Remember the so-called Four Horsemen of "New Atheism", of which Dawkins was one? I think Dennett was the only one of those who didn't end up being a detriment to any notion of a positive secular moment. Though it does give me an excuse to pull out this vintage meme
"Endless Forms Most Beautiful," the concept album based on evolution. The music is overall fantastic, but Dawkins has spots on a couple of tracks where he monologues (at one point for an excessive length of time).
Oh yeah I forgot it was Dr Yan Wong too, I looked him up on "X" and he looks pretty cool. Unlike Dawkins, so I'll attribute that book to him in future.
It's certainly comforting to believe that bad things are by design, planned out, and that they couldn't happen in a disconnected way. That's why conspiracy theories get traction.
Turns out if you sit a bunch of people in a room and get them to repeat "We're the smartest, we're the most rational, we're the best," on loop, they start to lose self-awareness
That whole atheism movement turned out to just be American imperialism and Catholicism in a trench coat. A huge win for the religious right in America in the long run.
I still remember the online atheism split that happened right before Gamergate and IIRC it was mostly centered around Dawkins hitting on someone in an elevator and handling the fallout from the incident REALLY fucking poorly
I mean, I think the paradox of the man is he somehow managed to make a faith centred on lack of faith and I'm not sure if he did it by accident or not?
I'm a biologist, so I've actually read The Selfish Gene, the thing what made him an important person, and for sure, it is very good. The science in it is still relevant and important today.
But it's fascinating how there's both hints at what he became, and surprisingly good opinions both inside it.
70s Dawkins says (paraphrasing) "a gene like anything in nature, cannot be perfectly defined within human borders, so for the purposes of our discussion a 'gene' is any section of DNA that acts as we think a gene ought to"
Modern day Dawkins says "biological sex is a perfect human-made distinction"
70s Dawkins explicitly states that human politics should avoid trying to base or justify itself on biology, because the thing that makes us human is our ability to make choices that our genes may not "want" us to, from an evolutionary fitness perspective. In particular for the book, non-kin altruism
But despite the book seemingly wanting to avoid connecting it to politics, if you read between the lines you can definitely see Dawkins making an argument against the Welfare State and for the free market at certain points.
So overall, 70s Dawkins didn't have any super egregious opinions and in fact had some decent points on broad things. He was also obviously a very good and important scientist.
Unfortunately what happened is that he fell down the 2010s alt-right conspiracy hole. He lost his critical thinking skills.
Oh he's an insufferable twat isn't he? Good for you Dawkins, you qualified in your field, that doesn't mean you're qualified to speak on someone else's.
Know your damn place you toffee nosed prick.
(not you ofc Casey, you know I love you ❤️)
كتاب "الإسلام والإلحاد وجها لوجه" باللغه الفرنسية
Islam and Atheism Face to Face Book in Frenchhttps://islamhouse.com/lite/index.php/item/2837079?lang=ar
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But yeah, elevatorgate was quite a shift and a lot of online atheists turned to antifeminism, depressingly
But it's fascinating how there's both hints at what he became, and surprisingly good opinions both inside it.
Modern day Dawkins says "biological sex is a perfect human-made distinction"
Unfortunately what happened is that he fell down the 2010s alt-right conspiracy hole. He lost his critical thinking skills.
Know your damn place you toffee nosed prick.
(not you ofc Casey, you know I love you ❤️)
Islam and Atheism Face to Face Book in Frenchhttps://islamhouse.com/lite/index.php/item/2837079?lang=ar