Also…
Here’s how the left margin of their Twitter account looks.
Oh really? My and our resource center for international policy? Really?
What makes it that? Who says it’s that? How can it possibly be that?
There’s not a trace of internationalism in their lineup. Not a whiff. There’s not one person who’s not pale, when internationally and globally, a lot more people are not pale than are pale. This joke of a “Global” council looks as if some twenty or thirty conceited Yanks and Brits have gotten together to reinvent the East India Company. I suppose Shermer wants to play the John Stuart Mill part, since Mill used to take his trousers off every day when he got to the office.
This is one of the reasons I don’t take the “movement” seriously. It seems to be a bunch of self-selected arrogant jerks and their rabid fans. There’s a whole bunch of declarations about stuff with zero achievement, experience, or knowledge behind it.
I wasn’t kidding on Twitter… you have just as much right to declare yourself Secular Thought Leader Ophelia Benson ESQ, LLC or whatever.
I know. You’re right.
Oh and about the self-declaration – yes, I have just as much right, which is to say, none.
Imperialism is nothing if not global, after all!
From their web site:
What I’m sensing is that the policies advocated by these overwhelmingly white, Western, self-declared “leading thinkers” will come with a hefty dose of libertarianism; torture, racial profiling, and military-aggression apologia; sexual harassment tolerance; sympathy for Christian conservatism; and racist and sexist Evo Psych pseudoscience. So not really my resource center.
You have to love how the “scientific, social, and political issues of our day” don’t explicitly include global inequality, racism, or environmental destruction.
This is just another cash grab/tax shelter, isn’t it? ISN’T IT?!?!
Funny we’re talking about this the same week as an Adam Sandler movie comes out. Actual headline: “Adam Sandler Admits ‘Blended’ Was an Excuse for a Vacation”
Adam Sandler makes films like those people are a global secular organization.
“I suppose Shermer wants to play the John Stuart Mill part, since Mill used to take his trousers off every day when he got to the office.”
Best laff of the day! Except now I need to go bleach my brain >.<
Seconding Blanche. That was brilliance, Ophelia. Brilliance.
Ah, yes: “the head muckety-mucks of Saudi Arabia, a clique of oil-rich Bedouin barbarians (think bloodthirsty Beverly Hillbillies),” “the Bronze Age,” “(And don’t start giving me PC flack for making bigoted remarks about Arabs. Surely you can see I’m sticking up for a group of Arabs, the atheists upon whom open season has just been declared),” “our enlightened Western civilization and the backwards culture of Saudi Arabia,” “the hyper-sensitivities of a decadent culture (the West) are aligning with the primitive half-civilization of the Middle East.”
That sort of rhetoric from a white guy from the US will undoubtedly appeal to Arab atheists and secularists. It’s not like there are Arab activists who might have insightful analyses. Very global.
Unsurprisingly, of the world’s great minds, 20 are men and 5 women.
Maybe it is the modesty that gets me. Because this crowd of people who have ZERO EXPERTISE in most of the relevant fields are the most qualified to address the issues.
Thank you Blanche and Josh. It amused me too!
They’ve told us they’re our global resource, Ophelia. I don’t know what else there is to say or why you think it’s appropriate to express confusion.
I can’t even see who wrote that thing that Salty quoted. Good web skillz.
Who wrote that thing?? It’s full of “I” and “me” as if we’re supposed to know who it is but there’s no name anywhere.
The best in their field. Ok.
Robert M. Price
Theology & Biblical Criticism
wrote it
At least his picture pops up when you go from the previous page.
Robert M. Price. On the home page, the title is accompanied by his picture, so I looked through the pictures (assuming, perhaps too generously, that this wasn’t random) to identify it. The World’s Leading Thinkers deserve more credit!
😀
Eh, what? How can you tell what the previous page is?
Ophelia
There are arrow thingys on either side of the screen.
Ohhh so there are. For some reason I got a version blown up to 300% so I didn’t see them.
They’ll be greeted as liberators.
What’s sad is what a missed opportunity this is. A genuinely global secular organization would be a great thing. It could involve activists and academics from around the world, experts in their own countries or regions, sharing and exchanging a variety of concerns, viewpoints, and experiences. It could find atheists and secularists able to translate works into other languages. This organization just seems narrow, pompous, and superfluous, and it could actually harm global relations among secularists.
There’s still the International Humanist and Ethical Union. I think this new one is just going to cut into their membership and funding while pointlessly duplicating their efforts.
Anybody who unironically calls themselves “world’s greatest thinkers” is not to be taken serious.
And yeah, I’ll totally ask them about issues of secularism in Germany. I mean, most of them have been there once, right? Makes them total experts, I guess.
White men telling the rest of the world how to behave. As if the 20th century never happened.
Right. That’s how organisations doing global work generally attempt to operate: by liaising with local, existing organizations in the target region to utilize local skillsets and knowledge wherever possible. Not only do such approaches make local buy in, and thus sustainability, more likely, but they reduce the likelihood of paternalistic, wrong-headed projects that look good on paper from afar but fail to account for realities on the ground.
It’s not like there’s an entire field of development that’s learned some of these lessons the hard way.
I’m wondering: should I ask them about their position on the changes in German church tax procedures? As THE global experts they should know, right?
When has lack of knowledge about a subject stopped Dawkins or Harris before?
I found a lot of things wrong with that particular article, including the use of pronouns. But hey, they’re global and diverse and they’re telling me so – no need to worry, right?
Thanks for your work on this Ophelia.
I’m just glad that FINALLY rich white powerful men from the US/UK will be able to have their voice heard and be able to speak for the globe. It’s refreshing, they have been silenced for too long. /snark
-It might. Most Arabs in the U.S. aren’t Muslims, much less Saudis, so it is doubtful that most Arab secularists in the U.S. were once Muslims.
Enopoletus,
Why do you focus on Arab secularists in the “US? It’s a “Global” organization, right? Not to mention it is still racist as all shit whether you are religious or not.
This talk about “global experts” reminds me of The World’s Foremost Authority, Professor Irwin Corey. Amazingly, he is still alive and will reach his centenary in July.
I suspected that Mill and Shermer took their trousers off in the office for different reasons, but didn’t know the anecdote. Google intoduced me to Reeves’s biography, which I now want to read. Thank you.
Otherwise — oh, dear, it’s “brights” all over again on a larger scale.