the right time meant basking in the reflected glory of people with multiple science degrees without going to the effort of doing them yourself!

It doesn't surprise me that they've moved on to something else.

They've moved onto stuff like this:

archive.fo/C4sSN

written by an evolutionary developmental biologist called PZ Myers who has really embraced social justice as a way to attack women. What is it about evolutionary developmental biology that tends to create this kind of thinking?

Quote from Myers: I was only able to handle asingle sentence of Rowling’s screed— it was too stupid to bear

Good grief. The quality of debate really has gone downhill. With quality rejoinders like that, here is someone who would have been as much use as a chocolate teapot back in 2003!

What a child that writer sounds. Only managed one sentence? JK is dead to him?

New atheism is the missing link between arguing with religious people about the minutiae of carbon-dating and "you smell of poo".

I used to read Pharyngula by PZ Myers avidly. There was something fascinating about mixing with people taking on the worst aspects of creationism, I learnt a lot and I felt a sense of belonging, I think. It is so galling to think of Myers behaving badly - this was supposed to be a community of people who asked tough but important questions and saw through bullshit. I stopped reading his blog years ago because so many in that community just seemed to want an opportunity to sneer at others and feel superior. It became uncomfortable.

I am finding this issue with Dawkins utterly captivating as a result, though. I don't like him but I do have respect for aspects of his work and he does have a HUGE following. I think he's going to push back against this and we can only hope it will open his eyes more. So thank you so much to the AHA but also, how horrifying they can act like this. It's chilling.

I've always thought Myers was a sneering, condescending prick. Much like Dawkins, but at least Dawkins is staying true to his principles when it comes to science and religion.

There was something fascinating about mixing with people taking on the worst aspects of creationism

I suspect this is inevitably a way to descend into problems with thinking clearly. It's interesting, but often not too taxing, to pick apart the worst popular instantiations of any ideology.

What's more difficult is to uncover the basic divergences in thinking that lead people to weigh things up differently, and the most difficult and substantive is to challenge the best thinking in a particular ideological position. Dawkins, among others, studiously avoided the latter.

Picking apart half baked ideas doesn't require much care or knowledge and that leads to bad habits of thought, and perhaps a tendency to think your own ideas are much more strongly founded than is in fact the case.

PZ Meyers has blogged today that he's a good little humanist of the year, and please don't take his award away because he's ALWAYS supported trans rights! Bit sad seeing all the humanists being cowed into line.

This whole thing is just barmy to me. Dawkin's didn't slur or bad mouth trans people. He asked a question about the relation between trans gender and trans race. It's astonishing that he's been cancelled by the humanist society for asking questions. Smacks very much of Gallileo being arrested for heresy. I find it quite sinister that even just discussing trans issues at fairly abstract and theoretical levels has been construed as 'hate'. I have read loads of postmodernism and queer theory, and I've concluded for myself that I don't agree with it. Why should I be called a bigot just because I have a different theory about gender?

Quote:

The evolutionary biologist’s latest comment, the board said, “implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent...

www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/20/richard-dawkins-loses-humanist-of-the-year-trans-comments

Strictly speaking it may not actually imply that. It may be rather that we should accept trans-racial identification also. Or perhaps there is a significant difference between the cases that is worthy of discussion. Perhaps Dawkins just did want the discussion and had an open mind on the subject.

But let's assume that Dawkins is leaning towards the viewpoint that "TWAW" shouldn't be taken too seriously. I think many people would read, or guess, Dawkins was taking that sort of skeptical position.

That still doesn't exactly imply that the, "identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent". I think it would be more that in some cases transgender people would be making false or nonsensical claims about their identity.

Why would it be offensive to suggest that?

Or regardless of whether it's offensive or not, more importantly, why can it apparently just be dismissed without argument?

"You aren't validating people! If you aren't validating people then your viewpoint just has to be wrong!"

Or you're attacking a marginalised group. We don't think that's nice of you. So therefore you're wrong. Or even if technically you're correct, it doesn't matter, you don't belong in polite society when you say that stuff.

"while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient."

And I don't think Dawkins meant that at all. I think that's just a complete misrepresentation.

@Zinco

"while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient."

And I don't think Dawkins meant that at all. I think that's just a complete misrepresentation.

Of course it is. There's no implication unless you first accept the congruence of transgender and transrace, and secondly assert that there can be no such thing as transrace. There's not even a suggestion of it , necessarily. You have to read the suggestion into it for reasons of your own.

I think it's more likely that Dawkins has been reading Helen Joyce's book, and is running through ideas in his own mind. I think it's actually a Real Question! I can't wait to read the book myself, in July!

I've quoted the wrong post, I think, but you'll get what I mean.

People and publications are getting very complacent that slander and libel are permitted when the target is supposedly transphobic. Someone indulging in such casual usage is going to get a nasty shock.

The Times has covered it:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/abd3fbc2-a1ec-11eb-949b-ab1b919d4f89?shareToken=760b0cd9fda1fe59b719c33424764517

I do like the last paragraph:

“ Dawkins said that he had accepted the decision of the AHA and taken steps to expunge the award. “Thinking to do my duty by deleting the entry, I opened up my CV,” he said. “Only to discover that there was nothing to delete.”

😂

That's hilarious

of course Dawkins thinks his books should be burned.

I don't believe that Dawkins thinks any books should be burned.

@rogdmum

The Times has covered it:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/abd3fbc2-a1ec-11eb-949b-ab1b919d4f89?shareToken=760b0cd9fda1fe59b719c33424764517

I do like the last paragraph:

“ Dawkins said that he had accepted the decision of the AHA and taken steps to expunge the award. “Thinking to do my duty by deleting the entry, I opened up my CV,” he said. “Only to discover that there was nothing to delete.”

😂

That is the perfect response from him. Very dry!

Interestingly, so far there appear to be few deletions in the comments in The Times, even though there are 435 of them at the moment!

“ Dawkins said that he had accepted the decision of the AHA and taken steps to expunge the award. “Thinking to do my duty by deleting the entry, I opened up my CV,” he said. “Only to discover that there was nothing to delete.”

Guardian article here: www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/20/richard-dawkins-loses-humanist-of-the-year-trans-comments?fbclid=IwAR07AcnqdSb-TMvd28iQetQcxIkEUq9QrbLJjoxRBB0FUD8qtGIi-whGBvU

Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein (both AHA award holders) are not amused and have written a rather excellent letter to AHA. Worth a read if you are on Twitter

twitter.com/sapinker/status/1385011253924478981?s=21

[quote nauticant]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/[/quote]
Thank you for that link @nauticant!

This has helped me crystallise why I’ve gone cold on some atheist thinkers/bloggers/podcasters I previously liked. I see what’s happened now. Penny drops

“There was nothing to delete” ahahahahahahahahahah 😂

Why do people whose foundational beliefs are supposed to be about reason and liberal principles keep acting so illiberally and refusing to engage in a process of reasoning??