Richard Dawkins loses humanist of year award over trans comment

Professor Richard Dawkins has been stripped of an award by the American Humanist Association, after the organisation said his statements on transgender rights “demean marginalised groups”.

Voting to withdraw a 1996 “humanist of the year award”, the AHA said that the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion was no longer “an exemplar of humanist values” after his tweets appeared to question whether people can choose their gender.

Dawkins, 80, claimed that the loss of the award would have little practical effect on him because he had never used it. “Apparently the honour hadn’t meant enough to me to be worth recording in my CV,” he said.

He had made a comparison between transgender people choosing their gender and a woman in the US who had been a senior member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, despite it later emerging she was white.

“In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as black,” he said on April 11. “Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/richard-dawkins-loses-humanist-of-year-award-over-trans-comment-g9gs9msx6

lol I see the American Humanist Association along with Matt Dillahunty have gone full woke and become acolytes to the gender religion lol

They fail to see here, that they are acting like religious fundementalists themselves. Casting out Dawkins as a heretic

Gender is a sociological creation, not inextricably tethered to body parts.  If someone has a penis or vagina, and is attracted to people with the same, it's their choice to be, sociologically, associated with them.  Body parts do not dictate which group you must belong to.

Dawkins has run aground on the same principle as other extreme Darwinists.  The Social Darwinists in the 1870's—notably Herbert Spencer—argued that biological concepts of 'natural selection' and 'survival of the fittest' were applicable to sociology, economics, and politics, and came up with a theory of superior races.  The race that achieved and succeeded was, quite naturally, the higher on the evolutionary totem pole.  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Herbert-Spencer

These people were suffering from what we now know as ethical naturalism: the thesis that objective moral properties are reducible to entirely non-ethical or natural properties.  Penii and vaginas aside, there is no reason why physiological properties should dictate what goes on in our brain.  The brain is the realm of the moral (good/bad, like/dislike, preference and desire, even invention), and if moral properties were tied to physical properties, we would have never have had the will or desire to fly…or, indeed, experiment with the world.

Likewise, whom we associate with, befriend, and even love, is a moral property.  Dawkins, in his quest for certainty, likes the permanent stability that Darwinist determinism offers, but then he is stuck with an inflexibility that does not allow for variety and change in a species.  Darwin taught us how we got here, but he only gave us the ‘process’ for where we are going.  He didn’t stop to judge, as Dawkins seems to do.

That’s the philosophical answer to Dawkins, but unfortunately, he has gotten caught up in the politics of the day.  Everything seems to get reduced to a for/against these days.  Blame Republicans.

Didgee wrote:Professor Richard Dawkins has been stripped of an award by the American Humanist Association, after the organisation said his statements on transgender rights “demean marginalised groups”.

Voting to withdraw a 1996 “humanist of the year award”, the AHA said that the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion was no longer “an exemplar of humanist values” after his tweets appeared to question whether people can choose their gender.

Dawkins, 80, claimed that the loss of the award would have little practical effect on him because he had never used it. “Apparently the honour hadn’t meant enough to me to be worth recording in my CV,” he said.

He had made a comparison between transgender people choosing their gender and a woman in the US who had been a senior member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, despite it later emerging she was white.

“In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as black,” he said on April 11. “Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/richard-dawkins-loses-humanist-of-year-award-over-trans-comment-g9gs9msx6

lol I see the American Humanist Association along with Matt Dillahunty have gone full woke and become acolytes to the gender religion lol

They fail to see here, that they are acting like religious fundementalists themselves. Casting out Dawkins as a heretic

These folks are no different than religious zealots.

Here's how these conversations should go:

TRANS WOMAN: I identify as a woman.

SOME DUDE: You look like a man to me, and your sex was listed as "male" on this birth certificate.

TRANS WOMAN: I feel like a woman, though, and prefer to be called a woman.

SOME DUDE: Whatever you say, you still look like a man.

TRANS WOMAN: I consider myself a woman in a man's body. In my own personal existence, I feel like a woman and think of myself as a woman.

SOME DUDE: Okay, I don't get it, but fine.

Ben Reilly wrote:Here's how these conversations should go:

TRANS WOMAN: I identify as a woman.

SOME DUDE: You look like a man to me, and your sex was listed as "male" on this birth certificate.

TRANS WOMAN: I feel like a woman, though, and prefer to be called a woman.

SOME DUDE: Whatever you say, you still look like a man.

TRANS WOMAN: I consider myself a woman in a man's body. In my own personal existence, I feel like a woman and think of myself as a woman.

SOME DUDE: Okay, I don't get it, but fine.

Most gender critical people I know and many are female lesbians, have no issue with trans women "identifying" as women

That is not the issue

Its trans activists claiming that trans women are literally women and now this has progressed to believe that trans women are also now litterally female

Many have openly stated they are ticking female, for the sex questions on the uk census

Many are happy to use the pronouns of trans women, but when it comes to such absurd views being made and even worse females losing provision in law and the inclusion of androgenised trans women aka males into the women's protected category of sport. Then many say "hang on a minute, you are now effecting the rights of females"

No belief system should effect the well being and rights of another group

This made me laugh

I think this cat is gender critical  


https://twitter.com/tappy1008/status/1384405655876943874

Richard Dawkins is surely just as known for his militant atheism as for his scientific genius. He is loved by some and loathed by others for his zealous crusades against religion and his savage mockery of the sacred. But this week, he was excommunicated by those you might least expect: his fellow atheists.

Dawkins’s act of blasphemy was not against any religious doctrine. He did not voice scepticism of transubstantiation, but of transgenderism. He did not query whether bread and wine can become the body and blood of Christ, but whether a man can become a woman – and vice versa.

And so the American Humanist Association has stripped Dawkins of its 1996 Humanist of the Year award. The AHA had initially honoured Dawkins for his extraordinary contributions to communicating science to the public. But 25 years later, the AHA has accused him of abusing "scientific discourse" to "demean marginalised groups".

The AHA alleged that Dawkins had "accumulated a history" of offensive statements, but singled out one tweet for condemnation: "In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss."

Of course, Dawkins said nothing demeaning or bigoted in that tweet. He merely raised a question about the inconsistency of modern identity politics.

It’s a good question, in fact. Why is it that racial boundaries are today more likely to be viewed as fixed, but gender as fluid? After all, you don’t have to go full Rachel Dolezal and try to live life as a black person to fall foul of the modern racial gatekeepers. In recent years, white people have been denounced for "cultural appropriation" over acts as trivial as practising yoga, braiding their hair in cornrows or writing fiction from the perspective of non-white characters.

At the same time, the belief that gender can simply be a matter of self-declaration has been placed beyond question. "Trans women are women" is now a foundational woke commandment. Clearly, it has even become an article of faith for self-professed "humanists". You might think that humanists and atheists would be the first to recognise how dogmatism hinders the search for truth. But there are greater forces at work, which Dawkins has himself picked up on.

At the end of last year, writing in the Spectator, Dawkins warned that scientific truth was coming increasingly under attack. Most insidiously, truth was being undermined in academia, in the very institutions set up to discover and uphold the truth. A school of thought that claims there is "no objective truth... no natural reality, only social constructs" has come to dominate, he said. This worldview also prioritises the so-called lived experience and identity of the speaker over empirical reality. Proven scientific facts, Dawkins complains, are too often dismissed as products of "patriarchal domination".

In his Spectator piece, Dawkins switches frequently between attacking the nascent woke ideology and the theologians he has been battling for decades. Although he does not make the link explicitly, the similarities between the two groups are too great to ignore.

In fact, Dawkins has personal experience of them converging. Last year, Trinity College Dublin rescinded his invitation to address its Historical Society. And in 2017, a radio station in California cancelled an event he was due to speak at. Both de-platformed Dawkins because the world-famous atheist had fiercely criticised Islam and not just Christianity. Criticism of Islam is prohibited by the woke not on theological grounds, but because critcising the beliefs of a "marginalised group" is considered bigoted (or Islamophobic, in this instance).

But no deity or dogma – whether formed in the 7th century or the 21st – should be so sacred as to be beyond question. As the woke orthodoxy becomes more powerful and resistant to challenge, we’ll need far more heretics like Richard Dawkins.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/21/need-champions-science-like-richard-dawkins-win-war-woke-orthodoxy/

Didge wrote:Its trans activists claiming that trans women are literally women and now this has progressed to believe that trans women are also now litterally female

What business is it of yours?

Original Quill wrote:

Didge wrote:Its trans activists claiming that trans women are literally women and now this has progressed to believe that trans women are also now litterally female

What business is it of yours?

Its everyone's business when it effects the rights of females being removed

Try reading again the part you deliberately decided to ignore

Many are happy to use the pronouns of trans women, but when it comes to such absurd views being made and even worse females losing provision in law and the inclusion of androgenised trans women aka males into the women's protected category of sport. Then many say "hang on a minute, you are now effecting the rights of females"

No belief system should effect the well being and rights of another group

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6vb__TEDY4

Didgee wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

What business is it of yours?

Its everyone's business when it effects the rights of females being removed

* * * *

…females losing provision in law and the inclusion of androgenised trans women aka males into the women's protected category of sport. Then many say "hang on a minute, you are now effecting the rights of females"

Change the rules to accommodate the people. Can’t believe that man-made rules and laws seem more sacrosanct than human beings. It’s like designing a toilet up-side-down, hanging from the ceiling, and saying if you can’t use it, you can’t take a crap!

Original Quill wrote:

Didgee wrote:

Its everyone's business when it effects the rights of females being removed

* * * *

…females losing provision in law and the inclusion of androgenised trans women aka males into the women's protected category of sport. Then many say "hang on a minute, you are now effecting the rights of females"

Change the rules to accommodate the people.  Can’t believe that man-made rules and laws seem more sacrosanct than human beings.  It’s like designing a toilet up-side-down, hanging from the ceiling, and saying if you can’t use it, you can’t take a crap!

Translation:

"Quill wanting to remove provisions for females in law to accommodate males that identify as women. Thus females lose even more rights to males"

Actually Quill what is needed is to balance competing rights and values rather than transfer protections from one vulnerable group to another.

Hence its wrong for females to lose sex based protections in law where some are trying to replace this with something which is comparable to a belief in a soul, that of gender identity. Both trans and females deserve protections in law, but you do not do this by removing rights from females

So females require safety and privacy with toilets and changing rooms. Allowing males that identify as women into these spaces, makes them mixed sex by default and ends up excluding far more females from a provision meant specifically for them. As they now longer feel comfortable using them

Hence to resolve this issue for both groups, should have them look to lobby governments to rethink this. By removing existing facilities and creating multiple single roomed facilities. That then removes the barriers and conflict here

That is how you resolve conflicting issues, where there is no need to change any law. You change the facilities and provide safety and privacy for all

Simple eh

Didgee wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Change the rules to accommodate the people.  Can’t believe that man-made rules and laws seem more sacrosanct than human beings.  It’s like designing a toilet up-side-down, hanging from the ceiling, and saying if you can’t use it, you can’t take a crap!

Translation:

"Quill wanting to remove provisions for females in law to accommodate males that identify as women. Thus females lose even more rights to males"

Actually Quill what is needed is to balance competing rights and values rather than transfer protections from one vulnerable group to another.

Hence its wrong for females to lose sex based protections in law where some are trying to replace this with something which is comparable to a belief in a soul, that of gender identity. Both trans and females deserve protections in law, but you do not do this by removing rights from females

So females require safety and privacy with toilets and changing rooms. Allowing males that identify as women into these spaces, makes them mixed sex by default and ends up excluding far more females from a provision meant specifically for them. As they now longer feel comfortable using them

Hence to resolve this issue for both groups,  should have them look to lobby governments to rethink this. By removing existing facilities and creating multiple single roomed facilities. That then removes the barriers and conflict here

That is how you resolve conflicting issues, where there is no need to change any law. You change the facilities and provide safety and privacy for all

Simple eh

Sadly though this is not happening and rights for females are being taken away

That is not accommodating but ending up excluding far more people

Even worse language is being changed in the most dehumanising fashion to accommodate trans activists , not so much trans people themselves

Many charities' run to help people with medical conditions, now instead of saying, women, trans men and non binary people who menstruate. They are now referred to menstruators, bleeders. Worse still cervix havers, chest feeders, birthing people etc. its a view to remove any view to have the word woman even mentioned

That is wrong and its not inclusive language but dehumanising language

Laters

Are you saying it's an impossible challenge for man to solve? Either women have rights, or trans-genders have rights. Then, in your view, we quash the trans-gender rights...and all will be well. Not exactly a Soloman-like solution, is it?

You give too little credit to the ingenuity of man. I think rules and laws can be reengineered to accommodate all.

I might as well being talking to a brick wall

Did anyone else see how I offered up solutions that would benefit both sides?

Clearly Quill needs to go to Specsavers

Quill if you cannot be bothered to read my replies properly, then I am not going to waste time repeating myself

All the best

You remind me of the Vogons: Oh, it's too hard...too hard!

As far as toilets go, simply provide unisex bathrooms with locks on the doors. Then it's simply a matter of providing enough bathrooms to accommodate all.

The rule changes in sports involve changes to each individual sport...too many to itemize. But it is achievable. Better than leaving one side, or the other, with nothing.

Ben Reilly wrote:Here's how these conversations should go:

TRANS WOMAN: I identify as a woman.

SOME DUDE: You look like a man to me, and your sex was listed as "male" on this birth certificate.

TRANS WOMAN: I feel like a woman, though, and prefer to be called a woman.

SOME DUDE: Whatever you say, you still look like a man.

TRANS WOMAN: I consider myself a woman in a man's body. In my own personal existence, I feel like a woman and think of myself as a woman.

SOME DUDE: Okay, I don't get it, but fine.

You can consider yourself a mermaid too. As long as you don't demand special accommodations for being a mermaid that's fine.

Didgee wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

What business is it of yours?

Its everyone's business when it effects the rights of females being removed

Try reading again the part you deliberately decided to ignore

Many are happy to use the pronouns of trans women, but when it comes to such absurd views being made and even worse females losing provision in law and the inclusion of androgenised trans women aka males into the women's protected category of sport. Then many say "hang on a minute, you are now effecting the rights of females"

No belief system should effect the well being and rights of another group

People like to see the parts that make them comfortable.

Maddog wrote:

Didgee wrote:

Its everyone's business when it effects the rights of females being removed

Try reading again the part you deliberately decided to ignore

Many are happy to use the pronouns of trans women, but when it comes to such absurd views being made and even worse females losing provision in law and the inclusion of androgenised trans women aka males into the women's protected category of sport. Then many say "hang on a minute, you are now effecting the rights of females"

No belief system should effect the well being and rights of another group

People like to see the parts that make them comfortable.  

Spot on mate

He also fails to grasp that many females do not like unisex shared facilities, even with cubicles and that said facilities have led to an increase in sexual assault to females. Hence why a need for multiple single roomed facilities

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html

His view that they can all be itemized shows he lacks basic knowledge about the advantages males hold over females in sports


The only ones that are possible is the ones we already have that are mixed like equestrian for example. The reality is in many US states they do not require trans girls/women to reduce their testosterone. Which is a flawed policy when they do, as it does not mitigate the advantages males gain through androgenisation, let alone what is called also mini-puberty



This is a study of 11 studies that show t-reduction does not mitigate the advantages of male puberty


https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-020-01389-3



To prove the vast gulf is simple to point out the following, this is a mixed race and watch in the last leg how the lead held by the Polish female athlete is caught easily and overtaken leaving him way behind. So I am all ears how Quill thinks this can be done via changes in each individual sport that does not disadvantage females

Maddog wrote:

Didgee wrote:

Its everyone's business when it effects the rights of females being removed

Try reading again the part you deliberately decided to ignore

Many are happy to use the pronouns of trans women, but when it comes to such absurd views being made and even worse females losing provision in law and the inclusion of androgenised trans women aka males into the women's protected category of sport. Then many say "hang on a minute, you are now effecting the rights of females"

No belief system should effect the well being and rights of another group

People like to see the parts that make them comfortable.  

  That's why the flat-earthers stayed around for so long.

Thankfully my daughters are grown. They were/are excellent athletes that competed at a high level. But they were never a match for males if the same caliber.

I have two grand daughters on the way. I wonder what female sports will look like in 10 years when they become competitive?

Maddog wrote:Thankfully my daughters are grown. They were/are excellent athletes that competed at a high level. But they were never a match for males if the same caliber.  

I have two grand daughters on the way. I wonder what female sports will look like in 10 years when they become competitive?

Its scary to think what will happen in the future mate. When as seen girls are losing out on places to boys that identify as girls, let alone female in the elite category will start to lose out.

I think many sporting bodies want to be seen as inclusive first, when safety and fairness comes first, within inclusion next

Many are afraid of being cast as transphobic, which is daft to say the least

Sports is divided in 4 protected categories, age, weight, sex and disability

How people identify is not the bases for eligibility into the protected female category of sport

I always think of this scene when I think of letting people identify as who they like, in terms of athletics.

Maddog wrote:


I always think of this scene when I think of letting people identify as who they like, in terms of athletics.

Yeah that just sums it up very well mate