Over at Nice Mangos, she posts about her perspective on movement atheism.
It’s quite depressing that movement Atheism has turned into such a joke. I valued it so much once.
This unraveling of the movement and it’s leaders has been tough to come to terms with. Especially for those of us who have already done this bit before…wrestled our beliefs, questioned respected leaders, lost community for it, and so on.
I had noticed a troubling turn 2-3 years ago. The questions in my mind became harder and harder to ignore when Rubin arrived on scene. He really brought the hypocrisies to the surface.
My personal, recent last straw was the treatment of the Krauss thing generally among movement leaders….and the Ezra Klein/Harris convo, the utterly obvious flaws in thinking. That was really it for me. No looking back and hoping former heroes come to their senses.
OK, that’s eerie — it’s the same scene, only about 5 years later, with different players. I noticed the “troubling turn” about 8 years ago, as more and more atheists began to rally around two themes: the Glorious Leaders who were fonts of inarguable Reason & Logic, and a definition of atheism that exempted them from all social responsibility or ethical obligation. The other big difference was that unlike Eiynah, I resisted criticizing with the excuses of #NotAllAtheists and they’ll outgrow the regressive social tendencies if we just keep trying. I was wrong. And it is quite depressing.
At least I can really love this portrayal of the shambles movement atheism is in right now.
Where’s all the energy of atheism going? Right into the pockets of those jokers, many of whom are openly anti-atheist.
Human nature: when faced with a problem, dilemma or crisis, form a committee, group or movement that molds your identity and separates you from others that have done the same damned thing. And don’t forget to Demand to Be Taken Seriously™, as that will surely impress those who despise you.
I had to spread my fingers to focus on the guy in the wizard suit. Or is he a warlock? Fitting either way.
I am concerned that Boghossian hasn’t been included in the above grouping. He’s as worthy as Peterson, no? The latter has gotten most of the attention lately.
Sheesh, is she ever tardy to the party.
Must have been born only yesterday evening.
Especially given the last bit, it’s hard to figure out what you’re saying.
In the picture, are any of those people atheists, other than Harris? And I suppose before we get to that question … who the hell are they? I just don’t recognize most of them by their faces.
Is the complaint supposed to be that there is some vaguely-defined fraction of atheists (not pictured) who take the ones in the picture seriously, although the latter aren’t straightforwardly in the movement or leaders of it?
If so, then okay … you can complain about that. But conflating them with movement leaders (respectable or not) would be a weird thing to do. It’s at least not clear when/where the shift is supposed to occur, away from talking of the movement or its leaders (however glorious they may be) to talking of others. And part of the issue is presumably that they’re not atheists, not in the movement, not among its leaders, and may even be quite explicitly opposed to atheism. So, one thing we’d want to know is how/why they’re having this kind of influence on (some part of) the movement, despite all of that. But if you’re having some other kind of conversation altogether, then I may just not know what that’s about.
@3
That’s not fair. It’s the kind of thing that you don’t notice when you first start to find out that there are other people who believe the same way you do. Then one day you notice it and you can’t stop noticing it. Everyone hits that point eventually.
Part of it, I suspect, is that many freshly-minted atheists come from religious backgrounds where their religion gave them their primary community and social network as well as a belief system to latch onto. When you find out that there’s an “atheist community” it’s a great thing – here’s a group of people I can build a social network with without the religious baggage.
It takes a while to realize that the religious baggage is all still there, despite it being a community that doesn’t believe in gods.
Behind Harris is Rubin (atheist) and Weinstein (probably not an atheist; acolyte of greed); behind them are Shapiro (anti-atheist), Nawaz (secular ex-Muslim), Sommers (conservative anti-feminist), Rogan (atheist asshole), Peterson in the wizard get-up (anti-atheist); far left in the back is Hugh Hewitt, I think; I don’t know who the guy in back on the far right is.
They’re the Intellectual Dork Web. They may not be leaders, but they think they are, and they’re getting paid like they are.
I also have to add that I don’t see atheism resisting this rightward trend — CFI is already co-opted, the RDF is a quiet contributor, American Atheists just wrecked itself against the shoals of the director’s behavior. American Humanists are looking OK, but they’ve always just focused on doing their own thing. Likewise, FFRF is likewise tightly focused on separation of church & state issues (and that’s not a bad thing).
For those wondering about the magic theme, this was originally from The Alliance of Magicians. I’m just glad they included Tony Wonder this time, front and center.
andyo, #8
That’s hilarious :)
re: PZ’s #6 and #7:
I’m not too familiar with Nawaz, but I think he’s a former “Islamist,” not a former Muslim. Rubin and Rogan are apparently “agnostic,” whatever that means. They have criticized religions … is that supposed to suffice? I know little about the content they produce, but atheism doesn’t seem to be their main focus at all. (I mean, you’ll have to draw a line at some point. Do lots of atheists listen to Taylor Swift? Maybe they do, but what does that have to do with anything?)
So, I would say we’re left with just Harris again. That’s 1 out of 10, which is not an impressive showing for the atheists. I assume Harris still thinks/talks about atheism, once in a while … maybe. He should count anyway, for historical reasons if nothing else.
At any rate, if this is what our evidence looks like, then it doesn’t make it seem like we have a huge problem on our hands. Maybe we do have one, but this isn’t the sort of stuff that puts me in crisis mode. There certainly are right-wing atheists, although they’re a minority and pretty much always have been. However, for all I know, as a group, we’ve become more liberal over time, not less. Or maybe nothing much has changed. Some good statistics about the general atheist population, not hand-picked individuals who annoy you and/or appear in headlines, would be useful.
If there isn’t a rightward trend to resist (and maybe it involves a significant number of theists), then this whole story is starting to fall apart. I don’t know what you expect to see various institutions do about it either. Maybe what we’ve already been doing has been working, even if you’re (understandably) unsatisfied with the amount of progress that has been made recently.
snarksnarksnark
PZ, what good is a Movement if some jerkwad can’t turn it into a profit machine? Then it would just be focused on helping people, or trying to fix things.
NOW it’s dedicated to the monetary enrichment of its leaders, like all good American institutions. It’s the American Way!!
endsnark
I am so reassured, #10 — there’s no problem at all with the atheist movement!
I wasn’t trying to reassure you. Pointing at a bunch of theists isn’t the way to show there’s a problem. You could make this case better with some genuine evidence that we know pertains to atheists, the movement, leadership, etc. What’s the trend actually like, and where did you get this information?
I didn’t know all those names. I guess that’s good?
I’m really not sure why there is a need to paint this as “movement atheism” because it isn’t. These creeps aren’t forcing me not to be an atheist and support atheism in general. It is weird because when I came fully into the atheist womb the assholes were pretty easy to spot (mostly the libertarians) and I avoided them as much as possible. I’ve never actually read anything by Sam Harris and doubt if I will.
Twenty years ago atheist and free thought groups were being born like how a cell divides. Once some people hated how one group did things they formed their own. That’s how Secular Students was born because some didn’t care for how CFI did their student outreach.
It actually bothers me when I hear people “quitting” activism because of the creeps when it is a lot easier to go where you are needed and respected.
If we let the assholes have “movement atheism” then they win
Yeah, I’d say you should be more worried about that shark you just jumped.
Uhm wtf does Rogan have to do with movement atheism, and when did he suggest people should take him seriously?