13 August 2013

Richard Dawkins on Islam: finally someone succeeds to avoid mentioning Jews

This came as a real relief: Dawkins tweeted his opinion on the modern-day achievements of Muslims as reflected in the granting of Nobel prizes. I've started sweating immediately after seeing the headline of that article, but thankfully all he said was:

All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.
Thanks deity for Trinity College. We are left out from that one, this time at least.

Well, what can I add to that? Only that I am not a follower of Dawkins, his brand of militant atheism is a bit too alien to me, although there are moments when... but no matter. Anyway, there is no arguing with the fact he presented in that tweet, because:
Muslims have been awarded 10 Nobel prizes while Trinity College can boast 32 Nobel laureates.
Anyone what will challenge that statement, like this Guardian lady scribe who is, according to herself, trying to "parse the painfully obvious fallacy", is doomed to display own stupidity. Oh well, good luck, Ms Nesrine Malik, no Nobel for you for that one.

The most amazing effect of that tweet was the wave of anger, hate and name-calling it generated. Of course, the usual inanity of "old racist white man" and its likes was unleashed in quantity. You see, it is racism to make fun of or criticize a religion (or, let's be perfectly frank, Islam) in the modern PC progressive circles. Of course, the name callers conveniently forgot that Richard Dawkins despises all religions equally. But this is what always happens when Islam is mentioned, so no surprises here.

Update. Oops! I was wrong after all: Dawkins stepped into it!
No, please, erase this one, Mr Dawkins, I beg you!

Update 2. The man persists in that folly, dragging us all into the fray (hat tip SarahAB):

Oy vey...

30 comments:

SnoopyTheGoon said...

And you missed this one.


https://twitter.com/SarahAB_UK/status/366113466127355904

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Sorry, that was my response in fact. Here's the direct link.

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/366113076442963969

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Thanks for the tip, Sarah, the post duly updated.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

You say that "Gurdian lady showed her own stupidity" but fail to explain why. Frankly, her piece seemed quite reasonable to me. Nobel prizes are not a good way to judge a group as diverse as muslims. Even when used to compare universities within a single field they are not always an accurate indicator of the institute's exellence.
So the question is whether Islam inhibits innovation and scientific progress..I tend to say it does but invoking the worn out "Nobel prize claim" isnt the way to demonstrate it.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

First of all, let's start with a simple statement: nothing is irrelevant in statistics. You can state any seemingly inane fact, such as that all one-legged people die, to take a simple example. First of all it is a fact, we can argue its relevance to anything or its contribution to humanity, but it will remain a fact. This puts paid to Maliks' choice of examples that to her may look as ones that disprove Dawkins by going to "ad absurdum" situation. Like "he himself had earned fewer Nobel prizes then every single Muslim who has, that more Muslim Premier League players had scored more goals than all Nobel prizewinners put together". All her examples are valid and *could be explained*, which is the most important aspect.

Then comes the other question: is Dawkins' statement invalid? Why a group of people including the graduates of Trinity college is not relevant for a comparison with the whole Muslim population for the last 100+ years? She doesn't provide any answer to that question, only an inane statement "But insert pretty much any other group of people instead of "Muslims", and the statement would be true. " First of all it's wrong - you yourself could bring up a few examples (Hungarians, Christians, Americans, Brits, pork eaters, etc., not to mention the subjects of this post).

The last remark is about your "worn out" notice on the Nobel prize issue. Fortunately in logic the number of times a statement is used ("the sky is blue") doesn't make the statement worn out. That's the nature of the beast.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Damn Snoop,
Flashing some intellectual horse power here! How can anyone doubt the Nobel awards committee's Olympian powers of discernment, for they are able to see and award achievements that exist only in the future (re: peace prize)!

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I confess - you got me there, with the peace Nobels. Still...

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Never fear Snoop,
I think your analysis was as you guys say, spot on. My Nobel Committee remark was a mere observation directed at those who believe the peace prize connotes a really reaaally out standing moral achievement done only by really reaaally super smart morally superior beings and you know who are, don't you!

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Dawkins is a rabble rouser. Like most atheists who never tire of trumpeting their superior "faith." But when he's right, he's right. Face it, the Musselmen are still challenged by flush toilets.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Yep, I can guess.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Not sure most atheists are that militant, I think that majority of religious people and atheists behave more or less reasonably. But yes, toilets are one of the issues.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Here is the challenge to the Guardian lady:


Muslims have 10 Nobels.
Trinity College have 32 Nobels.
Jews have 193 Nobels.


JEW WIN!!!!!

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Dear snoopy,
While appreciating the dangers in getting into an argument here, I will nevertheless try to explain myself further.

Indeed, the statements about the No. of Muslim Nobel prize winners vs. group X may be true, and their truth does not fade with repetition. But I think that your champion uses this statement to imply causality, i.e::The reason there are so few Muslim Nobel laureates is because they are Muslim. To use your own example, that is like saying: "All one legged men die, therefore, they die because they are one-legged".

Statistics is notorious for these kinds of pitfalls and while every True statement is logically correct, many if not most are either trivial or meaningless.
Tell me, why makes this factoid (no. of Nobel prize winners) so irresistible to you guys?

SnoopyTheGoon said...

No, please, lets' stay with Trinity example.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Let's leave the issue of danger for the moment, I shall mention it later.

As for statistics: it is not necessarily about causality, although about correlation - but I suspect you know it very well. There might be a lot of explanations why the percentage of people who got the Nobels among the Muslim population of the globe is low. For example: the Nobel committee ignores the outstanding achievements of Muslim scientists. Or: Muslim counties tend not submit their candidates for the prize. Or: science is not necessarily supported and/or budgeted enough in Muslim countries. Etc.

Statistics are not there to provide us conclusions, only correlations and observations, it's up to us to interpret those. So I don't see any special pitfalls there, only for people who are untrained in interpreting the observations provided.

As for your last question: re irresistible attraction of the Nobel issue to "you guys": here the danger starts. Who do you mean by "you guys"?

Notice that I was very happy to start with that Dawkins went for Trinity and not for the Jooz (or for Hungarians for that matter).

SnoopyTheGoon said...

My sons seem to have a lot of trouble with flush toilets. Should I be worried that they are clandestine Muslims?

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I couldn't agree more. My personal opinion is that Muslims provide our planet with the very best scientists, musicians and writers.

And that there aren't enough of them around (Muslims, not scientists). Given that latter fact, it is truly stunning how much they contributed to civilization. Did you know that Jacques-Yves Cousteau was Muslim? Yes he was! And so was Moses. And Shakespeare.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Nobel Prize laureates have 826 Nobels. Jews come second.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

And of course the mighty Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau!

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Snoopy;


Oh, I know thew art of correlation very well. A useful tool, that, though likely one of the most abused in History.
As I am sure you know, most people jump from correlation to assuming causality in a heart-beat. This is how our mind works, and even trained professionals sometimes confuse the two.


To put the subject of danger in its proper perspective, I should first state that my Jewishness and Israeliness are of surpassing quality. I'm even modest.
By "you guys" I meant no insult of course. I was referring to the commentators abound, which seam to gloat on every factoid which correlates Islam to backwardness. Although I agree with much of the opinions you state in the Blog, I cannot identify with that sentiment.


You started this post declaring you couldn't be happier we (the Jews) weren't mentioned, but the subtext was clear: our inclusion would have made the comparison to the Muslim world much less flattering.


Finally, I want to emphasize I harbor no feelings of admiration for the Islam religion. It is one of the most oppressing ones around, though in the basics its not much different than the other "Abraham" religions, including our own.
In my opinion, Islam has only a small part in the dismal state of the Arab world today.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

You bet you should.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

That's definitely one way to look at it.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Yes, Clousseau couldn't be forgotten ever.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Hi G,

I absolutely agree with your position on misuse of correlation. Many a discipline (take medicine as the brightest example) misuse statistics very frequently.

Re danger: you probably clearly understand that neither Jewishness nor Israeliness are the "go out of jail" ticket by themselves, but let's let it go.

In case of this post you were too suspicious. My subtext (stress on "my") was that I was real happy Dawkins didn't go the obvious way. I hate it when someone uses Jooz to bash Muslims. We really have enough trouble with Muslims without serving as someone's stick as well. Unfortunately he did eventually, so it all went down the drain.

As for religions in general - agreed.

Cheers.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I've been there. Fortunately a recurring threat to confiscate Mr. B.'s allowance got him reaching for the little silver handle every time after 'stead of only occasionally.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

They do pretty well at suicide bombing, too.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

That's only a part of the problem, first the aiming issue has to be resolved.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

No Nobels for that one so far.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

That's debatable. Yassir got one.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Yes, but he didn't blow up...