We atheists don’t need better leaders; we need leaders who are willing to step back and stop dominating the conversation, and dominating badly. Once again, Richard Dawkins has bungled the big conversation we ought to be having. Once again, he seems obsessed with a 15 year old kid who made a clock.
Don't call him "clock boy" since he never made a clock. Hoax Boy, having hoaxed his way into the White House, now wants $15M in addition!
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) November 24, 2015
Don’t call him “clock boy” since he never made a clock. Hoax Boy, having hoaxed his way into the White House, now wants $15M in addition!
I could be sympathetic. I agree with Dawkins that suing the school that suspended him for $15 million dollars, as Ahmed Mohamed’s parents are doing, is absurd and unjustifiable, especially when it got him so much positive attention. There is a point to slapping the school down hard for prejudiced behavior that they don’t seem to realize even yet that was bad and bigoted, but to the tune of many millions of dollars? It’s a ridiculous sum that is just going to dissipate what good will he had, and inflame people like Dawkins who resented his notoriety already.
But Dawkins goes further. Yes, he made a clock. Yes, he reassembled components from a clock to do it, but that is still a legitimate effort. It’s like complaining that someone built a circuit board with a standard timing chip, and then claiming that they didn’t really build it because they didn’t design the contents of the IC. Or like claiming that The Selfish Gene wasn’t a real contribution because it just repackages the work of Maynard Smith and Hamilton (no, I’m not arguing that: despite having no new math or observations, that book was a powerful telling of the story). A kid taking electronics apart and putting it together again isn’t revolutionary, but it’s a step in his education that ought to be encouraged.
And now the anti-Muslim sentiment has gone too far. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher — a combination to bring out the worst in both — got together to damn everything Muslim.
Oh, that’s their culture, you have to respect it,Dawkins said mockingly.
That’s right! That’s what they say. It’s just insane,Maher said, swooning.
Liberal about everything else, but then this one exception, ‘It’s their culture.’ Well, to hell with their culture,Dawkins concluded, to a storm of applause and a passionate yelp of approval from Maher.
To hell with their culture? I despise all religions, and I can sneer at every hateful thing that emerges out of a culture, every culture — but to ignore the good to condemn the bad, to make sweeping dismissals of entire complex traditions…I am sorry, Professor Dawkins, but that is bigotry. To forgive the sins of one culture because of the things one likes about it, while damning another culture wholesale because you don’t like certain parts of it (even when those parts are unforgiveably evil) is something that perpetuates conflict.
Keep in mind that Dawkins likes many things about his culture.
‘I’m kind of grateful to the Anglican tradition,’ he admits, ‘for its benign tolerance. I sort of suspect that many who profess Anglicanism probably don’t believe any of it at all in any case but vaguely enjoy, as I do… I suppose I’m a cultural Anglican and I see evensong in a country church through much the same eyes as I see a village cricket match on the village green. I have a certain love for it.’ Would he ever go into a church? ‘Well yes, maybe I would.’
There are billions of people who are culturally Muslim, who have fond sentiments about their experiences and traditions within Islam. What would Professor Dawkins say if one of them said, “To Hell with Western culture”, citing genocide in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, witch burnings, inquisitions, wars of mass destruction, racism, and colonialism? How can you talk about evensong and cricket matches, as if they somehow excuse the rot at the core?
And I can predict his answer, because I’ve heard its like many times before: that Christianity has mellowed, is less destructive, and doesn’t inspire the frenzy of hatred that Islam does, and all of those horrors are in the past. To which I would only say…racist police, Planned Parenthood killings, murders of trans gender people, Scott Lively, Westboro Baptist, the American prison system, the drone war, unfettered capitalism, our predatory attitude towards the environment.
How many cricket fields am I permitted to shit upon for all that? How many Anglican hymnals shall we burn to repudiate those other heinous products of our culture?
Every ex-Muslim can recite a litany of horrors that Islam perpetrates. But I don’t think most would argue that we need to erase the history of the Middle East, Asia, North Africa, and contributions all around the world. We should not ignore the Islamic gifts to literature, poetry, music, mathematics, and science; we must not forget that these are human beings who may feel the deepest love for their culture as a whole, even as they deplore aspects of it.
I want to embrace Islamic culture as a significant part of the human experience, even while I reject the barbarisms within it, exactly as I am a child of Western culture who wants to see our flaws recognized and corrected. My hope for the future isn’t a world of uniformity, but one where we can enjoy each others’ differences and not kill each other for them.
Richard Dawkins is a smart guy, and we see these glimmerings of appreciation for the complexity of human life (how can he not, as a biologist?) in his writings — I hope he can see that he’s taking the wrong path. Even more importantly, I hope atheists everywhere can learn that he’s not the atheist leader we need…and that maybe we shouldn’t be looking for a man to tell us what to think at all.
We should count ourselves lucky. The last Texas resident to hoax his way into the White House cost us billions, and didn’t leave for eight years.
Dawkins is probably well aware that the 1906 English Hymnal was co-edited by a fairly well known atheist/agnostic who also wrote several still popular hymn tunes.
Muslim culture’s prohibition on depicting people led to some beautiful geometric artwork not to mention structures like the Taj Mahal or the many beautiful mosques in Istanbul and elsewhere. Not mention turning Arabic calligraphy into a major artform.
Gofundeme for a one way ticket for him and Harris to an island with no internet, anyone?
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuuuck…..
Atheists don’t need leaders at all. What we need is people like you, Jerry, and Richard Dawkins who write interesting stuff that makes us think, develop and understand. We can decide for ourselves what to agree with, what to reject and what to look for further information on.
There is no Atheist Movement, no formal structure and no mechanism for choosing leaders and, even if there were such a structure, it is highly unlikely to be hierarchical with a ‘leader’ to whom we all defer as some sort of Atheist Pope.
Please stop bickering over who is the best leader and just keep doing what you do so well – explaining the science in ways that people like me who lack your detailed knowledge can understand, and giving us food for thought. Meanwhile, I’ll look to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Peter Boghossian, Lawrence Krauss, Greta Christina and a host of other atheist thinkers to do the same. Sometimes, I might even disagree with them.
“RR”
It’s not like Dawkins isn’t all about the benjamins, himself.
I agree with Dawkins that suing the school that suspended him for $15 million dollars, as Ahmed Mohamed’s parents are doing, is absurd and unjustifiable, especially when it got him so much positive attention.
I don’t. Think of it as a feedback mechanism for teaching other schools what they shouldn’t do. It’s training them, pure and simple. Apparently, they weren’t smart enough to learn by observation and thinking.
You’ve quite lost me on this one. I don’t at all see Dawkins’ statement, “to hell with their culture,” as some blanket condemnation of every item falling under “Muslim culture” (whatever that list of items might be; no one could define such a list).
I read his statement as, “To hell with the excuse ‘but it’s their culture’ as a defense of bad actions.” That’s a principle I’d agree with, too: We – atheists, believers, everyone – should definitely decry bad behavior, and should not accept “but it’s culture” as a defense of it. (It’s just as you say: “I can sneer at every hateful thing that emerges out of a culture…”)
Of course, the only way to be certain of Dawkins’ intent from that short quote would be to ask him. But I’m not about to bet that his answer will be, “Yes, what I mean is exactly what PZ is suggesting: To hell with everything that’s part of Muslim culture, whether good, bad, or indifferent.”
Slightly off-topic: I’m wondering why Harris and Dawkins aren’t tweeting about moderate christians decrying what appears to be an act of christianist terrorism at the Planned Parenthood in Colorado. The media is soft-stepping around it, like they’re not sure what the guy’s motives might be. Gosh, what a mystery!
I agree with #5. We don’t need leaders. We just need people to be capable of listening, thinking, and reasoning. There is no prominent atheist that I agree with all of his/her positions.
@Marcus Ranum:
I got curious to check the twitter. Dawkins has a tweet about it, but not Harris. But anyways, it’s clear where Dawkins stands on abortion rights (curiously, I don’t remember Sam Harris talk about it though, but I don’t really follow what he says much).
Well put. The problem is apparently a severe lack of self awareness to such a degree that they can’t see the problem in front of their face. They will almost surely continue setting themselves up as some kind of thought leaders as they have done for years now and those with the largest set of followers or subscribers will continue to dominate the discussion. It’s unfortunate but that seems to be the way of the world today.
For too many this is a radical idea. Many seem all too willing and happy to look for and to follow leaders who tell folks what they want to hear as opposed to what they need to hear.
PZ:
I don’t know. Anymore, I don’t think Dawkins is all that smart. It’s either that, or he is that smart, and is deliberately taking a path of divisiveness and bigotry, taking every opportunity to fan the flames, because he’s enjoying his lordship over his band of followers, and thinks he has a handle on what ails the world. When you come right down to it, he’s just another white man who has a serious case of aggrieved entitlement, coupled with a love of a so-called idyllic past.
defaithed @ 8:
Golly, ya know, that sentiment would have fit in a twitter box, so I expect that if that’s what Dawkins meant, that would have been what he said. There’s zero reason to think it’s what he meant, as he’s said extremely bigoted shit about young Ahmed from the start. And that’s just the icing on the shit cake where Dawkins is concerned. It’s not as if this is the only “misstep” he has made.
I have no problem with condemning Islamic culture. Because that culture is inextricably linked with Islamic religion. They cannot be separated. Islamic religion, culture, and even politics are one and the same. And that religion is, indeed, barbaric.
Yes, I am Islamophobic. I actually fear Islam. Because even the moderate muslims support the extremists. Islam is like Christianity before the Enlightenment.
I don’t care about the good parts of Islam, just as I don’t care about the good parts of Christianity. I fear and detest both religions, but Christianity have fever adherents willing to commit murder in the name of an invisible sky daddy, or support such atrocities.
And most of the Christian atrocities mentioned are exclusive to the US. Is that due to Christianity, or to US culture? What is the difference? Do tell.
I don’t give a shit about “clock boy”. I give a shit about muslims leaving their fundamentalist hell-holes, and then trying to convert whatever place they end up in into the same kind of fundamentalist hell-hole as the one they left.
Christianity have fever adherents willing to commit murder in the name of an invisible sky daddy
Have you looked at the news lately, citation-needed-boy?
Irreverand Bastard @ 15:
Well, one point for honesty. As you will never contribute in any way to making the world a better place, I suggest you go find a nice closet somewhere, without ‘net access, and lock the door.
Gee, you don’t have any problem with not looking at the evidence.
Thanks for admitting your biases. You are done here.
“[M]aybe we shouldn’t be looking for a man to tell us what to think at all.”
Precisely. And this is the problem.
If you read the comments on that Cenk Uygur video that was posted on this site a few days ago, they are all pretty much “How dare that Turk criticize our prophet! Sam Harris is a super genius!”
Swestfall @ 19:
Yes, much like that other super genius, Wile E. Coyote.
Caine @20,
Evidently he got his degree from the Acme Institute of Deep Thinkin’.
Suing for $15M does two things:
1 It gets everyone’s attention.
2 It’s so over the top that it screams – We would gladly settle for $200,000.
Ahmet was abused by police and educators. He should get something.
RE: #5
I propose Myer’s Law of Internet Discussion: Any online discussion of the Atheist Movement will attract commenters who furiously deny the existence of said movement or the necessity of said movement, sometimes both.
Irreverand Bastard @ 15:
With my little fix I can agree with your sentence. Why it’s not even been 24 hours since it’s happened on US soil. I quite suspect it’s happening right now in Iraq and Syria. In Europe I suspect it’ll be a couple hours yet before any attempts — normally it’s at night that arsonists strike.
Lou @ 23:
Seconded.
@15
Gosh, you are so brave! I love how you so valiantly and proudly declare that you are an irrational bigots with a repulsive opinion purely based on fear and ignorance. Good for you!
“Their culture” entails a hell of a lot more than Islam. Do you think that our culture is inextricably linked to christianity in such a way that rejection of christianity requires rejection of every single cultural notion of the west? If not, what the ever loving fuck is wrong with you then?
Bullshit makes it sound like he landed a job there. He’s not in the White House now, is he? Is it supposed to be noteworthy somehow, that he was allowed to enter the building and speak with someone who works for him in our government? I don’t give a fuck about England, but I thought that here we all had some right to do that and weren’t just deferential subordinates of the upper classes.
Was it an actual clock, or was it a hoax clock, in the same sense that there have been no actual sightings of Bigfoot but only hoaxes? If somebody hadn’t made a cold fusion device from scratch, yet presented a functional one to me, should I claim it was a hoax? If Dawkins went to McDonalds and ordered a burger, would he claim the one he receives is some kind of a hoax because the people there “never made a burger”?
Don’t “real” clockmakers use preexisting parts and materials to make their clocks? If they don’t need to control the configurations of every last particle as they assemble their machines, at what point does it suddenly shift from clockmaking to hoaxing? Does a person who makes an atomic clock perform similar tasks as a person who makes an hourglass or a sundial, or similar to one who makes any other sort of clock? Is there a reason why it doesn’t count as “real making,” if you only need to put together some scavenged or preassembled materials in order for that sort of object to be functional?
Isn’t it utterly normal and uncontroversial in the English language to say that people “make” such things? And who appointed Dawkins to define basic words like this for us, considering that he’s doing such a shitty job?
Marcus Ranum @ # 6: It’s not like Dawkins isn’t all about the benjamins, himself.
Pssst, Mohamed family attorney(s): Richard Dawkins has more money than the average Texas school district…
Regarding the amount the family is suing for, I would like to point out that neither the school nor the police department have apologized nor admitted to any wrongdoing and after the incident the family was subject to so much harassment that they decided to leave the country. Suing for punitive damages is really the only recourse the family has left. If they sued only for damages, it would be a trivial sum to the school. The whole point of punitive damages is for private citizens to have a way to take on comparatively wealthy organizations to a point that it provides incentive to change their behavior.
CR @ 27:
I subscribe to Make magazine, and am part of the Maker community. Going by Dawkins, there should be a change to Hoaxzine and Hoaxers community. Yep.
consciousness razor @27,
Clearly it was a hoax clock since Amhed didn’t create (ex nihilo) the sub atomic particles out of which it was made. Also it’s a fraud since Ahmed didn’t personally invent the very concept of time. /Dawkinslogic
Caine @30,
Will you be attending the next
MakerHoaxer Faire?Lou #23. Nice line in logic there – denying the existence of something that doesn’t exist establishes the existence of this non-existent thing!
I wonder if William Lane Craig could use that argument. It’s certainly worth of a religious apologist with no integrity.
Okay. Do you know anything about it?
What changed about Christianity after the Enlightenment which has made it unlike Islam? Did they get rid of their gods? Did they stop appealing to faith? Do they care whether their beliefs are true or justifiable?
Why don’t you care? Both religions are wrong, just like every other religion is, and you still should care about what’s good, whether or not it’s part of a religion. Rejecting religion isn’t rejecting that.
What makes you think you know this? How many murders have Christians committed? I’m sure you have no better idea of it than I do, and I see no evidence whatsoever that Christians are less violent or less threatening.
If you don’t care about the names of nonexistent beings, but you do care about consequences like people being murdered, what difference does it make whether they explicitly tell anybody the name according which they are committing a murder they believe is acceptable? If they murder for Jesus or capitalism or freedom or democracy or for nobody or nothing, why would you support any such atrocities by making excuses for them? How does actually giving a reason for their behavior, even a terrible one like “I’m doing it for Jesus,” make it a worse offense if that changes nothing about the nature of the offense?
If you can’t tell the difference, is that supposed to be an argument in favor of Christianity? It’s so pervasive and such a ubiquitous threat throughout our entire nation, that it’s “too big to fail”? And that’s good? That’s better than some isolated and more easily stereotyped threat from the outside; or is it just a more convenient target for you, for which you don’t have to admit some degree of responsibility?
Do you not understand that these are human beings? Why would they have bothered to leave in the first place, if they wanted it to be the same kind of thing as the thing they left behind? They may certainly have other reasons for moving elsewhere, as Christians also had other reasons for leaving Europe, yet likewise many still wanted a theocratic hellhole. So why don’t you give a shit about all kinds of theocratic hellholes, from whatever source, including Christian ones? You still haven’t explained anything like that.
Anyone who tells me there is no atheist movement, and no atheist leaders: Please inform
• The media
• All the atheist organizations
• Organizers of atheist conferences
• All those atheists who rage when you criticize Dawkins or Harris or any others
I presume you disapprove of the Reason Rally and all those atheist YouTube channels and FreethoughtBlogs (but of course you hate FtB! Forget that I mentioned it.)
Rosa,
You know, just because there isn’t a formal structure or an stablished way to elect official leaders, it doesn’t mean there isn’t an atheist movement. In fact, there are many. There a variety of conferences, events, internet sites, blogs, youtube channels, etc, dedicated to atheism with various other bits attached. You are right now commenting on an atheistic blog which attracts many people with similar views and a similar goal.
The “there is no movement” smacks of an excuse to not make people accountable for the shite they say. Hey, they aren’t my leaders so who cares if they are extremely popular and visible people who many identify as the most prominent public figures of atheism, and they are saying horrible, reprehensible, bigoted, prejudiced things to a huge audience. That clearly could never have any consequences whatsoever, so just agree with the good bits and pretend that the bad bits just aren’t happening at all.
I’ve seen similar attitudes among catholics…
Why should anybody care whether the “clock” was a hoax or not? Yes, it does look as if the boy disassembled a clock and put the contents into a pencil case. He probably is guilty of exaggerating his accomplishments – and he wouldn’t be either the first or last teenager to do that. However, whatever his “offenses” may be, they do not warrant being arrested for bringing a perfectly harmless object to school and, to add insult to injury, being suspended from school.
As to the “fake bomb” accusations, I don’t buy that for a minute. If you think something could be a bomb, you don’t take it to your office and put it on your desk. You leave the object alone, evacuate the school and call in the bomb squad. Clearly no one at school thought it was a bomb. The boy himself did not once use that word. He kept saying that it was a clock, to his teachers, to his friends and to the police.
As for people saying that it could be the trigger for a bomb, yeah it could. However, so could a cell phone or a digital watch. Ok, let’s now arrest every kid who brings a watch or a phone to school. Let’s see how that goes down. It’s fairly clear that the police and the school authorities behaved shamefully and that is what we should be focusing on – not whether or not Ahmed “invented” the clock.
– RM
PZ Wow!
Yes, ex nihilo nihil fit. Because it’s Church Latin, and because King Lear said it, that means it’s very wise and of course correct. Ergo, everything is a hoax or else it is unmade, obviously. I would figure that Dawkins is trying to prove the existence of a prime mover, but that wouldn’t be terribly original, thus he couldn’t have actually made that argument. So, he said nothing.
On a totally unrelated note, I propose that we establish “Ignore Dawkins Month” for December, with the understanding that during the other eleven months of the year it may be celebrated unofficially.
Plethora @ 31:
Unfortunately, no. I follow them with envy in my heart though!
PZ told you what reality is. Get used to it.
“Hoax boy”. Oh my. OK.
I still did not read one of Dawkins’s books I bought shortly before his “dear muslima” debacle.
The aftertaste of that idiocy made me unable to enjoy his books for some time afterwards. Unfortunately since that thime he spouts something idiotic on regular basis thus renewing the bad taste in my brain and making me to postpone that book yet again.
I am so glad that Terry Prattchet has never done anything like that so I still have at least some reading to enjoy.
Dawkins should step away from the spotlights and keyboard
Sorry but I thought this was a forum for grown-up debate, not baseless assertions and declarations of other people’s opinions because that fits a dogmatic narrative. I’ll go back to the real world now.
If there’s no atheist movement and no atheist leaders somone needs to update Wikipedia as well.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism
In all seriousness here’s a great post from Greta Christina on this topic. Should be required reading for any movement denialists and it dovetails nicely with Professor Myers comment @34.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2015/06/01/there-is-no-atheist-movement-dictionary-atheism/
I think it’s the city they’re suing for the way the police treated him (and since the school is public, they’re part of the city also), not the school specifically itself.
Yes, let’s go back to “the real world,” in which this isn’t a dogmatic statement:
You know, the one in which I claim there isn’t a god, but also claim that if there were, it probably wouldn’t be the stereotypical kind in my head that I allow myself to invent for my opponent to score an easy victory. Probably not. But just to be explicit, I am telling you that there is a chance it is in fact exactly that way. I mean, sure, why not? It’s just non-dogma that there is no such thing, but obviously I need to provide no argument to defend my own claims since that’s so very different from being dogmatic, so I will count it as a moot point.
Rosa Rubicondior
There was also no formal structure and no mechanism for choosing leaders in the civil rights movement. Still, there certainly was a civil rights movement. I think it is time to look up ‘movement’, because it doesn’t mean what you think it means. Or am I being ‘dogmatic’ again?
Has RD ever been invited to thw White House?
Human cultures have very deep roots, and anyone who has travelled to Indonesia and Pakistan and Iran (as I have) can tell you they are all Muslim and definitely not the same. Sheesh. Christian culture? Cough, Stonehenge. Definitely part of British culture.
Rich white dudes do love circle-jerking in the name of their self-proclaimed
racial intellectualcultural superiority, don’t they?There is a link to Rosa Rubicondior’s blog on the sidebar.
It crashed my browser twice.
PZ
Well I don’t. Not only because judicial pressure is the only force that is available to Ahmed Mohamed’s parents, but also because it’s the most American thing in the world. That’s more American than mom and apple pie (because apples are made in China and mom might be a feminist).
They should be applauding him. With their free hand, that is.
____
Rosa Rubicondior #42
Says the person who in his #5 comment spoke in the royal “we”, assuming all manner of things a priori.
Hey, how about you learn what a “movement” actually means and then try to explain how what is commonly considered as the Atheist Movement violates that definition? Because the only thing that’s true in your initial tirade is that atheism doesn’t have a Pope – a quality it shares with everything outside of the Roman Catholic Church (even the East Orthodox Church doesn’t have a Pope).
Have fun in Narnia.
Chicu (#50) I haven’t seen that crude attempt to deter people from reading an inconvenient blog outside a creationist site before. You’ve been learning, haven’t you, but you forgot to add something about viruses and malware warnings.
Dawkins’ handlers need to explain to him that being an asshole on twitter is not endearing to others.
We are chastising Dawkins for his ineptness with language and PR. I understand how Ahmed Mohamed is simply using the tools the law gives him, and it might be useful to dissuade a racist school district from repeating their performance, but as PR, suing for $15 million stinks.
I love that the new “dogma”, apparently, is that we exist. How dare we contradict Rosa’s statement of unsuported fact with our existing, being atheists and doing things together and shit…
@Marcus Ranum#9:
Well, there’s a report that back home in North Carolina, he has a shack with no running water, and a cross made of sticks on the front door. Given the lack of running water, I’d say the odds are pretty good that somewhere nearby he has another building with a crescent carved out of its front door: but are the Liberal Mus-Symps in the Lamestream Media reporting that???
Who is Chicu?
I’m sensing that Dawkins is envious of Ahmed for being invited to the White House. Of course, he was invited because he was a victim of bigotry. And kids should get encouragement for trying things on their own. It’s amazing how he is painting this 15 year old kid as some manipulative mastermind. That’s just sad.
Chicu is a lame attempt at an infantile jab…
@chigau#50: “There is a link to Rosa Rubicondior’s blog on the sidebar. It crashed my browser twice.”
I’m not sure on which sidebar this link is (not on PZ’s, that I can see). However, I sought out a direct route to Rosa Rubicondior’s blog through Google, and when I got there, all I found crashing was the boredom. (On the other hand, it did prompt me to discover that there is, or once was, a notion of “vicarious explanation” in the philosophy of explanation; so that’s something for my trouble.)
Dawkins should never be allowed to invoke the “reals before feels” argument, because he is so totally ruled by his emotions. “You dare to criticize me??? I WILL DESTROY YOU!”
leerudolph #60
On the sidebar on this page, under ATHEISM between Minnesota Atheists and Sandwalk is a link to Rosa Rubicondior’s Blogspot page.
That’s the one that crashed my browser.
chigau #62: so there is. How did I miss it? (Blind as a belfry full of bats, I am, sometimes.)
But it doesn’t crash my browser (Firefox 42.0, running NoScript).
I guess that since he retired from the job of “Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford” back in ’08, Dawkins no longer feels the need to display much understanding of anything in public.
I don’t, just like I don’t call you Shitty Bigoted Atheist. I call him Ahmed Mohamed and you Richard Dawkins. I use names instead of dehumanizing, distancing nicknames.
Who the fuck calls him “clock boy”? Everyone on “our side” call him “Ahmed” with some degree of affection.
Now, his father apparently is politically active and a vocal anti-islamaphobist. This isn’t really surprising or worthy of condemnation, is it? Most of us are politically aware and vocal, aren’t we? Okay, I’m with PZ and I think $15 million is a bit much and I think the father is doing this primarily because he is shit-stirrer. It’s aggressive and it’s assertive and it’s bold. And he probably won’t get it but he’ll probably stir up a lot of shit in asking for it. And that is probably his intent. I can’t really find it it in me to pretend to be shocked or to find it upsetting that he’d do so. Or to even disapprove. It’s not as if arresting a 14-year old boy is wasn’t an injustice, after all.
This is silly. The exchange had nothing to do with the “clock boy” affair. They were commenting on burqas, and the lame apologetics of “it’s their culture”. Well yes, it is their culture. It was also the american tradition to keep slaves and not allow women to vote. I don’t think anyone here really believes that every single aspect of any one culture should be accepted uncritically. Watching the clip, what I see Dawkins saying is to hell with the argument, ‘it’s their culture’, not ‘to hell with all of Islamic culture’ as PZ apparently understood it.
camilo @67
You’re right, that was a silly protest. Which exchange? If you mean the Bill Maher tete a tete with Richard Dawksbro, I don’t see where it was insinuated that the exchange had anything to do with the “clock boy” affair.
Besides, I’m mostly in agreement with them. I’d like to see the mandated wearing of a burqa banned, obviously. That’s an aspect of their culture which limits freedom, something Bill Maher or Richard Dawkins would be in agreement over. But they take it a step further and don’t allow for any choice to be made by the woman, whether she wants to wear one or not. That’s where the real silliness lies. Damning the entire culture so that you can control the women in order to make them more free… Makes libertarian sense.
@68 …
Yes, I was referring to the Maher clip, which is what prompted PZ’s post. As you said, there was no reference in that Maher/Dawkins exchange to the Ahmed Mohamed story – that was a PZ mashup. I am protesting PZ’s insinuation that they are condemning all of the Islamic culture – it is simply not in the clip I saw.
“But they take it a step further and don’t allow for any choice to be made by the woman, whether she wants to wear one or not.”
Of course that is something I don’t subscribe to, but where was that said?
I dunno, when they say “To hell with their culture!” maybe. It’s there in the subtext.
@Rosa Rubicondior
Today I learned that there is no Atheist Movement, no LGBTQ Movement, no Women’s Movement, and no Civil Rights Movement.
No Popes. *nods*
Dawkins said “to hell with their culture,” not “to hell with that excuse.” He may have meant the latter, but that’s not what he said.
And given that he has a history of tone deaf, bigoted remarks, I no longer feel ethically bound to give him the benefit of the doubt. He just needs to be encouraged to shut his trap when he gets the urge to bless us all with his peerless thinkythoughts. He needs another hobby. Choir singing, maybe? Croquet?
@70
Ok, but I think this subtext reading is where the problem lies. I would certainly say “to hell with their culture” when referring to the prohibition on female suffrage in the western world, and I wouldn’t necessarily be suggesting that women be forced to vote. But I agree, the statement “To hell with their culture” is problematic. I would have preferred “To hell with ‘It’s their culture'”, referring to the lame apologist’s argument. So perhaps this betrays something about how Dawkins thinks. Or maybe I would have said exactly the same thing, as I have whenever I get particularly pissed about certain issues such as the treatment of women in some (Muslim) countries. Or, “To hell with their culture”, when I think about the same argument applied to southern bigots claiming that the confederate flag is a part of their culture. Seriously, to hell with all of it!
I’d be inclined to interpret myself that “to hell with their culture”in the more charitable “to hell with that excuse” way.
Still, RD has been taking a lot of bigoted positions, I understand entirely those who do not want to be charitable.
(Also, congrats PZ, you are still being very charitable with the guy).
Also, I wonder, WTF is Richard Dawkins doing together with anti-vaxxer, anti-GMO Bill Maher?
Is he really suggesting that he intentionally hoaxed his way to the white house? He was thrown in to a stupid situation at no fault of his own and it was everyone else who jumped in to invite him to the white house, MIT or whatever for political reasons. The most you could say is that he went a long with it. I don’t get what Richard’s problem is.
F.O.
Being islamophobic. You gotta have your priorities straight…
+++
No, I don’t think the 15 million $ is too much or ridiculous. Maybe that’s the way to go. Since your criminal system is not willing and/or able to fix the problem, maybe the civil court system can simply make it too fucking expensive to violate black and brown bodies.
Imagine 15 million for Ahmed Mohammed
Imagine 25 million for the girl at Spring Valley High
Imagine 30 million for the family of Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Freddy Gray and all the rest of them.
Depending upon the laws where he is, the sum of $15M may be an artificial number required in order to submit a lawsuit in the first place. That is, for some jurisdictions where you are seeking civil damages, you have to submit a number rather than having the trial determine the amount of compensation all on its own. That is, some jurisdictions simply allow you to sue civilly and as part of the trial, compensation will be determined. Other jurisdictions, on the other hand, require you to submit that number beforehand and the trial will include a part to agree to that amount or change it.
If that’s the way it is, the number is often calculated for specific reasons. You know it’s going to get knocked down so you have to ask for more than what you’d expect so that during the bargaining, you can get an amount that is actually reasonable.
He’s still steamed that there weren’t massive street protests about the world’s real problem – an English prof’s jar of honey being taken away by the TSA.
Priorities, people!
I agree that Rosa was wrong, but does she really deserve the treatment she’s getting? Getting accused of her blog being boring, crashing browsers? WTH does that have to do with anything? Do you really think her first post was in bad faith, like we’re used to otherwise with drive-by MRA’s and creationists? Jeez, come on.
andyo @ 79:
You might want to take back your auto gender assignment by nym. The nym is from Carmina Burana by Orff, and I doubt it was chosen to represent gender.
andyo
Huh?
How’s that an accusation?
If chigau says the blog crashed the browser I have no doubt that it did. The reasons for this may lie at chigau’s end, Rosa Rubicondor’s and everywhere in between. Saying something is boring is also not an accusation.
80: OK, didn’t know that, I take that back.
PZ, about the money: $15 million is an opening demand. It’s not even the amount being sought in litigation, because this isn’t the suit filing. This is literally the very first step in the back and forth that will proceed through pre-litigation discussions, and through all the pre-trial steps, and through the trial, and through the judgment phase if the family wins, and through appeals of the award (again, if they win). I don’t have good overall figures here on what degree of shrinking to expect through all that, but it’s huge. Assuming the family prevails, they’re likelier to get maybe $1-2 million, with a third or more of that going to attorneys.
This is not a field I’m expert in. It’d be cool if someone who is could write up an article using this and other notorious cases as a guide to understanding what’s really going on, as with the refutations of the McDonald’s coffee case urban legends and the like.
Well, there’s the Snopes.com article.
PZ Myers
Is it that unprecedented or egregious? He was defamed by the school, the mayor, and the police department (all of whom cryptically insinuated to right-wing media that conversations among Mohamed, the police, and school officials on the day of the arrest demonstrated nefarious motivations and bad behavior on his part, and all of whom conveniently couldn’t prove any of this elaborate conspiracy, blaming the family because they didn’t sign off on releasing complete records), but the investigation concluded that he’d intended nothing more than to share yet another electronics project with his teachers and that there was no “hoax bomb.”
After that kind of persecution (which had been ongoing prior to the clock), after being handcuffed and arrested, after enduring local and national harassment, after receiving threats, he clearly couldn’t return to campus. And this is going to follow him into adulthood, having committed no crime but having been made infamous for being a liar or would-be terrorist.
When someone’s sexually harassed at work (to the point that they’ve got to leave for their own mental and physical health), they’ve a right to sue and it’d be tantamount to enabling the harasser to say that such a suit “stinks.” The legal standing of Mohamed’s case is probably radically different, and it may not even be legally tenable, but the case isn’t obviously frivolous. The majority of hostile workplace and discrimination suits are about principle, and can include punitive damages for affecting a person’s ability to earn a living. Why should interfering with someone’s education be any different? How else does one do “PR” in these instances, but by trying to rap the knuckles of irresponsible bigots, loudly point out their bigotry, and hit them where it hurts (their wallets).
They’ve had ample time to issue an apology, acknowledge their errors, and demonstrate how (and explain, in good faith, why) they’ll avoid doing something like this in the future. The suit’s good motivation for just that, as you say, and the family will probably settle if the department and school offer to do so.
By Dawkin’s logic, he never wrote a book, since he didn’t create a new language or new words for said book, just took existing words in anexisting language and arranged them in such a way that they were readable.
Just another attack by the talented against those with only the beginnings of real skill.
Taking something apart and assembling something out of it is, well, how you LEARN to make circuits. I myself started coding by reverse engineering someone else’s program and altering a few things. It taught me far more to see a complicated program up close than any set of instructions on making some simplistic “hello world” could ever do. This kid is still in grade school! You might as well criticize some kid who “made a sentence” because that’s nothing new. Gotta start with things that exist before you can invent brand new things. Seriously, these attacks are mean spirited.
The problem with atheists is they are such hypocrites. Say anything to make a buck some of ’em.
“How many Anglican hymnals shall we burn to repudiate those other heinous products of our culture?”
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/07/29/desecration-its-a-fun-hobby/
“Desecration: it’s a fun hobby!
Posted by PZ Myers on July 29, 2007
So I’m thinking of picking up a cheap copy of the Qu’ran. And I’m thinking … what to do, what to do
So here are a few ideas. Maybe you can think of some more.
I could simply urinate on it, but that’s old hat.
If I had a puppy, I could use the pages for paper training. But I do not have a puppy and I’m not going to get one for this horrible reason.
The traditional approach: keep it near the fireplace, and use the pages for kindling. Of course, there’s no way I’m going to start a fire in the fireplace in August in Minnesota, so that’s going to have to wait a while.
I could doodle cartoons in the margins and make my own crudely illustrated (I have no talent) version of the Qu’ran. Then I could put it on ebay and make a profit.
Here’s an artsy option: I could make a new cover and a bookmark for it … out of bacon.”
But of course Dawkins is a bigot and we need better atheist leadership. Can anyone think of someone???
And here’s PZ burying a copy of the Koran and Bible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQtQE8CsM-E&feature=youtu.be
Hypocrisy is so good some people make a career out of it.
Desecrating a holy book isn’t the same as writing off their whole culture. There’s hypocrisy here whatsoever.
@89
There’s no hypocrisy*
Yes, bagging people for “hating “Islam” and then pledging to urinate on the Quran, or have a dog defecate on the Quran, and then videotaping yourself burying the Quran…. is all totally consistent. Consistent with being a hater, I would say.
As is procuring stolen Eucharist wafers so they can be desecrated. That’s respect for culture right there.