Is Richard Dawkins an Associate of The National Academy of Sciences?

[tosca1]

First of all, just to be clear....here's an explanation what the National Academy of Sciences is all about:

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community. Nearly 500 members of the NAS have won Nobel Prizes, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, founded in 1914, is today one of the premier international journals publishing the results of original research.

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Members are elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Membership is a widely accepted mark of excellence in science and is considered one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive.

Because membership is achieved by election, there is no membership application process. Although many names are suggested informally, only Academy members may submit formal nominations. Consideration of a candidate begins with his or her nomination, followed by an extensive and careful vetting process that results in a final ballot at the Academy's annual meeting in April each year. Currently, a maximum of 84 members may be elected annually. Members must be U.S. citizens; non-citizens are elected as foreign associates, with a maximum of 21 elected annually.

The NAS membership totals approximately 2,290 members and nearly 460 foreign associates, of whom approximately 200 have received Nobel prizes.

Overview: Membership



I tried to do a search on Richard Dawkins - nothing came up.

I found his tweet, though:

Richard Dawkins‏Verified account @RichardDawkins

@logicNpeace NAS (National Academy) membership is not open to foreigners like me. UK equivalent is the Royal Society, of which I'm a Fellow
4:27 PM - 23 Aug 2015

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/635594201997135872


Well I know membership is not open to foreigners. But, are you an associate?

Winning a Nobel Prize - which you have not - couldn't have been a criteria to be an associate since out of 460 associates, only 200 had won them.

Is he an associate? If not.....why isn't Dawkins an associate of the most prestigious organization?

 

[HonestJoe]

Is he an associate? If not.....why isn't Dawkins an associate of the most prestigious organization?

Presumably he’s never been nominated or has been nominated but not elected. The nature of his work means he doesn’t do a lot of the original research the organisation apparently focuses on. Based on those numbers there will be thousands of non-American scientists doing all sorts of significant and quality work but aren’t members of the National Academy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society which is of similar prestige but has a slightly different focus for membership.

I personally don’t like his social politics or the manner in which he puts across some of his opinions but I don’t see any justification for this kind of back-handed personal attack.

 

[Chagos]

Does this thread have any point?

 

[joG]

First of all, just to be clear....here's an explanation what the National Academy of Sciences is all about:



Overview: Membership



I tried to do a search on Richard Dawkins - nothing came up.

I found his tweet, though:



https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/635594201997135872


Well I know membership is not open to foreigners. But, are you an associate?

Winning a Nobel Prize - which you have not - couldn't have been a criteria to be an associate since out of 460 associates, only 200 had won them.

Is he an associate? If not.....why isn't Dawkins an associate of the most prestigious organization?

The Selfish Gene was very good as were some of his earlier articles but since the late 1970s he went into popular amusement literature and hasn’t done any serious science to my knowledge since then. But correct me, if I missed something.

 

[tosca1]

Presumably he’s never been nominated or has been nominated but not elected. The nature of his work means he doesn’t do a lot of the original research the organisation apparently focuses on. Based on those numbers there will be thousands of non-American scientists doing all sorts of significant and quality work but aren’t members of the National Academy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society which is of similar prestige but has a slightly different focus for membership.

I personally don’t like his social politics or the manner in which he puts across some of his opinions but I don’t see any justification for this kind of back-handed personal attack.

Well, he's done not only a lot of back-handed, but also very up-in-your-face personal attacks on everyone who dare believe in a god - in a very egotistical and pompous manner.

Furthermore, he incites, and actually calls for atheists to shame religious people. So, he better be prepared to receive some tits to his tats.

Since he's made himself fair game...... it's only natural to poke at his credentials!

 

[tosca1]

The Selfish Gene was very good as were some of his earlier articles but since the late 1970s he went into popular amusement literature and hasn’t done any serious science to my knowledge since then. But correct me, if I missed something.

He deteriorated as a scientist. He's accused of peddling pseudo-science.

His book, The God Delusion - had sunk him. Ironic.
He was ridiculed even by his atheist colleagues.

 

[tosca1]

Does this thread have any point?

You missed it? better read again.

 

[PoS]

He deteriorated as a scientist. He's accused of peddling pseudo-science.

His book, The God Delusion - had sunk him. Ironic.
He was ridiculed even by his atheist colleagues.

Do you have a link to him being ridiculed or is this just your imagination?

 

[joG]

He deteriorated as a scientist. He's accused of peddling pseudo-science.

His book, The God Delusion - had sunk him. Ironic.
He was ridiculed even by his atheist colleagues.

Yes. I read that one. It was a come down from earlier his earlier writing. A little bit of an embarrassment, really.

 

[tosca1]

Do you have a link to him being ridiculed or is this just your imagination?

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching


“Dawkins is perhaps the world’s most popular science writer; he is also an extremely gifted science writer. (For example, his account of bats and their ways in his earlier book The Blind Watchmaker is a brilliant and fascinating tour de force.) The God Delusion, however, contains little science; it is mainly philosophy and theology. . . Dawkins is not a philosopher (he’s a biologist). Even taking this into account, however, much of the philosophy he purveys is at best jejune.
You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class.”
Alvin Plantinga (Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame) Books and Culture 3/01/2007

Some of Prof Dawkins’s contemporaries are not impressed. Dr Daniel Came, a philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist, from Worcester College, Oxford, wrote to him urging him to reconsider his refusal to debate the existence of God with Prof Craig.

In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.

“I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights like Pastor Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor Keenan Roberts of the Colorado Hell House.”

Richard Dawkins accused of cowardice for refusing to debate existence of God - Telegraph

The UK Guardian article denouncing Dawkins for cowardice is here. The conservative UK Telegraph explicitly called Dawkins a fool or a coward for not debating Craig. But I don’t think it’s going to happen, because Dawkins is a coward. That’s just what he is. And I think he isn’t even intelligent enough to lose as badly as Hitchens did – it would be a much worse defeat for atheism. The man has never expressed any substantial arguments for atheism in any of his books – it was always just bile.

https://winteryknight.com/2011/10/2...guardian-in-call-for-dawkins-to-debate-craig/

 

[Chagos]

You missed it? better read again.

H's not associate, okay.

But this is relevant how and to what?

 

[joG]

Do you have a link to him being ridiculed or is this just your imagination?

"Professor Antony Flew wrote:

The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’)."
https://www.bethinking.org/atheism/professor-antony-flew-reviews-the-god-delusion

"But like the Christian fundamentalist who misrepresents and oversimplifies Darwinian evolutionary science, Dawkins presents a monolithic and oversimplified straw man of “religion,” which he belittles and denigrates. Generalizing from religious extremism and fundamentalism to all religion, Dawkins demonstrates a deafness to the religious other and an inability to step outside his Darwinian “Theory of Everything,” the parameters of which are limited to the empirical declarative (144)."
Review Essay: Richard Dawkins? The God Delusion and Atheist Fundamentalism — Anthropoetics XV, no. 2 Spring 2010

These are the two first links in a Google search. It goes on and on and Dawkins Debunked

But it is quite true. He made a lot of money.

 

[PoS]

Richard Dawkins accused of cowardice for refusing to debate existence of God - Telegraph



https://winteryknight.com/2011/10/2...guardian-in-call-for-dawkins-to-debate-craig/

Everybody gets some bad book reviews- you ought to read some of the stuff on Amazon on Stephen King's works. That doesnt discredit Dawkins at all. The God Delusion is one of the top selling nonficiton books of all time and translated into 35 languages. The numbers dont support your biased views.

 

[Chagos]

Well, he's done not only a lot of back-handed, but also very up-in-your-face personal attacks on everyone who dare believe in a god - in a very egotistical and pompous manner.

Furthermore, he incites, and actually calls for atheists to shame religious people. So, he better be prepared to receive some tits to his tats.

Since he's made himself fair game...... it's only natural to poke at his credentials!

and, there being an abundance of those, which one of them might you be poking at?

And, seeing how we're on the subject, what have you got by way of credentials in the field of science that qualifies you as a poker?

 

[tosca1]

Everybody gets some bad book reviews- you ought to read some of the stuff on Amazon on Stephen King's works. That doesnt discredit Dawkins at all. The God Delusion is one of the top selling nonficiton books of all time and translated into 35 languages. The numbers dont support your biased views.

It's not just the book review.

The amount of pressure put on Dawkins at the time - for him to face Craig in a debate, to defend his own book - was such, that poor Dawkins was made into a laughing stock. The sarcasm from colleague Daniel Came was big news at the time!

How can he not stand by his own book?

The late Hitchens even jokingly referred to William Lane Craig as "the guy who put the fear of God into Dawkins."

 

[Chagos]

On professor Anthony Flew:

In letter to Carrier of 29 December 2004 Flew retracted his statement that a deity or a "super-intelligence" was the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature:

I now realise that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction.




​

To later revisit that position again as well with yet another outcome.

Now nothing is worse than somebody unable to change his mind, yet constant change of same eventually leads to dismissal on the principle of "WTH?"

 

[PoS]

It's not just the book review.

The amount of pressure put on Dawkins at the time - for him to face Craig in a debate, to defend his own book - was such, that poor Dawkins was made into a laughing stock. The sarcasm from colleague Daniel Came was big news at the time!

How can he not stand by his own book?

The late Hitchens even jokingly referred to William Lane Craig as "the guy who put the fear of God into Dawkins."

Dawkins participated in many debates about his book, he is under no obligation to respond to every religious fanatic to do so. Hitchens was trolling too as he does with just about everybody. The God Delusion is still selling well so once again its just your opinion.

 

[Chagos]

Beyond all of which, Dawkins is no Bertrand Russell.

Alone by that comparison I'd give Russell preference any time.

 

[Spartacus FPV]

Dawkins participated in many debates about his book, he is under no obligation to respond to every religious fanatic to do so. Hitchens was trolling too as he does with just about everybody. The God Delusion is still selling well so once again its just your opinion.

He had a policy on not giving equal time or legitimizing crackpot creationists.

 

[roughdraft274]

Wow this is weak sauce. You're attacking an incredibly credentialed scientist because he doesn't belong to a scientific academy that's in a country in which he doesn't even live.

 

[Sweden]

Wow this is weak sauce. You're attacking an incredibly credentialed scientist because he doesn't belong to a scientific academy that's in a country in which he doesn't even live.

Exactly. It is the NATIONAL (ie US) Academy of Science. Why should Dawkins care whether or not he is a member?

 

[tosca1]

Dawkins participated in many debates about his book, he is under no obligation to respond to every religious fanatic to do so. Hitchens was trolling too as he does with just about everybody. The God Delusion is still selling well so once again its just your opinion.

I'm not talking about the sales. He's got his niche of followers - of course they'll sell.

I'm talking about Dawkins' getting ridicules for his book!

 

[HonestJoe]

Since he's made himself fair game...... it's only natural to poke at his credentials!

Just because it’s natural doesn’t make it right. The “he started it” argument should stay in the playground (and he could probably make it himself) and I see no good reason or justification for anyone to lower themselves to the same level. I’d also suggest attacking him professionally and academically for his personal social opinions goes further than he generally does.

It’s perfectly possible to make reasoned and intelligent arguments against many of his opinions (I can do that while agreeing with some of them in principle!) but I appreciate that requires more effort and is less fun than flinging insults.

 

[tosca1]

On professor Anthony Flew:

To later revisit that position again as well with yet another outcome.

Now nothing is worse than somebody unable to change his mind, yet constant change of same eventually leads to dismissal on the principle of "WTH?"

This thread isn't about Anthony Flew.

 

[tosca1]

Just because it’s natural doesn’t make it right.

It is not only natural - but it's also right - to question someone's credentials who makes such kinds of public statements, expecially when he makes "authoritative" statements.

He's using his credentials to make himself seemingly authoritative.