Citation Needed - Richard Dawkins

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941)[3] is a British evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author.[4] He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. His 1976 book The Selfish Gene popularised the gene-centred view of evolution, as well as coining the term meme. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards.[5]

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pop culture moms, find it wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, a podcast where you choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Cecil, we'll be doing atheist stuff today so I'm happy to have with me a group of godless guys gung-ho about engaging gibberish. It's just Heath and Eli today.

Hey guys. Okay, if Richard Dawkins' Twitter was just like Shamanlamanlamanlamanlamanlaman speaking in tongues, that would be sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss could have scissor kicked our subject in the chest and didn't. That's all I'm saying. I wouldn't be in trouble. Man. The bouncers in Vegas are serious. That's true. Just think of the butterfly effect in there. Amazing.

I'd probably think fondly about it now. You would. You would 100% think fondly about it now. I'd be out by now. He'd be dead? Oh, gosh. Well, then I wouldn't be out. Woo!

Disagree. They would depend on the judge. He's an immigrant. Oh. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha They would depend on the judge. He's an immigrant. If I got like Eileen Cannon, I'd be great. Crush that. First, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons who just last week were treated to an hour long bonus episode on extreme cuddle fishing.

And I mean, cuddle like, not like the fish. And if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks be sure to stick around until the end of the show you get weekly Pre-show shenanigans you get bonus episodes. It's it's kind of amazing for you patrons All right with that I win Tom feels like All right with that out of the way tell us Eli What person place thing phenomenon, or event are we talking about today? Dr. Richard Dawkins.

I'm taking away the doctor. I don't have the authority to do that, but he doesn't really have any. Let's get in there. You don't get doctor anymore. And Eli, you waited until Noah was in London to write this essay. Why exactly is that? Well, Cecil, because he's a big fan and refused to in London to write this essay. Why exactly is that?

Well, Cecil, because he's a big fan and refused to be a part of this episode. His word's not mine. Dawkins is a personal hero. That's what he said. Tell us, Eli, who is Richard Dawkins? Oh, if only more people asked that question, Cecil, for Richard Dawkins. Do you want me to ask or something? Thank you. Richard Dawkins is a warning. He's a signpost, both

for our movement and our fate as individuals within it. He is the dead body hung from the town gate of atheism, his flesh sloughing off in the afternoon sun, bidding us beware of our love, of our own intelligence and importance He also wrote a couple good books on genetics. Okay. Is this gonna be this kind of essay elie? Sure Sure the fuck is So dockens has described his childhood as quote a normal anglican upbringing end quote, which it was He was born in Nairobi, which at the time was the capital of the colony

and protectorate of Kenya, where his father served as a high ranking civil servant. I'm gonna need to see his long-born birth certificate before I believe him about anything. He moved back to England at the age of eight. He owned an emerald mine too? Like what's happening? Close.

He moved back to England at the age of eight where his father, a member of the landed gentry, inherited over Norton Park in Oxfordshire. So yeah. A 210 acre farm. Yeah. From England. It has been in the family since 1720. So, you know, typical English stuff. Just one of the lines.

You know, typical English stuff, just one of the lads. From 1954 to 1959, Dawkins attended Oundel School in North Hampshire. It's like they made up the names to make him sound like more of an asshole. Yes, exactly. Like I know they're just British, but like, come on. It's 100% not pronounced that year. North Hampshire. There's no way. Northamptonshire.

Yeah. At Oundel School in Northamptonshire, he was sexually assaulted by a teacher. Now, I say this not to mock him or victims of sexual assault, but because, as you'll see throughout this essay, Dawkins has dedicated a tremendous amount of his time and energy into defending this act, which he calls mild pedophilia. Noting that his fellow classmates- I don't know if we should rank it. Yeah, well...

I get you're trying to have nuance, but like... Spoilers! Yeah, that doesn't sound great. Spoilers for later in the essay, Heathelton. Okay. Noting that his fellow classmates were abused by the same teacher, he said, quote, I don't think he did any of us any lasting harm, adding, I am very conscious that you can't condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours

Just as we don't look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as We would condemn modern people for racism I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning like mild Pedophilia and can't find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today. I save my condemnation for extra spicy pedophilia. Not the mild kind. Yeah, the one that's got the little chili next to it on the menu. Also, I'd like to condemn the 18th and 19th century racists.

I do not agree with the beginning of that sentence or the second half. Really, none of it. Unless you think that's just someone like obfuscating their own abuse, he's actually been pretty consistent on that pro-pedophilia take. In 2006, he said, quote, we live in a time of hysteria about pedophilia, a mob psychology that calls to mind the Salem witch hunts of 1692. And in perhaps his most- If he's not talking about like Q Anon. No, we don't.

We have the right amount of word. Not liking that. Sure. And I panic, whatever. Let me say something bold. Not enough hysteria about that. I feel you agree. And in perhaps his most famous work, the God delusion, he wrote, quote, all three

of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affections for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety that was indeed reprehensible never the less don't continue with a nevertheless there it's like Eli being like neither here nor there moving on nevertheless if 50 years on they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defense, even as the victim of one of them. An embarrassing, but otherwise harmless experience." He has even chosen the side of the Catholic Church when it comes to child abuse, saying, quote,

The Roman Catholic Church has borne a heavy share of such retrospective oborium for all sorts of reasons. Relax. It's a probrium. And don't say that. Just say a word. People know for all sorts of reasons. I dislike the Roman Catholic Church, but I dislike unfairness even more. And I can't help wondering whether this one institution has been unfairly demonized over the issue, especially in Ireland and America.

What are you talking about? It's not, it's a witch hunt where we found witches so many So many witches we should be aware of the remarkable power of the mind to concoct false memories what especially when abetted by unscrupulous therapists and Mercenary lawyers. Okay, well, what the fuck is a witch? False memories are a bunch of harmless diddling cuz you're kind of choosing both lanes here, man Yeah, yeah, seems like you would you be cool with it if it was like pro bono lawyers

You know, but like mercy the most lawyers work for the money that they make As do most jobs. I'm a mercenary podcaster sort of people donate And the who's will be's after that molestation, which we all agree was pretty cash money, Richard went on to study zoology at Beloy Old College, Oxford, graduating in 1962. He also received his MA and his doctorate of philosophy there. He briefly taught at UC Berkeley, but will return to Oxford to lecture. Since 1970, he has been a fellow of New College Oxford and he is now an emeritus fellow. But as everyone on this podcast knows, it's his work as an author that would truly put him on the map.

In 1976, he published what is, without a doubt, his most important contribution to science, his book, The Selfish Gene, which builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's adaptation to natural selection and brought the gene-centered view of evolution into the mainstream. The book is a monumental achievement in science communication. In a world post-Sapiens, Gun, Germs and Steel, and Harris and Amoreas, it's easy to take for granted how good science communication has become, but for many, The Selfish Gene was the first book of readable, approachable scientific literature on the subject. So much so that in July of 2017, the Royal Society Science Book Prize listed The Selfish

Gene as the most influential science book of all time. Fun fact, it is also the origin of the term meme. Yeah, meme, but some people pronounce it Jif. Yeah, and they immediately ruin all their cred as a science communicator and skin book expert and guest on Yim when they say that. But how much does Dawkins actually know about genetics? This is a trickier question to answer than you'd think. As we'll note later in the essay, Dawkins at times has demonstrated an almost cartoonish

ignorance of genetic understanding, and his hypothesis on the gene-centered view of evolution has come under fire as our understanding of the subject grows. Sorry, are you saying you're going to get to some hypocrisy? I might! In Richard Dawkins' life? Just perhaps. Okay. Perhaps. Most famously, scientist Stephen Jay Gould took Dawkins to task for his overly essentialist view of the topic.

While nobody doubts the role genetics plays in evolutions, Dawkins is skeptical of non-adaptive processes such as the spandrels and the importance of group selection. And while I certainly won't pretend to know what any of the words I just said mean, or which side of the argument is right or wrong, it's worth noting that if Dawkins is, in fact, just a good science communicator and not a particularly deeper scientific thinker,

the selfish gene, important as it might be, might be an early sign of that. It's a dog, right? Cocker Spantrils, is that? Yeah, that's what it is. I think it's a dog, yeah. Then in 2006, he wrote The God Delusion, which, while not his most scientifically important work,

would have the major cultural effect and certainly the largest effect on the people in this podcast. Again, it's almost impossible to overstate how important Dawkins was to the birth of the New Atheist movement and how many people it introduced to arguments against God's existence. Now, yes, philosophers and authors like Bertrand Russell had made the arguments in Dawkins book before, but nowhere near as clearly or as digestibly. Yeah, that book, The God Delusion, it did have a profound effect on me. I have pretended

I read it with so many people. Now look, I'm not going to spend too much time defending atheism's position. That's what our other podcasts are for. But I do want to briefly address the three major criticisms by theists of the God Delusion. The first, most notably put forward by Oxford theologian Alastair McGrath, author of The Dawkins Delusion and Dawkins is God, is that Dawkins doesn't know enough about Christian theology to refute it, which is fucking stupid. I know enough. Yeah. to refute it, which is fucking stupid. I know enough.

Yeah. As Dawkins himself has said, do you have to read up on leprechaunology before disbelieving in leprechauns? It's impossible to know if there's actually hidden elite reptilian extraterrestrials secretly controlling world governments and manipulating human history for their own agenda if I just skim the biggest secret

by David Icke. I have to read the whole thing. Right. That's right. And I only know about space lasers because some of my best friends are Jewish. But otherwise, I would just be guessing about that. Exactly. Yeah. The second criticism. Ready Eli? Yes. Mm-hmm. I got you. Pound.

You approve this message. I do. Right there. Old bag of gold right next to your head. approve this message? I do. Right there. A little bag of gold right next to your head. The second criticism made by a variety of critics boils down to and nobody actually believes in that shit. Especially when you point out how stupid what they believe is. Which is one, untrue. A study after study shows that a significant percentage of adults who can vote believe in an invisible wizard. Who doesn't? What kind of argument is this? Who literally poofed the

universe into existence. And two, it's irrelevant even if it were true, right? It doesn't matter how many people actually believe that Bigfoot is Cain from the Bible wandering the Pacific Northwest as a part of his punishment from God. He can still refute it as an idea. Those theories are some of my favorites.

They really are. They're pretty fantastic. That's a fun Genre yeah, and last and least is the argument that Dawkins is just as fundamentalist as the religious He criticizes which until Richie cuts off my head for writing this essay is the dumbest possible criticism You could conjure for debunking bad. I know guys are the cognitive dissonant. Sorry I just read in the comments left for us my other podcast. I You're the cognitive dissonant. Sorry, I was just reading the comments left for my other podcast. I apologize. I helped reverse Roe v Wade because Hillary Clinton wouldn't get me a pony.

Sorry. I was doing the same thing as Cecil, isn't it? The God Delusion, along with his other writings, his public debates, and his foundation of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science would later merge with the Center for Inquiry and are tremendously important to the New Atheist Movement. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that there is no New Atheist Movement, certainly as we know it, without Dawkins and his work. Okay, so so far, Richard Dawkins wrote a pretty basic book about whether or not fake stuff is real. Sounds real rigorous. So while we load up the rest of this episode and the canon, we're gonna take a quick break for some apropos of nothing

Alright everyone can have your attention? I've gathered you all around because you are the various dictators throughout history who I have been told multiple times have killed people in the name of atheism. Very excited, very excited. First up, Hitler, right? Probably worst guy ever. I hear you are all about atheism. Yeah, sorry.

I was actually explicitly Christian. What? No, you weren't. You're an atheist, yeah? Yeah, probably personally, but I was very clear publicly that our mission was a Christian mission. No. Yeah, that's like a quote by me.

That's like a real quote? Shit. Okay, Stalin. Hey, Joseph Stalin. Are you here, bud? Da. Ah, so you were an atheist, right? And you like, you persecuted religion in the name of atheism. Like you had a whole movement and everything, right? Da, but...

Oh, come on. No, it's pretty clearly a power thing. No, no! Because there was propaganda! And you made a bunch of speeches about atheism! And I was perfectly happy to align with churches that supported my regime. Oh, fuck, you were? Oh yeah, big time, totally.

Shit! Fine. Okay, thank you. Pol Pot! Pol! Pol! Alright, finally, you, you were an atheist, right? Uh, no, uh, actually I was Buddhist. You were?

Mm-hmm. You, you killed all those monks. It's like, I mean, I killed all those everybody, man. But yes, novice monk. I actually lied in a bunch of speeches about being more Buddhist than I am. The notion that I'm atheist though is largely just Christian bigotry. Fuck! Okay.

Stupid. Yeah, no, sorry. I guess I don't have anyone to kill in the name of atheism with. Yeah. Sorry, man. Hey, why don't you sound Chinese? Well, I mean, Cambodian, and I think you know why. Ah! Where is... can't... you know what? I'll look.

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Maverick. Adventures First Stop. Okay, it's official. Maverick. Adventures First Stop. Okay, it's official. We are very much in the final sprint to Election Day. And face it, between debates, polling releases, even court appearances, it can feel exhausting, even impossible, to keep up with. I'm Brad Milkey. I'm the host of Start Here, the daily podcast from ABC News. And every morning, my team and I get you caught up on the day's news in a quick, straightforward way that's easy to understand, with just enough context so you can listen, get it, and go

on with your day. So kickstart your morning. Start smart with Start Here and ABC News, because staying informed shouldn't feel overwhelming. And we're back. When we left off, Rick had some books and he had yearned to the days of completely horrifying relationships between age groups. Where does he go from here, Eli? That's a great question, Cecil.

Well, since then, Richard Dawkins has dedicated his every waking moment to skullfucking his legacy to death to the extent that the only reasonable explanation is that an evil universe clone murdered him and is doing it on purpose. He has so thoroughly and completely countered any good he has ever done, it is now downright likely that when he dies he will not be known for his contributions to science or atheism, but for his dumb ass fucking tweets. Yeah, same for the guy who owns that platform. Yeah.

With those tweets. So let's begin with Islamophobia. Now accusations of Dawkins Islamophobia date back to the publication of the God Delusion. And at the time they were largely baseless, right? If you criticize Islam, someone is going to call you a bigot. Hell, when Noah Heath and I read the Koran on our podcast, The Scaling Atheist, someone on Twitter told me I was Islamophobic for not reading it with, quote, an open heart

and clear eyes. If you're doing Muslim apologetics, maybe don't steal it from Friday Night Lights. I feel like that just kind of gets away from the gravity of the point you're making. Right? Yeah. So Dawkins has always claimed, correctly,. I'll add that it's not bigotry to criticize ideas. No matter who holds those ideas Luckily for his critics. He's spent the last couple of years focusing his Twitter on people Not ideas. Yep retroactively proving them all right by coincidence on Yep, retroactively proving them all right by coincidence on August 8th of 2013 Dawkins tweeted all the world's Muslims Have fewer Nobel prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge They did great things in the Middle Ages though and quote

responding to the negative response with quote interesting concept a simple statement of Undeniable fact can be offensive other examples where facts should be hidden because offensive? Oh, oh, oh, I have one. So if you kick Richard Dawkins hard enough in his weird old wrinkly balls, he will die. Merely fact, dear Watson. Whatever you take from that is your own fault. I am very smart and not a bigot. So to be clear, I'm not saying do that with the kicking.

It's illegal. I'm just naming things that are true, which cannot be offensive. We all agree cannot be offensive. It's impossible. He actually later doubled down on the implied bigotry of that tweet in a blog post titled Calm Reflections After a Storm in a Teacup saying, quote, You almost can't help wondering something like this. If you are so numerous, and if your science is so great, shouldn't you be able to point

to some pretty spectacular achievements emanating from among those vast numbers? If you can't today, but once could, what has gone wrong for the past 500 years? Whatever it is, is there something to be done about that?" End quote. If women were so smart, why hasn't one of them been pope yet? Checkmate. Checkmate, bad at Catholicism. I always say that. And it's not just that one tweet, by the way.

In 2018, he tweeted a picture of himself on a bench with the quote, listening to the lovely bells of Winchesterchester one of our great medieval cathedrals So much nicer than the aggressive sounding Allah who she is this good. Is that just my cultural upbringing? Sorry, you just went and sat on a bench for that. That's weird took a selfie That was your day and was like, you know what? I like this better than Muslims weird, took a selfie. That was your day. And was like, you know what? I like this better than Muslims. When asked to clarify his comments, Mr. Dawkins told the independent, the call to prayer could be quote, very beautiful, but also Allah, who Akbar is the last thing you hear before the suicide bomb goes off. And quote, yeah, just some Muslim guy getting ready to get murdered during the Spanish Inquisition.

These bells are just nice, you know, just sound good. Just a guy with a bomb vest standing next to Dawkins. God takes out a pan flute and some hand bells. All right, you got to admit, that's pretty funny, right? Like, it sounds nice. No, no, the best is fake. I'm just doing a bit. Like, with the thing you said in Twitter. Fuck you.

But, one does not have to look way back to the yonder years of 2018 for Dawkins' bigotry against Muslims. Just this past April, he told LBC News that he was quote, slightly horrified at the sight of lights that said happy Ramadan and asked why there weren't Easter lights instead. It's because people celebrating Ramadan paid for those lights. They just got donations and did that. Maybe if Christians cared about the resurrection of our Lord and savior, you could have seen Easter lights too, but they didn't.

So that's why. Get on it, Ricky. But whatever you think about Dawkins' views on Islam, at least he's expressed them without pretending to be a Muslim. Something that cannot be said for feminism or his criticisms of it. Let's talk about Elevator Gate. In June of 2011, Was it that long ago? Jesus Christ. I know, right? We're so fucking old, man.

We're so old, man. Just dust flowing in the fucking wind. Jesus Christ. How am I alive? How? In June of 2011 at the World Atheist Convention in Dublin, vlogger Rebecca Watson spoke on a panel, which also included Dawkins, about her experience of being sexualized within the atheist movement.

Was he also being sexualized within the atheist movement too? Oh, I get it, girlfriend. Tell me about it. You ever sit on the lap of your second grade math teacher? My god. The compass is pointed north, am I right, sister? Up high, down low. Not a big deal. She spoke about her experience of being sexualized within the atheist movement. That night, after talking and drinking with the other attendees till

4 a.m., Watson headed back to her room. A man from the group, whom she had not spoken to before, followed her into an elevator and once inside said, Don't take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting and I would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee? Which is fucking creepy. It's so is fucking creepy. It's so obviously fucking creepy. And if you don't know it's creepy podcast listener, give me a ring. Next time you're in an elevator by yourself and I'll pop in and say this to you.

And we'll see how fucking awesome you feel about it. Either way, Watson had the audacity to make a vlog about the experience in which she said, quote, get ready, everybody. This is going to be guys. Don't do that. I was a single woman in a foreign country at 4am in a hotel elevator with you, just you. And don't invite me back to your hotel room right after I've finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner."

Now I have to take a moment to point out that that was it. That completely reasonable and polite request that she made without identifying the man who did it would go on to pretty much end her career in skepticism. And I feel like it's worth pausing to note just how minimal a request it was. She is, I mean, I'm gonna well actually hear Eli. I feel like it fits in this story actually. So well actually, she still does make skeptical videos.

She still does make very good skeptical videos. So you see that vlog and that request were later shared by atheist blogger PZ Myers, where Dawkins, who I'll remind you at the time was arguably the most famous atheist in the world, publicly commented the following, quote, "'Dear Muslema, stop whining. Will you? Dear Muslim, you started, you wrote that ever? What are you doing? Hey, dear atheistus, stop talking like a psychopath.

Will you? You're making us look bad. Are you serious? Doesn't matter what happens next. Continuing his comment. Yes, yes, I know you had your generals mutilated with a razor blade and yawn. Don't tell me again. I know you aren't allowed to drive a car and you can't leave the house without a male relative and your husband is allowed to beat you and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining will you? Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one. She calls herself Skep-Chick. And do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her,

but even so. And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about. For goodness sake, grow up or at least grow a thicker skin. Richard Dawkins. Guys, until we cure cancer, we really shouldn't work on any other medical thing. Is that cool? Is that okay? Hey Cecil, the heat death of the universe is definitely happening as we fucking speak. Maybe you heard of it. Heat death. We don't have time for cancer. What are you talking about? Exactly. What followed was a campaign of- I can't believe he went back for the word muslima.

Yeah! He started with it and he was like, should I use this again? Yeah. I like that he signed it. That he was like, Richard Dawkins! What followed was a campaign of harassment, death, and rape threats that drove Watson from the atheist movement forever. Not without the help of Dawkins, who secretly made it known that he wouldn't attend events where Watson was speaking. Which is pretty funny, considering the amount of time he spent defending bigots against deplatforming since then. Not funny like, haha, but like like does this taste funny to you funny? Dawkins, by the way, has never apologized to Watson.

Not for sicking an army of sexist trolls on her, not for secretly blackballing her from conferences and events, and not for what he said. Though, in 2014, while once again doubling down on his positions about pedophilia, you guessed it, in a post called Who Is Belittling What, he said, quote, There should be no rivalry in victimhood. And I'm sorry I once said something similar to American women complaining of harassment, inviting them to contemplate the suffering of Muslim women by comparison. But maybe you get the point.

If we wish to insist in the face of judicial practice everywhere that all examples of sexual crime are exactly equally bad, perhaps we need to look more carefully at exactly who is belittling what, end quote, end anything remotely resembling an apology ever. Now you might be thinking to yourself- I don't think he contradicted anything. I feel like that was stupid. That meant that was nothing. Once again, the beginning half of your sentence and the second half, I disagreed with all of them. They're all disqualified. Now you might be thinking to yourself, okay, Eli, so he harassed and forced one woman out of the atheist movement for expressing discomfort But does that make him anti-feminist? And to that I say, are you okay?

Would you like to go to therapy like right now in some kind of emergency vehicle? But no, that's not all. In 2016, Dawkins tweeted out a video by internet troll and very near receiver of many of Tom's punches, Sargon of Akkad, which musically compared feminists and Islamists with Dawkins saying of the video, quote, obviously doesn't apply to the vast majority of feminists, among whom I count myself, but the minority are pernicious." End quote. He later deleted the video. He didn't want to use feminista there. Yeah, exactly.

He later deleted the video because he didn't realize that so-called feminists portrayed in the video were based on an actual person, clarifying that he meant to attack women, not woman. I want to, I just got to bring this up every time we talk about Sargon. I have to mention this. He got so frustrated with Tom just talking at him that he tried to shoulder bump Tom Sargon did. And then Tom is a 200 pound block of solid fucking muscle and Sargon nearly knocked himself over. It's possible he dislocated his arm. I believe he did.

Then he tried to spin it as Tom attacking him and we got a message from Andy Ngo to our email asking us to comment on the physical assault. Wait seriously? Yes absolutely we did that's weird because I could swear that Andy no got killed by a DQ blizzard I saw that in an article by Andy no quite certain reference as a result of that cartoon, the 2016 Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism disinvited him from their conference. That is, until Dawkins bitched about it on Twitter, at which point the organizers received

an emergency spinaectomy, apologized to him, and re-invited him to the conference, which he still did not attend. Fuck you. Side note, and I have to add this, during this controversy Dawkins retweeted a meme that retitled his book, The Social Justice Delusion. However, the meme contained a completely not hidden QR code which linked to the infamous neo-Nazi slogan, we must secure the existence of our people and our future for white children. How do you miss that? Yeah. Dawkins, who didn't bother to see why there was a QR code

in the middle of the picture he was tweeting, later deleted the tweet without apology. Yeah, shaking his head. People these days are so uptight about a little mild Naziism. Come on. OK, come on. I just thought there was a fun jigsaw puzzle inside the photo Also, how do you program a VCR? Does anybody know? But truly I channel three there's like seven channels though for different vice every time I scan this I get a drink menu What's happening? I know I want a paper one. He absolutely complains about the square code

Menus, I promise you but truly the final nail in the coffin of Dawkins legacy has been his recent mission on behalf of Transphobia if you found it odd that I couched my earlier description of the selfish gene in such careful turns It's largely due to the astonishing Ignorance he's demonstrated about genetics over the last couple of years. Because look, there are lots of prominent folks in and out of atheism with bad ideas about feminism. But to be a transphobe the way Dawkins has been a transphobe, Dawkins has had to throw

his own expertise under the bus. He's like a former astronaut who couldn't find a way not to be homophobic without being a flat earther. Okay. On the flat earth thing, I know I'm getting off topic here, but I'll never understand why flat earth is a gateway drug like that to fucking Nazis every time. It's always some guy just being like spheres are a hoax, but then he starts shaking and he's just like

Jewish Jewish hoax How do you get there? How did the neo-nazis even figure out that that's where that guy's gonna get and start doing all those conferences where they just like Guessing and going to conferences and they were like a the flat earth ones are finding the most gullible people and then picking on the most gullible Amongst us so they can convince some of your views just tie your own garbage into it Two birthdays in a room of 20 people thing. I get it. It's definitely what Cecil just said Yeah, so Dawkins first finds stupid people. Yeah Simpler way to put it now Dawkins first courted transphobic controversy when in defense of infamous transphobe Jermaine Greer, he tweeted quote, is trans woman a woman? Purely semantic. If you define by

chromosomes, no. If by self identification, yes, I call her she out, is wrong, scientifically. I have a BFA in theater fucking studies and I know it's wrong. Even by the most generous possible reading where you insert invisible words like most and with rare genetic exceptions into that tweet, it's still fucking wrong. Which means either Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, knows less about chromosomes than me, or he is so dedicated to bigotry that he pretends to be an idiot to defend it. It literally has to be one of those two things.

I hope this frustrates Rick so much that he decides to challenge Eli in a tap dance off to decide who's right. Anytime, Ricky boy, anytime! Since then, he has dedicated a tremendous amount of his online presence to defending the right of transphobes to speak in universities, to teach students whose gender they refuse to recognize, and, I don't know, tweet whatever the fuck they want because they wrote Harry Potter, damn it. and, I don't know, tweet whatever the fuck they want because they wrote Harry Potter, damn it. Why is he defending? He was, I think, at least trying to be like,

no, I'll do that out of courtesy. It's a shitty position, but like, why is he defending people who won't even do it out of courtesy? Since then he's been like, fuck courtesy! So back in 2021, he tweeted his hearty recommendation for the transphobic pseudoscientific work, The End of Gender, debunking the myths about about Sex and Identity by Dr. Deb Rousseau, which, among other things, promotes the largely discredited male-brain-female-brain hypothesis and claims that the

field of sexology has been overtaken by radical trans activists. Dawkins said of the book, quote, If even half is true of what she says about the intimidation of scientists in her field of sexology, we need to support the fight back. Luckily for us and unluckily for Richard, it's not. So we don't. And just this past April, he and Alan Sokol co-wrote an opinion piece.

The Sokol Hooks guy? Yeah, the Sokol Hooks guy. Conceptual penis guy? No. That's a different Sokol Hooks. They did a bad version of the thing that he did an ok version of the thing named after sokol they did a version with the conceptual penis concept

got it, exactly it's hard to keep the shit together it's really hard to keep the shit together also intellectual dark web guys i'm painting with a broad brush and i don't care i don't care yeah, no, hey let's be careful with Alan Sokol's feelings here, alright? Let's hear what he wrote. So they co-wrote an opinion piece called Sex and Gender, the

Medical Establishment's Reluctance to Speak Honestly About Biological Reality, which takes on the most dangerous of enemies. The phrase? Assigned sex at birth. And includes such monumentally stupid takes like, quote, A person's sex is an objective biological reality, just like their blood group or fingerprint pattern, not something that is assigned and, in short, sex in all animals is defined by gamete size. Sex in all mammals is determined by sex chromosomes. And there are two and only two sexes, male and female. Wait, somehow two scientists looked at all the deep

knowledge of the human species and settled on Genesis 5.2, right? Obviously wrote off the Bible too quickly. And if you're thinking- I just like the bells a lot. Like the bells are awesome. It's the bells, the bells brought them back in. And if you're thinking, wow.

Did you ever sit in a good bench? A really good bench. A really good bench. With no Muslims on it. Nice afternoon. Just a super Christian music space. Christian white bench. I'm an atheist. And if you're thinking, wow,

Richard Dawkins and Alan Sokol don't know that chromosomal abnormality are more common than red hair and green eyes. Oh no, they do! The piece has a whole paragraph about how wrong they are, but that doesn't count because how many people could.1% of all the people be? What's that? What's that?

It's 108 million people? Well nobody tell Richard Dawkins and Alan Sokol about the Philippines because their population is only 108 million people and they're starting to think they're a creation of the radical left. But to top it all off, they literally conclude their essay blaming vaccine denial on fancy liberal words, saying, quote, How can the public expect us to trust the medical establishment's declarations on other controversial issues such as vaccines, issues on which the medical consensus is indeed correct, when it has so visibly and blatantly misstated the facts about something so simple as sex."

There's much more that Richard Dawkins has done to decimate his legacy since he established it. I didn't even mention his odd fascination with cannibalism. What? Telling a woman that if she knew her baby had Down syndrome that she should abort it and try again. The list goes on and on. But I won't try to catalog them all because after all our show is published on a two week delay and he will undoubtedly have said some stupid ass shit before then.

Oh, that's a good bet. And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? If you meet Buddha on the road, take away his Twitter. Beat him to death with his phone. All right. Are you ready for the quiz? I am, sir. Okay, Eli, what did I agree with from Richard Dawkins just now? Ooh.

A. Yes, it's totally fine to eat lab-grown meat using human stem cells. B, that sounds fascinating. I wanna know what I taste like, and I think so do you, if you're being honest. C, for me, I'm guessing, tastes kinda gamey. That's just my guess. I bet it was gamey, but good.

Or D, congrats Richard Dawkins. Your best take is apparently about cannibalism. Yeah. That's weird. I'm going to go with D. D, congrats. That is correct. Yeah.

It was really all of the above, but yeah, correct. Okay, Eli, the folk song chronicling this is called A, more than a petafelic. B, take me to church. church C better off dead naming or D Good golly miss sogyny I'm gonna go with better off dead name. Uh Yes, you're correct Fantastic and you win. I do yes because there's only three of us and I went this week so

What are they gonna do all right? Would you like to write an essay next week and more importantly do it should we keep this in a threesome? Just the three of us best friends Okay, so myself Seriously wanna close all right well for Heath and Eli and an absent Tom and Noah getting closer I'm Cecil. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then Heath will be an expert on something else. Between now and then you can listen to our other shows. They are numerous.

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