What about that zany Richard Dawkins, eh? You’ve seen the infamous June 24 tweet, right?
Sun will engulf Earth. If we launch DVD as #CosmicTombstone, what would you put on it? Shakespeare Schubert Darwin Einstein for me. You?
There were prompt rebukes for the all white all male you get the idea. I actually thought that was pretty silly – it’s only four choices, and we’re all allowed to have favorites. But I didn’t say so, because I knew what was going to ensue, and I wasn’t wrong – the assholes got involved, Dawkins said silly things, and it all went to hell even faster than usual.
Then today he let us know that he’s been learning from the Twitter graffiti artists:
Learned a useful new phrase this week: Social Justice Warrior. SJWs can’t forgive Shakespeare for having the temerity to be white and male.
But wait – he explained – he’s a warrior for social justice himself, it’s just that he’s the right kind of warrior for social justice, unlike those pesky SJWs.
I fight for social justice, e.g. in the Islamic world, daily. But I hear people sneer at Shakespeare for being white & male.
Ah yes. He fights for social justice in “the Islamic world” daily, by telling women in the Dawkins world to shut up because Dear Muslima. He’s for social justice in places that are far away and exotic and not full of annoying women who question him instead of prostrating themselves before him. He uses the horrors perpetrated on women in “the Islamic world” as a shield and an excuse for his own impatient contempt for feminism in the part of the world where he actually lives.
Color me unimpressed.
imthegenieicandoanything says
And more Dawkins sniping – he’s just sadly entered the crotchety old fart phase – colors me as unimpressed as you and the rest of the purists present yourselves.
Yes, he’s often been an ass since “elevator-gate” at least. And, yes, he uses Twitter only to embarrass himself and any who like(d) him – meaning he sounds EXACTLY as mean-spirited and stupid as nearly everyone else stupid enough to use Twitter – and I wish he’s just never do it again.
The bitterness of the comments, like this one, made against Dawkins really shows the worst side of those making them, rather than leading to the better understanding of anything.
Just humans, I guess.
John Morales says
imthegenieicandoanything @1,
The unintentional irony of your comment aside, you admit those comments are not wrong.
(But hey, truth is no defense, right?)
Ophelia Benson says
Bitterness? What bitterness? You call that bitterness? Pff, that’s nothing.
Al Dente says
I’m not bitter against Dawkins. Quite frankly I’m surprised that an intelligent, educated person can be so obstinately wrong about feminism and other social justice issues. However I recognize that he’s backed himself into a corner and his pride won’t let him admit that he’s being an ass about these issues.
Improbable Joe, bearer of the Official SpokesGuitar says
It isn’t just his choices, it is defensiveness whenever anyone says anything to him that isn’t kissing his ass. A proper response could have been “those are just my choices, we’d surely want the best representatives from all cultures” and that could have sparked an interesting conversation. Instead he digs in, and then blatantly lies about the point people were making… either lies, or is the biggest damned fool on Earth.
Al Dente says
These choices aren’t mutually exclusive.
Tony! The Queer Shoop says
@1:
I’d love for you to elaborate on what you mean by “purists”
Ophelia Benson says
Chris Clarke has a Sonnet for Dawkins:
Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s Eve?
Thou art more churlish and intemperate.
Fine words don’t camouflage a nasty peeve,
and someone here is past their sell-by date.
Read on.
Cuttlefish says
Re #8
Damn, I wish I had written that.
John Morales says
[meta]
I have found that many theistic opponents of atheism seem to imagine atheists are just as epistemologically reliant on appeals to authority as they themselves are, and that they consider RD to be our main authority (cf. the gadfly posting as Khalil Abu Khadijeh on a recent post: “Being an atheist is yet the biggest insult to yourself which makes a loser seem like a compliment. So you believe of Ape Richard and that the universe came from nothing … Wow impressive”), so I think critical posts such as this one have utility in contradicting that claim.
iknklast says
I have never sneered at Shakespeare for being white and male, anymore than I have sneered at him for being dead. I enjoy Shakespeare (except I don’t like Taming of the Shrew). Most of us don’t want white males to quit doing wonderful things; we just want more room for non-white, non-males to be allowed room to accomplish equally wonderful things. Why are most of the renowned playwrights male even today? Because it’s harder to get your play read if you are a woman (or if your name sounds like you’re a woman – not sure about those names that could be either, like Terry). It’s not Shakespeare we fight against, it’s a world that doesn’t want to allow Caryl Churchill, Beth Henley, Lillian Hellman, Marsha Norman, Sarah Ruhl, etc, to attain equal status and have their work performed as frequently as that of their male counterparts (not to mention thousands of other women writing plays that don’t have well known names).
Hj Hornbeck says
Did… did Dawkins just drop a sly “Dear Muslimina?” He’s totally into the most important forms of social justice, like helping out Muslim women in the Middle East, but racism and sexism that happens at home? Nah, that’s just “social justice warrior” talk.
Ibis3, Let's burn some bridges says
It bugs me that every time Dawkins is criticised for his cluelessness or outright sexism, a bunch of people attribute it to his age or want to give him a pass because of same. My mother is one year younger than he and has been a feminist all her life. Her *mother* was a feminist too. Sure, she doesn’t get everything right.* But basic diversity of representation? *That* she was championing back as far as I can recall. There’s no excuse for him not to be educated if women like my mother have been trying to teach him and others like him since before I was born.
*And still, she’s open to learning and changing her mind (e.g. about gender essentialism or queer issues). A lot more than Dr Dawkins has shown himself to be.
As for the bitterness? I doubt many would have complained about Dawkins’ 4 choices if he hadn’t spent the past 3 years shitting on feminists and denigrating both their speech and their activities. It’s more of the same old crap.
anthrosciguy says
Here’s the thing:
He really does hear that, I’m certain. But people aren’t saying that. They’re saying “hey, you only picked (and pretty much ever pick) white guys”. Now if he were being honest, he’d try to make an honest argument that this is an appropriate thing to do. And people would argue against that, some people would argue for it. But he didn’t make that argument, because he can’t. Because when the sounds of someone saying “hey, you only picked (and pretty much ever pick) white guys” what happens between his ear drums and his brain is that it gets changed into someone ” sneer[ing] at Shakespeare for being white & male”.
He’s suffering a delusion and making no sense because of it.
brucegee1962 says
Dawkins is beginning to present the same problem as Orson Scott Card. If someone does work that is outstanding when they are young, but then starts to become loathsome as they age, how long does the process have to go on before what they say in their dotage begins to retroactively taint what they wrote when they were younger.
To some extent, this seems like a time’s arrow problem. If it worked the other way — a horrible bigot sees the light, repents, and writes important or profound things late in life — few would hold their youthful bigotry against their later work. Why does it seem so much more reasonable for it to work the other way?
Ibis3, Let's burn some bridges says
In any case, my thinking on this list of 4 is that mine probably would be 4 white men too. But to me, that’s a tragedy, not something to brush off. It makes me think of all the great playwrights and artists composers and scientists who lived unfulfilled and unknown, lost to humanity, to posterity, because they had the wrong body parts or nationality or skin colour or parentage and ended up sex slaves or house slaves or shut away in purdah or digging in a mine or picking cotton or doing laundry or birthing and raising a dozen children. It’s sad, not because WIlliam Shakespeare was a white guy, but because the plays of Judith Shakespeare couldn’t be written because she wasn’t. So maybe I’d take a few white guys off the DVD after all and make a point of putting a couple of women and a guy whose skin isn’t white on there instead.
Ibis3, Let's burn some bridges says
@brucegee
You just did the thing I called out people for doing. Dawkins is not “in his dotage”. There is absolutely no evidence that he’s “become more loathsome with age”. Not only is this ageism, you’re absolving him of responsibility for his words and actions. Stop giving him an excuse!
John Morales says
brucegee1962 @15,
To imagine that latter utterances could retroactively taint earlier ones is irrational; but I charitably grant that the earlier ones can be reinterpreted less positively in the light of new knowledge.
(But that RD may have feet of clay should not be a surprise to anyone!)
Bernard Hurley says
Dawkins is a brilliant communicator when it comes to explaining evolutionary biology and The Selfish Gene is a work of genius. However my lack of respect for him in other matters goes back to some remarks he made about Germaine Greer way back in the early 70’s. In academic terms, I am in the generation just after him and he had a “loyal following” even then,[1] and among them there was a consensus that the great man was allowed to say things that would not be acceptable from others – quod licet Iovi non licet bovi. I can’t say I found “Dear Muslima” or some of he silly Tweets particularly out of character and I don’t think it’s got much to do with him becoming old and crotchety except that he may feel more able to come out with this sort of thing in public now.
He had the upbringing of a tradition English colonial gentleman and so some extent it’s not surprising the holds views typical of that class, but I don’t think he can be excused because of this; after all Tony Grayling had a very similar upbringing but has a very different character.
Footnotes:
[1] My first wife read zoology at Oxford so I was invited to various social gatherings where his “followers” were evident.
Raging Bee says
I fight for social justice, e.g. in the Islamic world, daily.
Doing what, exactly?
atheist says
Dawkins depresses me. Why does such an intelligent guy say such dumb things? At one time he seemed like an impressive voice of reason, but now he seems like my crotchety alcoholic uncle yelling about sissy French people on TV, or something. I mostly try to ignore him, but sometimes I fail.
atheist says
@Bernard Hurley – June 28, 2014 at 9:58 pm (UTC -7)
Well, maybe that’s more the reality of Dawkins. Maybe he was always a smart biologist with some dumb, provincial views, and lacking the good judgement to stick to biology.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- says
Yep, he fights so hard for the rights of muslim women that he blocks Heina, an ex-muslim woman, for not appreciating his white saviourism
John Morales says
atheist @ 22,
I think he’s pretty darn good at the atheism thing, myself — isn’t that a rather salient part of the reality, O atheist?
(Giliell @23, yeah, the feminism, not so much)
Maureen Brian says
atheist @ 22,
That’s not provincial, that’s establishment! We have a whole damn government of them at the moment – narrow education, empathy button long since excised and wreaking havoc wherever they go.
I comfort myself with the thought of Robert Winston – also public school educated, an observant Jew, older than Dawkins and far, far more aware of reality – and for the future put my money on Jim Al-Khalili who does a better job of promoting science beyond the sacred quads and can find any number of eminent women scientists for his radio interviews.
Have we ever heard Dawkins praise a woman as a scientist?
Bruce says
All of this reminds me of a True Skeptic who told myself and others, that he was a proud liberal-left, advocate for social justice. And he’s an ally at that too, allegedly.
Only, True Skeptic thinks that women should consider drinking less so as not to be raped, and I’ve seen him use anti-union rhetoric in the past. Also, True Skeptic apparently couldn’t tell the difference between a left-wing unionist, and a fascist, calling a former left-wing unionist, precisely that, while getting stuck into his apparently wicked union ways. (Admittedly, said former unionist was a cynical, manipulative wanker, but he wasn’t anything approaching a fascist).
Last time I checked, competent social justice advocates knew what fascists were.
Some “allies” have next-to-zero social justice nous, Dawkins being amongst them in my reckoning. Not that I’ve ever relied on him for the social justice side of things, of course. And it’s not that I don’t realise that he considers paying taxes to support welfare payments a “moral duty”, either. He was once the brain on the evolutionary biology side of things. When it comes to social justice, he’s not even the arse.
Bernard Hurley says
Have we ever heard Dawkins praise a woman as a scientist?
Well there is the famous 1995 quote:[1]
“I greatly admire Lynn Margulis’s sheer courage and stamina in sticking by the endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it through from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy. I’m referring to the theory that the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. This is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, and I greatly admire her for it.”
But what is not so well known is that he somewhat spoils it by adding:
“.. [I] found her extremely obstinate in argument. I have the feeling that she’s the kind of person who just knows she’s right and doesn’t listen to argument. Whereas I think I actually do listen — and perhaps change my mind if someone presents a convincing argument — I get the feeling that she does not. That may be unfair, and in the case of the theory of the origin of the eukaryotic cell, she was right to be obstinate. She’s turned out, probably, to be right, but that doesn’t mean she’s always right. And I suspect that she isn’t always right.”
Footnotes:
[1] http://edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/n-Ch.7.html
Akira MacKenzie says
I’m still waiting for Dawkins to start railing against the “bloody wogs,” ranting about Gordon’s death at Khartoum, and reciting Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden.”
Tim Harris says
You were wise to quote only the first four lines of Chris Clarke’s dreadful attempt at parodying Sonnnet 18. From line 5, the syntax goes to pieces and the piece becomes virtually unintelligible.
Ophelia Benson says
Bernard @ 19
Oh snap [UK meaning, not mistaken US meaning]. I’ve had that exact thought so many times. The two of them even have rather similar voices. but Anthony is such a different and better kind of person.
Al Dente says
Akira MacKenzie @28
Dawkins is in favor of the bloody wogs, as long as they stay in Wogistan. He’ll even say supportive things about the victims of Wogistani atrocities since they’re much more heinous than the “indignities” Western women suffer.
</snark>
A. Noyd says
Bernard Hurley (#27)
Hahahahaha, nope.
Bruce says
I’m not actually so sure that Dawkins holds anti-immigration sentiments. Back in 2010 on QandA (on Australia’s ABC), while stating that he didn’t know the particulars, he expressed sympathy with pro-asylum seeker sentiments expressed by a Rabbi on the panel (he was near-deferential about it).
Aside from his views on feminism and gender, I don’t think that a lot of Dawkins dodgier comments come entirely, or even mostly, from ideological points.
I say this for two reasons broadly – that because his dodgier comments on Muslims (mostly abroad) don’t contain much in the way of content; they’re mostly rhetorical air, rather than cases against. “World’s Most Evil Religion”, and the wafer-thin commentary attached to it, shows little sign of dwelling on the subject. (I’ve met illiterate, bigoted thugs with more talking points on Islam than Dawkins has – not that they were any good, just that they were voluminous).
The other reason is because Dawkins seems very much invested in long-standing, or potentially long-standing grudges with people who have criticised him – on gender politics, and on Islam, in particular. He seems to group all of his critics in the same category as Mary Midgley, so he can on some level convince himself he’s being hard done by. And he responds accordingly.
His motions in the direction of (but often not-quite touching*) bigotry, and his naive enabling of bigots like Pat Condell, to me, smack of passive aggressive spite towards his own critics than anything else. (Not that I’m arguing that this is necessarily any less harmful or unethical that if he was just a plain garden_variety bigot).
* I remember a guest post here at B&W, that dealt with the “not touching” game, played between siblings, and if I recall correctly, Ophelia mentioned “not touching” in response to one of Dawkins’ Twitter deluges about Islam last year.
leni says
Aside from the whole Dawkins doubling down again, sending dvds into space just seems like a really, really bad idea.
You know who’s going to get it? The Americans of our galaxy. Very. Bad. Idea. I can’t even really get past that to thinking about who the four could/should be. Or why there should be four. Or why they should even be human.
Aside from all that, Shakespeare seems like a bad idea. We speak almost the same language as he did and most of us can barely understand it. What hope would they have? Imagine the effort they’d have to put into translating it only to get some bullshit full of references they didn’t understand and rhymes they couldn’t hear. It would be worse than useless to them, it would probably be incomprehensible and annoying, which is just asking for retaliation.
We should stick to the desert island scenario, in which case Dawkins picks are exactly what I would expect from him, because he pretty much already lives on that island.
Latverian Diplomat says
It’s a silly exercise, because the 1000 best exerpts and samples would be far more illuminating and comprehensive than the complete works of any four people.
But given that, any scientists are an odd choice anyway, since we’d just be telling the aliens how we happened to grope toward truths stuff observable in nature that they already know. And in these particular examples (Darwin and Einstein) there were contemporaries who were hot on their heels, so it’s almost certain other civilizations of sufficient advancement would have had the same insights.
A philosopher would be a better choice, because it would speak to how are thought processes worked and what we felt was important and difficult. My pick would be Hume, but honestly, I’d have stronger feelings that it not be Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, or Wittgenstein.
A suitable historian would also be a good choice.
And if can have a composer, why not a visual artist as well? Vermeer, Rembrandt, Michelangelo or van Gogh, perhaps.
Lots of choices better than scientists I’m afraid. I probably would not choose a mathematician either, for roughly the same reason, though if I did it would probably be someone like Georg Cantor who really thought about deep mathematics in a way no one had done before.
Marcus Ranum says
He had the upbringing of a tradition English colonial gentleman
Don’t do him the favor of assuming he’s incapable of further learning. That gives him an excuse.
It appears to me now that he’s failed to learn from the “dear muslima” incident; which says something much worse than “he was raised that way” to me.
Latverian Diplomat says
@34. Not what you meant, and not intended to detract from your fine point, but “Or why they should even be human.” made me think that we could do worst for a representative sample of great and influential thinkers than Bugs Bunny, Snoopy, Scrooge McDuck, and Pogo.
Ophelia Benson says
He hasn’t learned from the “dear muslima” incident, and in fact he’s still repeating it. That ridiculous tweet in which he says he “fights for social justice every day” in the “Islamic world” is just more Dear Muslima. Also, he’s been asked, more than once, to do something to repair the damage done by Dear Muslima, and he has adamantly and indignantly refused.
One of his stated reasons is that he thinks it’s beneath him. I find that revolting. It’s not a legitimate response when one has done a bad thing.
atheist says
@John Morales – June 29, 2014 at 2:14 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I admit he can be brilliant in arguing for atheism, but I also think his bigoted views are a liability. Perhaps this is because I tend to focus on political questions. It disturbs me that the “New Atheists” became so militaristic, and so bigoted against Muslims. You may have read Dawkin’s tweet about Islam being the greatest force for evil in the world. You can ask lots of questions about that statement: what is true Evil anyhow, is it angry extremists murdering people in the name of God? Is it an industry that’s destroying the global ecosystem? Or is it more banal — university professors who dehumanize whole tribes of people with a single sentence?
And even if Islam were the greatest evil, how exactly would one defeat it? Would you write a book about its ugliness, hoping to convince those not already convinced by Fox News, that Islam was the worst? Would you attempt to conquer Islamic nations and convert the people to secularism at gunpoint? Would you offer money to Muslims if they deconverted? (And if you did so, how could you make sure it stuck?)
What business does a skeptical scientist — a public intellectual — have making these vague, tendentious, demonizing statements about whole cultures? Does it really further the cause of reason to focus anger against one particular religion?
Also, I hate to melt everyone’s freeze peach, but why aren’t the real-world consequences of your statements something you’d want to consider, especially when you’re a public figure connected to a movement? When you call Islam the greatest source of evil in the world today, you’re helping to launch more armed drones. You’re rhetorically shaking the hand of the EDL. One of the more frustrating parts of Dawkins and the rest of the “New Atheists”, to me, is they want things both ways: they want the protection of Western culture, but they don’t want to be responsible for the effects of their words on that culture. They’re great at science but not so good at politics.
anbheal says
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/pics/77rreview5.jpg
Tony! The Queer Shoop says
atheist @39:
There was a time, years ago, when I would have agreed with Dawkins about Islam. This was at a time when my exposure to Islam and Muslims was limited to what I saw on the news. Not news on the net. I’m talking CNN type news. Without taking a skeptical eye to the information I was taking in, I formed a very skewed view of Islam. After all, the examples I saw in the media were overwhelmingly negative. That they happened to be examples of Islamic extremists didn’t register with me.
The ubiquity of christianity in the US also played a huge role. I’ve never been religious and I’ve been an atheist since I was 21 (39 now), but I knew nothing about how deeply christianity permeated our culture. I didn’t see the little ways in which it manifested. I knew nothing of christian privilege. I wasn’t even a christian and I took all the examples of christian privilege for granted.
It wasn’t under I began to accept that I could be wrong, and that I needed to take a skeptical view towards my opinions that I began to realize that I was, indeed wrong. As my eyes opened up to the shit christians get away with in the US, I began to see how pervasive that belief system was (and is). I started reading more and more about how christianity negatively impacts the lives of people in ways both sutble and overt.
I also began to realize that those snippets of Islam that I thought were representative of Muslims were hardly that. I realized that yes-extremist Islamists are dangerous terrorists, but they are hardly representative of the majority of Muslims. That point was driven home when I learned that Islam has billions of followers.
In time I realized that great harm is caused in the name of christianity, both in the US and across the world (Africa, I’m looking at you). Likewise, I saw that there are a great many Muslims who were nothing like Islamists. I began to realize that the extremists were a tiny fraction of the number of Muslims. They just had a louder bullhorn, so I heard them more.
Coupled with those two realizations, I also began to read news from sources outside the US. I began to learn about people outside of my little cultural bubble. That helped open my eyes quite a bit.
When I took a look at the claim that “Islam is the worst religion on the planet”, I realized so may people were diminishing the impact of christianity. And with Islam they were doing the opposite. There are still people in the US and around the world who are in almost no danger of an imminent attack from Islamic extremists that feel bc of 9/11, we’re constantly in danger.
Nuh uh. We’re not. Living in the US, I’m in greater danger of dealing with fundie christian terrorists than Islamic terrorists.
I came to those realizations before I even thought about what it means to be the worst religion on the planet. As you say, what can you do about that? If indeed Islam was *that* bad, does that mean we divert all our resources to combating it? Who’s “we”? How do you “combat” a religion? Where would you start? What type of resources are we talking about? Do we focus solely on Islam and ignore the harms done by other religions simply bc they’re not as bad? How can we do that when some people are oppressed due to these religions that aren’t as bad as Islam? Do we ignore their oppression?
I realized all that around the time of Dear Muslima. I saw that as a dismissal of the oppression and discrimination faced by women across the world if they weren’t dealing with acid attacks and honor killings. Just bc women around the planet may not be dealing with such horrific attacks on a daily basis doesn’t make their lives cakewalk. Denying women an education, preventing women from obtaining contraception, refusing to allow women to have abortions…these things have negative impacts on the lives of women across the planet, and ranking honor killings and acid attacks as more deadly doesn’t change that.
Another problem with Dawkins’ assertion is that few people are claiming to ignore the plight of women in Islamic countries. Many people are supportive of those women. And they can do that while fighting for women’s rights in their own countries. One need not focus solely on misogyny in the Islamic world while ignoring misogyny in the West. One can criticize both.
I just wish Dawkins would wake up and smell the coffee like I did.
John Morales says
atheist @39,
I can’t disagree with you there, so why do you think he should not argue for atheism but rather stick to biology?
Exactly: he’s a public figure — selling talks and articles and books is how he makes a living these days.
(O happy man! He’s retired from his vocation and now can indulge his avocation)
What makes you imagine he doesn’t consider the consequences of his utterances in the real world?
(Perhaps he thinks they are beneficial, overall)
atheist says
I argue Dawkins does not consider the consequences of his statements because I suspect his view of skepticism is more than just a weapon in an imperial arsenal. But, as you suggest, maybe I misunderstand him. Maybe he just wants to be a member of the dominant tribe.
John Morales says
atheist @43, fair enough, given it’s your judgment of his worthiness as a person rather than his worthiness as an achiever.
Me, I think that this OP more draws attention to one of his areas of unenlightenment* than suggests that in some aspects** he is a bad person.
—
* “Learned a useful new phrase this week: Social Justice Warrior.” is a confession of ignorance.
** The “do not attribute to malice…” heuristic.
John Morales says
[meta + OT]
Tony @41, I think that’s a impressively good comment.