Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

of all the man's legendary tweets i had not seen this one until right now

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/389432783304548352

First response HOF there, too.

british "secularists" group angry at labour shadow home secretary for implying the police might have biases when handling anti-muslim hate crimes
https://twitter.com/sajeraj/status/780770763745980416

what a bunch of nice pro-police people

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/richard-dawkins-atheism-criticism-atheist-study-rice-university-science-scientists-a7389396.html

(Mostly for the headline)

This was passed over at the time, probably because it looked like straight trolling:

Why fiction? What, when you think about it, is so special about things that never happened?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/03/what-is-so-special-about-things-that-never-happened-richard-dawkins-on-fiction-v-science

I had a friend in my early teens who used to rail against fiction because it was 'made up nonsense'. Nice to think he was expressing thought that would one day be taken seriously.

There's a condition known as aphantasia where the person having it has no "mind's eye," as in they can't picture sights, sounds, smells in the mind outside of literal fact-based representations. so if you say "imagine sheep jumping over a fence" they understand what you mean, but can't visualize.

There's a pretty strong correlation with disinterest in reading fiction. One of the first people I ran into who thought fiction wasn't worthwhile was my friend's sister -- and he (my friend) later admitted he has aphantasia, so it stands to reason that might be the case with his sister.

Dawkins probably just has his head up his own ass, though.

Dawkins' position on fiction aligns with that of a lot of hardcore biblical literalists

It's something I wonder about - do people have deeply different experiences than me? I see people claim they don't experience the impression of 'choice/free will', and I find that harder to imagine. Harder still are consciousness deniers, which I find incoherent. There's some stuff done about whether people think in pictures, words etc., but apparently their brains are doing similar things. But I don't doubt their report of a different experience.

i see the "it's fictional" argument all the time, often on message boards that devote a lot of time and energy to serious and passionate discussions of Batman and the various Cinematic Universes.

imo it's less an argument than an excuse

I hate to defend Dawkins, but the quote is a lot more reasonable in context.

"Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot” soliloquy is often quoted, and if Sagan were still alive, I’d nominate him for the Nobel prize in literature. The availability of other Nobels for science should not rule scientists out for the literature prize, in competition with fiction. Why fiction? What, when you think about it, is so special about things that never happened?"

He's not dismissing fiction. He's asking why fiction tends to be privileged over non-fiction in the awarding of literary prizes. Why is it "special" in that sense? I don't think it's necessarily a good point, but it's not like he's expressing some weird literalist hostility about the value of made-up things.

because it's called literature and very few scientific works are good works of literature, let alone great ones

dawkins can't craft language worth shit

He's a big fan of Fred Hoyle's Black Cloud and he's a fan of the bible as far as the prose.

He's not dismissing fiction. He's asking why fiction tends to be privileged over non-fiction in the awarding of literary prizes. Why is it "special" in that sense? I don't think it's necessarily a good point, but it's not like he's expressing some weird literalist hostility about the value of made-up things.

― jmm

it's true that tweets are grossly underrepresented when it comes time to hand out the literary prizes.

He's asking why fiction tends to be privileged over non-fiction in the awarding of literary prizes.

Mommsen won the Nobel lit prize for his histories, but he is the most prominent exception and that was a long time ago. Historians tend to have their own prizes, where non-literary qualities can be considered in addition to literary qualities.

As for science, winning a literary prize for one's scientific writing would gain you zero respect among your science peers beyond the respect they already had for the quality of your scientific work. The addition of literary effects to one's science writing is more likely to reduce its value to other scientists than to add anything they value. Dawkins, who is a popularizing author of 'science' books, is just indulging in a bit of wishful thinking that his books might deserve consideration as anything literarily special. But he's an egoist who probably thinks his books are the essence of greatness.

jmm otm

reminds me of the joke on twitter about all these tech dudes who hold up three or four tech guys as "great essayists"

so uh, what other essayists have you read, guys?

I wouldn't be surprised if Dawkins was asked for writing he likes only to get some challopsy thing where he lists all kinds of semi-religious fiction he likes but strongly disagrees with the premise of

"I uh, really love the literary style of The Screwtape Letters"

Non-fiction writer Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel last year, ffs.

Nestling/grumbling somewhere underneath his 'why fiction' comment is the idea/fear that fiction will misinform people about reality, and therefore they will make bad choices or will have someone else controlling them (using novels).

this guy is a p big butthead imo

The idea that non-fiction is 'real', but fiction is 'not real', is based on a highly simplistic analysis that can at best be called naïve, at worst childish.

lol

Postmodernist! (x-post)

We knows how Dawks feels about Pomo

Also what about mimesis, art of making a person out of words or stone or whatever that mimics a real person, etc

lol @ what dawkins quotes as incredible prose ("look at this"):

The only faith we need for the journey is the belief that everything can be understood and, ultimately, that there is nothing to explain ... We are almost there. Complete knowledge is just within our grasp. Comprehension is moving across the face of the Earth, like the sunrise.

what a fuckin zealot

Is that from interstellar or something

that is a really fucked up view contrary to scientific exploration imo

"complete knowledge" my ass

appears to be an excerpt from "The Creation" by P.W. Atkins

shades of thanatos imo in and, ultimately, that there is nothing to explain

"complete knowledge" my ass

― mh

maybe he's just a john hodgman fan

why r u guys continuing this discussion as if jmm's post upthread isn't there? all the insinuations you're making only make sense out of context, in context Dawk's just saying he likes Carl Sagan's writing and hey why couldn't he win a Nobel for Literature one day? (not that we should give him the benefit of the doubt for not holding awful opinions on every topic, given the record, but it seems kind of opportunistic to assume he believes "the idea/fear that fiction will misinform people about reality, and therefore they will make bad choices or will have someone else controlling them" when he's said no such thing!)

anyways, I do think really good technical or scientific non-fiction (opposed to Alexievich which is still very dramatic & human in subject matter) could win a fancy literary prize. something like Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality, maybe?

You're absolutely right about the quote people are piling on, but I figure Dawks is such a willful misreader himself he probably deserves whatever he gets

we acknowledged that and moved on to pondering what kind of prose Dawkins thinks is good writing -- which is as much an indicator of literature quality as the content matter

the truth is that Dawkins doesn't know what makes for good prose and thinks the subject matter is where it's at

Sagan's writing was pretty good, if workmanlike, and no single work really holds up as an example of great literature. Sagan being dead probably means his writing style isn't going to become much better.

The Nobel prize for literature is kind of ridiculous and I think nearly anything has a shot, though!

fwiw I think Sartre's disinterest in accepting the Nobel speaks to Dawkins's interest in the same -- Dawkins values it as a platform from which to speak and thinks enshrining ideals and the ideas in scientific works of writing is symbolically valuable

if only they had nobel prizes for advancements in scientific knowledge + content

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyrvYGtW8AAsi70.jpg

omg

loooool

when i debate with my religious family members, i'm not debating just them. i'm also debating God. so fuck me.

I assume by "literature" he means "souls."

wkiw tbh

jesus imagine wasting some of the precious gift of life sitting and reading The God Delusion

I'm sure dermatologists see such outbreaks of atheists all the time. Probably just allergies.

Recently heard Dawkins talking about one of his favorite recent science fiction stories about virtual reality but I never recognized or remembered the author's name.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1791656952
Interesting sounding book about Iris Murdoch on Plato's dislike of art.

Was that his conversation with Sam Harris? He mentions Counterfeit World by Daniel F. Galouye.