> Pretentious postmodern nonsense is a serious menace in universities...
I'm not sure what you expect me to object to there. If you don't think postmodernism has caused serious damage and is a terrible influence on peoples minds in the humanities then we'll have to agree to disagree.
> Some event with christians and anti-postmodernists speaking
Again, I'm not sure what you think the problem is. Dawkins isn't saying Christians should be deplatformed. His tweet was doubtless intended to promote the anti-postmodernists; you can't scour every retweet for transitive ideological inconsistencies. Well, maybe people do, but I don't think that's a good use of time.
> The letter to an imaginary muslim girl
Yeah, it's a bit cringe-inducing, but it's clear what his point was: that women in muslim cultures are subjected to terrible things which don't really compare to the problems of sexual inequality in western culture.
> Maybe as an old guy don't tell a woman that her experience is wrong.
Yes, that's one way in which we differ. You're a supporter of identity politics, one consequence of which is that you believe that the truth of statements depends on who utters them. I am a traditional liberal, who simply continues to follow the tenets of rationalism that were in place before the postmodernist and identity-politics movements took over the minds of most of my generation.
I'm sorry, I guess we don't have any common ground here. I agree with pretty much everything Dawkins has ever said. I have no respect for any religious belief in the minds of anyone who has had access to a modern education, and I have no trouble saying Islam is a terrible religion -- you don't have to look further than the treatment of women. There's no need for nuance here -- all religions are childish.
And what I'm saying is that someone who has no experience being a woman, or a person of color, can at most try to imagine what it's like depending on their level of empathy, but it's anything but rational to suggest you know better what that experience is.
And suggesting me to "look no further than how [they/"islam"] treats women is exactly the problem I was pointing out.
Again, I'm also non-religious, but I don't conflate westboro baptist church/mormons/amish with "Christianity".
Once again hugely ironic while criticizing identity politics.
By identity, I mean things one cannot change, like ones skin colour, or race, or sexual orientation. I don't consider being Christian to be an identity; I consider it to be simply an indication of not being a good student, i.e. that they completely failed to understand the education they received in the 20th or 21st-century classrooms that they were lucky to have occupied. Christianity, and any religion, amounts to encouraging people to not understand the world. That is a stupid intellectual choice, not an immutable identity.
> Jordan Peterson crank
What makes you think that I think poorly of Jordan Peterson? This is a website where software engineers -- i.e. rational, logical people -- discuss things. You are completely failing to see beyond the confines of your bubble of modern progressive dogma if you think you can just assume that people think poorly of someone like Peterson. I guess you can say stuff like that around your friends and no-one would ever question it. He appears to be someone doing his best to speak out strongly against various highly problematic aspects of modern culture, in particular the way that anti-intellectual attitudes -- the practice of writing literal nonsense and publishing it in so-called academic journals! -- have become de rigeur in many areas of the humanities (and yes, I have experience of that). Why on Earth would I have a problem with him?
I think what I'm trying to say, is that you are massively underestimating how profoundly fractured the left is. Yes of course Trump is terrible. But there is a very large body of educated people on the left who cannot accept that the left be replaced with the anti-intellectualism and intolerance of the identity politics movement. You don't seem to agree that these people exist and that they might have any sort of valid point at all.
> Pretentious postmodern nonsense is a serious menace in universities...
I'm not sure what you expect me to object to there. If you don't think postmodernism has caused serious damage and is a terrible influence on peoples minds in the humanities then we'll have to agree to disagree.
> Some event with christians and anti-postmodernists speaking
Again, I'm not sure what you think the problem is. Dawkins isn't saying Christians should be deplatformed. His tweet was doubtless intended to promote the anti-postmodernists; you can't scour every retweet for transitive ideological inconsistencies. Well, maybe people do, but I don't think that's a good use of time.
> The letter to an imaginary muslim girl
Yeah, it's a bit cringe-inducing, but it's clear what his point was: that women in muslim cultures are subjected to terrible things which don't really compare to the problems of sexual inequality in western culture.
> Maybe as an old guy don't tell a woman that her experience is wrong.
Yes, that's one way in which we differ. You're a supporter of identity politics, one consequence of which is that you believe that the truth of statements depends on who utters them. I am a traditional liberal, who simply continues to follow the tenets of rationalism that were in place before the postmodernist and identity-politics movements took over the minds of most of my generation.
I'm sorry, I guess we don't have any common ground here. I agree with pretty much everything Dawkins has ever said. I have no respect for any religious belief in the minds of anyone who has had access to a modern education, and I have no trouble saying Islam is a terrible religion -- you don't have to look further than the treatment of women. There's no need for nuance here -- all religions are childish.