Unholy Row

I enjoyed the unholy row caused by Richard Dawkins recently when his critics lost the plot on Twitter over the following 'tweet':

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

Now this seems all perfectly reasonable and straightforward to me.

Because how can societies which are run as religious theocracies by old men in beards - who believe in the literal word of the Koran and the Bible - have much to say about the world of science where empirical evidence is what matters - not blind faith and religious dogma.

Nonetheless, as Twitter users piled in to vent their spleen about him, the scientist and author (Dawkins) continued and seemed to warm to his theme:

"Why mention Muslim Nobels rather than any other group? Because we so often hear boasts about (a) their total numbers and (b) their science."

Yet despite the reasonableness of his arguments Dawkins was accused of being a 'bigot' - which is completely laughable when he to me at least was simply stating the bleeding obvious. 

Funny what gets some people worked up - and poking fun at or asking challenging questions about the impact of fundamentalist religious beliefs seems to be one of them.