{"id":309,"date":"2013-04-22T04:08:09","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T04:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/?p=309"},"modified":"2013-11-14T07:30:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T07:30:59","slug":"winged-horses-and-respect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/2013\/04\/22\/winged-horses-and-respect\/","title":{"rendered":"Winged Horses and Respect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, on the academic symposium Twitter, there was a bit of drama when Richard Dawkins (with his characteristic commitment to dispassionate inquiry) started questioning our treatment of weird beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>I think the question he asked is an interesting and reasonable one, even though I think it was gratuitously personal, and so a <em>little<\/em> out of line*:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Mehdi Hasan admits to believing Muhamed flew to heaven on a winged horse. And New Statesman sees fit to print him as a serious journalist<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RichardDawkins\/status\/325957740835004416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 21, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A believes in fairies. B believes in winged hoses. Criticise A and you&#39;re rational. Criticise B and you&#39;re a bigoted racist Islamophobe.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RichardDawkins\/status\/325974098956144643?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 21, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So the question is this: why is it that if a journalist was to say &#8220;I believe in fairies&#8221; their credibility would be destroyed, but if they were to say &#8220;I believed in winged horses&#8221; we &#8216;respect&#8217; their belief?<\/p>\n<p>Consider this paradox:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Those who believe in winged horses ought not be taken seriously.<\/li>\n<li>Mehdi Hasan ought to be taken seriously.<\/li>\n<li>Mehdi Hasan believes in winged horses.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>If we want to deny the first statement, then we have two options. One is that we make some arbitrary exception for winged horses, perhaps based on the fact that a winged horse features in the plotline of a major Abrahamic religion. But why is that? Isn&#8217;t that a sort of &#8216;tyranny of the majority&#8217;, oppressing those with less common but equally implausible weird beliefs, such as fairies? Consider the paradox with Arthur Conan Doyle and fairies. There seems to be no meaningful difference, and I don&#8217;t see a reason why &#8216;mainstream&#8217; religion is special. What about 9-11 &#8216;truthers&#8217;? In that case, statement 2) would be false (substituting in the &#8216;truther&#8217; for Hasan). Why? I don&#8217;t have an answer.<\/p>\n<p>The second option is to bite the bullet and say that statement 1) is false for <em>any\u00a0<\/em>weird belief. In order to be consistent, we need to respect journalists who are creationists, who deny the moon landings, who deny global warming&#8230; you get the idea. Perhaps this is the &#8216;correct&#8217; one, but it seems rather unpalatable.<\/p>\n<p>Denial of the second statement will depend on personal preference, but note that it should apply to anyone who holds a weird belief, not just Hasan. I doubt many would be consistent on this. I like Hasan generally, so I take this statement to be true.<\/p>\n<p>Dawkins himself considered denying the third statement:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Someone suggests he doesn&#39;t truly believe in winged horse but has to pretend. I&#39;d like to believe that because he&#39;s a nice guy &amp; good writer<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RichardDawkins\/status\/325995311241768961?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 21, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>If this really is the case, then it might solve our problem with Hasan, but there are presumably some who really do believe it, and\u00a0still ought to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s the solution? I think the reason we are so inconsistent on this point is that religion still holds a kind of &#8216;sacred exemption from ridicule&#8217; as a result of its powerful history. Once that&#8217;s gone we can treat all weird beliefs with the dirision afforded by their weirdness, and people will feel less inclined to prop up what they know deep down isn&#8217;t true.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>* I think it was a bit of a mix-up. Hasan had just tweeted this:<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/mehdirhasan\/status\/325946781844262912<\/p>\n<p>Presumably Dawkins saw it and thought it was a new article. So Hasan tweeted about an article in which he (apparently) &#8216;beat up&#8217; Dawkins, and Dawkins&#8217; personal tweet about Hasan was a response to the idea that he was intellectually &#8216;beaten up&#8217; in an article in which the author admits to believing in winged horses.<\/p>\n<p>Things escalated quickly and many seemed to think, wrongly, that he was claiming that Muslims should be unemployable:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RichardDawkins?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@RichardDawkins<\/a> is saying New Statesman shouldn&#39;t print <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mehdirhasan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@mehdirhasan<\/a> because he is Muslim. How is that better than when it<br \/>comes from BNP?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/stephenpollard\/status\/325969651358134272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 21, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This uncharitable reading prompted some rather sour replies:<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/mePadraigReidy\/status\/325958280209903617<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/OwenJones84\/status\/325961722944962561<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RichardDawkins?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@RichardDawkins<\/a> You really are an gratuitously unpleasant man.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Tom Watson (@tom_watson) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tom_watson\/status\/325960814441943042?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 21, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and so on.<\/p>\n<p>Nuance and\u00a0<em>thought<\/em>\u00a0is often lost on Twitter, among people who really should know better.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, on the academic symposium Twitter, there was a bit of drama when Richard Dawkins (with his usual commitment to dispassionate inquiry) started questioning our treatment of weird beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>I think the question he asked is an interesting and reasonable one, even though I think it was gratuitously personal, and so a little out of line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,15,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-ethics","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}