Virtue Signalling with Richard Dawkins.
Richard Dawkins, renowned atheist and biologist was performing in Tamaki Makaurau last week. A friend posted photos waiting in the theatre to see him live and other than the excitement of seeing a famous person in the flesh the idea left me cold. Rather you than me, I thought.
The man has thoughts to share, I’ve read some of them and found them interesting, but also very dull. It’s like reading a text book. He’s like Christopher Hitchens, who I will happily watch, but without the passion or the sense of humour. Just the smugness.
It turns out Richard Dawkins, is not only a bit of an insufferable bore, but a pompous prat as well apparently.
"Dawkins went on to criticise the use of te reo Māori in Government documents and questioned its use when few people were fluent.
“To grasp Government intentions requires a little work, because every third word of the relevant documents is in Māori,” he said.
“Since only 2 per cent of New Zealanders (and only 5 per cent of Māoris) speak that language, this again looks like self-righteous virtue-signalling.”
Dawkins declares the use of Te Reo by the government of Aotearoa to be virtue signalling - the language of Piers Morgan, Jeremy Clarkson, Mike Hosking, and Sean Plunket. So why is Dawkins using it? Got some tickets to sell Richard?
At some point relatively few people would have stated they were atheists. Does that mean, Richard, that we should have just said most people are religious and acknowledging this small group of non-religious people is just virtue signalling? Is being an outspoken atheist the strongest form of virtue signalling?
People get excited about vegans. They seem to think vegans are wandering around feeling all smug about telling everyone they don’t eat meat. Is it any different when Richard Dawkins smirks about not doing God? Clearly he is saying he is better than those who do.
I don’t believe in god myself, and there was a time when I was an angry atheist and thought it ridiculous we still had religion at this point in history. But you grow up. That teenage anger goes away and you realise that if others find comfort and happiness from a religion then fair play to them. With the standard provisos of as long as you don’t try to control what I can say or do then fill your boots - all power to you.
There was a time when if I saw someone saying something like “I pray they will be ok” after a disaster I’d have thought “well that’s not going to help is it?” Now I just think “me too”. Please note this does not apply to the hollow phrase “thoughts and prayers”.
Is there a greater form of virtue signalling than jumping up and down for decades saying “I’m an atheist look at me”? Well bully for your Richard, so am I. But what does a lack of belief in gods have to do with a country choosing to support the language of the first inhabitants of that land?
How does the use of Te Reo impact your passion for science and truth? It has nothing to do with it, those comments are just degrading and belittling another culture. The first culture of this land, because you consider yourself superior.
It’s like the two Canadians, Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux, who purported to want to talk about free speech. Sadly that free speech seemed to be primarily about the superiority of the white race and mocking the tangata whenua.
"Biculturalism and multiculturalism quite frankly don't work, there will always be one culture that fights for dominance and they will be the one who decides the laws and what the future of the nation becomes.” - Lauren Southern.
"I do not believe in collective moral guilt, I do not believe in the inheritance of the original sin of other people from 100 years ago.
"I wish to be judged morally as an individual, not by my skin colour, not by what my ancestors may or may not have done in this continent or some other continent and so everyone should be free, freedom is the solution for everyone," - Stefan Molyneux.
Stefan thinks we should just ignore past injustices and the resulting current inequalities so he, and other people that are already privileged, can feel even free er. Cool story Stefan.
Haven’t Maori suffered enough already from the people who signed up to be their partners and stole all their stuff? Like a marriage where one partner tells the other they have to go live in the doghouse for no reason at all. Without also having to listen to people from overseas telling them that it’s a nice doghouse, they should get on and enjoy being free, but for goodness sake don’t talk about it in their own language.
The fact few people are fluent in Te Reo is not a reason for us to not encourage it. Quite the contrary, it makes it more important that we support it. It’s an official language for goodness sake. “We don’t want any of that Maori stuff hoisted on us” is what we expect from small minded locals like Craig Jepson, the district mayor of Kaiparara dismissing karakia, not a well regarded writer like Dawkins talking about Te Reo.
Isn’t it disappointing when we find out people we had some respect for turn out to be small minded racists. Like Dilbert creator Scott Adams this last week. Sadly it was no surprise to see Elon Musk jump to support the racist guy once again.
“Based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people,” Adams had said, in a YouTube rant. “Just get the fuck away,” he added. “I don’t think it makes any sense as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens any more […] I’m going to back off on being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off.”
Of course Richard Dawkins, and people like Elon Musk, primary criticise the teaching of the traditional knowledge of the indigenous population, Mātauranga. “Maori ‘ways of knowing’ is not science”, says Dawkins.
Great isn’t it guys to come from a “superior civilisation”, one that brought us microwaves and ball point pens. You’re right, Māori didn’t develop those things and you know what else they didn’t produce? Nuclear weapons and climate change - that’s on us.
Now we’ve exploited this planet so much that it’s very viability for a good quality of life is under threat maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge a culture who are probably horrified at what we’ve done to the place. Even to their clean green Aotearoa, and they’d like a seat at the table to talk about things. To include their voice before we do something crazy like sell the water rights for short term profits.
They must be like - “hey guys, we’re right here we can hear everything you’re saying. We can also see what you’re doing and you know maybe it’s not such a good idea?”
Maybe we should have a wee Kōrero about that, without Richard Dawkins or anyone else that uses the phrase “virtue signalling”.
This is one of my favourite songs, I find it very spiritual, even for an old Atheist.
Very articulate, Nick! I attributed Richard Dawkins' book 'The God Delusion" with helping me move away from fundamental Christianity, which hadn't seemed ok with me and nobody could answer my questions - I was just told repeatedly to "have more faith"...eg: it's illogical, but try to believe it without evidence. However the last Dawkins book I attempted, I simply couldn't finish- the arrogance is too much. To think he should have any opinion about Te Reo is a little strange, and even more so that he feels the need to espouse it here.
I went to see Dawkins the last time he came and it really was a terrible waste of money. He is insufferable. While it was amusing to see that some people at question time thought they'd catch him out with a bible verse which they saw as unanswerable, he just smirked though it all. One of the things I've loved about my career in science is that it made it so obvious what I didn't know and how much was perhaps unknowable. Sometimes people say things like "Scientists think they know it all", they don't. There seems to be something about scientific fame that sends some people off the rails. As a young scientist I heard four Nobel prize winners speak - not one of them spoke about science, somehow now they assumed we'd share their interest in Chinese pottery or want to hear an extract from their novel. While I think there have been some great science popularisers in our time, the fame and fortune approach to science seems destructive.