Richard Dawkins is feted for his attacks on Christianity. On Islam less so: The outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins was involved in an online Twitter row on Thursday after tweeting: ”All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.” The usual you’re-a-bigot smearing from the Left rather than an engagement: Owen Jones, the left-leaning commentator and author of Chavs, told Dawkins: “How dare you dress your bigotry up as atheism. You are now beyond an embarrassment.” Legal blogger Jack of Kent added: “Following @RichardDawkins tweet, Trinity Cambridge has presumably also produced more Soviet-supporting traitors to the UK than Islam.” The row also drew in historian Tom Holland and Channel 4’s economics editor Faisal Islam who commented: “I thought scientists were meant to upbraid journalists for use of spurious data points to ‘prove’ existing prejudgements”. The proper reaction should of course be to ask if Dawkins is right and to discuss what the evidence means: Trinity College, Cambridge, has 32 Nobel laureates, as against 10 Muslims listed in Wikipedia. Actually, there is a link between the lack of intellectual breakthroughs in the Muslim world and the danger in pointing out such stuff. But in this Age of Seeming, truth so often is irrelevant in the great debates, whether on Islam, immigration, global warming or nuclear power. What matters more is how you seem.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 23:34:39 +0000
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