Every time Dawkins dumps on religion, my feed is full of people patiently explaining to him how he gets it wrong. And yet he keeps doing it. Is it too much to ask that a proponent of science and rationality should rationally update his beliefs in light of new evidence? Ah...https://twitter.com/ErikAngner/status/1103604440970469376 …
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And there is in fact an analogy with religion: if Dawkins is presented with solid evidence that contradicts his stated beliefs about religion, then rationality requires him to update those beliefs too. Right?
Yes, but that's question begging. The suggestion, I think, is that Dawkins is betraying his commitment to rationality by not updating his beliefs. My view is that's not true if he doesn't consider the evidence to be persuasive (even if he's actually wrong about that).
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Of course, there must come a point at which one says not being persuaded amounts to a betrayal of rationality. But I'm sceptical that one gets to that point as a result of tweets, especially if the people making the tweets have a large stake in the game.
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Not because that means their evidence counts for less - it might count for more (if they have expertise, etc) - but because if you're Dawkins it's inevitably you're going to get 1000s of responses disputing just about anything you say. So what are you going to do?
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Moreover, people don't treat Dawkins with anything approaching a principle of charity. I've not paid much attention to this stuff, but didn't Bertrand Russell say something very similar about Aristotle and evidence? That his teleological approach held back intellectual progress?
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There is a tendency for particular "interest groups" on Twitter to use "we've already explained this to you, we're not explaining it again, why haven't you updated your views" as a rhetorical device to disguise that the matter under consideration isn't settled. That's annoying!
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Example! Consider the way he ridicules the concept of continental philosophy: https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/334656775196393473 … https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/898918753014091776 …https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/1027987434674552834 …
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Right, but he's not alone at all in that. Ted Honderich told me that continental philosophy tends to take an idea, and then runs off a local cliff with it. Derrida was refused an honorary doctorate from Oxford, etc.
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