The idea of Maori myths should be taught in science class alongside the Big Bang and evolution. He thinks—and this is a classic Woke position—that Dawkins should lighten up:
Also that the project of science — no innocent bystander in the treatment of Indigenous people — will be best served if its most prominent voices address themselves to the Mairi, and other such groups, in an imaginative spirit of synthesis and reconciliation.
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The “imaginative spirit of synthesis and reconciliation” would likely be the latest victim of Cancel Culture in that case. End of story. Because while those are facts, they are not true.
To understand the Woke approach to education, it is helpful to see that facts and truth play little or no role in the question of what should be taught. The deciding question advances an approved agenda.
The University of Chicago evolutionary biologist, a Darwinian and an atheist, has had a fair bit to say against the recent move of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine to “braid Indigenous knowledge” into the hard sciences in the United States:
New Zealand is a kind of ground zero for the prioritization of indigenous beliefs over modern science.
Now, it’s being “ed” by the National Academies, a powerful, dominant organization in academia,” he said.
Coyne noted that most of the people on the committee were “not minorities or indigenous people at all, but they have decided that better make a gesture towards indigenous knowledge, because it’s almost considered sacred in a way.‘braid Indigenous knowledge’ into
The braiding lobby appears to have received a temporary setback; The Fix has been told that on May 14, the committee in charge of a study on how to do it disbanded concerns about the study’s approach. Some academic scientists may have discovered that beliefs are almost sacred.
Others were once so culturally dominant that they could shut down discussions of the evidence for design in nature. But now they are increasingly the targets, not the archers.
What happened? Basically, as I said last summer, the Woke have a message for science: Scram. Remember, truth is whatever benefits their causes. Insistence on truths that somehow exist apart from political benefit is perceived as a threat. They respond with hostility.
If Dawkins and Coyne want to prevent mythologies whose promotion is currently useful to the Woke from being taught in science class alongside, say, the water cycle or the Krebs cycle, they present a problem. And the Woke swing quickly into action when Dawkins and Coyne say that human beings, like all primates, are either male or female, so concepts like “multiple genders,” however they function elsewhere, have no place in biology. That amounts to the unpardonable sin of claiming that truth has some existence apart from politics.
If the National Academies of Science continue to embrace Woke culture, many former lions of atheism in science may experience a hard landing. It won’t be Fr. Georges Lemaître; they will be expected to treat with obedient respect but a variety of primeval beliefs. And if Ross Andersen is any guide, they will feel deeply discouraged.
At the dawn of the new atheist movement, the thinkers who became known as “the four horsemen,” the heralds of religion’s unraveling — Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett — sat down together over cocktails. What followed was a rigorous, pathbreaking, and enthralling exchange, which has been viewed millions of times since it was first posted on YouTube. This is intellectual inquiry at its best: exhilarating, funny, and unpredictable, sincere and probing, reminding us just how varied and colorful the threads of modern atheism are.
It did not help that Hitchens and Dennett are deceased. But what’s significant is that they were not replaced.
It’s not clear that the public is more religious so something else must have happened. Possibly, people look at the fine-tuning of the universe and realize that there is a God.
I wrote about the decline earlier this year, noting that the void is starting to be filled by people like “Professor Dave,” who, unlike Dawkins and Dennett, is neither a professor nor even a PhD.
What I had not run across then was that atheism also has a suicide problem, which certainly won’t help with numbers. At the Huffington Post, Stams Rosch, “a vocal atheist, humanist, progressive, and Jedi,” noted back in 2017:
Depression is a serious problem with in the greater atheist community and far too often, that depression has led to suicide. This is something many of my fellow atheists often don’t like to admit, but it is true. I know a lot of atheists, myself included, would all like to believe that atheists are happier people than religious believers and in many ways we are. But we also have to accept the reality that in some precious ways we are not.
There are, of course, many valid reasons why atheists are sometimes more prone to suicide than religious believers. Interestingly enough, one of those reasons is religious believers themselves. We live in a world dominated by people who often fervently believe ancient superstitions and who many times demonize, harass, ostracize, and disown those who lack belief in those ancient superstitions. Atheists on the receiving end of this treatment are understandably stressed and isolated. They often experience anxiety and depression as a result.
Apparently, atheism does not provide much of a basis for standing up to persecution, even in countries where many have laid down their lives for the right of others to believe whatever they want to.
Dawkins seems to have lost his sense of proportion. Now that mainstream culture has moved on from big debates about evolution and theism, he no longer has a prominent foe that so perfectly suits his singular talent for explaining the creative power of biology. And so he’s playing whack-a-mole, swinging full strength, and without much discernment, at anything that strikes him as even vaguely irrational. His fans at the Warner Theatre didn’t seem to mind. For all I know, some of them had come with the sole intent of hearing Dawkins weigh in on the latest campus disputes and cancellations. After he took his last bow, the lights went out, and I tried to understand what I was feeling. I didn’t leave the show offended. I wasn’t upset. It was something milder than that. I was bored.
But Andersen’s real concern is that Dawkins is not Woke. He does not think, for example, that Maori beliefs should be taught in science class. Andersen, finger in the wind, takes issue with that. It turns out the Woke are no more tolerant of atheists than they are of anyone else with non-Woke views. That may be what finally fells the New Atheism.
much discernment, at anything that strikes him as even vaguely irrational. His fans at the Warner Theatre didn’t seem to mind. For all I know, some of them had come with the sole intent of hearing Dawkins weigh in on the latest campus disputes and cancellations. After he took his last bow, the lights went out, and I tried to understand what I was feeling. I didn’t leave the show offended. I wasn’t upset. It was something milder than that. I was bored.