Tuesday 2 March, 2010

World
Science/Nature

Leading atheist Richard Dawkins has a laugh, often making religious believers the butt of his joke. But he’s not laughing now – after his own fans attacked him on his website.

By Andrew Halloway

Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins is used to denigrating believers in God with an astonishing range of insults and smears. But it seems he doesn’t like it when he is the subject of such vitriol himself.

And the guilty party are not religious believers, finally losing their rag after suffering his verbal abuse for decades, but his own supporters.

The reason? Mr Dawkins wanted to censor discussions on his website that he considers “irrelevant postings and frivolous gossip”. Once news of his intention to vet his site got out – which by the way he has every right to do – he became the subject of a tidal wave of foul-mouthed abuse, and the forum had to be shut down.

Now, he might well have been right about the content he wanted to eliminate, but his instinct for censorship is telling.

When free speech and argument are in his favour, he has no problem. While his 85,000 online fans vented their spleen on religious believers, in sometimes disgusting terms, he wasn’t suggesting moderating his discussion forum then. But when he takes a dislike to what people are saying, he soon labels it “irrelevant” and is suddenly converted to censorship.

Followers of the evolution/creation debate will see strong parallels with Dawkins’ approach to that discussion. He enjoys describing creationists and intelligent design (ID) scientists in the most insulting language he can muster, short of swearing (a restraint not shared by some of his colleagues), but at the same time does everything in his power to ensure that rational anti-evolutionist arguments are ignored, censored, avoided, caricatured and misrepresented. In short, he likes to hear the sound of his own voice dominating the airwaves but refuses to engage with any anti-evolutionist he thinks might defeat him in debate.

According to the Times, Dawkins wrote on his website on Thursday that there was “something rotten” in web culture and he was determined to rid his site of abuse: “Imagine seeing your face described by an anonymous poster as ‘a slack-jawed turd-in-the-mouth mug’… Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, overreacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical.”

Forgive those of us who have been on the end of a tongue-lashing from Richard ourselves if we have a little snigger at that. He is finally getting a taste of his own medicine. But perhaps it is an indication that atheists don’t all have the moral high ground as the thinking, rational people, as Dawkins would have us believe. They are just as capable of knee-jerk reactions and temper tantrums as anyone else.

A former moderator of Dawkins’ site voices the disillusion with Dawkins that is apparently felt by many: “Thousands of loyal, intelligent, rational forum members have been misrepresented as a bunch of foul-mouthed, vitriolic thugs by the man who so inspired them.”

Well, atheists like Dawkins have long been misrepresenting intelligent, rational believers in God as lunatics and worse, so join the club! He repeatedly labels all believers with the derogatory term ‘faith-heads’, and his latest book equates anyone who questions evolution with Holocaust deniers. And he has plenty more belittling phrases where those came from.

When Dawkins says about his own atheist supporters, “there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, overreacting so spectacularly,” he cannot see that he is also describing himself.

In the last few years, he has lost the support of many moderate atheists because of the abusive way in which he attacks religious believers and overreacts to those who oppose evolution.

If he really believes that evolution is the unassailable ‘fact’ he so often proposes, why does he waste so much time scathingly attacking those who disagree? Methinks he doth protest too much. If scientists who accept creationism or ID are so few in number and so irrelevant, as he often claims, then why is he always taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

Dawkins plans to reopen the forum when the new moderating system is up and running: “The forum is going to be more tightly controlled and will be under more central control. So it won’t be available for anyone who wants to sound off freely,” he says.

Hmm. Just like he wants to control science and not allow anyone to talk freely about the inadequacies of evolution. Anyone who doubts that controlling instinct in Dawkins should remember the outrage he expressed about a fellow member of the Royal Society (the country’s top science organisation) who conceded that teachers should be allowed to answer schoolkids’ questions on creationism and ID.

That same scientist, Prof Michael Reiss, was a fellow evolutionist who also said these questions should only be allowed so that the kids can be taught why evolution is superior. But did that matter? No. Dawkins doesn’t like dissent. And if anyone doubts his power in science, it should be remembered that the Royal Society initially defended Prof Reiss, but quickly forced him to resign after a campaign to oust him by atheists within the Society – including a public attack by Dawkins.

Incidentally, Prof Reiss was also a Church of England clergyman, so for Dawkins that made it doubly certain that he had to go. He said: “A clergyman in charge of education for the country’s leading scientific organisation – it’s a Monty Python sketch.” Of course, Dawkins was fully aware of Prof Reiss’ impeccable scientific credentials, and that many of the founding fathers of science and the Royal Society itself were clergymen, and that many leading scientists today are Christians. So he was merely revealing his own atheistic bias with this comment. But that doesn’t bother Dawkins – why resort to a rational discussion when you can call names instead?

And if you doubt that this is his strategy to attack believers, read his own words: “I lately started to think that we need to go further: go beyond humorous ridicule, sharpen our barbs to a point where they really hurt… And I think that (fence-sitters) are likely to be swayed by a display of naked contempt. Nobody likes to be laughed at. Nobody wants to be the butt of contempt.”

…As he is now finding out for himself. He continues: “Suppose the religious start treating us with naked contempt; how would we like it? I think the answer is that there is a real asymmetry here. We have so much more to be contemptuous about! And we are so much better at it. We have scathingly witty spokesmen of the calibre of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Who have the faith-heads got, by comparison? We can’t lose! Take, as an example of a typical faith-head trying to be contemptuous, David Bentley Hart… Listen to the stumbling, droning inarticulacy, the abysmal lack of anything approaching wit or intelligence. Imagine this yammering fumblewit coming up against Christopher Hitchens, or Dan Dennett, or PZ Myers – doesn’t it make your mouth water?

“I emphatically don’t mean we should use foul-mouthed rants. Nor should we raise our voices and shout at them… Instead, what we need is sarcastic, cutting wit.”

Well, I’m glad he wants to keep off swearing and shouting, but as ever, Dawkins considers anyone who disagrees with him as dim-wits.

However, the main thing Dawkins’ spat with his own supporters reveals is that atheism is often not the rational, reasoned response to the world around us that he claims. The often ill-tempered, demeaning and foul-mouthed language used by atheists to denounce religion, believers and creationists, which is common on so many websites, speaks of a deep-seated emotional reaction. It goes far beyond logical argument.

The reason is that the battle against Christianity is not just intellectual, but spiritual. Many atheists carry emotional wounds that make them angry against God. It may be that they have experienced personal suffering; it may be that they have been betrayed by weak Christians who didn’t live up to their faith; it may be that they once believed in God, but having backslidden away from him they have a subconscious guilt. It may be that they have an instinctive belief in God, but prefer to live life their own way and don’t want to face up to his moral demands, so rather than admit their lifestyle is sinful, they have to mock belief.

And when the only scientific theory that seems to support their unbelief is attacked – evolution – it arouses a defensive response that goes far beyond rational disagreement. As Dawkins himself admits, Darwinism gives his atheism intellectual credibility. But if that pillar of his belief is taken away, his worldview collapses. For him, and many like him, there is more at stake than science.

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