You might have heard of the six-seven phenomenon: kids attributing great significance to the numbers six and seven.
I have three sons who attend a school here in Turkey, and the six-seven meme has even come here. No, the pupils do not say altı-yedi (six-seven in Turkish), they say "six-seven" in English and then laugh their heads off. My second son coolly says that it is “brain rot”, not knowing that the phrase “brain rot” is itself a meme. And my third son says, dramatically: “It is not brain rot: it is curséd.” (Yes, indeed, he emphasises the second syllable of curséd, instinctive poet that he is.) Teachers whenever they hear six-seven despairingly shout “Stop that!”
It’s what we call a meme. Now, we still see the great Richard Dawkins around the place. I wonder if he ever reflects that all the subtlety and sharpness of The Selfish Gene is now not worth tuppence, especially now everyone is doubting the relevance of Darwin for anything (except as an example of how very historical everyone was in the 19th century). Yet he should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his invention of the word meme. (Should have spelt it meam, Dawkins. It’s a question of cream cake versus barbaric creme egg. Or, if you were getting Greek on us, it should have been mime, from mimesis. Then, hilariously, all the world would speak of the latest amusing mimes.)
The six-seven thing came
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Evidence? If all questions are to be settled by ‘evidence’, what is the evidence that, e.g., what we need to show us that there either is or isn’t a God is evidence? For an intelligent discussion of Dawkins and what ‘evidence’ has to do with it all, see Ian Robinson (Deceased) in Reactionary Essays at https://dukemaskell.substack.com/p/the-incompetent-atheist.
In fact there is evidence for the existence of some form of deity but nothing anyone can agree amounts to proof. And Dawkins is sadly wrong that the only evidence for existence is scientific. In fact, like many who profess scientific proficiency, Dawkins does not understand what evidence is or how it is used:
I recommend this: Irregularity Theory: a deductive proof of existence
Abstract
Modern science—and most theories of laws—are built around regularity (i.e., patterns that repeat or persist). Yet much of what we meet looks irregular. Irregularity Theory (IT) starts there. It asks what irregularity is, and what must be true of a world in which irregularities can appear at all. The answer is strict: even irregularity presupposes persisting order—a minimal structure that endures across neighbouring instants so that we can re-identify items through change and make sense of interactions across moments. From this, a conditional follows wherever anything exists in our universe (or, more generally, in any domain), some persisting order must obtain. In that sense Absolute Irregularity—the total absence of any persisting order—is incompatible with existence. The result is not a theory of law; it is a pre-nomic constraint that any account of laws must respect.… Read more »
“I believe in God … ” = ‘I believe in the existence of some form of deity”?
Belief is the operative word.
Indeed Dawkins makes a mistake about the sciences. Even for the most exact of exact science theories, it all comes down to belief that the theory is true.
Sadly for the vast majority of scientific theories they are in the inexact sciences where experimental proof cannot prove theories at all – making the majority of them false. If 7 out of ten experiments match the outcome the theory suggests but 3 don’t then the theory is false.
For Dawkins, sciences are his religion. He believes in them and not in a deity.
Some scientist believe in sciences having some validity and also that there is a deity of some kind.
A lot of science theories can’t even be tested by experiments.
And the difference between “God” and “the existence of some form of deity” is … er … inoperative?
The difference is substantial. God is some form of deity but not all forms of deity include God.
The difference is between belief and disbelief, between something that can be believed in and something that can’t. To believe in God is to worship Him. Who could worship ‘the existence of some form of deity’?
Who is saying anyone does?
What don’t understand between using a phrase collectively to mean all examples of a particular class and a term referring to one example?
I am using the former and you are using the latter.
I think you are overdue an holiday.
To call God ‘a member of a class of deities’, like all your similar phrases, announces your disbelief, much as does Dawkins wanting evidence of His existence. You want to speak of Him but in a phraseology that denies Him. My objection is not that you are an atheist but snared in a self-contradiction.
I am merely respecting the fact that there are many religions which worship one or more deities and I am adopting a dispassionate unbiased stance irrespective of any personal beliefs.
Leonard Lyons wrote about the noted philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell in the New York Post 23 June 1964 “I once asked Russell if he was willing to die for his beliefs. “Of course not,” he replied. “After all, I may be wrong . . .”
Who am I to deny the beliefs of others who are prepared to die for them.
You appear to be a true believer in your faith to the degree that you will not respect the faiths of others.
No, you mistake me. I am as ordinary an unbeliever as I suppose you are. This disagreement is about the meaning of words. If you are going to talk about God or gods–your “deities”–you must do so in an idiom that allows them to exist. Your way of talking about them doesn’t. It puts them all in scare quotes, makes not just the Christian God but each and every one a mere so-called God. Your “unbiased stance irrespective of any personal belief” is no such thing”. It has the bias of someone who is incapable of speaking of or conceiving of religious belief as anything real.
“To call God ‘a member of a class of deities’ … announces your disbelief”
“I am as ordinary an unbeliever as I suppose you are.”
Please make up your mind. Am I an unbeliever or not?
‘your “deities” ….. Your way of talking about them …. puts them all in scare quotes’
Incorrect. I have not used scare quotes in my prior posts about deities. You are the one using them.
“the bias of someone who is incapable of speaking of or conceiving of religious belief as anything real.”
Which of all the religious beliefs in one or more deities am I supposed to favour as being real and which beliefs are supposedly not real?
If people have a belief you seem to adopt a philosophical position that no belief can be “real”.
Are you trying to suggest that some beliefs are “real” and other beliefs are not?
What makes one person’s belief real and another’s not real?
Are you a philosophical absurdist who treats belief as not real: that the universe is fundamentally irrational and devoid of inherent meaning?
This is probably one of the most pointless exchanges I have ever had to contend with on DS.
If thats what “esteemed” professors rattle on about, not suprised children come out of education brainwashed, paid by the word perhaps?,
WTF is the point of this article? Why has DS published it?
I am interested in the new words kids have invented, how and why they have spread and what they mean if anything – and it seems words like skibidi or skibbidy don’t mean much at all. There is something odd going on with kids today including ‘brain rot’ and here we have yet another James Alexander article from Bilkent University in Turkey where it seems nothing much happens.
Here is an explanation of skibidi which is much more informative, pregnant with the need to look at the underlying psychology of the adoption of such words by kids:
Okay, Fine, We’ll Explain it: Here’s What “Skibidi” Means
If you’ve been too embarrassed to ask the Gen Alpha kids in your life, here’s a rundown.
Being discussed in the media today is the fact that these kids have been so glued to their smart phones that they have not even learnt the basics of ordinary daily human interaction.
It seems even graduates are starting work whose main mode of communication with their colleagues is by email and they lack the basics of good manners and the ordinary daily pleasantries of life like please, thank you, good morning, how are you and suchlike.
So yet again, this article by James Alexander fails badly and this must be the fourth or fifth article by him I have commented on in a similar fashion. And its not as if I do that with other articles on DS.
TBH I hadn’t a clue what he was on about. I find his articles a tad weird but perhaps it’s just me being of fairly ordinary IQ.
I have no idea,try as I might, to understand what the writer is talking about🙄
Glad it’s not just me
Or me… I’m afraid I only made it as far as “ I don’t want to bore you” before I thought ‘good grief’ and gave up!
His lectures must be… fun. 😏
6 x 7 = 42
6 and 7 follow 5! Thats deep man
Not when launching rockets – or blowing them up on lauch pads like Blue Origin.
And there is an infinite number of numbers between six and seven which means they are separated by not 1 but infinity.
How deep is that?
Nonsense. Everyone knows that 6 x 9 = 42.
Wasn’t thst the number that controlled the universe in A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?
No. Its the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.
This Answer was first calculated by the supercomputer Deep Thought after seven and a half million years of thought.
This shocking answer resulted in the construction of an even larger supercomputer, named Earth, which was tasked with determining what the question was in the first place.
If you want to know more – Source – the peer reviewed book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
“drill rap song ‘Doot Doot (6 7)’ by American rapper Skrilla”
Well doesn’t that just say it all?
I listen with bated breath for his next wise incites!
It was “the number 23” starring Jim Carrey that i remember!
Its all just another sign of mixed up crazy young kids in a mad world trying to find something that makes sense (Sorry guys,you never will,get over it and get on with living!)
Btw, what the fu@k is a meme?..and do I really need to know?
Personally, I’m intrigued at what lies on the other side of brain rot; some enlightened epiphany or something even more meaningless and nihilistic.
“Yet he should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his invention of the word meme”.
Er, no. Dawkins may have coined the word “meme”, but it was an adaptation of a word and concept from a rather obscure German publication from several decades earlier. Just as the central thesis of the Selfish Gene itself was an unattributed (at the time) restatement of the work of William Hamilton, from whom Dawkins also borrowed left-wing political views.
…and for those of us who are a little less pretentious than this esteemed professor, Proverbs 6:16-19 may be recognised as having a certain precedence.
It reads: thou shall’t not taketh any notice of bollokeths spoken by thick black American rappers!
Either way, it’s a good thing he didn’t. Dawkins is a vandal. He took a sledgehammer to religion without caring about it’s benefits or what might fill the void. I’m not even sure he thought a void would need to be filled, which is astonishing for someone supposedly so intelligent.
Basically Dawkins is like a man who announces to his family that the house they are living in has some leaks, a few electrical problems, perhaps some asbestos issues, proceeds to tear down the house and as everyone is standing out in the street looking at the rubble confesses he doesn’t have anywhere else to live nor has given the matter much thought and doesn’t quite understand why living on the street isn’t particularly appealing.
Good analogy
I am not at all religious in the accepted sense of the word but it seems obvious to me that life, existence, consciousness are all utterly mysterious and shall forever remain so, no matter what we find out or think we have found out. I don’t have the wiring for belief in a God but I don’t understand why anyone would want to spend their time and energy attacking such a belief – but no problem with attacking the unpleasant side effects of purported belief.
The point that Dawkins made but didn’t spend nearly enough time reinforcing is the link between what he called “moderate, sensible religion”, which he admitted has some benefits for some people, and extremism.
If children are brought up to believe that it’s OK or even admirable to believe in things for which there is no evidence why shouldn’t they believe that the creator of the universe dictated a book to a 7th Century paedophile and anyone who questions this should be killed?
If children were taught to ask basic questions such as “what evidence do you have that the claims you’re making are true?” as adults they’d be far more likely to as the same questions when someone tells them that Allah has permitted husbands to beat disobedient wives or stone adulterers to death.
I doubt anyone goes from being an atheist to religiously motivated thug in a single step. It’s far more likely they were never an atheist because they were brought up to believe things for which there is no evidence, conditioned by society in general to think this sort of believe is a virtue then choose to believe other things that are less virtuous.
Encouraging children to… Read more »
Not sure about that – it seems to me that belief in a God falls into a completely different category from belief in anything else. It requires a leap of faith and that’s the whole point. I think attempting to prove God exists is kind of weird though I think some religious people have attempted it.
If an atheist starts believing in a deity it may well require a leap of faith.
The vast majority of religious people believe what they were taught to believe as children because they were never encouraged to question whether or not there’s any evidence to support the bonkers ideas they were told are true.
When analysed rationally the basic tenets of Christianity are just as bonkers as those of any other religion.
If God wants to forgive sins that people genuinely repent why can’t He not just forgive them without an innocent person having to suffer and die first? I’m able to forgive people who “sin” against me, surely a perfect God can do the same.
The idea that people who aren’t “saved” will suffer for all eternity flies in the face of any notion of proportionality in terms of “just” punishment. If Christianity is true then when I die I’ll suffer the same fate as the worst Nazi war criminal. How can this be seen as any type of justice? I’m far from perfect but I haven’t been involved in the murder of 6 million Jews so how is it fair that I suffer the same amount?
I don’t know. What seems to me by far the most important aspect and what I choose to focus on is how we can live better lives by treating others and ourselves and life itself with respect.
In order to do this we need a set of moral guidelines for how to live our lives. If people say that the Bible provides far better moral guidelines than the Koran they’ve demonstrated they know the difference between right and wrong independently of what’s written in a Holy book, and there’s no need for them to then refer to the Bible simply to prove what they already know.
I’ve not read the Koran and cannot claim to know the Bible that well either. I would say that there is Truth, and those books (or any book) can only point to the Truth, not be it. But I am not a theologian or a Christian or a Christian Apologist.
I have mixed feelings about the disappearance of religion from our civilisation.
I think we’re basically selfish – well I know I am anyway. Overcoming that is not easy, at least it’s not been for me. One of the central ideas of Christianity seems to be putting others before self. I don’t know whether religious people are on average more successful at that than others.
Yes that’s a fair point
I wonder if those people could really be said to believe
The whole thing is a mystery to me
Brilliant!
I think that Dawkins is actually trying to encourage people to think for themselves and come up with their own idea of why we are here and what we are for.
As sceptics we should reject being forced into someone else’s framework of belief without evidence.
From what I can remember Dawkins used the word “meme” to describe inherited wisdom or notions passed down the generations by word of mouth. It seems to have been bastardised to mean any kind of catchphrase that has become popular over a shortish period of time. I think this explanation accounts for it’s use in connection with genetic inheritance. Today’s usage gives a certain gravitas to mundane ideas that would otherwise not be worthy of note, it appears to be used by the media to construct stories with little merit. I don’t think the author of this piece is using it in such a way.
The old fashioned term “I’m at sixes and sevens” was once popular but is still in use today, meaning being undecided, experiencing some kind of hazard or not being quite sure of which way to go. I think there may also be a connection to dice throwing, although that may be slightly tenuous since seven is statistically the most likely outcome, followed by six and eight.
I lost almost all of the respect I had for Dawkins when he went full-on batshit crazy over the Brexit referendum result. His brain blew a fuse or two, and he never recovered.
Yes, one would think he would be pleased that people made a decision based on their own opinions.