Do you guys like Richard Dawkins?

Not really

I didn't know this. Hated him enough already for being an obnoxious fedora tipper, but this makes it even worse.

Yup, he's the one who made up the word for something as vague as "idea that spreads".

He's alright. I see him as self-righteous dork, who enjoys alienating everyone around him, even people who agree with him, like I do.

Reducing evolution to the gene is retarded, albeit it is the main carrier of evolutionary information. The motor force of evolution is outside the gene, outside the phenotype; for animals, the environment (other species, changes in habitat, extinctions, unpredictable events), for humans there's also the social aspect (language, economy, civilization).

Dawkins' portrayal of evolutionary change as a slow constant is also retarded. Evolutionary change happens in rapid and discontinuous fashion, more closer to dialectical movement. With animals, there's a catastrophe (disease, sudden food scarcity, meteorite, etc.) which triggers a rapid response. Human social change follows a similar pattern.

If you want a better ev.biologist, try Stephen Jay Gould, who was also a Marxist.

tbf it's supposed to be analogous to a "gene" — hence "meme"

g e n e
m e m e

KOJIMAAAAAA

He's a good scientist. His critiques on philosophy are amateurish, but I think they do a really good job of illustrating just how poorly philosophy has been communicated, even to intelligent people.

He belongs in a re-education gulag. He's a very reasonable person and has been publicly convinced that he was wrong on more than one occasion. The reason he's ignorant of philosophy is lack of exposure and deliberate suppression of information by the ruling class.

Have you read The Selfish Gene? He goes out of his way multiple times to explain that natural processes are not "the right way" to do things, just how nature does things. The crux of the book is not selfishness, it's the gene. His point is that evolution happens at the level of the gene. The gene is what's "selfish" in that it only cares about propagating itself. The gene will do things that are terrible for the individual carrying it as long as the effect is that the gene reproduces. The biggest flaw in the book is that he doesn't think that "individual" organisms can form larger groups and be selected on that basis, but the book still has a lot of value in explaining the mechanics of evolution.

He's not a notable scientist. What has he actually published in a journal since his work on wasps in the early 1970's? Selfish Gene was the popular press.

"Meme" idea existed in dozens of forms since Darwin, and was expressed already in multiple schools of thought. He didn't even invent the term as used. It even founded a psuedoscientific micro-discipline, consisting primarily of known charlatans.

He's part of the general scientism movement of public "intellectuals" who reject philosophy and insist it has been supplanted by science.

Token displays of agreeableness mean nothing when you operate solely within pure ideology.

He peddles anti-humanism, cloaked in "rationalism". These retards are paving the way for techno-fascism, and are too arrogant, bought off, and autisitic to see it.

What do you mean by anti-humanism?

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I think he's okay. I've read most of his books and they're pretty good. Ancestor's tale was a comfy natural history book. I like how he pokes the fire of evolution and science denial, it's not a problem that can be ignored. He also pisses off christfags and atheists who have some bizarre respect for religion, which I find amusing. I don't worship him, but in the binary mindset of the internet I either suck his cock or want to light him on fire.

But genetic mutations are literally the only thing that allows evolution user. Random mutations occur which produces variation in a population, which then gives natural selection a disparity between individuals to select for or against.

Dawkins and literally anyone who paid attention in highschool biology is well aware of this, it's official name is Punctuated Equilibrium. Evolution works in many ways, from slow genetic drift to the rapid punctuated equilibrium mentioned. There's no reason evolution can only happen via one method, it is literally all of them at the same time.

You're a fucking idiot who doesn't know what you're talking about. Go read a bio textbook.

plz

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Evolutionary_Theory

Society evolves too. Dawkins actually mentions this explicitly though and confines the book to biological evolution. He did coin the term meme after all.

Yeah, he literally mentions it in The Selfish Gene, although when he initially wrote the book it wasn't as developed as it became later. I read TSG in a later edition, and in the foreword Dawkins acknowledges that in that respect in particular some of TSG is obsolete. Punctuated Equilibrium doesn't actually change any of the major points of TSG so he didn't change it much.

kys

I'm linking you Gould's polemic work, where he and Dawkins differ. There's no single, unified punct. eq. theory.

Oh please.

/thread

Agree with all this but:

what did you meme by this?

lol relax everyone I meant "secular humanism" and flag related is weirdly inhuman

You made invalid claims and I refuted them, what exactly was I ignoring?

I honestly have no idea what anyone is talking about now. The original post was bitching about The Selfish Gene, which has nothing to do with society but biological evolution. I don't know how the fuck societal evolution got thrown in the mix but I never commented on it either way.

Punctuated equilibrium in no way invalidates the Selfish Gene. This is making a false dichotomy that evolution must work in only one "way". Also Gould is not the end all be all of evolutionary theory, just because he disagreed with Dawkins on some points doesn't mean he was correct.

I like him as a parody of science and atheism. If he didn't exist we would have to make our own memes.

Yes, he's really only a victim, we should avoid triggering him by philosplaining.

Fuck no. Terrible awful technocratic minded scum bag

Has done nothing interesting since his meme theory/selfish gene autism (which is very compelling regardless of your stance on neo-darwinism)

His spiritual predecessor Bertrand Russell is a beautiful mind we did not deserve at all who would have laughed at Dawkins simple minded rejection of philosophy

I think a lot of you are unfairly judging him from his 2010 era fanbase

Don't worry, the four horsemen of new atheism manage to be retards on their own.

this tbh

Holla Forums is actually full of christfag liberals larping as commies. You can tell by the way any time someone mentions religion or irreligion the fedora posters come out.

I respect him as a biologist

but when he tries to delve into philosophy or tries to plaster evolutionary biology over sociology it's just pretentious and wrong

you need to keep in mind that someone might be good in his field, but extremely retarded outside it. remember that the guy that invented pcr is an aids and climate warming denialist, and also believes in astrology

I like him a lot and I also like how he triggers SJWs. As non-idpol leftists we have a lot to learn from the New Atheists that were able to BTFO them.

I wish we kind of had our own Richard Dawkins.

Yeah, it's retarded to reduce evolution to the gene. That's why we reduce it to the genome :^)

Pretty based.

ITT: Philosofuckers get buttmad when he BTFOs their delusional claims

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What a moron.

"These ideas foreshadowed the discovery of evolution, Freud's concepts of the libido and the unconscious mind, and evolutionary psychology in general."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer

"Schopenhauer also developed some ideas that can be found in the theory of evolution, before Darwin began to publish his work, for example the idea that all life strives to preserve itself and to engender new life, and that our mental faculties are merely tools to that end. However, he saw species as fixed. His respect for the rights of animals – including a vehement opposition to vivisection – has led many modern animal rights activists to find in him a precursor of their positions. He thought of animals and humans as both being objectifications of the same underlying Will."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_Will_and_Representation

This. Ideas like evolution and abiogenesis were thought-out long before Darwin.

"I think that man was formed by the action of the heat of the sun upon the mud… Say what you like, but everything is more or less organized matter. When I have had stags cut open in hunting, I saw that their interior was like that of man, Man is only a more perfect being than dogs and trees. Plants are the first link in the chain of which man is the last. I know this is contrary to religion, but it is my opinion. We are all matter. Man was created by a certain warmth in the atmosphere." - Napoleon Bonaparte in Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena

Aristotle also debated another Greek philosopher (I cant remember which at the moment, maybe Democritus) and Aristotle's position was anti-evolution against the other guys pro evolution stance.

The idea is as old as knowledge it self.

Doesn't surprise me.

Plato: Let's build a society based on common ownership.
Aristotle: Whoa buddy, calm down there, what about HUMAN NATURE?!?

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Go read the selfish gene, there is nothing worse than a leftist who doesn't even understand evolution.