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! Moderator Note Closing this for now, mostly because someone has reported every post with a counter stance to their own. It will take a while to sort this out, what with us being a volunteer staff and all.

No. And dislike of Jews would not likely be considered racism either, as Jews are not generally considered a 'race'. On the other hand, someone certainly could consider Jews a race, as 'race' is not necessarily based on biology. Bigotry, racism and antisemitism are basically the same behaviors toward a group, it is just that racism focuses prejudice against a race, antisemitism focuses prejudice against Jews, and bigotry focuses prejudice against anybody you'd like.

This is word salad. There is nothing to respond to here.

The ironic thing is there's more bias coming from the OP about science than we're likely to find within science itself.

Something circular about all this. Saying sciences are philosophically biased towards a physicalist worldview is like saying lawyers are biased towards a legalistic worldview. Yawn.

I don't think it's any different to saying 'anti-Muslim'' or anti-Christian'. If you look over a couple of millennia, the statistical odds of finding periods of focused, systemic persecution for any specific group are pretty good. It's much easier to find data to support a historical narrative if the timespan is long enough. Deliberate cognitive bias on the part of pro-Zionist historians, methinks. Edited to add: If I focused your attention on only the periods I was persecuted, omitting intervening periods of calm, I can make it appear that I have been continuously persecuted. This is the mirage they have managed to communicate, and very effectively.

Yes I think it's the case that racism was certainly elevated to an ideological, moral, pseudoscientific footing in the c.19th. It helped to justify the competitive colonialism of the period. But before that time there seems little doubt people tended to have what we would now see as a racist outlook. After all, the slave trade was predicated on the notion that black Africans could be treated as subhuman. I also think the Four Horsemen of New Atheism indeed tried, for a while, a kind of evangelical promotion of atheism as a replacement for religion. I've even come across a film they produced, designed to inspire awe in the grandeur of nature and to ridicule traditional religion (silly cartoon animation of hell, with little devils with pitchforks). I think the idea was to appeal to that part of human nature that is satisfied by religious feeling, but it was hopelessly cack-handed and crude. This idea was never progressed, thank goodness. But your attempt to connect this to so-called "cancel culture" strikes me as unpersuasive. In universities there have always been controversies over what speakers to invite and protests over it. I remember this from Oxford in the 1970s. The irony is that this term, invented by the far-Right as a stick to beat the Left with, describes a practice that is now used as much by the Right as the Left, for example in the banning of various books from American school libraries. But this is not generally about religion (though some Right wing US school boards ban Romeo and Juliet because there is too much sexual language). I asked you earlier on this thread for examples of religious speakers being "cancelled" and got no response. I've never come across this and doubt it is really a thing.

So basically a one-off. Low-risk. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASE_jumping

Isn’t this a function of the reach of social media? Facebook had ~1 million users in 2004. Twitter didn’t exist in 2005. If you can’t advertise your opinion and make your employer look bad, what’s to cancel? Citation needed

No, I want you to admit you were wrong and not pretend you were saying all along that this was an issue prior to 2005.

Paulsrocket has been banned for really bad faith arguments (like you can't trust science because it's always changing).

Anti-Semitism, as a concept, was invented by Zionists around the late 19th century. Prior to that, native Palestinians, which includes Jews and other denominations, got on just fine as a collective. It was necessary for the Zionist-aspirants to create ethnic/religious conflicts in order to achieve their mono-cultural, exclusionary, fascist goals.

Yes I am suggesting that Dawky's encouragement to disrespect other's opinions at the 2002 Ted talk has contributed to intolerance. I mean what other effect could it have? "Stop Being damned Respectful" means stop being damned respectful GIAN🙂XXX MOONTANMAN It's silly to critique religion if using a stupid methodology, same way It's stupid to try to critique science by using a skipping rope. It's not critique that's wrong, critique is never wrong. It's the methodology the Dawk uses that's wrong. GIAN🙂XXX

The word Dawky used in "2002" was "disrespect." I'm not aware that disrespecting racists or anyone else's opinions actually changed those opinions. What Dawk should have said was something like "We need to sharpen our arguments and counter-argue religion even more strongly." There is no argument inside "disrespect" of other people's perspectives, any more than there there's a valid argument inside some men's disrespect of women. Disrespect is an act of violence, not reason. So yes, Dawky was actively encouraging cancel culture, and if he doesn't like it now he's only himself to blame. Plus of course, Dawky's critique of religion is especially useless, becasue he's critiquing something which really is not there. What constitutes religion is something else entirely from what he's concocted in his ridiculous God Delusion book, for the sole purpose of having something he can then not believe in. Extraordinary. And putting creationist beliefs to children alongside science is an exceptionally good idea. Argument with counterargument is the most important thing children need to learn, they enjoy argument and they're always very good at it. In other words, if you've been able to work out Creationsim is nonsense, shouldn't you want to give children the equipment they need to do the same? Becasue if schoolteachers don't... someone else will won't they? If creationsism were taught alonside science in school, you'd probably find there'd be alot less creationsim and not more of it. Cheerz GIAN😊XXX

Cancel Culture has certainly not always been there or not on the scale it is now; I don't recall anyone before about 2005 losing his job because of opinion. Debate was always sacred at university and the phrase "He's entitled to his opinion" was widely used and went without saying. Richard Dawkins has been cancelled for simply expressing a point of view several times, and even if his ideas are stupid, cancelling him is even more so. The whole point of argument and debate is to overthrow not elevate nonsense; it's difficult to debate it without mentioning it. In order for you to decide that cowboys and aliens is nonsense, the concept had to be there for you to disagree with it. I repeat, if you don't teach the children to discern that Cowboys and aliens is bs, someone else will. And as for Creationism, that is already very much there in the public consciousness. So if you don't give the children proper critical skills they're sunk. Why do you think all these conspiracy theories are so popular? Why do you think people are so susceptible to any old bs on the internet? It's because children are not being taught proper critical analysis. What they're being pumped full of are other people's agendas. And inevitably - you can see this for yourself - Noam Chomsky is so right that the people most "educated" are those who are most willing to accept damned stupid ideas. The reason is that more "education" in our society = more brainwashing You won't find many construction workers on a building site who believe in Q-anon. cheerz GIAN😊XXX PS On your point about teaching creationsim and religion alongside science, one can state that it is true the Earth was formed about 4.5billion y ago, while also stating it is true that Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street. They're both true.

And do you want to go back to a time when people were burned at the stake for their opinions? And at least Joan of Arc was given a hearing, and both sides were able to express their opinion and hear the other's. There was no "We feel physically intimidated by being in the same building as Joan of Arc so we're not even going to let her speak" which is similar to what happened at Manchester "University" recently.

OK... in archaeology, there is no author, and probably there is no subject, but between those two, there certainly must be some folks living nowadays with seriously wrong things with them...

Sounds like you need to make some friends mate🙂 Disliking, say, communism is not racism is it? The dislike of Jews and Judaism was not racism, there was no such thing before the 19thC. As I've stated elsewhere, if, in the middle ages, Jews converted to Christanity -which they frequently did- the Christian Churches had no further problem with them. Why would they? That approach would not of course have counted for anything in National Socialist Germany, where it really was about race, nor it would seem with some others in this discussion thread. Given that they all purport to believe in evidence-based rational analysis, I'm left in a state of shock. Cheerz GIAN🙂XXX

Apologies Hun, I meant no disrespect ❤GIAN

I have to post this. It's taken me 2 decades. The Humanities is a science. A 5-field science. But one of those fields is not plate Techtonics or volcanism. Asia, Europe and the Lavant, have Vesuvius, as a time marker, now there is a strange scientific marvel! (but it's not a good time marker in pre-historic studies) America has Yellowstone, as a geo-fault oddity, and as a time marker it has to be considered! (but it's not a good time marker in historic studies) It can be toasted, that the complete depiction of human history can be summed up as an extraterrestrial ELE (Extinction Level Event) which buried the earth and all its inhabitants sometime in the pre-historic time frame. It is very, very hard to tell an archaeologist that they are wrong. It is even harder to tell them that all things on earth are retroactive and repeat with nauseating repedity. But that's the science, and without some geologists help, we are going to get stuck in this timeframe a long time, and that isn't good from the looks of things. So... when are these academic professors, going to allow us backyard archaeologists to work together, to build idiotic theories of human endeavor long past discarded in strange forms of entertainment? But I can't find any other people who have been buried in volcanic debris, neither historic nor pre-historic. The mummy? I was against it from the beginning. There isn't even a timeframe in it! But when sociopaths insist on things, the rest of us tend to agree. What if there are Vesuvius type remains in N. America? Isn't it the students right to be informed in such a swayed science of like-minded individuals? Anything buried in volcanic ash turns to voclanic ash, and if you tried to save your ancestor who was buried in volcanic ash? Wouldn't the remains ultimately become broken, lost and finally discarded from moving them, touching them and trying to communicate with them? (pardon the guess) Especially, if you don't have scholarly labs, professional diggers and a large warehouse to use as a storage area. Americans are Americans. Africans are Africans. Honestly, would you tell everyone you were related to me after what you just read?!!!? Yep. I got all the above in my backyard. #42Le561 isn't an Eastern American Smithsonian number, and they haven't ever been here... I know. I have been patiently waiting... and waiting... and waiting.