The fundamental problem Dawkins is struggling with is that he is asking for reasoned disagreement on Twitter, which is well-known for a desert of reason. If he truly desires thoughtful discussion, he needs to do it with real people in the real world.
And that's so obvious that I begin to wonder if he's sincere, or if he's just stirring up shit to capture people's attention.
Again, I disagree. Trans folks are not unreasoned. They are open to the immense challenging reality that is their identity. It's different. Go in with humility. Listen. Learn. Ask questions. Be open. All will be well.
I have. Of every trans person I've had conversations with about this, only one ever had a real conversation with me. The rest just didn't want to hear my viewpoints or get asked any substantiative questions because they made them feel bad. Most of my interactions I've been called names, many they just didn't want to have the conversation. I have never, anywhere on the internet or in real life, seen an example of a clear headed discussion on this topic between two people that disagree fundamentally about all this.
I recall that the subreddit "GCdebatesQT" had some quite clear-headed discussions about this, back in the day. Not all, just some. Unfortunately it was banned by Reddit's management a few years ago, along with all the other gender-critical subs. Which is a shame as it was one of the few forums where such discussion could be reasonably had.
On the other hand, the "ChangeMyView" subreddit also sometimes had constructive debate on this subject, but just a couple of days ago the moderators threw in the towel as it was getting too difficult to manage these discussions: https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/16hxvf8/meta_.... Perhaps an indication that it's now too divisive a topic for reason to prevail.
part of the problem is that some people can't differentiate between disagreement and rejection.
and that's understandable. how do you show acceptance of someone if you disagree with their understanding of gender.
i don't know what your viewpoint is, or what you would disagree with, so i can't comment on the specifics. but talking with someone who has an opposing viewpoint can be difficult if i don' know that person and i can't trust that they will accept me and love me (in the "love thy neighbor" sense) even if they reject my understanding or belief
I think part of the problem is that we all spend so much time online, where we are anonymous and mostly unaccountable. People understandably tend to become hyper-sensitive after years of online discussion, which makes even in-person discussion tough.
I’m honestly amazed that we’ve managed to make so much progress on these issues over the last 15 years. Remember, in 2008 Barack Obama couldn’t even support gay marriage. I don’t know how exactly we’ve done it, but I hope we keep it going.
In most spaces that I tried to ask questions about this topic, when first wondering about the contradictions in this ideology, I was pilloried and sometimes even banned from the space. These were typically leftist political spaces where I was already a participant.
So I listened and learned, and ended up realising that all of this is built upon unfalsifiable beliefs that I have no obligation to accept. Like, a man who calls himself a woman is a woman? Nope, not affirming that nonsense.
He's salty about getting demonetized on youtube. Which is a little ironic since transwomen's makeup tutorials are demonetized. Which is the horseshoe theory of advertising: if it ain't mainstream, don't put your brand on it.
Edit: For the two people who read this, in this buried submission, in this buried comment, a quote humorously apropos from the article: "so hair-trigger is the hypersensitivity, a mere invitation to discuss something is enough to set it off."
Reading this, it struck me how the dynamics of the current 'cancel culture' or whatever resemble those of the traditional religious institutions Dawkins has previously critiqued. Both, at their extremes, exhibit an intolerance to differing viewpoints as a threat to their literal existence. Both can become insular, shutting out any deviation from the 'accepted' narrative, and this poses a real threat to free thought and inquiry.
It is ironic, and sad that this was so quickly flagged.
It may be that, given something like 80-90% of humans on earth follow such religious institutions, we as a species have some genetic factors that make us intolerant of differing viewpoints. I can imagine such genetic factors could have played a role in social cohesion early in human evolution.
You're completely right, this couldn't be any more ironic. Article on how people can't debate got flagged with lots of comments proving the point, ah...
I'd love to engage with others about this. Richard Dawkins has not done himself any favors as being open to this conversation. There is so much to learn and appreciate about the diversity within humanity, including the concept of sexuality and gender. That would be a great conversation, and yet Dawkins and others just complain but don't open it up.
Jordan Peterson has some interesting thoughts on how the psychology behind environmentalism, wokism, social justice warriordom etc. has a lot of overlap with the psychology behind religion. And when he says that, that's not a shallow dismissal of something he disapproves of, because he's actually pro-religion.
The problem is the fact that people who hold these viewpoints see religious people as their enemy, so they're weirdly blind to how they themselves are religious. And it's a young and immature religion that hasn't yet been through the formative historical chapter of the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts etc., and the reckoning that followed. History will repeat itself.
> The problem is the fact that people who hold these viewpoints see religious people as their enemy, so they're weirdly blind to how they themselves are religious.
It’s a fascinating realization. It reminds me of the religious history of the Soviet Union. The Soviets attempted to “delete” religion, which instead of creating a rational secular society, instead pushed people into pseudoscience, occultism and superstition.
It may be that in a culture pushed away from orthodox religions, due in many cases to those religions often actually engaging in hate against certain groups, a kind of replacement religious system takes hold.
Yeah, it's weird how this particular social transformation has no sticking power and instead produces oscillations. Coming at it from the Christian perspective (since it's the only religion that I know anything about): Jesus himself is portrayed in the New Testament as a rebel against the religious orthodoxy at the time. This resulted in a religion which, itself, eventually turned into an orthodoxy worth opposing. And now, secular opposition to that orthodoxy is weirdly turning into an orthodoxy of its own.
>The problem is the fact that people who hold these viewpoints see religious people as their enemy, so they're weirdly blind to how they themselves are religious. And it's a young and immature religion that hasn't yet been through the formative historical chapter of the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts etc., and the reckoning that followed. History will repeat itself.
First this requires accepting an inaccurate definition of what a religion is, in other words you are mischaracterizing others beliefs. Second it seems like you are shooting your own religious position in the foot by dismissing your opponent's view 'just religion' as well. The rest is condescension.
How do you define religion? Is Shinto a religion? What about Confucianism? Do you believe that religions need a centralized governing body? Do religions require community? What is an accurate definition of religion that isn’t immediately fraught with counter-examples?
Neither of your examples are even close to being as abstract as 'wokeism.' At least those examples demonstrate something that could go either way, versus something that is clearly defined. E.g. Toyota Tacoma lovers are not a religion, Christianity is. You're pretty close to a 'what do words mean anyway?' type argument which I would struggle to classify as good faith.
It is odd that the only people I've ever encountered who thought secularists were religious were Christians though. A contradiction if you actually believe in definitions.
> Second it seems like you are shooting your own religious position in the foot by dismissing your opponent's view 'just religion' as well.
I have a ton of respect for religion, so when I characterize environmentalism, wokeism, and social justice warriordom as sharing characteristics with religion, that's actually not being dismissive at all, but quite the contrary. It implies that the respect I have for religion extends also to those belief systems. -- It strikes me as an internal contradiction that you characterize my position as religious, but also characterize it as a dismissal if I point out that my opponent's position shares characteristics with religion.
It seems, the only thing in what I wrote that could have given offence is that I picked those specific words in the first place. This is similar to how, when you pick the word "terrorist" over "freedom fighter", you've already identified yourself with the political camp that opposes them.
Interestingly, I chose those words precisely because I thought they had greater specificity than alternatives that came to mind (like "liberal" or "left").
I also think it's quite interesting that you seem to think that a concept like "Christian" is specific, while "wokeism" is not. After all the spectrum of different Christian beliefs, number of different social groupings underneath the Christian umbrella, and internal heterogeneity of beliefs within those groups is so great, that, literally, wars have been fought over that.
Another reason I picked those words was because I sincerely don't want to oppose "the left". In fact, the political grouping that historically most closely resembled the beliefs I still hold was the political left in Europe, prior to the financial crisis of 2008. With the tectonic shifts in the political landscape since then, and the likelihood that Americans would misunderstand what I mean by "left", I wanted to avoid that word.
>It strikes me as an internal contradiction that you characterize my position as religious, but also characterize it as a dismissal if I point out that my opponent's position shares characteristics with religion.
Your argument was clearly pro-religion. Are not not religious? If you are, this falls flat. It was a dismissal because you straight called them "young and immature" and suggested a reckoning was coming. Come on... that's not being careful with your words whatsoever. Nor is it "respectful." Truly baffling.
>After all the spectrum of different Christian beliefs, number of different social groupings underneath the Christian umbrella, and internal heterogeneity of beliefs within those groups is so great, that, literally, wars have been fought over that.
You're talking about two different things here. Sets of beliefs versus classifications. I have no doubt if you asked people on the street in the US if Christianity was a religion 9/10 or better would say it was. This is not a serious argument, it's throwing shade only your in-group would understand.
I apologize for not coming across as being in good faith. I’m just saying that religion takes many varied forms, and it might be within the realm of possibility to use duck typing when thinking about them.
My original point still stands though, not as a matter of combating your viewpoint, but just as an observation, that I bet even the most seemingly iron-clad definition of religion will still have lots of weird and unexpected edge cases.
>that I bet even the most seemingly iron-clad definition of religion will still have lots of weird and unexpected edge cases.
I'm sure there are plenty of edge cases, but this looks like a red herring to me. The OP in question doesn't actually believe people worship wokeism, view it as god, ultimate reality, divinity, or whatever. Their use was purely pejorative and dismissive in nature.
> The OP in question doesn't actually believe people worship wokeism, view it as god, ultimate reality, divinity, or whatever. Their use was purely pejorative and dismissive in nature.
Are you referring to me? See sibling comment. It was not pejorative. And I do think wokeism is a form of worship.
The sibling comment from "friend_and_foe" seems to reflect the point I was trying to make:
> What about believing that you must kill a sizeable portion of the human population to save the mother earth? Could that be characterized as a religious view? Why or why not? What about the idea that a man can be a woman if he wills it so, and that those who don't agree are ~~blasphemers~~ bigots? Could that be characterized as a religious view? Why or why not?
So, to add some meat to the bone here, let's start with Wikipedia's definition of religion:
"Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements"
For example, the way some gender theorists would define "gender" as opposed to "sex" makes it look a lot like "gender" is the abstraction that corresponds to "sex" but on the transcendental plane. It is then connected with a social-cultural system that includes behaviours, practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, [ not sure about sanctified places; can't think of any ] prophecies, ethics, and organizations.
Many environmentalists seem to me to have a quintessentially pessimistic view of man and his role in the universe, reflected in the belief that some of them have that the planet would be better off with fewer humans on it. This reminds me a lot of the chatholic doctrine of "original sin". To escape from original sin, man must exhibit certain behaviours, take part in certain practices, adopt certain morals, beliefs, and worldsviews, be part of certain organizations, etc.
>For example, the way some gender theorists would define "gender" as opposed to "sex" makes it look a lot like "gender" is the abstraction that corresponds to "sex" but on the transcendental plane.
That's not their view, and the way you are modifying definitions here means participating in any discussions of philosophy makes you religious, which is absurd.
Please note it's and not or.
>supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements"
>This reminds me a lot of the chatholic doctrine of "original sin". To escape from original sin, man must exhibit certain behaviours, take part in certain practices, adopt certain morals, beliefs, and worldsviews, be part of certain organizations, etc.
Seems a bit too much magical thinking. If I have a dirty house, does cleaning it not solve the problem? Nobody actually believes that they need to be righteous or do rituals to clean up the planet. Again you have a tendency to mischaracterize.
Notice how these categories are all negative categories. They define themselves by what they're not: Supernatural means "related to the universe, but not merely the natural aspects of it", transcendental means "related to language or categories, but not merely referring to something material nor pure abstraction", spiritual means "related to what goes on inside of man, but not merely cognition or psychology".
They also imply that the speaker thinks of them positively, similar to how when you say "freedom fighter" you mean the same thing as someone else might mean when saying "terrorist", but you're saying that you think of them positively.
A materialist atheist thinks of all the things that might fall under the categories of the supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual as dumb superstition, while a religious person views them as useful planes of meaning-making and useful ways of motivating behaviour.
So, having thus defined "religion", maybe this is the way you would define "philosophy", and if you tell me how you would define "philosophy", maybe I might respond by saying "hey, that too kind of sounds like religion to me". This kind of debate would be neither original, nor surprising within the history of intellectual discourse, nor useful in any way.
The more fruitful debate is to be had around this: Why is this even such a hot-button issue? It seems to me like there are a lot of overtly religious people out there who are associated with the established religions, who are just unbelievably bad at it. They use these religious planes of meaning-making and religious ways of motivating behaviour to the effect of adopting insanely stupid beliefs and engaging in insanely counterproductive behaviours. As a result "religious" has become an insult.
If you go to a small town poetry slam, you're likely to hear some very bad poetry. But if you think this is what defines poetry, you would be mistaken. And if you never sought out poetry again in your life after coming across a particularly bad poet, you would miss out big time.
Finally, to close the loop to my other comment about how the rise and fall of religion is kind of cyclical in human experience: You can't ever get rid of the religious element in yourself, so the most productive thing you can do is get good at it. You can't ever get rid of the religious element in society, so the most productive thing you can do is get society to be good at it. -- The more you try to outright deny the religious in society (or yourself), the more it will re-emerge in transformed and hard-to-recognize ways and lead to regression where society is (or you are) just as religious as it was before, but it became less capable of doing religion well.
I think I understand your reasoning better now. I didn’t interpret OP as being purely dismissive or pejorative, but I see how you did. From your viewpoint it makes total sense that it’s wrong to compare “wokeism” to religion because “wokeism” clearly isn’t a religion! Seems obvious when stated that way.
I was originally thinking the OP meant something like, “hey I’ve heard this quacking noise somewhere before… what could this be…?”
Yeah I mean we're talking about definition 1 versus definition 2 (or whatever) in the dictionary. They are using them interchangeably and then suggesting they aren't.
The author of the article that you're discussing in this thread is a counterexample to the only people you've encountered who think secularists were religious (as am I). The man is one of the top 3 candidates for the quintessential secularist.
Toyota Tacoma lovers aren't a religion, we agree on that. What about believing that you must kill a sizeable portion of the human population to save the mother earth? Could that be characterized as a religious view? Why or why not? What about the idea that a man can be a woman if he wills it so, and that those who don't agree are ~~blasphemers~~ bigots? Could that be characterized as a religious view? Why or why not?
In addition, what do these two statements have to do with secularism?
100%, in good faith I'm asking you these questions and hoping for a clear and honest answer. You have a genuine opportunity to change my mind on this topic.
Since you chose not to make an argument I'll leave you with this: having beliefs doesn't mean you have religion. I have an extreme belief that I have a lovely cat. It's not my religion.
I addressed your cat when I addressed Toyota lovers. I'm in agreement, your belief that your cat is awesome is not a religious belief. What about the belief that you have to kill or sterilize the majority of humans to save Gaia the earth mother? Or that a man can will himself into being a woman? Are these beliefs that have the characterizations of a religion? Why or why not? Or the behavior demonstrated that if someone doesn't agree with them they are an evil person worthy of prison time or ostracization? Is ostracization not a core characteristic of cults and religions?
You made it pretty clear from the phrasing of the questions that they were not in good faith.
>Sealioning is the name given to a specific, pervasive form of aggressive cluelessness, that masquerades as a sincere desire to understand.
>A Sealion is a person who, when confronted with a fact that they don't care to acknowledge, say, the persistence of systemic racism in America, will ask endlessly for "proof" and insist that it is the other person's job to stop everything they are doing and address the issue to their satisfaction.
I'm not asking for proof, just your perspective. And I've seen no clear facts even stated. And I'm not clueless, I have a very clear position here. And I'm not expecting satisfaction, you haven't even tried. Would you answer my questions?
What definition do you use? I don't think people arguing woke = religion are necessarily deriving that conclusion from a rigorous first-principles definition of religion. It's more like a collection of observations that sum up to a suspicion:
1. Woke people think that white people are born into sin due to the deeds of their ancestors, which is the doctrine of original sin.
2. This sin can be cleansed by becoming an "ally", "doing the work" etc, this is a bit like conversion.
3. Related: this notion that people are born pure and it's police/law (society) that corrupts them, so if you get rid of the police then crime will go away, this is like the Christian teaching of the Fall.
4. Trans stuff is an assertion that people have a sort of (gendered) soul distinct from their body.
5. The obsession with the virtue of minorities is similar to the story of the Good Samaritan and how Christian's are supposed to valorize the meek and the mild.
and so on. There's more of these especially when you get into their actions and not just beliefs, which yeah, do start to resemble Spanish Inquisition albeit with less physical torture thank goodness. So it's a walks like a duck quacks like a duck argument.
I think the people saying "religion" actually mean "belief system" (philosophy, religion, political ideology, economic system, scientific paradigm) but they don't have the right language so they're reaching for "religion" as the most obvious example of a belief system. It's just woolly language hiding a very obvious observation: people tend to adopt cohesive ideological packages rather than assembling personalized belief systems à la carte.
For example there's no particular reason why "pro-choice" and "climate change" should be bundled together (if anything you'd expect conservatives to be the ones trying to conserve the environment, and progressives to be the ones trying to tarmac the planet) but they have a pretty strong correlation in US politics.
It's more precise than that. Pro-choice/climate being bundled together is just the ordinary left/right (or non-left) divide, nothing special there. Progressives see motherhood as conservative-coded and anti-feminist, so control over that to be progress, they also assume anything academics say must be true because they're fellow progressives and "scientists" who thus personify Progress itself.
But the people talking about religion mean something more than just an arbitrary ideological package, they mean it has specific elements that are surprisingly close to the beliefs found in Christianity, rebranded. Like the elements in my list.
> Pro-choice/climate being bundled together is just the ordinary left/right (or non-left) divide, nothing special there.
Are you sure? They don't track together nearly so strongly in, say, France. They don't naturally, or necessarily, go together IMO.
In your list, items 1 and 3 contradict each other. Item 4 I read as Cartesian dualism. Mind and body, no soul required (I also seriously doubt your interpretation). Item 5... the Parable of the Good Samaritan isn't about being meek and mild, it's about obeying the Golden Rule, and the Good Samaritan is atypical: he doesn't represent all Samartians. Jesus wasn't making a point about the virtue of Samartians in general.
Honestly, I think you're building a straw man here.
Of course not in France, different cultures have different hot button political issues at any given time. In France the equivalent would be support for the EU or mass immigration.
For three you're right, I should have said "non white people". Their belief system is that "white" men are born into sin and other types are born pure then corrupted. More or less. I mean, I wouldn't expect an emerging religion to be internally consistent.
Mind is the same thing as soul in this context. They believe you can have a genetically male brain but the soul (or mind if you prefer) of a woman or vice versa.
For five, yes my sketch is rough and I appreciate the clarifications you're forcing on me here. It's the first time I've written down these thoughts, others have done so better. What I was getting at was the focus on the supposedly weakest members of society as a justification for attacking the strongest (tax collectors, the rich etc).
I don't know about others, but when I compare environmentalism, wokism, social justice warriordom, etc. to religions, I definitely do mean more than just "belief system". If I meant belief system, I would use that expression. My vocabulary is not that poor.
I took care not to strictly subsume them under the term of "religion". Specifically, in my initial post I said "overlap with psychology behind religion", I said that people who hold these beliefs are "religious" -- the use of the noun "religion" as an adjective lessens the character of the subsumption so that one reading is that it's just pointing out an analogy or similarity rather than stating a strict subsumption.
And I also predicted that these things all have the potential to undergo a similar historical development as religions did, that they have the potential to bring about something similar to the Spanish Inquisition, or the witch hunts. Not all belief systems have that potency.
So what I'm doing is pointing out an analogy that comes with lots of implications, not all of which I strictly believe to be true, but all of them are things that I find at least interesting to consider. For example, using the Wikipedia definition of "religion", besides implying a belief system, a religion also comes with behaviours, practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations. -- Environmentalism, wokism and social justice warriordom definitely all come with practices as well as just beliefs. Morals and ethics are more than just beliefs. Environmentalism, for example, clearly has prophecies ("doomsday cult" would be an interesting analogy), and it's interesting to think about what that does to the human psyche.
There is a lot in religion that trumps rationality in terms of its salience and psychological potency. And precisely this ability to trump rationality makes religions quite a different animal from belief systems that are strictly grounded in rationality.
For example, if the divide between the political right and left were just about "free market economy vs communist-style planned economy with redistribution" or "low taxes" vs "high taxes" or "small government" vs "big government", it would be about belief systems strictly grounded in rationality. But now add into the mix the thought that many on the political right are associated with established religions and on the political left things like environmentalism, wokism and social justice warriordom increasingly start looking like religions. Now the distinction between the political right and the left starts looking like a religious divide, and that's a whole other level. It used to be "We can't agree on the proper economic system." Now it's "Help! My identity is under attack!"
When I was young, I saw most religious people as bigots, while the message I mostly got from areligious people was that they were preaching tolerance, pluralism, minority protection, etc.
But now, doing my best to adopt a stance of tolerance myself, my impression is that the people who think of themselves as areligious have constructed grand narratives that increasingly look like religions, without even noticing that particular analogy, and have increasingly taken to bigotry themselves. That's my central thesis here.
> that they have the potential to bring about something similar to the Spanish Inquisition, or the witch hunts. Not all belief systems have that potency.
McCarthy, pogroms, Dreyfus Affair, Armenian genocide, Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, Lavender Scare, Khmer Rouge, Operation Condor, Aktion T4, Rwandan genocide. Holocaust.
Not all religions produce witch hunts.
> Environmentalism, for example, clearly has prophecies
Predictions. You know, the heart of a testable hypothesis? Science?
> Predictions. You know, the heart of a testable hypothesis? Science?
I think, getting a Ph.D. in a field that calls itself a science from a top university should have given me a passing familiarity with that thing called science.
Environmentalist "prophecies" may be intertwined with pieces of science that have implications on what to expect for the future, but they add an element of psychological framing to the facts that does not itself stand on scientific ground but is instead culturally ingrained and ultimately simply "made up".
One possible framing might be "nature wants me dead": You can think "With all those cold nights, lack of food in the winter, pathogens, etc. it looks a lot to me like nature wants me dead, and I'm lucky to have civilization to protect me from nature's violence." You can emphasize to yourself that nature has been there for billions of years before man came around. Now, for what is just a brief blip in natural history called the "anthropocene", man has become a weirdly dominant force, and the anthropocene will very likely end by man making the planet uninhabitable to himself in some way or another. The question is not whether it will happen, but when and how exactly. But regardless of the specifics of the when and how, the duration of the anthropocene will be dwarfed by the billions of years that the planet will happily go on producing life after man is long gone.
Another framing might be the "mother nature" framing, where nature is a fragile harmony, and any disturbance of that harmony cuts life off from what nurtures it. You can further go on to think that all life is sacred, and killing a fly is not morally any different from killing a man. Currently, the greatest disturbance to the harmony of nature is man, and it happens every time you turn on a light bulb, for that consumes energy, and takes something away from nature that would otherwise sustain life somewhere on the planet. Wasting energy, even if it's just a light bulb that you don't strictly need, is therefore a great sin.
Now, both of these framings are compatible with the same scientific facts about nature, but under the "mother nature" framing your behaviours will start to look like those of an environmentalist, while under the "nature wants me dead" framing, they will not. Neither of those two framings are themselves in any way grounded in science.
> Neither of those two framings are themselves in any way grounded in science.
Neither of those two framings are religions, either.
> You can further go on to think that all life is sacred, and killing a fly is not morally any different from killing a man.
I don't recognise environmentalism in your description of it. I still think this is straw manning. I admit it's a broad church, and you could probably find somebody that thinks like this, but you're not describing any kind of mainstream.
(Feel free to reply, but I'm out. But I just wanted to say you've been completely reasonable while putting forth your viewpoint.)
> and you could probably find somebody that thinks like this
I think, on a generous reading of Kierkegaard's "Three stages of life" [1], I could probably say that Kierkegaard probably thought that way.
Also, interestingly, people like Dawkins himself seem to be waking up to this way of thinking. Right there on his YouTube channel [2] he has a video called "Is Religion Inevitable?" In it, Peter Boghossian states the "substitution hypothesis": As one form of deranged belief (of which he thinks religion is one kind) recedes, another (like wokism) expands to fill the void. Dawkins says he hadn't really thought of that before. He thinks it's plausible, and hopes it's wrong, because it would mean he has wasted his life. Of course there's a few steps missing to get from there to my position.
The first is that they call it "deranged belief", where I call it "religion". But it would make a lot more sense, if the substitution hypothesis simply was: As one form of religion recedes, another expands to fill the void.
The second element that's missing is that they can't get themselves to be optimistic about it, which I am. I believe, religion can be a good thing if it's done well, which, usually, it's not, which is where I too am a pessimist, so the two positions aren't that far apart after all.
And third: If it were me debating Dawkins, and I wanted to make the debate really interesting, I would confront him with the idea that the hypothesis might apply to individuals. As one person denies his religiosity, a new religiosity will take hold within him to fill the void, that he may not even recognize as such. And by implication Dawkins himself has been religious all his life without knowing it. There is even a word for what Dawkins' religion would be if that were the case, and that word is "scientism" [3].
Finally, I want to mention the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams who is a heavy hitter not just as a religious leader but also a public intellectual with strong ties to academia, including science. I recall him saying in a sermon that religion, if it's treated as if it were science, makes for very bad science. That's how you get stupid beliefs like creationism that seem to be the thing that people like Dawkins are primarily bothered by. But also: Science, if it's treated as if it were a religion, makes for a very bad religion. And, in my mind, that's an interesting way of characterizing a lot of the problems facing society at the moment.
Eg "Famously, a functional approach can hold that even atheistic forms of capitalism, nationalism, and Marxism function as religions" vs "all three of these versions are “substantive” definitions of religion because they determine membership in the category in terms of the presence of a belief in a [supernatural, transcendent or superempirical] reality".
I recall a recent genetics study[1] concluding that the homo sapiens (or direct ancestor) population bottle neck was ~1000 people for about 100,000 years.
My mind immediately wondered whether that length of time was long enough for some evolution to occur that reflected those conditions. Surely that world was insular for the people/hominids and extreme enough that survival was at the forefront of nearly all behaviours and social phenomena.
If any of that rubbed off on our genetics and all of human evolution and history since has not provided any sufficient forces to alter those traits, then it stands to reason our psychology is somewhat hard wired for catastrophic/post-apocalyptic in-group survival defensiveness/aggressiveness beyond even our animal/primate cousins.
All of that rests however on what time periods are required for evolutionary changes. My vague memory of studying a tiny bit of population genetics is that big changes can happen pretty quickly if there are factors capable of altering the size of the population substantially and that persist for a few generations.
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Otherwise, yea ... seems pretty obvious to me that our world (global society) and its complexity is very much a "reach exceeding grasp" scenario for our species.
Generally, I suspect greater stability and prosperity is rather possible but would require a drastic change in what we prioritise in our education and upbringing, where I would guess that we have a fundamental choice between what is compartmentalised or distributed in the way of social thinking, processing and decision making. It seems to me we've de-prioritised the average ability of the population to effectively participate and understand broad social and economic issues and decisions, and, are instead emphasising specialised/compartmentalised economic roles.
Naively, I would propose that investing in more distributed social/economic understanding would be better for society at large, which has arguably taken place with modern wealthy western civilisation. But, in line with my armchair anthropology above, I wouldn't be at all surprised if plugging more humans into the broad social issues of the day, however good attempts at their education etc have been, will naturally lead to tumult and division that is inevitably irrational and driven by inapt or misaligned psychological drives.
Going sci-fi on this ... it's curious to think about whether the "great filter" may simply be whether a species evolves intelligence etc by following only a narrow, and therefore unlikely, set of evolutionary paths or biological/geological histories that confer the required innate traits for being able to scale up to larger and well coordinated civilisations. Like, could the ice age dynamic of our planet have limited the possible evolutionary paths a species could take to those which make population scaling difficult and unproductive?
It's really a shame Dawkins hasn't dipped his toe into social epistemology. It's very clear that this is a grounding issue that's highlighting that different categories have different grounding rules and that within categories, individuals have different grounding rules. Furthermore, grounding rules have cultural-geofraphic territories and change over time.
It's how I can get a new job and call myself a Data Scientist, but as Rachel Dolezal is mentioned in the article, cannot alter her appearance and be Black. The categories are simply grounded in different things.
Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir, does a phenomenal job at describing this principle in Categories We Live By. It's a plus that it's both fairly short and approachable.
> It's how I can get a new job and call myself a Data Scientist, but as Rachel Dolezal is mentioned in the article, cannot alter her appearance and be Black.
This theme was already explored in the literature [0]:
> Former NAACP chapter head Rachel Dolezal’s attempted transition from the white to the black race occasioned heated controversy. Her story gained notoriety at the same time that Caitlyn Jenner* graced the cover of Vanity Fair, signaling a growing acceptance of transgender identity. Yet criticisms of Dolezal for misrepresenting her birth race indicate a widespread social perception that it is neither possible nor acceptable to change one’s race in the way it might be to change one’s sex. Considerations that support transgenderism seem to apply equally to transracialism.
Unfortunately, just as is happening here, instead of engaging with the substance of the paper on its own merits, there were widespread calls to simply retract the paper and dispose of it down the memory hole [1].
> Unfortunately, just as is happening here, instead of engaging with the substance of the paper on its own merits, there were widespread calls to simply retract the paper and dispose of it down the memory hole.
What's your explanation for this, what do you suppose the retraction advocates explanation is, and why might they be different?
I'm glad Dawkins has not got into social epistemology. His reasoning seems very clear.
For comparison here is some Asta, where the jargon leaves me unclear at what she is saying:
>Gender is a paradigm case for me. However, even if we assume that my account does justice to the construction of gender, the question remains whether this notion of social construction and social meaning is really adequate for accounting for the metaphysics of all social categories of individuals. Perhaps the two aims pull in opposite direction here: theorizing the type of social construction involved with gender, on the one hand, and offering a general metaphysics of social categories of individuals, on the other.,
Asta is simply applying a little self-critique by asking, "Is my account complete?" You can rest assured that not understanding the quoted passage does not influence one's ability to understand the rest of the work.
Has Dawkins sat down with numerous trans people to listen to their stories and perspectives... and why his actions and words are offensive? Of course, offensive doesn't mean he has to pull back or go a different route. But sometimes, our choice of words causes us to have social repercussions. It certainly has me throughout my life. Often, I can repair those damaged relationships by listening, learning, and growing - sometimes, I cannot. Isn't this part of what it means to live in a society that is free and contested, where folks can push and pull in various directions? I just don't get this article. Is he a victim? Or what? What does he want us to do? Not criticize or complain about his dumb tweets?
Are you waiting to be told what to do? The article is asking whether we're approaching Orwellian times. If police turn up at your work because of a satirical tweet you wrote last night, maybe that's something to write about and be concerned about.
> Not criticize
I believe his problem is when criticism bares teeth and is delivered as legal action, or some kind of penalty or strike action, or drummed up hit pieces etc.
He mentions police showing up at someone's work regarding a tweet reported as hate-speech. Not really a laughing matter. It's a waste of police resources for starters.
Dawkins is not compelling reading on this subject. But I did find it funny the connection he makes between 1984's "2+2=5" and "her penis"... I chuckled at that!
I read your other comments here. You are pushing for Dawkins to sit down and chat with more trans people and discuss all these things, rather than throw stones from a place that looks a bit like intolerance or out of touch. Nothing wrong with that idea. Bring on the debate! The difference is that instead of his usual atheism subject matter, where God literally can't join the debate, it's now possible for the subject of his complaints to step up and answer his questions and concerns. I agree I think it should happen.
Most tweets are dumb. They are a tweet. That website is a mess.
I understand his article. He is bothered that he gets pushback and labeled all sorts of things because of what he writes. It happens. It's life. It's also not new. It's why so many religious/political people chose to create their own publications throughout history to not have to deal with editors/market forces.
Is he incapable of stepping back and understanding that the world is changing? Or looking at the bigger picture? Or thinking critically about the ways this moment mirrors other moments in history?
Constructive inquiry is different than the whine Dawkins is discussing.
He’s saying what you said; people write things, fuck off if you don’t like what they write, trans people, right wing people, liberal people, HN people.
And it’s being spun here as if he doesn’t get the point we all just absorbed reading his article.
> Constructive inquiry is different than the whine Dawkins is discussing.
Then Dawkins needs to get off Twitter, because it will never give him what he wants. He hasn't found a problem in society, he's found a problem on Twitter. As it stands, he's yelling at the ceiling because it's blocking his view of the sky. He needs to go outside.
You made a grammatically correct point but I’m not sure it’s logically sound.
Human Twitter posters are members of society. How is it possible to wave off Twitter as not a problem in society when Twitter users exist as part of society?
> Then Dawkins needs to get off Twitter, because it will never give him what he wants.
Don't we all need to do it?
> He hasn't found a problem in society, he's found a problem on Twitter.
The overlap between the two is large enough, that I don't think you can find a non-technical problem on Twitter that isn't also a problem within society itself.
> he's yelling at the ceiling because it's blocking his view of the sky.
Maybe trans people are tired of having their existence debated or being treated as a problem to solve (often in an unnuanced way that tries to simplify trans people in exactly the ways we are pushing back against).
Yes, seriously. Pick a characteristic and someone out there says it should not exist. I've walked past people with megaphones saying my race should not exist. I've loudly been told my religion should not exist by employers. Having your existence questioned is normal and probably unavoidable whenever humans with different values bump into one another.
You're ignoring specifics by making a dismissive general point. There is a specific thing happening right now that has the goal of eliminating a kind of person by preventing them from existing. That's different than the misogyny of Roe v Wade or the dehumanizing capitalism of job-based health care.
> 1984’s Appendix lays out the principles of Newspeak, the nascent language of Orwell’s dark dystopia. Newspeak was designed to make unorthodox thoughts impossible. There would be no words to express them.
> The Times (January 18) reported that “a transgender woman has denied raping two women with her penis”. If “with her penis” is not quite 2+2= 5, it’s getting close. 2+2= 4.5?
It's so curious that Dawkins, of all people, seems to be complaining that unorthodox thought -- that is to say, a rejection of traditional religious doctrine -- is expressible in the English language.
> It's so curious that Dawkins, of all people, seems to be complaining that unorthodox thought -- that is to say, a rejection of traditional religious doctrine -- is expressible in the English language.
That's not what he's "complaining" about at all. In fact, quite the opposite - that certain political and/or religious groups are _making it impossible_ to express unorthodox opinions that run counter to their dogma and catechisms, and that this is being accomplished through the control of language.
What religion do you refer to? Is it a major one? When you say catechism do you literally mean doctrine in the form of question-and-response dialogue that is memorized by adherents? Traditionally, "orthodoxy" refers to doctrine that is either religious tradition or generally accepted. But the acceptance of transgender people is still hotly contested worldwide, and a small minority of humans live in jurisdictions where it's even legal -- do words have meaning, or are you yourself "torturing the language" to reach conclusions that are unsupported by the facts presented?
It can be argued, and has been upthread in the top-voted comment at time of writing, that "the dynamics of the current 'cancel culture' or whatever resemble those of the traditional religious institutions Dawkins has previously critiqued."
You can choose to accept or refuse this proposition as you will; taking it as granted, it seems proper to invoke "orthodoxy" in its literal sense of "doctrine that is generally accepted," and catechism in its original sense derived 'from Greek katēkhismos, from katēkhizein "teach orally, instruct by word of mouth"'. [0]
What is generally accepted is dependent on time, location, and culture. Consider that this submission was immediately flagged within less than an hour of its posting, implying that this article is not generally accepted within the bounds of whatever time, location, and culture we are inhabiting when we post here.
What is cancel culture and how does Budweiser fit into that picture? For what it's worth, I do not accept that cancel culture is a religion. As far as I can tell, it's a label that regressives have applied to a set of behaviours exhibited by both progressives and regressives, but is only used to refer to those behaviours when exhibited by progressives.
> Consider that this submission was immediately flagged within less than an hour of its posting, implying that this article is not generally accepted within the bounds of whatever time, location, and culture we are inhabiting when we post here.
Do the science: post a pro-transgender thinkpiece, and see how quickly it gets flagged (or more likely, how few upvotes it gets). The topic is divisive -- and despite guidelines to the contrary, we as a community aren't great at maintaining a posture of curiosity, so it gets flagged every time it comes up.
In the case he cites, The Times was obliged to use that wording because of guidance from the press regulator.
Which many people, like Dawkins, complained about, but, on the other hand, complying with this guidance works out well in the long run because it highlights the absurdity of ideas like: a man is a woman if he says he's a woman.
Love to see articles simultaneously attacking trans athletes for being taller, and attacking the self-determination and gender exploration which would allow trans people to avoid the natal puberty causing them to suffer intense physical dysphoria (including shape, muscle mass, and height), and struggle to pass as their preferred appearance to themselves and others.
The "accept our shaky premise or else" crowd is annoying. The intimidation has backfired. The first big public controversy for transgender bathroom rights was in 2016. right before the US presidential election,[1] and may have pushed Trump over the top and into the White House.
A lot of the time when I see inflamed rethoric about "Woke" things on the web, I strongly suspect this is the work of a skilled provocateur, making sure anyone who could be radicalized into strongly opposing the presented opinions is reinforced into clear calls to action, in the case of 2016, 2020, 2024(?): """vote for Trump, because very clearly and very explicitly the Wokes want to take away your freedom"""
I agree with a bunch of what's said at the beginning of this. Dialog is the way, cancelling is not. But then he started to lose me:
> the biological fact that our sex is determined at conception by an X or a Y sperm.
Ever heard of people who are intersex?
Given the diversity of the human condition that some people are born feeling not like the sex of their body at birth does not seem far-fetched to me.
> What I didn’t know, and learned from Joyce in our interview, is that small children are being taught, using a series of colourful little books and videos, that their “assigned” sex is just a doctor’s best guess, looking at them when they were born.
Is this is actually happening on a significant scale? All that I have ever seen were books for children that say, it's ok if you feel different and not a single one that said you will be better if you are different.
I find it frustrating when people claim to be upholding science but then make simple, unscientific claims that suggest they actually have the minds of Greek philosophers.
Some women do have penises. Some men have XX chromosomes. Some women have XY chromosomes. Some people have XX and XY chromosomes. Science tells us that. This has nothing to do with transgender people. But it does suggest "sex" might not be as simple as a metaphysical binary.
According to Wikipedia 1.7% is the upper bound of all intersex variations in the population. It is important to acknowledge and accommodate these people. However their existence more often used as a weapon in discourse on adjacent topics like gender and identity but not necessarily specifically intersex.
As an example, about 9% of population is left-handed. When was the last time someone mentioned violence when talking about handedness?
I regularly mention that my grandmother was forced, with violence, to write with her right hand in school, and as a weird side effect would sometimes spontaneously start writing backwards.
I'm not sure what your point was in mentioning left-handedness, so not sure how this adds or detracts from it, but as I said I like to mention that because it's a weird little story from not so long ago.
> However their existence more often used as a weapon in discourse on adjacent topics like gender and identity but not necessarily specifically intersex.
Morally speaking, which is worse: weaponizing the fictional non-existence of intersex people to attack transgender people, some of whom are intersex; or weaponizing the actual existence of intersex people to defend transgender people, some of whom are intersex?
> When was the last time someone mentioned violence when talking about handedness?
My mom was beaten for writing left-handed, and she's still alive. While that is no longer popular in the US, the tradition is alive in the world.
Just to mention it, once I learned a little more about intersex people I very much feel for them: They often need the same medication that is now restricted due to anti trans legislation. They are also caught in stupid bathroom laws.
I do believe their existence is a good reason to not pass anti trans legislation, because they are affected as well, from birth.
The problem is that people use very (like VERY) rare edge cases to build a whole framework based on it and bully the rest. Typical tyranny of the minority.
I am disappointed by the absolute paucity of reasoned discourse in this comment thread so far. All I have witnessed are lazy dismissals and thought-terminating cliches [0] without anyone actually engaging with the substance of the article.
Recalling the HN guidelines:
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
I expect Dawkins has run into quite a bit of the same mode of equivocation and redefinitions of terms he writes of, when he went around striking down anti-scientific Creationist arguments such as "evolution is just a theory." A Creationist would parrot this line, thinking that "evolution is just a guess." A scientist understands this to mean, "a falsifiable hypothesis verified through empirical evidence and experiment."
It's worth taking a look at what Frege had to say with respect to words, their meanings, and what they can refer to [1]:
> It might perhaps be said: Just as one man connects this idea, and another that idea, with the same word, so also one man can associate this sense and another that sense.
Hence the necessity for interlocutors to "come to terms" on what exactly they mean by stating their definitions clearly before there is any hope of rational discussion.
This is rapidly becoming more and more difficult, as old words with a long history of usage such as "gender" are being appropriated to mean, and refer to, things quite different from the original senses and references of those terms.
Speaking of words, why would “Professor” Dawkins do that?
> This is rapidly becoming more and more difficult, as old words with a long history of usage such as "gender" are being appropriated to mean, and refer to, things quite different from the original senses and references of those terms.
Like "chaos" in physics, "master" in computing, or, as you point out, "theory" in science as a whole.
Wikipedia has John Money introducing a distinction between biological sex and gender identity in 1955, by the way.
> But shouldn’t we just indulge the harmless whims of an oppressed minority? Maybe, were it not for a strain of aggressive bossiness which insists, not so very harmlessly and not sounding very oppressed, that the rest of us must humour those whims and join in.
Goodness, what a whine. If you’re not a person who is directly confronted with this, why are you throwing yourself into this debate? The only reason to enforce your idea of a person’s gender over their own view of it is because you’re a jerk. It’s that simple. Stop being a jerk.
Only when you take the quote out of context. For the majority of the article he focuses on gender. And in the very same paragraph as that quote comes from he invokes J.K. Rowling. It is entirely reasonable to assume that transgender people are "the oppressed minority" he's specifically talking about.
My takeaway is it reads like a scientific publication; here’s authors premise, and author walks through an example of what they mean.
The title and subtitle are generic enough to apply to any of the tribal bubbles bleating online about a sense of persecution; Gurner and the CEO class, right wingers, politicians.
Hallucinations of persecution are not just coming from the trans community. It’s just easier to write a coherent article using one example.
You’re being weird. I thought you hadn’t read the article when you asked “Why did you invoke gender?”. They’re just talking about the same thing the article is.
That’s what the entire article is about.
Trans people: “Please don’t be rude to me. This is how you can be nice”
Dawkins: “My being rude to you isn’t the same as violence.”
Trans people: “Ok… why would you feel the need to say that unless you wanted to be violent to us?”
Dawkins: “You’re calling me violent! That’s policing my speech which is oppression!”
That's like saying to an atheist that they have to personally accept any of the harmless whims of the religious.
Like, a quick prayer won't hurt you if you don't really believe in it, will it? Just do it to be polite. Hands together, eyes closed, done. What's the problem?
In your example, I take it Dawkins is the atheist and Trans people are “forcing him to pray” ?
I think the analogy is better said that Trans allies think it’s rude to yell in people’s faces that god doesn’t exist (which is exactly what Dawkins does, so points for consistency).
There’s no personal obligation on what you believe, just don’t be a jerk and tell people that they can’t exist.
And that's so obvious that I begin to wonder if he's sincere, or if he's just stirring up shit to capture people's attention.