Richard Dawkins says trans activists 'bullied' JK Rowling for standing up for women's rights

[PorcelinaV]

Richard Dawkins says trans activists 'bullied' JK Rowling for standing up for women's rights

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/richard-dawkins-says-trans-activists-29511706

Richard Dawkins claims trans activists 'bullied' Harry Potter author JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock for standing up for women's rights....

He claimed that it was very upsetting that a "tiny minority" of people managed to capture the discourse to "talk errant nonsense".

Well, I blurted that out and am now wondering if love counts as a belief or if I'm framing that clumsily.

Feelings are often based on thoughts and beliefs, was my point. I think.

Maybe I'll have some coffee.

Love is a feeling. Presumably there is some evidence that human beings have various types of feelings. Maybe not though.

Ha ha I’m struggling to work it out too. Also reaching for the coffee ☕️

It's the clocks, Signalbox. Takes me about six months to recover from the discombobulation.

I couldn't remember Dawkins questioning the historicity of Jesus so I had a leaf through my copy of The God Delusion and - surprise, suprise - he does no such thing. He does note that there have been some scholars who have doubted Jesus' existence, but that this view is not well supported and that Jesus probably did exist.

There is something ironic about people claiming that Dawkins isn't well read when those same people clearly haven't actually read the person that they're criticising.

Be gone with your pesky research and fact checking!

Me too. I always spend a good couple of hours the night before trying to figure out if I'll be getting up earlier or later and last year in Autumn we put the clocks back a whole week early which lead to all manner of confusion!

One problem with the concept of “belief” is that we use the expression “I believe” so frequently when we really mean “I think” or “I feel” or “Someone told me”.
IMO genuine “belief” - in anything - invariably includes elements of irrationality or delusion.

Always the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October, that’s how I remember it. But I’d prefer GMT all year round. I don’t like going to bed while it’s still light outside, even when past ten.

I know you have dialed it back, but this is a common one that some religious people use to suggest that people who don't believe in a god are just as irrational as they are.

Love is a feeling or emotion that has a big basis in the physical as well. Brain scans can measure the different patterns when people think about their loved ones, hormones can be measured.

It really isn't the argument some people think it is.

I suppose it could be argued that belief that your partner loves you may be a faith position, however I would disagree. You have a real live person telling you they love you and acting in a loving way.

Love is a feeling or emotion that has a big basis in the physical as well. Brain scans can measure the different patterns when people think about their loved ones, hormones can be measured.

That's measuring the effect of love on physiology. I'm talking about whether the reason for feeling love is a rational belief.

But as I said, no coffee as yet.

*based on a rational belief

I'm sure it can be rationalised fwiw. Reproduction, mainly.

If that's true of any love, then love of God would turn up there, too.

I swear it's a government plot to keep us confused. <eye twitches>

Yes it would, because love is a real thing. I never said it wasn't.

However my partner could be tested to see if my love is reciprocated, the same can't be said for any god.

Only some religions suggest anything about 'god/s' is about 'love'.

I believe my wife loves me. I can’t prove it. I don’t ask her to prove it. Likewise with God?

I believe my wife loves me. I can’t prove it. I don’t ask her to prove it. Likewise with God?

But she tangibly exists, and provably does things which are consistent with her loving you. The same doesn't apply to gods.

Virtually everyone will believe in a world existing outside of mind. Now you might think that we directly experience such a thing, "it's right there, we see it!", but of course we don't, and the issue can't be investigated. It's an unprovable metaphysical belief.

Another example would be free will and moral responsibility. Although in this case there is a divide with some people believing in them, and others not. (Or believing in a weaker version of free will and moral responsibility.)

So if you believe that you could have had something different for lunch, you could have made that choice, and it's not all determined, that's an unprovable belief.

There are experiments regarding both th way we experience the outside world and regarding the extent to which we have free will. They are part of the purview of science. The existence and nature of anything you could describe as god isn't subject to experimental verification.

There is no experiment possible that could test for the existence of a world-outside-of-mind.

How we experience what we normally see as the "outside world" isn't really the same thing.

Depends what you mean by a 'world outside of mind'. We can certainly test for anything unknown to us but existing in the real world. We can test for our ability to see the world as it is. https://neurosciencenews.com/philosophy-see-world-16511/

I’m not sure that I “believe” in mind. I do “believe” in the material world, though I have no idea of how my mind (if it exists) interacts with it, other than being a manifestation/reflection of my brain processes as part of my body processes within the material world.

I was reading a piece by a young person who described themself as gender neutral and how all of us who feel that sex is binary have it all wrong. The idiot/non binary 'them' was waffling on and on and I realised how they tangled themselves in knots trying to categorise everyone. There are so many different genders apparently, I think even those that go along with the rubbish confuse themselves.