Richard Dawkins

This is the story of the one.

As head of maintenance at a concert hall, he knows the show must always go on.

That's why he works behind the scenes, ensuring every light is working, the HVAC is humming, and his facility shines.

With Granger's supplies and solutions for every challenge he faces, plus 24/7 customer support, his venue never misses a beat.

Call quickgranger.com or just stop by.

Granger for the ones who get it done.

So, what do this animal

and this animal

and this animal

have in common?

They all live on an organic valley farm.

Organic valley dairy comes from small organic family farms that protect the land and the plants and animals that live on it from toxic pesticides, which leads to a thriving ecosystem and delicious, nutritious milk and cheese.

Learn more at ov.coop and taste the difference.

Hello and welcome.

The Citation Needed.

Podcast where you choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now.

I'm Cecil.

We'll be doing atheist stuff today.

So I'm happy to have with me a group of godless guys gung-ho about engaging gibberish.

It's just Heath and Eli today.

Hey guys.

Okay, if Richard Dawkins Twitter was just like,

speaking in tongues, that would be

Ricky, if you're listening, give it a try, bud.

Give it a try.

Also, for the record, this is the first essay we've done on citation needed where one of the panel could have scissor kicked our subject in the chest then didn't

the bouncers in vegas are seriously effective

amazing i'd probably think fondly about it now they would

be out he'd be dead oh gosh well then i wouldn't be out

it would depend on the judge he's an immigrant

if i got like eileen cannon that'd be great yeah

first i'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons who just last week retreated to an hour-long bonus episode on extreme cuddle fishing and i mean cuddle like puggish not like the fish And if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around until the end of the show.

And you get weekly pre-show shenanigans.

You get bonus episodes.

It's kind of amazing for you patrons.

All right.

With that out of the way.

When Tom Feels Like.

Yeah.

when Tom feels like come in, Noah.

All right, with that out of the way, tell us, Eli,

what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event are we talking about today?

Dr.

Richard Dawkins.

I'm taking away the doctor.

Like, I don't have the authority to do that, but he doesn't really have any.

It's getting there.

You don't get doctor anymore.

And Eli, you waited until Noah was in London to write this essay.

Why exactly is that?

Well, Cecil, because he's a big fan and refused to be a part of this episode.

His words, not mine.

Dawkins is a personal hero.

That's what he said.

Tell us, Eli, who is Richard Dawkins.

Oh, if only more people asked that question, Cecil for Richard Dawkins?

Do you want me to ask or something?

Thank you.

Richard Dawkins is a warning.

He's a signpost, both for our movement and our fate as individuals within it.

He is the dead body hung from the town gate of atheism, his flesh sloughing off in the afternoon sun, bidding us beware of our love, of our own intelligence and importance.

He also wrote a couple good books on genetics.

Okay.

Is this going to be this kind of essay, Eli?

Sure the fuck is it?

Sure the fuck is.

So Dawkins has described his childhood as, quote, a normal Anglican upbringing, end quote, which it was.

He was born in Nairobi, which at the time was the capital of the colony and protectorate of Kenya, where his father served as a high-ranking civil servant.

I'm going to need to see his long-form birth certificate before I believe him about anything.

He moved back to England at the age of eight.

Do you own an admiral mine, too?

Like, what's happening?

Close.

He moved back to England at the age of eight, where his father, a member of the landed gentry, inherited over Norton Park in Oxfordshire.

Yeah.

A 210-acre

show.

Yeah.

And he's been in the family family since 1720.

So, you know, typical English stuff.

Just one of the lads.

From 1954 to 1959, Dawkins attended Aundel School in Northampton.

It's like they made up the names to make him sound like more of an asshole.

Exactly.

Like, I know they're just Brit, but.

It's 100%.

North.

Northampshire.

Northamptonshire.

Yeah.

At Aundel School in Northamptonshire, he was sexually assaulted by a teacher.

Now, I say this not to mock him or victims of sexual assault, but because, as you'll see throughout this essay, Dawkins has dedicated a tremendous amount of his time and energy into defending this act, which he calls mild pedophilia.

Noting that his fellow classmates.

I don't know if we should rank it.

Yeah.

Well, I get you're trying to have nuance, but like,

spoilers for later in the essay, Heathleton.

Okay.

Noting that his fellow classmates were abused by the same teacher, he said, quote, I don't think he did any of us any lasting harm, adding, I am very conscious that you can't condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours.

Just as we don't look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn modern people for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia.

and can't find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today.

I save my condemnation for extra spicy pedophilia.

Not by the words of the little chilliness.

Exactly.

Also, I'd like to condemn the 18th and 19th century racism.

What is that?

I do not agree with the beginning of that sentence or the second, literally none of it.

Unless you think that's just someone like obfuscating their own abuse, he's actually been pretty consistent on that pro-pedophilia take.

In 2006, he said, quote, we live in a time of hysteria about pedophilia, a mob psychology that calls to mind the Salem witchcraft of 1692.

And in perhaps his most...

He's not talking about like QAnon.

No, we don't.

We have the right amount of we're not liking that.

Sure enough.

Whatever.

Let me say something bold.

Not enough hysteria about pedophilia.

Agree.

And in perhaps his most famous work, The God Delusion, he wrote, quote, All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affections for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety.

That was indeed reprehensible.

Nevertheless, don't continue with a nevertheless there.

Nevertheless, you can't just say that.

It's like Eli being like, neither here nor there, moving on.

Nevertheless, if 50 years on they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defense, even as the victim of one of them.

An embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience.

End quote.

He has even chosen the side of the Catholic Church when it comes to child abuse, saying,

The Roman Catholic Church has borne a heavy share of such retrospective abrorium for all sorts of reasons.

Relax.

It's opprobrium and don't say that.

Yes.

Just say a word, people know.

For all sorts of reasons, I dislike the Roman Catholic Church, but

keeps

lights unfairness.

He's switching more.

I guess it's fair.

And I can't help wondering whether this one institution has been unfairly demonized over the issue, especially in Ireland and America.

What are you talking about?

It's not...

It's a witch hunt where we found witches.

So many.

So many witches.

We should be aware.

of the remarkable power of the mind to concoct false memories,

especially when abetted by unscrupulous unscrupulous therapists and mercenary lawyers.

Which is it, Rich?

False memories are a bunch of harmless diddling because you're kind of choosing both lanes here, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Seems like would you, would you be cool with it if it was like pro bono lawyers?

You know, like mercy, most lawyers work for the money that they make.

As do most jobs.

I'm a mercenary podcaster, sort of, if people donate.

Andy Hooselbees, after that molestation, which we all agree was pretty cash money, Richard went on to study zoology at Balloyold College, Oxford, graduating in 1962.

He also received his MA and his doctorate of philosophy there.

He briefly taught at UC Berkeley, but will return to Oxford to lecture.

Since 1970, he has been a fellow of New College, Oxford, and he is now an Emeritus Fellow.

But as everyone on this podcast knows, it's his work as an author that would truly put him on the map.

In 1976, he published what is, without a doubt, his most important contribution to science, his book, The Selfish Gene, which builds upon the principal theory of George C.

Williams' adaptation and natural selection and brought the gene-centered view of evolution into the mainstream.

The book is a monumental achievement in science communication.

In a world post-sapiens, gun germs and steel and para Santa Maria's, it's easy to take for granted how good science communication has become.

But for many, the selfish gene was the first book of readable, approachable scientific literature on the subject.

So much so that in July of 2017, the Royal Society Science Book Prize listed The Selfish Gene as the most influential science book of all time.

Fun fact, it is also the origin of the term meme.

Yeah, meme, but some people pronounce it GIF.

Yeah.

And they immediately ruin all their cred as a science communicator and skin book expert and guest on Yim when they say that.

But how much does Dawkins actually know about genetics?

This is a trickier question to answer than you'd think.

As we'll note later in the essay, Dawkins at times has demonstrated an almost cartoonish ignorance of genetic understanding, and his hypothesis on the gene-centered view of evolution has come under fire as our understanding of the subject grows.

Sorry, are you saying you're going to get to some hypocrisy?

I might.

In Richard Dawkins'

perhaps.

Most famously, scientist Stephen Jay Gould took Dawkins to task for his overly essentialist view of the topic.

While nobody doubts the role genetics plays in evolutions, Dawkins is skeptical of non-adaptive processes, such as the spandrels and the importance of group selection.

And while I certainly

certainly won't pretend to know what any of the words I just said mean,

or which side of the argument is right or wrong, it's worth noting that if Dawkins is, in fact, just a good science communicator and not a particularly deep or scientific thinker, the selfish gene, important as it might be, might be an early sign of that.

It's a dog, right?

Cocker spandrels?

Is that?

Yeah, yeah, that's what it is.

So it's, I think it's a dog.

Yeah.

Then in 2006, he wrote The God Delusion, which while not his most scientifically important work, would have the major cultural effect and certainly the largest effect on the people in this podcast.

Again, it's almost impossible to overstate how important Dawkins was to the birth of the new atheist movement and how many people it introduced to arguments against God's existence.

Now, yes, philosophers and authors like Bertrand Russell had made the arguments in Dawkins' book before, but nowhere near as clearly or as digestibly.

Yeah, that book, The God Delusion, it did have a profound effect on me.

I have pretended I read it with so many people.

Now, look, I'm not going to spend too much time defending atheism's position.

That's what our other podcasts are for.

But I do want to briefly address the three major criticisms by theists of the God delusion.

The first, most notably put forward by Oxford theologian Aleister McGrath, author of The Dawkins Delusion and Dawkins is God, is that Dawkins doesn't know enough about Christian theology to refute it.

Which is

fucking stupid.

I know enough.

Yeah.

As Dawkins himself has said, do you have to read up on leprechaunology before disbelieving in leprechaunology?

It's impossible to know if there's actually hidden, elite, reptilian, electraterrestrials secretly controlling world governments and manipulating human history for their own agenda if I just skim the biggest secret by David Icke.

I have to read the whole thing.

Right.

That's right.

And I only know about space lasers because some of my best friends are Jewish.

I would just be guessing exactly.

Yeah.

The second crazy Eli.

Yes.

Yes.

I got you.

Hound.

You approve this message.

I do.

Right there.

Little bag of gold right next to your head.

The second criticism made by a variety of critics boils down to, and nobody actually believes in that shit, especially when you point out how stupid what they believe is, which is one, untrue.

Study after study shows that a significant percentage of adults who can vote believe in an invisible wizard.

What kind of art?

Who literally poofed the universe into existence?

And two, it's irrelevant even if it were true, right?

It doesn't matter how many people actually believe that Bigfoot is Cain from the Bible wandering the Pacific Northwest as a part of his punishment from God.

He can still refute it as an idea.

Those are both made of those theories are some of my favorite theories.

They really are.

They're pretty fantastic.

That's a fun genre.

Yeah.

And last and least is the argument that Dawkins is just as fundamentalist as the religious he criticizes, which, until Richie cuts off my head for writing this essay, is the dumbest possible criticism you could conjure for debunking bad ideas.

You guys are the cognitive dissonant.

Sorry, I was just reading the comments left for us for my other podcast.

I apologize.

I helped reverse Roe v.

Wade because Hillary Clinton wouldn't get me a pony.

Sorry.

I was doing the same thing as Cecil Lisner.

The God Delusion, along with his other writings, his public debates, and his foundation of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, would later merge with the Center for Inquiry.

and are tremendously important to the new atheist movement.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that there is no new atheist movement, certainly as we know it, without Dawkins and his work.

Okay, so so far, Richard Dawkins wrote a pretty basic book about whether or not fake stuff is real.

Sounds real rigorous.

So while we load up the rest of this episode and the canon, we're going to take a quick break for some apropos of nothing.

All right, everyone.

Can I have your attention?

I've gathered you all around because you are the various dictators throughout history who I have been told multiple times have killed people in the name of atheism.

All right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Very excited.

Very excited.

First up, Hitler, right?

Probably worst guy ever.

I hear you are all about atheism.

Yeah, sorry.

I was actually explicitly Christian.

What?

No, you weren't.

You're an atheist.

Yeah?

Yeah, probably personally, but I was very clear publicly that our mission was a Christian mission.

No.

Yeah, that's like a quote by me.

That was like a real quote?

Shit.

Okay, Stalin.

Hey, Joseph Stalin.

Are you here, bud?

Duh.

Ah, so you were an atheist, right?

And you like, you persecuted religion in the name of atheism.

Like, you had a whole movement and everything, right?

But uh, oh, come on, no, it's a it's pretty clearly a power thing, no, no, because

there was propaganda and you made a bunch of speeches about atheism, and I was perfectly happy to align with churches that supported my regime.

Oh, you were?

Oh, yeah, big time, totally.

Chat, fine.

Um, okay, thank you.

Uh, Paul Pot, Paul, Paul, all right, finally, you

were an atheist, right?

No.

Actually, I was Buddhist.

You were?

You killed all those monks.

It's like, I mean,

killed all those, everybody, man.

But yes, novice monk.

I actually lied in a bunch of speeches about being more Buddhist than I am.

The notion that I'm atheist, though, is largely just Christian bigotry.

Fuck.

Okay.

Yeah, no, sorry.

I guess I don't have anyone to kill in the name of atheism with.

Yeah.

Sorry, man.

Hey, why don't you sound Chinese?

Well, I mean, Cambodian, and I think you know why.

Ah!

Where is Camp?

You know what?

I'll look.

I'll Google.

Ever wonder why you have insurance for your car or home, but not your digital life?

Meet Webroot Total Protection, your digital bodyguard that is built for real life.

Webroot takes the guessing game out of cybersecurity so you can confidently browse, bank, and be yourself online without the worry of hackers lurking around the corner.

With Webroot Total Protection, you get antivirus that scans six times faster and takes up 33 times less space than the other guys.

Identity protection with up to $1 million in fraud expense reimbursement and 24-7 U.S.-based customer support.

VPN protection that hides your IP address, personal data, and location from hackers.

And cloud backup with unlimited storage that works automatically in the background.

With plans for individuals and families, Webroot Webroot makes it easy to live a better digital life.

Go to webroot.com forward slash promo and get 50% off today.

That's webroot.com slash promo to get 50% off today.

Live a better digital life with Webroot because peace of mind shouldn't be optional.

So what do this animal

and this animal

and this animal

have in common?

They all live on an organic valley farm.

Organic Valley dairy comes from small organic family farms that protect the land and the plants and animals that live on it from toxic pesticides, which leads to a thriving ecosystem and delicious, nutritious milk and cheese.

Learn more at OV.coop and taste the difference.

And we're back.

When we left off, Rick had some books and he had yearned to the days of completely horrifying relationships between age groups.

Where does he go from here, Eli?

That's a great question, Cecil.

Well, since then, Richard Dawkins has dedicated his every waking moment to skull fucking his legacy to death to the extent that the only reasonable explanation is that an evil universe clone murdered him and is doing it on purpose.

He has so thoroughly and completely countered any good he has ever done.

It is now downright likely that when he dies, he will not be known for his contributions to science or atheism, but for his dumbass fucking tweets.

Yeah.

Same for the guy who owns that platform.

Yeah.

Yes.

So let's begin with Islamophobia.

Now, accusations of Dawkins' Islamophobia date back to the publication of the God Dilution.

And at the time, they were largely baseless, right?

If you criticize Islam, someone is going to call you a bigot.

Hell, when Noah Heath and I read the Quran on our podcast, The Scathing Atheist, someone on Twitter told me I was Islamophobic for not reading it with, quote, an open heart and clear eyes.

If you're doing Muslim apologetics,

maybe don't steal it from Friday Night Lights.

I feel like that just kind of gets away from the gravity of the point you're making.

Yeah.

So Dawkins has always claimed, correctly, I'll add, that it's not bigotry to criticize ideas, no matter who holds those ideas.

Luckily for his critics, he spent the last couple of years focusing his Twitter on people, not ideas, retroactively proving them all right by coincidence.

On August 8th of 2013, Dawkins tweeted, all the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge.

They did great things in the Middle Ages, though, end quote.

Responding to the negative response with, quote, quote interesting concept a simple statement of undeniable fact can be offensive other examples where facts should be hidden because offensive question oh oh oh i have one um so if you kick richard dawkins hard enough in his weird old wrinkly balls he will die

merely fact dear watson whatever you take from that is your own fault I am very smart and not a bigot.

So to be clear, I'm not saying do that with the kicking.

It's illegal.

I'm just naming things that are true, which cannot be available.

Which we all agree cannot be can't be available.

It's impossible.

He actually later doubled down on the implied bigotry of that tweet in a blog post titled, Calm Reflections After a Storm in a Teacup, saying, quote, you almost can't help wondering something like this.

If you are so numerous and if your science is so great, shouldn't you be able to point to some pretty spectacular achievements emanating from among those vast numbers?

If you can't today, but once could, what has gone wrong for the past 500 years?

Whatever it is, is there something to be done about that?

End quote.

If women were so smart, why hasn't one of them been pope yet?

Checkmate.

Checkmate.

Bad at Catholicism.

I always say that.

And it's not just that one tweet, by the way.

In 2018, he tweeted a picture of himself on a bench with the quote, listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great medieval cathedrals.

So much nicer than the aggressive sounding Allahu Akbar.

Jesus Christ.

Or is that just my cultural upbringing?

Sorry, you just went and sat on a bench for that?

That's weird.

Took a self-aid

and was like, you know what?

I like this better than Muslims.

When asked to clarify his comments.

Are you planking?

That's weird.

When asked to clarify his comments, Mr.

Dawkins told The Independent the call to prayer could be, quote, very beautiful, but also Allahu Akbar is the last thing you hear before the suicide bomb goes off.

End quote.

Yeah, just some Muslim guy getting ready to get murdered during the Spanish Inquisition.

These bells are just nice, you know?

They just sound good.

Just the guy with a bomb vest standing next to Dawkins.

The guy takes out a pan flute and some hand bells.

All right, Richard, you got to admit, that's pretty funny, right?

Like,

it sounds nice.

No, no, the vest is fake.

I'm just doing a bit.

Like, from with the thing you said in Twitter.

Fuck you.

But one does not have to look way back to the yonder years of 2018 for Dawkins' bigotry against Muslims.

Just this past April, he told LBC News that he was, quote, slightly horrified at the sight of lights that said happy Ramadan and asked

why there weren't Easter lights instead.

It's because people celebrating Ramadan paid for those lights.

They just got donations and did that.

Maybe if Christians cared about the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, you could have seen Easterlights do, but they didn't.

So that's why.

Get on it, Ricky.

But whatever you think about Dawkins' views on Islam, at least he's expressed them without pretending to be a Muslim.

Something that cannot be said for feminism or his criticisms of it.

Let's talk about Elevator Gate.

In June of 2011, was it that long ago?

Jesus, right?

We're so fucking old, man.

Man, dust is blowing in the fuck out.

Jesus Christ.

How am I alive?

How?

In June of 2011 at the World Atheist Convention in Dublin, blogger Rebecca Watson spoke on a panel, which also included Dawkins about her experience of being sexualized within the atheist movement.

Was he also being sexualized within the atheist movement?

Oh, I get it, girlfriend.

Tell me about it.

You ever sit on the lap of your second grade math teacher my god

the compass is pointed north am i right sister up high down low

not a big deal she spoke about her experience of being sexualized within the atheist movement that night after talking and drinking with the other attendees till 4 a.m watson headed back to her room A man from the group, whom she had not spoken to before, followed her into an elevator and once inside said

don't take this the wrong way but i find you very interesting and i would like to talk more would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee which

is

creepy it's so obviously creepy and if you don't know it's creepy podcast listener Give me a ring next time you're in an elevator by yourself and I'll pop in and say this to you and we'll see how fucking awesome awesome you feel about it.

Either way, Watson had the audacity to make a vlog about the experience in which she said, quote, get ready, everybody.

Oh, this is going to be.

Guys, don't do that.

I was a single woman in a foreign country at 4 a.m.

in a hotel elevator with you, just you.

And don't invite me back to your hotel room.

right after I've finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.

End quote.

Now, I have to take a moment to point out that that was it.

That completely reasonable and polite request that she made without identifying the man who did it would go on to pretty much end her career in skepticism.

And I feel like it's worth pausing to note just how minimal a request.

it was.

She is, I mean, I'm going to, well, actually, I hear Eli.

I feel like it fits in this story, actually.

So, well, actually,

she still does make skeptical people.

She got very good ones.

She still does make very good skeptical videos.

So, you see, that vlog and that request were later shared by atheist blogger PZ Myers, where Dawkins, who I'll remind you at the time, was arguably the most famous atheist in the world, publicly commented the following: quote, Dear Muslima, stop whining, will you?

Dear Muslim, you started, you wrote that ever?

What are you doing?

Hey, dear atheistus,

stop talking like a psychopath, will you?

You're making us look bad.

Are you serious?

Doesn't matter what happens next.

Continuing his comment.

Yes, yes, I know you had your generals mutilated with a razor blade and yawn.

Don't tell me again.

I know you aren't allowed to drive a car and you can't leave the house without a male relative and your husband is allowed to beat you and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery but stop whining will you think of the suffering your poor american sisters have to put up with only this week i heard of one she calls herself skep chick and do you know what happened to her a man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee i am not exaggerating he really did he invited her back to his room for coffee Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so.

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about for goodness sake grow up or at least grow a thicker skin richard dawkins guys until we cure cancer we really shouldn't work on any other medical thing is that cool is that okay uh hey cecil the heat death of the universe is definitely happening as we speak maybe you've heard of it heat death we don't have time for cancer what are you talking about exactly uh what followed was a campaign i can't believe he went back for the word muslima yeah

He started with it and he was like, should I use this again?

Yeah, I'm going to use it.

I like that he signed it, that he was like, Richard Dawkins.

What followed was a campaign of harassment, death, and rape threats that drove Watson from the atheist movement forever.

Not without the help of Dawkins, who secretly made it known that he wouldn't attend events where Watson was speaking, which is pretty funny considering the amount of time he spent defending bigots.

against deplatforming since then.

Not funny like, haha, but like, does this taste funny to you, funny?

Dawkins, by the way, has never apologized to Watson, not for sticking an army of sexist trolls on her, not for secretly blackballing her from conferences and events, and not for what he said.

Though, in 2014, while once again doubling down on his positions about pedophilia, you guessed it, in a post called, Who is Belittling What, he said, quote, there should be no rivalry in victimhood.

And I'm sorry I once said something similar to American women complaining of harassment, inviting them to contemplate the suffering of Muslim women by comparison.

But maybe you get the point?

If we wish to insist

in

the face of judicial practice everywhere, that all examples of sexual crime are exactly equally bad, perhaps we need to look more carefully at exactly who is belittling what.

End quote, and anything remotely resembling an apology ever.

Now you might be thinking to to yourself, I don't think he contradicted anything.

I feel like that was stupid.

Yeah.

That meant that was nothing.

Once again, the beginning half of your sentence and the second half, I disagreed with all of them.

They're all disqualified.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, okay, Eli.

So he harassed and forced one woman out of the atheist movement for expressing discomfort.

But does that make him anti-feminist?

And to that, I say, are you okay?

Would you like to go to therapy like right now in some kind of emergency vehicle?

But no, that's not all.

In 2016, Dawkins tweeted out a video by internet troll and very near receiver of many of Tom's punches, Sargon of Akkad, which musically compared feminists and Islamists, with Dawkins saying of the video, quote, obviously doesn't apply to the vast majority of feminists among whom I count myself, but the minority are pernicious, end quote.

He later deleted the video.

You didn't want to use feminista there?

Yeah, exactly

he later deleted the video because he didn't realize that so-called feminists portrayed in the video were based on an actual person clarifying that he meant to attack women not woman i want i just got to bring this up every time we talk about sargon i have to mention this he got so frustrated with tom

just talking at him that he tried to shoulder bump Tom.

Sargon did.

And that

Tom is a 200-pound block of solid fucking muscle.

And Sargon nearly knocked himself over.

That's possible he dislocated his arm.

I believe he did.

Then he tried to spin it as Tom attacking him.

And we got a message from Andy No.

to our email asking us to comment on the physical assault.

Wait, seriously?

Yes, absolutely.

We did.

That's weird because I could swear that Andy No got killed by a DQ blizzard.

Damn, that's true.

I remember

I saw that in an article by Andy No.

I'm quite certain.

Reference murder congressional testimony

by Andy.

Yeah.

Oreo.

As a result of that cartoon, the 2016 Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism disinvited him from their conference.

That is, until Dawkins bitched about it on Twitter, at which point the organizers received an emergency spinectomy, apologized to him, and reinvited him to the conference, which he still did not attend.

Fuck you.

Side note, and I have to add this.

During this controversy, Dawkins retweeted a meme that retitled his book, The Social Justice Delusion.

However, the meme contained a completely not hidden QR code, which linked to the infamous neo-Nazi slogan, we must secure the existence of our people and our future for white children.

Yeah, Dawkins, who didn't bother to see why there was a QR code in the middle of the picture he was tweeting, later deleted the tweet without apology.

Yeah, shaking his head.

People these days are so uptight about a little mild Nazism, man.

Come on.

Okay, come on.

I just thought there was a fun jigsaw puzzle inside the photo.

Also, how do you program a VCR?

Does anybody know?

Channel three.

But truly, inside channel three, there's like seven channels, though, for different devices.

Every time I scan this, I get a drink menu.

What's happening?

I know.

I want a paper one.

He absolutely complains about the square code menus, I promise you.

But truly, the final nail in the coffin of Dawkins' legacy has been his recent mission on behalf of transphobia.

If you found it odd that I couched my earlier description of the selfish gene in such careful terms, it's largely due to the astonishing ignorance he's demonstrated about genetics over the last couple of years.

Because look, there are lots of prominent folks in and out of atheism with bad ideas about feminism.

But to be a transphobe the way Dawkins has been a transphobe, Dawkins has had to throw his own expertise under the bus.

He's like a former astronaut who couldn't find a way not to be homophobic without being a flat earther.

Okay, on the flat earth thing, I know I'm getting off topic here, but I'll never understand why flat earth is a gateway drug like that to fucking Nazis every time.

It's always some guy just being like, Spheres are a hoax, but then he starts shaking and he's just like,

Jewish, Jewish hoax for some reason.

How do you get there?

How did the neo-Nazis even figure out that that's where that guy's going to get and start doing all those conferences?

Were they just like guessing and going to conferences?

And they were like, hey, the flat earth ones are finding the most gullible people and then picking on the most gullible amongst us so they can convince them of your views.

Just tie your own garbage in.

the business.

It's like the two birthdays in any room of 20 people thing.

I get it.

Definitely what Cecil just said.

That is the answer.

Yeah.

So Dawkins first.

Defines stupid people.

Yeah.

Stupid people.

It's a

simpler way to put it.

Now, Dawkins first quartered transphobic controversy when, in defense of infamous transphobe Jermaine Greer, he tweeted,

Is trans woman a woman?

Purely semantic.

If you define by chromosomes, no.

If by self-identification, yes.

I call her she out of courtesy.

End quote.

Which I have to point out is wrong scientifically, right?

I have a BFA in theater fucking studies, and I know it's wrong.

Even by the most generous possible reading, where you insert invisible words like most and with rare genetic exceptions into that tweet, it's still fucking wrong.

Which means either Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, knows less about chromosomes than me.

Or he is so dedicated to bigotry that he pretends to be an idiot to defend it.

It literally has to be one of those two things.

I hope this frustrates Rick so much that he decides to challenge Eli in a tap dance off to decide who's right.

Anytime, Ricky Boy, anytime.

Since then, he has dedicated a tremendous amount of his online presence to defending the right of transphobes to speak in universities, to teach students whose gender gender they refuse to recognize, and, I don't know, tweet whatever the fuck they want because they wrote Harry Potter.

Damn it.

Why is he defending?

He was, I think, at least trying to be like, no, I'll do that out of courtesy.

It's a shitty position, but like, why is he defending people who won't write?

Since then, he's been like, fuck courtesy.

So back in 2021, he tweeted his.

hearty recommendation for the transphobic pseudoscientific work, The End of Gender, debunking the myths about sex and identity by Dr.

Debra So, which, among other things, promotes the largely discredited male-brain-female brain hypothesis and claims that the field of sexology has been overtaken by radical trans activists.

Dawkins said of the book, quote, if even half is true of what she says about the intimidation of scientists in her field of sexology, we need to support the fight back.

Luckily for us and unluckily for Richard, it's not.

So we don't.

And just this past April, he and Alan Sokol co-wrote the Sokol Hoax guy?

Yeah, the Sokolo.

The conceptual penis guy?

No, that's a different thing.

They did a bad version of the thing that he did an okay.

Co-version of the thing named after Sokol.

Exactly.

They did a version with the conceptual penis concept.

Got it.

Exactly.

So it's hard to keep the shit.

It's really hard to keep the solar.

Intellectual dark web guys.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm painting with a broad brush and I don't care.

I don't care.

Yeah.

No.

Hey, let's be careful with Alan Sokol's feelings here.

All right.

Let's hear what he wrote.

So they co-wrote an opinion piece called Sex and Gender, The Medical Establishment's Reluctance to Speak Honestly About Biological Reality, which takes on the most dangerous of enemies.

The phrase, assigned sex at birth, and includes such monumentally stupid takes like, quote, a person's sex is an objective biological reality.

just like their blood group or fingerprint pattern, not something that is assigned.

And in short, sex in all animals is defined by gamete size.

Sex in all mammals is determined by sex chromosomes.

And there are two and only two sexes, male and female.

Wait, somehow two scientists looked at all the deep knowledge of the human species and settled on Genesis 5, 2.

Right?

I obviously wrote off the Bible too quickly.

And if you're thinking, I just like the bells a lot.

Like the bells are awesome.

It's the bells.

The bells brought them back in.

And if you're thinking, wow.

Did you ever sit in a good bench?

A really good bench.

A really good bench.

With no Muslims on it.

Just a super Christian music space.

Christian white bench.

I'm an atheist.

And if you're thinking, wow, Richard Dawkins and Alan Sokol don't know that chromosomal abnormality are more common than red hair and green eyes.

Oh, oh, no, they do.

The piece has a whole paragraph about how wrong they are, but that doesn't count because how many people could 0.1% of all the people be?

Oh, what's that?

What's that?

It's 108 million people?

Well, nobody tell Richard Dawkins and Alan Sokol about the Philippines because their population is only 108 million people and they're starting to think they're a creation of the radical left.

But to top it all off, they literally conclude their essay blaming vaccine denial on fancy liberal words, saying, quote, How can the public expect us to trust the medical establishment's declarations on other controversial issues, such as vaccines, issues on which the medical consensus is indeed correct, when it has so visibly and blatantly misstated the facts about something so simple as sex.

End quote.

There's much more that Richard Dawkins has done to decimate his legacy since he established it.

I didn't even mention his odd fascination with cannibalism, telling a woman that if she knew her baby had Down syndrome, that she should abort it and try again.

The list goes on and on, but I won't try to catalog them all because after all, our show is published on a two-week delay, and he will undoubtedly have said some stupid-ass shit before then.

Oh, that's a good bet.

And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be?

If you meet Buddha on the road, take away his Twitter.

Beat him to death with his phone.

All right.

Are you ready for the quiz?

I am, sir.

Okay, Eli.

What did I agree with from Richard Dawkins just now?

Ooh.

A,

yes, it's totally fine to eat lab-grown meat using human stem cells.

B, that sounds fascinating.

I want to know what I taste like.

And I think so do you, if you're being honest.

C, for me, I'm guessing tastes kind of gamey.

That's just my guess.

I bet it's gamey, but good.

Or D, well marbled.

Congrats, Richard Dawkins.

Your best take is apparently about cannibalism.

Yeah.

That's weird.

I'm going to go with D.

D, congrats.

That is correct.

It was really all of the above, but yeah, correct.

K, Eli, the folk song chronicling.

This is called A,

More Than a Pet a Feeling.

B.

Fantastic.

Take me to church.

C,

better off dead naming or D,

good golly misogyny.

I'm going to go with Better Off Dead Naming.

Yes, you're correct.

Fantastic.

And you win.

I do, yes, because there's only three of us and I went this week.

So fucking A, what are they going to do?

All right.

Eat.

Would you like to write an essay next week?

And more importantly, do it.

Should we keep this at a threesome?

Just the three of us, best friends?

Okay.

Cecil, myself.

Cecil, you want to close this?

All right.

Well, for Heath and Eli, and an absent Tom and No.

I'm Cecil.

Thank you for hanging out with us today.

We'll be back next week.

And by then, Heath will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then, you can listen to our other shows.

They are numerous.

And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash citation or you can leave us a five-star review everywhere you can.

Like, get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes.

Be sure to check out citationpod.com.

Today, we're exploring deep in the North American wilderness among nature's wildest plants, animals, and

cows.

Uh, you're actually on an Organic Valley dairy farm where nutritious, delicious organic food gets its start.

But there's so much nature.

Exactly.

Organic Valley's small family farms protect the land and the plants and animals that call it home.

Extraordinary.

Sure is.

Organic Valley, protecting where your food comes from.

Learn more about their delicious dairy at OV.coop.

The Man in the Arena by LifeVac is a new podcast from the founder and CEO of LifeVac, Arthur Lee.

Shines a light on real people saving lives, standing up, and stepping in when it matters most.

From everyday heroes to the moments that define us, this is what resilience, faith, and purpose sound like.

Listen today to The Man in the Arena by LifeVac on the iHeartRadio app.

That's the Man in the Arena by LifeVac.

Because doing the right thing still matters.