Richard Dawkins' Twitter Followers

I remember the first time I met Muslim apologist Adnan Rashid. He, Hamza Tzortzis and other members of the Islamic Education and Research Academy were running a stall on my route home and he attempted to convince me evolution could not be true because of 'irreducible complexity'. As he waxed lyrical on the complexities of bacterial flagellum (a whiplike appendage that enables movement in bacteria) I realised he was liberally borrowing from the work of Christian creationist Michael Behe.

Rather than point out the incongruity of relying on such a source I said it seemed odd to offer a mechanism that allows the spread of devastating diseases like Legionnaire's as evidence for a loving God. He paused, folded his arms, fixed me with a gaze that conveyed seriousness and then asked "what would happen if all the cells in your body lost their flagellums?".

Some with an interest in biology may have chuckled at the above. Bacterial flagella by definition are attached only to bacteria, facilitate movement, and as a general rule the cells in my body have no particular need to independently decide to relocate. It demonstrated the lightest skimming of Christian creationist material and a near complete misunderstanding of Behe's rather poor argument. (Those interested can see it debunked in full here. You can watch footage of Rashid losing an argument with PZ Myers here.)

The second time I shared a room with Rashid was at the World Atheist Convention in Dublin, 2011, when he asked a ponderously long and dreary question of Dawkins. I shared my anecdote with Dawkins who chuckled briefly. I thought it might be interesting to look at his Twitter account.

Word Cloud
I took a sample of five thousand of Dawkins' followers and examined their Twitter biographies, running them through a program that counts the frequency of words folk use to describe themselves and assembling an image where most frequently used words are shown in greater sizes. Dawkins' followers are likely to describe themselves using words like student, science, university, teacher and atheist. (On a general note, an improbably high number of tweeps describe themselves as writers. I do hope they have day jobs.)

Words noted by their absence include homeopath, Hare Krishna, acupuncture and miracle. It seems the head of the foundation for reason and science has done an admirable job of attracting those interested in both fields.

Gender
These results are indicative only. Again working off the same sample of five thousand Twitter accounts, I ran the first names through a script I wrote to estimate gender. It isn't overly complex - I have a list of known masculine names and a list of known feminine names. Based on the results it seems that 75% of Dawkins' followers have masculine names.

iERA's Campaign - Coincidence, Convergence, or Copied?

In the past I've discussed Hamza Tzortzis's plagiarism of William Lane Craig and his poorly executed attempt to pretend that liberal societies facilitate rape. Perhaps it is unfair of me to focus exclusively on the Islamic Education and Research Academy's head of research.

Today instead we look at Abdur Raheem Green, head of the aforementioned iERA, perhaps most famous for his lectures on how one should best beat one's wives. I use the plural as he has two wives at time of print and sees four as the maximum. I'm reliably informed that he is the keen mind behind the 'Don't Shoot the Messenger' campaign which features a trilemma argument. In brief, it states that Mohammed was either lying, deluded or the final prophet of Allah. It then attempts to prove the first two explanations incoherent by saying his actions are neither those of a liar or a madman.

But does this sound familiar?

Those of us who have read C S Lewis's Mere Christianity (published 1952, popular with only a small number of my regular readership, I'll admit) may recall his Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument, also featuring a trilemma. In it he states that Jesus was either lying, deluded, or the risen son of God. It then attempts to prove the first two explanations incoherent by saying his actions are neither those of a liar or a madman.

Do have a read of both arguments and see if you also feel there are similarities.

Hamza Tzortzis and The God Delusion

As regular readers of  this blog are likely aware, some two years ago Hamza Tzortzis released what he described as his response to the God Delusion. Back in February I happened upon it and noticed it bore marked similarities to the work of William Lane Craig. After PZ Myers featured my article, Hamza updated his piece to indicate it was a pastiche of Christian authors, including Paul Copan, William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Frank J. Tipler, John D. Barrow, Keith Ward and Roy Abraham Varghese.

Thanks to an anonymous commenter I'm only now realising the delicious irony in his opening line:

"What I read were rehashed, incoherent and outdated arguments that made me realize that Richard Dawkins is not very well read in philosophy"

Emphasis mine, but I digress. Hamza and I had a pleasant Twitter chat after the events, during which he suggested I respond to the content:

After two years his collage of Christian authors stands at version 0.3: I jokingly responded that I would await version 1.0. Dawkins is well able to defend himself; writing further on the matter seemed superfluous. Still, there seems to be appetite for this stuff.

Particularly avid readers of this blog - likely those who make notes - will recall I wrote another piece on Islam, months ago, where I described exemplary behaviour from Muslim apologists despite extreme provocation. You'll note that before the physical and verbal abuse of these fine gentlemen started I was discussing Halal fish oil supplements. Softgel capsules are generally made from porcine gelatin and a gym friend of mine was looking for a Muslim-friendly alternative.

Interfaith Dialogue Revisited - Hamza Tzortzis and the William Lane Craig influence

Back in February I mentioned that an article Hamza Tzortzis wrote seemed to rely heavily on the work of Christian apologist William Lane Craig. It was a reasonably unpopular article until PZ Myers featured it, earning me 1,800 hits in one day. If you're counting that's about 1,750 more than average.

Hamza initially denied that there were similarities between William Lane Craig's work and his own:

But I'm glad to report that within two days of the increased interest Hamza has updated his article, giving proper credit to Christian apologists Paul Copan, William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Frank J. Tipler, John D. Barrow, Keith Ward and Roy Abraham Varghese as well as atheist philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong as influencing his thinking on the matter. No Muslim authors were cited, though the Qur'an was quoted in several areas.

Interfaith Dialogue: Hamza Tzortzis and William Lane Craig

Hamza Tzortzis just tweeted about his response to The God Delusion. I'd missed it before now. While reading it some of the quotes and statistics he used seemed familiar. In this post I'll be comparing Hamza's article to one by William Lane Craig, entitled Does God Exist? (Free registration required.)

*Update June 2012: Two years after publication, Hamza has updated his article to reflect the sources and has modified the description to list it as a compilation. This is a positive step. A link to my followup article has been added to the end of this post.*

For copyright reasons I won't reproduce both articles in their entirety. Let's start after Hamza's preliminary note:

Hamza Tzortzis: "The existence of a life permitting universe is due to conditions that must have been fined-tuned to a degree that is literally incalculable. Take the following examples:"

William Lane Craig: "The existence of intelligent life depends upon a conspiracy of initial conditions which must be fine-tuned to a degree that is literally incomprehensible and incalculable."

Hamza Tzortzis: "The Strength of Gravity & the Atomic Weak Force: Physicist P. C. W. Davies has calculated that a change in the strength of gravity or of the atomic weak force by only one part in 10¹⁰⁰ would have prevented a life permitting universe."

William Lane Craig: "For example, the physicist P. C. W. Davies has calculated that a change in the strength of gravity or of the atomic weak force by only one part in 10¹⁰⁰ would have prevented a life-permitting universe."