The Atlantic decided they needed a piece on Richard Dawkins’s “farewell tour”, but they either chose the wrong journalist or asked the author to write a semi hit-piece that made Dawkins look bad. Not completely bad, mind you, for the author does mention a few good things Dawkins has done. But, overall, the piece depicts an aging man who simply needs to fight battles, and now there are no battles to fight. Once it was creationism, says senior editor Ross Andersen, but now it’s the lesser battle of “fighting wokeness”.
Since Andersen himself shows signs of “progressive” thought in his piece (he defends, for example, the teaching Māori legends as science in New Zealand), he may have an animus against Richard. I don’t know, but I know two things. First, Andersen shows no signs of having read Dawkins’s books or followed his career. Second, Anderson ends his piece, which describes his opinion of Richard’s recent lecture in Washington D.C., by saying “I was bored.” His pronouncement is distinctly un-journalistic given that Andersen describes a very enthusiastic audience lining up to get books signed, and bespeaks a reviewer more concerned with his own personal reaction than with the effect of Dawkins, his writing, and his Washington discussion on the audience (and on society in general).
Click on the headline below to read it, or, if you can’t, you can find it archived here. Several readers sent me this piece—I suppose expecting to get my reaction. So here it is: the piece stinks.
The dissing starts off in a subtle way with the title (granted, Andersen may not have written it, but the Atlantic approved it). But in the second sentence, Andersen says this:
[Dawkins] has adapted his swaggering Oxbridge eloquence to a variety of media ecosystems.
Anybody who knows or has even heard Richard knows that his eloquence is not “swaggering,” but measured and reserved. But I’ll leave that aside and pass on. Here, also, in the first paragraph, Andersen describes Dawkins’s first foray into atheism:
In 2006’s The God Delusion, another mega–best seller, Dawkins antagonized the world’s religions.
“Antagonized the world’s religions”? Well, yes, some believers may have been offended, but what about adding that this book made an eloquent argument against religion, and, in fact (as Andersen says later!), changed people’s lives for the better. That sentence is like saying, “In Mein Kampf, Hitler antagonized the world’s Jews.” It may be true, but both statements are certainly pejorative and woefully incomplete.
Throughout the piece, Anderson describes how energized, worshipful, and jazzed up the audience was. But of course Anderson was “bored”. Here is part of his description:
Now, at age 83, Dawkins is saying goodbye to the lecture circuit with a five-country tour that he’s marketing as his “Final Bow.” Earlier this month, I went to see him at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. Dawkins has said that when he visits the U.S., he has the most fun in the Bible Belt, but most of his farewell-tour appearances will take place in godless coastal cities. After all, Dawkins has a new book to sell—The Genetic Book of the Dead—and at the Warner, it was selling well. I saw several people holding two or three copies, and one man walking around awkwardly with nine, steadying the whole stack beneath his chin. The line to buy books snaked away from the theater entrance and ran all the way up the stairs. It was longer than the line for the bar.
As for the audience, which was surely diverse:
The packed theater looked like a subreddit come to life. Bald white heads poked above the seat backs, as did a few ponytails and fedoras. This being an assembly of freethinkers, there was no standard uniform, but I did spot lots of goatees and black T-shirts. The faded silk-screen graphics on the tees varied. One was covered in equations. Another featured a taxonomy of jellyfish extending onto its sleeves. These people had not come here merely to see a performer; Dawkins had changed many of their lives. A man in the row behind me said that he had attended Dawkins’s show in Newark, New Jersey, the previous night. As a Christian teen, he had sought out videos of Dawkins, hoping that they would prepare him to rebut arguments for evolution. He ultimately found himself defeated by the zoologist’s logic, and gave up his faith.
. . . Jake Klein, the director of the Virginia Chapter of Atheists for Liberty [JAC: the “warm-up” act], told a similar conversion story onstage, before introducing Dawkins. Klein said The God Delusion had radicalized him against the Orthodox Judaism of his youth. Millions of other creationists had similar experiences, Klein said. He credited Dawkins with catalyzing an important triumph of reason over blind superstition.
Indeed, Dawkins has changed many lives for the better; his books were an important impetus for people not only accepting the scientific truth of evolution, but also grasping the wonder and majesty of both natural selection and evolution—not to mention helping people throw off the constricting chains of religion. (I’m a small fish, but I myself have been told that that Why Evolution is True and Faith Versus Fact have also changed lives.) Given the dominance of creationism in America—37% of Americans still accept Biblical creationism, 34% accept a form of God-guided evolution, while a mere 24% accept naturalistic evolution, making a total of 71% of Americans who think the supernatural played a role in evolution—accepting naturalistic evolution as true is a powerful reason to jettison your faith. And that’s what several people have told me about my first trade book.
More on audience appreciation for what Dawkins has done (attacking wokeness), a description tinged with opprobrium (my bolding):
Now that mainstream culture has moved on from big debates about evolution and theism, he no longer has a prominent foe that so perfectly suits his singular talent for explaining the creative power of biology. And so he’s playing whack-a-mole, swinging full strength, and without much discernment, at anything that strikes him as even vaguely irrational. His fans at the Warner Theatre didn’t seem to mind. For all I know, some of them had come with the sole intent of hearing Dawkins weigh in on the latest campus disputes and cancellations.
For nearly an hour, Dawkins stuck largely to science, and it served him well. The latter half of the evening was heavier on culture-war material. To whoops and hollers, Dawkins expressed astonishment that anyone could believe that sex is a continuum, instead of a straightforward binary. He described safety-craving college students as “pathetic wimps.” It all seemed small, compared with the majesty of the ideas he’d been discussing just minutes before.
Is the discussion of wokeness (mainly how ideology affects science) a problem? And doesn’t the author realize that the interlocutor, economist Steven Levitt, confected the questions without Dawkins’s knowledge of what they’d be? If Levitt wanted to ask Dawkins about wokeness or campus ferment, is that Dawkins’s fault? Besides, the audience wanted to hear a thoughtful person’s take on wokeness, which includes science: not only the biology of sex, but the low value of indigenous “knowledge” (see below).
And that brings us to one of several major misconceptions about Dawkins. Andersen seems to think that, throughout Richard’s life, he was motivated by contentiousness: everything he did was motivated by his need to have an enemy. That enemy was, avers Andersen initially creationism, but now has morphed into wokeness (see “whack-a-mole” above):
The day before, on a video call, Dawkins told me that he was puzzled—and disquieted—by the support he has received from the political right. He tends to support the Labour Party. He loathes Donald Trump. The New Atheist movement arose partly in response to the ascent of George W. Bush and other evangelicals in Republican politics. Its leaders—Dawkins, along with Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett—worried that public-school students would soon be learning creationism in biology class. But there has since been a realignment in America’s culture wars. Americans still fight over the separation of church and state, but arguments about evolution have almost completely vanished from electoral politics and the broader zeitgeist. With no great crusade against creationism to occupy him, Dawkins’s most visible moments over the past 15 years have been not as a scientist but as a crusader against “wokeness”—even before that was the preferred term.
First, creationism is still with us, and in a big way. I gave the figures above, but Andersen, who’s supposed to know science, doesn’t seem to realize that far more Americans are creationists than are materialistic evolutionists, and more than 7 out of 10 of us think that God played some role in evolution. We have a long way to go. Further, arguments about evolution aren’t gone, for the Intelligent Design miscreants are still plaguing us. As for electoral politics, evolution never played a prominent role there except once (in 2008, three of the Republican Presidential candidates in a debate raised their hands to show they didn’t accept evolution.) Evolution simply isn’t on the electoral agenda compared to the economy and, right now, immigration. And doesn’t Andersen know that the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is a creationist? Further, many of us worry, and justifiably so, that the Supreme Court, which hasn’t adjudicated the teaching of evolution since 1987, might now revisit the issue and allow creationism to be taught. Given the present composition of the court, that’s entirely possible.
I’ve known Richard for much longer than has Andersen, and I can’t agree with his conclusion that Richard needs an enemy to thrive. Dawkins started off writing a book expounding how evolution worked (The Selfish Gene), and as far as I remember that book barely mentions creationism, if at all. It was designed not to fight creationists but to enlighten both scientists and readers about how natural selection worked. This was followed by more books explaining evolution (Climbing Mount Improbable. The Extended Phenotype—Richard’s favorite—and my favorite, the Blind Watchmaker) and of course there are several more books explaining evolution.
The fight against creationism, I think, only came later, when Richard saw to his dismay that his views weren’t immediately embraced by the American public (I had the same reaction when I wrote Wby Evolution is True). He saw, correctly, that that opposition came almost exclusively from religion. And so, only in 2009 (three decades after The Selfish Gene) did Richard write an explicitly anticreationist book: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidcence for Evolution. My own parallel is having the same realization about religious opposition to evolution, which led to my writing Faith Versus Fact after WEIT. Richard’s main motivation, as I see it, was not to fight creationism, but to share the wonder of evolution and natural selection that he himself felt. Since The Selfish Gene, he’s written 18 books, only two against religion and creationism; and his most recent books, Flights of Fancy: Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution, and The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie, are pure science.
As for Richard’s new “opponent”, wokeness, Andersen has to reach back into Dawkins’s Precambrian Twitter feed, basing this criticdism on just three tweets. He even mentions Elevatorgate, without noting that Richard apologized for that tweet. And as for this one, well, I see nothing wrong with it: it raises a good question for debate first broached by philosopher Rebecca Tuvel in the journal Hypatia:
Dawkins is raising the question for discussion, though Andersen denigrates this important issue by saying it’s a “just-asking-questions” (JAQ) tweet. He doesn’t seem to realize that Dawkins was a professor and teacher, and this is very similar to the kind of questions an Oxford don would ask his students to write about.
At any rate, Andersen really shows his own wokeness, and, importantly, his ignorance of what’s going on in New Zealand, when he criticizes Richard’s emphasis on not teaching Māori “ways of knowing” alongside and coequal to modern science in New Zealand. This is an ongoing problem that I’ve written about many times, and one Andersen wrongly dismisses as a non-problem:
The tale of Lysenko is almost fable-like in its moral purity, and Dawkins told it well, but only as a setup for a contemporary controversy that he wished to discuss—an ongoing dispute over school curricula in New Zealand. According to one proposal, students there would learn traditional creation stories and myths alongside standard science lessons, out of deference to the Māori, whose language and culture British settlers had tried earnestly to erase. Dawkins noted that some eminent New Zealand scientists had “stuck their heads above the parapet” to object to this idea with an open letter in 2021, and were “unpleasantly punished” for doing so. He called this mob rule, and expressed concern for the young students. They could end up confused, he said, forced as they would be to reconcile lessons about the “sky father” and “earth mother” with those that concern the Big Bang and evolution.
I suspect that kids can hold those two things in mind. I suspect also that the project of science—no innocent bystander in the treatment of Indigenous people—will be best served if its most prominent voices address themselves to the Māori, and other such groups, in an imaginative spirit of synthesis and reconciliation. But even if I am wrong about all that, the specter of Lysenko would seem to have little bearing on a case in which no scientist has been officially punished. Complaints about the open letter did produce an initial investigation by the Royal Society Te Apārangi, as a matter of process, but nothing more.
The errors in these two paragraphs are at least four:
1.) The endeavor to keep modern science free from indigenous superstition was not just in the Listener Letter, but is an ongoing battle between rationalism and superstition.
2.) The battle continues because kids CANNOT hold two different conceptions of science in their mind at once. It is confusing and simply bad pedagogy.
3.) Scientists were officially punished for denying the scientific worth of indigenous knowledge. See this report by the New Zealand Initiative. Not only were professors punished and investigated, but the ubiquity of Māori sacralization in New Zealand has chilled both university teaching and the speech of professors and students.
4.) Andersen’s ignorance is particularly strong when, Tom-Friedman-like, he proposes a melding of Māori “ways of knowing” and science in “an imaginative spirit of synthesis and reconciliation.” That idea has led to the ludicrous notion, for example, that kauri blight (a tree disease) might be cured by rubbing the trees with whale bones and whale oil while saying Māori prayers. That is the imaginative synthesis that’s happening at this moment, and it’s in all the sciences.
The final paragraph is, frankly, offensive to journalists and readers alike:
After he took his last bow, the lights went out, and I tried to understand what I was feeling. I didn’t leave the show offended. I wasn’t upset. It was something milder than that. I was bored.
Who cares if Andersen was bored? The crowd wasn’t bored and many paid extra for VIP tickets to get their books custom-signed and say a few words to Richard, while others formed a bigger line to get pre-signed books. All we learn here is that the author feels superior to both Dawkins and the crowd. I went to Dawkins’s talk here in Chicago, and I wasn’t bored, even at times when I disagreed with what Richard said. And I’m an evolutionary biologist who’s written a lot about the fracas in New Zealand. It appears that Mr. Andersen is not just journalistically ham-handed, but also incurious.
“Senior citizen disagrees with modern social trends. Film at 11.”
Groundbreaking journalism by The Atlantic.
Richard is still doing remarkably well, and he’s right on most of these issues. Long may he live.
Andersen is a clown fish.
My favorite Dawkins is The Extended Phenotype
Dennett in the Afterword wrote: “Dawkins, like a philosopher, is primarily concerned with the logic of the explanations we devise to account for these processes and predict their outcomes.”
The best inference machine of the 20th century!
“editor Ross Andersen”
noted.
I take this as a sign Richard’s still got it
Growing old is inevitable — growing weak is optional
It’s a mean-spirited piece that, I thought, was beneath The Atlantic. It will soon be forgotten.
I’ve read most of Dawkins’s books. As a graduate student, my entire cohort spent weeks reading and debating The Selfish Gene. Then came The Extended Phenotype; then The Blind Watchmaker (my favorite, too); then The God Delusion, then… .
Mr Andersen—who will leave little if any scholarly record—ought to read them, too!
+1 Norman
Bored?! Really? This says much more about Mr. Andersen than it does about Prof. Dawkins. I know the descriptor, “narcissist” has been overused recently, but as his The Atlantic article ends with the author’s feelings to sum up the evening, he must think that the reader cares most about that, rather than the content of the evening…I believe him a paragon of narcissism. Jerry’s point that HE, Jerry, who I believe to be a world-class subject matter expert on Dawkins’ material, was not bored says much…as if anything really need be said for anyone who has read even a fraction of Dawkins’ writings over the years.
It is the hiring of writers like Ross Andersen that have led me to cancel my subscription to The Atlantic, and most recently not even trouble myself to purchase a single copy from the magazine rack. Andersen, like studies courses at today’s unis, writes about stuff, as opposed to creating and writing stuff itself. A passive observer diluting the material of an active participant.
“Andersen, like studies courses at today’s unis, writes about stuff, as opposed to creating and writing stuff itself. A passive observer diluting the material of an active participant.”
This is so true! Maybe that’s what bothers me about how so many science writers have replaced actual scientists in such journals as Scientific American, but the problem is broader than that. There are so many commentators out there, that my guess is that the commentators have more influence than the people who provide the original contributions. That concerns me.*
*Of course, I’m just a commentator myself.
“Andersen was bored.”
No, no – Andersen is a bore. Clearly not scientifically literate enough to appreciate the beauty of evolution as told by a living legend of evolutionary biology using compelling examples of living creatures. He probably gets a little impatient when listening to David Attenborough and Carl Sagan too.
“The line to buy books…was longer than the line for the bar.” Makes sense and now we know Andersen’s priorities vs the other attendees. Glad he went and could score some cocktails without too much trouble using the Atlantic credit card. Don’t forget to take the tax writeoff and we’ll now write you off as a serious journalist or editor.
Delicious takedown there Jimbo. 100%.
best,
D.A.
NYC
If Anderson could have written “The line for the bar … was longer than the line to buy books” he would have done so, with relish and glee. As it was, he had to make do with admitting it was otherwise, but ignoring it.
Anderson’s poorly considered piece is a reminder of a widespread problem in journalism. Fact and understanding often take a back seat to biased opinion. If he’d taken the trouble to know more about his subject he would not come off as sloppy. But writers are driven to publish negative critique in large quantity in order to earn a good living and to stay “relevant”. Pure, honest and knowledgeable analyses are hard to find.
I think it’s very important to understand that the lack of skeptical voices approaching the ideology of sex and gender identity is aiding the right-wing by giving them factual examples of wokeness that are truly diminishing the role of science in answering important questions. Some very good skeptics are spreading the meme that since there are multiple forms of sexual expression in fungi (see Scientists discovery why fungi have 36,000 sexes ) then of course it is natural for humans to have multiple gender identities, and that the identities are biologically rather than socially based.
The gender identity movement, and the lack of skepticism by most liberals thereof, are providing fodder for groups such as “Moms for Liberty” and QAnon to suggest that liberals are foolish groomers who just want kids to be exposed to weird sex in their elementary education. With such examples, it’s hard to defend the idea that books shouldn’t be excluded from curricula if they are teaching kids that gender identity should lead to sex-change or sex hormone suppression in pre-teens. We really do need good skeptics to set the example that it is possible to question what gender identity means without being hateful towards those individuals who are confused by the social pressure to conform to gender standards and mutilate themselves if they feel more like conforming to those of the other sex. The Beeb’s Documentary “The Coming Storm” has a brief episode on this issue of how the right are using this issue, and indeed I have observed many formerly liberal feminists now embracing the right and Trumpism because “at least they know what a woman is.” If it’s okay, I would like to share another link, this one to the episode of “The Coming Storm” podcast.
The Groomers
I think that you and Dawkins need some support, rather than bile, for approaching this subject skeptically. It’s not hate, it’s genuine skepticism.
Sorry, but I’ve written any number of tempered and factual posts on this subject. So please don’t lecture me on how to approach the sex and ideology thing, or accuse me of aiding the right wing by sharing a position that they hold. Even conservatives can be right, you know.
?
Did you read Mike’s comment? He did neither of the things you suggest.
hahah. I sent this article to PPC(E) hoping he/you didn’t mistake “Andersen” with ME!
I’d never write such stuff about Dawkins, whom I adore. The article is very unfair. Having such a common name as I do there are a lot of co-incidences and imitators of the original David Anderson out there. There’s even an old earth creationist with my name who self publishes, to my horror. “Will the real slim shady please stand up.” HHHAHA.
My syndicated column always starts here:
https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/ Don’t accept fakes. 🙂
-and I repost most articles at WEIT for my friends here.
On much weightier Middle East news:
Alleged strike against Nasrallah a few minutes ago in Sth Beirut. Unconfirmed.
That would be a bad idea I think. Nasrallah, curse him, is a known quantity. Any new young punk with stuff to prove who’d take over after his demise might be worse.
(Just my opinion).
D.A.
NYC
Oh we know you better than that! It didn’t even cross my mind.
The whole piece has a whiff of ageism about it. I heard Richard Dawkins on Sam Harris’s podcast and he was as articulate and sharp as ever but this piece seems to make subtle digs to suggest that he is just some old dude that is just not with the times and his audience is full of old farts who think they are hip.
That seems right to me!
Bullseye! I was very impressed by him on Sam’s podcast (6-Sep-2024) and on Tiggernometry (25-Aug-2024). After his stroke in 2016 (which did affect him for a while), I thought he might really slow down or have other problems. But, thankfully, he has overcome the effects of the stroke and keeps doing great work. Wonderful and amazing.
We are so lucky to have Richard (how much longer?).
That is what stood out to me, as well. It was low.
Immensely grateful to be able to read accessible science by Richard Dawkins and our host. Lyrical English prose and rational arguments add spice.
Unfortunately, most people are not curious about our world or about our evolution. They prefer the primitive narratives of religion – perhaps that is all they are capable of doing. Richard Dawkins has had a lot of flack from ignoramuses which he seems to have taken in good humour. I hope he has a long life.
Thank you for this article.
Hi happened to have read the Andersen article before seeing this post, and I totally agree with the critique of Andersen, who comes across as shallow, snarky, and ideological. But my main reason for responding is to say that MY favorite of Dawkins’ books is The Ancestor’s Tale.
I had never heard of Anderson, and I don’t mind if I never hear of him again; but what an a***hole! And I agree with you about our favourite Dawkins book (amid stiff competition).
Also my favorite book of his. 😉
And An Ancestor’sTale is also my favorite, Jim, Steve, and Fred. I refer to it often.
I once introduced a public lecture by Dawkins at Michigan State University, and I mentioned my appreciation of Ancestor’s Tale. His response indicated that he is especially proud of it and thinks it should be more widely appreciated.
I just started reading Richard Dawkins’ The Genetic Book of the Dead. I quote from page 70 of this book: “Herbivore teeth are millstones which, like the mills of God, grind slowly and they grind exceedingly small.”
Why do secular writers use religious mythical figures in their writings when there is no need for that and, worse, do not clarify that the mentioned entity is a non-existent thing. In the previous quote of Dawkins’ book, a reader assumes that he is tacitly accepting God as a real physical, existing entity.
I thought the analogy was clever. After all, the Bible is part of Western culture, and it doesn’t make anyone believe in God when you use a small quote from it. I can’t think of a better quote to use.
No, it’s not true that a reader of Dawkins’s book (all of us know he’s an atheist, for crying out loud) would think that by using that analogy, Richard is a believer. Are you serious?
+1
Actually, your reading of this passage is probably immature. Dawkins surely used this analogy intentionally and knowingly, not to add gravitas by invoking God nor as mere literary device, he did it as a microcosm of his entire thesis – that God doesn’t exist and cannot be found in evolution and is an unnecessary hypothesis. He’s refuting God’s existence in a sentence by showing evolution creates the most amazing, seemingly designed mechanisms like tiny grinders with optimized function that may appear miraculous and designed but are not, having been selected for over evolutionary time, because there is no designer and there is no God. In a phrase, he’s juxtaposing the Design hypothesis against evolution and weakening the need for a designer to a lay public who might start stumbling onto the fact that none of it was designed. That is elegant writing and maybe part of the special sauce of how Dawkins has been effective in changing the minds of committed theists and evolution deniers.
I’ve followed Richard Dawkins for a long time, have read some of his books, and subscribe to his Substack. He has always tried to explain scientific facts to people, especially the facts of evolutionary biology and how we know them, in a way that can be understood. That’s pretty much all he’s doing! He’s not, as you said, fighting wokeness any more than he was fighting creationism. He’s simply explaining scientific facts, and some people’s wishful thinking (I.e. sex is a spectrum) is coming into conflict with those facts. So they think they’re being fought with.
Utterly shocking!
How is it that journalists – in fact anyone – can’t see that there is a massive problem in the way people have been coerced into putting belief before reason? loudmouth assertion before evidence? contrarianism before considered thought? Dawkins is the world’s strongest voice in support of evidence based reasoning and science, or in other words the best advocate for the most likely explanation for objective reality.
So Anderson thinks creationism isn’t an issue any more? He needs to log into Facebook philosophy groups. He wouldn’t believe the number of people that have allowed themselves to be duped by the massive, well funded and sophisticated creationist scam industry. Now there’s a scandal that needs its “expose”. But should we wait for the scoop…? No, I know!
In view of his previous comments to the contrary, was Anderson really “bored”? Or was it that when he submitted his copy to the editor, he/she wanted it more punchy, and he thought: Why not say it was boring, that will give it bite? I mean, what does Truth matter anyway?
I subscribe to the Atlantic precisely because it does not push a certain point of view. Nor does it confine itself to one article per topic – such as Dawkins, in this case. Often, it will publish follow-on articles that respond critically to previous articles.
This is all to say that I think that you, Jerry, should expand on your above critique and pitch it to the Atlantic. If you do, I would rethink my good opinion of the magazine if it did not publish your article, especially since there is no denying that you are a qualified – “decorated,” even! – source whose opinions are well worth hearing.
I was thinking the same thing. I encourage PCC(E) to consider this.
No, they would not publish it. At first they rejected my paper with Luana on the ideological erosion of biology, but when we told them that Skeptical Inquirer wanted it, they suddenly became friendly and said that there was a 90% chance they would publish it. I was not at all impressed; they had misled me from the outset so I would take the race section out.
That’s discouraging but I can’t say I’m surprised.
And I cancelled my subscription a few years back when they started pushing wokeness!
What with Anne Applebaum onboard, I suspect the Atlantic pushes her point of view and support of U.S. foreign policy: NATO eastward expansion and containment and diminution of Russia.
This article does one thing dazzlingly well: it demonstrates that Anderson is not fit to tie Richard Dawkins’ shoelaces. However, that’s all it accomplishes. There’s no point to it; it’s mean-spirited, ill-informed, and some of it is just downright bigoted. Why does he have to comment on the number of bald white people and guys wearing fedoras?
He has virtually no idea about Richard’s’ work, so he has to rely on cherry-picking some ‘controversial’ tweets and painting him as a grumpy old man who, when not shouting “Get off my lawn!” is looking for confrontation – because that’s what he’s always been like. Except he hasn’t.
I don’t get why people often want to trample on Dawkins, portraying him as angry, sneering and uncharitable (and now swaggering, I see). If I were to guess, it’s because he has the guts to call bullshit when he sees it, and this is something you hip journalists can’t tolerate.
I’m immensely fond of Richard and his work. When, in 2016, I heard he’d had a stroke, I almost felt like a family member had been taken ill. His writing is beautiful, and he has the remarkable ability to make science poetic. His introduction to Unweaving the Rainbow is incredibly moving and evocative; it’s right up there with Pale Blue Dot. He’s one of the best science writers of all time and deserves to be recognised as such. There are few, if any, people who have written as prolifically on biology and none who have done as much to reveal the wonders of evolution to the general public. Why people can’t concentrate on these things and instead choose to have a go at him is beyond me.
All the best, Richard. Long may you have bald white men appreciating your work!
The line about bald white men was very bizarre.
I’d say you’ve nailed it, WJ – that Andersen was bitten by the green-eyed monster: “They say Mr Dawkins writes beautifully but I’ll show ’em…”
Also, Frau Katze observes the bizarre bit about bald white men – did anyone else check out Mr Andersen’s photo? He seems somewhat follically challenged to me. More jealousy, eh? given that Richard Dawkins still has a decent amount of hair for his age.
Perhaps Mr. Andersen should have a clause in his employment contract to the effect that, if he perceives that a given assignment is potentially boring, he does not have to complete it. No doubt The Atlantic will go for that.
It would seem that the honorable Mr. Andersen is no less obligated to report on the fraction of attendees who have won the genetic hair lottery. (But then, that’s not generally considered a “dig” at anyone, eh? Exception: Maureen Dowd’s tonsorially-related digs at lottery winner former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.) Were any attendees suffering from alopecia? Would Andersen consider them deserving of a barb? (Re: Jada Smith having to bear up under Chris Rock’s dulcet tones and observations uttered in the presence of a thousand or more attendees.)
It seems rare that a writer dealing with his own tonsorial challenges and therefore presumably empathetic would get in a dig at the baldness of others, as from my (and surely others’) experience it is the fully hair-headed who take joy in making such digs, or lecturing the tonsorially-challenged that their situation is perfectly “natural.” Certainly, the tonsorially-challenged are better positioned than the fully hair-headed to presume to lecture the tonsorially-challenged.
Some years ago Professor Dawkins in an online article featured photos of books critical of him and written after the publication of “The God Delusion.” (One was entitled “The Dawkins Delusion.”) Dawkins quoted I forget whom who said, “Every dog has its fleas.” It would seem reasonable and appropriate that the honorable Mr. Andersen should join that august group of authors.
You’re right. I just checked Andersen’s photo, and he’s as bald as a coot (or fulica atra, this being WEIT). That’s pretty funny and makes his weird comments all the more bizarre.
You know, I just realised I could have picked any coot, but being Northern European, I went straight for the Eurasian variety!
My unconscious bias is showing. Oh, the horror.
Your last two paragraphs. 100%
“Water off a ducks back” to Richard Dawkins I’d imagine. He’s a seasoned compaigner and many a jerk has had a go at ’em…
With his dropping out of the touring life all I can say to a man who helped change my direction is I hope you get to do more of what you want to do.
The Anderson’s of this world will always be out there and who else finer to agitate & piss them off… Richard Dawkins. His body of work will always inspire they’ll just have to get use to it or go else where for their “boredom”.
Has it occurred to anyone that those who try to tear Dawkins down are probably just jealous of his intellect and his brilliant articulation of evolution? Sure, his atheism probably bothers some people. But underneath they are seething. And the Four Horsemen won’t cheer them up.
I’d like to add a couple of things.
First, if all Andersen can find against Dawkins are elevatorgate and the “transracial” DISCUSS tweet, it means he know he has in fact NOTHING against Dawkins.
Secondly, if criticizing wokeness seems small after speaking of evolution… it’s because it is, but guess whose fault it is. Dawkins, as most of us here, surely would be happy if we could avoid the topic altogether, if it weren’t for the fact that cynical theories are actively harming science.
The Wikipedia article on Elevatorgate is (still) fiction, and shouldn’t be linked to.
?
What’s wrong about it?
I almost expected, but halfway hoped people here would know. I recall you’re an old pharyngulana?
In the most broad sense, it was a flame war with various flash points around the introduction of “social justice blogging” (see e.g. Know Your Meme) and its ideological beliefs into the new atheist conversations. In another fair version, Rebecca Watson had discovered the market for “online intersectionality callout culture” already popular elsewhere, notably Young Adult Writing and Tumblr blogospheres and wanted to promote her new blog network “SkepChicks” with that hip and up-and-coming focus. I say this is fair characterisation, that her own side can interpret as “necessary conciousness raising”.
In terms of actual events: Watson was promoting her new brand next to Dawkins by appropriating a panel on a different topic to unprofessionally comment on a previous “women in atheism” panel. I suspect —speculation— that this didn’t go too well with Dawkins, in particular, because she also especially went against Paula Kirby, a friend of Dawkins.
This left no public effect, other than coming off as unprofessional. Once back home, Watson doubled down in a video where she claims that her unprofessional behaviour and SkepChick brand promotion are more important than ever, because, you won’t believe it, that very night, at the hotel, some attendee asked her for a coffee over in her hotel room whilst they were riding the lift — “guys don’t do that”. She said no, they went their ways. Yet, nobody cared. Really. She had a tiny YouTube channel and her subscribers were SkepChick fans, and back then YouTube showed “video responses” under the video. Now three or so women commented, one named Stef McGraw.
Watson discussed with McGraw, who was a representative of some student atheist organisation, and it escalated. The sharper Social Justice Blogging style began to arrive, you know calling people racist, misogynist, getting them fired etc. — this is just consistent with other communities, e.g. Young Adult. No idea why Americans are so obtuse about it when it just super obvious. Notably, this American ideology didn‘t go well with international crowds, by the way, but the US “new atheist” sphere never realised it.
Now this was still not yet there yet. Watson is invited to a CFI conference to speak on Women vs the Right. Here, she uses a good first 15 minutes to bring her YouTube feud with McGraw to that stage, whilst reportedly McGraw herself was in the audience. You can watch this on YouTube and see for yourself. This is the key event when the plane hits the tower, and yet, each and every report on Elevatorgate omits it. Watson now really cranks it up to eleven. She accuses people in the audience that they think they can freely assault women, mentions rape victims, death threats, implicates McGraw by directly mentioning her.
My, again fair reading, is that she knew of the since publicised sexual assault allegations. Maybe it was her crude attempt to bring it up. It didn‘t work, there, and she wasn‘t helpful at all later, or since. And after all, nobody seems to remember or care about the extreme accusations made on that conference since.
Here is the “official start”: A virulogy blogger next door to PZ Myers, with large shared community, took issue with Watson bringing her feud to a conference stage. Take note, yet another female “opponent”, after Kirby, a few SkepChick youtubers, and McGraw. Then PZ Myers disagreed with the virulogy blogger, sided with Watson and wrote to “always name names”.
I found out that according to the dates, Watson’s extreme accusations were not yet online, but since it happened at a conference, the word was spreading and caused a stir in the core conference-going American circus. The plebs saw a surface version, e.g. etiquette, since it was not entirely clear what happened. So people went back and found Watson’s video with the “guys don’t do that” comment.
Apparently puzzled why a double entendre in a lift causes such an uproar, Richard Dawkins pens a sarcastic comment in PZ Myers very blog post about a Dear Muslima. Ironically, Dawkins has been accused of downplaying something serious, when in reality, the atheist movement itself had memory-holed and “disappeared” Watson’s real accusations. They are on video. On YouTube. I was amazed over years how little a community of self-styled thinkers and skeptics ever bothered to look anything up.
Dawkins comment can be read as a feminist version of atheism, no matter how sarcastic, but it didn’t land at the time due to the super harsh climate. In typical fashion, people played Outrage Rorschach with his letter ever since. The media made it Old White Guy vs Young Feminist, ignoring all the other women in chavinistic fashion, and to top it off, in various iterations claimed Dawkins and his “side” either made a mountain of a “guys don’t do that” molehill, or conversely casually dismissed very serious allegations. Dawkins replied more at some point comparing the discomfort in the lift to someone loudly chewing gum. It’s pretty obvious that he wasn’t aware of the explosive mix Watson had prepared in the background. Slate, Salon etc, reported on it and always interviewed Watson’s friends, literally, or the reporters were themselves close, e.g. Amanda Marcotte, deceiving readers with non-existing impartiality.
Watson then responded with a blog post “privilege delusion” and called for a boycott of all things Dawkins. The trajectory of escalations are pretty clear, well-documented and it’s also obvious in the wikipedia article itself how well “free thinkers” and “skeptics” value demonstrable facts. PZ Myers claimed the boycott didn’t happen, tilted his lance at windmills, swung ban-hammers etc. and over time you get a “deep rift”, he also routinely dehumanised others and called them slime (chuds etc) which the opponents then ironically embraced as name of their board (where at first the virologist and half of PZ Myers community went).
Tragicomically, the great result of this intersectional “social justice” hegemony everywhere in the years that followed was a resurgence of gnarly right wing evangelicalism, with Trump as a President. What a massive “told you so” by all of (actual) left wingers on the other side of rift, and pond.
This comment is almost twice as long as the maximum prescribed in the Roolz. Please keep them shorter than 600 words. Thanks!
If it’s in The Atlantic, you can be sure the opposite is truth, or fact.
No, you’re wrong.
Well said, and one might add that the modern left has so totally fused social identity with politics that heretics to any nostrum of woke find themselves immediately at danger of being ejected from erstwhile “mainstream” institutions.
The ambit for free dissent on today’s campuses or in today’s newsrooms is terrifyingly small. Because of this enormous cognitive constriction, it is especially the case that the subjective emotional takes of woke leftists should be granted very little currency, as the error radius for minds thus constrained to virtue-signal approaches 100%.
Finding Dawkins “boring” is in part a social judgement of his cachet. This is the constant galvanic sieve for forcing through all the water of the world’s oceans. Similarly, Trump is “a total reject” I read on X the other night. All of this rather conveniently elides the tectonic policy differences between left and right, a chasm that is so yawning it is simply stunning how much of leftist rhetoric will dwell upon a psychologization of Trump and his supporters rather than the policy delta, that spans the Pacific.