AS271: Living Up To Smalley's Message

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 271 and I'm your host Thomas Smith. Got a plan for you today. I had several requests from people to sort of commentate adjudicate on the debate between David Smalley and PZ Myers, so I'm going to do that, I have some things to say about that, also, I've got some great listener comments that I want to go through, I got some observations on that and sort of the, the comments are in from the Rondale Jabari debate, and I've also talked a bit with Ishmael, it's actually on Ishmael's show, it should be out already, I believe, if not, keep an eye out for that. Angry Black Rant, of course, is the show. Great show. He's really done a lot to improve that show lately.

0:01:15 Thomas: It's awesome. Production is great, he's great, his segments are funny, so definitely check out Angry Black rant and listen to me on that, I think, this week. But anyway, as a result of that discussion, I had a lot of thoughts about that and about the Rondale Jabari debate, so I'm going to talk about that later as well. All these things are to come. I also have a special message for one Eli Bosnick that I want to get to later. So all that today and probably more. We'll see how the commentary goes.

0:01:53 Thomas: Okay, first things first, I have to make a plea. Please, right now, go check out Opening Arguments on iTunes. The website is openargs.com for people who are old-fashioned and don't like iTunes or whatever it is. So you can find the feed there, openargs.com, for the podcast feed. But please, it is launched. It is launched, it is a great podcast. I've put so much work into the production and we have eight episodes available for you guys.

That's all launched and ready to go, ready for your listening pleasure. We're really trying to make a big push so that if we get enough attention on iTunes, we can be a featured, you know, new and noteworthy podcast and we can reach a new audience that way. So let me make one last push for this podcast, it is so good, I'm telling you, and it's not because of me, it's because of Andrew, Andrew has so much to offer, and I've worked really hard on the production to make it good, we've got good segments, we're answering, people have so many questions about legal matters, a lot of it is traffic ticket related, so we may end up doing a whole show on that kind of thing, but there are so many questions and Andrew has answers and we've got lots of cool stuff.

We covered this satanic temple case, you may have heard of it, there's a law on the books in Missouri that if you want to get an abortion, you have to like, you know, do all this unnecessary stuff, they give you a pamphlet, you, you know, about how your fetus is a kid, and you're actually murdering them, and then they make you listen to the heartbeat or something, and just outrageous stuff.

0:03:25 Thomas: They make you have tea with your fetuses, and have to, like, read it a bedtime story, and then maybe, you wait 72 hours, and then you can get an abortion. And I don't want to give away the whole punchline of the episode, you'll have to check out Opening Arguments to find out what happened, but it's been challenged and it may not be good news, let me just say what's going on there, so just stuff like that, there's so many good topics, please check out opening arguments, pause this show, download all those podcasts and then meet back here. So I'm just going to wait. This is just going to be, let's see, like five hours, five hours of blank audio while I wait for you. No, that's not necessary. I'll just, I'll just pause, but, but still meet back here after you're done with that. Okay, on to some commentating.

0:04:11 Thomas: Now, a lot of people, I had several people tweet, message, that kind of thing, asking if I would comment on the David Smalley PZ Myers debate thing, I guess, and, and maybe more appropriately, Smalley's initial post and podcast, and I checked it out, and you know me, I've got plenty of opinions at all times, I got plenty critiques, so let's go into it. So if you'd like to check out the podcast version, it was Dogma Debate number 259. It's only like, well, it says 18 minutes, but the last four or five minutes is just a song. I don't know what that's about, but so it's really only like 14 minutes. So you can listen, or I'll summarize it. It won't take too long.

0:04:57 Thomas: There's also a Patheos post. If you search Patheos David Smalley. I'm sure it'll come up. And there's about 4,500 paragraphs because he's a fan of each sentence being a new paragraph. So that's also something you can observe. So it seems like this all stemmed from David Smalley observing sort of a online, like Facebook, social media fight between two women who were fighting about a some post involving a pregnant woman on a train, I think, I don't know, I'm not privy to it, I mean there's, actually I think there's been a lot of internal drama in the atheist movement that I have, I've noticed kind of, but I haven't really gotten into it, so don't assume I'm on any side of any debate of, drama of any kind.

0:05:42 Thomas: I really have nothing to do with it and don't, I don't know much about it. So that's where I'm coming from. I'm from a position of not really knowing much about these little internal fights. Uh, but you know, I see stuff on, on social media from time to time. Uh, so Smalley's thesis here is that we really need to be more focused on the broader picture of atheism as he defines it. So he's got his definition of what atheism should be doing. I I think it's fair to say that would involve, I don't know, getting rid of religion, or at least arguing people out of religion, secular, keeping religion out of government. It seems as though from what I can gather that that's his goal of atheism, and therefore that's what, you know, should be focused on, and we should let these smaller disagreements go. Or I think he's got mostly a good message here.

0:06:31 Thomas: I think the key will come down, if I'm going to start my analysis a little early here, I think that the key would be that I don't know how often this specific thing that he's talking about happens.

But if we assume that this specific thing he's talking about is happening, then sure, I think it's got a good msg, which is if you really do agree with someone on most things and you're just posturing and having a disagreement on sort of like tone or something that's not entirely substantive, then better to deal with it in a more friendly, friendly manner. He talks a lot about giving people phone calls.

I, for one, don't really have anyone's number in the atheist movement, I couldn't really do a lot of phone calling, but I get it. I mean, you could send people a message, I suppose, if you're having an argument or that kind of thing. As far as that goes, I don't really think that part's necessary, I think David seems to be really worried about being called out for being wrong in public. I don't know if that's a personal worry of his, but he puts a lot of emphasis on you need to call someone or whatever, talk to them. He talks about that a lot. And I don't see why you couldn't just say post.

Post a more courteous reply, I mean that would really do it, it's not like there's anything, sure a phone call would be a little more personable I guess, again I don't think that's the kind of relationships we're talking about here, at least for me, I think it's a lot of people who are just online friends or kind of know of each other online and are Facebook friends, so I think that is a little I guess more personal than I think of, but who knows, maybe there are some friends out there who have each other's phone numbers and call each other from time to time, but that might be a different situation.

0:08:19 Thomas: But I guess I would just say, in general, you can post a reply or you can blog your reply or whatever it is, Facebook message your reply in a way that's less hostile. I mean, that's always a good idea. I think this goes under the category of things that are always a Good Idea, no matter what. And the limitation of Smalley's post here, I think is that there, and what you saw, if you listen to him debate PZ Myers about it, or rather him talk the entire time and PZ get in about four or five words, at least in the first hour, which was the free hour. I don't think this situation happens all that much. I think there's situations where people have actual disagreements.

0:09:04 Thomas: People are on two sides of, it really comes down to social justice. It really does. This is a divisive thing. Now, I personally, I agree with David that I wish people were approached it in a different way. I think PZ certainly is incredibly vilifying and I don't think it's productive. I don't, I'm just saying nothing of whether or not he's right or wrong on a given stance. Like even just merely looking at the tactics of either side. But I have to say, from where I'm sitting, I see a lot worse tactics on the anti-social justice side, at least a lot more serious ones, harassment, consistent comments, and I also think they have the advantage of numbers, more people are on the antisocial justice side, from my perspective, what I've experienced, you get way more comments on the Antisocial Justice side because there's just more people that are kind of mainstream.

0:09:57 Thomas: So all this is to say, if, if there is ever a disagreement that is truly some sort of spat, like it's not really a, an actual disagreement on a substantive issue, it's just sort of a, you know, tone problem, like maybe someone was too aggressive on one end, and then, as Smalley says, egos get in the way, and there's posturing. If that's happening, sure, this advice applies. I just don't think this is what's tearing apart the atheism movement. I think he would have to really get into issues, is the thing. So, I agree with his message, I just disagree that it applies really that broadly. And I think that's kind of what PZ thought as well. As much as I've had my problems with PZ Myers, it's amazing how he's the opposite of how he blogs.

0:10:46 Thomas: His speaking voice is the most gentle, calm demeanor. And then his blog is just the most savage.

0:10:57 Thomas: Attacking of people and and all that, and in PZ's mind, they struck first, people who are anti-women, anti-feminism, struck first, and therefore you can, I mean, anything goes, like you can block, you can call people names, you can tell people to do whatever, that's kind of his thing, his view is that. And so I think for David Smalley's column or podcast to have more of an impact, I think he would have had to have gotten a little more specific with the issues, I think, because if, I suppose I don't know exactly what Smalley's referring to, so I'm going through the possibilities. If he's not talking about the social justice divide, then I think he would be wrong to say this thing that he's talking about is killing the atheist movement, because for me, the biggest divide is the social-justice versus anti-social-justices divide.

0:11:52 Thomas: That's what I've seen as the most divisive. I think within atheism I would be highly surprised if anyone thought there was a bigger divide than that. So that's why I'm sort of forced to conclude that he is talking about that divide, in which case the issue there isn't what he's talking about, it isn't a question of people's egos getting in the way, whatever, there is a demonizing of each side, and I think that would be, in my opinion, a better way to frame it, not a question of, oh, someone posts like one thing and then their tempers flare. Like that's not really how it goes.

How it goes is, people are, there is an extreme side of both social justice and anti-social justice, I'll try to state things really neutrally, and sorry for that, but I'm just, just cause I, for ease, cause I'm, I'm try, I try not to put my bias on it, but if I'm trying to be super neutral, there's, there are extreme, I guess extremists on either side, and those are who everybody sees.

And those are also who each side argues against, despite the fact, so if I were to write this column, I would say that's the issue, I think, I truly believe, based on my experience podcasting, interviewing people, hosting debates, I think there are a ton of people who are more in the middle on this, who are pretty reasonable, they're like, well, I think, you know, trigger warnings might be a little silly, but then what's the harm?

Versus, I don't think there's a lot of people People who are like, no, trigger warnings are ending school like they're they're killing universities. People are never going to learn. And then on the other extreme would be, no.

0:13:28 Thomas: We need a trigger warning for if you're going to discuss a person of color, you need to warn that there's going, you know, just extreme trigger warning of like, every single possible thing, which is actually more of just a content note, like this is what we're going to be talking about. It's not a, you can't have a trigger for those things, there's no way that, know, you discussing history in colonialism is giving people panic attacks, I just don't think that's happening. I, and so that would be the opposite extreme. And I disagree with both of those, you, but I do think there are a lot of people who are in the middle. My personal take, just to mention briefly, is I, I want to be considerate. So I'm not mad at people who want a trigger warning for a certain thing or who need a safe space if they're LGBT or trans or they're like veterans.

0:14:19 Thomas: There's a lot of veteran safe spaces at colleges. It doesn't make me mad. I'm not mad that someone wants to hang out in a place, really. Or if it's people of color and they want to have a safe space, and they don't want me to go into that safe space. That doesn't make me mad, I guess. I think that's what, for the extremists on the anti-social justice side, they get really mad that they might not be allowed in a place and they think that it's reverse racism, I ought to be able to go barge in and tell them my ideas. They're hiding from my ideas, and so I think a lot of people are there. And when you're in the middle, you can see a lot of bullshit on either side. You can see like, well, you know, this such and such study is totally wrong, being overblown. Or for example, the safe space policy of Goldsmiths and how it was applied to Mariam Namazi was total bullshit.

0:15:11 Thomas: Like there's, that's where I am. I'm kind of picking the bullshit on either side and saying, I don't like that, but ultimately I would say I, I side probably 10, 15% towards social justice. If, if it was like, you Let's say on a scale of zero is anti-social justice and 100 is social justice, whatever. I'm 65-70 or something. Something like that. And my point is that I think a lot of people are in that range. They might, maybe they're 35 to 75 or something like that, you know, 20 to 80. I don't even, I think even that would be a little, little more extreme than most people are. And that I, I, think is what may be hurting the movement. I don't even want to use those terms because I don't think anything's killing the atheist movement.

0:15:56 Thomas: I think there's still plenty of organizations that are doing the atheist-y things we want them to do, that are the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the, you know, Secular Coalition. Like there's all these groups that are doing that work, that are fighting for For separation of church and state that are fighting a lot of these, like mentioned in opening arguments, the satanic temple case that are fighting abortion laws that are clearly biased toward Christians, that sort of work is happening. I don't think that's being threatened by this. But I suppose if you want to say there's something that's threatening just the cohesion among atheists, then it would be this justice, social justice, anti-social justice debate, and my diagnosis of the issue would be we're looking at the extremes too much.

0:16:44 Thomas: We need, one thing I started to develop and I want to come back to it is sort of a social justice poll. Whole. I kind of want to get some data on where people actually are on all these issues. And maybe that would prove me wrong. Maybe I would find, oh, it is really polarized. Uh, Or if it proved me correct, that would be very interesting. I would be able to say, here, I have some data, it may be limited, but it shows that people are not as different as they might think in their views, because I think what happens is it's all about which team you're on. You want to be on team social justice or team free speech, I guess, you know, that that's what I think when you actually look at the issues, we don't disagree that much. And in in David Smalley's defense, to sort of go with his point, he does talk about this.

0:17:30 Thomas: At least when he says that he thinks we line up on 98% of the issues. I think that's a little high. It might not be 98%. I don't know how you quantify that. But still, I agree with that. That's a good point. We do line up on most things. And social justice, I think it's more about what team you're on and which YouTube personality you like, or whatever it is. And there's like allegiances declared. And anyone who remotely entertains the ideas of the other side is instantly made into a villain. And so that would be what I think is quote-unquote killing the atheism movement. So now I want to talk about the interaction with PZ. So this was, like I said, it was an hour, but there was supposedly another hour behind a paywall.

0:18:15 Thomas: Such an uninteresting discussion that there was no chance I was paying for a second hour of it. It basically involved David Smalley trying to frame what he thought the problem was for 10 minutes at a time, then finally saying, so what do you think? PZ would start to say, and you can listen for yourself. This is not me exaggerating. I would be curious if anyone wanted to measure the difference in times between PZ and David Smalley, it would be, it would be pretty hilarious. So out of 55, I think minutes where there was actual talking and not commercials or whatever, maybe it was 50, 55 minutes. I wouldn't be surprised if Smalley talked for 45, like that would not, that would not at all surprise me. Wouldn't even surprise me that much if it was like 50, it's incredible.

0:19:01 Thomas: So Smalley sets it up forever and then PZ starts to say, well, I just think you're wrong because these aren't these little interactions that are happening. PZ's whole point every time he would get a chance to speak for two sentences was to say these aren'T just minor spats. These are people I've identified as people who hate feminists and say bad things about women. So I'm not going to give him a call. I'm not going, you know, that was his whole point. And so every time you start to say that, Smalley would recognize, oh, he disagrees with me. So here, let me try to frame this again for an hour or like five or 10 minutes. Let me try To frame it in a way that maybe we'll get PZ to say, okay, sure. Uh, and then PZ, he'd finally kick it back over to PZ and PZ would say, I still think you're wrong because, you know, and so, you know, rinse, lather, repeat.

0:19:49 Thomas: That's what happened for an hour. My criticism of PZ would be that I don't even think this blog post was directed at him, so I think that's PZ's error because I don't think this post is even really designed for him. And so then what happened is Smalley sees, oh, PZ might come on my show. PZ, you know, is a guy who has a following and here's a chance to have someone who has a following on my show, which I think is smart business podcast move. I would have PZ on my show as well, despite the fact that we would have a lot to argue about, by the way. But we would also have a lot we kind of agreed on, so maybe I should try to get him. But anyway, I think that's what happened. And David Smalley said, ah, here we go. This is perfect. And then what happened was the debate was terrible because they were talking about two different things.

0:20:35 Thomas: Smalley is talking about when there's an interaction that goes bad among two people who otherwise are kind of friends. And PZ is talking about, no, these are mortal enemies because we, we have differing views on social justice, and so no debate was had.

Let me know if anything better happened in the next hour, but if the second hour was anything like the incredibly monotonous first hour, where nothing, no progress was made really, then I think my theory will hold, but feel free to let me know otherwise.

So now is where I really have to call out Smalley for, so far what I think he's done is written something that's a nice positive message and I don't disagree with much of it other than in the scope, I don't think it covers a whole lot, I think it's very specific, now I have to calm out for not living up to his own example, You guys, listeners of the show, will remember I did, I think, a lot of commentating about this interaction between David Smalley and my friend Andrew Torrez, where Andrew tried to correct him on a very elementary legal matter, something that over which there's not any difference in opinion among experts, and that was this Christian Mingle settlement. David Smalley wrote a post.

He happened to be very wrong about what he interpreted to be the legal consequences of a settlement, which was not binding in any way and isn't precedent, rather, on other people, and he wrote about it as though it is setting some precedent. He wrote about it as though the judge was making a decision on it when really all the judge does is sign off on the settlement. He doesn't even evaluate whether it's, you know, has any merit or anything like that.

0:22:09 Thomas: I had Andrew on the show. Check it out. It's an old episode. That's AS256 and 7 if you want to go check out the original podcast I did on that particular thing.

I talked about this interaction, I said it was a public post on Facebook, it was, it's still up there actually, but a lot of people asked me like, hey, can you link to the original post, so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to include a PDF of the whole interaction, maybe not the whole entire, well actually it is the whole interaction between David and Andrew on Facebook so you can see for yourself because I think it is actually important, and when you read this and when you were there, like I kind of was, and you hear David talk and really what amounts to kind of a condescending, somewhat sanctimonious tone about how rational and able to coolly assess when one is wrong, It really comes across as condescending to me for him to talk like this when he desperately failed in living up to his own example.

I think it would have been more effective if he spoke from a place of, hey, I lost my head in this particular thing. By the way, he's been called out on this multiple times. He's aware of this. He even had a brief interaction with Andrew where they were maybe going to talk about Andrew coming on Dogma Debate.

I don't, I just don't know that David Smalley is interested in being shown that he's wrong. But at any rate, this is where I have to say it's pretty weird to be talking in such a tone about how everybody else is all petty and lets these little disagreements get to their ego and such stuff like that when this example is under his belt.

0:23:54 Thomas: So I'm also, in case someone doesn't want to load the PDF, I'm going to read the first two, it's the first four interactions. So if you've already heard this before, feel free to bump ahead like 30 seconds or whatever, but I think it's important for people who maybe aren't able to grab the PDF to really hear what I'm talking about. So Andrew Torrez came in pretty hard initially, at least in terms of his confidence about, and why wouldn't he? He's a lawyer speaking about an issue where he 100% has the obvious legal truth, and Smalley is not a lawyer and is just wrong about procedural stuff, stuff you can't argue about. It's not opinion. He's just wrong about a bunch of procedural questions. So David Smalley, you're just wrong about this. CM, and that's Christian Mingle, does not offer straight dating services.

0:24:42 Thomas: That, that would be a violation of the UNRA Act. CM offers dating services, period. And until the settlement kicks in, they offer them in a way that plainly violates the UNRA Act, see my above comments. David, what I'd like to know from you is where was your outrage when Christian-backed dating site eHarmony entered into this exact same settlement six years ago? And given that your parade of bizarre, slippery slope horribles hasn't happened in the six years since the eHermony settlement, isn't it possible that you're just engaged in hyperbole now? So definitely direct. Correct. Now, I would say civil, but certainly not spoken with deference to Smalley's great legal mind. So Smalley responds, "Wow, Andrew Torrez, your arrogance is unprecedented. For starters, this is a highly nuanced topic that can have multiple opinions and interpretations.

0:25:30 Thomas: No one has to be just wrong. That's a childish way of looking at it. Secondly, I did rage about this six years ago." I'd be curious to find out if that's true, by the way. Why would you assume something never happened just because you didn't hear it? I wonder how many fallacies that falls under. "Finally, CM is a private company that offers Christian dating how they believe it should be. While we may disagree with it, that is their right. Allowing our government to step in and determine that what services they offer as a private company puts us all at risk for government overreach. You're fighting for something that will eventually lead to every secular company being in violation of this interpretation of the law and being forced to have Christian options and hiring Christian people, be careful what you wish for." And he says, David Smalley, in order. "Number one, sorry if I'm coming across as arrogant to you.

0:26:16 Thomas: This is what I do for a living. And sometimes it's painful when amateurs get on and start offering extremely confident and extremely wrong opinions about the law, particularly those that begin with just gross misconception about what the law is. I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings, but you're repeatedly describing a settlement as if it were a judicial opinion. And that's like if I came on your podcast and started describing podcasts as if they were some kind of kangaroo. Obviously, humor is not Andrew's strong suit, but you get there. That's what I provide on opening arguments, by the way. Two, this is not a highly nuanced topic just because you happen to have a contrary opinion. Go ahead and talk to a dozen other lawyers and I promise you that none of them will agree with you. Three, I asked if you raged about eHarmony six years ago. I didn't assume you didn't. Now, that I actually disagree with on Andrew's part, by the way.

0:27:02 Thomas: I think he did phrase that as though he doubted there was any possible way David raged about eHarmony. I personally do as well. I just don't think that happened, but I think David's just saying it did. But I suppose, let me know if you have any proof on that either way, listeners. And by the way, I'm just going to read for a little bit more. Sorry, it's a little long, but I Think it's important to know this backstory because I made some pretty harsh judgments on David Smalley. So I think I need to read this in order to back those up. So given that you apparently did, and given that nothing like what you said would happen has happened in the past six years, why would you double down and say it's going to happen now? Four, allowing our government to step in and determine what services they offer as a private company puts us all at risk for government overreach. That was a quote of David Smalley. Congratulations, you've just argued against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

0:27:49 Thomas: Seriously, Robert Bork said this in 1987, and it was why he was deemed unfit to serve on the Supreme Court. Five, you're fighting for, dot, dot, dot, another quote. No, I'm not. You could go read the UNRWA Act for yourself. It's only one sentence long and the Wikipedia article on it is pretty good for a layperson. I've already explained at great length in multiple threads here and in a short comment on your website that your slippery slope arguments are ill-founded. You haven't engaged with any of the substance of what I've said. I don't know why you're digging in your heels here. You screwed up legal analysis. That's not a big deal. You're not a lawyer. Why not just say, 'Oops, I didn't realize this was a settlement, and now that I look at the act, I get that this is limited in scope.' Lots of other people have done that on the thread already, including Eric Brewer, and I was a lot more sarcastic to him than I was to you."

0:28:38 Thomas: Okay, final comment, and this one is much shorter, and it's for all the marbles, it's my favorite quote of all time, really, well, no, second favorite, actually, my favorite is after this, but I don't know if I want to get to it, second-favorite quote of all time. Amateur, I have to point it out, it is just so funny, amateur, and the comment says edited, so, he edited the comment, but still left amateur. Amateur, fuck you. Being an attorney doesn't make you right 100% of the time. You clearly have no idea for what I do for a living to call me an amateur. So, yeah. Okay, sorry. I apologize. I have to read on because my favorite quote of all time is a few seconds from now.

0:29:24 Thomas: So, Andrew Torrez responded, "Wow, that escalated quickly. Dude, amateur just means not a professional. You're not a lawyer, so when you're analyzing legal documents, you're doing so as an amateur. That's not an insult, that's a fact. I'm really kind of surprised that you're reacting this way. We're the skeptical community, you're not supposed to dig in your heels and put your fingers in your ears and refuse to listen just because you're wrong. You're supposed to engage with the evidence and figure out why." Now, if that sounds familiar to you, that quote is basically not word for word, but that sentiment is in Smalley's original article, so it's pretty hilarious that Andrew was using this to say, Smalley, what are you doing here? We're skeptics. Stop digging your heels in. Now at this point, surely you must think, okay, David Smalley is going to back down.

0:30:09 Thomas: He's going to realize he's speaking to an actual lawyer, a belted lawyer for an inside opening arguments joke, a lawyer who graduated from Harvard, by the way. He is a pretty sharp lawyer. And finally, Smiley has got to backdown. So here's what he says. Andrew Torrez, yeah, no shit. I debate for a living. So that would make you the amateur in this discussion.

0:30:33 Thomas: Oh, that's my favorite quote. It is my favorite quote of all time. I got my second favorite is armature. My first favorite is, "I debate for a living, so that makes you the amateur in this discussion," because replace, any, this, rather, replace with any other discussion, and that still applies. So David Smalley could be talking to anybody. Anybody who's not a professional debater is therefore an amateur and his opinion, opinion can be overruled by one David Smalley. So that's my favorite quote of all time. Now, I had to, sorry that was so long and I had read it to you. There's more, actually, and you can find the PDF online in the show notes. It'll be uploaded on my site or something. So I had to include that because when you read that, when you hear that, and then you hear David Smiley being completely sanctimonious about how everybody needs to just get along and back down and not insult people when David was the one who said, "Fuck you," to the expert.

0:31:29 Thomas: Literally, actually, literally said, fuck you to the expert. Hey, expert, fuck you. It's pretty ridiculous in my mind. It's pretty hilarious. So I don't know if there's any point in doing this, but I suspect that this will have burned any possible bridge with Smalley and I. But if David, keep in mind, this is just me. Andrew isn't a part of this. He still is just an expert. David, if you're listening, or if anyone wants to tweet at David or whatever, if you want to fix it, because you made this offer on your show. You said, oh, if anyone want to heal the wounds, get together, put their egos aside, I will provide a platform, is what you said on your podcast. So I'll tell you this. I would say I could provide the platform for you and David to come on my show. I know you're not going to do that.

0:32:14 Thomas: That's fine, I get it, I know. That's fine, but I don't know how it works. You're going to want to do it on your shows. I will. I happily do it it on my show, by the way. But I would say, forget me, I don't even have to be any part of it. If you want to have Andrew on your show, have him in an effort to show some sort of solidarity and to show a little bit of humility, it will make your message more effective. It will make your message of let's heal the wounds far more effective if you have a bit of a mea culpa and you say, you know what? I screwed up. I provided an exact counterexample to what I was trying to to say in this last episode. I want to remedy that now. Here's Andrew Torrez, legal expert, Harvard graduate lawyer. What did I get wrong in my post about Christian Mingle? Now, if you did that, you have Andrew on the show.

0:33:00 Thomas: Honestly, all my criticism would go away. I mean, that would be the way to fix it. It would be the way of fixing it. I don't know. I'm not sure. I think it would be the right way to sort of repair this particular oversight. And that's how it goes, you know? So, that's my very long answer to what I feel about the David Smalley post and the PZ Myers debate. So, there you have it. Let's move on to some other stuff.

0:33:35 Thomas: So, I think I can kind of frame the listener comments and the thing I wanted to talk about relating to Ishmael's show that I recently did, kind of in the same, it's along the same lines. One thing I realized, I think I've realized this before, I mentioned it before, but it's something that I need to keep an eye on, is that our views are so different on what the prevalent reality is when it comes to social media, when it comes to the news you're seeing.

Let me give you a tangible example to illustrate that. So it came, there came a point in the show with Ishmael and I, where we, I said, for example, there was a big backlash against Ellen for that Photoshop photo, and Ishmael said, "Well, I didn't see that, I just saw people backlashing the other way," and we got into it a little bit, and I realized I don't watch cable news, so I don't see that stuff, and I think that does affect the way I look at the world, and it's unfortunate because I I don't want to start watching cable news. I think it's a huge waste of time. I prefer to read my news. I prefer to get a feel that way and seek out sources where I know, you know, there might be a bias either way. I've so realized that that's maybe a barrier between, you know, me, and truth.

And I don't know that watching cable news gives you the right answer. It just might give you a different answer. So I can't say for sure who was right between me and Ishmael in terms of what the backlash was, because you'll see the CNN headline, and Ismael pointed this out, CNN headline said, Ellen's tweet deemed racist.

0:35:20 Thomas: And Ismael's point was like, who deemed it racist? What was the, how do you decide that? And I don't know. I mean, it's hard for, you know, you and I, John Q Public, to know what went into that. We don't know all that, we can look for tweets. You can find tweets of anything if you want is the thing you can find. Oh, there's a bunch of tweets about this. There's a bunch of tweets against those tweets saying, no, it wasn't racist. How do you judge which is more prevalent, which is the zeitgeist? I really don't know. I mean, there may be some metrics people are using, but when CNN writes an article, writes a headline that this is deemed racist, what does that mean? Do we know that it was deemed racist? Who's deeming it racist? How many people? Is it merely the presence of three or four angry tweeters, some of whom might be notable, that can deem something racist?

0:36:10 Thomas: And the issue is that I think this affects things. So I want to say right now that I, I want to acknowledge that there's a lot of racism in America. I'll just speak about America. I just can't even begin to get it. I can barely keep track of America. I can't get into other countries. There's a lot of, of racism in America that I am sort of, I wouldn't say I'm blind to it. I know it exists, but I possibly downplay, uh, or don't talk about enough because when I see people being stupid, I don't have much patience for it. So, let me give you a real example, something I wanted to talk about. The latest buzz is Colin Kaepernick. He sat for the Pledge of Allegiance. Now, what I do, or Pledge Allegiance, sorry, sorry, I got a laugh at my own mistake there. I would edit that out, but it's kind of funny.

0:36:56 Thomas: He sat for the singing of the national anthem, which I just imagine every game starting with him. I pledge allegiance. Both sides have to do that. So, he sat for this and it was some sort of protest. I think it, what I read, it was inspired somewhat by Black Lives Matter. Now, when I see that, I see, that he did that, I think there's nothing here. All that there is there is, okay, interesting, he made a protest. Test. Cool. Maybe that'll bring some attention to certain issues in our society, whatever. I honestly, I'm also kind of cynical where I think that's not really going to do anything, but I also, I don't care. Like, that's cool. Like express yourself, express your opinions either way. That's fine with me, you know, more power to them. And that's kind of where I sit because I, you Know, I I'm me, I have my views.

0:37:44 Thomas: That's what I see, but what I might be potentially blind to and that I specifically have thought about when it comes to this Colin Kaepernick issue is just how many people there are who are, in my opinion, being idiots in this case, who are incredibly concerned with the fact that he dishonored the flag. Oh, you always salute the flag, it means freedom or something, and so we always have to respect the flag, and there's a lot of people who think that. And I see that response and my brain says, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." So therefore ignore it, like there's nothing valuable there in that response. And so that's a fault of mine. I think I need to be more conscious of those kinds of things because they matter, because I saw, like, the biggest person I saw was like some MMA fighter was one of the top tweets.

0:38:38 Thomas: I have no idea who it is. I haven't heard of him. And I watch a little bit of MMA, but anyway, he had like 170k followers, I think, and he tweeted something like, "I will never watch another 49ers game," which is just so ridiculous to me. Like, for one, okay, maybe you're mad at Kaepernick, does it, he's, he may not, might not even start for the team, like, that the whole team is ruined for you now? You can't, maybe what about like some running backs you want to watch or something, maybe they're, maybe they're even anti-Black Lives Matter, you don't know. Like Like, you're throwing out the entire team because of this one thing that doesn't even matter. So I thought that was hilarious. But that's a guy with 170,000 followers. And that was just the one I glanced at. Who knows how many of these people there are? And there might be a lot.

0:39:24 Thomas: It might be, it might be. A bigger number of people than probably than people who are like me, who are like, "Oh, that's cool statement." Whatever. It's so I just wanted to bring that up because I I think that it is important when I'm discussing some of these issues to call that side out, uh, more.

I don't do it because it's not interesting to me, because I just write them off as terribly wrong, like there's a, they're wrong in an uninteresting way, uh, which is the point of my show has always been to talk about interesting disagreements among atheists. And when I see things like that, they're like, "Well, I doubt there's that many atheists who think there's like you got to honor the flag and you can't sit during the national..." Like, maybe there are, feel free to message me, I'd be happy to talk to you, but I do a judgment of like, "Oh, that's just a kind of religious conservative thing that happens," and I don't really spend too much time talking about that on my show.

But I should probably bring it up because when I talk about these issues of race, and when I have Jabari, Rondale, whoever, on to talk about these issues, that's when it's important for me to realize they, there's a big group of people who are doing things like that that are arguably somewhat racist when you're getting really mad at Kaepernick for what he's doing, or really mad at that swimmer or gymnast, I can't remember who it was, who wasn't covering her heart for the anthem, but then turns out there's like a million examples of white people doing it and you don't give a shit, so clearly there's some racial bias going on there.

0:40:59 Thomas: There. Aiming these criticisms at people of colour all the time and not criticising white people when they're doing the same thing. Maybe you just don't really like people of colour, in a way. Now I wanna transition to a comment I got on the Rondale-Jabari debate, um, and I think the first thing I talked about here is tangentially related, or not even tangentially, like probably pretty related and important. So some guy, uh, I, I don't know your real name, some guy. Maybe I should, I'm not sure if you're a patron or not, but some guy posted a comment and some guy posts a lot of comments and they're good. So thank you. I appreciate that. I like when people post on atheisticallyspeaking.com because it's a cool place for people who disagree to, uh, hash out their views. It's, it's really nice. So thank you for doing that. This is a pretty critical comment of me.

0:41:46 Thomas: And those are the ones I usually focus on because that's where I have the opportunity to learn, change my mind, that kind of thing. So, this is a little bit long, but I think it's worthwhile. I don't know if I'll get through the whole thing, but yeah, I posted something, here's the quote: "I posted similar in response to the first half of this episode, but I was again surprised by how overtly Rondale conflates BLM protests with riots that have the potential to destroy cities.

Moreover, I'd love to hear Rondale or someone who shares his views about waiting until the facts are in to elaborate on when it would be acceptable to protest a police shooting. Even that phrasing might be too reductive, i.e. is BLM protesting shootings or the lack of judicial response to shootings? How much information justifies a protest?

Would it be acceptable to protest a court's decision, or do we have to accept that George Zimmerman isn't a racist because he was not found to be guilty by a jury of his peers, one of whom said something along the lines of, 'I think they both made mistakes,' and they both walk away and think about what they've done,' not not realizing that the victim in a murder trial generally doesn't get to walk away and think about what they've done." Wow, I didn't hear about that at the time. That is an absolutely insane quote. Yeah, so this is interesting, this is worth talking about. I think I want to clarify my view on this, because I think those are great points.

I don't think that nothing is to be done until all the facts are in, that's not actually what I think. And I sort of got into this at the time, but it wasn't my show, it was mainly meant to be a discussion between Rondale and Jabari, so I don't think I got too much into it. What I think is, I think we should be appropriate in how we talk about it until the facts are in.

I think protests are fine, protests, it's hard because no one plans a riot, I don't think, I mean, it, it hard to even criticize that because, I, people who are apt to riot are probably not apt to taking constructive criticism,

0:43:39 Thomas: So, I dunno, that, that's tough, I, I don't think anyone is willingly like saying, oh, there was a shooting, let's riot, but I, who knows, so I'm just gonna talk about how we talk about these issues on social media because that's what I notice the most. And that sounds like a minor thing, but it's actually pretty major. These discussions on social media really shape the conversation because everybody's on there. I mean, not everybody is at a Black Lives Matter protest.

0:44:09 Thomas: Very few people are at the protest, but much more people are seeing the online stuff about it and the social media posts and the twitstorm, as it were. So all I was saying, and again, I think I need to do more recognizing of things like the racism and the criticism of Colin Kaepernick and just, just random, just how much everyday racism there is. I need to say, yes, that exists. That should change. We need to change that fully. 100% that needs to change, that's bad, there are lots of casual and not so casual racists in our society saying racist things, I totally need to recognize that more because I realize when I do things like say, oh, we shouldn't call Ellen racist because I don't think she was actually being racist, I think we should just call what she did kind of reminiscent of racist time, I I think people hear that and say, geez, your only criticism is for the people who are sensitive to racism.

0:45:09 Thomas: Like you're not, that's where your criticism is. And that's, that's valid. I think that's something I need to realize. What's actually going on in my mind is I'm assuming all the first part, I'm assuming the part of, well, obviously, you know, we need to end a lot of the structural racism in this country. We need to change our policies. We need change the drug war. We need to change the over-policing of black communities, all this stuff. That's all.

I'm assuming that but that's going on in my brain. I get that that doesn't make it to the microphone if I don't say it So to clarify my view, yes, the first bit of criticism goes to racist policing policies and inadequate training, police who will never admit another police officer has done anything wrong, my first and foremost criticism needs to go to them, and then secondarily to that, and not even secondarily, maybe further down the list, would be, okay, when there is one of these shootings, let's wait till all the facts are in before we die. Deem the policemen a murderer. Because, I mean, that does ruin their lives. There have been police officers who have done justified shootings, who have had their careers and lives ruined because of the Twitter mob and have had to go into hiding and not be, you know. And all I'm saying is we shouldn't do that. I mean, two wrongs don't make a right.

But certainly, certainly in order of problems, the first thing is more, the racist policing, the shooting of unarmed black, all that, certainly I need to emphasize that is first and foremost. And then when we came to the topic of Black Lives Matter and that kind of thing, I just offered the opinion of there are going to be a certain number of shootings that are justified because that's the reality we live in, and people carry guns, and policemen cannot mess around with that.

0:46:57 Thomas: If someone has a gun, there's not that much room for error. There's going to be a certain percentage of justified shootings. More of them actually happen to white people. Certainly, disproportionate number happen to black people, and that's the issue. The only reason I bring that up is these shootings happen, is all I'm saying. They happen. Happen, some percentage of them are going to be, "Well, the guy literally threatened a police officer with a gun or something like that." Some percentage of him. So the only point I was making is a shooting of a person by default, by a police officer, by default isn't a murder. That's the only thing. It may be in the appropriate application of force in the line of duty. But I really do want to emphasize that that should be totally secondary to the first and foremost criticism of the racist system and the racist policing that goes on.

0:47:48 Thomas: So I appreciate being called out on that by Ishmael on his show, because I think that's true, that's a valid criticism, and I apologize for making a mistake and not emphasizing that enough. So now the comment gets far more critical of me, so I'm going to continue. "As for Thomas, while I enjoyed these episodes, I think it's powerfully naive to think that white people would be more amenable to discussing the ways racism disenfranchises people of color if only they were allowed to call black people racist. While it may clear up some casual miscommunication, isn't it more likely that adopting an official, less nuanced definition of racism will lead to increased false equivocation? Sure, I'm not getting pulled over 52 times despite having never been charged with a single traffic offense, but I'm also a victim of racism because one time a black person made me feel intimidated.

0:48:38 Thomas: White people already think it's racist that they can't call black people racist, and that's fucking stupid. Today on CNN, a white spokesperson for Trump condescendingly explained what the word bigot means to a black panel member because she had to justify some asinine thing Trump said about it being bigoted to call him a racist.

This is the country that invented the war on Christmas, but somehow validating conservative feelings of victimhood is going to prime the pump for meaningful social change?" So there's a little more, but sure, I take that on board, and I think there may be a little bit of misunderstanding of my position on there. I don't think that's going to solve the world's problems.

I mean, just in general, I don't think that I need to ignore possible misconceptions or possible failures of communication, just because, you, I'm white and black people have it worse, like, I get, I get that, and I certainly think that's true, I, I absolutely think that it's easier to be a white person than a person of color, and I again acknowledge the structural racism going on, but I don't, I don't think that I, I should never be able to say, "Oh, let's clarify how we're using the word racist," like that doesn't, I mean, can't I do that, because I, I think there's just a lot of confusion, I think that the, the, the term was redefined at some point, because at some point in my life, racism meant just acting, treating people differently because of their race. You know, prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism, to use dictionary definition, directed against someone of a different race because of that race.

0:50:17 Thomas: So that's what it always meant for me. And then now I think I'm not, I don't totally know about it, but I think in academic circles, it started to change. My all I'm saying is I don't know that we're on the whole benefiting from this definition change, because you can always just use the term structural racism, and that covers it, that covers it, like it doesn't, so I don't, I don't think there's a benefit, I'm not saying that I, defining it in the more basic way that I just read, I'm not saying that would solve Fox News, like that's not, of course, and certainly it's not the biggest criticism, there are other big criticisms, and they've already gone through a number of times, I just think that this definition of racist isn't, I don't think it helps anything, I mean, give me an example where that definition is serving the goals of people of color better, I could be wrong, but I think what I've witnessed it doing is confuse people and just need to be on the same page about what the term means.

0:51:24 Thomas: And that could just be a matter of saying, of just declaring ahead of time, no, I believe racism is only applicable when the, you know, the power structures are in place, but I think that's just such a difficult, I, I just think it's a worse definition, because... When two people are dealing on an individual level, that stuff doesn't apply all the time, I, I mean, I understand if you don't want to do it, you want to keep the definition of structural racism essentially being racism, so you've just redefined it to mean structural racism, that's okay, I'm not gonna, obviously, I am not in control of the dictionary, I just speculating that I don't think that definition helps anything, like I don, I think it confuses people who who might be on the fence or something, or, like, might be reachable.

0:52:10 Thomas: Certainly, I take your point that the Fox News crowd are not, in general, not usually reachable, but I think it's confusing people who are not necessarily on the Fox News crowd, like just your everyday people who don't know that it means that, and then are confused when people make claims that a black person can never, ever be racist. They might think, well, that seems wrong to me, like it seems unfair that that that could be true, because there certainly you can believe that the black race is superior to the white race, and then that's kind of racist, right? So that's my thoughts on that. I can't believe how much time has gone by. I could go way more into that. I also, by the way, I would, I may engage in a conversation with another black atheist who has more of a, I guess, a hardline view on this.

0:52:56 Thomas: And that will certainly hold me accountable if I'm getting anything wrong in that view. But so that's why I have a belief on it. And it's merely a practical thing. Like, I just don't know that that definition is helping us is all. But but anyway, I've said a lot on that and wow, time has flown. So last and certainly not least, I want to give a special shout out to one Eli Bosnick who got married, uh, I, oh man, it might have been two weeks, a week and a half ago now, but I, I think it was last week, at any rate, he got married and people usually do the thing of like, oh, Eli's a lucky man because of the, you know, look Look at that beautiful bride, Eli's a lucky guy, and the default thing is kind of this, like... Sentiment of the man is always lucky that he has a woman, which, you know, I get it, I get it.

0:53:41 Thomas: But I don't know Anna. I've never met Anna. I've never talked to her. I'm sure she's great. I don't know her at all. So I'm going to approach it the other way and say I do know Eli. And I just wanted to say that I think Anna is very lucky to have Eli, because Eli is somebody who is a hilarious, be a hardworking, successful podcaster, like making a living on being funny and interesting, which, how many people do that, you know? And, and furthermore, Eli is just an incredibly good friend. He is, I, you know, like, I don't even know how good of friends I am with Eli because he's so nice to me that I don't know if that's because like, we're great friends or if he's just that way with everybody.

0:54:26 Thomas: It might be that I'm like number 2000 on his friend list. I don't actually know. I can't tell because he's someone who is incredibly generous and caring and thoughtful with his friends and someone also who you hate to be on the other side of because his wit is so sharp, even though his spelling isn't, that he's able to eviscerate people with words. And I just wanted to, so I wanted to approach it from that way. Congratulations, Eli and Anna. And Anna, you're really lucky. I want to go against the stream of all the well-wishing where they always say, oh, Eli, lucky guy. Look at that bride. And no, I don't really know Anna. So I'm just going to say, Anna, you're lucky because look at Eli. He's a really cool guy.

0:55:09 Thomas: So congratulations, Eli and Anna. I really wish the best for you guys. And I can't wait until you're done with your honeymoon so that Eli can start podcasting again.

0:55:21 Thomas: All right, thank you very much for listening to the show. As usual, comments at atheisticallyspeaking.com. Oh, that's not an email, actually. Make comments at atheisticallyspeaking.com, the website, and That's a great way to interact with me and the listeners, and patreon.com/atheist if you want to support the show, got some great interviews coming up, so look forward to that on Thursday, and And most importantly, check out Opening Arguments, please download the podcast, listen to it, it's great, it is really good, I promise, so thank you for doing all those things I said, and I will see you guys on Thursday.