 |
| Maryam Namazie is an Iranian-born activist and Spokesperson of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and One Law for All. |
Showing posts with label Richard Dawkins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Dawkins. Show all posts
I have written the following letter to the American Humanist Association.
Please reconsider your decision to publicly withdraw from Richard Dawkins the Humanist of the Year award that you gave him in 1996. By doing this you are sustaining a pattern in recent years of people unjustly portraying Richard as something of a cartoon villain.
You are of course entitled to publicly disagree with or dissociate from Richard’s opinions. Indeed, your executive director Roy Speckhardt wrote an article in 2014 that criticised both Richard and former AHA Honorary President Gore Vidal for what Roy called “arrogant atheism.”
However, retrospectively withdrawing an honour made a quarter of a century ago undermines the integrity of nearly seven decades of your awards process. It turns a public recognition of contributions to humanism, which many people have accepted in good faith, into an ongoing threat of public censure for decades into the future.
This is an escalation of the recent tendency of groups inviting and then disinviting speakers. It is perfectly okay to not invite a speaker, or to not give a person an award. But once you have publicly done either, you should require overwhelming reasons to reverse it. Otherwise you harm your own credibility as a body that can be trusted to keep to its word.
In this case, your stated reasons are uncharitable opinions about the intent and implications of some of Richard’s statements, and an unsubstantiated claim that his clarification is insincere. I don’t share this view. I think Richard is honourable, rational, respectful of rights, and passionately inquisitive. But I accept that you sincerely believe your opinions.
On this basis, you have concluded that Richard “is no longer deserving of being honoured by the AHA.” Yet your website says that:
The Humanist of the Year award recognises the accomplishments and work of the individuals reflecting humanist values up to the date of the award and in concert with the prevailing humanist thought of the time. Since humanism is an evolving philosophy where we continually strive for improvement, some awardees we recognised in the past would no longer meet our current standards. As humanists we also recognise that people are imperfect and may at times lose sight of the values and ethics that previously guided their humanistic behaviour.
Presumably this more charitable approach to humanity explains why you have not publicly withdrawn the same honour that you previously gave to other awardees, including:
- An awardee from the 1950s who supported eugenics and spoke publicly of the need to put an end to breeding by the unfit.
- An awardee from the 1960s, a former AHA President, who lobbied Stalin to promote his utopian dream of positive eugenics in a classless society.
- An awardee from the 1980s, a former AHA President, who was notorious for groping women and whose own autobiography describes him as “the man with a hundred hands.”
- An awardee from the 1990s, a former AHA Honorary President, whose authorised biography cites friends and relatives describing him as cruel, nasty, and scary.
- An awardee from the 1990s who promoted a book by David Icke which includes conspiracy theories about Jews and alien space invaders.
- An awardee from the 2000s who has repeatedly used violent rhetoric and written that he hates or despises named people and groups, and who has now published a photo of himself with his AHA award in a blog post titled “I still have mine.”
By contrast, Richard Dawkins has not engaged in any behaviours like these, yet you have chosen to withdraw his award. You did not do this when he made statements that made religious people uncomfortable, but you have now done so when his critics are secular.
As I have said, I don’t share your genuinely-held beliefs about Richard’s statements or his sincerity. But even if your beliefs were correct, why are you treating him less charitably than these other previous awardees?
Do you now intend to retrospectively test all of your previous awardees against the standard you are now applying selectively to Richard? If not, can you please reconsider your decision to withdraw your previous award to Richard?
You can then continue to criticise his opinions and his style of communication, and ask him to reconsider his beliefs and behaviour. And he and others can do likewise with you. That is entirely within the spirit of humanist values.
I would welcome a response that outlines your thoughts on this.
 |
| Michael Nugent is Chair of Atheist Ireland |
Internationally renowned evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins has had an invitation to address Trinity College’s Historical Society next year withdrawn. The world’s oldest student debating society auditor, Brid O’Donnell, in a ludicrous statement reeking more of woke than wisdom, claimed that she was “unaware of Richard Dawkins’ opinions on Islam and sexual assault until this evening.”
How O’Donnell did not know Dawkins' opinions in advance illustrates the dangers of valuing ignorance. She stood to learn much from Dawkins had the decision to invite him not been reversed. Not content to suffer in silence her affliction of being dangerously unaware, she is intent on becoming a super spreader so that ultimately the virus of ignorance will strike everyone down.
Her first targets were the student members of the Hist, as it is known. In order that they might know as little as she, Richard Dawkins was disinvited in a bid to thwart the intellectual insight that he was likely to bring. Exposure to critical ideas was less important to O’Donnell than “the comfort of our membership." Nothing, of course, to do with her own condescending chauvinism which could only see students as snowflakes likely to melt when confronted with an incendiary idea: something like Young Earth Science and Flat Earth Science being intellectual equals.
The reasoning was spurious. Dawkins being an atheist is of course going to reject the tenets of Islam and all other religions. He is a firm opponent of creationism being taught in schools as science rather than the junk science it is, which has of course angered religious fundamentalists of all hues including some within Islam. Dawkins lamented that Muslim students frequently walked out of class during discussions on evolution. That they might have a preference for magic, much like their Christian evangelical counterparts, is no reason for public educators to remain silent out of respect for their religious opinion.
As for his views on sexual assault:
How O’Donnell did not know Dawkins' opinions in advance illustrates the dangers of valuing ignorance. She stood to learn much from Dawkins had the decision to invite him not been reversed. Not content to suffer in silence her affliction of being dangerously unaware, she is intent on becoming a super spreader so that ultimately the virus of ignorance will strike everyone down.
Her first targets were the student members of the Hist, as it is known. In order that they might know as little as she, Richard Dawkins was disinvited in a bid to thwart the intellectual insight that he was likely to bring. Exposure to critical ideas was less important to O’Donnell than “the comfort of our membership." Nothing, of course, to do with her own condescending chauvinism which could only see students as snowflakes likely to melt when confronted with an incendiary idea: something like Young Earth Science and Flat Earth Science being intellectual equals.
The reasoning was spurious. Dawkins being an atheist is of course going to reject the tenets of Islam and all other religions. He is a firm opponent of creationism being taught in schools as science rather than the junk science it is, which has of course angered religious fundamentalists of all hues including some within Islam. Dawkins lamented that Muslim students frequently walked out of class during discussions on evolution. That they might have a preference for magic, much like their Christian evangelical counterparts, is no reason for public educators to remain silent out of respect for their religious opinion.
As for his views on sexual assault:
Well apparently it refers to two tweets he sent in 2014, in which he suggested that being drunk and unable to remember being assaulted might make it more difficult to secure a prosecution.
Hardly much controversial there. It seems horrendous that a victim of rape might see her attacker go free because she was too intoxicated to remember the event. But this is what rape victims face in a legal system with a very low conviction rate for the vile offence of sexual violence. Dawkins did not seek to minimise the awfulness of sexual assault or give any quarter to rapists, but aimed to raise awareness about the evidentiary barriers that excessive alcohol consumption might raise. Enhancing awareness is something Brid O’Donnell seems hostile to. Nevertheless, it is a message I would have no difficulty sharing with my daughter. Maybe that will get me banned from Trinity as well. No more guest lectures at your invite then Professor Eunan O'Halpin! Thus spoke Brid the Banner.
The irony is that in a hotel less than a mile from Trinity, the same daughter when she was ten met Richard Dawkins at the World Atheist Convention who, while curious that one so young would be present, told her that he was writing a book for children of her age. Now at Trinity it seems she stands to learn a lot less in a university at 19 than she did in a hotel at 10.
The Hist has form for sticking fingers in its ears. Two years ago it also disinvited Nigel Farage. The then auditor Paul Molloy rowed back from his original compelling reason for inviting Farage:
The Society plays host to numerous individuals of divergent views, many of which our members feel strongly and passionately about. This is the nature of free enquiry in a democratic society. It is by that enquiry the strength of ideas and the validity of beliefs are challenged and upheld.
Once Molloy folded under pressure and disinvited Nasty Nigel the die was cast. Free inquiry was no longer the moving spirit of the Hist. To comfort the students, ideas had to be made uncomfortable and unwelcome.
Irish society might have thought it had purged itself of the spectre of Conor Cruise O’Brien. Brid O’Donnell in treating Dawkins as Cruise O’Brien did Mary Holland - when she too discomfited people Cruise O'Brien would rather view as mushrooms - has, like some deranged necromancer, breathed life into the the old ogre.
⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
