Interesting Links for 14-05-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Why is Richard Dawkins talking about Cultural Christianity?

(tags:society islam bigotry OhForFucksSake religion atheism ChurchOfEngland uk RichardDawkins )

2. Brain abnormalities in survivors of COVID-19 after 2-year recovery: a functional MRI study

(tags:pandemic brain doom )

3. PFI means that school meals are too expensive and too small

(tags:money school food children business OhForFucksSake )

4. What Your Favorite '90s Band Says About the Kind of Bored Suburban Mom You Are Today

(tags:women age music funny )

5. Autonomous F-16 Fighters Are Roughly Even With Human Pilots

(tags:ai airplanes military automation flying )

6. Overdue Edinburgh library fines to be scrapped as £50k in charges to be wiped

(tags:edinburgh library )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

He's an odd character that Richard Dawkins.

I remain hugely influenced by the Blind Watchmaker and the Selfish Gene. Perhaps the single most important things I've read. And he gave Douglas Adams' eulogy and married Tom Baker's ex. So there's that.

But he seems very agitated of late.

[andrewducker]

Same here.

I was originally in favour of the whole Sceptic movement and New Atheism, but it was all very combative and black and white, and while I'm still instinctively anti-religion I try not to take that out on individuals too much, or to focus on the specifics of any one religion. Dawkins becoming specifically anti-islamic is a real shame.

[danieldwilliam]

Yeah, al of that on the Sceptic movement. I think secularism and anti-clericism are more important to me in the public sphere than atheism. Atheism is a private matter and I'm more interested in how people I know behave than whether the ethical well spring for that behaviour is religion or some other philosophical underpinning or simply instinct and good manners.

Dawkins does seem particularly exercised by his anti-Islam position in a way that I don't think he is quite so much by American Evangelical Fundamentalism or Hindu nationalism or other similar religious movements.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. In the macro I'm not in favour of religion. But most of the time I don't care about that nearly as much as "Is the person a decent one."

[channelpenguin]

Exactly

[emceeaich]

Because Dawkins has not taken a hint from Daniel C. Dennet.