SIO56: Who Speaks for the Atheist Movement?

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 56, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. All right, there is so much that we could be talking about today. Lots of funny stuff in the news. One of my favorite stories was NPR tweeted out, as it does every 4th of July, the Declaration of Independence, and triggered a bunch of Trump snowflakes, who I am calling bro flakes now. I saw it, I didn't come up with it obviously, but I saw that.

I think it's perfect because it really shows the similarity there, and the fact that there really is some that symmetry there, and it's not just a one-sided thing. So the bro flakes were triggered. They thought the Declaration of Independence was like a call to arms against Trump. Oh, it was so great. And then there's also health care. There's a lot we could be talking about with health care right now. There's the CNN thing that was very interesting, but when CNN found the guy who made the gif that Trump retweeted, which was Trump beating the crap out of CNN, they found him. He also, by the way, he had tweeted a bunch of racist stuff, or sorry, not tweeted, he had put it up in Reddit, like 4chan kind of stuff, a bunch of anti-Semitic stuff. He was doing it just for trolls, allegedly.

They found him. The guy apologized, deleted the post. And so CNN said, OK, we're not going to post his name. And then a bunch of people took that to be CNN threatening to release his name if he didn't comply. We're going to talk about that, I think, over on Opening Arguments. I won't talk about it much here other than to say it would be totally within normal journalistic practices to release the guy's name.

0:02:03 Thomas: So people are making a big deal out of that. It's kind of nothing. But now what we're going to talk about today is a piece written, written by David Smalley of Dogma Debate. And you guys, if you're a new listener, you probably, maybe you do know who he is, maybe you don't, you might not know, we have a little bit of a history on this show. But I want to ignore all that because I wantto look at this piece that he wrote called "How the Regressive Left is Killing the Atheist Movement." Because sometimes I self-identify as regressive left, depending on what we're talking about. Now, if we're taking about Majid Nawaz's regressive left, no, I'm not part of that. But if we're talking about how everybody else in the world seemingly has taken that term and misused it and applied it to anyone remotely social justice oriented, then sure, I am happily a regressive-left by your definition, although, of course, I would not refer to myself as such, but I fall into that category.

0:02:56 Thomas: So, when I see an article that's how the regressive Left is killing the atheist movement, and furthermore, when I see Richard Dawkins tweet out and endorse that article, that's something I want to pay attention to. And it's a chance to synthesize a lot of thoughts I've been having about just what is the atheist and skeptic movement? Who gets to decide what it is? Who, who gets to speak for it? There's just all kinds of stuff. I put a ton of work into, cause I'm not a writer really, I don't think. So it was really hard for me, but I've put a tone of work in writing a response to this. And I'm not going to just read it word for word. I'm going to read some of it, talk about it on the show, but I might expand on certain parts. But I did write it. I wrote a response. I am going to post it tomorrow.

0:03:41 Thomas: You should see it if you're hearing this, most likely. I've got to format some stuff and get it up there. But I'm gonna post it as a response. It's my first kind of attempt at writing a blog post. I don't think I've blogged really at all because I get really perfectionist about writing. I wrote it, and I want to talk about it because it's, it's, I think it brings up a lot of ideas that, clearly, if Richard Dawkins is endorsing it, a lot, lot of people are thinking, I know David Smalley has a big following of his own, so I know a lot of people who are thinking along these lines, and I would like to combat what I think is some really, really terrible thinking and on fallacious reasoning, and I love taking that on. So here we go. But I chose to to write this, and I'm going to do this now, because a lot could be said about Smalley's behavior on Facebook and what he's essentially in this piece condemning the very thing he does a lot.

0:04:27 Thomas: A lot could been said about that, but I don't want to focus on that. I want to pretend that I don't even know who wrote this. I just want to take the ideas as they are, separate it from the author, and let's just talk about ideas. So that's what I'm gonna do here. I didn't even reference name in my piece on purpose because I want it to just be about the ideas, and so we can evaluate it at that level. So here we go.

0:04:57 Thomas: My response is titled, Whoever I Don't Like Is Ruining the Atheist Movement. This article is meant in response to a curiously written, one-sentence paragraph-laden, self-anointed wake-up call to, quote, liberals, leftists, and everyone in the the barely surviving secular community, unquote. It is titled How the Regressive Left is Killing the Atheist Movement, and in it, the author, while displaying a bewildering contempt for his readers, for example, quote, you beg for short reads and then criticize the lack of nuance, end quote. And later, the particularly eye-roll-inducing, quote read that again, which is, end unquote, which is never a good thing to put in an article, in my opinion. It utilizes a sort of both sides or bad argument to conclude that actually only one side, the regressive left, is ruining the skeptic argument if top of all that, it is given to us with a tone of, look how much more reasonable I am than everyone else.

0:05:55 Thomas: And I wish I could say that was only subtext, and I wish I could say I was making that up, but here's a quote. Quote, I am controversial simply because I am reasonable, end quote. There are some things that even if they're true, it's prudent to let others say of us. The piece starts off with some perfectly praiseworthy, if obvious, condemnations of false dichotomies. According to the author, it seems that these days you either hate cops or hate black people, you either condone violence or support Nazis. This is something that I think we can all agree on. It would be better if our discourse was less divisive. We communicated more. But when we see the author's solution to the Black Lives versus Blue Lives Matter debate, the problems emerge. He writes, quote, here's a reasonably controversial reality check. Black lives matter and cops have really tough jobs, end quote.

0:06:44 Thomas: The author seems to believe that this pioneering statement just hasn't occurred to people, or else, and his words, is, quote, "so reasonable that it's controversial," end quote. This is frankly an embarrassingly naive read of the situation. The fact is, people are tired of the "cops have hard jobs" or "Blue Lives Matter" response to people of color voicing their concerns over countless examples of police getting away with literal murder. The debate between Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter isn't simply one side saying black lives matter and the other side saying cops have tough jobs. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. If that were truly the debate, there wouldn't even be an argument. The author strolls casually into this conflict with all the nuance of Donald Trump wondering why the whole Israel-Palestine thing is still going on.

0:07:30 Thomas: The real question at the heart of this debate is, is the status quo okay? Is the current system in which an officer can get away with no charges filed after killing Philando Castile okay? Or do we need change? If the answer is yes, the system needs to be changed, you're on the side of Black Lives Matter. Saying cops have tough jobs is not a proper response to that problem. You aren't making a groundbreaking point by saying both black and blue lives matter. Those are empty words that anyone can utter. Black lives matter can easily entail police lives mattering as well, but saying blue lives or all lives matter in response to black lives matter is meant to silence. It's meant to say, no, you're wrong. The status quo is fine. The two statements are not compatible.

0:08:17 Thomas: Just take a look at the websites. In blue lives matters about section, there's strong language explicitly condemning black lives Matter. Quote, the media catered to movements such as Black Lives Matter, whose goal was the vilification of law enforcement, end quote. That's from the Blue Lives Matter website. The author brought up backing the blue and saying, in a sense, people are overreacting to something like backing the Blue bumper stickers, for example. Take a look at their Facebook page, and you see how often they endorse Blue Lives Matter, which above I just referenced, specifically talks about Black Lives Matter, whose goal is to vilify law enforcement. Now, if you look at Black Lives Matter's website, you'll see a stark difference. The Black Lives Matter website does not have any content vilifying law enforcement, first of all.

0:09:05 Thomas: And indeed, the page is quite inclusive. Quote from it, We're not saying black lives are more important than other lives or that other lives are not criminalized and oppressed in various ways. We remain in active solidarity with all oppressed people who are fighting for their liberation, and we know that our destinies are intertwined. End quote. The point is, you can't simply say both sides have a point when Blue Lives Matter has in its mission statement, quote, NYPD officer Rafael Ramos and officer Wenjian Liu were ambushed and murdered by a fanatic who believed the lies of Black Lives Matter, end quote. Either become more informed on the question and pick a side or don't comment on the issue. Having solved race relations in America, the author moves on to a laundry list of issues that two sides overreact to.

0:09:54 Thomas: For example, on the Question of Islam, you're either an Islamophobe or a libtard. Those are quotes. However, he gives up the game when he follows it with this. Quote, if you even hint at one of the obvious facts above, you can expect an assumption followed by an insult, then likely a mob attack from keyboard warriors who are giving liberals and skeptics a bad name, end quote. Wait a minute, what happened to the whole two sides thing? Before, both sides were overreacting and assigning malicious intent to each other, but now this behavior is just giving liberals and skeptics a bad name. This is the fundamental error of the piece. Keep that in mind as we move on. The next part is in bold, so I suppose it's extra important. Quote, and we wonder why we're losing elections, losing funding, and our conferences are getting smaller, end quote. But wait, why are we losing elections?

0:10:41 Thomas: A moment ago, the author was highlighting the problems for both sides. Why isn't the alt-right a reason that the right is losing elections? Why isn't the KKK's endorsement of Donald Trump a reason why the right is losing elections? As with the previous tell, focusing only on one side reveals the bias of the author. As for conferences, I could imagine a number of reasons why they are getting smaller. Isn't it possible that atheism as a movement just really isn't as exciting or novel as it was seven or ten years ago? I, for one, would want to gather some data before making a definitive claim about the the cause of conference attendance dwindling, but if we're going to speculate, I'd say it's entirely possible that the topic has simply gotten a tad stale for some people. I can only speak for myself and a number of my friends I've talked to have echoed the same sentiments, but while it was tremendously exciting once upon a time to watch, for example, the brilliant Christopher Hitchens dismantle some theist, With magnificent aplomb and turns of phrase, Hitch is unfortunately no longer with us.

0:11:40 Thomas: And the God debate is literally one of the oldest philosophical questions there is. It's not as though there's a ton of fresh new material on either side. The question is completely settled in a lot of atheist minds. This is not to say the movement is completely done in or anything. With how religious our country is, there's always going to be fresh deconverts excited to explore new intellectual terrain with others similarly situated. My guess is that there was something of an atheism bubble. Demand was intense in the wake of a religiously motivated attack in 9-11, during a somewhat theocratic presidency, and was further stoked along by some truly excellent literature. And now, as is the case after all bubbles, demand for atheism as a product has settled back to a market equilibrium. Stepping out of the paper here, this is speculation, and it's also not meant to say that people aren't going to be atheists anymore, by any means.

0:12:32 Thomas: And I really do think that there will always be a movement. There will always be people just coming out of religion. I think that sometimes I can certainly get too focused on my particular situation, which is I've been an atheist for a very long time. I wasn't really raised incredibly religiously. So sometimes I forget. And ReasonCon was a really interesting chance for me to talk to people who aren't like that. People who just got out of a religion like, you know, this month or a year ago. And to see those people. I mean, there's always going to be a need for a movement that supports those people. But I do think that demand for conferences and atheism, as I said, as a product, I don't know that it'll get back to what it was when we had Hitch, one of, in my opinion, one of the most gifted, polemicist citation of a generation of, forget atheists, just anybody.

0:13:18 Thomas: When we lose who's him? And when you have Richard Dawkins is getting on yours, he's not doing as much anymore. Dan Dennett, I don't hear from him much anymore, Sam Harris is, you know, he is branching out, he's doing more stuff. I just don't know that we're ever going to get back to that bubble. It doesn't mean it's going to go to zero, but I think demand has settled a little bit. So, I've been thinking a lot about that and just wanted to step out from the paper to elaborate a littlebit. Back to the paper. But there's another interesting element to this equation. In that same time period, podcasts have absolutely thrived. The Thinking Atheist and Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, for example, continue to do quite well. Shows like The Scathing Atheists, Godawful Movies, and Cognitive Dissonance, and now, by the way, Virtue needed, of course, they are doing really well. They are able to sell out large-scale venues on their own for live shows.

0:14:07 Thomas: Perhaps the key ingredient is that these shows aren't simply atheism. They're atheism and humor, atheism and news, for example. If some atheists or conferences are finding their support dwindling, perhaps the market is shifting elsewhere. I want to emphasize these are just my educated guesses. Both mine and the author's theories would need testing, and I would certainly update my beliefs with data. Continuing in the blog post, we are treated to some more one-sentence paragraphs before arriving at an X-Men-related hypothetical Facebook argument. Here's how it goes. Quoting from the author's paper here. Here's what usually happens. Al, I can't believe Joe hates X-Men. Fred, whoa, what evidence do you have for that? Al, here's a video with 12 views, highly edited with tiny clips taken out of context. Fred, that seems more like propaganda. I didn't really see hatred there.

0:14:53 Thomas: Have more? Al, wow, so you hate X-men too. Fred, I didn't say that. Al, by saying you don't see hatred like I do, you're saying X-Men aren't significant. Fred, OMG, I just want better evidence before I jump to conclusions. Al, how dare you minimize the plight of X-Men. And what a piece of shit. Fred, I'm just trying to out-blocked. Seem familiar? The author says. In this generic example, we see the author subject himself to a political Rorschach test. He peers into the ostensibly neutral inkblots of his X-Men example, and he sees the villain he clearly had in mind the whole time, the left, because he continues, quote, a world where asking for additional evidence is considered hateful can only be called regressive. That's in bold. On the left, it becomes quite common for us to beat one another into submission with extreme false claims, accusations, and assumptions, end quote.

0:15:41 Thomas: Well, I don't know. What are you asking for more evidence for? This is where hypotheticals become fairly useless and real life examples are necessary. If you're asking me for more evidences of, say, Bill Cosby's sexual assaults before you'll accept what dozens and dozens of women are telling you, then yes, you're being obtuse and deserve criticism. But what are we talking about? Black Lives Matter? Matter? Do you need more evidence that our policing has a race problem? In general, of course, evidence is great and jumping to conclusions is wrong, but your readers don't have any idea what you're talking about. For all we know, you've just erected a straw X-man and beaten him down. A large problem with this piece is that for every problem the author highlights, there are legitimately two unhelpful sides to the equation. But mysteriously, only the regressive left is the target of his criticism.

0:16:27 Thomas: If you want evidence of the other side, it can be found all over the comment section. Here's a comment I took a screenshot of. Enzo Giovanni says, Black Lives Matter is a de facto terrorist organization. No explanations needed, just facts. Reasoning being responded, I noticed you made an assertion yet provided no facts. Note that regressive lefty asking for additional evidence in response. Anyone in atheism knows there's no shortage of Enzos around, the commenter. Why isn't he ruining the movement? And I can certainly attest to no shortage of enzos around, especially Twitter. Why isn't he ruining the movement? If the author was unaware of this contingent of skeptics, he really ought to peruse the comments on his own piece. He'll find several more gems. I have pictures of several more deliciously bad comments, and it's really shocking.

0:17:14 Thomas: There's quite a few. Jocelyn Renfrey posted, As a trans woman, it is indeed quite difficult to produce sympathy for an institution that has routinely harassed trans female sex workers, etc, etc. And then the response, which is the important part, says, you're not a woman, you are an insane man. Hoyt Baxter says, someone can be pro-white without being against any other group. And Dale says, and they can be pro-white while being against a group that isn't white. When one responds to Black Lives Matter, when issued a response to horrific injustice toward a black person with all lives matter, IMO, the odds are very high that one is in fact a white supremacist or at least supports those that are. I'm white, by the way. And then the original commenter responds, the most vicious anti-whites are white. Signaling Cuck.

0:18:00 Thomas: And then Enzo actually jumped back down on this one and said, textbook example of white guilt. Sad. And then finally, there's one more here, Truth Monsters. This one is just, I'm not going going to read the whole thing, but it's riddled with caps lock and political correctness is not like a religion. It is a religion, Scientology and Buddhism are atheistic, but they are religions. Most atheists are in reality, religious fanatics that scream that all non-believers to the tenets of religious Marxism are bigots, heathens, racist sinners, sexists. The church of PC is waging jihad and Western civilization. And then, the Most Important Part is, this commenter says, it is the Church of PC that is bringing in all these Muslims to colonize Europe. Bringing in all These Muslims to Colonize Europe, I quote. This one reminds us that there are two sides to the overreaction on the question of Islam.

0:18:47 Thomas: Sure, there's a genuine group of people whom Majid Nawaz accurately and astutely labeled the regressive left. They paint far too rosy a picture of Islam and shield it from any criticism under the guise of being anti-bigotry. That's a problem and something the left needs to deal with. However, Truth Monsters here, the commenter, reminds us that we can't forget the other side of this. There are actual anti-Muslim bigots in atheism and in our society. Just ask Ina, PAC Canadian blogger and ex-Muslim who gets hate from all sides. I've linked some of her tweets where she's outlining it. Perhaps the author should speak to her. She could enlighten him on how bigoted the atheist community can be. Here she tweeted a video in which a very prominent atheist, Gad Saad, compares Muslims to mosquitoes. What hilarious satire.

0:19:32 Thomas: Guys, And I watched this video and wow, I was thinking, I have to admit, I was wondering if Ina was accurate in her description. I thought, oh, he can't really be doing that. He literally is making the argument that, and he's making fun of Lawrence Krauss in the video who said, oh look at the numbers, terrorism isn't a big problem, something like that. And his analogy, Gadzad's analogy is, well, if you take all the mosquitoes in the world as the denominator, and for the numerator you put the number of mosquitoes that have bitten you. Sure, it's like one in a gazillion. That's the analogy he's using for Muslims, as though they're all mosquitoes, as though they all would kill you if they had the opportunity.

0:20:18 Thomas: I mean, that is anti-Muslim bigotry, and that's a prominent atheist. It is really, really sickening to me. Again, I have to ask, continuing on, why isn't it these people who are ruining the skeptic community for the author? To be honest, they tend to ruin it for me. More on that later. Continuing on, I'm genuinely baffled by this next part. Here's a quote.

"We use statement A to assume statement B and then base all of our hatred on our assumption and stick that person into a box they never agreed to be in." Yeah, that can happen sometimes. Sorry, that was me. And then back into it. "And then you sit back with wine." Anyway, only a non-drinker would say that. But anyway, "and then you sit back with wine, refresh Facebook and see how the masses will vote you into popularity with the like button as your cult grows." Shows, and to avoid being attacked, the vast majority of reasonable people stay silent. You sit and watch, wondering if your online reputation is worth supporting a fellow reasonable person who is being swarmed, end quote. Boy, it's hard to just be one of the one or two reasonable people, huh? Well, which is it, I say? Are the vast minority of reasonable People silent, or do the masses vote you into popularity?

If there truly are masses of skeptics who swarm any true reasonable person, as the author outlines for no legitimate reason, then what is this skeptic community? It sounds terrible. Maybe it should be destroyed if that's what it is. Fortunately for me, this hasn't really been my experience. Next we get to the motherlode of false equivalences. Here's a big quote from the original blog.

0:21:49 Thomas: "An extreme leftist protester punching a white nationalist on television looks a lot like a racist in the 60s punching blacks for trying to vote. Liberals shutting down a conservative speaker with violence and force at a university looks a lot fundamentalist Christians blocking the entrances at abortion clinics. Of course, I understand the differences and nuances here, but the call for violence and force to become the new oppressor is the common denominator causing both extreme ideologies to converge at the tip of the horseshoe, making you both appear out of touch with American values of freedom and compassion." End quote. This is two preposterous statements followed by the get out of jail free card of, quote, "of course I understand the differences and nuances here," end quote. It's fun, try it.

0:22:34 Thomas: Here's my example. "Punching a guy in the face while he's trying to stab you looks a whole lot like punching a guy on the face for no reason." End. "Of course, I understand the differences and nuances though." Does he? I think if he understood the differences, he wouldn't have made this comparison to begin with. I want to be absolutely clear. I don't condone violence over speech. I had a debate on my show, I linked the Eli episode, where I was on the side of not punching Richard Spencer. And frankly, I've been surprised by how many people didn't see it my way. I found, though, that most of these people are fine with Spencer having gotten punched and aren't actually promoting perpetrating violence themselves. But it's fundamentally different to view favorably a black man punching an alt-right bigot who has declared a desire for peaceful ethnic cleansing and punching black people for trying to vote.

0:23:21 Thomas: I mean, really? In a blog post that is a plea against black and white thinking. I would hope we could all see that one of these things is kind of questionable and the other is downright evil, right? As for blocking college speakers, the author has another middle ground reason bomb for us. Quote, as an example, my solution for Milo versus the university situation was this. Milo should be allowed to give his talk, but put into his contract that if he uses his platform to single out or bully a specific student, the talk will be stopped and he will be fined a percentage of his speaking fee for breaking the bullying policy of the university. All protesters must remain 300 feet from the entrance to the auditorium to reduce concern for violence. Both political extremes hate it because neither of them get to dominate the landscape.

0:24:09 Thomas: Exactly. Neither of you get to be the impressor. This isn't bold. Reasonable people want equality. End quote. There is so much wrong with this, I barely know where to begin. The author really ought to consult an expert before opining on legal issues. Berkeley has no authority to put such a stipulation in Milo's contract. Berkeley is merely a facilitator of a limited public forum, important legal term. They also definitely can't put a content-based restriction on his speech. That would actually violate the First Amendment. When I investigated the issue, I was shocked at how rigorously Berkeley administration defended the First amendment. If Milo were invited to speak tomorrow, he would be allowed to speak, assuming he agreed to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions that Berkeley has in place to deal with high-profile, riot-inspiring speakers like Milo.

0:24:58 Thomas: The talk was not canceled because of the regressive left. It was stopped because an outside group of 150 agitators came in on a mission to riot and cause violence. The truth is we don't know who these people were. Stepping out, this is important. I've seen evidence from both sides. It It could be there were some students involved. It could have also seen evidence that Milo himself organized it because he loves to be the victim. I don't totally know. I'm not going to believe either one. When even the FBI, who was investigating it, by the way, when even the F.B.I. was not able to figure out who these people were, I'm going to go ahead and say I don't know who they were sitting here with just reading articles. And I'm gonna go ahead say you don't know who they were either, so that I think that's the skeptical position. The actual rational position is to say we don't who they were.

0:25:46 Thomas: Anyway, back into the paper. Around 1,500 students peacefully protested. The distance from the entrance to the auditorium made absolutely no difference. Most of the damage was in downtown Berkeley anyway, and it was done after the talk was canceled. This tells us that the agitators weren't there to just stop Milo from speaking. They weren't part of the organized student protest. They were anarchists bent on destruction. Many have blamed the university or have blamed students they perceive to be snowflakes, but in my analysis, this is completely unfair. The author's solution is, once again, naive, ill-considered, and yet presented condescendingly as a sort of parental intervention between two screaming kids. Exactly, quoting him, exactly, neither of you get to be the oppressor, end quote.

0:26:31 Thomas: It misses the most important question. At a previous talk, and I have a link here, Milo posted a picture, I've talked about this before, posted a photo of a trans student and mocked their appearance. He made disgusting comments. I can't imagine what it must have felt like to be a student at a university and find out a group invited a speaker who ridiculed you personally and rejected your gender identity while your fellow classmates jeered. Horrifying. Disgusting. The question that we all should have been asking at that point was, why on earth would a group of young Republicans think it is okay to invite this man on campus? They should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. The author's solution is legally impossible. Once the invitation is given, Berkeley's hands are tied, so let's focus on finding a way to communicate to the Berkeley College Republicans that trans people have dignity and deserve respect.

0:27:19 Thomas: That should be a nonpartisan issue. The piece ends with sentiments that we can all get behind. Here I'll quote, let's agree to focus on reason, logic, and evidence instead of click mobs. Let's stop assuming that since you overcame that one big illusion of religion, you're somehow immune to believing false things. Let'S acknowledge group psychology and refuse to succumb to it. LetS re-embrace the love for skepticism and apply that to all parts of our lives, not just the ones in our comfort zone of criticism. Let's stop demonizing those with whom we disagree. Let us allow questions to be asked without assuming that horrible motives are fueling them. And finally, let us communicate with active listening skills. Point. I agree with all of this. Anyone would look at those sentiments and agree. That's right, even regressive lefties like me.

0:28:05 Thomas: This, this is the issue. One could just as easily write a mirror of this blog post and say the anti-PC religion is ruining skepticism. The argument is incredibly easy to make, especially in the wake of the conceptual penis hoax paper perpetrated by Peter Boghossian and, he's a frequent Dogma Debate guest, by the way, just was on, and James Lindsay. The news of this hoax paper was embraced by scores of skeptics frothing at the mouth to finally see the field of gender studies revealed as bunk. But as Phil Torres and many others pointed out, the hoax was in itself a hoax. I both did a breakdown of why the hoax is a failure with Eli Bosnick and also debated co-author James Lindsay on it. Indeed, when the authors posted about their triumph, lots of us asked for more evidence, and we're the ones constantly labeled regressive.

0:28:51 Thomas: Why were these skeptics, in quotes, so easily fooled? Because when it comes to their blind spots, they aren't really skeptics at all. They are ideologically motivated against PC culture and are willing to embrace almost any evidence of their narrative no matter the source. Like when Boghossian linked InfoWars because it comported with his irrational hatred of safe spaces. I have the link to that, by the way. Or when he linked a pro-life propaganda site because it fit his anti-PC narrative. And I have pictures of that one from Eli. For me and many others, the people who are actually ruining the skeptic movement. For me and many others, the people who are actually ruining the skeptic movement are those with blinding anti-PC, anti-feminist bias. Bias. But this raises the obvious question, who gets to decide what the skeptic movement is?

0:29:39 Thomas: In reality, atheists are merely a group of people who find that there isn't evidence to support a belief in God, and on a good day, we hopefully all agree in church-state separation. That's about it, though. We tend to share some beliefs, but they aren't logically entailed by atheism. In fact, if you're talking about the secular community, that includes plenty of believers who believe in strong church-state separation. So really, secularists don't all agree on even the God question. Of the social justice-oriented and anti-feminist-oriented factions of atheism. Neither side gets to be correct by default. We don't all have to agree on that question to have a movement. What's so frustrating about the "how the regressive left is killing the atheist movement" piece that I've referenced is that the author claims to be finding a middle ground in all of this in the name of protecting the skeptic movement.

0:30:29 Thomas: But in reality, what he's doing is deciding on these PC anti-PC questions and then putting those who disagree with him on the other side of the line. This is revealed in the very beginning when he lists the guests in this series he's done. Quote, "Today's podcast episode continues the set of conversations with Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, Adam Carolla, Pete Boghossian, and Lawrence Krauss on Dogma Debate." End quote. Wow, five white men and the host, another white man, are all going to school us about, and I quote, "what it means to be reasonable." End unquote. For the record, I don't know what Lawrence Kraus is doing on that list. I've always known him to be a friend of social justice causes. And whatever episode of Dogma Debate that he was on has disappeared behind a paywall. So being incredibly optimistic, maybe Krauss was a lone voice of dissent in that, but it would truly be the lone voice since Boghossian, Shermer, Carolla, and Dawkins are all vehemently anti-PC, anti-safe spaces, and often anti- feminist.

0:31:29 Thomas: Oh, and they all fell for the gender studies hoax. And that's fine. The author can, of course, have his positions and have a show on social justice questions and discuss them with all the white men he wants. He just has to be honest about the fact that he's taking a side. When you dismissively refer to Evergreen's Day of Absence as, quoting back from the blog, no white's day, end quote, you're taking a side. I put in parentheses, maybe he should have Brett Weinstein, another white man, on to to talk about the situation.

0:32:00 Thomas: The way I see it, the author and anyone else who wants to keep a skeptic, atheist, secular community alive has a few options. One, simply focus on the main questions and problems in atheism. Devote your time solely to secularism, to debating God's existence, to fighting any religion-fueled bigotry or bills or anything like that. Or number two, do as some do and wear your political values on your sleeve. I would put myself in this camp. On my show, serious inquiries only. You guys are probably listening to that right now. I don't hide the fact that I am a liberal or the fact that I'm more partial to social justice causes. In my view, there's simply nothing wrong with being an overt partisan and also caring about secular slash atheist causes. But when I advocate for the social justice side of things, I don't do so under the illusion that I speak for the atheist community.

0:32:49 Thomas: As much as I wish it weren't the case, the truth is I don't get to speak for all of us. I don't get to say, you disagree with me on my view of social justice, you're ruining atheism. Individuals get to decide for themselves what causes are more important to them. And for a lot of us right now, there are more important issues than atheism sometimes. And frankly, skeptic bro behavior can turn us off. Like when I have a link, like when we see almost every prominent skeptic embrace a false narrative about an entire field of study with no evidence. Another link. Or when we hear one person's side of a story about Evergreen, and somehow the whole skeptic community has rendered judgment on it. You don't have the right to tell us we can't speak up because we're hurting atheism, don't worry, we're able to focus on social justice and donate to Freedom From Religion Foundation, for example.

0:33:40 Thomas: It's possible to care about multiple things at once. I'm doing it right now. And I that's the end of the piece. I think by the time I post it, it's probably going to have some edits, minor stuff, but that's, that's a good thing. Of it. And I know I went off script a few times. I want to go off script right now and say, yeah, this is something I've been thinking of. Because I thought a lot about like, what is this movement, the skeptic atheist movement? I mean, I changed the name of my show from Atheistically Speaking to Serious Inquiries only because I just didn't really think I was doing an atheist show. That doesn't mean I'm not an atheist. It doesn't mean that I don't see the harms religion causes. I think the conversation I had with Seth Andrews on the show was really useful for that. There's all kinds of harms. There are all kinds kinds of people who, if they want to, all day can devote their time and effort and energy to atheist causes.

0:34:27 Thomas: I have no problem with that. I think it's great. It's something that I haven't found as interesting to me because of what I like to look at. I don't know. The kinds of problems I like to look at are different, the kinds of inequalities, but that doesn't mean that I'm not still supporting things like Freedom From Religion or, you know, any other organization, that's the one I referenced, but any other organisation that's doing that good work. I can donate my money. I can retweet them. I can do little support things here and there, but I put the majority of my focus on these issues that I think are bigger because the alt-right is in the White House. The alt-right is in power right now, and I'm tired of people using really sloppy logic to suggest that, A, that Trump is like the left's fault, that Trump, all this stuff, that that's what's been most pressing to me personally, and I know a lot of you listening, if you're, I, I have a lot of trans listeners.

0:35:19 Thomas: I know for sure I hear from you guys and I appreciate it. Oh, I need to still do my trans panel. I cannot believe I lost track of that idea. Oh, side note. I know I have the right to do it. I have lots of trans viewers. And I know you guys are probably facing a lot more pressing issues than secularism at times when you're, you know, there's danger of bathroom bills. And that's related to religion. Of course, it's relatedto religion, but there's a lot of trans bigotry that is not. There's a lotof so-called atheists who are, you know, doing videos about gender pronouns, ruining the world and making $50,000 a month on Patreon. On. Oh, sorry. Jordan B. Peterson's not an atheist, but he's so widely loved for his hatred of trans pronouns that he gets cross bipartisan atheist and theist support. Know, by the way, sent me a lot of good links for this. Oh, and I have some shout outs at the end.

0:36:06 Thomas: I want to thank Ina. I want Alex Jules who helped me out a little bit. I want Andrew who gave me the okay on the legal stuff. Made sure I didn't get it wrong. I wanted someone to proofread it. Thank you so much to Amy for that. But by the way, but yeah, I heard a lot from Ina. She gave me a lot of links of, yeah, here's where this guest that Dave Rubin had is a white supremacist and is advocating like getting all the non-white people out of the country and all this stuff. Yeah, that's what interests me. That's what's honestly, again, I wouldn't say they're ruining the movement because we can all get together and agree when someone's trying to build a Ten Commandments monument. We can all gets together, even me and Dave Rubin, for all I know. We get together, donate some money to that. It's not ruining the movement, but it's ruining the moment for me in a way.

0:36:55 Thomas: Dave Ruben and that crowd are making it such that I feel like I'm along with a lot of irrational people, in my view, and I provide evidence for this. I'm with people who are okay, curiously, with interviewing white supremacists and giving them a platform, with Milo Yiannopoulos. That's what's pressing to me. But we can still have a movement. We can still be atheists. But do I want to go to your conferences if I know, for example, and I'm not saying this is David Smalley yet, but do I wanna go to you conferences? If you're someone like Ruben, if you're like Boghossian who will link InfoWars and retweet Laura Ingram who is linking a pro-life propaganda website just because it serves your anti-PC narrative, that's not skepticism. And I'm not excited to go see that conference speaking for myself personally.

0:37:52 Thomas: Does that mean I'm hurting the movement? Well, I might be hurting your conference, I guess. So if it was rewritten as Thomas and people who think like Thomas or whatever, people who are social justice oriented are hurting conference attendance, it might be true. But you could also just do conferences that we like, you know, like you could do that too. I don't know. Maybe conferences are not the thing anymore. Maybe podcasts are the thing. I know live shows are killing it for scathing and cog diss and that crew. And hopefully, God willing, hopefully opening arguments soon. That would be really cool. So, thank you for listening to this. That is a a response that I, I really worked an incredible amount of time on and that's why I wanted to do it as an episode as well.

0:38:39 Thomas: Cause I think sharing a link is going to get, you know, a handful of views, but I know this podcast goes to tens of thousands and I'm very proud of that. And I, I really think these thoughts are, I think they're important to these allegations that you're ruining the community. I don't want you guys, if you're someone who's like me and agrees with me on some of this stuff, not all of it, but yeah, who knows? I don't want you to feel like you're ruining a community. It's unfair. It really is unfair to target anyone who is of a certain social justice mindset and say you're ruling a community, and by the way, I anticipate, I don't know that Smalley will hear this or see this or anything, but I would anticipate that he'll likely try to counter, just like he has his get out of jail free card of, of course, I understand the nuances, he'll say, and If I were to guess, I would think he would say, I'm not actually taking a position on these social justice questions.

0:39:30 Thomas: I'm just saying people who block on Facebook and do all that are ruining the movement. And to that, I was, and I thought a lot about this. And to that, the thing I keep coming back to is, sure, but your paper and the entire thing is titled, and the first paragraph is, this is a wake-up call to the regressive left. You would have to, frankly, I need more evidence, sir, to use your words. If you are trying to say, if you're making the claim that the regressive left are the only people who are blocking on Facebook and who are doing all these behaviors, you would would have to support that claim because I think that the anti-PC secular portion, the anti PC portion of the secular movement, I think they are doing this just as much, if not more, you know, I, so we've both made that claim.

0:40:16 Thomas: Now we can try to look for data or we can just kind of agree that, okay, those, that behavior isn't great on either side. I don't like blocking. I haven't blocked anyone on Facebook. I've blocked one person on Twitter and it's the pin tweet is why. Frankly, Frankly, Smalley is the one blocking people that I know of and, you know, I know others do, but that's what I'm seeing. I'm seen an anti-PC, anti-feminist portion. It's not Republicans per se, I don't think. It's kind of that new center. I'm seein' them doin' a lot of this behavior. So, if he had written this from the perspective of, hey, this generic behavior on social media is bad, and then it said, yeah, here's who, and he started it this way. Here's who does it. Oh, people on the right and people onthe left. If he started it like that and he kept going like that, I probably wouldn't argue with it.

0:41:05 Thomas: I'd probably say, yeah, that's a problem. It's a problem if you block people. It's a problem if you assume malicious intent. Everything he said at the end, but he smuggles in the fact that it's actually just the regressive left who is ruining the movement. It's not this new center skeptic bros that I've said and made the case are ruining skepticism for some people. Okay, so that's my thoughts on that. I need to say a couple things. First off, I am going to be at a live show very, very soon, in a week and a half. That is the 100th episode live of Inciting Incident podcast. I'll read from it. The Current Events Podcast, hosted by author and speaker Marissa Alexa McCool, will host their 100th episode live with some great special guests, and I've been tagging that. There's going to be Chris Cluey, Noah, Heath, and Eli.

0:41:52 Thomas: Can't wait to hang out with them again. Callie and Ari. Oh, that's going be fun to see them again, Thomas. Oh that's me. Andrew Torrez. Oh Andrew's going gonna be there. I cannot wait. I'm really excited. July 14th, that is at at the Carlisle Theater, and I will put the link for tickets in the show notes. Really hope to see you there. I love these little gatherings, and it's so fun to meet you and be there, and I want to thank RIS again for inviting me to come. It's going to be really fun. And the next thing I need to say is I need to offer a correction to my episode with Ishmael last week. Now, I referred to Katie Quiznos, who the correction isn't that her name isn't Quiznos. That's a joke. Their name is Katie Connell, I think, and Katie may be changing their name to Oliver.

0:42:37 Thomas: We'll see. But anyway, I use the pronoun she for Katie. And it's stupid. But I knew, I knew better, but I just wasn't thinking in the moment. Uh, Katie likes to use they, them pronouns. So Katie, I'm sorry. I got your pronouns wrong. I will make sure to get your pronouns right. And if I don't definitely message me and say, Hey dummy, you forgot again. And I will apologize profusely. It's, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. I've got a whole lot in my mind and I sometimes forget and we don't know each other personally. So it's, it's a hard thing to keep up, but I want to, and I want to do my best to keep it up. And if I get it wrong, I apologize. I will, I, I absolutely will endeavor to get it right. So Katie, sorry for that misgendering of you. I deeply apologize for that.

0:43:23 Thomas: I will do my best to not mess that up in the future, so thanks, Katie, for listening, and sorry about that. All right. That's the show for today. Uh, I want to save voicemails for next week because I've gotten a lot of good ones, but they're all evergreen related. And we just talked about that. So I'm going to, I'm going to save those next week.

Maybe we'll do extra voicemails next week, but I did want this to kind of be a standalone to just talk about this blog post. And, uh, it's my first ever blog post on the website. Uh, if anyone, by the way, if anyone wanted to like host it, guest hosted on their website or Patheos or anything, I don't know. I'm not sure how this works. I, I'm just a podcaster, but it's my first one.

I hope it, I hope you, uh, found it well, and I'm looking forward to comments on it. Feel free to call me out if you think I'm wrong, and by the way, I want to say another thing, if David Smalley tomorrow was like, "Hey, I'll talk about this," I would talk about it with him because I don't care.

0:44:18 Thomas: He's the one who from his end has blocked me and done all that stuff, but I would, and I would honestly, I would talk to David Smalley right now and say, "We don't even have to talk about any of our history. We can start from scratch. We can just talk about the really bad ideas in this blog post," and I'd be happy to do that because I'm very happy, happy to stand up for what I believe is right and stand up for which arguments I think are good. And yeah, I could always be wrong, but that's where I stand. So I just wanted to throw that out there. But anyway, thank you for listening as always. Thank you for another great week. Oh, I've got to thank my patrons. My new patrons this week are Jimmy Bugs, Bergelmer, Joseph Adams, Vladimir Alexandrov, Michael Hughes, Mark Illing, Kacey, and Charles Vaughn. Thank you guys so much for pledging.

0:45:04 Thomas: By the way, again, I sort of brought up the idea of doing this response to my patrons. So that's a reason to be on patreon.com/seriouspod. A little inside stuff, bonus conversations. I do what I can. And I like interacting with you guys. I polled listeners. Sorry, I poalled patrons about the last episode. So if you want to have Have a vote next time. Jump on there. Pledge as little as a dollar. I appreciate it so much to those who do. And speaking of, I've got to thank my all-time greats. And they are Brian, Garefort, Matt, Garrett, Peter, Skelton, Steve, Sigmund, Adrian, Borschoff, Roger, Cases 1 in 30 Minutes, or your pizza's free Metcalf, Matthew, Max, and of odd atheist friends, Andrew Waddington, Zabby, John Bodley, Terry Pratchett is really great. Ian Ryan, Matthew Vernon, Ray Lives Jenny, Robin, the Zika baby that lived, Marcel, no further message for Thomas to read.

0:45:57 Thomas: Good one. The Netsack Heathen, Abseon, Beth Deitch, Sarah McPike, Sammy, Clayton Hart, Chas Wallas read some effing Terry Pratchett, Luke Boucher, Boucher, I'm not sure how it's pronounced, Bouchier, I can't remember, Dan Griffith, Ian Rosano, Jonathan Moyet, Michael Rops, and Michael Schaefer of Reason Real Estate, and Hunter Ash, thank you guys for making this show happen, you really do, it is why it continues, and I want to encourage you to read the blog version of this if you want, it'll be linked in the show notes, it's got the links for you, it'll have a couple different sentences here and there, and share it, and even if you don't want to reread it, that's cool. Share it. I would love to get it out there to provide a counterbalance in today's skeptical movement. I really would. So thanks for listening. I'll see you beautiful people on Monday.