Richard Dawkins On God, Sex, Race

A lovely chat with the famous atheist and evolutionary biologist.

Richard is a scientist, author, and public speaker. From 1995 to 2008 he was the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and he’s currently a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature. Among his many bestselling books are the The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion, and his two-part autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and A Brief Candle in the Dark. He also has substack called The Poetry of Reality — check it out and subscribe!

A pioneering New Atheist, Dawkins is a passionate defender of science and denigrator of religion. Who better to talk to about God? You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on whether faith is necessary for meaning, and which religion is the worst — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Richard growing up in England and colonial Africa; his father serving as an agricultural officer; the paternalistic racism of that period; Orwell’s “Such, Such Were the Joys”; genetic variation and natural selection; how evolution is “stunningly simple” but yields “prodigious complexity”; the emergence of consciousness; the crucial role of language for humans; how our intelligence will destroy us; life on other planets; birds-of-paradise and seducing the opposite sex; how faith and the scientific method aren’t mutually exclusive; Einstein’s faith; Pascal; Oakeshott; religious practice over doctrine; the divinity of nature; Richard’s love of cathedrals and church music; Buddhism; virgin births and transubstantiation; Jesus as a moral teacher; his shifting of human consciousness; the Jefferson bible; Hitchens; GK Chesterton; Larkin; Richard as a “cultural Anglican”; gender as “fictive sex”; gamete size; respecting pronouns; science and race; tribalism and “the other”; the complex blend of genetics and culture; the heritability of intelligence; the evolutionary role of religion; the heretical violence of Islam; gays in the Catholic Church; falling rates of religious faith; Judith Butler’s new book; and my awful experience on Jon Stewart’s now-terminated show.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Next up: Daniel Finkelstein on his memoir Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad, and Neil J. Young on his history of the gay right. After that: Johann Hari on weight-loss drugs, Adam Moss on the artistic process, and George Will on Trump and conservatism. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other pod comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Here’s one of many emailers who enjoyed last week’s episode with Abigail Shrier on kids and therapy:

I’ve been a subscriber for a while and eagerly await your email and podcast every Friday. This last week’s with Abigail Shrier was both informative and absolutely frightening. No wonder todays’ young people are so messed up!

Another fan of the episode:

I suspect you will get a lot of mail this week. Something I have noticed in my own family is the people who put traumas in their past became successful and happy. The people who ruminate, who make the bad stuff part of their identities, never become happy. Rather than say, “This awful thing happened to you. You will never be the same. You will be ruined for life,” I would rather people say, “This awful thing happened to you. I am so sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I am your friend. I am here for you, whatever you need. You can still have a happy life, even if it is not quite the one you imagined.”

I’ve seen people I love wait for a time machine that will never come, that will never erase the big bad thing. Joy is self-generated. It doesn’t come in a pill, no matter how clever the pharmacologists may be. You choose joy. Living in 21st century America with its technological magic and civil freedoms, there’s lots of reasons to be joyful. I guess finding the joy within doesn’t make money for anybody?

A mixed response from this listener:

Many times throughout the Shrier episode, she was creating a strawman/caricature of therapy and arguing against it. In essence, she was describing bad therapy. She also used a lot of absolute statements (she seemed to say “always” and “never” about 25 times), which was a red flag. That being said, she had many valuable points. Thanks to her for coming on the pod.

P.S. Talk to more people you disagree with! I know that’s probably easier said than done.

True, though Richard Dawkins was a gracious adversary. Another listener:

I practice as a psychotherapist in Ontario, where there is socialized medicine, so the landscape may be completely different here than where Shrier is. From this location, however, it appears that what she is saying is so general as to be meaningless. Her assertion that we “rush to medicate ADHD without trying to change conditions in a child’s situation” is simply not true. It may well be the case that ADHD is incorrectly and over-diagnosed, but that does not prove that other solutions haven’t been attempted.

Statements about the young generation being the worst or least effective in history can’t be proven, nor can statements about previous eras of parenting. Aside from everything else, each generation of children grow up in different conditions, in which parenting is only one influence. Psychotherapy is part of the social landscape, but not the cure for it.

Shrier’s discussion of iatrogenesis, which she described as side effects, is simplistic. It’s not exactly “when the healer introduces harm,” but when the treatment causes unexpected harm that requires another cure. It’s an important issue, but much more complex than she presents it.

One more on the Shrier pod:

My daughter experienced a serious mental health episode at 14 — depression and anxiety so extreme she was disassociated and unable to function at all. Therapy and medication was lifesaving, and now she is a thriving college student, a member of a sorority, and on the deans list. The difference was the type of therapy she received: CBT — Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It doesn’t aim to go over past traumas, but to change the way a person thinks about things. In other words, “What happened is over — what’s next?” It discourages rumination. It tries to change negative thinking into positive thinking in order to break out of negative behavioral patterns.

This type of therapy is replacing the old type of therapy. I also struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my life and wish I had CBT available to me when I was young. I never reached what I believe was my full potential because of mental health issues. (Genetics are a bitch.) I was never able to talk to my parents about my struggles because of the atmosphere surrounding those things in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Is it possible that the rise in anxiety and depression diagnoses are rising in young people due to under-diagnosis in the past? I know my father is living with undiagnosed general anxiety, as I did well into my 40s.

CBT is arguably the most effective anti-depressant therapy we have, barring new breakthroughs from psychedelic-based drugs. Another recent episode:

The Christian Wiman interview is so good, I had to subscribe to the Dish. The only reason I didn’t before was that I get waaaay too much content to read and I always have trouble prioritizing it. A hard-stop “rule” against paying just makes it easier to prioritize, but now I’m all in.

Word got around: “A friend of mine recommended the Wiman episode and I loved it, so here I am now, subscribing to hear more!” And another:

Add me to the list of Dishheads who loved the conversation with Christian Wiman. I wasn’t familiar with his work, but I was especially intrigued to listen when I saw in the description that he’s from West Texas, where my late mother grew up. Indeed, when talking to my aunt about the podcast, she was familiar with Wiman and recalls that his uncle (at least she thinks it was his uncle) was a principal at the elementary school where she taught years ago.

Small-world note aside, I truly appreciated his exploration of Christian faith and the willingness to admit, at times, that people of faith will still sometimes question it — whether it’s a way to cope with this often cruel world. As a 34-year recovering alcoholic, I can say without question I am alive today because God works in my life. He loves and cares for me in ways beyond my ability to comprehend. Yet, I still have moments of doubt. They are few and far between, yet they are there. So thank you, again, for an honest discussion about faith.

I plan on sharing Wiman’s book with my 22-year-old son, who has struggled with mental health issues most of his life but who is a gifted writer. I’m hoping he’ll find inspiration.

Here’s a dissent over last week’s column on the transqueer movement:

Your takedown of Chu’s ridiculous arguments in New York Magazine was excellent. I would also point you to Freddie de Boer’s response to her piece; it attacks it from a different perspective but is also great.

I write to dissent on three points that have been somewhat frequent in your writings on this subject and that I disagree with. The first regards pronouns and Dylan Mulvaney.

When I first saw her TikTok series, I assumed it was a bad right-wing impersonation of a trans person. Turns out it wasn’t, and people liked it! With the massive following she developed (currently 10.1 million followers on TikTok), it’s not just trans people who relate to her, or want to see her content. While I find her annoying and her videos sexist, that does not mean that she is not genuine in stating that she’s trans and has gender dysphoria. I don’t think it’s a grift; she has gotten surgery, takes hormones, and the like.

Trans people are just like the larger population; some of them, just like us, are fucking annoying. That does not mean that they should be disrespected or their dysphoria is not real. And in Mulvaney’s case, the fact she has faced violent threats and not detransitioned is a clear sign that she’s not faking it for clout.

For me, there’s a low bar in believing someone’s claim of being trans. I usually take people’s word for it. I see no reason to question people’s pronouns, primarily out of a general indifference. Why should I give a shit? It doesn’t affect me. (That being said, Chu does not meet even my low standards because a hypersexualization of being trans is just wrong and, as you say, a mockery of actual trans people. There’s a difference between Chu and Mulvaney; the latter is annoying, and Chu is a pervert.)

My second point is a smaller one but centers on Chu’s quotes about her “vagina being a wound” and being a straight white male. Beginning with her “vagina being a wound,” I struggle to find a better way to describe it. It’s certainly not the same as a biological woman’s. And it’s really not that far off from the objective truth. On the straight, white-male quote, she had not started to transition yet. Pretend an actual trans person made a similar comment ten years ago and, in the last ten years, had come out and transitioned. Would that mitigate their transness today? Of course not. While this does not apply to a fraud like Chu, it would apply to a genuine person with gender dysphoria.

My third point focuses on trans legal protections. While trans people are covered under the Civil Rights Act, that does not mean that every problem has been solved. Plenty of things are illegal but still happen, and laws require enforcement. In many areas, including housing and employment, trans people report higher rates of discrimination than the rest of the general population despite that discrimination being illegal. Legal protections from Bostock were a monumental step forward, and there has never been a better time to be trans, but there are still unique and serious issues that trans people face despite the improvements from the past few years.

By the way, I am a student who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary, so it’s safe to say I am significantly to your left on many issues. But I enjoy reading your pieces because I disagree with many of them and they challenge how I view certain subjects. I appreciate your perspective and look forward to the Dish every week.

In general, I agree with you about giving the benefit of the doubt to anyone who says they’re trans, even if they said they were a straight male only a few years ago. But Mulvaney is clearly in it for fame and clicks and money, and his misogyny is beyond belief. Ditto Chu. They’re exceptions to the rule because they became trans for publicity in the first case and for pomo trolling purposes in the second. I fear Mulvaney’s schtick is not going to make him happy.

Another dissent:

You’ve frequently mentioned the Trevor Project and Grindr as part of your hall of shame — organizations that are woke to the point of homophobia. I’ve been volunteering with Trevor for years. I am unhappy with its public face, but also understand that it is tailored to the donor base. In its actual service to youth in crisis, Trevor is apolitical.

Based on decades of psychological research, volunteers say almost nothing other than open-ended questions. People in crisis are unlikely to respond to prescriptive advice from a stranger. Instead, we try to figure out what already brings the contact some happiness and meaning. This can and does involve referring contacts into decidedly anti-woke spaces, provided that’s where they are likely to feel happy and included. (The answer is often church.) In conversations, we never take any stand whatsoever in the definitions of words like “gay” or “gender.” Do you think we should? If someone identifies as a male lesbian, we certainly aren’t going to argue about whether that makes sense. We’re going to look for ways to reduce self-harm and the risk of suicide.

I use Grindr daily. I’ve used it in some of the most woke neighborhoods on the planet. It has not been taken over by nonbinary extremists. Yes, there are some profiles that say “no men.” I’ve talked about these profiles with hundreds of other Grindr users. Do we know what we call those profiles? Closet cases.

You know what is ten times more common on Grindr? Profiles that say “no trans.” It is an interesting quirk that essentially two separate markets exist on the same app. It’s also no great inconvenience. The bridge between these markets is femmes. Many “str8” men on Grindr are open to feminine twinks. Most gay men are also open to feminine twinks. So splitting Grindr into two apps would hurt both of its markets.

There are also many gay men who are open to hooking up with trans women. Okay, maybe they should identify as bi, but they’re not ruining Grindr. Overall, I’ve found the Grindr user base to be apolitical. You present it as though the average profile includes Foucault quotes. Nope. The average profile says, “no pic, no chat,” because the average user’s top concern is physical attractiveness. It’s still a hook-up app, not a Judith Butler seminar.

It’s a hook-up app despite Grindr management’s best efforts. They’re queerer than queer, and constantly harping on it. You can search for age, and sexual positions, and body types, for example. But you cannot search for sex, i.e. biological men only, because Grindr only offers “gender identity” as an option. They have both abolished biological sex and homosexuality — because trans fantasies always come first.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You could have an app for straight or bi or gay closet-cases and their trans fixations. You could have an app for trans people. You already have sub-sub-cultural apps — for bears, daddies, twinks, etc. But an app for biological men seeking sex and dates with other biological men? No longer allowed.

As for Trevor, how am I to trust a group counseling kids when it has defined homosexuality as including biological men having sex with biological women? That’s conversion therapy — by a group funded by gay people! I don’t know what happens in those confidential phone conversations, but I sure don’t trust a group whose public facing message is so homophobic. I once donated and held some of the first fundraisers for Trevor when it was trying to help gay kids who were in despair. Now I’d warn any gay kid against being caught in its indoctrination process.

Another reader writes, “I read that Chu piece in amazement, but also in satisfaction to see the moral bankruptcy of this movement so clearly articulated.” Another feels that transqueer ideology isn’t a threat:

This is best sentence in your piece about Judith Butler and her ideology: “They are not winning, but it is not for lack of trying.” What comforts me in reading about all this madness is that it isn’t catching on with the general public. I understand concerns about these ideas taking over journalism and other institutions, let alone being introduced in schools, but because 99+% of humanity is comfortable with their biological sex, we don’t need to worry about the abolition of the male-female binary. “Male and female God created them” saith the scriptures, and for once I agree.

The thing is they don’t need to persuade anyone. They just have to control the elites and have them impose this on everyone, regardless. Try taking your kid to a doctor and not having him asked if he identifies as a girl; try sending your child to public school and not have him be told everyone gets to choose their sex, regardless of their bodies; try opening a lesbian or gay bar for biological women or men only; and try offering an opinion about this in private, and in Scotland, you will soon be thrown in jail for gender wrongthink. Of course they’ll never persuade most sane people that biological sex is irrelevant for determining who is a man or a woman. But they don’t have to as long as they retain power.

Another reader can’t believe Butler has endured this long:

I should begin by saying that I have not read Judith Butler’s entire oeuvre — that would be a task fit for prisoners — but I’ve read enough to marvel at how the most prominent people in the contemporary academic world seem to fail at things we once considered basic to first-year writing classes. If Claudine Gay found it difficult to produce anything at all without plagiarizing, Butler is obviously and repeatedly guilty of violating two of the cardinal rules of Freshman English: 1) make arguments rather than assertions; 2) acknowledge and address the counterargument. A series of bald claims supported only by the writer’s high profile in the intellectual fashion world is worthless as anything but a manifesto.

Butler’s viability even as a producer of mere ideology was effectively demolished by Martha Nussbaum in TNR a quarter century ago: “The Professor of Parody: The hip defeatism of Judith Butler.” The more worrisome marvel is that such an effective piece of demolition work didn’t put an end to the Butler phenomenon back then.

Nothing can. Check out today’s review of Butler by the non-fiction reviewer for the WokePo, Becca Rothfeld. In her view, Butler really shouldn’t have bothered even addressing counter-points on sex and gender because they’re self-evidently absurd:

Quibbling with hacks is a waste of a formidable thinker’s intellect, even when those hacks are tragically efficacious. Of course, it would be a public service if Butler were to change the zealots’ minds, but “Who’s Afraid of Gender?” wisely reminds us that conservative pathologies are often impervious to reason.

Now you begin to realize why the Washington Post is a woke joke. Or check out David Remnick’s fawning, giggling interview with Butler, where he utters not a word of dissent to the guru that his entire junior staff all worship. He seems unaware of any arguments on the other side, and so brings none up.

Another reader recommends a New Yorker piece called “My Adventures In Deconstruction,” adding, “Seems like Judith Butler & co were already busy fucking up young people’s lives starting 30+ years ago.”

Another recommends an alternative to Butler:

In your latest column you wrote, “On the most blazing practical issues of our current gender debate, [i.e., childhood gender dysmorphia], Butler has little to say. This begs the question, “Why do a close reading of her work if in fact you are looking for a solution to making sure these kids are safe?” I understand that Butler is a patron saint of a certain sect of critical gender theorists, but that doesn’t, automatically, make her an interlocutor worth your time.

I recommend looking into the work of Avgi Saketopoulou, a practicing psychoanalyst who, in a recent book she co-authored, Gender without Identity, argues for embracing the complexity of the role gender plays in self actualization, as opposed to simply reducing any claim of gender dysmorphia as proof of a trans identity. She and her co-author make this claim in the face of their own uneasiness with introducing an ambiguity into the trans discourse that could be “weaponized” to erase trans experiences. They do so because they put the care of individual children and adults above the political stakes of transness that you regularly grapple with.

These are the types of people “on the other side” I’d like to see you engaging with intellectually because they are grounded in reality, as opposed to living solely in the consequence-free zone of Berkeley or the New York media bubble.

Many thanks. This next reader looks past ideology:

Let’s leave aside his discussions of children. They’re clearly bonkers. And I agree that Andrew Long Chu has a platform he shouldn’t have.

But I feel a certain sympathy for the man himself. He seems a mystic whose soul is severely distorted by our present age. When he discusses suffering, he calls to mind many of the female saints I’ve read. There’s an argument to be made that St. Perpetua bullied her way into a martyrdom, but she clearly understood why she was suffering and for Whom. Chu and many of his compatriots seem like people desperately looking to understand their suffering without wishing it away or burying it under the hedonism so available in modern America. I admire this. In an age that avoids discomfort of any kind, choosing to examine and embrace one’s suffering rather than avoiding it seems closer to Christ than many Christians I know.

Where Chu goes off the rails, in my opinion, is coming to the conclusion that suffering is an end in itself rather than the means of a greater enlightenment. I have been thinking a lot about the gods of the past — and the present, in different guise — who ask for suffering but never embrace it for themselves. It seems apropos that this article came out during Lent. Jesus, the Suffering Servant, was the ultimate seed who died, but was reborn to bear fruit in all of us. Chu seems trapped inside of his own psyche and rotting; that must be awful.

I appreciate your fighting against his ideas. I also hope that he will come to know why the Man of Sorrows is good news and find the Fountain from which joy through suffering is found. Think of what a shining soul that could be!

Another reader plugs a new pod episode:

Excellent post, Andrew! I happened to catch James Lindsay on Rogan yesterday. Some of his greater points might drift into “conspiracy” land for those not familiar with the literature, but most of us know Lindsay has read these people, which makes his observations and critiques that much more damning — and terrifying.

Seeing New York Mag print such utter rubbish reminds me of the NYTs printing the 1619 Project — its blatant misreading of the historical record and deliberate spread of falsehoods that not only have been widely accepted by institutional America, but have seen themselves inserted into curriculums, Obama-produced Hulu shows, and of course Hannah-Jones’ Pulitzer.

There’s a sinister similarity here: despite how wrong we know these people to be — not because we’re prejudiced against their views but because their views don’t hold up to scrutiny — one has to wonder if that’s not the whole game. Hannah-Jones’ smugness and refusal to debate her critics — similar to Kendi, DiAngelo, Butler, Crenshaw, et al — is revealing. They’re all part of the same cult. They truly believe they’re revolutionaries at the vanguard.

But they’re not the ones writing the checks and ensuring this stuff gains traction in key American institutions. Whoever holds those keys are the ones allowing all this nonsense to become embedded.

That would be the entire foundation network in America, now pouring billions into projects rooted in critical race, gender and queer theory. Another reader points a finger at the Democratic Party:

You wrote, “A new lawsuit is being filed against the NCAA for destroying women’s sports.” But that lawsuit will be moot if the Democrats ever manage to pass the Equality Act, which would enshrine that NCAA policy — any man who says he is a woman is a woman — into federal law. Talk about deconstruction! Biden in his recent SOTU once again called for immediate passage of the Equality Act. Every Democrat in Congress is on record as being in favor of the Equality Act. The Democrats have become nothing more than the legislative arm of the transqueer movement, and we allow them to stay in office at our peril.

The Equality Act would abolish homosexuality and biological sex as legal and constitutional markers. It would mark the trans obliteration of same-sex attraction. Here’s another vent over the Dems:

I’m an old school Dishhead, going back over two decades now. (Back in the day I had a couple emails featured as “Email of the Day,” I’m still very proud to say.) I’m compelled to write today because I feel like I’m losing my mind. I have just read another news article about a transgender woman with his dick and balls out in a women’s locker room — this time in Alaska, where apparently a 12-year-old girl was (understandably) upset and surprised at the sight of a man shaving in the fucking women’s locker room!

I feel like I’m drowning, with no good outlet for standing up to or pushing back against this ongoing political debacle, without allying myself with the execrable haters on the far right. I am a 52-year-old, single, liberal, hetero white guy. I strongly support the right of trans-identified individuals to live in dignity and personal safety/security. At the same time, I strongly back your idea of “sane pragmatic accommodations,” which would preserve women-only spaces and sports for biological women.

It beggars belief that the elites of the Democratic Party — my party of 34 years — now support biological men walking around women’s locker rooms with their genitalia on full display, simply because these individuals have declared themselves “women”. When the trans rights movement really got going several years ago, I was fully onboard with the “trans women are women” statement, because I thought it meant that we as citizens of this great democracy were going to treat trans women with full dignity in their adopted gender. I didn’t get that they actually meant: “No, trans women are literally women.”

This is: (1) insane, and (2) a political disaster for the Democratic Party. As these stories of men with their junk out in women’s locker rooms proliferate, we are going to see that the backlash in public opinion around trans issues is only getting started. That won’t be good for anyone’s lived experience.

The Democrats are run by their interest groups, and their interest groups are run by the craziest fringe of the recently graduated Ivy League.

Yet another liberal mugged by reality:

In my mid 20s, decades ago in law school, I explored Critical Legal Studies. Lacking the background in the classics that you and Jeffrey Rosen carry forward with such facility, and having only passing knowledge of Foucault, Derrida and other intellectual forebears of CLS, I was passingly intrigued by the notion that what passes for established legal principles and precedents are not only contingent but also a cover for systems of power that maintain the privileged few at the expense of the oppressed masses. I remain convinced that this broad concept springs from a kernel of truth — but it’s a truth so banal as to be both meaningless and unhelpful if one is serious about addressing injustice and inequality.

I admire your willingness and ability to slog through Butler, to spare the rest of us the nausea. And I can only marvel at the vigor and vim with which you continue to battle the forces of idiocy. After a stint at the ACLU back in the good old days of principled First Amendment advocacy (before the likes of Nadine Strossen decamped to FAIR, for obvious reasons, leaving the likes of Chase Strangio to hold forth unchallenged), I am much too old and tired to carry on. These days, I channel my energies as a recovering lawyer to dispute resolution through mediation … and to our rescue pup. Yes, this whole email is a verbose and tardy offering of a rescue pic:

Dogs will keep us sane as our civilization rots from within. Another reader looks to the future:

I wonder if there’s a middle ground here, or at least a way in which a longer view might be informative. If you think about it, the entire arc of the past 200 years has featured humans using technology to free ourselves from one biological constraint after another. We no longer have to walk or run or ride an animal to travel; we can literally fly through the air. Journeys that took days or weeks in living memory can be done in less than a day to anywhere on earth.

If your liver fails — not to mention your knees and hips — we can replace it. Smallpox — an ancient scourge that haunted our ancestors and constantly reshaped human history — no longer exists in the wild because we defeated it. Women can take a pill to reliably control ovulation. We can create human embryos outside human bodies and no one doubts we will be able to gestate babies in artificial environments at some point, etc, etc.

Every time we have broken some kind of new ground that abolishes some biological limit in our bodies, people have howled in complaint about how it’s against god and nature. So I get very skeptical whenever I hear anyone say that biology necessarily dictates X, so X is therefore a line we cannot or must not cross.  I’m sorry, but I don’t accept that cancer is a death sentence just because nature says it must be so, so it’s not hard for me to understand that people are unwilling to accept that they must remain the chromosomal sex of their birth if it can be changed and they want to change it.

Why? Just wind the tape forward a few decades from now. We will throw off the limits of biology at an ever-more rapid pace, and our bodies will become increasingly cybernetic. Consider artificial limbs, which are becoming so advanced, so cool, and so interchangeable that the day will come when healthy people will make the choice to replace their healthy arms and legs with prosthetics. It will start with some outliers who are just into extreme body modification, but it will eventually become more common until at some point it will be utility or even just a fashion statement.

At some point in the future, as our bodies and our lives become more and more divorced from the constraints of mature, what will gender even mean? One day, we will surely be able to switch our physical sexes as easily as we change our underwear.

Seen in this light, it’s very easy to understand how every age-old assumption we make about our bodies will become a social construct that technology obviates. We think nothing of flying or of planning children, but man was not “meant” to fly, nor were people “meant” to have sex just for pleasure without worrying about making babies. In a world where I can go to a party as a woman and then change into being a man on a whim, how quaint will these gender debates appear?

Culturally, we have really not fully grappled with where we are headed and what it means. The technology is coming whether we want it or not, and if past is prologue, a lot more people will want it than not.

An important point. Nietzsche’s prediction of our leaving behind all natural constraints, or the emergence of Yuval Noah-Harari’s Homo Deus, are definitely floating in our future. But if humans are not part of nature, what are we? The appeal of gnosticism remains. But its negation of our humanity remains as well.

Thanks as always for the smart and interesting emails. Send yours to dish@andrewsullivan.com. One more for the week:

I typically find myself on the “other” side of your takes, but I find them interesting nonetheless, as I believe in healthy debate instead of throwing people with different opinions into the metaphorical trash bin. I have to say, though, I am so happy you are taking up this side of the trans / woke debate. Conservatives have long been about these talking points, but you have a unique position as being a more center-left voice that allows you to wade into this battle with a more legitimate-seeming opinion. You also take the time to read and critique the crazy stuff in New York Magazine etc. that people like myself just don’t have the interest or time to keep up with.

I must say, it is entertaining to see the trans movement eat itself alive — though I grieve for the lives destroyed or even lost in the process. Thank you for doing what you can to open people’s eyes to the true, destructive nature of the movement.

See you next Friday.

Invite your friends and earn rewards

If you enjoy The Weekly Dish, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe.

Invite Friends