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 …
-
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.
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?
-
-
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?
-
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!
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.