Richard Dawkins, in attempt to ridicule muslims, got a backlash over his twitter comment;

"All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though."


Many people on twitter have complained that the tweet from Richard Dawkins is nonsensical when you consider that the Trinity College has had more nobel prizes than most groups of people. Furthermore, nobel prizes have nothing to do with the truth of Islam. Islam evaluated on a Western prize?


For more reading
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/08/richard-dawkins-twitter-row-muslims-cambridge
http://metro.co.uk/2013/08/09/athiest-richard-dawkins-in-hot-water-over-islam-dig-on-twitter-3917965/

One of the cons of the social network. Everyone gets to talk.

But then, why care so much about what someone else says, like it makes a difference?

In essence, if the nobel prizes was being given in the middle ages, Muslims would have had more winners?
The man is a nobody and I don't care what he says about Muslims or Islam. What Allah says is sufficent: 'Muslims are the best of people.' As long as we obey Allah and worship Him alone, we are okay. Nobel won't take us to paradise.

deols: One of the cons of the social network. Everyone gets to talk.

But then, why care so much about what someone else says, like it makes a difference?

It is a con indeed. Otherwise his head would be on the next chopping block for blasphemy.

AbdH: In essence, if the nobel prizes was being given in the middle ages, Muslims would have had more winners?
The man is a nobody and I don't care what he says about Muslims or Islam. What Allah says is sufficent: 'Muslims are the best of people.' As long as we obey Allah and worship Him alone, we are okay. Nobel won't take us to paradise.

Exactly my brother.Allah says in Surah Al-Qariah 101:6-9 As for him whose scales (of righteousness) are heavy,he will have a pleasant life.But as for him whose scales are light,hell will be his nursing mother”.
It's not all about nobel prizes.

An atheist comparing number of nobel prizes won by Muslims with similar achievements by a college named after the core doctrine of Christianity is strange

Is the Nobel Prize what everyone is striving for?
Suppose for strategic reasons, I don't want to share my research findings
68 years ago the atomic bomb was used for the first time! How many scientists are working on its successor?

BTW how many Nobel prises has China won?
Are we talking about Chinese in the Mainland or are we going to include those won by Chinese outside the country?

Non-muslim Africans might want to cheer but his dad was one of the people that led African troops during WWII. We know how Nigerians fought in "Burma". As first class soldiers or as expendables, you can work it out.

Paris_Love:
It is a con indeed. Otherwise his head would be on the next chopping block for blasphemy.

Can you rephrase? That way, it can make sense to me. Thanks.

Dawkins' stance is mistaken. They are may groups of people who have no representative in the Nobel prize list who have contributed prominently, critically without being known and helped nurture mankind to the stage wherein which we find ourselves. It's sad that Nobel prize has become an end in itself rather than a means. For a time now, I have made it a duty to remind myself that I am as good a thinker as any Nobel laurette. Nobel prizes don't reduce the worth of people who don't have them. Here's what Dawkins had to say on his motive for the comment.

You have surely heard something like the following
two statements, often uttered with a measure of
truculence:-
1. “There are 1.6 billion Muslims, nearly a quarter
of the world’s population, and we are growing fast.”
There is even, sometimes, a hint of menace added.
In the words of Houari Boumediene, President of
Algeria, “Le ventre de nos femmes nous donnera la
victoire” (the belly of our women will give us the
victory).
2. “Islamic science deserves enormous respect.”
There are two versions of this second claim,
ranging from the pathetic desperation of “the
Qu’ran anticipated modern science” (the embryo
develops from a blob, mountains have roots that
hold the earth in place, salt and fresh water don’t
mix) to what is arguably quite a good historical
point: “Muslim scholars kept the flame of Greek
learning alight while Christendom wallowed in the
Dark Ages.”
photo: Lalla Ward
Putting these two claims together, you almost can’t help
wondering something like this: “If you are so numerous, and if your
science is so great, shouldn’t you be able to point to some pretty
spectacular achievements emanating from among those vast
numbers? If you can’t today but once could, what has gone wrong
for the past 500 years? Whatever it is, is there something to be
done about it?”
Twitter’s 140 character limit always presents a tough challenge,
but I tried to rise to it. Nobel Prizes are a pretty widely quoted, if
not ideal, barometer of excellence in science. I thought about
comparing the numbers of Nobel Prizes won by Jews (more than
120) and Muslims (ten if you count Peace Prizes, half that if you
don’t). This astonishing discrepancy is rendered the more dramatic
when you consider the small size of the world’s Jewish population.
However, I decided against tweeting that comparison because it
might seem unduly provocative (many Muslim “community
leaders” are quite outspoken in their hatred of Jews) and I sought a
more neutral comparison as more suitable to the potentially
inflammable medium of Twitter. It is a remarkable fact that one
Cambridge college, Trinity, has 32 Nobel Prizes to its credit. That’s
three times as many as the entire Muslim world even if you count
Peace Prizes, six times as many if you don’t. I dramatised the
poverty of Muslim scientific achievement, and the contrast with
their achievements in earlier centuries, in the following brief tweet:
“All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity
College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages,
though.”
And then the storm broke. About half the responses were
supportive, and I am grateful for them but I’ll concentrate on the
attacks because, obviously, they are the ones that need a
response. Rather than quote particular tweets individually, I’ll
condense families of attacks into generalised form:-
You’re a racist (actually usually written as “Your a racist”)
If you think Islam is a race, you are a racist yourself. The concept
of race is controversial in biology, for complicated reasons. I could
go into that, but I don’t need to here. It’s enough to say that if you
can convert to something (or convert or apostatize out of it) it is
not a race. If you are going to accuse me of racism, you’ll have to
do a lot better than that. Islam is a religion and you can choose to
leave it or join it.
But aren’t Jews a race? And you can convert to Judaism
Yes you can convert to Judaism and no, the Jews are not a race.
You can argue about whether Judaism is a religion or a cultural
tradition, but whatever else it is it is not a race. That was one of
many things Hitler got wrong. But if you want to bring up the Jews,
I’m happy to drop Trinity, Cambridge and give you the truly
astonishing Nobel Prize figures for Jews. You’ll find it won’t bolster
your apologetics.
Race is not a biological concept at all but a socially
constructed one. In the sociological sense you can convert
to a race because race is a social construction.
There may be sociologists who choose to redefine words to their
own purpose, in which case we have a simple semantic
disagreement. I have a right to choose to interpret “race” (and
hence “racism”) according to the dictionary definition: “A limited
group of people descended from a common ancestor”.
Sociologists are entitled to redefine words in technical senses that
they find useful, but they are not entitled to impose their new
definitions on those of us who prefer common or dictionary usage.
You can define naked mole rats as termites if you wish (they have
similar social systems) but don’t blame the rest of us if we prefer
to call them mammals because they are close genetic cousins to
non-social mole rats and other rodents.
OK, maybe you aren’t strictly a racist, but most Muslims
have brown skins so you are in effect a racist
Incidentally, the reverse is not true: huge numbers of brown
skinned people are Hindus or Sikhs or Buddhists. But in any case,
I’m a lot less interested in skin colour than you seem to be. I don’t
think skin colour has the slightest bearing on ability to win Nobel
Prizes, whereas it is highly probable that childhood education in a
particular religion does. Educational systems that teach boys only
memorisation of one particular book, and teach girls nothing at all,
are not calculated to breed success in science.
OK, you aren’t a racist at all, but you are a bigot, giving
needless hurt and offence
How can the assertion of an undeniable fact be bigotry? Do you
deny the fact that Trinity College has produced more Nobel prize-
winners than all the billions of Muslims? Actually this raises the
interesting question of whether, and under what circumstances, we
should refrain from stating uncomfortable facts for fear of giving
hurt and offence. I raised this question in a later tweet, out of
genuine curiosity. The answers I got were all of the “white lie”
form. You don’t go out of your way to tell people they are fat. You
may even lie to cheer them up. Fair enough.
Well, quoting an undeniable fact may not be bigotry in
itself but you left an offensive, though unstated,
implication dangling on the end of the fact
You may be reading in an implication that I didn’t intend. Since
(unlike many tweeters, apparently) I am firm about Islam being a
religion and not a race, I certainly didn’t, and don’t, imply any
innate inferiority of intellect in those people who happen to follow
the Muslim religion. But I did intend to raise in people’s minds the
question of whether the religion itself is inimical to scientific
education. I don’t have the answer, but I think it is well worth
asking the question. Has something gone wrong with education in
the Islamic world, and is it a problem that Muslims themselves
might wish to consider? Just to throw in a separate piece of
information, colleagues lecturing to aspiring doctors in British
universities inform me that Muslim students boycott lectures on
evolution. And I have myself interviewed, for television, pupils and
teachers at one of Britain’s leading Islamic secondary schools –
one with impeccable Ofsted ratings – where I was informed by a
teacher that literally all the pupils reject evolution.
Cambridge University, like other First World Institutions,
has economic advantages denied to those countries where
most Muslims live.
No doubt there is something in that. But . . . oil wealth? Might it be
more equitably deployed amongst the populace of those countries
that happen to sit on the accidental geological boon of oil. Is this
an example of something that Muslims might consider to improve
the education of their children?

Why pick on Muslims?

You could arbitrarily pick on plenty
of categories of people that have achieved far less than
Trinity College, Cambridge
Again, fair point. Somebody mentioned redheads (neither he nor I
have figures on redheaded scientific achievement but we get the
point). I myself tweeted that Trinity Cambridge has more Nobel
Prizes than any single country in the world except the USA, Britain
(tautologically), Germany and France. You could well think there
was something gratuitous in my picking on Muslims, were it not for
the ubiquity of the two positive boasts with which I began.
Redheads (and the other hypothetical categories we might
mention) don’t boast of their large populations and don’t boast of
their prowess in science.
Trinity College is a Christian foundation. Its full name is
“the College of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity”.
Er, yes, that could be kind of the point. Christendom has moved on
since 1546 when the college was founded. If Islam has not moved
on during the same period, perhaps Muslims might consider asking
why, and whether something could be done about it. That was sort
of why I added the final sentence of my original tweet: “They did
great things in the Middle Ages, though.”
Muslim scholars gave you algebra and alchemy
Thank you, I’ll take algebra. But alchemy? Are you sure you want
to own alchemy? In any case, once again, a substantial half of my
point was that Muslim scholars did indeed grace a golden age, so it
is all the more poignant to ask what went wrong and what should
be done about it.

How many Nobel Prizes has Richard Dawkins won?
This is getting silly, it really has the scent of desperation but it was
tweeted remarkably often. I am one person, Muslims are 1.6
billion.

How many Nobel Prizes have been won by atheists?
Now that’s a really interesting question, one that I would sincerely
love to see answered. I suspect that the truculence with which the
question was posed might turn out to be misplaced – and that’s an
understatement. Polls of the US National Academy of Sciences and
of the Royal Society of London give almost identical results and
suggest that an overwhelming majority of elite scientists (and a
lesser majority of scientists as a whole) have no religious faith,
although many might nominally be recorded as, say, baptised
Christians or Bar-Mitzvahed Jews. I would love to see a well-
conducted study of the beliefs of Nobel prizewinning scientists. My
guess is that a large majority would self-describe as atheist or
agnostic. And a further substantial number would say something
like “I might characterise my awe at the universe as ‘spiritual’ but,
like Einstein, I have no belief in a personal god and follow no
religion.” I’d be very surprised if a single prize-winner were to say
“I believe Jesus was born of a virgin and rose from the dead” or “I
believe Mohammed rode through the sky on a winged horse”. But
those are all conjectures and I would love to see the research
done.

Henry Kissinger won a Nobel Prize. That just shows how
worthless they are.
That was a Peace prize, and the Peace prize does have a rather
more controversial reputation. Mother Teresa won it, after all, and
said in her acceptance speech that abortion was the “greatest
destroyer of peace in the world”. I’d be happy to subtract the Peace
prizes. Trinity would lose only one of its 32 and Muslims would lose
fully half their tally. Because of the second of the two boasts that I
mentioned at the outset, I was in any case primarily interested in
scientific achievement. If we count only science prizes, discounting
Economics, Literature and Peace, Trinity’s count drops to 27 and
the Muslim count drops to two (and even that includes the great
theoretical physicist Abdus Salam, who left Pakistan in 1974 in
protest at his particular version of Islam being declared “non-
Islamic” by its parliament). Bizarrely, some counts of Muslim
scientific Nobelists are boosted by inclusion of that quintessential
Englishman Sir Peter Medawar (born in Brazil, his father was
Lebanese, a Maronite Christian).

Your a dick.
I’m an athiest but you make me ashamed to be an athiest.
Your a disgusting piece of shit
Oh dear, you’ve got me there. Devastating arguments, no come-
back.

Source

deols:

Can you rephrase? That way, it can make sense to me. Thanks.

Like you said, the social network is a con for Islam and muslims otherwise people like Richard wouldn't be criticizing Islam most times anonymously and getting away with it.

Paris_Love:

Like you said, the social network is a con for Islam and muslims otherwise people like Richard wouldn't be criticizing Islam most times anonymously and getting away with it.

Obviously, you lack comprehension skills. Go and read what I wrote again.

Lol.

deols:

Obviously, you lack comprehension skills. Go and read what I wrote again.

clearly, it is YOU that lacks comprehension skills.

Paris_Love:
It is a con indeed. Otherwise his head would be on the next chopping block for blasphemy.

Paris_Love would you kill someone because of blasphemy?

Will that change their view?

Dawkins ruminations

Richard Dawkins recently ignited a minor furor by pointing out that "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge". His defenders rushed to point out that his statement was merely a fact and as such there was nothing bigoted about it whatsoever.

Dawkins declaration also happens to be true when you substitute the word "Hindus", "Blacks" or "Chinese" for Muslims here, but his admirers would have had a harder time defending the same statement made about any of these groups without being tarred as xenophobes.

This situation is often decried by New Atheist advocates and their fellow travellers as a 'refusal to acknowledge reality' - the ostensible 'reality' being their own inherent superiority over others. Nonetheless, they are hesitant about whom they relate this to and toe the line when it comes to which minority groups it is safe to attack and which must be avoided. D[b]an Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor explained the fallacies behind this crude chauvinism:

Dawkins, as an educated man, should be well aware of the legacy of colonialism and of simple poverty…. When the Nobel Prize was founded in 1901, the vast majority of the world's Muslims lived in countries ruled by foreign powers, and for much of the 20th century Muslims did not have much access to great centres of learning like Cambridge.[/b] The ranks of Nobel Prize winners have traditionally been dominated by white, Western men - a reflection of both the economic might of the West in the past century, preferential access to education for that class of people as well as a wonderful intellectual tradition .

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/08/201381112549657227.html


when will the bulk of NL christians act like Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor

^^ What has Christians got to do with this? As far as I can see on this thread none has supported him.

GeneralShepherd:

Paris_Love would you kill someone because of blasphemy?

Will that change their view?

Nope

Paris_Love: ^^ What has Christians got to do with this? As far as I can see on this thread none has supported him.

why don't you ask Dan Murphy?

Paris_Love:
Nope

Matthew 15:1-9
1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked,
2 "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!"
3 Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?
4 For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.

vedaxcool:

Matthew 15:1-9
1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked,
2 "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!"
3 Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?
4 For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.

They won't see that. The only part they see is probably where they are asked to pay tithe.

How did the topic change to christianity?


The fact is that some western secularists always belive that they are intellectually superior. Unfortunately, ptide come before a big fall

Nairatalks: How did the topic change to christianity?

GeneralShepherd:

Paris_Love would you kill someone because of blasphemy?

Will that change their view?

^^^^
Don't mind them. Subterranean campaign of calumny. Enhanced duplicity