Why Richard Dawkins Fails to Appreciate Plato
The other day, Richard Dawkins had a go at Plato:
It’s not the first time. Dawkins has a thing for picking on Plato. He said this back in March:
The other day, Richard Dawkins had a go at Plato:
It’s not the first time. Dawkins has a thing for picking on Plato. He said this back in March:
Over at Current Affairs, Nathan Robinson and Eli Massey have written the critique of Sam Harris. Robinson offers a magisterial, detailed overview of the rhetorical sleights of hand Harris uses to give relatively weak, unoriginal positions the imprimatur of “science” and “reason”. I want to add something to this discussion–something Robinson touches on but which I want to stay with for a minute. There is a core problem with the way Harris thinks which necessarily generates bad takes on Islam and the Muslim world.
Kim Davis has just been released from prison. Davis is the infamous Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Clerks are elected (bizarrely, Davis was elected as a democrat), so Davis cannot be summarily fired. Instead, she was taken to court and ordered to issue the licenses. She appealed, but the Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal. She continued refusing to issue licenses anyway, and was jailed for five days for contempt of court. She vows to continue refusing to issue licenses. So far, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (another democrat) has declined to appoint a special prosecutor to charge Davis with misconduct. When Davis was released from prison, she was greeted by throngs of supporters led by US Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Ted Cruz was also in attendance, but Huckabee’s people succeeded in marginalizing him. The reaction from people to this has been very interesting–nearly everyone is being a hypocrite about Kim Davis (including Kim Davis), on all sides.
Recently, Mike Huckabee decided to run for president. This means another entry in the Candidate Evaluations series–where we examine a US presidential candidate’s background, policy history, and explicit statements in an attempt to figure out whether the candidate would actually be any good at being president, rather than focusing on electability or likeability, as is common in the mainstream press. There have been quite a few of these, and if the rumor mill holds any truth, there will be quite a few more before the race is over. Previously, we’ve covered:
