Richard Dawkins has a bright idea: Atheists are the new gays. Is he joking? Not at all. The bestselling author of The God Delusion has been suggesting for two years now that atheists can follow the example of gays. You see, gays have found a good name. Gays used to be called homosexual, but then they decided to pick a positive-sounding name like "gay." Suddenly the meaning of the term "gay" was entirely appropriated by homosexuals. Dawkins cited this example in advocating that atheists call themselves "brights." After all, atheist is a somewhat negative term because it defines itself by what it is opposed to. "Bright" sounds so much happier and, more important, smarter. "Bright" kind of reflects the high opinion that atheists have of their own intellectual abilities. Even the stupidest village atheist gets to pat himself on the back and place himself in the tradition of science and philosophy by calling himself a "bright."
Dawkins has also suggested that atheists, like gays, should come out of the closet. Well, what if they don't want to? I don't know if Dawkins would support "outing" atheists. Can an atheist "rights" group be far behind? Hate crimes laws to protect atheists? Affirmative action for unbelievers? An Atheist Annual Parade, complete with dancers and floats? Atheist History Month?
Honestly, I think the whole atheist-gay analogy is quite absurd. How bright is it for Dawkins to urge atheists to come out of the closet in the style of the all-American boy standing up on the dining table of his public high school and confessing that he is a homosexual? Dawkins, being British, doesn't seem to recognize that this would not win many popularity contests in America. And if Dawkins' public relations skills seem lacking in this area, they are positively abysmal when they come to building support for science. Remember that Dawkins is professor of the public understanding of science. He has a chair funded by a Microsoft multimillionaire. If I were that guy, I'd withdraw the support, not because I disagree with Dawkins, but because I think he is setting back the cause of science. Basically Dawkins is saying if you are religious, then science is your enemy. Either you choose God or you choose science. No wonder that so many Americans say they are opposed to evolution. They believe that evolution is atheism masquerading as science, and Dawkins confirms their suspicions. Indeed Dawkins takes the same position as the most ignorant fundamentalist: you can have Darwin or you can have the Bible but you can't have both.
Dawkins is in some ways a terrible representative for atheism, which I'm glad about because a bad cause deserves a bad leader. He is also a terrible advocate for science, which I'm sad about because science deserves all the support it can get.
Reader Comments ( Page 2 of 30)
16. @ Laura...13
I automatically added "Keep in mind.." when I read your, "The writers had completely different ways of thinking from us."
Is THAT the latest excuse for the Bible being DRIVEL... oh, well, since the people who copied to the Septuaguint and the people who wrote the Masoretic Texts probably had different 'ways of thinking' too... and the next set of translators and the next had 'different ways of thinking' too..
... guess what, Laura... no matter what you come up with, it is still all DRIVEL. But I suppose you, being a 'wiseling' probably know that and know you're not supposed to TELL.
"Oh look, thousands of years ago, they thought that the world operated by magic. Who woulda thunk?"
pboyfloyd at 4:03AM on Nov 9th 2007
17. #3 - "Keep in mind, it's his blog. You don't have to read it if you don't want to. That's the great thing about "Choice" and free will."
But we all have to see those danged bigotted headlines. :(
Aine at 5:41AM on Nov 9th 2007
18. Re comment # 2 Laila... cool post. Re botts # 3... it's DD's blog and he can say what he wants to; but it's Laila's post and she can say what she wants to; and botts can say what he / she wants to even if it's irrelevant
Laila again... you make a point and are also very funny
I should not be making this post; neither should you Laila. Why? Because even if we devastate DD's points it doesn't matter too much. He probably doesn't care and he has an audience that doesn't care for reason. (DD is smart no doubt but his arguments lack ultimate cogency e.g. his misinterpretation of Hume's arguments and Kant's arguments that I pointed out in earlier posts.) Of course in a democracy and with free speech, DD has the right to speak his mind even if he is not true to principles. My argument against DD's having an audience is that the kind of subtle and not-so-subtle deviousness in which he engages drowns out and displaces truth which is not shrill and which does not use illicit 'reason' to appeal to the baser emotions. So, I think it is better to ignore DD / Coulter types who feed off attention than to debate them
I think that DD is intelligent; it is therefore hard for me to imagine that he truly believes what he says and argues but I might be wrong. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine were immensely intelligent Christian apologists (and possessed of much greater integrity, I think, than the modern apologists who, like the Bush camp, think that reality is irrelevant because 'We define reality.'
Funny thing though, I do sort of agree with DD when he says that Dawkins is a 'terrible advocate for science.' Dawkins is intelligent; his science writing on science (mostly at the popular level) is well written and thought out--Dawkins explains and justifies evolutionary biology well. It is when Dawkins writes as though science describes all of reality that his thought is limited. Richard Lewontin, one of the great evolutionary biologists of the 20th / 21st centuries wrote, in an article in the New York Review of Books -- The Wars Over Evolution, October 2005, that the fundamentalist backlash to evolutionary theory may be attributed to 'evolutionism' which is the belief, often argued by scientists, that evolutionary explanation extends far beyond its established boundaries. Dawkins is one of those who would so push evolutionary explanation. Modern science shows some of its own limits; for example, modern physical science shows that there are limits of time and space and variety of being beyond which we know nothing (by the methods of science.) Yet many scientists are supremely confident that 'if it isn't explained by modern science, it doesn't exist.' The view that there is nothing outside science has been labeled 'scientific positivism'
It seems to me, then, that the clash of the apologists for religion, e.g. DD, and the scientific positivists, e.g. Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, is a clash of extremists who, as a result of the nature of their arguments and positions, draw far more attention than they deserve. I enjoy science and I believe that there is much of value in religion (I don't believe the archaic religious cosmologies though) but I don't find my self enlightened by the clash of DD and those he calls the atheists
By the way, is there a way to answer the question "What lies outside science?" For my answer, visit my website by clicking on my name below
Anil Mitra at 4:30AM on Nov 9th 2007
19. Laila hit the nail on the head: D'dipshit is obsessed with gays just like all the other self-hating conflicted Repugtards in the closet, it's only a matter of time before he gets caught looking for sex in a toilet too.
To add to the amusement factor of how stupid someone can be and enjoy AOL's sponsorship as a professional blogger, D'magical thinker somehow imagines that his nutcake religion has some kind of validity in the real world. Consequently his every thought is predictably slanted and wrong by being colored by ridiculous superstition. His is the exact same personality type that set out on Crusades to kill nonbelievers (which some would say we have another Crusade going on today), the exact same personality type that ran the Inquisitions, the exact same personality type that burned "witches" at the stake. In love with authority, he sets his mind at rest by blithely swallowing the superstitious nonsense he was taught as a child, like so many "conservatives" have always done. And his thought processes therefore never rise above childish, as demonstrated in this latest silly piece. Sadly, he contributes to the dumbing-down of contemporary intellectual life by criticizing his betters like Dawkins, people who actually use their minds to advance our civilization but must continually fight the kind of savage ignorance that D'dipshit doles out routinely.
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DancesWithFascists at 3:09PM on Nov 12th 2007
20. DD: Dawkins cited this example in advocating that atheists call themselves "brights."
Ro: Good point. "Brights" is silly. I'd like to think he is suggesting this with tongue-in-cheek. More importantly - not all atheists are bright and not all Christians are bright.
DD: kind of reflects the high opinion that atheists have of their own intellectual abilities
Ro: And what's wrong with someone having a high opinion of his or her intellectual abilities? You do, don't you?
DD: Dawkins has also suggested that atheists, like gays, should come out of the closet. Well, what if they don't want to?
Ro: Good point. However, many of them have "come out of the closet" - here on this blog (albeit on a more or less anonymous basis). Still, that closet may be the safest place for atheists, since "good" Christians have so little tolerance for them. On the other hand, if they did "come out" Christians might be amazed at just how many there are.
DD: Can an atheist "rights" group be far behind?
Ro: Hey, not a bad idea.
DD: Atheist History Month?
Ro: Is that a slam against blacks? It certainly could be interpreted as such since you are using satirical references. Surely you don't have a problem with blacks too? Do you?
DD: Basically Dawkins is saying if you are religious, then science is your enemy.
Ro: Wait a second . . . Did you change the subject?
DD: I'm glad about [that] because a bad cause deserves a bad leader
Ro: So atheism is a "cause"? Interesting!
Roglo at 4:44AM on Nov 9th 2007
21. I want to add to my comments. I think that the comparison between gays and atheists is a revolting ploy designed, as said in post #2, to tug on the baser emotions of the ignorant and the insecure. Remember, also, that being conservative and being fundamentalist, and parading one's hate for homosexuals is no indication that one is not homosexual. How hateful must one's life be if one is compelled to denounce with hate what one is? I have no idea what percentage of avowed anti-gays are lying about their true feelings. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if the figure were quite high. And I wouldn't be very surprised if there are more conservative gay bashing gays than liberal gay loving gays
Anil Mitra at 4:47AM on Nov 9th 2007
22. You don't have to agree with someone's lifestyle. I have gay friends but that doesn't mean they give me details on their sex life or go around groping in public. While I am sure some gay people do that, so do straight people as well.
Intelligence is based off of the individual and has nothing to do with religious preference or lack thereof. Some but not all Atheists and Theists do have something in common. It is very self-centered and selfish to assume that one opinion is set in stone and everyone else is an idiot for not agreeing with you. This goes for Atheists and Theists alike. It would be sad to generalize a situation. Religion and Science can co-exist. Science is fascinating and there is much knowledge people should be learning. Religion is a personal journey and is tailored to the individual. They are two totally difference parts of the human psyche yet they can co-exist in my opinion.
There are way too many people on this planet to assume that even all Atheists or all Religious people think the same.
I find it ironic that not even all Christians can agree with each other, which is why there are so many denominations. Then you have Judaism, Christianity and Islam that all pretty much started as one source. The thing is man likes to alter Religion to his liking. He/She doesn't agree so they decide to make their own branch of Religion with their own idea of traditions.
Dinesh, have you ever stopped to think that maybe "some" of the population just has an issue with organized religion for some of these reasons?
E at 5:30AM on Nov 9th 2007
23. Reply to: 8. I heard him deliver a lecture on the Big Bang theory, and he concluded by saying that God created the bang. He couldn't prove it; he only had his faith to reach that conclusion. But every other theory had problems that couldn't be explained. Kent.
Ever hear the term "God of the gaps"?
ie, IF there's a question that we can't answer, then it must prove there's a God?
As scientific knowledge progresses, the position of "the gap" changes.
You've just described a "gap" that existed in 1960, but not today.
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/exclusives-nfrm/060330_multiverse.htm
LINK: The “multiverse” theory reappeared as a consequence of another theory of physics, that of “inflation,” developed by various physicists in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The theory solved several gnawing problems in the Big Bang theory, the idea that the universe was created from an explosion of a single point of extremely compact matter, by postulating that this expansion was stupendously fast in the first infinitesimal fraction of a second, then slowed down.
As part of this initial superheated expansion, known as the inflationary period, the universe could have sprouted legions of “baby universes,” said Andrei Linde of Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., a panelist at Wednesday’s event and a developer of the inflation theory.
Different universes can be defined as zones of spacetime that interact with each other weakly or not at all, she said.
Where’s the evidence?
Marshalling their best evidence for extra universes, Kaku and Linde—the two panelists who back the notion—presented a variety of arguments, which all boiled down to two basic points.
One, explained Linde, is that the multiverse solves the problem of
*** why the laws of physics in our universe seem to be fine-tuned to allow for life. ***
without resorting to the supernatural.
If there are infinite universes, each one can have different physical laws, and some of them will have those that are just right for us.
The second key argument they presented is the one based on inflation, a theory considered more solidly grounded than the highly speculative string theory and its offshoots. The equations of inflation, Kaku explained, suggest spacetime—the fabric of reality including space and time—was initially a sort of foam, like the bathtub bubbles.
_____________
I know exactly what your speaker was talking about.... but you made the same mistake that D'Souza did in his book.
You assume that science hasn't improved the Big Bang theory in the last 30 years... and that's wrong.
God does not exist. Why?
If God existed, then we wouldn't have ANY questions. We would know.
We live in a universe where God does NOT exist, and the evidence is 100% conclusive.
William Hays at 5:43AM on Nov 9th 2007
24. Reply to: 8. It would be interesting to know what Mr. Dawkins would think of the late Victor Weisskopf. He was a professor of physics at MIT.
In other words, he was dealing with the kind of physics that was well beyond what we learned in high school. I heard him deliver a lecture on the Big Bang theory, and he concluded by saying that .... every other theory had problems that couldn't be explained. Kent.
_________________
You've raised an interesting question, but PBS has done TV specials with the Correct Answers:
PBS: The classical form of the big bang theory describes how the early, hot, dense universe expanded and cooled; it describes how the light chemical elements were synthesized during this expansion, and how the matter coagulated to form galaxies and stars. But it says nothing about what banged or what caused it to bang, and therefore it makes no predictions about the uniformity of the universe just after the bang. Inflation, on the other hand, can explain the “bang” of the big bang. It relies on a proposal, originating in modern particle physics, that extraordinarily high densities can lead to a form of matter that would turn gravity on its head, causing it to become repulsive rather than attractive
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/mysteries/html/guth_1.html
Limitations of the Big Bang Theory
While the Big Bang theory successfully explains the shape of the cosmic microwave background spectrum and the origin of the light elements, it leaves open a number of important questions:
Why is the universe so uniform on the largest length scales?
Why is the physical scale of the universe so much larger than the fundamental scale of gravity, the Planck length, which is one billionth of one trillionth of the size of an atomic nucleus?
Why are there so many photons in the universe?
What physical process produced the initial fluctuations in the density of matter?
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101inflation.html
The Inflation Theory
The Inflation Theory, developed by Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Paul Steinhardt, and Andy Albrecht, offers answers to these questions and several other open questions in cosmology. It proposes a period of extremely rapid (exponential) expansion of the universe leading to the Big Bang expansion,
__________
My point is, it only takes a simple Internet search to discover exactly what those questions were, AND how physicists have answered them.
You might check out a sit-com called "The Big Bang Theory." In the living room of two post-grad students, there's a white board where the physics of the universe appears.
The answer to the questions that baffled a MIT physicist in the Sixties... NOW APPEARS IN SIT-COMS!!!! Catch up.
William Hays at 5:58AM on Nov 9th 2007
25. OCT. 3, 2006
Americans John C. Mather and George F. Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for work that helped cement the big-bang theory of how the universe was created and deepen understanding of the origin of galaxies and stars.
The scientists shared the prestigious 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award for discovering the nature of "blackbody radiation" — cosmic background radiation believed to stem from the Big Bang — the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said.
"It says the Big Bang was the right story, and it tells us how to understand the formation of galaxies and stars and eventually the conditions that would lead to our own existence here on earth."
"My part of the prize is for leading a team of researchers who made a map of what I would call the 'embryo universe' and show that it was very uniform, but there were small variations that lead to interesting things, like galaxies," Smoot explained.
Mather, 60, and Smoot, 61, based their work on measurements done with the help of the NASA-launched COsmic Background Explorer satellite in 1989.
They were able to observe the universe in its early stages about 380,000 years after it was born.
"What we saw was a universe that was very uniform, but it had tiny ripples in it, and these ripples are the seeds that grow to be the galaxies and the stars and the planetary systems that we see today," Smoot said.
"They have not proven the Big Bang theory but they give it very strong support," said Per Carlson, chairman of the Nobel committee for physics.
___________
When a scientist examines new data, he crosses his fingers that it will help him PROVE something.
So far, all of the data has proven that God does NOT exist.
If there was ANY scientific evidence that the universe was created, you would read about it in EVERY scientific journal.
D'SOUZA: Basically Dawkins is saying
*** if you are religious, then science is your enemy. ****
**** Either you choose God or you choose science.***
No wonder that so many Americans say they are opposed to evolution. They believe that evolution is atheism masquerading as science (end)
In today's blog, D'Souza posts the Correct Answer... but he doesn't understand it. So he buries it.
You can either have science, or you can have God. You can't have BOTH.
"It is one of the greatest discoveries of the century. I would call it the greatest. It increases our knowledge of our place in the universe."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/03/tech/main2057513.shtml
http://www.physorg.com/news79074220.html
William Hays at 6:12AM on Nov 9th 2007
26. Of course atheists are the new gays, the christian right of D'ouches' ilk always needs someone to hate.
Dennis at 7:10AM on Nov 9th 2007
27. The "bright" idea was completely rejected by secular huanists ("atheists" as everyone likes to think of us). It's just so arogant. Dawkins is an extremist who doesn't represent the views of all atheists.
Matthew at 7:13AM on Nov 9th 2007
28. humanists "typo"
Matthew at 7:14AM on Nov 9th 2007
29. double d wrote: Dawkins, being British, doesn't seem to recognize that this would not win many popularity contests in America.
*****
So, then, by this logic: double d, being Indian, doesn't seem fit to comment on American culture, race, or anything remotely American.
I have never seen such consistently, predictably inflammatory, useless spew, which is not intended to provoke thought - only venom; from a supposed educated 'intellectual'.
Stanford and Dartmouth should be ashamed.
stuart joshua at 7:27AM on Nov 9th 2007
30. Once again, you belittle a race of people when you write things about affirmative action for atheists, and an atheist history month. Oh, fool from the land of untouchables: how you do offend and not give a crap about it. That is very unchristian of you.
YOUR GOD WILL GET YOU IN THE END......
stuart joshua at 7:26AM on Nov 9th 2007