Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins' Terrible Tweet

[cbayer]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/7269/some_thoughts_on_richard_dawkins__terrible_tweet/

August 27, 2013


Dawkins is a twitter celebrity, with over 800,000 followers

Haroon Moghul
RD Senior Correspondent Haroon Moghul is a Fellow both at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. Haroon is completing his doctorate at Columbia University and is the author of The Order of Light (Penguin, 2006). He's been a guest on CNN, BBC, The History Channel, NPR, Russia Today and al-Jazeera.


“All the world’s Muslims,” Richard Dawkins recently tweeted, “have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge.” For good measure he sprinkled salt in the wound: “They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.” It happened so long ago, in internet time, that you might wonder the utility of a lengthy response. But in the great green country of Islamophobistan, where no argument goes unrecycled, what’s late one day might be on time another.

Unfortunately, too many who responded to Dawkins’ tweet did no more than prove his point. By arguing for all that Islam had historically accomplished for science and technology, they were however unwittingly drawing attention to the great knowledge gap between the modern West and modern Muslims, or at least the modern Muslim-majority world, which is another reason to return to his tweet.

"What have you done recently for us?" Dawkins seemed to be asking. If the answer is nothing, does that mean Muslims don’t matter? (To justify the alienation, oppression, or killing of a person, you must first dehumanize him.) And you can do all kinds of things to folks who don’t matter. But Dawkins was not quite as clever as he supposed. Writing for The Guardian, Nesrine Malik proposed that if we:

insert pretty much any other group of people instead of "Muslims" and the statement would be true.

Malik addressed Dawkins directly:

You are comparing a specialised academic institution to an arbitrarily chosen group of people. Go on. Try it. All the world's Chinese, all the world's Indians, all the world's lefthanded people, all the world's cyclists.

more at link

[cleanhippie]

1. Oh, the false equivalency of race and religion strikes again.

Islam is not a race of people, it's a religious ideology.

[DonCoquixote]

28. then Dawkins should have known better

Just because he is good at expressing atheist thought does not mean he is not being an ass when he says things like this.

[cleanhippie]

38. Being an ass is a matter of opinion. He is factually right about what he says.

One needs to look beyond the scrum at DU and a few tweets for the full story.

[DonCoquixote]

39. about what

Yes there are Muslims who are afraid of science, and they also churn out many scientists. The same can be said about ANY group, are there are atheist scientists and athiests who are dumb. I thought the whole point of getting rid of religion was so we could think clearly, not make an idol of a man who, thanks to his sexists outbursts in time past, apparently seems to think he is entitled to all the same privileges the Europeans used to use religion to get.

Oh, in case people wonder what I meant:

http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/07/richard-dawkins-trying-to-use-muslim-women-as-foot-soldiers-in-his-crusade-against-religion/

http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Richard-Dawkins-Sexist

An ass is an ass. I will respect what he writes about science, but outside of that, Dawkins is an ass.

[LTX]

66. If I take your point correctly,

it is the "religious ideology" aspect of the equation that has suppressed the number of Nobel prize winners. Of course, Jews are disproportionately represented in the Nobel prize brotherhood, so I assume you are not making a claim that religion per se is a deterrent to Nobel status, just Islamic religions.

Do you think there are any cultural (or racial) aspects (or barriers) to the phenomenon?

[AtheistCrusader]

2. Dawkins comment is a lament, not a boast.

But you knew that.

[cbayer]

3. Are you addressing that to me or the author of this piece?

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Both, because you called that statement bigoted in the other thread.

It is not. It is not different from Neil Degrasse Tyson's comments on the matter, except that it is necessarily missing the intro/outro context as tweets are limited in size.

[cbayer]

6. What did you think about what this author says on the subject?

I'm not sure what NDT comments you are talking about, but I've not heard him say anything even close to this.

As I have said before, there is not context with tweets. He knows, or should have known, that.

[AtheistCrusader]

8. I think the author is massively off-base and willfully misinterpreting what Dawkins' said.

Here's a post where I shared the NDT comments, and the timestamp that takes you right to it.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1230&pid=16988

NDT is saying the same thing. This is a lament.

[cbayer]

9. He agrees that the statement is factual.

His piece is primarily on why it is true. While he does take Dawkins to task for the way he used it, I am at a loss to see how he willfully misinterprets it.

Due to very slow connection speeds, I can't stream that video - it's too long. Can you give me a synopsis?

I disagree that it was a lament. He's not sorrowful about it at all. He sees it as a failure due to their religious beliefs.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. Just click on the progress bar on the video at 38 minutes. You don't have to watch the whole thing.

NDT wraps the whole thing up in a beautiful little package, because he is free to elaborate, not being constrained by the character limit on Twitter.

"He sees it as a failure due to their religious beliefs."

It is. Their religious beliefs inhibit scientific progress. NDT explains why better than I can, but essentially, it is because Religion purports to give answers to difficult questions that short circuit or halt scientific inquiry.

"So, what I want to put on the table is the fact that I don't want the religious person in the lab telling me that god is responsible for what it is that they cannot discover, because look at the hubris of that. You're in the lab and you say "I don't know how this works" and not only that "no one alive on earth knows how this works" and not only that but "no one who will ever be born will know how this works". That's kind of audacious when you think about it. And then you put it down and go on to the next problem, and this problem is the cure of Alzheimer's or Cancer or whatever else, I don't want them in the science classroom. And so the issue is simply about progress and discovery. And in my recent forays into Washington, where I've been closer to a community of Republicans than I have ever been in my life, because I grew up in New York City, and in New York City it's 'I think that person is Republican back there', you see 'no not that person, the one behind that person'. 'Yeah, that's a republican, there's another one' that, so in New York you sort of grow up this way, and I get sort of baptized into a republican administration, I had two consecutive appointments in the Bush administration, one on aerospace, on the aerospace industry, and one on space exploration, the, NASA's future basically, and I realized something spending that much time in the community of powerful Republicans, that Republicans above all else, do not want to die poor. So there's a limit to how far this will go. And I bet most people in this room, even those assembled at this table were highly concerned about the Dover trial, wondering how that would turn, and I said, I'm not worried. Because it's a republican judge. And in the end, if you put people who are not making discoveries in the science classroom, that is the end of the foundation of your future economy. And so I had a little more confidence than others did, because of this sensitivity to the money aspect of this. But we all know, tomorrow's economies will be founded on innovations in science and technology, and of course that gets cut short if we lose our civilization, as what happened in Islam in 1100. and the last thought I'll leave you with, which concerns me greatly, if you do the math, ok, if you just look, at all the nobel prize winners that ever were, some even in this room and ask 'how many were muslim?' and it's like one, maybe two, ok I think the second was in economics, and the one we referred to, was described earlier, the co-winner of the Nobel Prize with professor Weinberg, Abdu Salam, and he's not middle eastern muslim, he's Pakistani muslim. Ok. Now, how many nobel prizes won by Jews? It's like a fourth of the nobel prizes. Ok, some high fraction of the total. And then you look, how many muslims in the world? There's like a billion muslims. How many jews? 15 million, tops. So you ratio these numbers, had Islam not collapsed in it's intellectual standing in the year 1100, and you just do the ratios, they would have every single nobel prize today. So the fact that it's not only just a few, it's near zero, is deeply worrying. I'm concerned about what lost, what brilliance may have expressed itself, and did not, in that community, over the past thousand years. and so what I want to put on the table is why, and so that's the end of my talk but, I want to say, I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the national academy rejects god, I want to know why 15% DON'T, and that's really what we've got to address here, otherwise the public is secondary to this. Thank you for your attention today."

As you can see, NDT gives equal billing to the Christian community in the US as well. The 85%/15% question he was concerned about at the end is in reference to how people throw up their hands and say 'god did it' when they are at their limits of human knowledge. Even great scientific minds like Newton, Copernicus, etc. They all did it. He's concerned that as long as that exists, that 15% exists in the scientific community, where people cop out with 'god did it', how can we hope to help the public move beyond religion, at least in matters of science and discovery.

I hope you get a chance to watch the entire clip. It is very illuminating. He is a great speaker, very approachable. I feel I did a good job transcribing it above, but obviously I cannot convey the inflection and body language.

It truly is a lament. What have we lost? What could have been? And it's not limited to Islam, Christianity had it's own dark ages. What brilliance was lost from Plato and who knows who else when you consider the religious destruction of the library of Alexandria? So much destroyed. So much wasted.

Dawkins is the same. It's a lament. It saddens him.

[cbayer]

12. I see what you are saying here, but NDT's analysis of this is so much more thoughtful

and nuanced.

I thank you very much for taking the time to transcribe this. NDT is one of my favorite scientists and speakers. I think he would probably agree that Nobel Prizes aren't necessarily a good measure of things, but I see the point that religion can inhibit the progress of science, and it has always done so to some degree or another.

I also find NDT very thoughtful in his take on religion in general. He is not an anti-theist and takes the label agnostic for his personal position.

OTOH, I don't find Dawkins thoughtful on this matter. He is a self-proclaimed anti-theist. He refuses to see the good that religion has done and continues to do. His position is that religion ruins everything and he would like to see it eliminated.

I don't think he's sad at all.

[AtheistCrusader]

13. Dawkins has elaborated in a couple essays on this matter.

In forums that have more elbow room to discuss the issue. What he is saying in twitter is necessarily limited by the format of the media he is using.

It did start a conversation at least.
Here's a more comprehensive statement by him, on this matter.
http://www.richarddawkins.net/foundation_articles/2013/8/9/calm-reflections-after-a-storm-in-a-teacup#

I think part of the problem is, Dawkins is British. Don't know if you've seen the trailer for the new Pixar movie 'Planes', but in it, a character called Bulldog, with the union jack on his cowling, exclaims: "I'm don't cry, I'm British!", a riff on a stereotype that is a reflection of, in some ways, actual British society. Dawkins is a bit stuffy and in some cases, snooty/abrasive. It's his cultural nature. So I tend to give a little leeway, especially compared to someone like NDT, who is a scientist, but is VERY approachable, very versed in 'selling' ideas in a entertaining way. Dawkin's humor is incredibly dry, and well.. British. NDT is much more appealing to Americans. His humor is very warm and friendly.

It's just a matter of delivery. Both men are, I am sure, saddened by what they believe they have identified and perceive as a lost opportunity. Both will, I do not doubt, rail about Christianity for it's own dark ages and lost opportunities.

Dawkins IS an anti-theist, unlike NDT as well, I agree there. Dawkins is much more in the trenches, and I think it would be fair to consider that he has been battered about issues like this for over a decade. He has acerbic tone and thick skin for a reason. He went to war a long time ago, and bears many scars from it. NDT prefers not to fight, he is only interested in progress.

[cbayer]

14. Yes, I saw that he crawfished after the fact.

It was a foolish thing to do, imo. He should not tweet things like that, unless, of course, he is purposefully putting flamebait out there.

I'm married to a brit, so I know all too well how they can be or come across. While I adore his sense of humor, sometimes he is also very dry.

The thing with Dawkins is this - he was in the trenches and he kicked down some doors that needed to be kicked. But now, he seems more a liability in advancing the causes of decreasing discrimination against atheists. I am aware that he has many adherents and to speak badly of him is anathema to some.

But a man of his intelligence and one who speaks to so many who have not had a voice in the past should be thoughtful and circumspect when it comes to making statements such as this.

I'm with NDT. I am much more interested in progress. I don't think offending religious people does much to advance that at this point.

[cbayer]

15. BTW, the t-shirt Dawkins is wearing in the link is really offensive.

I can't imagine NDT ever wearing anything like that.

[AtheistCrusader]

16. I don't see why it's offensive.

Is it offensive when religious people talk about converting people and expanding their churches?

But yes, that is the anti-theist side of Dawkins, which Tyson does not share.

[cbayer]

17. If I am trying to make a point that what I said was not bigoted,

I probably wouldn't choose to adorn with myself with something that basically says that all religious people are sick.

That is the kind of pompous bigotry that is getting him in trouble, and rightly so.

It is not different than religious people trying to "convert" others. He's just about the same.

[AtheistCrusader]

21. Dawkins position has long been (and this is true of all memetics) that religion is a socially transm

itted thing, like a virus or a disease. This is not new territory.

That's pretty mild stuff. Especially considering what non-believers in the US are often subjected to.

[cbayer]

24. The argument that one side does it so the other should do it as well is weak.

Dawkins has his opinion on this. He thinks religious people are infected or delusional.

He's just as bad as the fundamentalists who think atheists are morally bereft and going to hell.

[AtheistCrusader]

26. Memes propagate just like diseases.

This is not meant to be offensive. Dawkins is just making it somewhat provocative/funny.
Memes drive all information propagation, including religion.

It doesn't really matter if you find it offensive either.

[cbayer]

29. Why doesn't it matter if I find it offensive?

I find slurs against GLBT people offensive. Does that matter?

I find stereotyped images of black americans offensive. Does that matter?

Does your saying that it doesn't matter make it so?

Does Dawkins thinks that because he developed a definition of "meme" that he is free of them? Seems to me that your using his definition in your reply is a pretty good example of a meme being propagated like a disease. Childhood indoctrination, intellectual dishonesty, cognitive dissonance - all memes.

[AtheistCrusader]

32. That is correct, they are all memes.

Good and bad.

[cbayer]

33. Wow. Stephen Fry. Now there is an authority on, well, everything.

It is my position that words or phrases can be offensive and harmful and that those people that are or may be affected get to define that.

Are you of the opinion that all things should be permitted and none considered offensive?

[AtheistCrusader]

36. I leave 'offense' up to the individual.

That shirt is certainly not offensive to me. I may even buy one.

[cbayer]

40. Feel free and make sure you wear it around anyone you care about who is a believer.

I mean, if you are going to make a point, make it with the ones you love.

[AtheistCrusader]

41. Fortunately, none of the people I love are.

Even if they did, I am pretty careful to surround myself with people who have a sense of humor.

[cbayer]

42. No one you love is a believer?

That's odd, but might explain something about where you are coming from.

We saw some of the same kinds of reactions right here this week from people that had never been around or close to transgendered people. Whether they were all bigots, or some just naive and insensitive, much of what they said was offensive.

I've got a great sense of humor, but some things just aren't funny. Like the guy who told the hilarious racist joke to a group I recently was with. Not funny at all.

[AtheistCrusader]

44. Religion isn't a race or gender identity, it's an idea.

I can say whatever the hell I want about an idea, the merits are in the statement.

I know people who lean on religion, but I do not love them. Direct relatives, family, my child, friends, all secular people.

Sexual identity and race aren't memes. They aren't information. The comparison is absurd.
Tell me, do you find this offensive? I find it a useful rhetorical point about the nature of our evolving social religious constructs, that reveals just how arbitrary they are:

[cbayer]

46. I completely reject that notion. Do you choose to be an atheist or is

it just a part of who you are? I think believing or not believing may be part of who a person is and not just a meme. But your using a meme quite common in the anti-theist community.

Again, secular does not mean areligious. It's important, imo, to make that distinction.

I find the cartoon juvenile and pointless, but not particularly offensive.

I think we should perhaps say goodbye for now.

[AtheistCrusader]

47. I'm an atheist by default. I CHOOSE to be anti-theist becuse it impacts my life on a daily basis

and it's getting old.

I am surrounded by people who seem to want to stuff religion into everything, including law. I won't tolerate it anymore.

[okasha]

59. But race and gender identity

are ideas, and relatively recent ones at that. Neither was known in antiquity.

And by the way, it's the Frost Giants who win the final battle at the end, not Thor and the other Aesir.

[edhopper]

20. Are you equally offended

by "Are you good with God" tee shirts?

[cbayer]

23. I don't like t-shirts in general that tell other people what they should think

or be or look like or believe.

I don't like proselytizers and I don't like people who take the position that they are right and everyone else is mentally ill for not thinking like them.

And I think it's either just provocative or stupid to post a picture of yourself in that t-shirt when you are trying to explain why you really aren't a bigot.

[AtheistCrusader]

48. That shirt doesn't tell people 'what to believe'.

So, I think your problem with it might be somewhere in that misunderstanding.

[cbayer]

49. I don't really have a problem. The t-shirt says that religion is a disease,

and therefore says that believers are diseased and need to be cured.

And that's the last I am going to say about that.

See you around the campfire.

[AtheistCrusader]

50. I don't see how that shirt tells anyone 'what to think' any more than a 'jesus is lord' shirt which

is obviously exclusive of... every other religion pretty much.

Why does the ketch in your sig disappear sometimes? Are you manually typing it in every time, but sometimes forgetting it?

[cbayer]

51. The ketch is always there for me.

It's my regular sig line and entered in my profile.

[AtheistCrusader]

52. Must be my browser.

Any opinion on a singular/exclusive statement like 'jesus is lord'? Do you find it offensive? Because the unspoken implication is that religions like Islam are bunk.

[okasha]

19. Good grief, Tom Sawyer.

What a whitewash! (Pun inevitable.)

[eomer]

22. It's not that he "refuses to see the good that religion has done", but rather that he doesn't agree

that believing in God makes you more likely to do good things.

DAWKINS: If God doesn't exist then doing something good in his name is... it's great that something good gets done but there's no evidence at all that believing in God makes you more likely to do good things. I can't see any noble, logical connection between being religious and doing good things.

Starts at about 1:53 in:

I don't see where there's anything that has been demonstrated but he refuses to see. Is it demonstrated somewhere that belief in God causes people to do more good than if they don't believe in God?

[cbayer]

25. No. I don't think being religious makes you more likely to do good things, but

Dawkins goes much further than that. He believes that it makes you more likely to do bad things.

There is lots of evidence about the good religion can, has and continues to do on this earth. There is also evidence that it can, has and continues to do harm. I have never made the claim that one can not do good things without religion.

He only sees one side of it.

[eomer]

43. He does see both sides of it. But he makes some further points.

See that in the part I bolded he says he imagines that religion fed into the good things that MLK did:

MEHDI HASAN: So my question to you is: why not acknowledge, for example, the good things that religion has done, or do you accept that religion has done good things despite all of our mad beliefs in our miracles?

DAWKINS: I accept that individual religious people have done an enormous number of good things.

MEHDI HASAN: Not driven by religion?

DAWKINS: Well, I mean, who knows…

MEHDI HASAN: You're mean-spirited, you won't give any credit at all to the...

DAWKINS: Take somebody like Martin Luther King, for example...

MEHDI HASAN: Reverend Martin Luther King.

DAWKINS: Yes, um, obviously he was a cleric, so I imagine that that fed into the good things that he did, plenty of other things he did - he was a big admirer of Gandhi and he was a great admirer of non-violence, he was a brilliant and wonderful, great man.

MEHDI HASAN: Would you disconnect MLK's non-violence and Gandhi’s non-violence from their very strongly-held religious beliefs? They didn't.

DAWKINS: Well, I think that's... it's not a thing that I really care about, actually. I mean I think they were...

MEHDI HASAN: You do care about it Richard, you were saying that people carry out violence in the name of God and I cite you an example of very famous people who've done good and non-violence in the name of God and you say I'm not interested.

DAWKINS: If God doesn't exist then doing something good in his name is... it's great that something good gets done but there's no evidence at all that believing in God makes you more likely to do good things. I can't see any noble, logical connection between being religious and doing good things.

MEHDI HASAN: Let's concede that God does not exist, let's concede that religion is false, my problem here is trying to understand why some of the new atheists are so anti-religion when religious people clearly are doing lots of good things and they're doing it in the name of God.

DAWKINS: I've never denied that religious people are doing good things and non-religious people are doing good things. I care about what's true, I'm an educator, I'm a scientist and I want people to understand the truth about the universe in which they live - that's what I care about. And I regard religion as a distraction and in some cases a pernicious distraction from true education, which I love and value the way you value and love your God.

Starting at about 00:44 in:

But, paraphrasing Dawkins, there's nothing to say that MLK wouldn't have done the same good things without believing in God.

And I don't think you've got the other part exactly right, Dawkins doesn't say religion "makes you more likely to do bad things". What he says is that faith is dangerous in that it can potentially (and sometimes will) be used to convince a person to do bad things they otherwise wouldn't (and he expounds on the reasons why). So I think the more accurate way to describe his view is that faith can be used as a tool to get people to do bad things.

[cbayer]

45. You've got to admit that's some pretty faint praise, particularly

as there is no doubt that MLK's faith and beliefs absolutely drove him.

As he said, he's not really interested in the good that religion can and does do.

Who are you or he to say that MLK would of done the same things if he were not religious? It certainly would have changed the tone, the immediacy and the passion he conveyed.

The issue here is not whether non-believers can do good. They most certainly can.

The issue here is the inability of some to acknowledge the good that religion can and does do.

Again, he continues to take the position that religion can make a person do bad things and can not acknowledge that it can also make people do good things. And he's got zero evidence to back that up.

Sorry, his agenda is to evangelistic for me. He peddles atheism like it's a religion and some of his acolytes swallow it whole.

I would point out that the bulk of the outrage after his recent islamophobic comments came from atheists. There is a schism and I am rooting for the atheists who are not anti-theists.

[eomer]

54. I've heard...

that MLK early on expressed some affinity with Unitarian Universalism and even considered making it his religion (I believe this is something his widow told many years after his death). Supposedly he went the way he did (as to choice of religion) because he felt it was a better platform for the things he wanted to do. This would mean, essentially, that it was the good in him and the good things he wanted to do that caused him to choose a religion rather than the religion causing the good in him and the good things he did.

[cbayer]

55. I've never heard that, but perhaps he would have considered it

because it is so inclusive. There are christian members of UU.

I don't think MLK was a grandstander, and although he may have made many decisions for political reasons, I highly doubt that his religion was one of them.

He was born, raised, educated and ordained as a christian. It was an integral part of who he was, imo. It might make an interesting rhetorical argument to say that he would have done what he did if he had not been, but it's not more than rhetorical.

[eomer]

56. No, it's certainly not rhetorical.

Here we are debating it so it's obviously not just rhetorical.

[eomer]

57. Coretta Scott King disagreed with you about how she and MLK chose their religion.

Here is the story I was referring to, it includes CSK's statement about their choosing a religious platform but I also think you'll find it interesting aside from that question:

http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/2527.shtml

[cbayer]

58. Fascinating. I had not heard this story before and thank you for sharing it.

UU used to be much more christian based. It has broadened it's reach considerably. Interesting that they were actively discouraging AA's from becoming pastors at the time. They certainly have come a long way.

While this is interesting and indicates some political consideration when he made his decisions, it does not say anything about the depth and breadth of his religious beliefs. It does, however, give some very interesting insights into the UU's.

[eomer]

62. It does say a bit about the depth and breadth of his religious beliefs.

It says that those beliefs developed over time, in response to the living of his life. Which is related to the point I'm making, that it is possible for people to be inherently good, for them to get religion as a result of their goodness rather than becoming good as a result of their religion, which is my personal assessment of the case of MLK. I believe that in a hypothetical world without religion, where religion was replaced by a secular morality with no concept of god(s), that there would still be people like MLK.

[okasha]

64. So your argument is that

people who do good things do so because they are inherentlly good. It follows that people who do evil things do so because they are inherently evil. How does this differ from Calvinism?

[eomer]

67. Probably didn't explain myself very well, need to put a finer point on it.

What I would say if I can have another go at it is that people are good and do good as a result of complex causes that we don't fully understand and that religion can be one part of those causes but that it's neither necessary nor sufficient - there can be people who are good and do good without religion and there can be people who are bad and do bad with religion.

It seems to me a question for Psychology (of which I haven't been a student); I personally wouldn't look to Calvinism to explain or understand it.

[cbayer]

65. I think we are on the same page. I think people can be inherently good.

The role religion plays in their life can be a factor in that or not.

I agree that if religion were to disappear, there would still be people like MLK. But religion is not going to disappear, so what I think we should do is promote good people and good institutions, without regard to whether they are religious or not.

[Skittles]

53. interesting analyisis, AC

you provide context

[DonCoquixote]

35. It was still stupid

especially when you consider that Nobel Prizes were a European county club until very recently.

[Warren Stupidity]

61. Look at the stats for the last 50 years then.

Pretty much the same results with respect to Islamic culture.

[Jim__]

5. Excellent article - thanks for posting it!

[cbayer]

7. You are welcome. I really like this writer and thought his take on this

was very good.

[madrchsod]

10. civilizations and religions come and go.

it will be till mother earth decides to change the sheets

[okasha]

18. Or all the world's women.

Or all the world's LGBT's. Or all the world's people of African descent. Or Native Americans.
Somehow that clarifies the bigotry, doesn't it?

And as one of the commenters on the original pointed out, Oxbridge doesn't exactly have a sterling record of admitting non-whites.

[Agnosticsherbet]

27. So who would have guessed that Dawkins is a bigot

The Nobel prize is a western organization that never awarded a prize to a Muslim until Anwar al-Sadat in 1978. In eastern Asia, Le Duc Tho was the first in 1973. Perhaps Dawkins is just not aware of how linked to western civilization the Nobel Committee has been for most of its history.

Look at this list from1901

Source


The 1901 Nobel Prize Winners


Physics: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen

Chemistry: Jacobus H. van 't Hoff

Medicine: Emil von Behring

Literature: Sully Prudhomme

Peace: Henry Dunant and Frédéric Passy.

[AtheistCrusader]

30. WTF is a biggot?

Urban dictionary leaves me bewildered in this case.

[cbayer]

34. It's a typo. Lighten up.

[Agnosticsherbet]

37. Fixed.

[cbayer]

31. Oh, I think he is aware. It's just the yardstick that he prefers to use because it is most

reflective of people like him, imo.

[Warren Stupidity]

60. Actually Islamic culture comes up short compared to china Japan and India too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country#India

[trotsky]

63. Keep it up, cbayer.

Or perhaps we could have an adult discussion about the consequences of a religion that, as practiced by the majority of its followers:

1) Denies half of its adherents equal educational access.
2) For the other half, emphasizes religious study over secular.

What do you think the innovative and scientific progress of that religion will be?

How do you think it will compare to a society that does educate both sexes, and values secular instruction?

I am positive you would rather not answer, because you have far more fun bashing Strawman Dawkins than actually engaging in a frank discussion about the negative effects of religion.