Rationality ought to be polite and humorous
The Times talked to Richard Dawkins the other day, and The Australian republished the interview.
He is thrilled that The God Delusion was recently translated, unofficially, into Arabic and circulated online. “It’s been downloaded ten million times, mostly in Saudi Arabia, but also in Iran and Iraq. I get very encouraging messages; there’s a substantial underground of nonbelievers in those countries. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a secular uprising?”
Hey you know what? It was also recently translated into Kurdish, by the guy who translated Does God Hate Women? I passed a few questions on to Dawkins for him, and also helped him with some English idioms. The translation was published a few weeks ago, and I helped the translator get copies to Dawkins. I share his view about the benefit of the Arabic translation. Whatever our disagreements, I think that’s a good thing.
But then there’s the other stuff.
Dawkins blames the rise in extremism on a confusion between religion and politics. “In the case of Islam, religion has got bound up with a sense of identity. It would be very nice if people did identify with science, but we don’t say, ‘Join the science party, join the rationality party.’ Maybe we should.” The West should be more confident about its values, he says. “We should have a sense of identity as rationalists. We should be more proud of that and it should take on some of the gentle decency of the Church of England. Rationality ought to be polite and humorous. Aggressive atheism is sometimes attributed to me, but I think wrongly.”
That’s the self-knowledge problem again. He still thinks it’s wrong to call him aggressive, after who knows how many aggressive tweets. He still apparently thinks his rationality is polite and humorous, after who knows how many rude tweets.
Ah well, we all have our faults. I’m glad he’s recovering.
Well, he’s polite to the *right* people, right?
Has there ever been a time when more pride was a good idea? I cannot think of any. He has got to be one of the least self aware most self righteous asshats it has ever been my misfortune to read.
The heck of it: even the notion of _always_ being polite and humorous kinda makes me… I dunno. Blech. Okay. Sometimes. But I dunno how polite and humorous I’m feeling about Avjit Roy (for one) right now.
And speaking of self knowledge: I’m not even sure polite and humorous is even my main thing. I mean a bit, sure. Alternate Tuesdays, at least, okay, I can do that.
Between the caustic rat bastard moments. And the twitchy and suppressing probably unhelpful vengeful impulses, I guess. And drinking quietly, managing quick smiles to assure anyone wondering: listen, it’s all good. Leaving soon.
(/Acerbic, barely veiling my contempt, but managing to finish my cognac without throwing it at anyone? Does that pass muster at Oxford, maybe? I think I can do that one pretty steadily.)
Did I hear the words “Dawkins” and “humorous”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mKrSoXHtfA
I saw a tape of Dawkins handling a Q&A session that was packed with ‘Liberty College’ students. He showed saintly patience, but rigorous determination to each pitiful question.
Has he just lost it with age? Or does he really think that HIS survival of the C of E indoctrination is some guarantee of its harmlessness for others? Some synapse for empathy with the unfamiliar seems to have been severed.
I dunno, John. We all get old and cranky. I mean, I’m not quite that old, and I do get cranky.
… Come to think of it, I think I’d feel a lot more fondness for Dr. D if he simply got that bit of self-awareness. Sure, I think he’s kinda screwing the pooch of late, making all the wrong friends, making a real hash of picking sides, and anytime the braindead MRA dudebro refugees from the YouTube grunting threads agree with you about pretty much anything at all, I figure the healthiest reaction is probably to take a long, hot shower to try to scrub that off. With lye, if necessary. Or sandpaper.
But y’know, I figure I’d still be comfortable enough having a drink with the guy, that shit notwithstanding, if he just came out and said something like: ‘Right, now you mention it, maybe I kinda _am_ a supercilious bastard on and off. But sweet fucking FSM, people, like thinking I’m a little better than some of you is such a bizarre thing, is that what you’re implying here? Like we don’t all think that, sometimes. I went to Oxford, grokked the modern synthesis maybe better than a few, scribbled out some bestsellers from that, drew the kinda obvious conclusions on cosmology writ large, and I _still_ wind up on panels with people on about talking snakes and flying horses. _That’s_ my world. _You_ try that life on for size, and see how you manage your contempt… And so maybe I’m a bit stunned about the social sciences, maybe, whatever. But fuck, people, it’s not like those don’t have their risible moments. You people _have_ heard about that whole replicability crisis thing, right? Okay, yeah, not real astute or concerned about existing power gradients I’m actually part of, clueless old boy, okay, maybe, yadda yadda. And maybe it also made me a bit twitchy their offices are anywhere near the theology department. _Context_ people. What do you even _want_ from me?’
(/Also come-to-think-of-it, Doctor, if you need a new PR agent, consider that my pitch. Sure, I have exactly no experience in said field, and am probably like 98 percent likely to make a bigger mess of this than you already have, but as if that’s ever bothered you before. Listen, I’ll be in England ’round mid-July, anyway… Call me, babe.)
The thing is…it’s as if he’s stopped coming up with new material. He’s stopped self-churning. In short he repeats his own mantras these days, and it gets disconcerting. I think I wrote here about the fact that his Point of Inquiry chat at the CFI conference last June was full of depressingly familiar remarks. We’d heard it before.
I thought the same thing about this interview. Formulas. Familiar. Stale. He talks in sort of pre-fabricated phrases these days. I suspect that’s related to the fact that he seems to be bad at listening. They’re both the same sort of thing: hanging on to the already chosen ideas, and not allowing in any disruptions. So I think the kind of conversation you would like to see, Andrew, is out of his reach now, maybe because he carefully put it out of reach and locked the door and threw away the key.
Well, at least The God Delusion is apparently still winning converts. (By the way, they may have fixed it by the time you click on the link, but at one point the article refers to him as Richard “Dawson,” which gave me a good laugh imagining the host of Family Feud arguing with religious contestants.)
John the Drunkard @5,
Apropos of Ophelia’s comment about him being a sort of one-trick pony, I think that Dawkins also seems to have one conversational mode or tone: slightly condescending waspishness. That comes across as pretty dignified when dealing with idiocy from religious wingnuts, but as obnoxious when dealing with reasonable criticism. For example:
Q: “Professor Dawkins, why should we believe Darwin? He was a Marxist Nazi who admitted on his deathbed that he made it all up.”
A: “That’s a rather ridiculous question. I’m afraid you’re rather ignorant about this subject.”
That comes across as being almost charitable, compared to what most of us would say. But:
Q: “Professor Dawkins, can’t we try to reduce harassment against women in developed Western countries AND try to improve the treatment of women in developing Muslim nations?”
A: “That’s a rather ridiculous question. I’m afraid you’re rather ignorant about this subject.”
has a rather different presentation.
Oh, and a related point I just thought of: that tone of “let me enlighten you on this subject of which you apparently know little” works fine when you’re a scientist writing popular science books, because the entire point is that your reader accepts you as an authority on the subject and is happy to be lectured at, but it’s grating when it’s coming in the form of tweets on subjects where he’s no more of an authority — and often less — than his interlocuters.
It is like the final scene from Bull Durham harkening back to this scene:
Crash Davis: It’s time to work on your interviews.
Ebby Calvin LaLoosh: My interviews? What do I gotta do?
Crash Davis: You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: “We gotta play it one day at a time.”
Screechy @ 8 – yes, but I would add that for me the slightly condescending waspishness has worn thin even when it’s more or less earned. I used to like it but now I’ve just had enough of it (or I’ve seen it used the other way too much, or both). It feels stuck – it feels as if he’s stuck in that one groove and can’t do anything else, and it’s tiresome (and often worse than tiresome). I used to long to meet him, and by the time I had the chance, I wanted not to (and not just because I know he’s displeased with me).
thebewilderness @ 10 – ha – that’s like the scene in Apollo 13 where Marilyn Lovell instructs a novice wife-of-astronaut in what to say to reporters when they shout “How are you feeling?!!” “Remember, you’re proud, happy, and thrilled.”
@ 7 Ophelia Benson
So you’re saying his memes replicate but do not evolve. ;-)
But it appears that Dawkins is capable of learning and change, or at least of taking Ophelia’s advice. From a BBC interview this week:
Good for him. I mean that sincerely.
Twitter: http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web05/2012/8/6/2/anigif_enhanced-buzz-8296-1344235778-6.gif
Ya I saw that – but we knew his staff had taken over his Twitter account after his stroke, so it’s not clear whether he’s saying he’s given it up for good or not. And even if he does mean he’s given it up for good, he could of course always decide that no he hasn’t. As I’ve mentioned several times, I know that many people close to him have begged him to stop using Twitter, so I suspect he kept on using it because he liked it.
So, who knows.