Adam Lee has a post about the obfuscations and denial about Michael Shermer by some Big Names (he more politely calls them prominent individuals) in atheoskepticism.
One is Randi, because of what he told Mark Oppenheimer – you know, that whole thing about how Shermer’s a naughty boy, and if there had been any actual violence then somebody would have done something, but as it is it’s just a matter of getting drunk and boys doing what boys do, but hey if he gets many more such reports he might possibly ask Shermer to show up less often.
I quoted this statement in my previous post, but the more I reread it, the more damning it becomes.* This isn’t some innocent misunderstanding of the situation; Randi had been told by multiple people that Shermer had done something blameworthy, and he believed them. (He warned about what would happen if he got “more” complaints from “people I have reason to believe” – implying that he already had some.) He doesn’t even have the slender reed of an excuse that he didn’t think the complaints were credible. But because he didn’t have reports that Shermer had done anything “violent”, he dismisses it with a “ho ho ho, boys will be boys, what do you expect when people are drinking” attitude.
Quite. It’s horrifying.
Then there are Dawkins’s many insulting tweets about rape and being drunk.
Unless you choose to believe that Dawkins just happened to be idly speculating on the topic of drinking and rape at the same time this controversy was occurring – as one of my commenters put it, popping off random facts from “the lottery ball machine of his mind” – the obvious inference is that he believes the allegations against Shermer should be doubted on those grounds. Yet he says so without making it explicit who or what he’s talking about.
Another datum on that: before all this, before the Oppenheimer article, even before the “let’s rank kinds of rape and if you don’t like it go away and learn how to think” tweets – at the end of our email conversation that resulted in the joint statement, Dawkins asked me to dissuade people from spreading the “libellous allegation that Michael Shermer is a rapist or a sexual predator.”
I must say, I stared at the screen in shocked disbelief for quite awhile when that came in. What was I supposed to do, tell people who reported their own experiences to stop doing that? On what authority? On the basis of what knowledge? I don’t know that they are not telling the truth, do I.
I so badly wanted to reply with something along the lines of “How would that be different from what the bishops have been doing for decades?” But that would have been a bad beginning to the post-joint-statement situation, so I didn’t…quite. I pointed out that these were first-person accounts and that I didn’t know they weren’t true, so I couldn’t dismiss them. I did conclude with “It’s too reminiscent of the Catholic church and the rapey priests.” I haven’t heard from him since.
Adam goes on to Michael Nugent, and Jerry Coyne, and D J Grothe. The Grothe part contains the information that Pamela Gay confirmed that the “person B” in her account was Grothe, information that surprises approximately no one.
Adam concludes with that same comparison – which should, if there’s any justice, particularly sting Dawkins and Nugent.
There is, of course, no law obligating anyone in particular to discuss the accusations against Shermer, much less to believe them. However, our community has consistently condemned religious organizations that try to cover up misdeeds by one of their own – and with good reason, in my view. Secrecy leads to unaccountability, to corruption, and hence to harm. Conversely, the truth has nothing to fear from open and honest discussion. It’s this same principle which leads me to conclude that these allegations deserve a hearing, at the very least. Intellectual consistency demands no less.
There are many, many atheists who’ve condemned Catholicism and other religions for covering up allegations of molestation by clergy, shuffling predators from one parish to another or trying to pressure the victims into silence. If any of the atheists who’ve said this in the past are now taking the position that the allegations against Shermer shouldn’t be discussed, those people owe the Catholic church a very large apology. As for me, I don’t believe in a double standard, nor do I expect religion to abide by any moral rule that I don’t strive to live up to myself.
There is no “if” – we know that’s the case.
The amazing thing about all of this to me is that Dawkins, who has gained his fame as a writer of massive tomes, doesn’t seem to feel that this whole controversy rates even a short essay on his website — almost his entire argument seems to rely on tweets, as if those had suddenly become a valid form of public discussion or academic discourse.
He’s said so little that it’s hard to even figure out where he’s coming from. If he just came out and said something like
“Michael Shermer said that he never had sex with the woman who is accusing him, and I believe him,” or else “He told me that she was sober by the time they had sex, and furthermore he thought she had consented, and I believed him,” then we’d at least know what we were dealing with.
But in the absence of actual paragraphs containing actual statements of opinion, it’s hard not to think that his actual opinion is “Yes he got her drunk and then took advantage of her, but I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
Maybe that’s the real reason he’s relying on tweets — with those, he doesn’t need to try to state what he actually means, because he realizes on some level how wrong it sounds.
Shermer has only tepidly distanced himself from the most obvious foolishness of the Rand cult:
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/the-unlikeliest-cult-in-history/
I re-read this essay in light of the current news about him. When you skim down the whole thing, it becomes clear that Shermer is a moral nihilist who thinks individual gratification is self-justifying. Also, his critique of Rand focuses almost exclusively on her relationship with her acolyte Nathaniel Branden. No mention of her denial about alcohol, tobacco and speed even as her life was devasted by them.
This may seem a stretch, sticking this oar in here. But there is an ideological element in Shermer’s activities. And that ideology is under a lot of rocks in, especially, the older ‘skeptical’ movement.
If Shermer thinks it’s libelous, let him take it court. That’s what Dawkins et al. claim to think should be done instead of tweeting and blogging.
Well, for others anyway; apparently their rules don’t apply to themselves.
brucegee1962@1:
It could be his new bumper sticker: “Shermer said it. I believe it. That settles it.”
“Libel”?? Emery Emerii raised a whole load of cash for the libel action against PZ, where is the money incidentally? All he did was file a cease and desist, rattled some sabres, when that didn’t work slinked away. The suit has expired now so I assume he has lost his ability to sue for libel, also I assume why Alison went public.
Surely by the standards of the Dawkbros it absolutely isn’t libel now? He went to the “proper authorities” and nothing came of if, ergo no libel.
Reply to @johhthedrunkard
I think this essay here (http://lesswrong.com/lw/m1/guardians_of_ayn_rand/) provides the best answer to Shermer’s article and a warning sign about this ‘movement’ we (almost all) ignored (it was written in 2007).
It’s really horrifying how all this Atheist Movement (TM) is going the same way Objectivism did. (No, I’m not a libertarian).
No mention of her denial about alcohol, tobacco and speed even as her life was devasted by them.
Don’t’cha know Shermer approves of women that are drunk?
All he did was file a cease and desist, rattled some sabres, when that didn’t work slinked away.
Wasn’t there some money involved?
So, a few ‘pitters at Adam Lee’s place are telling us they’re having robust discussions about Shermer over in the pit. Dishonest sleazewit Gemmer snarked at PZ that ‘additional information’ changed their minds about the situation (eg Buzzfeed’s description of Randi’s non-action).
But the argument they made was that anything short of criminal prosecution was insufficient evidence to even warrant a discussion in public. Less than that, Shermer was being tried in the ‘court of public opinion’. Police or STFU was the cry.
Discussions in the pit are just as slanderous as PZ’s ‘grenade’ post. But now they have to pretend they never felt that way in order to counter Adam Lee’s charge of a wall of silence.
@2 Shermer mentions that other folk had come to the conclusion that Randism is a cult before him. But to write an article of this type and not mention Jeff Walker’s biography of Rand, The Ayn Rand Cult…?