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.

Hare Krishna Impersonator!

Sometimes I can be helpful. Take the below, where I alert the Hare Krishnas here to an impostor in their midst. Or is he for real? Links in this post do not appear in the e-mail I've sent. Contact details taken from here. 

Dear Mayesvara and Syamananda, 

I'm writing to alert you to an impersonator in Dublin who is attempting to bring the good name of your organisation into disrepute.

He stopped me last Thursday on Henry Street and introduced himself as a travelling Yoga teacher asking for donations for Dublin's Hare Krishna temple.

He had no identification, and while his distinctive haircut suggested a monk I felt this was not enough to ensure authenticity. I recalled that your parent organisation had declared bankruptcy to avoid paying compensation to child sex abuse victims, and I asked him if he could explain this approach to me. This may have seemed a mite harsh but I was sure anyone authorised by your temple to collect money would have been appropriately briefed to discuss this matter with tact and compassion.

Going dancing?

Hare Krishnas dancing outside Easons. Decent rhythm; lyrics a mite repetitive.

Sent from my Windows Phone

The Unusual Suspects - a guide to street preachers in Dublin

The fine folks at Atheist Ireland were kind enough to mention me in their latest newsletter. This had the advantage of sending some more readers to my blog and in the absence of an 'About' page I decided to recap my intent.


I talk to street preachers.


I'm glad I had this opportunity to recap. The remainder of this post will trace an imaginary walking tour of Dublin and detail some of the highlights. Is there a street preacher I've missed? Do let me know in the comments section.

Hare Krishnas
Our tour starts on Grafton Street where, if you're lucky, we'll spot one or more Hare Krishnas. Normally dressed in distinctive orange or white flowing robes with incomplete headshaves, they can be hard to spot when they work the streets. Their activities are of dubious legality. Look for casual dress, wolly hats, hoodies, or other devices to cover their heads, and an armful of books.


When to find them: Rush hours, days vary. They're sometimes active on Henry Street and O'Connell Street.
Awkward questions to ask:

• Which is closer, the sun or the moon? (The answer will surprise you.)
• I see you're asking for cash donations. As per section 94 of the Charities Act 2009, may I see your written permit and sealed collection box?
• Do you agree with your founder that women's brains are half the size of men's?

Prabhupada: Hare Krishna's founder on Jews, Africans, Native Americans and Hitler

Earlier this year I enrolled in the National Genographic project. For a reasonable fee they sequenced my Y chromosome and compared the mutations to those found at archaeological digs and isolated tribes worldwide. Using this information they built a map showing my deep genetic ancestry, showing the route taken by a small band of frightened, hairless apes as they left the African savannah, eventually spreading throughout the world and depositing my more recent ancestors in Europe.

It's one of those moments when science can bring you the transcendent, and I still hold dear the bond I share with all my fellow humans so well exemplified by a simple map backed by decades of research. I highly recommend it to all and think it should be compulsory for anyone convicted of racist offences.

But what of Prabhupada? What were the founder of the Hare Krishna's views on racism?

Prabhupada: Hare Krishna's founder in his own words

In an earlier article I discussed how many Hare Krishnas have a rather unusual view of cosmology. They believe the moon to be larger than the sun and some 800,000 miles more distant. One of the supporting quotes I provided included the line

"I’m sure that devotees who are more erudite than a mere woman can come up with much better citations..."

and I was asked offline if I could elaborate on sexism in the organisation. (Emphasis in the above quote is mine.)

Hare Krishnas and the faked moon landing

I sometimes encounter beliefs that are so outlandish as to be immune to parody. Take Hare Krishnas and the moon landing.

krishna.org has a lengthy pseudoscientific article on why they feel the moon landing was faked, and a shorter example of poor maths directed at the same goal. I've met moon landing deniers. Some of them can make a superficially compelling case by referring to the tension of the cold war and the pressure to outdo the Russians, but ultimately they fall down under the weight of scientific facts. Still, you can have a conversation with them. I've known them to change their views.

But it turns out it is not doubts about moon landing footage or radiation levels that cause their dubiousness. Krishna Consciousness' founding dates all the way back to the mid 1960's when His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (henceforth Prabhupada, I don't want to get RSI retyping that title) formed the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. He had some interesting views on cosmology which are thoroughly defended by krishna.org here. An excerpt:

"The Vedic account of our planetary system is already researched, concluded, and perfect. TheVedas state that the moon is 800,000 miles farther from the earth than the sun. Therefore, even if we accept the modern calculation of 93 million miles as the distance from the earth to the sun, how could the “astronauts” have traveled to the moon–a distance of almost 94 million miles–in only 91 hours (the alleged elapsed time of the Apollo 11 moon trip)? This would require an average speed of more than one million miles per hour for the spacecraft, a patently impossible feat by even the space scientists’ calculations."

Boost your book sales through Krishna consciousness

"Are you from Dublin by any chance?"

I was stopped on Grafton Street by a book salesman with an English accent who was making the rather safe bet that those walking on Grafton Street during rush hour were likely to be Dublin natives. I responded in the affirmative, noting hints of shaved head under a warm hoddie.

"Tell me - do you ever get stressed?"

As a rule I dislike it when salespeople and street preachers ask me questions to which they already know the answer. It's a very obvious tactic known as the Yes-set Close. I answered that I had, once, been stressed.

"And are you a thinking man?"

It seemed this was likely to go on for some time. I confirmed that, on occasion, my neurons fire. The light was poor but by this time I'd spotted the telltale tilak of a Hare Krishna on his forehead.

"I used to get stressed when I studied Economics at Cambridge University." he continued, perhaps a little too eager to boast of his studies for a man devoted to the renunciation of the self, "but this book really helped me."