Dawkins on Alien Rubbish

[Exi5tentialist]

Re anything Dawkins' related? I suppose I do.

You mean the public don't venerate Dawkins like they you think they should? Thank God for the public then.

No, I mean the argument becomes polarized around the old chestnut of 'science is right, religion is wrong, therefore you're an idiot' or vice versa.

That's Dawkins's approach, not the public's. Dawkins deploys the insults, that's why he gets the headlines.

[Jason]

Re anything Dawkins' related? I suppose I do.

You mean the public don't venerate Dawkins like they you think they should? Thank God for the public then.

No, I mean the argument becomes polarized around the old chestnut of 'science is right, religion is wrong, therefore you're an idiot' or vice versa.

That's Dawkins's approach, not the public's. Dawkins deploys the insults, that's why he gets the headlines.

Well, that's what I saw reading the comments from that thread Pappa posted.

I consider people who post on news stories a skewed, but helpful reflection of the public at large.

[Exi5tentialist]

Well, that's what I saw reading the comments from that thread Pappa posted.

I consider people who post on news stories a skewed, but helpful reflection of the public at large.

Well I think you're reading a lot into just a few posts.

[Jason]

Well, that's what I saw reading the comments from that thread Pappa posted.

I consider people who post on news stories a skewed, but helpful reflection of the public at large.

Well I think you're reading a lot into just a few posts.

Am I? It's long been a slogan of the gnu-atheism that religious people are statistically more ignorant than atheists, or it's more commonly put that atheists are statistically more educated/intelligent than believers. I know a lot of counterexamples to that slogan on both sides, but it remains, nevertheless, one of the 'standards' the gnu-atheists like to bear.

Little wonder, then, that whatever Dawkins may have to say, the watercooler discussion ends up being polarized over that slogan.

It is something I have observed more times than I care to count. Observation - analysis -deduction. Very useful tools.

[Tero]

It takes a lot of effort for a college educated person to become a young earth creationist. I had two in my lab in the 90s, both were chemists. They were both disinterested in most biology. The thing is, we were supposed to be inventing drugs, and both of these guys had bosses that dealt with all the biologists and the inventing. They just made stuff. Sometimes kilograms.

[Exi5tentialist]

It is something I have observed more times than I care to count. Observation - analysis -deduction. Very useful tools.

It's a very limited analysis, though. I'm sure it happens the way you describe at the moment, but only as part of a bigger political discussion, and I do not think the discussion will always be stuck in that groove. People move on. People don't like seeing religious freedom attacked, Dawkins will put a foot wrong and there'll be a backlash. Things don't stay the same for ever.

[Jason]

Even a bad chemist should never be out of work.

[Exi5tentialist]

It takes a lot of effort for a college educated person to become a young earth creationist. I had two in my lab in the 90s, both were chemists. They were both disinterested in most biology. The thing is, we were supposed to be inventing drugs, and both of these guys had bosses that dealt with all the biologists and the inventing. They just made stuff. Sometimes kilograms.

This brings me to another point. Whether young earth creationists or anti-evolution muslims, for every christian or muslim who went to a fundamentalist, creationist-loving school that gets up and walks out of a lecture on evolution or who is unproductive in creating new biological breakthroughs, how do we know there aren't another 10 or 100 who went to exactly the same retrograde schools but who have taken a completely different, evolution-embracing technical path? People just see the effects they want to see.

[Tero]

I tend to see religious people in chemistry and engineering, whereas the biologists and biochemists I know are perhaps religious but I know of no fundamentalists. A few Asians I never talk to about politics and religion, it just never comes up. I have enough trouble communicating chemistry with them, the common language we have!

[Hermit]

He repeatedly describes women wearing the niqab as bin liners. He dehumanises muslims to the status of rubbish. He uses the judeo-christian concept of evil to insult islam. These are facts.

They are not. He describes the niquab that women wear as bin liners. To islamic males the women are inferior forms of existence, to be kept out of sight like rubbish with bin liners. Dawkins regards them as victims of islamic oppression. They are very much humans to him.

Even the article Crumple linked to makes it clear that the alien rubbish Dawkins refers to are faith schools generally and the Koran in particular. In this context he clearly means 'alien rubbish' to mean 'ideas alien to modern thinking' which is what you quoted from your choice of dictionary.

Every person I met believes if there is any disagreement between the Koran and science, then the Koran wins.

'It's just utterly deplorable. These are now British children who are having their minds stuffed with alien rubbish.

That is not insulting Muslims (although they may well choose to feel insulted, just like some Christians do when it is pointed out to them how useless it is to use Genesis to determine the age of the universe). The 'alien rubbish' clearly refers to the Koran in the context of what Dawkins was actually quoted as saying. The context makes that incontrovertible.

[Atheist-Lite]

He repeatedly describes women wearing the niqab as bin liners. He dehumanises muslims to the status of rubbish. He uses the judeo-christian concept of evil to insult islam. These are facts.

They are not. He describes the niquab that women wear as bin liners. To islamic males the women are inferior forms of existence, to be kept out of sight like rubbish with bin liners. Dawkins regards them as victims of islamic oppression. They are very much humans to him.

Even the article Crumple linked to makes it clear that the alien rubbish Dawkins refers to are faith schools generally and the Koran in particular. In this context he clearly means 'alien rubbish' to mean 'ideas alien to modern thinking' which is what you quoted from your choice of dictionary.

Every person I met believes if there is any disagreement between the Koran and science, then the Koran wins.

'It's just utterly deplorable. These are now British children who are having their minds stuffed with alien rubbish.

That is not insulting Muslims (although they may well choose to feel insulted, just like some Christians do when it is pointed out to them how useless it is to use Genesis to determine the age of the universe). The 'alien rubbish' clearly refers to the Koran in the context of what Dawkins was actually quoted as saying. The context makes that incontrovertible.

It's not how he is likely to be interpreted by the less erudite. The average Daily Mail reader isn't going to think the content of the book is alien rubbish - they'll think 'illegal aliens' bringing in 'rubbish' and the question is did Dawkins do this o'purpose?

[JimC]

However, I think he chose the word with some care, and was deliberately skating on the edge of appealing to anti-immigrant sentiment, while still being able to claim he simply meant "alien to rationality and enlightenment values"

That is a major problem with opposing the parts of islam that need opposing, and criticising fundamentalist muslims. It immediately puts you in jeopardy of being linked to a bunch of racists

Come on, it's what you call "deliberately skating on the edge of appealing to anti-immigrant sentiment" that puts you in jeopardy of being linked to a bunch of racists, not "opposing and criticising fundamentalist muslims".

Those two positions have a considerable amount of overlap, at least on the surface, meaning that a position opposing fundamentalist islam needs to be explicated very carefully - something I don't think RD did, for whatever reason.

[Gawd]

I remember seeing that video when Dawkins visited the muslim school and interviewed the pupils. Made me really sad. Is that where the world is going?

I'm also afraid that Dawkins might get murdered by some muslim nutter before he turns 75. But still I'm happy that he has courage to say things aloud even when it makes some people mad.

He knows the value of 'martyrdom' to bring people to a cause. Putting his head in the lions mouth like this is very brave...he isn't getting any younger, what better way to leave the show?

And at least with a suicide bomber, you take one arsehole with you...

Unlike Christian arseholes that bomb you repeatedly from the sky and don't die.

[Atheist-Lite]

I remember seeing that video when Dawkins visited the muslim school and interviewed the pupils. Made me really sad. Is that where the world is going?

I'm also afraid that Dawkins might get murdered by some muslim nutter before he turns 75. But still I'm happy that he has courage to say things aloud even when it makes some people mad.

He knows the value of 'martyrdom' to bring people to a cause. Putting his head in the lions mouth like this is very brave...he isn't getting any younger, what better way to leave the show?

And at least with a suicide bomber, you take one arsehole with you...

Unlike Christian arseholes that bomb you repeatedly from the sky and don't die.

You've got to see 'not wanting to die' as a fairly universal outside Islam Gawd if you are to understand that aspect properly.

[Gawd]

That just means you are chicken.