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American Humanist Association Statement Withdrawing Honor from Richard Dawkins

28 points by thinkingemote 6y ago

bad_username 6y ago
Radical social justice is a form of ultimate conspiracism. It immediately attributes abject malice to every phenomenon it observes. According to this worldview, Richard Dawkins can have only one possible motivation when writing about transgenderism. The acclaimed author, thinker, and a lifelong apologist of scientific truth only makes his claims because he wants to demean a disadvantaged group. This man only pretended to be an iconic intellectual for many decades, only to show his true racist nature today, and there can be no other interpretation.
LatteLazy 6y ago
The award they gave him in 1996. His tweet that upset them: https://mobile.twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1380812852055973888 https://mobile.twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/13808128520...
- pomian 6y ago
  Strange. Disturbing even. An award given 24 years ago can be taken away? To quote that tweet you posted: Discuss
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Looks like a pretty interesting tweet to me... But I daren't say more for fear of my own Twitter history attracting unwanted attention.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  It wasn’t one tweet, FTFA: “Richard Dawkins has over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values.” (Of course, before and contemporaneously with being given the award Dawkins was notorious for using the paper-thin pretext of scientific discourse (and sometimes not even that much cover) for both broad and specifically targeted anti-religious bigotry. While humanism is inherently in opposition to religion, it need not be bigoted in the way Dawkins always has been, and he was always a poor choice as an exemplar of that community.
  - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
    I don’t think he is trying to demean the actual marginalized groups. He just points at the inconsistencies of the predominant social framework. Arguments for “social justice” (for lack of a better term) often aren’t logical or consistent, and maybe they can never be, because human nature just isn’t that way, which is not even to say that there is anything inherently wrong with that, but it should be scrutinized and one should be aware of it. There are countless examples of this in the replies to Dawkins’ tweet alone. Someone literally says that transracialism is invalid because, unlike gender, race isn’t a spectrum. That seems completely wrong to me and even if “race” (as a German I’ve always found this word’s fashionability pretty weird btw) were descrete, what about that precludes transracialism? Others focus on the aspect of choice, with some implying that the specific woman in question “chose” to be transracial, while transgender people are inherently transgender. Does this mean someone claiming to have been born in the wrong skin color would not get vilified? And again, what makes this the deciding factor? I remember this was a huge point in favor of gay rights as well. Why? I suppose because it’s easily defensible and somehow worked in the discourse at the time, but we should be so honest with ourselves as not to conflate auch tactical manouvers with actual foundations of our beliefs. Some people focus on the privilege aspect, alleging the transracial woman only posed as black to gain some benefits afforded to black people. Yet the same doesn’t seem to apply to MTF transwomen. I’m not going for a “gotcha, checkmate sjws” here and it’s sad it has to be said. Obviously, presumably like Dawkins himself, I’m all for social liberties. I don’t care what other people do with their bodies and I shouldn’t regulate it. I consider myself on the side of “the left” if you will, and that’s the only reason I cringe so hard at it. The right wing trolls under Dawkins’ tweet are deplorable, but they don’t affect me as much and generally don’t intersect with my bubble a lot. They don’t feel very powerful to me, so even ridiculing them seems pretty self congratulatory. Dawkins is challenging social justice like he challanged christianity 20 years ago: because they are dominant and wrongly feel infallible. It’s just more sad having to do it to what you consider your own camp, and being vilified by them.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 6y ago
pvaldes 6y ago
So they shamelessly used his notorious public image to attract donors and obtain publicity, but the man is a damned free thinker, can't be tamed, and can't be milked anymore after twenty five years? Not much lost, then. My congratulations to Mr Dawkins; this kind of 'honors' are just chains on disguise and this is the kind of conduct that you would expect from a toddler. The level of the discussion in many of the replies from the twitter trend is infantile also. Showing a photo of a famous person doing something cute to reply, is like a scene taken directly from the idiocracy film.
londons_explore 6y ago
When one 'gives' an award, one should not expect to be able to take it back...
truth_ 6y ago
You cannot speak the truth anymore. Dawkins began to fall out of grace of the western left after he started to criticize Islam. When he only criticized Christianity, he was their darling. Remember, "Just because some are underdogs, does not mean they are the good guys". While I do not know enough about the trans issues, I know for a fact, some people do use their race as a card when it benefits them.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  It's been a while since I read the The God Delusion but I'm pretty sure he criticized Islam in it. Since then he veered into social media territory, delivering cringe-worthy 'burns' and 'hot-takes' on all sorts of clickbait news items. It's hard for me to reconcile that the same man who wrote The Selfish Gene, which I love, is the guy ranting on Twitter like a drunk FB grandpa.

28 points by thinkingemote 6y ago

Radical social justice is a form of ultimate conspiracism. It immediately attributes abject malice to every phenomenon it observes. According to this worldview, Richard Dawkins can have only one possible motivation when writing about transgenderism. The acclaimed author, thinker, and a lifelong apologist of scientific truth only makes his claims because he wants to demean a disadvantaged group. This man only pretended to be an iconic intellectual for many decades, only to show his true racist nature today, and there can be no other interpretation.

LatteLazy 6y ago

The award they gave him in 1996. His tweet that upset them: https://mobile.twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1380812852055973888 https://mobile.twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/13808128520...

pomian 6y ago
Strange. Disturbing even. An award given 24 years ago can be taken away? To quote that tweet you posted: Discuss
londons_explore 6y ago
Looks like a pretty interesting tweet to me... But I daren't say more for fear of my own Twitter history attracting unwanted attention.
dragonwriter 6y ago
It wasn’t one tweet, FTFA: “Richard Dawkins has over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values.” (Of course, before and contemporaneously with being given the award Dawkins was notorious for using the paper-thin pretext of scientific discourse (and sometimes not even that much cover) for both broad and specifically targeted anti-religious bigotry. While humanism is inherently in opposition to religion, it need not be bigoted in the way Dawkins always has been, and he was always a poor choice as an exemplar of that community.
- pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
  I don’t think he is trying to demean the actual marginalized groups. He just points at the inconsistencies of the predominant social framework. Arguments for “social justice” (for lack of a better term) often aren’t logical or consistent, and maybe they can never be, because human nature just isn’t that way, which is not even to say that there is anything inherently wrong with that, but it should be scrutinized and one should be aware of it. There are countless examples of this in the replies to Dawkins’ tweet alone. Someone literally says that transracialism is invalid because, unlike gender, race isn’t a spectrum. That seems completely wrong to me and even if “race” (as a German I’ve always found this word’s fashionability pretty weird btw) were descrete, what about that precludes transracialism? Others focus on the aspect of choice, with some implying that the specific woman in question “chose” to be transracial, while transgender people are inherently transgender. Does this mean someone claiming to have been born in the wrong skin color would not get vilified? And again, what makes this the deciding factor? I remember this was a huge point in favor of gay rights as well. Why? I suppose because it’s easily defensible and somehow worked in the discourse at the time, but we should be so honest with ourselves as not to conflate auch tactical manouvers with actual foundations of our beliefs. Some people focus on the privilege aspect, alleging the transracial woman only posed as black to gain some benefits afforded to black people. Yet the same doesn’t seem to apply to MTF transwomen. I’m not going for a “gotcha, checkmate sjws” here and it’s sad it has to be said. Obviously, presumably like Dawkins himself, I’m all for social liberties. I don’t care what other people do with their bodies and I shouldn’t regulate it. I consider myself on the side of “the left” if you will, and that’s the only reason I cringe so hard at it. The right wing trolls under Dawkins’ tweet are deplorable, but they don’t affect me as much and generally don’t intersect with my bubble a lot. They don’t feel very powerful to me, so even ridiculing them seems pretty self congratulatory. Dawkins is challenging social justice like he challanged christianity 20 years ago: because they are dominant and wrongly feel infallible. It’s just more sad having to do it to what you consider your own camp, and being vilified by them.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 6y ago

pvaldes 6y ago

So they shamelessly used his notorious public image to attract donors and obtain publicity, but the man is a damned free thinker, can't be tamed, and can't be milked anymore after twenty five years? Not much lost, then. My congratulations to Mr Dawkins; this kind of 'honors' are just chains on disguise and this is the kind of conduct that you would expect from a toddler. The level of the discussion in many of the replies from the twitter trend is infantile also. Showing a photo of a famous person doing something cute to reply, is like a scene taken directly from the idiocracy film.

londons_explore 6y ago

When one 'gives' an award, one should not expect to be able to take it back...

truth_ 6y ago

You cannot speak the truth anymore. Dawkins began to fall out of grace of the western left after he started to criticize Islam. When he only criticized Christianity, he was their darling. Remember, "Just because some are underdogs, does not mean they are the good guys". While I do not know enough about the trans issues, I know for a fact, some people do use their race as a card when it benefits them.

uniqueid 6y ago
It's been a while since I read the The God Delusion but I'm pretty sure he criticized Islam in it. Since then he veered into social media territory, delivering cringe-worthy 'burns' and 'hot-takes' on all sorts of clickbait news items. It's hard for me to reconcile that the same man who wrote The Selfish Gene, which I love, is the guy ranting on Twitter like a drunk FB grandpa.