Weird Richard Dawkins Ephemera

Ever heard of this Richard Dawkins guy?

I’m personally somewhat sympathetic to Richard Dawkins’ predicament right now, in that he’s a seventy-five year old man born literally in the British Empire and as a beneficiary of same, who has discovered an injustice in the world, and he wants to fix it, but he’s still insulated by these calcified layers of cultural overgrowth, and there’s this very reasonable recognition that the dude’s got some really back-assward views on things. I mean look, you don’t tend to get to the upper levels of British academia by being a massive reactionary.

That said, I think he’s crap at some of the issues he wants to take care of, but there is some good intention and he’s trying for public advocacy on a matter that does actually posess some potentially dangerous power. I think he’s even got at least one good idea, which he’s underscored in his books – that awe in the face of reality is totally acceptable. At the same time, for example, his reaction to Ahmed’s clock speaks to me of a grown man with a child within him that still feels like it never got the approval he feels he deserved. It’s pathetic, but I feel like I know where it’s coming from.

This is all a preface, however, to say Content Warning: Contains Mentions Of Richard Dawkins that are anything but honey jokes and sneering disdain. Also white creationist rap.

Richard Dawkins - Beware the Believers

What the fuck was that, right?

What you just watched is a video created for Ben Stein’s Expelled, a propaganda film that tried to establish the notion that there was a conspiracy amongst the scientific community that was ‘quashing’ ‘evidence’ of Intelligent Design. This video is trying to paste the scientists and science advocates as being bad people.

Thing is, if you listen to it? Read the words…?

This is really badly done satire?

The problem with satire is, that, done poorly, you wind up presenting not a mockery of a thing, but just an example of a thing. Ironic racism is, for example, such a vice because it’s really possible for people to look at your ironic racism and draw comfort from it beliving it’s real racism. In this case, there was a real confusion when this video came out as to whether or not it was somehow, very subtly a mockery of creationists, with their perception of white scientists as people who were smart, and proud of it.

Now there’s some stuff in there that actually does bother me – I don’t like how they turn Eugenie Scott into a dancing bikini girl, when she merits every bit of ridiculous power fantasy as the rest of the mischaracters in this. But it more and more, the more I look on this piece of media as the years slip away, come to think, deep down…

The people who made this think hiphop is fundamentally discrediting.

This is the thing that I often feel when I see people complaining about Dawkins. It’s saying that he’s smart, because he’s got a PhD and studied biology. Well, yeah. That’s a good reason to think of a person as smart – I mean, if you look into his impact in research, holy shit yeah.

This is the community mindset I was raised in, and there’s a lot of weird, ugly, twisted ideas that underpin it. And it’s one that springs to mind when people complain about an old cranky man disliking the TSA.

I guess one of the slight charms of this is that this video is kinda weird and odd in its own right? So I hope you enjoy this little drop of obscure weirdness.