Richard Dawkins is his own religion.
Man thinks everything he says is infallible.
Strong atheism is, in fact, a religious belief: claims of the non-existence of gods are no more falsifiable than claims of the existence of them, so in order to “know” there is no god one must have faith.
In other words, if religion is the faith-based belief in N gods, where N = many for religions like Hinduism and N = 1 for religions like Christianity, strong atheism is simply the religion where N = 0.
Meanwhile, scientific skepticism/disbelief in god(s) due to lack of positive evidence is more like agnosticism/weak atheism.
Edit: see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism
Edit 2: I genuinely don’t understand what the downvoters are so upset about. Could some of you please reply to explain?
Ridiculous.
I get the notion that biological sex is one thing, but gender is another thing entirely. They’re still conflating the two.
And even in saying that, biological sex is not a binary because we know intersex individuals exist—people born with ambiguous sex organs, sex organs that don’t match chromosomal makeup, or even chromosomal makeups beyond the typical XX/XY. For all of the claims of “scientific reality,” the figures named in this article seem to do a very good job of cherry picking facts while ignoring the actual, less convenient reality of science.
Calling sex a true binary is strange for a talented biologist, intersex people definitely exist.
Transgenderism is a bit different though. Personally I think gender is a repressive, outdated social norm, and I disagree with transgenderism precisely because it reinforces this obsolete notion. Anyone should feel free to dress, act, and identify however they please, including but not limited to any body modifications they wish. But “switching” your identity to align with another set of stereotypical expressions only reinforces those stereotypes.
I can’t even see the point in “fitting in”, because those who care about how you express yourself aren’t going to accept you as transgender anyway, and the people who are going to accept you aren’t going to care if your expression matches the stereotypes they’re used to.
I dunno if that’s his objection because paywall, but I can certainly understand opposition to transgenderism that isn’t actually intolerant of transgender people themselves.
This article may have some direct relevance to you: https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/so-you-found-out-youre-agender-because-you-don-t-understand-trans-people-886fdee6f178
This is an interesting article but it’s a little superficial. I wish it addressed where that internal gender originates from. It’s something I’ve been trying to understand. We know gender dysphoria is real and transgender is something that needs to be addressed through presentation (I hope I’m saying this right). But doesn’t that presentation ultimately conform to arbitrary societal norms on gender presentation?
It’s because we are social creatures who are not entirely in control of our schemas, or conceptualisations. We can’t just decide to have logical opinions and have it work instantly. There’s always a difficulty, and the difficulty scales with personal relevance and importance. When we aren’t in control, society decides how we define things like “man” and “woman”. And the internal sense demands that we be able to categorise ourselves as the preferred gender, to the standards of not just our ego but also our irrational id.
“It’s basic biology, XX or XY, man or woman!”
“OK, but have you ever looked into intermediate or advanced biology?”
Dawkins is such a disappointing person. He has all the knowledge required to not only understand but also advocate for trans people but instead is defending the Anglican church, “light pedophelia”, and gender essentialism. He wrote a couple of books with some good parts but honestly, he is a sad old man and should be forgotten. Science moves forward one funeral at a time.
Science moves forward one funeral at a time.
That is badass
I knew it sounded familiar. It even has a name and a wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck’s_principle
“Why should sex be changeable while other physical traits cannot? Feelings don’t create reality,” he wrote. “Instead, in biology ‘sex’ is traditionally defined by the size and mobility of reproductive cells. “It is not ‘transphobic’ to accept the biological reality of binary sex and to reject concepts based on ideology. One should never have to choose between scientific reality and trans rights.”
As a fellow psychologist, I must regretfully state that this is the stupidest thing ever written by a psychologist. Our entire science is built upon the notion that feelings indeed create and modify (social) reality*. Sex is not gender, and he fumbled the most basic differentiation of concepts.
Heteronormative gender roles, on the other hand, are categorically a form of ideology and to defend them in place of basic human decency is a disgrace, good riddance to both asshats, I say. Specially with such a tenous biological argument that any good biologist can tell you is patently false. Gametes are not binary, there are hundred of thousands of intersex individuals for which this narrow definition doesn’t apply.
Grant is absolutely right, but I don’t expect the mentally weak asshole who invented the word “meme” to ever understand social sciences. His book is a pathetic pseudo scientific intrusion in a field he doesn’t understand in the slightest.
*: some philosophers would even argue that there’s no reality but social reality and both are one and the same.
mentally weak asshole who invented the word “meme”
He coined the word to mean a thought or idea that spreads through a population. Internet memes are completely unrelated to his usage. It’s not like he created the first insanity wolf meme or something.
Yes, and it is the most useless concept ever committed to text. It’s ironic it was coopted by internet culture and then ridiculed and reduced to absurdity.
He just tried to poorly rebrand the concepts of cultural imagery, and social constructs but with less evidence. It’s akin to me going “I propose the term garggle, it is water that flows down by gravity following the contours of the solid ground”. It’s like, yeah, we call it water and when it does that we call it a river, you would know if you opened a book about it anytime in the past century. You could summarize that book as “better read a book on sociology, it’s more useful”.
Nah, this is a bad take. Memes are a sociological analog to genetic genes. They’re units of cultural information that mutate, recombine, and evolve in the cultural space the same way genes mutate, recombine, and evolve in the gene pool. It’s a poignant observation about the behavior of viral cultural concepts that transcends merely describing their existence. The parallel to genetic behavior is a useful observation that, to my knowledge, was not really acknowledged before he coined the term.
I can accept there’s people who like the concept but there’s a reason it didn’t take hold anywhere except pop science and is a theoretical dead end. It has a ton of epistemological flaws that make it useless as a scientific construct. It is unfalsifiable and it provides no venues for theoretical or experimental developments. As I stated, there are far more useful constructs in sociology and social psychology that allows the analysis of social constructs, cultural imagery, beliefs, values, worldviews, etc. With over a century of epistemological, theoretical and methodological traditions that have provided useful advancements to our scientific understanding, and provided tools for further development. Memes are barely a fun simile with genes that was cool to make YouTube videos about ten years ago, but that’s about it.
Hard disagree. I don’t think you actually understand the premise.
I don’t think you have ever read the premise beyond the cliffsnotes. But it is not my job to educate strangers on the internet.
I read Selfish Gene, like, a few months ago.
