Adam Lee is taken aback at Richard Dawkins’s comment on Jerry Coyne’s blog post yesterday (the one about Adam’s Comment is Free article about Dawkins).
I saw that comment yesterday, and I saw that it was bad, but I didn’t have time to do it justice. Adam has done it justice; read his post. I want to say a thing or two about it myself.
Thank you, Jerry.
I long ago declared that I would not wish to go on living if I found myself in a world dominated by people who no longer care about what’s true and express open contempt for factual evidence. Either a 1984 world where the Party in power is the sole arbiter of what is “true” and enforces it with violence; or a world where truth is whatever society deems it to be, regardless of evidence, and where dissenters are ruthlessly punished by vitriolic abuse or ostracism rather than violence.
I fear we are sleepwalking towards that feared world, where people shun evidence and despise facts: a world where dogma is king, emotion is queen and evidence is exiled; and where dissent from orthodoxy is suppressed by verbal if not physical jackboots.
What’s this about a world dominated by people who no longer care about what’s true and express open contempt for factual evidence? Excuse me: we have been documenting the things Dawkins types for weeks (in some cases, months). Documenting them. How is that not caring about what’s true? How is it open contempt for factual evidence? How ironic: in complaining about people with a disregard for truth, he tells an untruth about people he dislikes.
Ok wait a second, a partisan of the Dawkins-Coyne faction might say here. Hold on. Why have people been documenting the things Dawkins types? It’s just because you’re looking for fodder for click-bait, right? Right?
No. It’s because Dawkins matters. It’s because he’s not just some random atheist; he’s the most un-random atheist we’ve got. He is by far the most famous recognizable celebrity-like person in the Anglophone atheist movement. (Anglophone, please note. Michael Nugent keeps complaining that global atheism isn’t American atheism, as if we obnoxious Yanks had been pretending otherwise. No, of course it’s not. I’m talking about Anglophone atheism here.) Now an atheist celebrity isn’t a real celebrity by the usual standards; Dawkins isn’t a movie star or rock star or basketball star; but he is a celeb in this particular niche. He’s the celeb.
As such, he does a lot to set the tone of said atheist movement.
That tone sucks.
We – we naughty critics, we bad people who keep documenting what Dawkins says on Twitter – we would like to have a better atheist movement with a less sucky tone. We would like to have an atheist movement that’s not sometimes absent-mindedly and sometimes determinedly contemptuous of women. We think it would help if Dawkins set a better tone.
Or at least I do. I think the others do too; I think that’s basically why any of us do this; but I haven’t polled them and I don’t know that they would word it this way.
But I’m pretty sure that’s the gist of it. The atheist movement is way too riddled with casual sexism, and Dawkins has done a lot to make it that way, and we would like him to stop doing that and do the opposite instead.
There. Now back to his staggeringly hyperbolic and self-pitying comment.
Either a 1984 world where the Party in power is the sole arbiter of what is “true” and enforces it with violence; or a world where truth is whatever society deems it to be, regardless of evidence, and where dissenters are ruthlessly punished by vitriolic abuse or ostracism rather than violence.
And he’s claiming that bloggers criticizing him, on the basis of things he has said and done, are or look like or are leading to a world where truth is whatever society deems it to be, regardless of evidence, and where dissenters are ruthlessly punished by vitriolic abuse or ostracism rather than violence? Really?
It’s so tempting to do a Dear Muslimo about that. So tempting.
I fear we are sleepwalking towards that feared world, where people shun evidence and despise facts: a world where dogma is king, emotion is queen and evidence is exiled; and where dissent from orthodoxy is suppressed by verbal if not physical jackboots.
Verbal jackboots: like, Richard Dawkins said the following clueless sexist thing on Twitter today.
Really?
That reads like something someone worried about chemtrails would write.
That was thought leader Richard Dawkins.
It’s still just so disappointing.
This is projection on Dawkins’ part. A very pure and clear example of projection.
BTW, I’ve gotten to the point where I tend to assume the worst from people using the term “vitriolic” about someone’s comments. I’ve had it applied to me for years now, over and over, for the “crime” of accurately quoting a pseudoscientist’s statements and pointing out why it is factually wrong. Maybe that’s just the context I’m noticing it in when I notice it, but I do see it applied like that. As Dawkins did in the stuff you quoted above.
Dunno about others, but here’s a second person taking Dawkins to task because he is the most public face of this movement. When he says reprehensible shit, he needs to be called out.
Enough with the empty promises, Richard.
No no no, no telling people to die. Come on.
I wish that Dawkins and Harris would listen to fellow “Horseman” Dennett’s four steps for arguing “without caricatur[ing] one’s opponent,” especially Step 1: “You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
Things would have gone very differently for Harris, at least.
Your blog, your rules; but he’s the one making the attention-seeking theatrical declarations to not want to live anymore. Five out of six people on this planet believe in some sort of dumbass deity sans evidence and fact, and this has been the state of things his entire life.
He’s a sleazy fucking con artist. Asking him to be honest is not beyond the pale.
But, as you say, I’ll stop.
I’m pretty sure that whenever he melodramatically invokes “evidence”, he’s not necessarily talking about Adam’s article in particular, but about the general argument. Namely, this brave view he holds (that might even end up costing him his life, people! we’re talking unwashed masses with pitchforks here!) that we’re quick to believe rape claims without evidence, while he’s being all logical, fact-based and even-handed by deciding which victim to believe based on whether or not he’s friendly with the abuser.
Anthony, by all means ask him to be honest. Just no telling people to die, even cryptically. (It’s ok if you want to offer him a ticket to a better planet though.)
I was reading an article on Murry Bookchin earlier today and it mentioned “grumpy old man syndrome”i.e. a tendency to become set in your ways and finding change difficult. I think to an extent that is what is afflicting Dawkins-his upbringing is showing through as he ages. This is not a defence as there are many of us who still retain mental flexibility and can accept change.
The rape thing. sigh. He keeps putting in terms of JAIL when what we’re talking about is giving women fair warning of guys who are known to skeeve. The standard of proof in the second case is a lot lower. A lot.
It’s still not nothing. You don’t want to damage reputations on flimsy evidence. On the other hand, in many circles having a reputation as a skeeve is considered an honor.
@Anthony K:
I’m pretty fucking furious about Dawkins invoking suicide, even in a vague way, over the criticism he’s received. The answer isn’t to invoke it back at him in a wishful way and compound the problem. Mock him for his hyperbolic ridiculousness, rage against him for trivializing suicide in order to attempt to smear/silence critics, there’s lots of ways to slam him without wishing he’d actually kill himself.
Picture a boot, stomping on a blog. Forever.
Oh man, I’m so forming a post-punk jazz / funk fusion band and calling it “Verbal Jackboots and the Oestrogen Vibe”…
Brilliant, Marcus.
Dunc-with a name like that shouldn’t it be a Death metal/folk band
I enjoyed Adam’s point that, if Dawkins is so worried about a jackbooted Orwellian future, maybe he should be a bit more concerned about the people who are getting actual harassment and death threats. I mean, the ones that are men, anyway.
Yet it seems to me that you and your apologists have long gone down that road, Richard. I am not even sure why you are even complaining about it. Welcome to the internets?
I wanted to comment at WEIT in support of not-being-sexist, but after even established commenters being banned I doubt I’d have much influence.
So maybe I’ll start participating more here.
This is me just ‘not asking questions but a refresh of memories’. Didn’t Richard Dawkins have a mistress who used stassi – Nazi rhetoric to make a point against Rebecca Watson and the skepchicks?
Secondly, was this before, or after, we learned he had a second mistress in America.
This is not to slut shame but identify that Richard Dawkins used others to.voice his opinion without disclosing the conflict of interest and that he exemplifies the difference between a moral and ethical person.
A moral person knows the difference between right and wrong. An ethical person lives a life living his/her morals.
Evidence: Every single thing Dawkins has typed in the last…. um, long time?
People expressing open contempt for factual evidence: Dawkins & friends.
It’s like he’s trying to gaslight people, but it doesn’t work because we can actually still read the words he wrote so his friends join in trying to convince us we are misreading him. Crowdsourced gaslighting?
I used to be a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, RIchard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett (in pretty much that order). Now, likely through his own mortality, I still have a special place of reverence for the Hitch…though I shudder to think what his contributions to the current so-called ‘argument’ might have been. I like to think that he would be able to see through the bullshit spouted by his friends, but I cannot even speculate about the odds on that. As it stands now, Daniel has my admiration of all the old white dude atheists, though I’ve expanded my circle of reading quite a bit in the last five years to include women such as Ophelia Benson, Rebecca Watson, Maryam Namazie, and Heina Dadabhoy, along with quite a few other non-old-white-dudes whom I greatly respect and admire.
But Sam and Richard have finally lost all my respect. That someone can say “organised atheism just lacks that extra estrogen vibe” (even supposedly in jest) and then be shocked–SHOCKED–that someone might take offence to statements of that kind, not a sexist bone in his body, nosirreebob, then that someone has clearly lost the ability to reason objectively about their own statements and the effects those statements might have in the world. That someone can claim persecution and lies based on having their own tweets quoted at them (and, really, claiming a tweet is ‘out of context’ is certainly incredibly rich) shows a disjunction with the actual meaning of words. Talk about Orwellian.
Oh, and in case the above wasn’t vitriolic enough for the keyboard warriors: I’m a white male atheist, and I think Sam and Richard should fuck off. They don’t fucking speak for me, they’re not my goddamned ‘leaders;, and I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.
The problems we point to are part of these spheres as well:
Tech, comics, sci-fi fandom, gaming, currency debates and a long list of other places dominated until recently by men.
This timeline does not include the atheosphere but it very much should. I hope people will help with that.
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents
Evidence? Dawkins will not entertain it unless is confirms his bias in the area of women speaking for themselves.
“emotion is queen”…. I see what you did there Richard. Not pretty. Not becoming, and certainly not “showing leadership.”
Dick Dawkins has become the Bill Donahue of atheism.
Good grief. How oblivious can Dawkins be?
He’s actually encouraging this dreaded land of evidence-less emotion – he’s not engaging with his critics on any meaningful level, just emotionally lashing out because some people had the temerity to question his tweets.
Just staggering that he can be so pompously self assured and blind to his own faults. I guess this is what happens when you have decades of people fawning over you?
At this point, I’d just like to see a straight answer to a yes-or-no question from Dawkins. That’s all. Two or three letters — a whole lot less than the 140-character cap he’s been putting on himself recently.
That question is: “If a guy has sex with a woman who hasn’t consented, should there be ANY NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES AT ALL?”
We aren’t talking about jail — just some kind of negative consequences. As in, people saying mean things about you on blogs. A pretty low bar.
Right now, it sounds as if his answer would be “no.”
citizenjane @ 23
I perused that timeline. I especially like (*hurk*) how it starts out as an incident every 8-10 years and then, by the early 2000s, it’s multiple bullet points per month. Oy.
Oh,Dawkins, shut up you whiny, self-pitying , upper-class twit!
What , the second some people stop worshipping at the hem of your napkin and
dare to hold you to the standards to which you hold (nearly) everybody else, you’re being
jackbooted, persecuted, why , practically driven into a virtual gas chamber!
The second some people stop carressing you with velvet gloves, your skin breaks into weeping wounds of vanity!
You need to find Jesus and join one of those Sado-Methodist USian Megachurches,you’d fit right in…
@Marcus, 14:
Picture a boot, stomping from a blog. For as long as that post is on the front page. So, like, a week, tops.
Because that’s the incarnation of the Orwellian orthodoxy that he’s actually up against here.
@Seven of Mine Yes – I wonder about that too… is it parallel to the rise of MRA sites I wonder?
Ophelia, strictly speaking Dawkins is documenting himself in his Twitter feed. Others are just commenting upon it.
Seth@22: Hitch was an amazing writer, but I have absolutely no doubt that he would be on the Dawkins-Shermer-Harris team given his published rampantly sexist opinions. I guess there’s a small chance he would put his attitudes towards women aside for this particular issue, but I very much doubt it.
What really amazes me is that Dawkins makes public pronouncements, often with amplifying remarks, and then takes umbrage when people quote him accurately and criticize what he’s written.
No, Professor, it is not “obvious” that Adam Lee lied when he quoted you verbatim and gave sources to your comments. What is obvious is that you dislike criticism and get quite emotional when your rationality is shown to be less than Vulcanesque.
Dawkins has been contemplating his navel so long that some of its lint migrated into his brain. Personally (and speaking with both scientist and feminist hats on), I think his behavior is all of a piece, as I said in Dudebros under the Skin.
Hitchens was a glib imperialist who had the bad fortune to be born a century too late and Harris is a tarzanist à la Kanazawa.
Donnie @ 20 – yes, Paula Kirby wrote an essay titled “Sisterhood of the Oppressed” that did indeed compare women such as Rebecca and (since you ask) me to the Nazis and the Stasi.
chrislawson:
Hitch was an amazing writer, but I have absolutely no doubt that he would be on the Dawkins-Shermer-Harris team given his published rampantly sexist opinions.
I agree, sadly. I always enjoyed Hitch for a bon mot, but one thing I realized when the Iraq war went south was that Hitch suffered terribly from that pervasive disease “can’t-admit-I-was-wrong-itis” I think Harris and Dawkins also suffer from it and sometimes I wonder if that’s worse (for them) than the sexism. They’re all obviously intelligent humans and capable of learning; it’s as if the biggest thing in their way is their fear that they’ll be (what? laughed at? rejected? called “inconsistent”?) if they say “I was wrong.”
I remember, years ago, when James Randi was keynote speaker at a USENIX conference, and Randi said something funny. He said he didn’t believe in magic or the supernatural, but there was one bone fide miracle he’d witnessed. According to Randi, when a PhD is created, they are given a piece of paper and a handshake and **poof** they are now a PhD and somehow magically are incapable of uttering the words “I was wrong” Oh, irony thy name is “Randi”
Personally, I have experience with being wrong – to the point where I ought to have a Doctorate of Wrong. One of the things I learned in my senior year at Wrong U is how to admit you were wrong, and then to “move on” from there. If fucking President Obama can actually float the idea that “we tortured some folks, and that was wrong, but we’ve forgiven ourselves”(basically) that helps us calibrate the scale of impact of admitting wrong. The world appears to be a pretty forgiving place for people who admit they were wrong and change their behaviors. But it’s as if Hitch, and Dawkins, and Harris think they’re working in a hard vacuum, or some environment in which the slightest hint of wrong can kill you. If what they’re concerned about is their legacy, it’s a foolish strategy. I suspect that had Hitch come out loudly and beautifully and said he was wrong about Iraq, and that women are pretty fucking funny, people would say “I respect him for the way he turned around on the Iraq thing” not “He went to his grave sounding like another privileged pontificator who couldn’t say ‘I was wrong'”
@seven of mine, @cityzenjane: The wiki’s been around for under a decade, and afaik there was no centralized place to share stories like these before then, so it’s not surprising that there’s not as much pre-2000. I think the rise in the number of documented incidents are more a matter of now being able to document incidents as they happen, especially with raised awareness these days that they are even a problem and not just “how it is”.
Dawkins is certainly getting worldwide notice. Here he is mentioned on an Australian news/humour site with a daily rant: http://thevine.com.au/life/news/10-things-welcome-to-the-terrordome-20140922-287126
Marcus Ranum #36 –
One of the reasons I admire Malcolm X is his repeated revelations and reversals, where he decided he’d been doing things wrong and tried an entirely new tack.
I’m not at all surprised by how much of an ass Richard Dawkins has made of himself recently. “Dear Muslima” really should have been the last nail in that coffin, and Dawkins should have been written off as any kind of useful spokesman right then and there.
What does surprise me, however, is how utterly pathetic Dawkins is. He doesn’t want to live in a world where jackbooted thugs call him names on the internet? Even if you accept his ridiculous characterization of the criticism he receives, this comment of his is just mind-blowingly pathetic. His drama-queen histrionics have blown off the top of the chart. He’s out-Palined Sarah Palin as a FREEZE PEACH!1!!!1!11! warrior, for fucks sake! I knew Dawkins was an asshole, but I had no idea he carried all the intellectual heft of an eight-year-old throwing a screaming tantrum because his toy was broken.
As someone who was indifferent to Dawkins before he shit all over Rebecca Watson and cackled gleefully while she was consequently mercilessly harassed for years on end–he’d been on my radar as an atheist big-wig who was widely considered to be a good writer, but I’m not an activist, I’d come to atheism on my own a long time ago, and couldn’t imagine being anything other than spectacularly bored by sizable books making an argument that should be the length of a blog post, so I never encountered him or read his books–I do have to wonder: how can someone so juvenile, self-centered, and anti-intellectual in his approach to the world possibly have ever been a good writer about or advocate for atheism? What did anyone ever see in him? Was it all rose colored glasses because he was saying things people wanted to hear? If I go and read The God Delusion now will I wonder what happened to him or will I just want to hate everyone who ever thought he was a gifted advocate on behalf of atheism?
brucegee1962,
If presented with “If a guy has sex with a woman who hasn’t consented, should there be ANY NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES AT ALL?”, Dawkins would most likely tell you that OF COURSE there should be negative consequences. He might even compile a list, and it might even prove adequate. What he’d also tell you is that if the woman was so drunk she doesn’t remember what happened, then we don’t know what happened. What he actually means by this is that she probably consented but changed her mind after having sex with the guy. A more “charitable” take might be “Maybe she consented but doesn’t remember doing so because the alcohol muddled her memories; we have no way of knowing, so ruining a man’s reputation over this would be unfair.”
(It evidently hasn’t occurred to him that if he was trying to defend someone who DOES remember her rape to a naysayer – say the Statesman journalist – and defended her with „drunk or not, she has clear memories of it, and even of being roughed up, so obviously it happened“, a naysayer would go „She was drunk. She admits she drifted in and out of it. Just because she doesn’t remember consenting and wanting it rough doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Go away.“
The problem with his stance isn’t that he doesn’t think there should be consequences when a woman doesn’t consent, but sex happens anyway. (Well – what I mean is that at this point, he’s made no such indications.) The problem with his stance, at this point, is that he refuses to accept “One cannot meaningfully consent while drunk” applies to rape. WHY he refuses to accept it no longer interests me all that much, to be honest. I would guess it’s because that suits him in multiple ways.
@Marcus: a boot stomping on a twit.
What stood out for me was the brazen lack od self-awareness. Emotion is queen? Does that make him the dogmatic king since hes surely married to emotional diatribes. Or is IT only “emotional” if its a woman or a feminist?
What also stands out is his love of rhetoric, as long as it’s his own..
About Hitchens –
He was the one who “converted” me, so to speak. Having grown up in the Eastern Bloc, I wasn’t raised religious but contrary to popular belief about communist states, the concept of “god” was still very much this given floating in the ether (at least in my country). No, nobody jammed religious teachings of any kind down our throats which does make a difference, but everybody I ever knew was a believer anyway. In the same passive, unthinking way, so was I, until I started giving existential questions some actual attention in my late teens. All the “explanations” involving supernatural agents (god, karma, the Akashic records, etc, etc.) struck me as interesting enough, but with each one, I’d always came to a point where I was required to look the other way (make a leap of faith, in other words) when something major doesn’t add up. After going through that routine enough times, I got to a point where what I didn’t want to consider (that there’s nobody upstairs and no Grand Plan) started making the most sense of all the options, but for years, I wouldn’t dare make the plunge. It was too important to keep an open mind.
I came across Hitchens on youtube, while looking for something completely unrelated to this subject. He struck me as so ridiculously quick witted, sarcastic and eloquent I just HAD to hear more, on any subject, and people had uploaded mostly atheism debates. It was thanks to those my doubts solidified enough, and I was no longer interested in keeping an open mind about unprovable and unstudiable (if interesting) fairytales. It felt immensely liberating, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that.
Not for a moment, however, did I entertain any hopes about his feminist status. Not even when he’d actively co-opt women’s plight to score a point against a religious opponent. He just radiated sexism and, at least in the interviews I’ve watched / read, never attempted to claim otherwise. I’m absolutely certain he’d be on the wrong side of the fence with this, except that would neither surprise, not disappoint me because unlike Dawkins, he never called himself a feminist. I’d go as far as to suggest he’d have laughed out loud if anyone suggested he was.
I was this close to starting out with a disclaimer stating I’m NOT trying to suggest he’s somehow better than Dawkins, but the fact is I find sexists who are upfront with their bullsh-t far less dangerous than the type Dawkins has turned out to be. I can’t be tricked into trusting the former. Dawkins I trusted, and evidently I shouldn’t have.
“It’s so tempting to do a Dear Muslimo about that. So tempting.”
I’m surprised there’s no Downfall parody yet.
Es bleiben im raum: Meikel, Coynl, Shrebs… und Blackdorf.
@Beatrice: I think Crowdsourced Gaslighting is opening for Verbal Jackboots & the Oestrogen Vibe tonight.
I’m really not sure Hitchen’s would have backed Dawkins. I rather suspect that he would realize that Dawkins is the aging has been who is frightened of losing his position to young upstarts like Watson and is using all available means to attack them.
Hitchens would not have had any sympathy for Watson had she stood down but I think he would rather enjoy the fact that Dawkins has made such a fool of himself. The difference between Hitchens and Dawkins is the difference between Jeremy Clarkson and Rush Limbaugh, Clarkson is a casual bigot, he says things that are awful because he can’t be bothered to think hard. Limbaugh is an apostle of bigotry who wants to make everyone like himself.
But going back to the original article, I think there is an important point a lot of folk are overlooking and that is Dawkins was never so great for the movement in his prime. He really was the atheist bigot who went out of his way to inflict his ideas on others in the same way that we find objectionable when religions do it. He wasn’t just trashing religious ideas he was trashing people for believing them.
I didn’t much care for Dawkins having read his take on evolution and that of Stephen Jay Gould. Dawkins is a rigid ideolog and if you disagree with him then you mist be doing so out of ignorance or some sort of mental incapacity. Gould is vastly superior and is equally willing to demolish the arguments of creationists and folk like the IQ test pseudoscientists. If Gould was alive today he would surely be writing the definitive smackdown of evolutionary psychology which (not coincidentally) was much less prominent when he was alive than today. He does have some good pieces on it but nothing quite like the mismeasure of man.
Apparently we’re supposed to think that when Shariah law refuses to believe the testimony of a single female witness, that’s misogyny, but when Richard Dawkins refuses to believe the testimony of a single female witness, that’s totally rational and logical and not a problem at all.
This rift can’t get wide enough. RD and Shermer and their “drunk women are fair game” attitudes need to be as far away as possible.
Hitchens was a seething mass of contradictions. As bad as he was on women in general, and abortion in particular, he did say one true thing: There is one sure cure for poverty, and it is the empowerment of women. Give a woman some control over her reproduction, and some financial stability, and the boats rise for everyone around her.
Yeah, well Dawkins suffers from the chronic condition “can’t-admit-I-need-to-reconsider-anything-itis”.
I call it, “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Disease”, named for the man who displayed it to the nth degree–“I am an upper class, white male Englishman (though it crosses all national boundaries) therefore I can pontificate on *any* subject with authority, no matter how obscure, no matter if I just heard of it the first time 3 seconds ago, and my opinions are *always* right.” Hence, Sir Arthur’s belief in the Cottingley fairies (An upper class, white male adult could never be fooled by two little girls of the artisan class!) and that Houdini was actually a medium who dematerialized (in spite of Houdini showing Sir Arthur how he did some of his tricks. How could a Jew, and a…a stage performer at that!…be expected to know how he did things).
I think you can just generalize that to “mansplaining,” the phenomenon by which men are enculturated to feel like they can confidently weigh in on any topic, regardless of how much they know about it (and the assumption that they certainly know more about it than women).
Skeptics and atheists, I think, have this bad, because we’ve trained ourselves to weigh in on topics with a set of standardized debunking tools, whether or not we really know much about it. We classify claims and experiences into groups that have standard responses, and especially inexperienced skeptics often leap to providing ad-hoc explanations of phenomena before doing basic things like establishing whether a phenomenon has actually occurred. The proble, as we keep seeing, is when people assume that their 9th grade understanding of biology is the complete picture of gender, and that experiences of harassment and rape can be evaluated with the same heuristics as experiences of alien abduction and miraculous visions.