Ben Shapiro vs Neil deGrasse Tyson: The WAR Over Transgender Issues

[Belacqua]

You either accept the science or you reject it. You can't have it both ways. If you reject the science and make up something sciencey-sounding to support your agenda then you're little better than a creationist.

Yes, I think so too. And I think that to Dawkins, he is supporting real science while his opponents in this debate are making up something sciencey-sounding. Or simply ignoring the standards which science imposes in order to get the results they want. This is why Coyne, et.al., compare "wokism" to a religion. To them, it seems to operate like creationism. People want it to be true so they accept it as true.

As you know, scientific claims are supposed to be empirical, repeatedly testable, and quantifiable. Dawkins got rich and famous for applying these standards to the claims made by religious people, and showing how religious claims do not meet the standards of science. 

Now he is confronted by a different set of claims which are not empirical, repeatedly testable, and quantifiable, and he rejects those as well -- these are the claims made by people who see maleness or femaleness as something not knowable through empirical, repeatedly testable, and quantifiable methods. 

So he may be a lunkhead, but he's not a hypocrite. He is being consistent. Those of us who support the claims of trans people should be able to explain to him why the standards he's successfully applied in the past are not relevant here. 

This may require a shift in some people's thinking. Quite a few people on line, especially atheists, have taken a very similar line, to say that the only claims we accept as true should be demonstrable through objective evidence. But when we accept the claims of trans people, we are accepting something subjective. 

If gender is NOT provable through empirical, testable, and quantifiable observation of physical structures or functions, then it is the subjective experience of the individual. It is the subjective life-world they inhabit. And we have to give credence, in this case, to the truth of their subjective experience. 

Seen in a larger sense, this brings us back to an old debate -- the difference between body and mind. The fact that the scientific method cannot explain how we get from brain events to subjective experiences (qualia) remains a sticking point. A number of atheists, like Daniel Dennett, simply deny the truth of subjective experiences. But I think that if we're going to accept subjective claims regarding gender, then we have to acknowledge that there is a disconnect which is still inexplicable. 

I'm not really interested in opening up the whole mind/body debate yet again. Probably we've all heard enough about P-zombies to last a lifetime. 

In fact the number of people who are happy to accept subjective claims as true, in this case, is encouraging to me. I have long felt that people like Dawkins try to use the methods of science in places where they don't really apply. Some people, who formerly seemed to support that sort of strictness, are now openly advocating for a different sort of standard, and that seems like a good development to me.