Richard Dawkins faces “awkward questions” regarding his ancestry.
But he has expressed surprise at the latest attack, which claims the scientist faces awkward questions because some of his ancestors were slave owners.
So what if they were. All of the protagonists of Britain’s slave trade have been dead this past two centuries. It has nothing to do with their descendants.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that Henry Dawkins had amassed more than 1,000 slaves in Jamaica by the time of his death in 1744, and quoted campaigners calling on Dawkins to pay reparations.
What!?! I mean, really, WTF!?! So because something his ancestors allegedly did, these cretins want him to pay reparations. I think, just maybe, I’ve heard it all now. Dawkins says the whole thing is surreal. He is being too kind, I fear. There’s some serious shark jumping going on here.
Of course, this all hinges on the visiting the sins of the fathers on the sons. I agree with Dawkins, that this is a deeply repugnant philosophy. If Christians are behind this smear, then it is likely to backfire badly. I don’t hold with Dawkins’ strident anti-religion agenda, preferring a live and let live approach. However, I’m right behind him on this one.
He is now facing calls to apologise and make reparations for his family’s past.
I hope he resists the temptation to give into this call demand. He has done nothing to apologise for. The people responsible are long dead.
Esther Stanford-Xosei, of Lewisham, south London, the co-vice chairman of the Pan-African Reparations Coalition in Europe, said: “There is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity”
“The words of the apology need to be backed by action. The most appropriate course would be for the family to fund an educational initiative telling the history of slavery and how it impacts on communities today, in terms of racism and fractured relationships.”
Esther Stanford-Xosei is a cretin. There is nothing to apologise for – it happened centuries before any of us were born. And as for enabling these creeps by giving them money, Jeebus! The best response is to refer her to the reply given in Arkell v Pressdram (1971) and engage in no further discussion on the matter.
Is it April 1st already?
I too am no Dawkins advocate, but the demand for reparations? How about sending these rent seekers the bill for all the British monies spent fighting the slave trade.
That makes more sense.
I should imagine the interest on that will have mounted up a bit by now đ
“Is it April 1st already?”
I was wondering the same thing. Alternately, I’ve been reading a surrealist novel all afternoon, and maybe it’s turned out to be realist after all…
No, the religious think they are on a roll, and will use any excuse.
They are truly vile.
Given that slavery can be traced back over 10,000 years, is Ms. Stanford-Xosei really proposing that all of us, as descendants of those men and woman, should be making reparations?
Or is it only for those whose forefathers were involved in the African slave trade?
The latter, obviously. There’s no race mongering to be had in the former.
I demand reparations from the Italians for the killing, torture and rape of my ancient ancestors. As my ancestors are from all parts of Britain I demand reparations from myself, the Vikings and the Normans, especially the Normans, a Chateau would do nicely. On the other hand I think I’ll just GET OVER IT!!
Dawkins is many things but he’s no scientist.
Er, that’s precisely what he is.
If Mr Dawkins had bought any slaves direct from Africa then he would have bought them from European Slave Traders who, in turn, would have bought them on the shores of Africa.
The slaves were not sitting on the beach waiting to be bought by these Traders, they were taken there, by force, by African and Arab Slave Traders. These Traders may have bought them from other Traders further inland, and so on back to the “source”.
In the vast majority of cases, the “source” of the slaves was either an African ruler, who had captured the them in battle, or by Arab raider, who had captured them by raiding. These slaves would have been born as “free” men and women. In some cases they were born into slavery in Africa and sold on as part of “normal trade”.
So if any-one is seeking for “compensation” for the existance of American and Carribean slavery perhaps they should look closer to home.
But of course they won’t.
jameshigham
You are a stupid and ignorant LIAR
1] Have you actually ready anything at all by RD?
2] If so, have you read any of his popular-science or even non-popular science books?
3] If the answer to both the above is “no” then might I suggest any one of:
The Ancestor’s Tale
The Greatest Show on Earth
Unweaving the Rainbow
or (hard going, even for me as a non-biologist) .. The Extended Phenotype …
You don’t get to be a biological-sciences professor at Oxford, without being a proper scientist (before his “Simoni” post).
Nor as a student of the great Niko Tinbergen (I have his classic book on the Herring Gull) would the young RD have been anything at all other than a proper scientist.
Now:
a]
Shut up
b]
Learn
Ms. Stanford-Xosei should first read Keith B. Richburg’s excellent book Out of America.
And before seeking reparations from Dawkins should perhaps seek reparations from those who SOLD her ancestors into slavery in the first place.
Precisely. However, that would not fit in with the racemongering evil whitey is a racist agenda now, would it?
She’s definitely not a cretin, she’s internationally acclaimed, a recognised scholar-activist, courageous yet eloquent and, most notably, a long-standing researcher, campaigner, spokesperson and public opinion former on Pan-African Reparations for Global Justice. How do I know all this? I went to her website:
http://estherstanford.com/about_esther.html#more
Well, if she says it’s so, it must be true…
That’s as may be. Doesn’t mean she isn’t a fucking cretin.
Is it really necessary to add /sarc?
Yes. Tone of voice and cadence are difficult to discern in written text.
Oh, I dunno, I got it okay.
A classic shakedown. If you disagree with it you are a racist, etc. amusing to see one of our leading Progressives as the victim though. Usually they are waving the pitchforks when a conservative is the victim.
Wonder if she’ll start campaigning against Arab-run slavery and slavers?
Who carried on doing it long after the British abolished the trade.
Particularly as they’ve go all this lovely OIL money to spare?
Should we suggest it to her ????
@jameshigham
Greg Tingey may be ill-bred and semi-literate, but he is right in that Dawkins is unquestionably a genuine and competent scientist. Dawkins’ defence of his (rather tedious) militant atheism is usually based on personal rather than scientific foundations, but in his day job he’s good at what he does.
Well I had made a promise to myself not to get involved in any more atheist v believers stuff but wotthehell, it’s his scientific credentials that give weight to his ‘militant’* atheism. If he was just Joe Bloggs his views would be no more interesting than those of the rest of us but his expert knowledge has enabled him to speak convincingly of the total lack of any scientific underpinning for a belief in a deity, which is why so many believers hate him. They can’t compete intellectually and instead of accepting that and just saying that their position rests on one of personal faith, which no one sensible has any quarrel with, they start in with ad hominem attacks. He has also been on the receiving end of some hostility from feminists but then who hasn’t ?
* Why are atheists always ‘militant’, catholics ‘devout’ and protestants ‘staunch’ ?
Thornavis
Because scientists, and engineers are very used to examining evidence, often in great detail. It’s an essential part of what they do.
Right
We can detect DOWN to … subatomic particles with NO rest-mass (photons) and almost no mass (neutrinoes), and … UP to Super-Galaxy clusters many millions of parsecs away, and back in deep time.
No BigSkyFairy anywhere.
De Nada, nix, nothing.
Yet the religious fuckwits keep on saying BigSky Fairy is “real” and we get messages from him/her/it/them – but we can’t detect those messages.
BigSkyFairy is like the Lumioniferous AEther (look it up) – it is not detectable – and therefore, doesn’t exist ….
As for this “militan shit, it is deliberately lying religious propaganda.
Look:
A militant Christian; right, we know what they look like:
Timothy McVeigh, St Dominic, St Cyril of Alexandria, Jean Calvin who were all murderous bullying thugs.
A militant islamist; right we know what they look like, and I donât think I need to elaborate?
A militant atheist or even secularist (Quakers are secularists, for instance) …
Point out that the religious believers are lying, making exaggerated claims, and are bullies.
Please note this latter, and very important distinction.
A militant Christian; right, we know what they look like:
Timothy McVeigh, St Dominic, St Cyril of Alexandria, Jean Calvin who were all murderous bullying thugs.
A militant islamist; right we know what they look like, and I donât think I need to elaborate?
A militant atheist or even secularist (Quakers are secularists, for instance) …
Point out that the religious believers are lying, making exaggerated claims, and are bullies.
Please note this latter, and very important distinction.
A note to our host:
This will be long and some way off the original topic of reparations for slavery. Feel free to edit or delete as you wish. In any case Iâll probably put it up at my own place with a link to here.
Thornavis
Why are atheists always âmilitantâ, catholics âdevoutâ and protestants âstaunchâ?
Possibly because journalists are always lazy đ
Dawkins is a geneticist, and a good one, though he is also very knowledgeable in a number of related fields, and I can believe he is fed up with being wheeled out to argue evolution yet again with a creationist who doesnât have a clue what heâs talking about. But there are other areas of belief, and spirituality in general, which are not so amenable to scientific enquiry. At the very least we can say that much less is known. In these areas he has a habit of harrumphing, waving his hands about and instead of saying âIâm not sureâ it comes out as âI donât believe it so it canât be trueâ. I caricature, of course, but he should at least recognise when he on is less certain intellectual ground.
Greg old chap, in among the abuse and the incoherence you did manage to make a couple of points worth addressing. Whilst picking through atoms and peeping behind supernovae in search of God, did you find your mind, or dark matter, or the Higgs boson? No, you didnât, did you. All of these things are presumed to exist, but science has not yet found them. Science doesnât proceed on the assumption that if you canât see it, then it doesnât exist (although my late mother-in-law used to drive on that assumption, which was bloody terrifying, because she was 5â2â and short-sighted). The clever chaps in Switzerland will continue to look for the Higgs boson until they either find it or prove that it doesnât exist, in which case theyâll be extremely busy working out what it means for the theory. Which leads us to the Ether (I didnât have to look it up, by the way). The hypothesis that light propagates in a medium called ether was tested by physical experiments, a mathematical analysis of which showed that light could not in fact propagate in a medium with those characteristics. They didnât just have a bit of a look round and say, no, canât find it, must be a load of rubbish.
I am aware that Dawkins does not bomb churches, and I am quite certain he never will. Nevertheless, his tedious and heavy-handed repetition of his atheism at any opportunity suggests a militant approach to his beliefs. You can find people who have killed, or been inspired to continued evil, by every kind of idea imaginable, including anti-religion. Dawkins isnât one of them. Neither are the overwhelming majority of those who ascribe to or defend any other system of belief you care to name.
Most people use their system of belief, or of morality, to guide them towards conduct they can recognise as good, and they must get it from somewhere. There appears to be no universal moral tenet, although morality tends to be steady across groups in close cultural contact. We appear to have no universal morality but we do have a need for morality, and to find an authority behind that morality. Dawkins has notions of right and wrong which are probably very similar to mine, but are in complete contradiction to some other peopleâs, who will hold them as deeply and immutably.
Where do these psychological and social needs come from? They undoubtedly exist. Are they dictated directly by the genes? Do we create them within ourselves by using that remarkable, invisible and little-understood thing, our mind? Were they injected into the DNA of some ancestor by long-departed (and much-missed) visitors from Eroticon VI? Or are they inspired in us by a superior being that graces a bit of our mind we sometimes call the soul? I would be interested to hear Dawkins defend the idea that the last one is the least parsimonious. He would probably do it very well, and I really would like to hear him. It isnât clear to me why this is obviously true.
The human mind doesnât thirst for teapots or pink unicorns, but it does thirst for âgodâ. Which is why I donât completely dismiss the idea that we include some input from a consciousness outside of ourselves. Science doesnât need god, and it will probably never find him, but to deduce from that that there is nothing to find is a step that, I think, it is worth waiting a bit longer to take.
There are many mysteries in the human mind, and our knowledge of most of them is rudimentary, to say the least. Understanding of the development of language, for example, is still at the phlogiston and epicycles stage, and involves a great deal of hand-waving and idle speculation. Even Ockam would have chosen god over Chomskyâs Language Acquisition Device.
A final comment for anyone who’s still paying attention. The books mentioned by Greg Tingey are popular science, they are books about science for people who wouldnât understand the actual science. They donât in themselves contain science. They undoubtedly contain truth. They tell you what Dawkins believes (or knows) to be true. Of course, he knows and understands the work that has gone into determining that it is true, and heâs done some of it himself, but the books donât show you that. Itâs a little beef of mine about popular science, that it often sells the reader too short.
A couple of things, first. Comparing God to the Higgs Boson is a bit disingenuous, science hasn’t just gone off hunting for Snarks, they are looking for it because past discoveries and the whole structure of painfully acquired knowledge of atomic physics has led them to believe it’s there. If it isn’t that in itself will be a positive discovery and there’s the difference from religion, scientific hypotheses are based on existing evidence and can be falsified. It’s really no good saying, well we don’t know whether God is there but we have a longing for him therefore that’s a reasonable basis for assuming that he may exist, that’s much more hand wavingy than anything Dawkins says.
Second, this.” I am aware that Dawkins does not bomb churches, and I am quite certain he never will. Nevertheless, his tedious and heavy-handed repetition of his atheism at any opportunity suggests a militant approach to his beliefs.” Why is that when an atheist argues passionately for their position and gets involved in public debate this is somehow assumed to be over the top ? Yet when the religious argue passionately for their beliefs and involve themselves in public debate they get a free pass. Why is it assumed that arguing for a faith position is perfectly normal and reasonable but arguing against one is somehow a bit tasteless and obsessive ? Dawkins doesn’t like religion and doesn’t want the churches involved in politics and says so, I’ve never understood why that gets him slated as a fanatic.
Right, now I shall re-impose my self denying ordinance and refrain from involving myself in these matters again, for a while at least, after all I wouldn’t want to look like a militant.
Cingram
So
Science does not know everything (yet) – and probably never will.
So?
And your supposed point was?
That believers in Bronze-Age goatherders’ &/or Dark-Ages cemelherders’ myths in some very carefully unspecified way know MORE?
What bloody weaselling, lying codswallop.
The scientists are very carefully examining EVIDENCE (the last thing any religious believer goes near – see M Luther, below)) for/against the Higgs boson.
Ditto “Dark Matter” (which almost certainly does exist)
“Dark Energy” – LOTS of handwavium involved here, along with invocation of “String Theory” – which is more handwavium.
BUT
At least they are making the effort to understand.
Someone wrote it down a long time ago:
“We (The Merchants of Light) make up the noblest foundation that ever was upon the Earth. For the end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes and the secret nature of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.”
And the opposing view, as expressed by Martin Luther …
“Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed.
Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and … know nothing but the word of God.”
Now do you support Luther, or the previous author?
Luther had a thisrst for BigSky Fairy, so did Jean Calvin and Saint Dominic – Isuggest you eaxmine their record of burnt victims.
I prefer a thist for “knowledge of causes and the secret nature of things”
Now stop it!
Your tactics are only too familiar.
Having read enough of your comments here and elsewhere, I feel sorry for you, Greg.
Have you ever read Luther or Calvin? Thomas Aquinas? If so, I think you would change your rhetoric somewhat.
You make Christianity to be completely anti-intellectual and stupid. I agree that a number of today’s fundamentalists are, and I would agree with you there, but that doesn’t mean that the Reformers and their learned successors were or that today’s theologians are.
Calvin tried to spare Servetus from his death sentence, but Geneva’s city council wouldn’t hear of it. (For those unaware, European cities were largely theocracies at the time. Note that the Protestant ‘semper reformanda’ — always reforming — doctrine allows for adaptation over time.)
I have much respect for scientists, but Dawkins’s banging on against faith doesn’t cut it for me. Why isn’t he more scientific in his career? Could it be because he has failed as a scientist? I don’t know. I’m just asking.
It’s interesting that you often ask people to close down their anti-Dawkins comments, yet none of us asks you to be quiet.
Chaps, fascinating though this discussion may be, two points. Firstly, it isn’t the reason behind this post; the demands for reparations for offences committed by previous generations was. An insidious idea as well as being deeply absurd, so worth raising. That it happened to be Dawkins on the receiving end is just happen-stance – my reaction would have been the same whoever it was.
The second point is; these discussions never lead anywhere, do they?
Reparations as ‘absurd’ and ‘insidious’ — agree.
And, yes, agree that ‘these discussions’ never get us anywhere.
Point taken, LR. Thanks for your indulgence thus far.
If I can just make a final remark to Greg Tingey- I’m probably not any of the things you think I am. And whatever it is you seem to imagine I’m doing, I’m not.
Back on topic, finally. The reparations game is a question of having the momentum of fashionable opinion on your side. If the press and the politicians get behind it it won’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong. Of course the claimn is absurd, and wrong in any number of ways, but it won’t necessarily die. If this woman’s already got a hint of an apology from Richard Dawkins she’ll keep at it.
Then he had better not hint at an apology. So far, I don’t think that he has. An absolute refusal to even discuss the matter is the best approach to such attempts at extortion.
Or, in case like this, if pushed to reply, and given no option ….
1] What planet is she on?
2] From above – demand reparations from everyone since the Celtic invasion of Britain ….