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Posted: 09-07-2012 02:39 Post subject:

Fiction, maybe, but it's also a kind of geek fantasy, in which Lalla Ward would be better as his wife.

For once, I have to say I'm on Dawkins' side. While my parents were once staying at a friend's house in Sydney, my father chatted with a neighbour who was setting wire traps for the possums that climbed on his balcony and left droppings for him to clean up. Seems a tad excessive for a fairly minor inconvenience.

Posted: 04-09-2012 20:50 Post subject:

The Life Scientific
- 31. Richard Dawkins

Jim Al-Khalili meets Prof Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion.

Richard Dawkins' first book on evolutionary biology "The Selfish Gene" was published to much acclaim and some controversy in 1976. In this interview with Jim Al-Khalili, Professor Dawkins discusses his enthusiasm for the science that inspired the book and how he popularised the idea of the immortal gene. Using the source material from scientists such as Bill Hamilton, Robert Trivers and John Maynard Smith, he presented a gene's eye view of the world. He's written many other books on evolutionary biology, such as "The Extended Phenotype" "Unweaving the Rainbow" and "The Ancestors Tale". In 2006 he published a polemic which he describes as "a gentlemanly attack on religion", "The God Delusion". Jim asks what he hoped to achieve by writing the book and finds out why he would rather be known for his science than his atheism.

First broadcast
BBC Radio 4, 9:00AM Tue, 4 Sep 2012

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01mc11f/The_Life_Scientific_Richard_Dawkins/

Posted: 22-12-2012 11:48 Post subject:

Richard Dawkins has a new Christmas message snappily tying in with the theme of the latter part of the year.

Posted: 22-12-2012 13:13 Post subject:

You know, I just skimmed that and misread 'snappily tying' for 'snappily trying'.

Is he really reduced to that level of trolling for controversy now? Sad

Posted: 28-01-2013 08:17 Post subject:

Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams booked for Cambridge debate

Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams are to discuss the role of religion at a Cambridge Union debate.
Prominent atheist Prof Dawkins and the former Archbishop of Canterbury will discuss whether "religion has no place in the 21st Century" on Thursday.
They were involved in a public discussion at Oxford University last year.

Ben Kentish, president of the union, said it should be a highlight of the debating society's 200-year history.
"Our speakers are the most renowned commentators on this subject," he said.
In Cambridge, about 1,000 students will be in the audience.
"The prospect of seeing Professor Dawkins and the former Archbishop of Canterbury debate the subject is particularly exciting for our members," Mr Kentish said.
"It has all the makings of an excellent debate."

Professor Tariq Ramadan, Andrew Copson, the chief executive of the British Humanist Association, and Douglas Murray, founder of the Centre for Social Cohesion, will also take part.
The debate will be filmed and made available soon after on the union's website.

Previous speakers at the debating society include Sir Winston Churchill, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-21220007

Posted: 28-01-2013 21:24 Post subject:

Not much of a debate I suspect, because Rowan Williams is halfway towards being an atheist himself. He is not a blind believer.

Posted: 28-01-2013 22:58 Post subject:

Could they provide an array of weapons and make it a fight to the death? I'd tune in for that deffo.

Posted: 29-01-2013 00:03 Post subject:

May god help them...or maybe not. Laughing

Posted: 29-01-2013 02:29 Post subject:

Rowan Williams was OK as Mrs. Doubtfire but when he does that smorky face, I just want to punch it.

Posted: 29-01-2013 08:22 Post subject:

It will be interesting to see what happens. I'm sure they've met before, but Williams, in many ways, seems a lot more rational than Dawkins. He's certainly less spiteful, and more feminist.

Posted: 10-03-2013 01:01 Post subject:

Eeee, this sure went nuclear in a hurry:

link

You would need some sort of periodic table to keep track of all the factions involved, but mainly the fracture seems to be between slightly antique "Old Guard" types and younger "Avant-garde" types.

And the bloodthirsty rhetoric coming from some of the Old Guard is... alarming, to say the least.

Posted: 11-03-2013 13:26 Post subject:

Posted: 12-03-2013 08:52 Post subject:

I saw this go down at the time, and it was a bit more complicated than that.

Firstly, Rebecca Watson mentioned the incident as a footnote to a longer blog about the (sadly real) problem of sexism, and even misogyny, in the skeptical movement. Something she has lectured about at conferences and the like for some time.

The Dawkins response was made on another blog, and possibly without reference to the original video. It was part of a larger backlash from part of the community against the idea that there is any such sexism or misogyny. (Said backlash more or less proving Ms Watson's point.) It also suggests he believes women should just put up with being hit on in elevators at 4 am, because that's what they're for.

Many people have been shocked by Richard Dawkins' reaction, and I must say I haven't. After trying to read the first chapter of The God Delusion and listening to him speak, I'm not at all surprised that he would behave like this.

The end result has been an escalation, with a certain element of the skeptical community feeling free, in the light of Dawkins' comments, to start hurling violent, hateful remarks at Ms Watson, and another element equating an offer of coffee with physical assault.

As I see it, a guy asked her for coffee at 4am, when she'd said she needed to go to bed, and she said that made her uncomfortable. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I also see that there is a lot of sexism and misogyny in many online communities, and that women who go online are often subjected to hateful messages for no better reason than an imagined slight on some dickhead somewhere. This does not seem reasonable at all to me.

I also see a lot of people who are willing to bend any situation to fit their own political agenda on either side of such a dispute. This is also unreasonable in my opinion.

I seem to have rambled on a bit here. It's been bothering me for some time, and I've been trying to get my thoughts on the whole matter into some semblance of order.

Posted: 12-03-2013 13:59 Post subject:

Yes. I felt she was very well-meaning and meant only to help her fellow conference goers understand that there's a time and a place to proposition a woman, and an elevator at 4am is not it.

1. Tiny 4 x 4 enclosed space in motion - no way to exit quickly
2. Middle of the night (no one will hear you scream)
3. Having to refuse someone who may not take it well.

It was just an "FYI, you may not have known it, and I'm sure you didn't intend to, but you scared me a little."

The point is not that this particular guy was a rapist. The point is not that all men, or most men or rapists. The point is that a very small percentage of people are rapists and they don't wear badges identifying themselves as such. So, women are taught to be careful and watch for red flags.

The point is definitely not whether she overreacted in thinking that "coffee" could mean "sex" because it was 4am and the invitation was to go to his room. Anyone, man or woman, would make some cautious assumptions there.

She was also talking in general about having to deflect explicit sexual invitations at the sausage fest that is the Atheist conference circuit. Again, this isn't against men, it's more about the human experience and a call to everyone to be more considerate. When you're the minority gender you get hit on more. You go from being "Meh" to the hottest person in the room. I know men have experienced this as well. Has anyone here worked at a bar during a hen party? Yeah, the cloying compliments and the groping. Yup. You can tolerate it to a point... and then you end up in an elevator alone with one of them and it's not so funny anymore.[/b]