Disproportional Nobels

Recently, Richard Dawkins tweeted:
“All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.”

If you take the tweet at its literal meaning, Noah Millman’s response would make sense:
“Here’s a handy-dandy little fact to throw out there: 20% of Nobel Prizes have been awarded to Jews. This despite the fact that Jews are only 0.2% of the world’s population... At first glance, it would seem that if the “it’s all culture” folks mean what they say, the implication would be that we should all become Jews.”

Or you could take Isaac Chotiner’s approach: be tough on Dawkins for such a generalization, but also consider a more nuanced reading of the tweet:
“Dawkins was (I think) trying to say that a belief system human beings choose to follow has impaired their development.”

I think the phrase “choose to follow” hits the nail on the head. The United (or Disunited) States of Islam’istan are not exactly known for their freedom of…well, anything. And not having the freedom to doubt, to question, to contradict authority figures is the exact opposite of the scientific spirit. So that might partly explain the Nobel famine.

On the other hand, Judaism does offer far more freedom of choice. Check out Millman’s observation:
“If you scroll through the pictures of those Jewish Nobel laureates, you’ll discover see few if any covered heads. Some of the winners come from traditionally observant backgrounds, but I’m not aware of any that live the life of a strictly observant Jew. It seems that Judaism is a great religion to be from, but you have to leave it behind in order to achieve Nobel-level greatness.”
Exactly. Judaism won’t hunt and persecute people who “leave it behind”. Also known as freedom of choice.

On a somewhat tangential note, ever noticed how such discussions never seem to ask the same question about Hindus or Buddhists? After all, it’s not like the number of Nobel prize winners from those religions are proportional to their population in the world either. Then again, those guys don’t go around practicing terrorism and killing people based on which God they believe in either.

Like it or not, it is what Islam does to the rest of the world that provokes such comments. And no amount of political correctness can suppress all such comments.

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