Dawkins loses humanist title

[Reforged]

 should you be denounced by humanists for it?

Humanists have all sorts of better reasons to denounce me and my positions and my actions on things than speaking about a contentious topic, and I couldn't care less.....but, personally, I don't think the topic I'm discussing is contentious at all.

The aha did what they wanted to do with their own prize.  Dawkins did what he wanted to do with his own mouth.  The world may not be the way we insist that it should be.

Dawkins didn't think his subject was contentious either.
He just considered it a matter of discussing the scientific evidence available regardless of popularity. 

Yes, yes they did. Which opens up the question "Are they in the humanism business or the pandering business?" 
Its a question worth asking because people will listen to what they insist the world will be, some organisations and people just seem to have that power.
So is the world they want a more humanist one... or more like an echo chamber?

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, he did, he explicitly noted how contentious it was..and with that, waded right in. That was his call, wasn't it? Or are we going for the doddering geriatric who knew not what he did bit?

For better or for worse, the business of ideological associations is a pandering business. Humanism can no more suffer bad pr by having associated itself with and awarded a person who appears to have taken some kind of interesting turn than the catholic church needs another scandal. You can wring your hands over this all you like, as a freethinker - but are you doing so out of a factual understanding of the reality of the matter and through a set of rational inferences?

I'm willing to grant that the american humanist association wants a more humanist world, lol. Dawkins comments in the recent past and present, regardless of whatever work he did in the more distant past of 96 or so, just don;t serve that goal anymore - if they ever did. Perhaps giving him the award in the first place was their mistake, regardless of whether we agree with his positions?

[vulcanlogician]

Yes, race realists and gender realists are really freethinkers, unless you're limiting freethought to the approved grounds right off the bat......you know I love irony and subtlety, lol.

I'm not. Freethinkers can be all over the map. I know this. What I'm saying is that pushing an ideology is not free thinking.

Now you may say, "That means that there are areas that humanism and freethinking do not overlap because humanism is an ideology." And I guess I'd have to concede that point. But I'd want to add (because it's my thesis here) that there is perhaps SOME overlap. Freethinking is about exploring different answers, not deciding on them. I'd argue that you can explore a wide range of questions and still be a humanist.

Out of interest; what is your position on the genetics regarding resistance and vulnerability to conditions like diabetes and cancer?

I guess I don't really have a position. I would defer to biologists or medical researchers concerning that.

[The Grand Nudger]

No argument from me there, they can overlap - but they certainly don't in this instance, if freethought is what dawkins was engaging in..though, by the metrics we're using, he wasn't.

Dawkins wasn't exploring any range of questions, he was asserting a specifically inaccurate claim of victimization. You know, he should be aware of this more than most, the victimization meme is exactly the sort of thing he made himself famous describing. He might want to go see a doctor for that mental infection - it can get nasty quick.

[vulcanlogician]

No argument from me there, they can overlap - but they certainly don't in this instance, if freethought is what dawkins was engaging in..though, by the metrics we're using, he wasn't.

Dawkins wasn't exploring any range of questions, he was asserting a specifically inaccurate claim of victimization.  You know, he should be aware of this more than most, the victimization meme is exactly the sort of thing he made himself famous describing.  He might want to go see a doctor for that mental infection - it can get nasty quick.

I think that Dawkins loses freethinker points (as well as humanist points) with the Dolezal comment. That particular comment reflects the values of neither.

That's not to say that Dawkins really isn't a humanist or freethinker though. According to the standards of the AHA, he is not deserving of an award. I guess it depends on what standards we use if he qualifies as a humanist or not. If we are considering his body of literature, perhaps he does. If we are considering his twitter feed, maybe not.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's not an excommunication, no one deposed a king. The aha couldn't possibly ignore his twitter feed in the age of twitter. That would be a dereliction of their own self professed purpose. His body of literature isn't now nor has it ever been free of assertions which run contrary to humanist values.

They were overlooking that before..perhaps on account of whatever other (conceptually greater) body of work that mattered to them...seems their patience has run out. Dawkins has voluntarily made himself a cancel culture warrior, and worse (at least from their pov), thrown his chips in with the bigots. What else was the aha going to do about that?

[Belacqua]

I think that Dawkins loses freethinker points (as well as humanist points) with the Dolezal comment. That particular comment reflects the values of neither.

Here is the tweet in question:

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.

So he starts off by appearing to equate Dolezal's case with that of trans people. If we give him the benefit of the doubt, we might interpret him as saying that the cases could be equated, but that he isn't doing so. And he's inviting us to discuss the difference between the cases. He's certainly guilty of clunky writing and being careless on a topic that he should have known you have to be careful about.

Worse, though, is that his wording does deny that trans women are women. He says "Some men choose to identify as women," etc. This says that the people who are identifying as women are not women -- they are men who are identifying as women. And the same with "some women choose to identify as men." In this statement, it is women who identify themselves as men, not men (assigned female at birth) who are revealing that they are really men. 

In his "clarifications" afterward he still doesn't seem to realize what he's saying. 

His statements are made so poorly that it's hard to tell, but the real problem here may well be scientism. If he thinks that gender is determined by science alone, and not culture, personal inclination, etc. -- all things that science can't determine by looking at chromosomes -- then he is guilty of scientism. 

For some people, scientism is just an epistemological error. But in Dawkins' case scientism has been his career and is certainly an ideology. So this controversy boils down to a clash of ideologies on both sides. 

Mostly, though, I think Dawkins is just cementing his reputation as an old man who thinks he knows more than he does, and isn't willing to listen.

[The Grand Nudger]

That would be biological essentialism, not scientism, but go off. It's not as if the notion that cultural factors are at play is unscientific, or "not science".

Goes back to a comment earlier - the notion that dawkins, a biologist, is a subject matter expert. He's not. He's a biologist and an ethologist, not a cultural anthropologist or sociologist, for example. When he says that there is such a thing as being biologically male, sure, and that's where his expertise ends.....and if you refer to science, the actual and very separate question of gender in society and all that this entails....begins.

Just as people try to squeeze this into their cancel culture fetishes, others squeeze it into their scientism fetishes.

[Reforged]

Yes, he did, he explicitly noted how contentious it was..and with that, waded right in.  That was his call, wasn't it?  Or are we going for the doddering geriatric who knew not what he did bit?

For better or for worse, the business of ideological associations is a pandering business.  Humanism can no more suffer bad pr by having associated itself with and awarded a person who appears to have taken some kind of interesting turn than the catholic church needs another scandal.  You can wring your hands over this all you like, as a freethinker - but are you doing so out of a factual understanding of the reality of the matter and through a set of rational inferences?

I'm willing to grant that the american humanist association wants a more humanist world, lol.  Dawkins comments in the recent past and present, regardless of whatever work he did in the more distant past of 96 or so, just don;t serve that goal anymore - if they ever did.  Perhaps giving him the award in the first place was their mistake, regardless of whether we agree with his positions?

Didn't see that quote but will take your word for it.
Alright, so it was contentious. So was Galileo's telescope. Not exactly proportional but its still throwing yourself against popular sentiment in the pursuit of empirical, objective truth. What could possibly be more representative of the better parts of human nature than that? 

Oh I understand that. I'm saying thats wrong, I'm saying its not humanism. That whether we like Dawkin's or not it should concern us that this sort of "tow the line" nonsense can not only be done in the name of humanism but against the freedom of expression and against science. These are the highest accomplishments we have and they're being sold off piecemeal like brand names to a company in a merger. 

When someone can literally be stripped of the title of humanist for asking questions it cheapens the word.
It becomes a term used to punish debate and award conformity. How far down that road do you really want to see the word travel?

[The Grand Nudger]

The ideology of humanism is exactly that people should tow the humanist line, even if...and especially when...reality does not conform to the ideology.

That's what humanism is, that's it's goal. Not to accurately describe reality as it is, but to actively change reality so that it's closer to how we wish it to be.

All of that is at play regardless of any disagreement you and I have about whether he was actually throwing himself against public opinion in the pursuit of empirical or objective truth. I don't think he was, you might think he was, hell... he probably thinks he was...but the item of that disagreement is irrelevant to the advocacy and pursuit of an ideology. That's what the aha does. Advocates for and pursues a specific ideology. I think it's strange to be upset at a dog for eating a biscuit. He wasn't stripped of the title humanist, there is no such title, and the aha can't give it out or revoke it. He was stripped of an award that -they- granted, because he no longer fits the organizations goals as they see them, due to a pattern of behavior and comment that is perfectly available for anyone to go and have a look at, for themselves.