It’s something of a standing joke that it is so common to see priests outed as pedophiles — it’s as if their religion doesn’t actually do anything to promote moral behavior. That individual priests are repulsive in their behavior doesn’t necessarily indict their faith as contributing to the problem, though. What does is when their religious hierarchy permits or enables it, or makes excuses for it, or ignores the problem altogether.
So I’m dismayed to read this story about identifying the founder of the Redpill Subreddit, a vile online sanctuary for misogynistic abusive men. The Daily Beast did a thorough job of tracking down the creator; read the article and there is more than enough evidence that Robert Fisher is the name of the man who built “the web’s most popular online destination for pickup artistry and men’s rights activists, The Red Pill”.
It turns out he’s a Republican. Check, no surprise there.
He’s a computer nerd and businessman, check.
He’s been elected to his state Congress, check.
Aaaaaand…he’s an atheist. Check, and no surprise, I’m sorry to say. Online, he went by the alias Pk_atheist.
A post by Pk_atheist in the early days of the forum advertises the author’s blog, Dating American, a blog that immediately precipitated the establishment of The Red Pill in 2012 and which was “dedicated to the woes of dating in the American culture.” On the “about the author” section of Dating American, the author, who calls himself “Desmond,” promotes two other blogs he’s “authored”: Existential Vortex and Explain God. Performing a search of the unique URL for Existential Vortex led to a comment on an ex-Christian message board again advertising the blog, existentialvortex.blogspot.com.
Futrelle summarizes his repellent misogyny. He’s simply a terrible person. He’s a perfectly acceptable atheist, of course, as I’m sure many will tell me. He’s a person who doesn’t believe in gods, and that’s all it takes to be an atheist, and the amoral contingent within movement atheism will take this as good evidence that my pleas for the atheist movement to adopt some degree of moral responsibility, to regard acceptance of the natural world and rejection of the supernatural as a proper foundation for justifying ethical behavior, are completely wrong.
I’m beginning to be swayed to agreement.
Unfortunately, if this movement is willing to accept Robert Fisher as a member in good standing, if we are so pleased with the absence of any kind of ethical stance to this collection of random people united by one trivial idea, if this is nothing but a granfalloon that gives a tacit welcome to anyone, no matter how vile, then…
Why would anyone want to be identified as an atheist?
I mean, it’s not as if atheism does anything to promote moral behavior, and a hell of a lot of atheists treat it as a point of pride that their identity lacks any expectations beyond not believing in deities. If I will condemn the Catholics for condoning the rape of children, why would I want to be part of a movement that implicitly condones the rape and harassment of women, with many of its members gladly joining misogynistic fora on YouTube and Reddit? It is looking rather pointless.
Your not part of a granfalloon nor am I! That means a lot to me.
I’m amazed that an atheist got elected in the States. I guess his voters found his misogyny, and hatred of women’s rights more palatable.
In my early morning post about Fisher, I did note that he started out as a democrat. Just getting that in there before anyone shows up an attempts some sort of idiotic gotcha. I’ll add that everyone should read the Daily Beast article first, because it is very in-depth, and link heavy. The attribution is extremely well done, as is the attention to all the details.
As for the rest of it, can’t say I’m remotely surprised.
I know a number of people who don’t believe in a God who won’t call themselves atheists because of the shenanigans of those who seem to represent atheism. It reminds me of how many women, especially women of color, refuse to call themselves feminists, despite believing in most of the things arch feminists fight for, because they have been so alienated by white feminism.
Personally, I don’t call myself an atheist because I find the whole question of “is there a God” so much philosophical masturbation. I usually say, “if there is a God, I’m sure she can take care of herself. It’s the mortals here on Earth I need to look out for.” In other words, whether there is a God or not wouldn’t have any effect on what I think I should do. My “religion” consists of “don’t be a jerk” with a side order of “on good days, try to leave the world a better place than you found it.” And I do it because I want to feel okay about myself. (And because I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of what the jerks dish out.)
He’s a perfectly good atheist, but I would expect the local model railway club to avoid associating with someone that gross, nevermind a group like American movement atheism that has ambitions of outreach and changing people’s minds! Not because his philosophy is incompatible with building model railways/atheism, but because he’s a shitty person and tolerating him reflects badly on any group.
So I take people like him as an indication that movement atheism absolutely, definitely needs to adopt some moral responsibility if it wants to do any good. But I also take the sheer prevalence of atheists like him as evidence that “acceptance of the natural world and rejection of the supernatural” isn’t actually a sufficient foundation for this. Which is why I like the idea of merging the atheist movement into the broader social justice movement: put some meat on those scattered ideological bones and get rid of assholes like Fisher at the same time, by making your movement explicitly and consistently incompatible with their beliefs!
@Allison calling yourself atheist openly is a political act in a world dominated by theists. Because of that its important that the political movement have a moral backbone and really have something to say about scam artists, misogynists and bigots openly waving the label around as part of the movement.
Remember that he is a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives — one of 400 politicians representing about 3,000 constituents each.
He’s a terrible atheist, as an inherited class from being a terrible human being. He isn’t theologically inconsistent, but that’s beside the point.
Also:
It certainly indicts their faith insofar as their faith explicitly purports to legitimize itself by ostensibly making people moral.
As proven in Myanmar, even Buddists can be bigoted assholes. We run into problems whenever we generalize about groups of people, be it a racial minority or a religion (or lack thereof). People are individuals first, and many can rationalize any behavior if it gets them what they want. Man is not a rational animal, man is a rationalizing animal (Heinlein).
It is true that not believing in a religion can free one from an obligation to a defined (and often flawed) set of morals. What it doesn’t free you from is a need to adhere to some code of ethics, drawn from guidelines derived from rational observations about life. Don’t lie, because you will lose the trust of others and if it’s OK then someone could do the same to you. Don’t steal, for similar justifications. Help out where you can and do your best, to enhance your social standing and leave a better world for your descendants.
Developing a good set of ethics however often requires some work, some thought, and a good sense of empathy. This seems to be what many of the dictionary atheists don’t want to bother with. Much easier to say “Me first!”, and not think about the social consequences.
\end pontification mode
Richard Spencer is a fascist whose bioidentitarian social Darwinist whites only totalitarian ideology is the closest I have seen in this day and age of resembling national socialism. And guess what? He’s an atheist!!! Sorry to burst your bubble but there have been and always will be atheist assholes. Rather than focus on others who set atheism backwards, why not take pride in yourself for trying to forge a bright secular future. Spencer, Fisher and others like them are not movement atheism. Sunshine will eventually burn them away. Don’t let those voices ruin the chorus.
You’re new here, aren’t you?
How’s that workin’ out for you?
no
;)?
Is Fisher part of “the atheist movement”, or “movement atheism”, in any way? Does he go to conventions, or organise with other atheists? Glancing through the latest couple of pages of the blogs the Daily Beast found from 2010, I can’t see the misogyny – it may be there with a more careful reading, but are you saying that all blogs should always be monitored and scrutinised so we can denounce them, even if it’s just a person putting up a blog without further involvement in the community?
Or is it that we should have monitored all the usernames on the internet, so that when ‘pk_atheist’ popped up, we should have demanded he shape up, or stop using the word?
I think that spending our time looking for them, and then saying “here’s a person who calls themselves an atheist, but he’s a misogynistic wanker” would give them the publicity they’d like, while increasing the association of “atheist=immoral”. When someone else finds people like him, and tries to use them to make atheists in general look bad, that’s the point where we should point out he’s not taken part in discussions with the “movement”, and his attitudes are disgusting to us.
And you can’t see the misogyny? Interesting.
@ethicsgradient
Have you tried squinting?
Why associate a movement with atheism? The discussion is short; there is no God, all in agreement say aye. Well, we’re done here, let’s have a beer.
Oh; some of you want to discuss other things? Maybe the banner ad I see below that wants me to “Vote Now” on Trump’s wall? There’s more? Good, let’s go forth.
The “atheist movement” has always left me cold, partly because it prominently features so many raging assholes, but also because I just don’t find atheism that interesting. I find it true, but it informs my worldview about as much as my belief that there is no flying spaghetti monster. I’m much more interested in the things I do believe in.
That said, I read the Daily Beast article and couldn’t help but think that this guy would have turned out quite different had he not been the son of a preacher.
“He’s a person who doesn’t believe in gods, and that’s all it takes to be an atheist, and the amoral contingent within movement atheism will take this as good evidence that my pleas for the atheist movement to adopt some degree of moral responsibility, to regard acceptance of the natural world and rejection of the supernatural as a proper foundation for justifying ethical behavior, are completely wrong.”
No, not completely wrong, but I do see a problem. If one rejects a rule-giving deity as the source of an ethical compass, one goes somewhere else, and the somewhere-else you have long advocated is a good place to go. What gives me pause is tying this rational-naturalistic approach so tightly to atheism, as if it is a coherent belief system that leads inevitably to certain down-stream conclusions. I tend to take the no-frills approach to atheism: I am not a theist in the same sense that I am not a stamp collector. I don’t tell people I am a-theistic any more than I introduce myself as an a-philatelist. In my opinion, once you tie atheism to a particular approach to ethics and morals as a necessary conclusion, you have created an atheistic orthodoxy, and the next step is the search for atheistic heresies. And while I have enjoyed reading Pharyngula for many years, I see far more heretic hunting here than I would like to see. I grew up in the Lutheran Church, Wisconsin Synod and got my fill of it there.
I do find self identifying clubs a bit of a bore, cosying up to each other to keep out the cold light of reality that the world is composed of all sorts of stupidities and nonsense. As far as I am concerned, live and let live until the bastards try to come for you or prostelyse at you with their particular brand of insanity, and then stand and be counted. Otherwise just leave them be.
Because it’s accurate to say I’m an atheist, and I or anyone else shouldn’t be discriminated against for being one. And in solidarity with other atheists (who may not be able to be open about it), I try to speak up.
As long as there is significant discrimination of atheists, there’s a need for a movement against that discrimination, just like there is need for movements against discrimination of for example women and African-Americans and LGBT+ people.
How to deal with the amoral assholeism, I don’t have the energy right now to think about, but I don’t accept it anywhere.
So, who gets to decide on what constitutes the official atheist ethics?
twueatheist, #23
I don’t know. Check at the Strawman Factory.
God-belief doesn’t stop anyone from being an asshat. God-non-belief isn’t going to either. This guy is an atheist AND he’s unethical. There’s no reason other atheists or atheist organizations can’t say, “Guy, you are horrible and you can’t play in our clubhouse. Sharing a core belief doesn’t give you a free pass to benefits of being part of our community.”
#notallatheists
I think atheist groups, rather than waiting to get an all-atheist consensus, could benefit by thinking intersectionally about ethics.
@siobhan, @PZ Myers,
No, the quotes PZ gives do not appear on either of the blogs:
http://archive.is/xkdIP
http://archive.is/ZlBdV
What are the quotes there are we should have been objecting to when they appeared? Were these blogs at all well known?
Or are you saying we should have been monitoring the entire reddit website (plus similar ones, I suppose) for anyone putting ‘atheist’ in their username? That anyone who puts ‘atheist’ in their username becomes our problem, that we have to be active in monitoring for when they say something hateful?
I’ve lurked here long time and this post is the first time I’ve felt like posting.
I’m not comfortable about an atheist movement at all,one of the things I don’t like about religions is this compelling need they all have to try and convert you to their way of thinking and to me it’s felt like the atheist movement has become just another religion in that sense. I know you will maybe disagree, but unfortunately I think it’s a human tendency to want others to think like you, nothing wrong with that except it’s maybe led to so many wars aye.
Personally I know there’s no god, it’s a ridiculous concept, but I never bring it up unless asked, to me it’s so unimportant and irrelevant. My moral code is simple, try not to harm anyone else, treat others with respect and make every interaction fun, if appropriate.
You are welcome to believe whatever you want. So long as it fits broadly within my moral code then go ahead, I might even join you for a while so long as there’s no worship involved. If others choose to follow the same path as me that’s fine but not essential, makes no difference to me.
If it doesn’t then I will not interact with you in any way. I will not fight you I will not argue, you threaten to kill me then go ahead, I shall look you in the eye and smile. Your violence will not dictate my actions.
What that means in this case is that this asshat is just an asshat, his religion, or lack of, has nowt to do with his misogynistic inbred penis led thinking, it’s him at fault, no need to go hand wringing abut what it will do for the movement. If others choose to highlight it, let them, just concentrate on what you are and what you are doing for those around you.
I firmly believe that you just need to make sure that you are practicing not preaching and if you are making others lives a little bit easier then you are making the world a better place and that to me is the best thing we can do for each other.
There, that’s my little rant over, I’m going back to lurking. PZ, I have enjoyed your writing for a long time now, we’re about the same age so I get your reference frame, may your zebrafish live long and prosper!
Atheists are in the unfortunate position of having to fight a rear-guard action against theocrats who want to turn the world into a religious dictatorship. So it’s not just that we don’t believe in God; it’s that we also have to devote energy to keeping church and state separate. And I think it’s that struggle that unites us even more than the mere fact that we don’t believe in deities. If not for that, there wouldn’t need to be an atheist movement.
So the question then is what do we do with people like Robert Fisher, who is (or at least potentially can be) an important ally in the war against religion, but who at the same time is a vile human being. As a matter of cold, calculated political analysis, does his presence help the struggle or hurt it? And I don’t think we know yet, though if anyone has any good data on the subject I’d be interested to see it. Of course, that also leaves unanswered the question of whether someone is so vile that we simply don’t care what they contribute to the anti-religion struggle.
I’m a veteran of the gay rights movement going back to the mid 1960s. I can tell you that in those early days, the movement was mostly made up of people with issues (including, truthfully, me). But in those days, those were just about the only people who could be found to lead the movement since the respectable gays had jobs and families to worry about. I find this a very difficult subject to come to a position I find satisfactory.
What a scumbag.
I’m an atheist simply because that’s the accurate label, and it says shit fuck all about my ethics.
Maybe I should start describing myself as a humanist from now on.
The problem isn’t that atheists aren’t agreeing to an imaginary demand that every time they mention atheism they must also mention feminism.
The problem is that there are many atheists who are against the idea that they should consider women as human beings.
For instance, “What does atheism have to do with feminism?!” is the wrong response to someone pointing out that atheist/skeptic conferences should be free of sexual harassment. It’s like if I were part of a gardening group and someone called me out on a racist remark and my answer was “what does racism have to do with burying seeds in the ground?!”
Nobody is saying a necessary effect of not believing in god is that it renders you incapable of being sexist.
We’re saying don’t be sexist.
And don’t think “but atheism!!!” is a valid retort to that.
I think it’s been almost a year since the last time I commented on anything here, so I apologize for only showing up to argue and disagree, but I feel this is an important point to have an argument about. I also apologize for the wall of text ahead, this turned out longer than I expected it to be. I’ll quote PZ’s post and reply to it part by part, just for the sake of organization.
This is all correct. He’s a terrible person, but nothing about that makes him more or less of an atheist, it just makes him less of a decent human being. But the next part is more important.
Now you’re talking about the *movement*, not an individual. These are two separate discussions, so it’s important to make the distinction. Asking that the atheist movement have a certain moral responsibility doesn’t mean changing the definition of atheism, or considering people like Fisher to not be atheists (which is what seems to be implied by your earlier sentence), so even if the entirety of the atheist movement agreed on what this set of morals should be, Fisher would still be an atheist. That’s not the same as saying that we should just accept him everywhere and let him speak for the movement.
You’re not wrong on wanting a proper foundation for ethical behavior, you’re wrong in thinking it is “acceptance of the natural world and rejection of the supernatural”. Rejecting supernatural things does almost nothing to establish what is or isn’t moral behavior between humans, because the only thing it excludes are a few excuses used to justify certain behavior, not the behaviors themselves (and not all excuses either, as we see so often with scientificism). We all know that countries and communities full of atheists aren’t immune from things like racism, sexism, homophobia and so on, so why would you think that atheism is a good base for moral behavior? I’m not going to pretend I have the answer to what the basis of human morality should be (I don’t think anyone has an answer to that that could fit in less than a book) but the point I’m trying to make is that it’s not as simple as rejecting supernatural phenomena. This rejection would be merely one of the aspects of this specific moral framework. Just as an example: the question “is human life worth anything at all?” could be answered in the affirmative or the negative if there is some sort of god (a god that created humans with specif purpose in mind would give those humans value, while a god that created humans as mere toys wouldn’t), and it could also be answered in the affirmative or the negative if there’s no god at all (some atheists seem life as meaningless for a number of reasons, while others see it as more meaningful because of the lack of a god).
There’s a lot to be said about this part. 1) The atheist movement isn’t a monolith. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of communities within the movement. You could find an atheist community focused on anything, from music to any side of politics you can imagine. So it’s very strange to try to say that the movement as a whole accepts or rejects Fisher, because there’s no such agreement. 2) There’s a difference between accepting someone as a member and accepting someone as a member in good standing. I accept Fisher as an atheist because he is one. I don’t accept him in good standing (and wouldn’t accept him at any event, regardless of it being an atheist event or not) because he’s a horrible human being. I don’t see why or how one of those interferes with the other.
Again, this is at best a strawman. When we reject the notion of inserting the moral code in the definition of atheism we’re not rejecting the idea that particular communities in the movement are free to have ethical stances on things and reject other atheists from their midst. What we do have a problem with is this idea that PZ seems to have that the entirety of the atheist movement should be *one* community, with focus on social justice issues and with a specific moral code that he agrees with, and that any other community should be expunged from the movement as a whole. So PZ argues that he’s not trying to change the definition of atheism, while at the same time trying to argue that the entirety of the atheist movement should conform to a very specific model of community and that all other models are, by this definition of human morals, immoral and therefore should be excluded.
Again, PZ seems to conflate atheism, the lack of belief, with atheism, the movement. The first is one that accepts anyone, no matter how vile, just like “human” or “person”. The second doesn’t have to accept anyone, but that decision is up to each community. Your community, PZ, is very clear about the fact that they wouldn’t accept the kind of person Fisher is and the kind of behavior he has. That’s great. Other communities have the right to choose to associate with him or not, and your community, in turn, has the right to choose to associate with that community or not.
In my case? I wouldn’t, if it weren’t necessary. When you say atheism is “one trivial idea”, I agree. I wish we lived in a world where identifying as an atheist is just as unnecessary as identifying as a-faeryist, but the belief in god is still too prevalent for me to have that luxury.
Atheism as in lack of belief really isn’t. The movement can promote something, but since atheism isn’t some united front that pushes only one moral view, it hardly pushes far in any one direction.
You’re not. You’re part of that movement that does the exact opposite of that. Your community and the communities you support are the ones that you see as morally good, and that you see as doing something to fix the problems you care about. You share nothing with the people who those bad things, and you do everything you can to combat them in a manner you find effective. What else is there to it?
YouTube and Reddit are a whole new can of worms, and I understand you don’t use them, so let me just say this. They’re only as bad as far as a particular community goes. Yes, the redpill subreddit is probably one of the worst offenders on the internet when it comes to misogyny, but the LGBT subreddits were some of the most helpful communities I met when learning to accept myself. The feminist communities there are nothing to forget about either.
Anyway, I think this whole thing is probably a huge strawman coming from both sides. Arguing for the movement as whole to have a specific set of morals is a little problematic when the movement is whole at all, but more of a loose set of thousands of communities. But no one should try to argue that PZ is wrong in trying to get these communities to have better morals, only that doing so by trying to say that atheism as a worldview is a very flawed type of argument.
Zeppelin #5:
Right, it’s not. There is a seed for moral responsibility in there, but it’s easy to toss aside. Bronowski worried about science being viewed as a “notebook of facts”. My own metaphor is that it’s become a stuffed museum exhibit with the guts removed and buried out in back.
You can accept the natural world as described by science and reject all supernaturalism and superstition, but still give no thought to how we came to understand what (we think) we understand about that natural world. However, if you value science not as a product, but as a collegial human endeavor and a process of inquiry, then you just about have to buy into the moral and ethical presuppositions that make it possible. As Bronowski, Monod, and a lot of scientists were saying back in the ’60’s and ’70’s, you have to at least recognize the scientific imperative to tell the truth (as best you can see it). At a minimum, this means that if you value the results, but allow the lies of misogyny, racism, homophobia and xenophobia to convince you that you can dismiss out of hand the views and efforts of a large segment, even a majority of your potential colleagues, then you are operating on assumptions that are demonstratively untrue, and we can expect that, as a result, the continued advancement and growth of your science will be crippled.
These days, it seems that an ethic valuing truth-telling rates a shrug, if not a horse-laugh from at least a plurality, if not a majority in America. I don’t see much hope for the future of an American role in a worldwide scientific civilization unless this is turned around. Religion may be a part of the problem, but atheism is not the answer. A better place to start is with a scientific ethic and process that helps us to understand why theism is a failed hypothesis. “Dictionary atheism,” with no concern for why we might reasonably believe it to be more likely to be true than theism, is a dead end.
@Saad
Sure, your gardening friends can and should call out racist remarks. That’s implied by being a decent human being. However, what if your gardening community suddenly imagines that there is only one way to be a gardening community and starts to write something of the following:
@Scientismist 32
Color me confused, but I have no idea what those “moral and ethical presuppositions” that “make [science] possible” are.
@PZ
I can’t speak for other “dictionary atheists”, but no amount of vile individuals identifying themselves as atheists is going to persuade me that god exists. So, I stand by the atheist label.
Again, I can’t speak for the rest of the so-called “dictionary atheists”, but my identity does not end with the label of “atheism.” It is, fortunately, much broader, and, believe it or not, even includes a moral code. I just don’t treat it as a straightforward consequence of my atheism nor do I expect other atheists to subscribe to it.
Gardeners don’t convene to talk about the ills of religion. There is no gardening movement that does activism against religious bigotry.
But I imagine atheist conventions aren’t just “Yahweh isn’t real. Allah isn’t real. Ganesh isn’t real.” The activism of the atheism movement is about some of the problems caused by religion. Atheists often get together and point out how religion mistreats certain people and what can be done about it. You can’t get to claim that you were being a “movement atheist” when speaking against religion but then you’re merely an “atheist” when harassing a woman at the same conference and thus should be left alone by your fellow atheists since atheism just means no god. Why didn’t atheism just mean no god when you were opposing church tax breaks?
The atheist movement is a thing. And people like PZ are connected, however loosely, to people like Sam Harris because of it. So it makes sense for PZ to ask “if we are so pleased with the absence of any kind of ethical stance to this collection of random people united by one trivial idea, if this is nothing but a granfalloon that gives a tacit welcome to anyone, no matter how vile, then…Why would anyone want to be identified as an atheist?”
@Saad
Indeed, that would be a bad argument. And harassing a woman is reprehensible and should be called out. But not because it somehow goes against the atheist credo, but rather because it is a bad thing to do. Surely, you would agree that a bunch of gardeners should step in and stop harassment, even though you agree that gardening does not entail any moral views.
I also don’t understand what criticizing religion imply for harassing people. Surely, you wouldn’t claim that sexual harassment is a distinctly religious ill?
At best, it is a very diverse, loosely-connected “thing.” At worst, it is a collection of different movements and communities. But even if it were one thing, it doesn’t not justify PZ’s question. Now, if he were to ask, “why would any one want to join this one particular atheist community?”, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Instead, he asked “Why would anyone want to be identified as an atheist?”, which sounds suspiciously as if he is referring to “atheism” in the sense of personal belief rather than a particular movement.
Rivendellyan, #31:
I think I agree with some of what you wrote, but these parts are especially confusing:
What kind of distinction is this? The goal is presumably to make a rational basis of ethics, which basically amounts to determining whether or not your actions are justified. Naturalistic or otherwise, that’s the point of a project like this; and if you don’t have that, it just sounds like some abstraction that doesn’t have any bearing on anything in the world, whereas ethical systems should have that. If an action has any moral significance (to any moral agent), such as hurting a person or infringing their rights or whatever, then it is wrong — some kind of justification would be needed to do it anyway, if that offers better (rather than worse) results overall. For example, a doctor can “hurt” you in all sorts of ways while providing a medical treatment, but the justification is that this is outweighed by the benefits of the treatment: you’re likely to die if you don’t get it, let’s say, so some pain or what-have-you is acceptable compared to that.
So, in this context where we’re considering such systems, to say that something (a particular fact) ought to “exclude” or invalidate a justification for a certain behavior, but it doesn’t do this for the behaviors themselves…. Well, what is that supposed to be about? Obviously, none of this involves a claim that such behaviors are impossible, so any given person can of course violate the conclusions reached by that system, so the justifications themselves don’t somehow force that outcome to make that behavior “excluded” in the sense that it doesn’t/can’t happen.
Because atheism is true, and good bases can’t consist of falsehoods or contradictions, not if they’re going to work in the real world where things like atheism (and all sorts of other things) are true.
The Earth is round — and if it will make you happy, here we go observing that lots of bad shit nevertheless happens on it, however tendentious it may be to do so — why wouldn’t we have to account for the fact that Earth is round, if such facts or the consequences of such facts ever enter into our moral decision-making? Sure, it’s a fairly trivial and widely-accepted fact, which isn’t very relevant (not very directly) to a whole lot of decisions that we might consider in various circumstances. Even though it’s there under the surface as a premise in a whole lot of arguments, people don’t tend to deny it or say anything in conflict with it, so in practice it’s not typically going to matter very much. Still, if we’re going to be able to take some things like flat-Earthism off the table, and if we’re going to have some coherent/reliable ways of determining what should and shouldn’t belong on the table, then we had better reach a conclusion that we need to get the facts right. Whatever else it might require, those need to be foundational to the process, because there’s no reliable way to conjure up some other type of useful system which somehow doesn’t depend on the facts.
Before things become too verbose, I’d like to refer people to my attempt at defining the term “dictionary atheist”:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2016/06/07/dictionary-atheists-are-boring-atheists/comment-page-1/#comment-1020813
Also, @Rivendellyan, yup, the basis for morality remains the same regardless of gods. Even divine command theory could only rest upon the same ultimate meta-ethical foundation as natural scientific morality.
consciousness razor #38:
That was poorly worded of me, so I ended up making the wrong argument there. What I wanted to say is that people will find justifications for bad behavior regardless of whether or not “supernatural” is one of the options, so focusing on a rejection of the supernatural as a *basis* for a moral system isn’t enough.
However, you’re very correct when you say:
and
so I will gladly concede this point. Those were bad arguments to make, so thanks for the correction.
@38, consciousness razor
You seem to think that any random true statement can be considered the foundation for all moral truth, simply because the random true statement is true? O:
Atheism is just a lack of belief in gods. It doesn’t imply anything else. So you can identify as an atheist and still not believe that the earth is 4.6 billion years old. It’s perfectly consistent to not believe in gods and accept that the world popped into existence last Tuesday, and all of you who insist that atheists should accept that the age of the earth is 4.6 billion years are acting just like theists.
Brian Pansky #39:
That is sorta what I was trying to say, only I’m incapable of typing less than a paragraph.
#41:
I think it’s more that he’s defending that the foundation only works if it’s based on truth, not that any truth will serve as a foundation. Any truth that has any bearing on moral questions should be a *part* of the foundation, right?
#42:
For a second there I thought you were serious and I almost replied to you with an argument :P
@42, What a Maroon, living up to the ‘nym
i think you mean that people are acting like theists if they require someone to believe the earth is 4.6 billion years old in order to be an atheist. That’s what you’re saying right?
You’re not saying that it’s bad to insist that people (including atheists) should accept the facts, right?
No, I don’t seem to think that. I was talking about the entire set of true statements, not each specific one taken individually. Those shouldn’t be conflated.
It’s not especially clear to me what’s involved in claiming that such a thing is “the” foundation, but it at least needs to be a part of the foundation. That was my claim. Maybe this isn’t the best way to put it, but I don’t consider these radically independent domains. There just is the truth, and it’s not clear what the point is supposed to be of cataloguing the different “types” of truth. It may be easier to talk that way sometimes, given our traditional ways of communicating and representing, but those sorts of considerations don’t carry much real logical weight behind them.
Anyway, do I think “truth” is a foundation of “moral truth”? Sure, why the hell not? How exactly would things be, if I were able to deny that coherently? Having a particular flavor of it (“moral” or “empirical” or whatever you like) still means you have a flavor of that and not a flavor of something else.
Brian Pansky,
I’m making an analogy to show where I think the dictionary atheist argument falls apart. It was partly aimed at
Rivendellyan, but that was before I saw their partial walk-back, so I don’t think it applies to them.
So
Right.
To expand a bit on my point (which I think is similar to CR’s).
There’s a school of thought in linguistics that says that, rather than carrying a (dictionary) meaning, words evoke a(n encyclopedic) meaning (George Lakoff is probably the most well-known proponent). So when someone says they’re a Catholic or a Christian or a Muslim or whatever, it evokes not just a specific belief about the existence of a god or gods, but a whole worldview which often includes things such as the origin of the earth and a moral code (of course there are millions of varieties even among those who identify as, say, Catholic, but that’s not really relevant here). So when you say you are atheist, you’re rejecting not just the existence of all those gods, but also the whole basis for all those worldviews (maybe you don’t think you are, but you can be sure that the people who hold those worldviews are thinking that).
But just because you reject their story for how the earth came to be doesn’t mean that the question ceases to be interesting. Quite the opposite. We know the earth exists now, so logically there are two possibilities: either the earth always was, or it came to be through some process at some point in time. If you’re not going to accept all the thousands of stories of how that happened, you still need some basis for deciding the question. And that’s where science enters the equation–through the work of countless people carefully examining the evidence and using reason to draw conclusions, a consensus has emerged that the earth is roughly 4.6 billion years old. Of course, the possibility still exists that that age will be revised as more evidence comes in, but for now it seems like a pretty good estimate.
I’d argue that something similar applies to morality. As atheists, we reject any religious basis for morality, but that doesn’t obviate the need for some sort of moral code. And so our atheism forces us to consider what that basis is, and then to tease out the moral implications.
So while saying that atheism has nothing to say about morality may be correct if you only consider the narrow dictionary definition of atheism, I would argue that in fact atheism forces you to examine the basis for your morality and the implications of that basis.
Maybe I’m just getting mixed up over what people meant by “basis”… :P
@48, What a Maroon, living up to the ‘nym
For sure the implications are changed I think.
I guess I’d just reserve the title of “basis for morality” for the most meta-ethical facts, which I’m pretty sure will be the same regardless of whether atheism or divine command theory are true. But I can see that being a point too trivial for people to care about, since we mostly care about what we should actually do…which will always have to be based ;) on the facts, including whether a god exists or not.
twueatheist #34:
I thought the rest of that same paragraph made it pretty clear that at least some scientists used to think that “truth-telling” was a moral and/or ethical presupposition that was essential to the social project of science. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. I understand that claiming science to have moral and ethical involvement (in both its underpinnings and conclusions) is an unpopular “scientistic” point of view; but I believe it to be a highly probable truth. Hence my pseudonym.
What a Maroon 48:
Agreed. And then your new basis for morality leads to re-examination of your understanding of how you justify your beliefs about the natural world, which in turn affects your ethics.. and round and round we go. It may never stop, but hopefully gives us a “best for now” scientific and moral consilience.
Another follow-up to Rivendellyan, #31:
I’ll admit that people can come up with conflicting answers, but you ought to ask whether some of those answers are any good. If some are bullshit, then we don’t need to put much stock into the fact that people can bullshit each other, which is basically all that’s been established. Maybe you can still draw some useful conclusions from that — it is generally good to be aware of bullshitters and have some way of dealing with that — but at any rate, they’ll be a very different set compared to what you would get if we were considering sound arguments.
Let me paraphrase an analogy from Tim Maudlin*. Suppose you have a chess-loving couple, and the only reason they decide to have a child is so that the child will one become the chess world champion. In some manner of speaking, that is why this person exists — the purpose for that person’s existence, which their parents (would like to) have attributed to them, is to become the chess world champ. They wouldn’t have had a child, and in particular that child, for another reason. So, they raise the child to make sure they study chess, play in tournaments, etc. Perhaps they are very good at it too, to the extent that they can even contend with the likes of Magnus Carlsen, which is no small feat.
However, as they grow up, they are capable of deciding of their own accord that they want other things out of their life. Their life has some other meaning or purpose for them. Their parents intentions aren’t so important, chess isn’t the only meaningful aspect of who or what they are, they have other goals of their own which they want to accomplish, and so forth. Maybe they think chess is totally boring or stupid or whatever, even if they’re extremely good at it and have that potential and were created precisely in order to be the champ. So, it’s not as if scenarios like this are unimaginable or logically impossible. There is no convincing argument which could tell you that we should not even acknowledge that this person intends things for themselves (when in fact they do), because they were created by somebody else who had a possibly different set of intentions. “Being created,” whatever that may imply, just doesn’t have that kind of content to it.
The fact that the “creators” of a thing wanted something for it makes no difference at all, when the created thing (e.g., a human being) has its own capacity to want things for itself and have stuff be meaningful to it. On the other hand, of course, if you create a rock, then it may be meaningful to you, you may intend things for it, want to use it for some purpose, etc.; but unlike a human being, it isn’t the sort of thing which has intentions or purposes or meanings of its own. Absent your intentions for it or anyone else’s intentions for it, then it does make some kind of sense to talk about the meaninglessness of that rock. But, if you know anything at all about people (besides the allegation that a god intentionally created them, if that were true), then you know that they’re not like rocks in this regard.
So, given that, how could these arguments work, where a god’s purposes for us (or the lack of any such thing) do anything to get us toward a conclusion like that? What kind of leap are we making there, and why should anybody be compelled to make it? The answer is that we don’t have to. When we just note that people certainly can come up with meanings all on their own, we didn’t need a bizarre, inane, convoluted set of arguments, which don’t even demonstrate what they’re purporting to demonstrate. Those two things are not at all on a par with one another. We can take one seriously and see where that might lead, while you can’t say that about the other because it’s a load of bullshit.
*Here’s a video of it. His whole talk was excellent. But William Lane Craig’s responses (this was in a classic “debate” setting), as you should expect if you know anything about him, are … not excellent. More than a little infuriating, utterly pathetic, ought to be embarrassing to anybody with a sense of shame, etc. So, fair warning: be prepared for that.
consciousness razor #51:
with that example I was trying to show that there are morally relevant questions to humans that do not have an automatic answer just because we exclude the supernatural version of them. I wasn’t trying to argue that there’s some merit to the theistic arguments, I meant to say that regardless of whether or not a community believes in a god, they can still come to any conclusion about the value of human life, because the argument isn’t actually theistic at all. The argument *is* whether or not human life has some value, with some theism sprinkled on top of it when it comes to the religious version of the argument.
Now, like we discussed in the other comment, I think I did downplay the importance of having reality as basis to moral arguments a little too much, so it comes out sounding like I don’t care if it’s true or not, only that there’s an argument to be had, but that’s not really what I was trying to say.
I don’t think I’m being able to communicate these ideas as well as I wanted to, so I apologize for being unclear.
What a Maroon:
re: your point in 48: Sure, words carry a whole pile of connotations when used in everyday conversation! But when we’re talking philosophy we aren’t (well, shouldn’t be) using words in their floppy fuzzy everyday sense, we’re using them as technical terms. It’s the difference between a layman and a scientist saying that they “have a theory”, and why English-speakers can meaningfully say “insects and animals” even though that phrase is redundant gibberish if interpreted taxonomically.
So yes, if you take ‘atheism’ to mean “all the things I typically associate with being an atheist”, then you might say that atheism forces you to examine your morality. But that’s basically useless to others, who don’t know what comes to your mind when you hear ‘atheism’. It’s not how you (should) use words in reasoned discourse. Because otherwise I can just as truthfully claim that atheism doesn’t force you to examine your morality because to me the word doesn’t evoke those associations. And an evangelical Christian can truthfully claim that atheism leads to devil worship because that’s the association the word evokes for them. And it doesn’t matter that your associations are more accurate statistically than the Evangelical’s (or mine), they still shouldn’t be part of the definition proper.
The whole point of language is to communicate thoughts despite our inability to read each other’s minds, after all. Which is why I’ll normally insist that when we say “atheism” we take it to mean simply “lack of belief in gods”, and come up with dedicated names for any other, uh, atheism-adjacent phenomena. Saying that you’re an atheist is not the same as saying you’re a Catholic or a Muslim, because unlike atheism those are complete (if variable) belief systems as per their rigorous definition.
So [literal] atheism only forces you to examine the basis of your morality if your ethics were previously theistic [and you feel the need to justify your behaviour systematically as opposed to, say, by outcomes or custom]. Atheism tends to lead to a lot of philosophising because most people still grow up with theistic ethics. But it’s not atheism itself that’s the basis of their new philosophy — it’s just that they need a new one once they reject the basis of the old one, and loss of faith triggers this process.
The ethical crisis isn’t a contingent property of atheism itself any more than wheelchair use is a necessary outcome of breaking your legs. The ethical crisis/wheelchair use is typical because other circumstances are typical (previous religiosity/the need to get around somehow), yes, and we should certainly acknowledge that when it’s relevant. But it’s not contingent.
Does it make a difference whether it’s “new” to somebody, whether a person was previously working with some other set of concepts or customs or whatever?
If you’re “forced” to examine your ideas rationally either way, because rationality itself has some such force behind it or because being irrational can have painful consequences, then there’s no reason to place a condition on it like “if your ethics were previously theistic.” I mean, I could add “if you were previously a pink elephant” or anything else, but all of that is superfluous.
The way I’m reading this, that’s not just a careless add-on that you could drop while keeping the argument basically intact. You’re claiming it’s only if that condition holds. But that’s just false.
However a person came to be an atheist, if you just drop them anywhere in the universe and I don’t get to ask how it came about that they became an atheist, then the fact that gods don’t exist (which they justifiably understand to be true, however they came to this understanding) forces them them on pain of irrationality to examine what consequences that has. Just like it would for anything else.
It’s simply relevant to lots of philosophical issues. That’s how it comes into the picture: you’re doing something constructive to confront certain issues, which involves doing philosophy. (It’s moral or political philosophy specifically, whenever those are moral or political issues, but at any point metaphysics and epistemology may certainly be involved as well.) Atheism is a particular conclusion reached by that kind of process, whether or not a person grew up with any theistic ideas and whether or not “most people still” do this or that or the other thing.
Should we believe it always follows a sequence of events like this?
Theism -> “loss of faith” -> “new philosophy”
No. It certainly can happen that way, but that’s also certainly not how it has to be, nor is that central to what it is or what’s about or what we can learn from it. If we’re trying to understand what any person has to contend with, regardless of their personal history or circumstances or whatever, then this way of characterizing it seems like the wrong way to go. So is there a point in trying to present it this way?
Yes please excommunicate from athiesm anyone who doesn’t follow your orthodox beliefs. Maybe we can make you Atheist Pope and you can sit in your chair and make pronouncements ex cathedra. Once you posted that you wanted to drive Libertarians out of atheism. If someone is a shithole they are a shithole even if they vote for progressive politicians. If a biologist who shares your particular viewpoints about biology says something shitty about women do they then get excommunicated from biology? Are their views on biology now invalid? If every fucking idea you share with someone means you have to share their values you have lost your way. You need to get out in the real world and stop playing on the Internet. If someone makes a good argument against religion you don’t have to adopt them. You don’t have to say shit about the person. An idea is something that exists in a person’s head. Those ideas can be good or bad independent of the person themselves or any other ideas they have.
And no I don’t remember the good old days that way. I remember the good old days when atheism meant you didn’t believe in gods. In fact you are part of the problem. You link to something some idiot says and then project that same thing onto every other who has something in common. So a Trump supporter says or does X and then every Trump supporter belongs in the same X category. Theists then do the same thing with atheism. They point to something idiotic an atheist says or does and then tags every other atheist with the same crime. In this case you didn’t even bother to let the Theist do it. You did it yourself. Good job.
So Zeppelin and Chuck Stanley,
Would you then agree that saying you’re an atheist says nothing about your beliefs about the age of the earth, or for that matter the shape of the earth? Atheism is perfectly compatible with a young, flat earth?
consciousness razor:
I take “evaluate one’s ethics” to mean an active process, i.e. actively examining an idea, like the absence of gods, and checking whether it affects one’s current ethical system. That only happens if the idea is new information. Since the default assumption is that things don’t exist unless shown otherwise, you don’t need to evaluate your ethics re: the absence of gods unless you previously thought that they did exist.
You haven’t actively evaluated your ethics in light of the non-existence of the literally infinite number of things that you don’t believe exist (you’ve never even thought about practically any of them). But since non-existant things don’t do anything, this doesn’t matter: they’re all the same. I’ve always been an atheist, so my ethics have always been compatible with atheism the same way yours have always been compatible with a-Zorblaxian-invasion-fleet-arriving-tomorrow-to-destroy-us-all-ism.
So yes, it’s in fact crucial whether atheism is new to somebody!
“Should we believe it always follows a sequence of events like this?
Theism -> “loss of faith” -> “new philosophy””
My entire point was that it doesn’t always follow a sequence like this! Which is why it makes no sense to blanket-claim that “atheism forces you to evaluate the basis of your morality”. Because that’s actually only the case if the basis of your morality is theistic.
“So is there a point in trying to present it this way?”
The point is that this is the only situation in which the claim that “atheism forces you to evaluate your ethics” is actually true. And that people in this situation will tend find their new atheism central to their new ethics emotionally and in terms of the “head space” it takes up (because they’re comparing it to their previous theistic thinking as they actively reject theistic conclusions, and because they are confronted with theistic ethics by other people), which leads them to the erroneous belief that atheism is also central to their new ethics logically. When it’s actually just one of an infinite number of equally trivial non-existances that by themselves lead to no positive claims, factual or ethical.
What a Maroon:
Because of the way our culture works, atheism correlates with belief in a round, old earth, but that has nothing to do with the proposition of atheism itself. It’s just that there aren’t a lot of attractive non-religious reasons to reject the scientific consensus on those issues.
So yes, I think atheism is perfectly compatible with a young, flat earth!
The fact that this question is being asked indicates how bad this situation has become. Seriously? I’m an atheist and I believe a satellite receiver is going to unfold out of my asshole. See what a dumb shit you have to be in order to be an atheist?
What if 99.999% of atheists believed that women were not to speak without permission from a man (Pope PZ being the ethical exception)? Would that mean gods exist? Or just that there was only one atheist – PZ?
Does theism entail a young flat earth?
I cannot believe this conversation is actually happening.
So I get it. I get that reason should lead one to atheism and that reason should lead one to an old round earth. So if reason led you to atheism it should also lead you to an old round earth. I like to believe I’m an atheist and an old round earther because the same process of reason leads to both. But you can be stupid and vile and still be an atheist. And you can be a flat earth atheist. In fact there probably have been such people in the past and there very well may still be some.
No, it ought to happen if there is new information or new evidence, which could be basically anything, and it’s not the same as newly acquiring that specific idea.
You may have revisit all sorts of old ideas, any time you learn something new or are actively engaged in a process like this. Some of those things may not change in the end, but an honest engagement in such an active process is not static, if it’s worth advertising as something that you try to engage in, meaning you cannot dictate ahead of time what will or will not be affected in light of new evidence, new arguments, etc. If I learn about anything, whatever it may be, maybe I ought to change my mind about lots of other stuff, including stuff that I already “knew” (or thought I knew) for my entire life.
For example, it’s not as if I learned everything there was to know about arithmetic when I first encountered it (so long ago I don’t even remember what that was like). I was able to learn new things about it, and I could learn new things about the world where I’d apply all sorts of mathematical knowledge like that, because in fact I wasn’t stuck with that very first conception I had, which wasn’t completely right or completely general or completely useful. It was probably more or less on the right track if my teachers were any good, but it has had to be revised a number of times, in a number of different ways, as I learned all sorts of new shit pertaining to all sorts of independent topics.
First day on the internet?
@Maroon, 48
I am hesitant to make such blanket statements as atheism forces you to examine the basis for your morality and the implications of that basis. But let us grant this statement for the time. Say that this, indeed, is the case for each individual atheist. They will still come up with different ideas of what that moral basis is and what morals they should subscribe to. Now, like-minded individuals can get together and form communities (note the plural here). But this still does not lead to a single, monolithic “movement” that has an ultimate authority on what the atheist ethic is or ought to be.
@Scientismist, 50
In that case, I don’t quite follow your argument. Are we to accept every moral precept as long as it is conducive to science? A lot of our current ethical views actually hamper science (e.g., ethical limitations on animal/human experiments). Or for another example, murder is wrong, but not because it might eliminate potential scientists.
This kind of argumentation seems to place science on an almost god-like pedestal, as if we are here to serve All-Mighty Science, and not the other way around. But perhaps I am misunderstanding your argument.
I feel like the discussion here is permeated by two assumptions:
1. all religious people base their morality on their deity (possibly even unquestioningly)
2. all atheists automatically start to re-evaluate their moral stance and develop a keen interest (and possibly even expertize) in (meta-)ethics.
But I think this is way too simplistic. I have met plenty of religious people, and they seldom justify their morality by reference to god. Not very many of them would say that stealing is wrong, because it upsets god, for instance. Likewise, claiming that atheism automatically causes one to reflect on one’s morals is just wishful thinking, imho. In both cases, people, and thus the groups that they form, are more complicated and diverse.
@26 ethicsgradient: Both quotes were mentioned and linked in the Daily Beast article datelined three days ago, which is the second link in the original post.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/25/the-republican-lawmaker-who-secretly-created-reddit-s-women-hating-red-pill.html
twueatheist 63 & 64:
Yes, I think you may be misunderstanding my argument — but your questions are on the right track, and I’d love to spend an evening discussing it over beer or wine, but I need to do some work today (I haven’t quite retired yet). Briefly:
1) “Are we to accept every moral precept as long as it is conducive to science?”
No, we can, for example, decide that the personal rewards to be had by not telling the truth outweigh the damage to the public and to the scientific community. I’ve known at least one scientist who made that choice, and I can’t be sure, but I suspect that that choice was part of what drove him to eventual suicide. Any moral choice has consequences. The potential consequences to the advancement of human understanding is one. If that one is negative, and you really value understanding the human condition (and your OWN human condition), it’s a good clue that you might want to rethink your choice.
2) “A lot of our current ethical views actually hamper science (e.g., ethical limitations on animal/human experiments).”
That is true, if you view science as merely a collection of facts, like knowing that Jews don’t survive well in a vacuum chamber, or that mercury salts cause venereal disease bacteria to die (along with, eventually, their hosts). I think the argument has been made (and pretty well) that gathering such facts without first considering the damage the process will do to the social cohesion of the social group that might potentially be expected to benefit from that knowledge, leads to a science of limited collegiality and limited human benefit. Of course, if you value science only for the advantage it might give you over others whom you hope to eliminate or keep in ignorance, then you’ve already chosen a limited science.
3) “murder is wrong, but not because it might eliminate potential scientists.”
It doesn’t just run the chance of eliminating potential scientists as victims of murder, but as the perpetrators, the police, the investigators, the judges, the juries, the jailers… Society doesn’t generally like murder, even when they don’t like the victim, because it is disruptive, costly, and wasteful.
Many years ago I took a course, for fun, in philosophy of science taught by an evangelical Christian. His take was that doing science was doing God’s work and was the revealing of God’s truth and will. He thought that this would have been the proper answer to the moral argument said to have been made against the early Greek atomists: If all is atoms and the void, then why tell the truth and why fight for Athens? If atoms and the void is the truth, then it’s God’s truth and you should be honored to tell it; and if Athens is God’s (Athena’s) city-state, then you must fight for it. The only problem he saw in that was that the Greek polytheism prevented them from seeing that it was all in service of a single truth from a single God.
My own answer was that you tell the truth because that’s how you find out whether all is atoms and the void; and you fight for Athens because it provides a stable society within which you can speculate (and potentially do experiments) about whether it is all atoms and the void. I think this applies equally to the question, “why proscribe murder”.
Finally, from your post at #64:
4) “I have met plenty of religious people, and they seldom justify their morality by reference to god.”
My own experience has often been the opposite. Way back when I was in grad schoo I had an atheist friend who had an evangelical roommate. When the roommate found out that my friend was an atheist, she immediately asked why my friend, without the guidance of God, wasn’t out killing people and robbing banks. My friend answered simply that such activities would not be helpful to her ambitions to get her degree and do research in the field of molecular biochemistry.
I recently watched an interview of John Kasich by Trevor Noah. Kasich appeared to be remarkably “liberal” for a Republican, but I noticed that he justified his tolerant views based on the idea of equality in the eyes of God (though he also allowed that if you’re a humanist doing good things, then more power to you).
I definitely agree with you that atheism does not automatically cause one to reflect on one’s morals (and neither does theism). But if you came to your atheism (or theism) through reflection on the epistemology of science (or of scripture and revelation), then I think there’s a good chance you might be led to such reflection.
Oops — I really need to get back to work. But yes, your questions were good ones. Thanks.
“Why would anyone want to be identified as an atheist?”
Because that’s what I am.
Just like I’m a teacher math and physics.
And no, I don’t want to me member of any organization or movement that includes people like Fisher.
Fortunately atheism is not a movement for me.
Nothing difficult here.
@65 petesh,
yes, they didn’t come from the atheist-oriented blogs, which one might argue was the one place that people might have seen his views if just looking for “what do atheists think?”.
Those quotes are all from him as “pk_atheist” the Reddit ‘Red Pill’ swamp. So the idea that “the movement” “implicitly condones” his views comes down to “the movement” not monitoring all the worst parts of Reddit for what anyone inserting “atheist” into their username might post there. I don’t think that is “implicitly condoning” his views at all. PZ does not need to beat himself up about it, and neither do the rest of us.