The philosopher Leo Strauss once spoke of the reductio ad Hitlerum. By this he meant the promiscuous tendency of people to try to score a debating point by comparing their opponents to Hitler. The form of the argument is something like this: "My opponent doesn't like strawberry ice cream. Hitler didn't like strawberry ice cream. My opponent is just like Hitler." Strauss's point was that the reductio ad Hitlerum is the mark of the lazy and illogical mind.
Sure enough, here is Richard Dawkins employing the reductio against me in a recent comment on his website richarddawkins.net. Referring to me and a conservative rabbi named Boteach, Dawkins writes: "It occurs to me that people like Boteach and D'Souza may be honestly unaware that they shriek and yell in such an unbecoming way. Maybe this is just what preachers of a certain kind do. So people who profession is to preach, or who live their lives surrounded by preachers, just don't hear their ugly yells and shrieks as we do. They have become so inured to the preaching style of yelling that the resemblance to Hitler passes them by.
"I'm not suggesting that Boteach and D'Souza have literally damaged their ears. But at a higher cortical level they may have become desensitized through years of preaching, and exposure to preachers, so they don't hear, and literally and honestly don't understand, the strong resemblance to the hideous vocal style of Hitler. Once again, I need to emphasize that the comparison with Hitler is limited to vocal style. Of course nobody is suggesting that either Boteach or D'Souza have similar opinions to Hitler, or resemble him in any other way at all.
"But imagine listening to a Boteach speech or a D'Souza speech or a Hitler speech with no knowledge of English or German. I suspect that you'd hardly notice the difference. Contrast it with a speech by Christopher Hitchens. The voice is strong, even a little thrilling. But there's no hysteria there. The words match the content: measured, thoughtful, strong and powerful but never hysterical."
Had this not appeared on Dawkins' website, I would have thought it parody. But who can bring himself to laugh? Does Dawkins have any idea of how gross it is to compare a rabbi to Hitler on the sole ground that both men had a tendency to raise their voices? If this isn't anti-Semitism at the very least it shows a shocking disregard for what the Holocaust means to Jews. Perhaps the kindest explanation is that Dawkins has a pathological hatred for the clergy, and Boteach is a rabbi.
I, on the other hand, am a scholar and author. Dawkins, who knows this, weirdly insinuates that I am a preacher or spend most of my time with preachers. This couldn't be further from the truth. I have been a secular writer for 20 years and mostly I speak to university audiences and business groups. Moreover, the atheists I debate, like Michael Shermer and Peter Singer and Christopher Hitchens, routinely tell me how effectively I use wit and repartee and rhetorical understatement and learned analogies to make my points. Far from using "yells" and "shrieks," the only time I can recall even raising my voice was during my debate with Daniel Dennett, and this was not because I was upset but only because the microphone was not working properly.
I suspect that Dawkins has come up with this pathetic reductio ad Hitlerum in order to justify his cowardice in not debating me. "I can't debate Dinesh because he will use his Hitler voice to shout me down." Isn't the real problem that Dawkins has used his zoologist's credentials in order to wander into fields (physics, astronomy, history, phiosophy, anthropology, theology) where his knowledge is embarrassingly limited? I suspect he's worried that in a debate I will exposure his ignorance and make him an international object of ridicule.
Why not prove me wrong, Richard? Come out from under your desk and take me up on my invitation to debate. I promise to speak in whispers!
And here's some news from our Department of Atheists Who Aren't Wimps: On Friday July 11, I will debate Christopher Hitchens at the big libertarian conference Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. Our topic is "Christianity, Islam and the War on Terror." For more information go to freedomfest.com or simply click here.
Reader Comments ( Page 29 of 29)
421. Once I caused a baptist to lose her faith. Born-Again and all, or so she said. I shared my synchronicities stories with her, not knowing that she was also getting them, but had attributed them to her God. I didn't know that my words would cause her to cry for two days straight afterwards. See, to her the mere fact that I was there, someone she'd just met, and was telling her about what she was experiencing, only with a non-deist perspective that made sense to her, well THAT was yet another synchronicity to her, so she believed it, I guess... She did tell me later on that for a while she actually thought that I was SATAN, the experience seemed so "paranormal" to her... But she realized that I was not, and that instead I was simply there to tell her soimething that she needed to hear, and that's often how it works.
Godless Heathen Brian at 4:29PM on Jul 9th 2008
422. I meant "non-theist perspective" in the post above, not non-deist.
Godless Heathen Brian at 4:31PM on Jul 9th 2008
423. Hey, the new blog's up, and it's even stupider than this one, and it's a God Blog.... I'll see you all there? This conversation can be continued there, and even be more appropriate...
:-)
Godless Heathen Brian at 5:45PM on Jul 9th 2008
424. "Drasatic emotional changes that cause things to happen like when I'm describing my friend's parrot to my wife and son, the exact breed of parrot, a blue and gold macaw, is placed on the shoulder of a government official on the NEWS playing on the TV behind me where I can't see it but they can, while he was giving a speech, as a joke by his friends, thereby freaking out my family... Only ONE example of literally tens of thousands now..." - GHB
Coincidences all.
The human mind is a connection making machine. What you need to do is learn to be critical of those connections otherwise they lead to hardened faith based beliefs.
Peter at 9:20PM on Jul 9th 2008
425. KitKrumblingInTerrorOfHerGod wrote asking me: "is one sin greater than another through the eyes of a perfect mythical being?"
Mythical beings are just that mythical and not real so it's a pointless question since you can answer it anyway you want to as it matters not how you answer it. Your faith based beliefs in god all fantasy and delusional dementia KitCumbie.
Peter at 9:31PM on Jul 9th 2008
426. KitCrumbie 411: "Peter, you are worthless as an intelligent rational philosophical thinker. I suppose you scream a lot. Calling people names doesn't make you seem rational or intelligent it just makes you look foolish. Believe what you wish and stop putting words in my mouth, I haven't condemned you to anything, haven't judged you, and whatever man does in the name of God doesn't necessarily put God's stamp on it. You obviously have suffered some sort of painful experience regarding religion and I am sorry about that. Your hate and your fear will not avail you when you search for peace. You need to learn from some of the other people who have posted here and get a grip on yourself man!" - KitCumbie
Your faith based beliefs are what make you worthless as an intelligent philosophical thinker KitCrumbie.
Even worse your faith based beliefs are so deeply held that you can't even see that you need proof and evidence before you can talk intelligently about objective reality - otherwise it's simply speculation.
Since your faith hasn't ever produced even one shred of solid verifiable and testable proof or evidence it's clear that you're beliefs are solely faith based nonsense.
As a result you are delusional.
I don't scream a lot, or even much at all.
What makes people look foolish is being a faith freak like you.
I've put no words into your mouth. What words do you assert that I put in your mouth? Sheesh.
It's clear that you are a bible thumper. As a result you likely take what's written in the bible seriously. The contents of the bible condemn me for denying the power of the holy spirit. By extension of your support for the evil mythology of the bible you condemn people like myself. Unless of course you're not a christian who believes in jesus or the christian god. Which is it?
I've experienced no such pain as you incorrectly claim.
You are a foolish faith freak KitCrumbie. It's not a name it's a technically accurate descriptive term for you. Learn what the words mean.
Peter at 9:42PM on Jul 9th 2008
427. I started to have bizarre coincidences, things I couldn't explain in the paradigm of science as we know it now.
xxx
Brian, I've been reading your take on jungian synchronicities for better than a year, I think and it's provoked some contemplation of my own on the subject. You pitch the issue well, and it's an interesting thing to think about. I haven't read jung since college, but I remembered a little about synchronicities.
I have them too, and I think everyone does, and thereby hangs the tale, maybe
Let me give you one of mine. I'm driving and listening to my favorite jazz station and a recording of Cherokee comes on at a time I had been focusing on playing the song a lot.
At the same time the light hits and I'm stopped at Cherokee street. I look to my left and lo and behold, a jeep cherokee pulls up. I look to my right and there's the other kind - the four liter.
That seems like a strange coincidence, but I drove past cherokee street all the time, about any suv that isn't an explorer or a tahoe around here is a cherokee, and cherokee is by any reckoning a jazz standard and it's gonna get a lot of airplay on a jazz station. I don't think it was that rare a hit.
Also if it's just one individual out of 7 billion, it doesn't seem statistically significant either. If 50,000 people had the same parrot experience, or was it you that mentioned tiramisu in a coincidence it might be more impressive.
It seems very like the bible code things to me - there's enough time we go through that we can make associations that seem impossible to have happened randomly.
I think what it is is that first, people don't really have a good intuition about statistical oddity and second that they seed the experience by, as is happening with you, having an alarm go off to remind them of coincidences and this can probable grow semi-exponentially as we get into it and seed it more.
That seems like something we all do, or most of us anyway, including me.
There may be some chaos factor, like emergence.
If things get complex enough, some seemingly magical but very physically accountable things can happen. Think of bird flocks with thousands of individuals that spontaneously seem to change direction nearly all at once, or the parallel ridges quadrillions of sand particles make from the motion of tides and waves.
I think the human mind sucks at statistical intuition, and I have the college grades to prove it...I always seemed to 'get it' in statistical problems about an hour after I walked out of the test.
Anyway, I thought about your statements on this for quite a while whenever it crossed my mind, and I think that would be my opinion as of now.
Any of that hold water with you?
Clif Kuplen at 11:48PM on Jul 9th 2008
428. Peter - if you die tomorrow as a non believer you will lift up your eyes in a devils hell.
American Soldier at 4:30PM on Jul 10th 2008
429. Dinesh, anyone who compares you to Hitler for any reason, is just plain incorrect and misled and disillusioned.
Many on your blogs mistake a heated debate, an exchange of ideas and beliefs and thoughts, as attacks on whichever side they're on. (the opposition)
Such people exude persecution complexes and are way too sensitive. And, what comes out of their mouths is useless, ignorant, rude, false and circular for the most part.
Lots of hot air but no substance with which to refute your sensible, true, intelligent statements.
Over the years, they have not been able to successfully refute you and yet they still follow you closely like white on rice. With anger, scandal, heresies, lies and hate speech in full tow.
By their fruits you shall know them.
Christian at 5:13PM on Jul 11th 2008
430. Dinesh D'Souza, i am certain has his supporters. And someday he will be nothing more than a fart in the wind, a bad smell....
..even mr. hitler, the whole while he was killing jews, had his 30% support....after all, this is what he does to make a living...rush limbaugh, a bad smell, a fart in the wind....
McBush at 4:46PM on Jul 12th 2008
431. You should be glad that Richard Dawkins gave you some free publicity. I see nothing in any of your rants that justifies spending time on reading such nonsense. To me you're nothing more than a petty conservative bigot.
Whether there is a god or not depends upon how one defines the word "god." If one defines it as "a vast non-anthropomorphic creative force of unknown origin," they may have a point. But if one picks up all the baggage that goes with Yahweh and Jesus . . . there's no reasonable way to justify such an absurd, crazy story. As described by the 5th century BCE priests, Yahweh is a paranoid schizophrenic with terrible mood-swings, willing to drown all sorts of innocent living creatures because most humans haven't lived according to rules which had not yet been issued (the Flood preceded the Decalogue), and whose life-account had been vastly misstated (e.g., the Tower of Babel was built after lexical lists had already been compiled).
My advice? Get a life, a real life.
Fred Glynn at 5:15PM on Jul 12th 2008
432. ATHEISM: A CATASTROPHIC FAILURE
http://www.evolutionfacts.blogspot.com
ISSAC ASIMOV at 7:47AM on Jul 15th 2008
433. Lol. In the blog and best selling book "things white people like"
Comparing people to hitler
"Being a truly advanced white person means being able to speak with authority about pretty much any field of conversation- especially politics. In order for white people to streamline the process of knowing everything, all human beings can be neatly filed into one of two categories: People I Agree With, and People Who are Just Like Adolf Hitler.
Comparing people to Hitler is an easy way for white people to get a strong point across to the less enlightened, or the insufficiently white. Everyone knows who Adolf Hitler was. And everyone knows that Hitler was very, very bad. Therefore, if a white person really, REALLY, doesn’t like something or
someone, he or she may angrily say something to the effect of, “This is exactly the same kind of thing that Hitler used to do!” accompanied by varying levels of profanity based on blood-alcohol content. No matter what your gut reaction may be at that point, do not disagree with that white person. Otherwise, well, you love Hitler.
This time-tested white-person maneuver may seem so awesomely useful to you that you are tempted to go out and try it right now. Not so fast. White people have spent the last 30 years perfecting this technique. There are cultural guidelines.
It’s also critical that you avoid the fatal mistake of getting creative and comparing people you don’t like to other evil dictators, such as Joseph Stalin or Fidel Castro. With few exceptions, white people are actually fond
of almost any dictator not named Hitler, and your remark that “this is just like something Mao Zedong would do” will be met with blank stares and possible social alienation. This is because, with the exception of Hitler,
oppressive dictators share a passion for many of the things white people love- such as universal health care, conspiracy theories, caring about poor people while being filthy rich, and cool hats. Stick to the script and
compare things you don’t like to Hitler, and Hitler alone.
Now, like most reasonable people, you might find this strategy distasteful, and even a bit disrespectful, since after all, Hitler was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, and probably doesn’t have that much in common with Pat Robertson, in perspective. If you prefer to avoid hearing or using the Hitler technique, we recommend you speak in soothing, affirming tones around angry white people to prevent the phenomenon from manifesting, and change the subject tactfully. To something that doesn’t involve George W. Bush."
Alex C at 12:44PM on Jul 15th 2008
434. "on the fact that you believe in something that has never been proven to have any basis in fact is just as annoying as speeches by white supremacists and other bigots."
not to mention dawkins
wernher at 7:42AM on Oct 26th 2009