Jeremy Paxman religious comments were offensive, rules BBC Trust
Editorial standards committee says comments made in discussion with Richard Dawkins had no clear editorial purpose
John Plunkett
31 July 2012Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman went too far when he talked about religious hogwash and stupid people who believe in the Old Testament, the BBC Trust has ruled.
Paxman made the comments in an interview with Professor Richard Dawkins, the outspoken author of The God Delusion, prompting one viewer to complain that the presenter of BBC2's Newsnight was biased and offensive.
The trust's editorial standards committee rejected the accusation of bias, but said Paxman might have unintentionally caused offence with the comments which had no clear editorial purpose.
Originally, BBC management rejected the complaint in its entirity, denying that Paxman had shown any anti-Christian bias and saying the presenter had played devil's advocate to Dawkins, who was on the programme to talk about his new book, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True, on 13 September 2011.
However, the complaint then went to the BBC Trust editorial standards committee, which ruled that Paxman had a well-known interviewing style and viewers would have expected a lively discussion between the pair on the programme.
The committee said there was a clear editorial purpose for Paxman's use of the word myth in the item, and the Newsnight host was clearly referring to myths as hogwash and not all religion.
"However, the committee recognised that some Newsnight viewers were unlikely to have expected Jeremy Paxman's typically robust and confrontational interviewing style to extend to the use of the terms 'religious hogwash' when introducing the story of Genesis, and 'stupid people' when talking about those with a literal belief in the Old Testament in the context of the item about religious myths," the committee said in its ruling, published on Tuesday.
"Although the committee did not agree with the complainant that Mr Paxman's use of the terms 'religious hogwash' and 'stupid people' were intended to cause deliberate offence, particularly to those with religious views and beliefs, it nevertheless agreed that they were offensive to some of the audience and that there was no clear editorial purpose for their use in the context of this Newsnight item, taking account of generally accepted standards.
"The committee therefore concluded that the item breached the editorial guidelines on harm and offence. It added that it regretted the offence caused to some viewers by the use of the terms 'religious hogwash' and 'stupid people' on this occasion."
A BBC News spokeswoman said: "Newsnight notes the trust's finding that viewers may have found some of the comments offensive, but also welcomes the finding that the piece achieved due impartiality." Gruniad
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Paxo Offensive to Jesoids Rule BBC Trust
Monday, July 09, 2012
Richard Dawkins: Creationism at Giant's Causeway 'is intellectual baboonism'
Richard Dawkins: Creationism at Giant's Causeway 'is intellectual baboonism'H/T Eddie Izzard
7 July 2012The National Trust should not have buckled to pressure from the “intellectual baboons of young Earth creationism”, one of the world’s leading evolutionists has told the Belfast Telegraph.
Professor Richard Dawkins said it was regrettable that the trust had “paid lip service to the ignorant bigotry” of fundamentalists who believe the world is just 6,000 years old after references to creationism were included in the Giant's Causeway visitors' centre.
TV science broadcaster Professor Brian Cox also waded into the row. He said: “The National Trust should be ashamed of themselves. I don't mind creation stories presented as mythology, but to suggest there is any debate that Earth is 4.54 billion years old is pure s***.”
The trust’s move was hailed by the Caleb Foundation — an evangelical Protestant lobby group whose members believe in the literal truth of the Bible — which said the gesture “respects and acknowledges an alternative viewpoint” on the origins of the Earth.
While it claims to be non-party political, its chairman is Wallace Thompson, a former adviser to DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds. The vice chair is DUP MLA Mervyn Storey, who represents North Antrim, where the Causeway centre was built. Mr Thompson said Caleb had “worked closely with the National Trust over many months” to ensure the creationist position was included and it was very pleased with the results.
Prof Dawkins said that while the trust exhibit presents the scientific view of the Earth’s age, the charity had also “paid lip service to the ignorant bigotry of ‘young Earth creationism’, a view which flies in the face not only of science, but of theology too”.
“The age of the Earth is a matter of scientific fact, not opinion, and balance and fairness do not enter into matters of fact.
“The National Trust should not have given any consideration whatsoever to the intellectual baboons of young Earth creationism,” he said.
But the trust said it had merely acknowledged such views. A spokesman said: “We reflect, in a small part of the exhibition, that the Causeway played a role in the historic debate about the formation of the Earth, and that for some this debate continues today.“
Background
Creationist theories have sparked controversy here in the past. Two years ago the then Culture Minister Nelson McCausland called for museums to give more recognition to creationism after meeting Caleb Foundation lobbyists. Mr McCausland later asked for alternative views on the universe’s origins to be represented in museum exhibitions here. Belfaarst Telegraaph
Related: The (US) Photo Galleries of Volker Dierks
Give yourself a visual treat, the causeway photo I found at: Weird and Strange Wonders of the World
Friday, April 27, 2012
The Beautiful Mind of Professor Richard Dawkins
That discontent only brought about by being unable to bring you under similar circumstances, an embedded version, of a similar beautiful mind, that of Professor Andre Greim.
Consequently I can only offer a link, viewable only in the UK unfortunately, to Beautiful Minds Series Professor Andre Geim.
But that said, let it not detract for a moment, the pleasure of watching sixty minutes of the beautiful mind of Professor Richard Dawkins.
View below or with BBC iplayer.
And now it falls on me to watch the first program in the series.
Jenny Clack recounts how she overcame setbacks before she found and described a fossil which offered new evidence of how fish made the transition onto land. link
Professor Richard Dawkins reveals how he came to write his explosive first book The Selfish Gene, a work that was to divide the scientific community and make him the most influential evolutionary biologist of his generation. He also explores how this set him on the path to becoming an outspoken spokesman for atheism.
Just five minutes of Andre Greim's acceptance speech at the Nobel dinner.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Politicians Who Flaunt Their Ignorance: Who Would Rally Against Reason: Richard Dawkins
“I don’t trust educated intellectuals, élitists who know more than I do. I’d prefer to vote for somebody like me, rather than somebody who is actually qualified to be president.”
What other than this mentality accounts for the popularity of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum--politicians who flaunt their ignorance as a vote-winning virtue?
Who would rally against reason?
By Richard Dawkins
03/21/2012March 24th is a landmark date for Washington, D.C. Thousands will converge on the world’s leading capital city to celebrate the crowning human virtue of reason.
How have we come to the point where reason needs a rally to defend it? To base your life on reason means to base it on evidence and logic. Evidence is the only way we know to discover what’s true about the real world. Logic is how we deduce the consequences that follow from evidence. Who could be against either? Alas, plenty of people, which is why we need the Reason Rally.
Reason, as played out in the grand cooperative enterprise called science, makes me proud of Homo sapiens. Sapiens literally means ‘wise,’ but we have deserved the accolade only since we crawled from the swamp of primitive superstition and supernatural gullibility and embraced reason, logic, science and evidence-based truth.
We now know the age of our universe (13-14 billion years), the age of the Earth (4-5 billion years), what we and all other objects are made of (atoms), where we come from (evolved from other species), why all species are so well adapted to their environments (natural selection of their DNA). We know why we have night and day (Earth spins like a top), why we have winter and summer (Earth is tilted), what is the maximum speed at which anything can travel (two thirds of a billion mph). We know what the sun is (one star among billions in the Milky Way galaxy), we know what the Milky Way is (one galaxy among billions in our universe). We understand what causes smallpox (a virus, which we have eradicated), polio (a virus, which we have nearly eradicated), malaria (a protozoan, still here but we’re working on it), syphilis, tuberculosis, gangrene, cholera (bacteria and we know how to kill them). We have built planes that can cross the Atlantic in hours, rockets that safely land men on the moon and robot vehicles on Mars, and might one day save our planet by diverting a meteor of the kind that - we now understand - killed the dinosaurs. Thanks to evidence-based reason we are blessedly liberated from ancient fears of ghosts and devils, evil spirits and djinns, magic spells and witches’ curses.
Who then would rally against reason? The following statements will sound all too familiar.
1. “I don’t trust educated intellectuals, élitists who know more than I do. I’d prefer to vote for somebody like me, rather than somebody who is actually qualified to be president.”
What other than this mentality accounts for the popularity of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum--politicians who flaunt their ignorance as a vote-winning virtue? You want your airline pilot to be educated in aeronautics and navigation. You want your surgeon to be learned in anatomy. Yet when you vote for a president to lead a great country, you prefer to choose somebody who is ignorant and proud of it, someone you’d enjoy having a drink with, rather than somebody qualified for high office? If you are such a voter, you will not join the Reason Rally.
2. “Rather than have them learn modern science, I’d prefer my children to study a book written in 800 BC by unidentifed authors whose knowledge and qualifications were of their time. If I can’t trust the school to shield them from science, I’ll home-school them instead.”
Such a parent will not enjoy the Reason Rally. In 2008, at a conference of American science educators in Atlanta, Georgia, one teacher reported that students “burst into tears” when told they would be studying evolution. Another teacher described how students repeatedly screamed, “No!” when he began talking about evolution in class. If you are such a student, the Reason Rally is not for you - unless you take the precaution of stopping up your ears lest a word of unwelcome truth might penetrate.
3. “When I am faced with a mystery, with something I don’t understand, I don’t interrogate science for a solution, but jump to the conclusion that it must be supernatural and has no solution.”
This has been the lamentable but understandable first recourse of humanity for most of our history. We have grown out of it only during the past few centuries. Many people have never grown out of it, and if you are one of those the Reason Rally may have no appeal for you.
That is the fourth time in this essay I have said something like: “the Reason Rally is not for you.” But let me end on a more positive note. Even if you are unaccustomed to living by reason, if you are one of those, perhaps, who actively distrust reason, why not give it a try? Cast aside the prejudices of upbringing and habit, and come along anyway. If you come with open ears and open curiosity you will learn something, will probably be entertained and may even change your mind. And that, you will find, is a liberating and refreshing experience.
A hundred years from now, there should be no need for a Reason Rally. Meanwhile, unfortunately, the need is all around us and may become increasingly apparent in this election year. Please come to Washington and stand up for reason, science and truth. WaPo
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Richard Dawkins in ‘single-celled ancestor’ Shock
Richard Dawkins in ‘single-celled ancestor’ shock
Michael Marshall
20 February 2012
Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has been hit by fresh scandal today after it emerged his ancestors were single-celled organisms who metabolised sulphur.
New findings have shown that the outspoken atheist is the direct descendent of a primordial soup-dwelling thermophile – a particular variant of extremophile which clung to hydrothermic vents just 3.5 billion years ago.
Adam Lasher of the Telegraph said of the shock findings:
“This comes after I found out that someone in Dawkins’ family did something three hundred years ago which we now consider bad – so these latest revelations finally put paid to the belief that Dawkins comes from an infinite line of human beings with an exclusively 21st-century moral code.”
“That nobody has at any point ever held that belief is neither here nor there. All we really know is that this definitely proves that Dawkins is wrong about God”.
Hypocrite
To many it appears clear hypocrisy that Professor Dawkins – who has spent much of his career talking up the benefits of being a multi-cellular organism – is directly related to a single-cell organism.
It’s not apparent at this time how Dawkin’s justifies this relationship, beyond the dozen or so books he’s written about the evolution of life.
Lasher continued, ”I always knew there was something about Dawkins I didn’t like, and now I know why.”
“How can he claim to be a human being with arms and lungs and stuff when his ancestor metabolised sulphur in an ancient, boiling-hot underwater vent?
“Plus, ‘extremophile’? Sounds a bit terroristy if you ask me.” newsthump.com
Related: The War of Dawkins Ear: The Church Wins the Award For Intolerance
The War of Dawkins Ear: The Church Wins the Award For Intolerance
The Church Wins the Award For Intolerance
By Matt Ridley
21 February 2012
Of course religion is central to our culture. It spent a thousand years stamping out rivals
For people who profess to be kind and tolerant, the defenders of Christianity can be remarkably unpleasant and intolerant. For all his frank and sometimes brusque bluster, I cannot think of anything that Richard Dawkins has said that is nearly as personally offensive as the insults that have been deluged upon his head in the past few days.
“Puffed-up, self-regarding, vain, prickly and militant,” snaps one commentator. Running a “Foundation for Enlightening People Stupider than Professor Richard Dawkins,” scoffs another. Descended from slave owners, smears a third, visiting the sins of a great-great-great-great-great- great-grandfather upon the son (who has made and given away far more money than he inherited).
In all the coverage of last week’s War of Dawkins Ear, there has been a consistent pattern of playing the man, not the ball: refusing to engage with his ideas but thinking only of how to find new ways to insult him. If this is Christian, frankly, you can keep it.
By contrast, where is the condemnation of Baroness Warsi’s extraordinary article last week claiming that “militant secularisation is ... deeply intolerant ... and demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes”, as if Dawkins had sent people to gas chambers? The closest things to a totalitarian society today (neo-religious North Korea apart) are theocracies such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, places where it is not much fun to be gay or atheist or have two X chromosomes. For the religious to lecture the secular on tolerance is rich. Lady Warsi went on: “When we look at the deep distrust between some communities today, there is no doubt that faith has a key role to play in bridging these divides.” Excuse me, there is a great deal of doubt about that. Tell a persecuted Christian in Iran, a divided community in Ulster or a victim of Osama bin Laden that there is no doubt that faith plays a key role in bridging divides.
Sure, there have been atheist dictators such as Stalin, just as there have been vegetarian ones such as Hitler, and Catholic ones such as Franco (enthusiastically supported by the Church). But our own free and tolerant society became so only as it managed to throw off religious dogmatism. Tudor and Cromwellian England were the very archetype of a totalitarian society. My ancestral relation Nicholas Ridley was burned slowly to death, screaming in pain, as a spectator sport merely because he believed that the body of Christ was figuratively, but not literally, present at the communion. That’s all in the distant past, insist the Dawkins bashers, and today the Church is all about forgiveness and community. Largely true and wholly welcome. No doubt good Anglican vicars are too embarrassed to read from the chapters of the Bible where God advocates gang rape, genocide and murder, preferring the nice bits. But if some of the Bible can be ignored, what is so special about the rest?
Above all, why is it necessary to insist on the truth of an arbitrary fairytale from a particular pastoral society in order to teach morality? Might it not actually hinder the spread of virtue to insist that the only reason you should be kind is because somebody says a supernatural entity told you to, two millennia ago? The Church and its rituals are central to all the things that are good about modern communities, say the religious. But that is because society tamed the Church, at least much as vice versa.
To say that religion is part of our culture, therefore we should cherish it, is a circular argument. The Church spent a thousand years intolerantly stamping out rival strands of culture, insisting that every ritual from birth to death be celebrated in its halls. So yes, it is part of my culture.
Last year I stood in wonder before the extraordinary 15th-century carved wooden altarpiece of St Mary’s Basilica in Cracow, fascinated by the story that each of the apostles is actually a portrait of a Cracow merchant. Such art, you will sometimes hear, would never have been created without religion. Bunk. The only way that Veit Stoss could do his brilliant portraiture was by dressing it up as yet another portrayal of 12 boring old Palestinians. Think how much more variety we eventually got from artists once they were not confined to doing saints.
Some years ago, a colleague snapped: “I don’t force my views on Dawkins, why should he force his on me?” I held my tongue, but what ran through my mind was a memory of being forced, yes forced, to attend church every day at my school, preached at from the pulpit without right of reply, and my delight when the school allowed daily attendance at a secular alternative instead.
Occasionally, after that, I still went to chapel rather than the secular version, because it was no longer compulsory. RDFRS
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Richard Dawkins: ‘Don’t waste time, there is no God’ Oh Yes There Is, Oh No There's Not
‘Don’t waste time, there is no God’
Amitava Sanyal
January 24, 2012
It will remain one of the abiding ironies of the Jaipur Literature Festival: For an event that got the loudest publicity because of the threats of ungodly communal trouble, a number of sessions were dedicated to denouncing god and religion. The most strident among the speakers on the subject, however, was Richard Dawkins, author of the bestseller The God Delusion.At one of his three sessions at JLF, where he read out from his latest work The Magic of Reality in tandem with his wife and actor Lalla Ward, the British author said, “Religious faith deserves a whole chapter in war technology, alongside tanks and guns… Religiosity usually recedes with the advancement of knowledge. In the fullness of time, we may see the death of all religions.” He followed the broadside with a statement in support of Salman Rushdie, which he said was a modified version of what he had written at the time of the earlier fatwa against the author. Dawkins’s eloquence on the “magic of truth in science” led a member of the audience to accuse the author of “fostering a religion of science”.
It’s a line of counter-attack the 70-year-old Dawkins is familiar with. The evolutionary biologist has been called ‘Darwin’s Rottweiler’ for his passionate defence of the subject in works such as The Selfish Gene, the bestseller from which he read out in another session at the festival. Not long ago, he won a bruising battle against the British government to keep out religious Creationist myths from school science texts.
Off stage, when asked whether he would want to be immortal with the help of science, Dawkins said, “Eternity is a frightening thought whether you are in it or not. I can only go through it under general anesthesia.” He parried a question on why faith and emotion spurred humans to greater efforts – such as love and war – than reason ever could.
Such questions were straight down the line for AC Grayling, whose quote, ‘Religion and science have a common ancestor, ignorance’, features at the top of the quotes page of the Richard Dawkins Foundation website. At an earlier session in Jaipur, ‘In Defence of Enlightenment’, Grayling said, “Earlier, doubt about the existence of god was seen as a sin. This is what changed with the Enlightenment in the 18th century, which taught us scepticism; that humans can be fallible.”
“One of the best known examples of this divide between emotions and reason was Dr Spock of Star Trek. He thought he was a poor logician because he was always in love with someone or the other. It’s another matter that he was suspected to be in love with Captain Kirk,” Grayling told to a ripple of laughter. “But seriously, the rights of the individual are not in exclusion to his deep emotional bonds with family or society.”
Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, who was on the dais with Grayling, addressed the ‘faith-versus-reason’ question head-on. He told Hindustan Times, “Emotions can be very destructive. And reason even lets you choose the right belief.”
The last throw on the subject, however, was Dawkins’s. At the last session of the festival on Tuesday, a debate on whether man has replaced god, Dawkins said, “You are utterly wasting your time – all of you who are indignant at being attacked about your god – because there is no god.” Hindustan Times
Dawkin’s Theory of God
Dawkin’s Theory of God
Jan 25 2012
Eminent British biologist and author Richard Dawkins was one of the most vociferously spoken writers to defend Salman Rushdie’s right to express his views while demolishing the idea of faith and religion. An ardent proponent of atheism, professor Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion, called Rushdie’s absence a “lamentful disgrace” and “deplorable”, a day before the Midnight’s Children author’s video link at the Jaipur Literature Festival was canceled due to protests outside the venue.“ Religious faith is a state of mind, that leads people to believe in something, without a whisper of doubt. It is so strong in some cases that they are prepared to kill and die for it. This is the terrifying thing about faith; wherein those taken over by it, are not open to reason, argument or persuasion. Faith is powerful enough to unite people against pity, forgiveness and decent human feeling,” said Dawkins, lashing out at the idea of faith with precision taking over every word he uttered in his packed session.
Author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker — books dealing with gene-centric view of evolution — Dawkins is known for his strong views on evolution and the origin of the universe. At the overcrowded festival, Dawkins’ charming style of decoding science, paired with his views on faith, was sprinkled with many ‘Dawkins moments’ lauded at regular intervals.“ Our whole society is soft on religion. The assumption is remarkably widespread. Without being religious, we might find all sorts of things offensive. I have been deeply offended by things that are a part of Christmas — Baby Jesus and Rudolf, the reindeer — but if I like to act on these prejudices, then I will be held accountable. I will be challenged to justify myself. But let somebody’s religion be offended, and it another matter entirely,” said Dawkins, who added that “the antidote to any kind of religious indoctrination is education specially scientific and critical education and protecting children from indoctrination,”
Talking about separating religion from politics, the antagonist in him wants to have “no privileges given to religion via the state.” He said, “I suspect we have already seen several atheist US presidents, they just didn’t admit it. I suspect Lincoln was an atheist, probably so was Kennedy. Obama is an intelligent man, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a closet atheist.”
When asked if he would like to be immortal, Dawkins said, “The idea of eternity is frightening; would never want it.” indianexpress.com
Click again when opened.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Richard Dawkins Celebrates a Victory Over Creationists
Richard Dawkins celebrates a victory over creationists
Free schools that teach 'intelligent design' as science will lose funding
Jamie Doward
15 January 2012Leading scientists and naturalists, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, are claiming a victory over the creationist movement after the government ratified measures that will bar anti-evolution groups from teaching creationism in science classes.
The Department for Education has revised its model funding agreement, allowing the education secretary to withdraw cash from schools that fail to meet strict criteria relating to what they teach. Under the new agreement, funding will be withdrawn for any free school that teaches what it claims are "evidence-based views or theories" that run "contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations".
The British Humanist Association (BHA), which has led a campaign against creationism – the movement that denies Darwinian evolution and claims that the Earth and all its life was created by God – described the move as "highly significant" and predicted that it would have implications for other faith groups looking to run schools.
Dawkins, who was one of the leading lights in the campaign, welcomed confirmation that creationists would not receive funding to run free schools if they sought to portray their views as science. "I welcome all moves to ensure that creationism is not taught as fact in schools," he said. "Government rules on this are extremely welcome, but they need to be properly enforced."
Free schools, which are state-funded and run by local people or organisations, do not need to follow the national curriculum. Scientific groups have expressed concerns that their spread will see a reduction in the teaching of evolution in the classroom.
Several creationist groups have expressed an interest in opening schools in towns and cities across England, including Bedford, Barnsley, Sheffield and Nottingham. Critics say they seek to promote creationism, or the doctrine of "intelligent design", as a scientific theory rather than as a myth or metaphor.
One creationist organisation, Truth in Science, which encourages teachers to incorporate intelligent design into their science teaching, has sent free resources to all secondary schools and sixth-form colleges.
A BHA campaign, called "Teach evolution, not creationism", saw 30 leading scientists and educators call on the government to introduce statutory guidance against the teaching of creationism. The group said if the government would not support the call, an explicit amendment to the wording of the funding agreement could have the same effect. Last week the Department for Education confirmed it had amended the agreement, although a spokesman denied it was the result of pressure from scientists. He said the revision made good on a pledge regarding the teaching of creationism given when the education secretary, Michael Gove, was in opposition. "We will not accept any academy or free school proposal which plans to teach creationism in the science curriculum or as an alternative to accepted scientific theories," the spokesman said, adding that "all free school proposals will be subject to due diligence checks by the department's specialist team".
The revised funding agreement has been seized upon by anti-creationists who are pressing for wider concessions from the government.
"It is clear that some faith schools are ignoring the regulations and are continuing to teach myth as though it were science," Dawkins said. "Evolution is fact, supported by evidence from a host of scientific disciplines, and we do a great disservice to our young people if we fail to teach it properly. "
A spokeswoman for the BHA said: "The government's new wording is quite wide and in practice
could prevent those who promote extreme religious or particular spiritual or pseudoscientific approaches from including them as part of the school curriculum as science or as evidence-based." gruniad
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Richard Dawkins: A Letter to the Prime Minister, Christmas and Other Things
No doubt there are one or two other issues that we are in agreement on, but one in particular, quite topical given the time of year, is this ''happy holidays'' shit.
Surprisingly as it may seem, the good Professor is of the same opinion, only perhaps the Prof describing it not quite in the same manner as myself. But that's the way it is sometimes for us lads from oop north, we all have a cross to bear.
In fact it was only two days ago that I had this to say about happy holidays.
''Happy holiday'' Has Ricky joined the war on Christmas? And him with a direct line to God n'all.Yes quite.
It's Christmas, happy Christmas, always has been, always will be; and I'm a goddamned atheist. (Rick Perry You Are Such a Wanker)
I do know that Dawkins and I share an appreciation for ecclesiastical architecture, there's nothing quite like being stood in some Cathedral or other, that although built a millennia ago, survives as a testament to the artisans that built it and not least the bloke that designed the thing.
And I too, not unlike the world's most famous atheist, have been known on occasion to rattle out a hymn or a carol, oft time with gusto. But Richard Dawkins' revelation to that effect below, doesn't come entirely as a surprise to me, for I reported as much back in 2007, Richard Dawkins Sings Jingles For Jesus. The same graphic being used then as now.
So with little more ado, I give you, Professor Richard Dawkins, Englishman. Nice to be able to say that with no small manner of pride, it's such a rare occasion that one can do that these days.
Leader: Do you get it now, Prime Minister?
An open letter to the Rt Hon David Cameron MP from the New Statesman’s Christmas 2011 guest editor, Richard Dawkins.
14 December 2011
Dear Prime Minister,
Merry Christmas! I mean it. All that "Happy Holiday Season" stuff, with "holiday" cards and "holiday" presents, is a tiresome import from the US, where it has long been fostered more by rival religions than by atheists. A cultural Anglican (whose family has been part of the Chipping Norton Set since 1727, as you'll see if you look around you in the parish church), I recoil from secular carols such as "White Christmas", "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and the loathsome "Jingle Bells", but I'm happy to sing real carols, and in the unlikely event that anyone wants me to read a lesson I'll gladly oblige - only from the King James Version, of course.
Token objections to cribs and carols are not just silly, they distract vital attention from the real domination of our culture and politics that religion still gets away with, in (tax-free) spades. There's an important difference between traditions freely embraced by individuals and traditions enforced by government edict. Imagine the outcry if your government were to require every family to celebrate Christmas in a religious way. You wouldn't dream of abusing your power like that. And yet your government, like its predecessors, does force religion on our society, in ways whose very familiarity disarms us. Setting aside the 26 bishops in the House of Lords, passing lightly over the smooth inside track on which the Charity Commission accelerates faith-based charities to tax-free status while others (quite rightly) have to jump through hoops, the most obvious and most dangerous way in which governments impose religion on our society is through faith schools - as Rabbi Jonathan Romain reminds us on page 27.
We should teach about religion, if only because religion is such a salient force in world politics and such a potent driver of lethal conflict. We need more and better instruction in comparative religion (and I'm sure you'll agree with me that any education in English literature is sadly impoverished if the child can't take allusions from the King James Bible). But faith schools don't so much teach about religion as indoctrinate in the particular religion that runs the school. Unconscionably, they give children the message that they belong specifically to one particular faith, usually that of their parents, paving the way, at least in places such as Belfast and Glasgow, for a lifetime of discrimination and prejudice.
Psychologists tell us that, if you experimentally separate children in any arbitrary way - say, dress half of them in green T-shirts and half in orange - they will develop in-group loyalty and outgroup prejudice. To continue the experiment, suppose that, when they grow up, greens only marry greens and oranges only marry oranges. Moreover, "green children" only go to green schools and "orange children" to orange schools. Carry on for 300 years and what have you got? Northern Ireland, or worse. Religion may not be the only divisive power that can propel dangerous prejudices down through many generations (language and race are other candidates) but religion is the only one that receives active government support in the form of schools.
So deeply ingrained is this divisive ethos in our social consciousness that journalists, and indeed most of us, breezily refer to "Catholic children", "Protestant children", "Muslim children", "Christian children", even where the children are too young to decide what they think about questions that divide the various faiths. We assume that children of Catholic parents (for instance) just are "Catholic children", and so on. A phrase such as "Muslim child" should grate like fingernails on a blackboard. The appropriate substitution is "child of Muslim parents".
I satirised the faith-labelling of children, in the Guardian last month (26 November), using an analogy that almost everybody gets as soon as he hears it - we wouldn't dream of labelling a child a "Keynesian child" simply because her parents were Keynesian economists. Mr Cameron, you replied to that serious and sincere point with what could distinctly be heard on the audio version as a contemptuous snigger: "Comparing John Maynard Keynes to Jesus Christ shows, in my view, why Richard Dawkins just doesn't really get it." Do you get it now, Prime Minister? Obviously I was not comparing Keynes with Jesus. I could just as well have used "monetarist child" or "fascist child" or "postmodernist child" or "Europhile child". Moreover, I wasn't talking specifically about Jesus, any more than Muhammad or the Buddha.
In fact, I think you got it all along. If you are like several government ministers (of all three parties) to whom I have spoken, you are not really a religious believer yourself. Several ministers and ex-ministers of education whom I have met, both Conservative and Labour, don't believe in God but, to quote the philosopher Daniel Dennett, they do "believe in belief". A depressingly large number of intelligent and educated people, despite having outgrown religious faith, still vaguely presume without thinking about it that religious faith is somehow "good" for other people, good for society, good for public order, good for instilling morals, good for the common people even if we chaps don't need it. Condescending? Patronising? Yes, but isn't that largely what lies behind successive governments' enthusiasm for faith schools?
Baroness Warsi, your Minister Without Portfolio (and without election), has been at pains to inform us that this coalition government does indeed "do God". But we who elected you mostly do not. It is possible that the recent census may register a slight majority of people ticking the "Christian" box. However, the UK branch of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science commissioned an Ipsos MORI poll in the week following the census. When published, this will enable us to see how many people who self-identified as Christian are believers.
Meanwhile, the latest British Social Attitudes survey, just published, clearly demonstrates that religious affiliation, religious observance and religious attitudes to social issues have all continued their long-term decline and are now irrelevant to all but a minority of the population. When it comes to life choices, social attitudes, moral dilemmas and sense of identity, religion is on its deathbed, even for many of those who still nominally identify with a religion.
This is good news. It is good news because if we depended on religion for our values and our sense of cohesion we would be well and truly stuck. The very idea that we might get our morals from the Bible or the Quran will horrify any decent person today who takes the trouble to read those books - rather than cherry-pick the verses that happen to conform to our modern secular consensus. As for the patronising assumption that people need the promise of heaven (or the obscene threat of torture in hell) in order to be moral, what a contemptibly immoral motive for being moral! What binds us together, what gives us our sense of empathy and compassion - our goodness - is something far more important, more fundamental and more powerful than religion: it is our common humanity, deriving from our pre-religious evolutionary heritage, then refined and improved, as Professor Steven Pinker argues in The Better Angels of Our Nature, by centuries of secular enlightenment.
A diverse and largely secular country such as Britain should not privilege the religious over the non-religious, or impose or underwrite religion in any aspect of public life. A government that does so is out of step with modern demographics and values. You seemed to understand that in your excellent, and unfairly criticised, speech on the dangers of "multiculturalism" in February this year. Modern society requires and deserves a truly secular state, by which I mean not state atheism, but state neutrality in all matters pertaining to religion: the recognition that faith is personal and no business of the state. Individuals must always be free to "do God" if they wish; but a government for the people certainly should not.
With my best wishes to you and your family for a happy Christmas,
Richard Dawkins
New Statesman
A lovely bit of Richard Dawkins can be found here, Richard Dawkins (own) Seven Wonders of the World. Bottom of the page, thirty minutes in total.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Jesoids Ban Richard Dawkins Event in Michigan Country Club
Billo is such an ignorant loud mouthed gobshite, or as some disillusion soul described him a while back: 'A great American.' And I'm not making that up, as hard as it might be to get your head around.
Bill O'Reilly, corporate shill and a great American.
Previous: Billo You're So Predictable
Richard Dawkins Event Banned by Michigan Country Club
October 10, 2011
The Wyndgate Country Club in Rochester Hills, MI, cancels Center for Inquiry–Michigan event with biologist Richard Dawkins because of his atheist philosophy.
Prejudice against atheists (video here & here) manifested itself again when The Wyndgate Country Club in Rochester Hills, Michigan (outside of Detroit), cancelled an event with scientist and author Richard Dawkins after learning of Dawkins’s views on religion. The event had been arranged by the Center for Inquiry–Michigan (CFI), an advocacy group for secularism and science, and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.
Richard DawkinsThe Wyndgate terminated the agreement after the owner saw an October 5th interview with Dawkins on The O’Reilly Factor in which Dawkins discussed his new book, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True.
In a phone call to CFI–Michigan Assistant Director Jennifer Beahan, The Wyndgate’s representative explained that the owner did not wish to associate with individuals such as Dawkins, or his philosophies.
Although privately owned, The Wyndgate facilities are open to the public for special events and occasions. According to Title II of the Federal Civil Rights Law of 1964, “open to the public” means “all persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.”
After learning of the owner’s last-minute refusal to allow Dawkins to speak, CFI–Michigan asked the owner to reconsider his position, but this attempt to resolve the issue amicably was met with silence. The event, scheduled for Wednesday, October 12, will now be held at a different venue.
“It’s important to understand that discrimination based on a person’s religion—or lack thereof—is legally equivalent to discriminating against a person because of his or her race,” said Jeff Seaver, executive director of CFI–Michigan. “This action by The Wyndgate illustrates the kind of bias and bigotry that nonbelievers encounter all the time. It’s exactly why organizations like CFI and the Richard Dawkins Foundation are needed: to help end the stigma attached to being a nonbeliever.” CFI-Michigan: via RDF - Video link
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins - Review
The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins - review
A brilliant introduction to science for children
By Tim Radford
21 September 2011
Myths and fables are the first Just So stories; they tell us what we would like to know. Science tells us what we may know, along with why and how we may know it. Myths endure because, at their best, they are great stories. The narrative of science is always incomplete, continuously under revision, and seldom delivers a neat ending or a consoling moral. Even so, as Richard Dawkins confirms again and again in this book – his first for "a family audience" – science composes stories as thrilling as Homer, as profound as Job, and as entertaining as anything by Kipling.
Consider the epic of creation: in considerably less time than it takes to say "Let there be light", all matter, time and space confected itself either from nothing, or almost nothing, about 13.7bn years ago, and within the first second was already on course to become an unimaginably vast arena for dark matter, light, galaxies, stars, planets, comets, asteroids, 92 elements, countless chemical compounds and finally – as far as we know – on just one little speck of a planet, a world of living things. No less wonderful is that this whole story has been transcribed by collective effort in only 400 years, with the agency of light and some help from telescope, microscope and the light-splitting, rainbow-making spectroscope. "Rainbows are not just beautiful to look at," says Dawkins. "In a way, they tell us when everything began, including time and space. I think that makes the rainbow even more beautiful."
He has, of course, stood up for rainbow research before: specifically in Unweaving the Rainbow (1998) and the strengths, and possible weaknesses, of this book lie in just that: it is a distillation of so much that Dawkins has written and argued since the publication of The Selfish Gene (1976), not excluding his 2006 provocation The God Delusion. The strength is that he knows his ground. The weakness is that – for a "family audience" – he deliberately constrains his vocabulary along with the exuberant imagery and belligerence that made his reputation from the start. The tone is friendly, conversational and forthright: don't ask him to explain how a rainbow tells you that time and space began with the big bang "because, not being a cosmologist, I don't understand it myself".
There is a price to be paid for a disarming manner. The reader may wonder whether you really have the ammunition and firepower needed to hold your ground. There is, conversely, a reward: such asides are a grown-up reminder that science is also about things we don't know, but which we are sure can be addressed.
And – in a relatively short book, prodigiously illustrated and beautifully designed – he covers a lot of ground by addressing a series of pleasingly simple questions. Who was the first person? Why are there so many kinds of animals? Why do we have night and day, winter and summer? What is an earthquake? And so on. The answers take us from DNA to the Doppler effect, from hydrogen to hibernation, from rainbows to redshift, from tsunami to tectonic shifts, from perihelion to parallax, from sod's law to shooting stars. Like many science writers before him, he starts with the myths once composed to explain the sun and the moon, or the animals, or the first humans, or the seasons, or the shaking earth: by the close of the book he has mildly placed the Aboriginal, Nordic, Hopi, Greek, Maori, Hebrew and Christian traditions as equally primitive, equally interesting and equally unsatisfactory explanations of reality.
This fabulous context drives the direction of the text, towards all those old questions that children must always have asked. I cannot think of a better, or simpler, introduction to science as a good idea: simpler, because the starting point is the world's palpable, experienced reality rather than say formal subjects such as genetics, wave mechanics or astrophysics; better, because it could hardly be more up-to-date. At the time of the book's writing (January 2011) "484 planets have been detected … orbiting 408 stars. There will surely be more by the time you read this."
Dave McKean's illustrations play wittily on already half-familiar images from Hollywood biblical epics, Pink Panther movies, film noir, science-fiction covers, cartoons, paintings, icons, hieroglyphs and formal scientific graphics. There is an extended homily for the young would-be rationalist, on probability and how to evaluate reports of miracles such as the apparition of the virgin at Fatima. This sustained emphasis on myth and fable is intended to provoke, and does.
I am reminded that my very first introduction to evolutionary theory was a Lamarckian heresy composed to account for the rumpled hide of a rhinoceros. It involved natural selection in the form of a hot day, some stale cake crumbs and a Parsee from whose hat the sun's rays were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. It was, of course, one of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. I loved every word of it, and still do. I don't remember believing, even at the age of four, that a rhino ever took off its skin to bathe, and I absorbed the Darwinian version of evolution as soon as it was presented to me. The intended lesson of Dawkins's book is that science tells a marvellous set of experimentally testable stories. The less direct lesson may be that we cannot stop telling ourselves fables, but at least we should learn to tell the difference. Gruniad
Tim Radford's The Address Book is published by Fourth Estate.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Richard Dawkins On The Ignorant (Rick Perry)
Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a factQ. Texas governor and GOP candidate Rick Perry, at a campaign event this week, told a boy that evolution is ”just a theory” with “gaps” and that in Texas they teach “both creationism and evolution.” Perry later added “God is how we got here.” According to a 2009 Gallup study , only 38 percent of Americans say they believe in evolution. If a majority of Americans are skeptical or unsure about evolution, should schools teach it as a mere “theory”? Why is evolution so threatening to religion?
A. There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.
Any other organization -- a big corporation, say, or a university, or a learned society - -when seeking a new leader, will go to immense trouble over the choice. The CVs of candidates and their portfolios of relevant experience are meticulously scrutinized, their publications are read by a learned committee, references are taken up and scrupulously discussed, the candidates are subjected to rigorous interviews and vetting procedures. Mistakes are still made, but not through lack of serious effort.
The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.
A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.
Darwin’s idea is arguably the most powerful ever to occur to a human mind. The power of a scientific theory may be measured as a ratio: the number of facts that it explains divided by the number of assumptions it needs to postulate in order to do the explaining. A theory that assumes most of what it is trying to explain is a bad theory. That is why the creationist or ‘intelligent design’ theory is such a rotten theory.
What any theory of life needs to explain is functional complexity. Complexity can be measured as statistical improbability, and living things are statistically improbable in a very particular direction: the direction of functional efficiency. The body of a bird is not just a prodigiously complicated machine, with its trillions of cells - each one in itself a marvel of miniaturized complexity - all conspiring together to make muscle or bone, kidney or brain. Its interlocking parts also conspire to make it good for something - in the case of most birds, good for flying. An aero-engineer is struck dumb with admiration for the bird as flying machine: its feathered flight-surfaces and ailerons sensitively adjusted in real time by the on-board computer which is the brain; the breast muscles, which are the engines, the ligaments, tendons and lightweight bony struts all exactly suited to the task. And the whole machine is immensely improbable in the sense that, if you randomly shook up the parts over and over again, never in a million years would they fall into the right shape to fly like a swallow, soar like a vulture, or ride the oceanic up-draughts like a wandering albatross. Any theory of life has to explain how the laws of physics can give rise to a complex flying machine like a bird or a bat or a pterosaur, a complex swimming machine like a tarpon or a dolphin, a complex burrowing machine like a mole, a complex climbing machine like a monkey, or a complex thinking machine like a person.
Darwin explained all of this with one brilliantly simple idea - natural selection, driving gradual evolution over immensities of geological time. His is a good theory because of the huge ratio of what it explains (all the complexity of life) divided by what it needs to assume (simply the nonrandom survival of hereditary information through many generations). The rival theory to explain the functional complexity of life - creationism - is about as bad a theory as has ever been proposed. What it postulates (an intelligent designer) is even more complex, even more statistically improbable than what it explains. In fact it is such a bad theory it doesn’t deserve to be called a theory at all, and it certainly doesn’t deserve to be taught alongside evolution in science classes.
The simplicity of Darwin’s idea, then, is a virtue for three reasons. First, and most important, it is the signature of its immense power as a theory, when compared with the mass of disparate facts that it explains - everything about life including our own existence. Second, it makes it easy for children to understand (in addition to the obvious virtue of being true!), which means that it could be taught in the early years of school. And finally, it makes it extremely beautiful, one of the most beautiful ideas anyone ever had as well as arguably the most powerful. To die in ignorance of its elegance, and power to explain our own existence, is a tragic loss, comparable to dying without ever having experienced great music, great literature, or a beautiful sunset.
There are many reasons to vote against Rick Perry. His fatuous stance on the teaching of evolution in schools is perhaps not the first reason that springs to mind. But maybe it is the most telling litmus test of the other reasons, and it seems to apply not just to him but, lamentably, to all the likely contenders for the Republican nomination. The ‘evolution question’ deserves a prominent place in the list of questions put to candidates in interviews and public debates during the course of the coming election.
Richard Dawkins wrote this response to Governor Perry for On Faith, the Washington Post’s forum for news and opinion on religion and politics.
WaPo
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Is Richard Dawkins Bus Campaign Getting Out Of Hand?
He's such a dear isn't he, always polite, never aloof and always the diplomat, a thoroughly likable bloke all in all, I would think even the Jezoids would have trouble taking exception.
Some of you will be aware of the bus ads that Richard Dawkins endorses and for those that are not the bottom line is, life is for living, so fuck the miserable theocrats and their miserable fucking ways, get partying, though I do have to admit he does tend to put it rather more eloquently than I.
Here then is a report from the Guardian and an accompanying two minute film featuring the creator of the campaign Ariane Sherine and not least the good professor being his usual pleasant self although he does manage a little barbed one liner at the end.
Have a take on Polly Toynbee the Guardian columnist, I couldn't help but wonder how long she would have been in employment were she reporting for some Yankee news organisation.
Atheist bus campaign spreads the word of no God nationwide
Anyone who has spent a chilly half-hour waiting for a double-decker may already have doubted the existence of a deity. But for those who need further proof, a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with the backing of some of Britain's most famous non-believers.
The principal slogan – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – can already be seen on four London bus routes, and now 200 bendy buses in London and 600 across the country are to carry the advert after a fundraising drive raised more than £140,000, exceeding the original target of £5,500. more
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Monday, March 03, 2008
Popcorn: Break The Science Barrier
Approximately fifty minutes in length but presented in six bite sized chunks, I thoroughly enjoyed Richard Dawkins present and narrate "Break the Science Barrier."
Each segment improving on the one previous, the first below, and the rest can be followed as YouTube allows or all links from Richard Dawkins .net
Again courtesy of Dawkins, Hitchens on the Bill Maher show, about ten minutes.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Guardian Interviews Dawkins
As the more atheistic among you are probably aware Dawkins "Out" campaign has been underway for some short time now but the Guardian conducts a contemporary interview with the good professor.
It is like Daniel going into the lions' den, though Professor Richard Dawkins might not appreciate the biblical comparison. Britain's leading atheist is spearheading a campaign in America to challenge the dominance of religion in every day life and in politics, insisting that the millions of US godless deserve to be heard too.Atheists in the US "have been downtrodden for a very long time. So I think some sort of political organisation is what they need", he said.......
He had been encouraged by the apparent distancing of Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential race from the Christian right. But he found "very depressing" the profession of faith from all the Democratic candidates. "I guess the Democrats have to pretend to be more pious than the Republicans because they are under suspicion of not being."More
Monday, July 23, 2007
An Unlikely Messenger
"During a recent trip to the Galapagos with the Center for Inquiry, Richard Dawkins gave a reading of his new preface to the paperback edition of The God Delusion along with a Q&A session that followed. The event took place in the ship's bar salon area."
It was then, toward the latter end of the first clip that Dawkins, reading from the preface, made mention of the untimely death of a seventeen year old young man.
To hear of this in such a manner, and from this most unlikely of sources, was to say the least quite a shock, and thereafter followed great sadness for myself.
My personal sadness at this tragic news is brought about, that some ten years ago, for a brief period of time, this young man and I were part of, for want of a better description, a family unit.
Rest in peace, Luke (Hebby) Ashton.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Dawkins on Child Abuse
Again I'm not up to stringing many words together but Dawkin's gives a quintessential English take on the way of things, this article probably demonstrates better than anything the difference between American and English cultures.
Religion's Real Child Abuse.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Hitchens, A Pleasant Surprise
How nice then to listen to his argument on a proposed amendment to criminalize hate speech.
H/T RichardDawkins.net