The delicate ego of Mr Michael Shermer

As you’ve probably already heard since Ophelia Benson has posted a few things about it, Michael Shermer has had another meltdown. To keep it short, Shermer said a stupid sexist thing on camera — about the skewed sex ratio among atheist/skeptical activists, he said “It’s who wants to stand up and talk about it, go on shows about it, go to conferences and speak about it, who’s intellectually active about it, you know, it’s more of a guy thing” — and Ophelia pointed out that that is exactly the kind of stereotyping of men’s and women’s roles that forms a self-fulfilling prophecy. She was right. He was wrong. It’s a fairly clear and simple case.

But apparently pointing out that Mr Michael Shermer said something that wasn’t very nice represents an all out assault on the man himself. His response was…well, unbelievable.

It involves a McCarthy-like witch hunt within secular communities to root out the last vestiges of sexism, racism, and bigotry of any kind, real or imagined. Although this unfortunate trend has produced a backlash against itself by purging from its ranks the likes of such prominent advocates as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris…

To date, I have stayed out of this witch hunt against our most prominent leaders, thinking that “this too shall pass.” Perhaps I should have said something earlier. As Martin Niemöller famously warned about the inactivity of German intellectuals during the rise of the Nazi party, “first they came for …” but “I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a….”

…

But perhaps I should have spoken out, because now the inquisition has been turned on me, by none other than one of the leading self-proclaimed secular feminists whose work has heretofore been important in the moral progress of our movement. I have already responded to this charge against me elsewhere,* so I will only briefly summarize it here. Instead of allowing my inquisitors to force me into the position of defending myself (I still believe in the judicial principle of innocence until proven guilty), I shall use this incident to make the case for moral progress.

Astonishing. Apparently, criticizing anything Mr Michael Shermer says is now a “McCarthy-like witch hunt”, an “inquisition” with the goal of “purging” Shermer from the ranks of…what? He’s a publisher and author. Is there a threat to take his word processor away?

But see, this is why the atheist movement can’t have leaders. The ones we’ve got, informally, all seem to think they’re like gods and popes, infallible and unquestionable, and that normal, healthy, productive criticism within the movement is all a conspiracy to dethrone them.

What’s particularly ironic here is that I’ve read his books and heard his talk on The Believing Brain and Why People Believe Weird Things — if anyone ought to be conscious of the way our brains make cognitive shortcuts and model the world with often-flawed assumptions, it’s Shermer, and he ought to know that calling attention to misconceptions that we all have is not an attempt to destroy a person. If that were the case, his books would have to be interpreted as incitements to mass genocide rather than reasonable discussions of how to recognize flaws in our thinking.

But then, Mr Michael Shermer doesn’t do self-awareness: one moment he’s critizing overwrought Nazi analogies, the next he’s comparing everyone who thought he misspoke to Nazis.

Similarly, he praises the great strides the movement has made in increasing diversity over the last decade, but doesn’t seem to be aware of how that happened. Let me tell you: it’s taken constant nagging from people like me, and Greta Christina, and Jen McCreight, and many others, to wake up the leaders of organizations and conferences from their complacency. It’s taken actions of organizations like the SSA and CFI to consciously reach out and broaden the scope of the movement, to open the doors to women, minorities, and young people. It’s taken the responsiveness of people like Dave Silverman and Ron Lindsay and yes, DJ Grothe, who, when we mentioned that their speaker lineups tended to skew a bit white and male, didn’t react by declaring their critics a Nazi inquisition out to purge the movement of white men. They weren’t dragged kicking and screaming into promoting equality — they were already thinking the same way themselves and were appreciative of reminders of the importance of being conscious of greater interests.

Shermer isn’t being purged at all. He’s being left behind if he thinks a skeptic shouldn’t be criticized. I’m hoping, though, that he’ll snap out of this and realize that he ought to be embarrassed by the laughable accusations he makes.

And Digital Cuttlefish cuts to the chase. Why is anyone satisfied with the “It’s a guy thing” answer?

Hey, I thought an atheist was just someone who didn’t believe in gods

At least, that’s what people keep yelling at me. But apparently, even an idiot can recognize that there are wider implications to non-belief…of course, if you’re an idiot as big as Satoshi Kanazawa, you get them all wrong.

It is ironic because, according to Dawkins himself, I am actually more atheist than he is in the original meaning of the word. Fellow Big Think blogger Mark Cheney quotes Dawkins as saying “On a scale of seven, where one means I know he exists, and seven I know he doesn’t, I call myself a six. That doesn’t mean I’m absolutely confident, that I absolutely know, because I don’t.” It’s funny, because, unlike Dawkins, I absolutely know for sure that God doesn’t exist, as any scientist would. For scientists, it’s very simple; absolutely nothing exists in the universe, except for those entities for which there is credible scientific evidence for their existence. So I know for sure that God doesn’t exist for the same reason that I know Santa Claus or Superman doesn’t exist

But I am not an atheist.

So why does he argue that he’s not an atheist?

  • Because atheists are assholes.

  • Because religious people are not all evil and oppressive (except Islam! Islam is evil and oppressive!)

  • Because Americans are religious, and a Reader’s Digest survey found that New Yorkers are civil.

It’s a typical Kanazawa-style argument, in other words: stupid, reliant on assumed propositions, and using dubious statistical arguments and inferences, with a repulsive undercurrent of bigotry.

I’m happy to see you disassociate from atheism, Satoshi!

Awww, he remembers me!

Ken Ham is complaining about someone lying about the content of the Creation “Museum” (I think the museum is so awful that lying could only improve it — but meanwhile, the student adresses those comments). But what warmed my black heart was that Kenny-Boy remembered my visit a few years ago, and quoted Mark Looy on a detail of that trip.

It helped that all 285 atheists/agnostics signed a statement that they would be civil—they did that when they checked in and got their tickets from their organizer, Lyz (who was a pleasure to work with). By the way, I did not request that the signed agreements were to be done (with the exception of getting the professor’s signature [he is an out-spoken atheist and anti-creationist, who is known for making vile comments], which we demanded in a certified letter mailed to him over a week ago)—to her credit, Lyz, after hearing our concerns about the web chatter about the possible behavior of her SSA group, did not want to see a ruckus in the museum, and she, I understand it, volunteered the idea of having her group sign such a statement (and we did verify with Lyz that the prof signed it).

It’s true! I did have to sign a promise not to be naughty in the “museum” — they were very concerned that we might have gay sex on the exhibits.

By the way, I’m still extra-special. Ham mentions the student’s name — Tyler Simko — and even links directly to his blog, Quantumaniac, but me? I’m still the vile Atheist Professor who must not be named.

I’m a little bit proud of that.

I spoke too soon

After admitting that the Muslims in the UK, at least, were a little bit better than the Christian fundamentalists in the US, look what Turkey has gone and done.

The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) has put a stop to the publication and sale of all books in its archives that support the theory of evolution, daily Radikal has reported.

Where once Turkey had the pride of being one of the most secular Islamic nations, they’ve now fallen far.

A slight improvement

A recent debate among Muslims on evolution had a better outcome than most of the similar debates among Christians — they ended up laughing at the creationists.

The high quality of scientific and theological discussion exposed the shallowness of Islamic creationists, such as Harun Yahya. One of his acolytes, Oktar Babuna, presented his arguments from Istanbul, via the internet. He kept on pointing to fossils as evidence that species have never changed in history. He also discounted any historical changes in the DNA. Babuna’s arguments were countered earlier on by both Abouheif and Jackson. But he unintentionally served as a comic relief, when the audience realised that after several hours of discussion, almost all of his responses included the mention of “fossils”, irrespective of the topic of discussion.

Yeah, “fossils” is the only argument they’ve got, and it’s a bad one. Anyone who has browsed Yahya’s Atlas of Creation knows that that’s what it is: page after page of stolen photographs of fossils next to stolen photos of extant organisms, claiming that there has been no change at all in millions of years, therefore evolution is false.

So it’s actually good progress that they ended up finding Yahya absurd. In the US (the debate took place in London), we instead end up nominating the loons for high office.

But, not to be complacent…most of the discussion was about reconciling evolution with Islam, and they trotted out the usual tropes, from “God inserted Adam in the natural order” to “science only tells us ‘how’ things happen, and not ‘why'”, and claiming that “the miracle of Adam is preserved theologically” without recognizing that those positions are almost as laughable as Yahya’s and Babuna’s.

I also have to take exception to the editor’s summary of the article: “A high-quality debate of a sensitive topic did not disappoint, as all panellists bar one accepted the scientific consensus”. Nope. The scientific consensus is that there is no teleological imperative in evolution at all. The panelists accepted a phenomenological narrative of evolution, while implicitly rejecting the mechanistic underpinnings of the science.

It’s still progress, though. American fundamentalists aren’t even that far along yet.

I shoulda checked the reviews first

I watched the movie Red Lights last night on Netflix. The first part of the movie was strikingly familiar: it practically stole the life story of James Randi. There was the Peter Popoff exposé, the psychic surgery stunts, the usual whirl of frauds and fanatics, all under different names with different details, but the same general stories about exposing flim-flam. And then it had a marvelous cast: Sigourney Weaver, Robert De Niro, Cillian Murphy. The whole movie is following a good ol’ skeptical trajectory…and then, the ending. Oh, jebus, I have never seen a movie so thoroughly implode as this one did with that ending.

Stop here. Don’t read further, unless you want to know how it ends, because I’m going to give it all away. Completely. This isn’t just a spoiler, it is full disclosure.

[Read more…]

Matt Dillahunty & Tracie Harris show how to handle a Christian

This is the risk of taking call-ins on an atheist show — you have to deal with some of the most repulsive people in the country, Bible-believin’ Christians. So there they are, arguing the problem of evil with a caller like they do, and the caller makes one of the usual Christian excuses.

“I don’t think that God exists but if we’re talking about the God character in Bible as God is represented, you know, it’s a pretty horrible, jealous, angry being that advocates slavery,” Dillahunty pointed out. “I don’t know why he’s that way. Maybe he’s just a dick.”

“You either have a God who sends child rapists to rape children or you have a God who simply watches it and says, ‘When you’re done, I’m going to punish you,’” Harris agreed. “If I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That’s the difference between me and your God.”

“First of all, you portray that little girl as someone who’s innocent, she’s just as evil as you,” the caller shot back.

With that comment, Dillahunty disconnected the call.

“Goodbye, you piece of shit!” he exclaimed. “You know what? I was a better Christian than you when I was a Christian, and I still am.”

BAM! That’s how you do it!

Now let’s hear the cries of “Censorship! Free speech!” from the usual crowd.

Atheism and the real search for meaning

Almost every day, I get a pugnacious email or a tweet saying something like this:

Atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of gods. Period.

It’s been that way for about three years now, ever since I gave a talk in Montreal in which, in a brief aside (at about the 18’30” mark), I decried the dogmatic dumbness of “Dictionary Atheists”, a talk I followed up with a post in which I explained why dictionary atheism is wrong.

I had made the mistake, you see, of pointing out that atheism is more than just disbelief. I suppose I could have mentioned that a painting is more than pigment on canvas, families are more than just small groups of people, and that people are more than ambulatory arrangements of carbon compounds, but let’s not go crazy here — it was heretical enough that I expected atheists to do more with reason and rationality than simply deny god. How dare I confront people with history and context, and meaning and consequences, when all they wanted was a simple statement that made them better than other people?

I was actually surprised and disappointed at the volley of denunciations that followed that post, and like I say, almost every day I get reminders from indignant atheists who insist that their ideas are meaningless and inconsequential, and must be interpreted in the narrowest way. Sadly, another kind of email I get (with lower frequency, fortunately) comes from people who are growing disenchanted with atheism, precisely because so many dogmatists refuse to apply reason to their lives and everyone’s lives, while demanding that they be acknowledged as “True” Atheists, that is, Dictionary Atheists.

Dictionary Atheists disbelieve in gods and dislike religion, but that’s it. The fact that the universe is an uncaring place, that we’re products of chance and necessity rather than benevolence, that we only have each other to help ourselves through this life…none of that matters. So when you say that reason demands equality, when rationality dictates community, when justice ought to be part of the godless agenda, they reflexively throw out that dictionary definition to deny any expectation that there ought to be more to atheism than cussing out gods. They’re intellectual cowards who run away from the full implications of living in a godless universe.

So I get despairing letters from people who once saw atheism as a shining promise, and now see it as a refuge for the same old haters, the same old deniers, the same old reactionaries trying to use their received wisdom as a too to silence new voices and new ideas. And sometimes I feel a little despair, too.

But I haven’t given up. I still think atheism is the best path to comprehending our world and making it better — better in all ways, not just scientific and technological, but also socially. The atheist movement is not in the hands of dictionary atheists, and it’s not growing by recruiting more narrow-minded deniers; it’s growing by helping people realize that it’s something more and something beautiful.

There are also still plenty of people who appreciate the depth of freethought, and are willing to discuss its roots and meaning. And one of my favorites is Susan Jacoby, who really gets it.

This widespread misapprehension that atheists believe in nothing positive is one of the main reasons secularly inclined Americans — roughly 20 percent of the population — do not wield public influence commensurate with their numbers. One major problem is the dearth of secular community institutions. But the most powerful force holding us back is our own reluctance to speak, particularly at moments of high national drama and emotion, with the combination of reason and passion needed to erase the image of the atheist as a bloodless intellectual robot.

It’s not just speaking that we need to do: we need to find common cause in human concerns. And rejecting religion just isn’t that great a concern — it’s a side-effect, not a goal, of realizing how the world works, as a great natural, material process. You lack belief in the existence of gods? That’s nice, you’ve taken your first tiny baby step. Now what does that mean for human affairs? What will you do next? When will you stride forward and do something that matters with your new freedom?

Freedom is the word, after all. Many of us have noted that rejecting god and religion is a liberating act. But now that you’re free, you should do something, and being an atheist means we are enabled to do more.

The atheist is free to concentrate on the fate of this world — whether that means visiting a friend in a hospital or advocating for tougher gun control laws — without trying to square things with an unseen overlord in the next. Atheists do not want to deny religious believers the comfort of their faith. We do want our fellow citizens to respect our deeply held conviction that the absence of an afterlife lends a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth.

Today’s atheists would do well to emulate some of the great 19th-century American freethinkers, who insisted that reason and emotion were not opposed but complementary.

There’s the step the Dictionary Atheists don’t want to take — that once you’ve thrown off your shackles you’re now obligated to do something worthwhile with your life, because now all of our lives shine as something greater and more valuable and more important. That with freedom comes responsibility.

We must speak up as atheists in order to take responsibility for whatever it is humans are responsible for — including violence in our streets and schools. We need to demonstrate that atheism is rooted in empathy as well as intellect. And although atheism is not a religion, we need community-based outreach programs so that our activists will be as recognizable to their neighbors as the clergy.

But not as clergy, as privileged people set apart from others by a special paternalistic relationship. How about as a community of equals? What if every atheist, rather than some particular special subset of atheists, were to acknowledge their part in building a better society?

Maybe then this movement could change the world.

(By the way, Jacoby has a new book, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought which I’ve ordered. She has always been a brilliant contributor to atheism.)