Philosophical Vegan Forum

knot wrote:Dawkins is hilarious, and tells the truth as always. Feminism has a loud, radical segment (however big) that has much ideological ground in common with Islamism. By banning Dawkins they only proved his point

It's not a ban; it's a withdrawal of an invitation. By just not giving a position on their platform means nothing. It's their conference, and they can invite whoever they want. Seeing this as a reason to regard it similarly to Islamism is a view not worthy to be taken seriously to be honest.

Volenta wrote: It's not a ban; it's a withdrawal of an invitation. By just not giving a position on their platform means nothing.

It means quite a bit, though. Did you watch the video? It's probably one of Thunderf00t's best (he's just criticizing behavior, not the ideas of feminism there, which is where he has a much stronger argument).

It would be a little more understandable if they didn't allow their platform to be used for expressing those particular ideas -- although they couldn't then claim to be a free speech platform. That would be as if we banned the advocacy of meat on this forum, and banned people who came here to break the rules and do that.
That can be reasonable, although it's probably not very appropriate for a university to be taking sides on these political issues.

...But they didn't do that.

It would be almost understandable (but still atrocious) if they just uninvited people who actually made that video. It would be like us banning people on the forum -- who behaved perfectly in accordance with the forum rules -- but who outside the forum and on their own time did something like that we disagreed with.
The military does stuff like that. And some private religious schools with strict codes of conduct.
This is bordering on declaring thought crimes.

...But they didn't even do that.
Dawkins only retweeted it.

It means either that they're trying to isolate themselves not JUST from ideas, but from people who happen to agree with certain ideas.
Or, even more nefariously, they're trying to punish him for holding an opinion -- or agreeing with others who hold an opinion -- in order to make him stop holding that opinion, or stop expressing it freely. It's a form of censorship by bullying.

Volenta wrote: It's their conference, and they can invite whoever they want.

They wanted to invite him, and then they uninvited him based on him retweeting that tweet -- just agreeing with somebody they disagreed with. It had nothing to do with the content of what he was going to present there (if that were the case, it would be reasonable).

They're either trying to form an echo chamber, or they're trying to punish him for his beliefs and bully him into not expressing himself on his own time.
This is the kind of stuff we've been seeing from religion, particularly Islam, in the West. Using any means they can to censor speech in public.
They haven't used violence, of course, but it is a form of bullying still. And they haven't pressed a litigation Jihad yet, but it's moving in a disturbing direction.
The mindset of the extremist feminists, and unfortunately the academics, is a fair comparison.

Thankfully there are more rational and practical feminists who are more interested in doing good and presenting arguments than censoring the opposition and punishing people for thought crimes, but Thunderf00t is right about the problems of censorship he's expressing.
This should be about a battle of ideas, not a witch hunt against people for thought crimes.

Fair enough brimstoneSalad, good points. (I only watched the beginning, but stopped watching after seeing the video Dawkins had re-tweeted wondering why he doesn't keep his attention to biology and atheism)

Volenta wrote:Fair enough brimstoneSalad, good points. (I only watched the beginning, but stopped watching after seeing the video Dawkins had re-tweeted wondering why he doesn't keep his attention to biology and atheism)

Well, he's a human being, and surely has other interests.
I try to stay out of politics as much as I can, since I think it interferes with other things by creating unnecessary division on topics there's not a lot of basis in evidence for (too much rhetoric and ideology for me), but I can understand how he got drawn into it.

Theists think he should stick to biology alone, since he doesn't have a degree in atheism either.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Well, he's a human being, and surely has other interests.

Theists think he should stick to biology alone, since he doesn't have a degree in atheism either.

Well, to some extend I would even agree with them. If he's speaking as a scientist about subjects that don't fit within his research field, he should be very careful making factual claims or other bold assertions (which he doesn't always shrink away from). If something is not your expertise, you should be very cautious if you have as much influence as he does. I don't want to dismiss his work (like The God Delusion) because I think he's actually right on many things and certainly is a great thinker, but there are better sources for the arguments for and against god from people who do have some actual authority on the subject.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the border between his scientific work and activism is sometimes really blurry. I'm not saying he should stop doing what he does though, just to be clear.

Volenta wrote:If something is not your expertise, you should be very cautious if you have as much influence as he does.[...]there are better sources for the arguments for and against god from people who do have some actual authority on the subject.

True, although I would say that as long as he isn't wrong on anything, he is a very good writer (and funny), so in some sense the most approachable arguments probably rise like cream to the top for people to access due to public acclaim, and his may offer something others could be too dense or technical to provide to the general public.

Volenta wrote:I guess what I'm trying to say is that the border between his scientific work and activism is sometimes really blurry.

Right. But biology argument bleeds quite directly into religious literalism (because it contradicts science), which then bleeds into more abstract or metaphorical religion, which bleeds into deism, etc. It's hard to draw any hard lines there at all, since one kind of leads into others that are buttressing it.

In terms of the political matters, it's the same since those are affecting atheism through the schism it's creating (which he got into through defense of science), and academics (which he is deep in), so oddly he may even be more qualified to comment on this than his more philosophical arguments about god and evil.