SIO288: The AHA Dawkins Debacle, Part 2

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 288. I'm Thomas Smith, and this is a part two. If you didn't listen to the episode before this one, go check that out. This is... I've got time now. I am following up, finishing the discussion on Dawkins and the American Humanist Association Humanist of the Year Award and Steven Pinker and all this stuff. Quick note, again, we got that Q&A coming on Friday. Friday. I'm going to record that and put that up hopefully same day with Lindsay. So if you're a patron, you can ask questions on patreon.com slash series pod. Go find that thread. It's going to be a lot of fun. Can't wait. And if you are not a patron, don't worry. You still get to hear it. I will put it out for everybody. And also, I know it's an action-packed week, but again, I just had a lot on my mind.

0:01:15 Thomas: I had to get out and make it up for earlier in the month when I wasn't putting stuff out. But expect part two of the racism and criminal justice with Lindsay, expect that tomorrow. I will get that up. I promised that I would, and I will. I just didn't get it up as early for patrons because of these intervening two episodes here. So, okay, what do we talk about? Well, I've already had some good reaction. A couple things to push back on. This is a weird... So, the Margaret Sanger thing. This is an interesting thing. I'm quite confident that Steven Pinker was echoing a right-wing talking point about Margaret Sanger being like a racial eugenicist and trying to eliminate black people kind of thing that Republicans have been harping on for years.

0:02:00 Thomas: It's BS. But given that Sanger was associated early on with eugenics and was trying to like, I keep reading more and more things and more and I find troublesome quotes, but that still don't exactly say what I think people are saying they're saying, but whatever. I'm not really that heavily invested in Margaret Sanger. I do not invest much in the idea that people from the 20s, when she was doing a lot of these quotes that are pulled, like 1919 and in the 20s that a lot the worst quotes are pulled from, none of my position rides on her actually being super cool then. So I will withdraw the point about Pinker echoing right-wing talking points, even though I think that's what he was doing, but it just so happens there's also like a portion of the left that has had enough with Sanger, or at least defending Sanger in certain ways.

0:02:57 Thomas: And whenever you have the right, this is a weird combination. When you have essentially all of the right fighting against someone, and then a segment of the right fighting, you're pretty much screwed. And so as it turns out, there's a op-ed that was just released like 10 days ago in the New York Times called, I'm the head of Planned Parenthood. We're done making excuses for our founder. And it says we must reckon with Margaret Sanger's association with white supremacist groups and eugenics. So fair enough. I think I have to withdraw that criticism from Pinker that that is, again, this is 10 days old. I guess if he specifically was just basing it on this 10 days old thing of like Planned parenthood finally being like, all right, fine, we're done fighting about this.

0:03:45 Thomas: Before that, it was almost exclusively a right-wing talking point. And that's kind of what I was used to. I stand by that factcheck.org article that I talked about that debunked the racial component of that. I think there is absolutely a very valid case that Sanger was in favor of a negative eugenics. That is, she was in favor of women making their own choices, but she thought that given more access to birth control, people with certain disabilities would you know, be quote unquote weeded out, which the reason I didn't go with that interpretation is because Richard Dawkins still believes that today tweeted about that earlier, like tweeted that about aborting fetuses with Down syndrome and stuff. So like, I didn't, I don't think that's what Pinker's talking about, but given that he plausibly could be talking about that, I, you know I suppose I got to back off on that point.

0:04:33 Thomas: The Sanger conversation is a very interesting one for another day. I cannot stop reading about it. It's, there's so many intersections of fascinating things about the right weaponizing some really bad old-timey language but but I don't really think and and like one of Sanger's biographers defends Sanger and says like I don't really think this is being interpreted correctly, it's not what she meant, uh, and then there's the fact that like because the entire right criticized Margaret Sanger as much as possible and then also there's like a legitimate criticism of Planned Parenthood that Planned Parenthood was too white focused in its advocacy, very legitimate criticism, it's based on real stuff, it's on women of color, non-white women who were upset with the direction that it was going and so forth, and I think as a result that's, that's a tough combination when it's like, well, the entire right wing wants to make Sanger out to be the devil, and there's like legitimate criticism mixed in with that on the left, and so that that just kind of created a critical mass. And so I'm not surprised that Planned Parenthood doesn't really want to be defending Sanger anymore, and that's fine. I won't either. Whatever.

I still think there's like a really nuanced discussion to be had about what she actually believed, if you wanted to, but I'm not a history podcast person, even though it is kind of interesting and I keep reading about it. It's kind of weird. But anyway, that's not for me to do.

So I'll withdraw that part of it, but let's talk about the consistency thing here, because, because this is the complaint and this is the intention behind the Pinker point and Godless Spellchecker 2, which I'll get to.

0:06:11 Thomas: This seems to be the main go-to and unfortunately it's really prevalent online if you ever try to debate or talk, engage online, and it's such a waste of time, but it's something that a lot of people like me have learned a lot more about this because back in the day, I think it did appeal to me to try to say, oh, you've said this one thing. Well, you've also said this other thing. Gotcha. You know, that kind of contradicts it. And there became an obsession with that in the Trump era. And then there, I think a lot of people realized and helped me realize that like consistency is not the end all be all end all. And that systematically it favors kind of moral values that have fewer rules or fewer restrictions Or basically allow more things, you know?

0:07:00 Thomas: And so it's like, it's always going to be a weapon against people who want to try to have some higher moral standards when it comes to inclusivity and social justice. It's always gonna be essentially a handicap on that. It's always going to be a go-to argument because if your view that you're trying to espouse is, I don't know, I give a shit about anybody or anything and I don't to be considerate of marginalized groups, I do not care, it's very easy to be consistent about that, and it's an uphill battle to struggle a lot of times to be perfectly consistent in how people on the social justice side, especially like white people like me, are learning and growing. And maybe we messed up here.

0:07:46 Thomas: We messed up there. We didn't understand something here. We didn't understand something there. And then it's very easy for people, for critics, for cynical actors to say, oh, you believe in such and such value. Well, look at this thing over here. But it's actually not an argument against the thing itself. For example, I know I'm getting a little abstract here, I guess. But for example, when Steven Pinker says in his letter that I read, and I still cannot not believe that one sentence that I went over was so funny to me. I'm still laughing about that, but set that aside. So when he says, when Pinker says, this will only intensify when critics discover that past humanists of the year whose awards have not been withdrawn include Margaret Sanger, a proponent of eugenics, and Alice Walker, who advances lunatic anti-Semitic conspiracy appears.

0:08:34 Thomas: Okay. So what's happening there in that objection? What's happening is that the argument is that you can't do this. You can't withdraw Dawkins award or you shouldn't because that a, you're being hypocritical because you haven't withdrawn these other awards. So we can look at that or kind of B you're creating an unrealistic standard and you won't be able to fulfill it. Like that's what the, that's the point I think they're trying to make, like in good faith, like trying to interpret what they're saying. That doesn't really function as an argument against withdrawing Dawkins Award. If you think about it, logically speaking, all it's saying is you should also withdraw these other people's awards, which is like, oh, okay. So one response is to be like, Oh yeah, sure.

0:09:19 Thomas: Go ahead. But I think the Margaret Sanger thing is pretty dumb because, because the award was given in 1957 while she was alive, and she's dead, so it's kind of, it doesn't, I mean, you could say if you wanted to, who cares, like, what, by the way, who would give a shit if they withdrew the 1957 humanist award to Margaret Sanger? I actually wouldn't care. So this is not really a threat to my worldview because I could take it or leave it, nothing rides on this. But I think you can make a reasonable distinction between Richard Dawkins is alive now and is actively doing harm to the trans community. We want to show that that's not okay. Versus, here's an award we gave in 1957 when this person was alive.

0:10:08 Thomas: They are now dead. Now, if Margaret Sanger, again, she rose from the dead, she got on zombie Twitter and was like, hey, check out these things I'm saying about disabled people and poor people, we'd be like, like, yeah, no, withdraw that award immediately because she's still alive and doing harm. I think you can draw an easy distinction there. Seems easy to me. Or either way, like either way I don't give a shit.

Like either, okay, fine, the standard should be withdraw Margaret Sanger's award if you want, don't care. Or just be like, well, I think there's a pretty clean distinction to be made between people who have long since died. Seems like a reasonable distinction to me, but now that's Sanger. Let's talk about Alice Walker. Walker. Okay, so I'm gonna reference the Godless spell checker blog. Side note on Godless Bell check, I've talked about how much I can't stand this guy, and I think he's really, uh, a force for harm in the atheism world. But then it's funny because the dude has 65-ish thousand Twitter followers who he, you know, eggs on in his trollish ventures, just essentially he's an anti-woke warrior now. Like he's not even, not even really in atheism, and fair, fair enough. Like I'm not either, for the opposite reason. Like, I care more about, I guess, the political situation in this country.

And, uh, I don't know, also science and also reason and trying to like combat misinformation that feels like more of a big deal in atheism-y to me right now. Although I still like a lot of atheists and listen to atheist stuff and I participate a little bit.

0:11:41 Thomas: But anyway, it's like the mirror image that which is now the anti-woke ism is essentially the cause for a lot of these people. Anyway, while he has a big Twitter following, if you look at his like blog and his Patreon, it is not clear that anybody supports him. So I don't know. I am not really trying to do some sort of measuring contest, but I also just don't know. Like, it's hard to know in today's environment, like, what does 65,000 Twitter followers mean? I mean, he gained that a long time ago when he was making fun of people, misspelled the word atheist. That's why his name is Godless Spellchecker. And Ricky Gervais really loved his content and that pushed him, that pushed Stephen Knight further, you know, and got him a lot of followers.

0:12:28 Thomas: He's very active on on Twitter. He's cultivated that Twitter account. So, fair enough. He seems to have some influence, but I also don't know. It doesn't translate into much. So I don't know. I have no, I could be, all this is to say, I don't know how much of an influence he is. I don't know how worthwhile it is to waste time on him, but he does seem to be a big proponent of the Alice Walker argument of this. So, I'm going to read a little bit from this blog entry of his. It's called, are you ready for this, everybody? It's called "Our Jews Welcome at the American Humanist Association?" Right away, it sounds like some good faith stuff, huh? Sounds like this is definitely going to be a sincere argument out of a place of genuine care for whether or not Jewish people are allowed an American Humanist.

0:13:17 Thomas: Anyway, he says, I recently wrote about the hysteria. Listen to the word choice here. I think this is pretty telling. I recently wrote about the hysteria emanating from a number of American atheists, secular and humanist organizations in response to some words tweeted by Richard Dawkins on the topic of self-identification. So the statements that people have made condemning Dawkins, those are not words somehow, I guess. But then what Dawkins said, that's just words. It's kind of a weird, isn't it weird? Like like it's hysteria. All the statements of people being like, wow, you're a shitty transphobe and you shouldn't do that. That's classified as a different thing than words, even though they were just words.

0:14:02 Thomas: That is hysteria, and I don't know if, but that's all just words though. Like those are words. They put out statements. A lot of people put out statement. Is that the criticism, that a lot of put out words, but then Richard Dawkins was just one guy doing words. I don't, don't understand, like, isn't that weird? It's not like some people did karate chops that I know of. I don't think any humanist organizations karate chopped him or did something that isn't words. I'm pretty sure they just did words. Even the thing where they said they're revoking the award is just words. They're all just words. It's like what I had to yell about last episode. It's all just, just opinions. This victimhood complex of Spellchecker, Stephen Knight, and some of these other people, it's about casting the people who are against them.

0:14:52 Thomas: They're doing something unfair. They're not just words when they issue a statement comprised of words. They were doing something unfair, but Dawkins, poor little Richard Dawkins, he just did some words. He did a word thing. That's just words. Weird. Anyway, I'll read the rest of this. This a very short thing, bad faith thingy. I think you can see where it's going, but I'll read it. So, Roy Speckhardt, the executive director of American Humanists, appeared to explain the decision by stating that Dawkins' pattern of insensitivity to groups who experience prejudice are holding our movement back from attracting diverse populations we should be seeing in droves. Which got me thinking, are Jews welcome in the American Humanist Association? You see, I only asked this question because a year after Richard Dawkins was awarded Humanist of the Year 1996, the 1997 honor went to American activist Alice Walker.

0:15:46 Thomas: In the intervening years, Alice Walker has earned a reputation as someone that promotes anti-Semitism. It seems even after her promotion of anti-Semitism was well known and documented, American humanists were still celebrating her on their social media. He links a 2016 tweet and then like a 2018 re-up of the profile of the 1997 thing. So, last paragraph here. So, if Dawkins is to be publicly condemned and have his award withdrawn on the grounds of insensitivity to groups who experience prejudice, I fully expect Roy Speckhardt of the American Humanists will be announcing their withdrawal of Humanist of the Year from Alice Walker any moment now. This is the crucial part.

0:16:32 Thomas: Unless, of course, Jews don't count in the model of intersectionality they are pushing, I await a response. That last second-to-last sentence there, I think, is pretty key. When you talk about conspiracy theories and the anti-woke religion is a conspiracy theory, the anti woke kind of crowd and group and this blogosphere and the Twittersphere and the whatever, all of that is very much conspiracy theory-esque. It's about there's these kids in college. They're taking over. They're unreasonable. They're doing all this stuff. And every claim, when you look at virtually every claim made, they're always wrong. Like they're easily debunkable. They're misrepresented. A lot of the cancellation stories are completely wrong.

0:17:17 Thomas: I've seen a lot of debunking of some, like, Alan Dershowitz examples of cancel culture, which are just total crap. And it just feeds on itself as a giant conspiracy theory of a bunch of people who are all convinced that this horrible thing is happening and this woke religion is canceling people left and right. And, like any conspiracy theory, there's like small kernels of truthful examples. Like I'm not going to sit here and pretend there isn't any example of somebody being quote unquote canceled inappropriately. There are those examples. Sure. It's a big world. Very big world, most of the example, very high percentage of the examples that are actually used, though, are completely misrepresented crap. And I have a history on this show of actually taking a minute to look into the claims and they're almost always bogus.

0:18:04 Thomas: Almost always. Doesn't mean there aren't some. We could talk about those. And if you want a good faith discussion of cancel culture, the latest Ezra Klein podcast has Natalie Wynn and another person on there too, talking about cancel culture. There's a good faithful discussion to be had among good faith actors who aren't desperate to prove that the crazy college woke kids are ruining the world. World, that's a conversation to have. And a conversation about maybe how social media is a bad influence in our discourse and it creates these short attention span kind of attack that, you know, all that. Like, sure. But that's not this. This anti-woke crusade is not that. It's not a reasonable discourse on that. So anyway, what I was going to say is like with any good good conspiracy theory.

0:18:52 Thomas: You have to kind of look at like, okay, what would this mean if your theory were true? And the theory that Stephen Knight is putting forth here is that somehow the American Humanist Association doesn't care about Jewish people in some way. And I think, honestly, I think what they think, I think what the anti-woke think is that they are like the woke folk, people are so consumed with trans rights and stuff like that, and maybe like black issues and trans issues, gender issues. They're so consumed with those issues that they don't actually care about things like Jewish people or hate crimes against Jewish people. I think that's actually what they think.

0:19:38 Thomas: But if you just look at what's happening here and try to project a reasonable mind onto to the American humanists, I think the explanation is a lot easier is that, a I've been in atheism or whatever in this sphere, you whatever you want to call it, for 10, 11 years now or more, and I don't, I didn't know that Alice Walker had an American Humanist Association award. I, I'm gonna confess I've never read The Color Purple. I didn't even know who Alice Walker was. Whereas I very much know who Richard Dawkins is. And he was, again, one of the four horse people, four horsemen of the branding of the big, one of biggest name, if not the biggest name in the atheist movement.

0:20:25 Thomas: So a more good faith interpretation of what's happening here is maybe the American humanists overlooked this, or maybe they think Alice Walker, let's compare hair Twitter account, Richard Dawkins has 2.9 million followers. Jeez, I think I've been citing a number of like one point something. I guess I'm a little off. He's got double that. 2.9 million people that he's potentially influencing. I know not all of them are, you know, some of them are hate follows, like, uh, like some people I know I see in the followed list. I don't follow him anymore, but, you know, but still that's a lot of people that he's influencing, whereas, uh, if you try to search for Alice Walker's Twitter, you'll find that she doesn't have one.

0:21:11 Thomas: And I can't think of a time when I've seen something that Alice Walker said or did, it's never, I've never come across that as like a big influence in skepticism or humanism or anything. I have no idea, I couldn't have told you what her beliefs were. The point is, the much more good faith interpretation of the American Humanist Association's actions here, they didn't really think about it, and or they don't really give a shit about Alice Walker because the movement doesn't seem to care about Alice Walker. I don't know what she believes because she doesn't harp on it all the time. Now, it turns out in some interviews, and this is important, in some interviews, she is cited that she loves David Icke or whatever.

0:22:03 Thomas: David is the guy, the conspiracy guy that Cognitive Dissonance talks about a lot. That guy's awful. Very anti-Semitic. So, yeah, she has endorsed his books, I guess, in the past. I'm also looking at a lot of her other things that people claim are anti-Semitic, and now I'm realizing it's just criticism of Israel, which is probably valid, but we know that's a fine line. That could come from a good place, or it could come from an anti-Semitic place. By the way, if we're putting it on even terms, I would absolutely consider an endorsement of an anti Semitic book to be harmful anti-semitism, just as an endorsements of Deborah Tso's horrible transphobic book is an endorsement of transphobia and is a bad, bigoted thing to do.

0:22:53 Thomas: So I will take it as a given that she is promoting anti-Semitism in the same way that Dawkins is promoting an anti-trans agenda. Sure, we'll grant that. I hadn't fucking heard of her or her beliefs or anything, again, because she is not a big influence in this community. She's just not. Now, here's what I would say. I really think that American humanists should just withdraw her award. Be like, oh shit, yeah, no, oversight. She sucks. Let's withdraw her reward. She still alive. She falls under that rubric. Again, it was very hard to find what she believed because the only source for this is like a print interview where she She endorses David Icke's books, but fine. Withdraw her award.

0:23:38 Thomas: Do it. Done. Argument over. We don't have to have this argument anymore. Yay. You know, like that's, that's what happens here. You say, oh, well, what about these people? And I can either, we can either make some attempt to differentiate, which I think they're, again, there are good reasons why AHA would have overlooked Alice Walker. Because again, she's not on Twitter. Her. She's not, I, I've, I don't, I didn't know who she was. I'm going to confess. I didn't know who Alice Walker was. I didn' know that. And I'm a pretty involved in atheism. So I think that's good sign that Alice Walker is not a huge atheist hero. She may, she's not even an atheist. I know it's American humanist. So because we talk about humanism, but still like she's kind of a spiritual type and talks about weird spiritual stuff.

0:24:25 Thomas: I don't understand. Um, so yeah, not a a big influence, I don't think, in this community. But there's a meaningful difference in tone between saying, hey, you probably overlooked this person. You may want to withdraw their award versus the tone of this argument, which is you don't actually care. I'm proving you don't care because you're not also doing this other thing. So anyway, if you want my opinion, the Sanger thing is different because she's long dead and the award was given when she was alive and she's dead. So it's different. Don't bother with it. It's a waste of time. But Alice Walker, yeah, go ahead and withdraw that award. Say, oh, you know, it's actually really gross anti-Semitism and she is still alive, despite the fact that she doesn't seem to be much of an influence on humanism or atheism that I know of.

0:25:10 Thomas: But whatever. Fine. Do that too. Sounds good. But I want to step back again here and get kind of, well, I'm not sure if meta is, get conceptual. Let's get conceptual. Because what I see happening here in this back and forth, again, even since my episode and some of the chirps back on my episode, is that we have a high stakes disagreement on fact. And so I want a drawn analogy. I like to do this a lot, you know, and I hope it's helpful. But I mean, imagine if I just, you know, apologies, my analogies are often kind of silly, but I think that I try to use them to illustrate a point. Imagine if I believe that you are radioactive, like literally or infected with something like COVID or whatever.

0:26:04 Thomas: Like, I believe that you were literally radioactive or infectious in some way, that you're a threat. Like, let's talk, talk about that hypothetical. This is a thought experiment. You or other people disagree with me, and you say, no, Thomas, you've misinterpreted the scientific tests here. We have a disagreement. And then, but I say, okay, but you know, I have good reason in the hypothetical. I believe I have very good reason. I have science. I think I have everything on my side that you are actually a a danger and I need to not be near you, or to quarantine you or whatever. Like, we, I don't, I'm not going to be around you. I believe you are a harm right now.

0:26:50 Thomas: Again, this is a, this is a thought experiment. So you and some other people around you disagree with me and you think, no, I'm not actually radioactive or I'm actually infectious or whatever it may be. You've misinterpreted this. And then you say, and look, there's Thomas over there trying to quarantine you all because of disagreement, he can't handle a disagreement, he has no room for anyone who, just anyone who disagrees with him, he wants to literally quarantine them. And it's like, well, no, we disagree on a thing that is important. Like, if I'm right, I don't want you around me because you're dangerous in some way, for example, and if you're right, of course, then I'm wrong about that. But you can't take the argument on your terms and then apply motivations to me as though I agree with your terms.

0:27:44 Thomas: So it's not true that I'm trying to cancel Richard Dawkins over a disagreement, like just for disagreeing. That's not, that's not truth. In my belief, what he's doing is very dangerous and is a matter of life and death to trans people when he's endorsing this horrible shit book that, if you haven't listened to those episodes, they're really good. Listen to the debunking of The End of Gender, Debra So. And I believe that he has done this for a long time, and people have tried to change his mind. He doesn't seem to be changing his mind, he's actively a harmful person to his 2.9 million followers on Twitter. And so I think people should be calling him out for that, and I think withdrawing an award is appropriate.

0:28:32 Thomas: But you don't get to say that I'm just doing that because I hate everyone who disagrees with me. Like if he were saying, I don't know, that Hamilton is good or something, I'm not going to be like, cancel that person. In fact, I am actually at much more risk of getting canceled for saying I don't really particularly like Hamilton. I shouldn't have said that. Now I have no, now I have nobody on my side. I've lost everybody. And look, I think it is a valid discussion.

Again, there is a good faith discussion to be had about drawing these lines. And it is true that more and more things seem to have those life and death stakes, which is interesting to think about, when boomers are like, we used to be able to disagree on politics, and you know, that was, that we didn't really think anybody, we could still be friends and disagree, they're, they're not wrong about that, but it also maybe wasn't good, you know, like the idea that like, oh, you could be in favor of the Vietnam War and I could be against it, but we'd still be friends and we'd chuckle and whatever, I don't know if that's good. Like, I think maybe that's not good.

But it is hard because you have to also somehow leave open the idea that you want to convince people. And that's where I do think it gets tough. Because in this day and age, when we have access to so much more information globally, it is kind of true that every issue is life and death in some way, or at least a lot of issues, life and death?

0:30:08 Thomas: Yeah, I was going to bring the example up of like supply side economics or something. And I thought about it. I was like, you know, it's kind of life and death too. When you're impoverishing more people, that is kind of life and depth. I mean, I still think it's a little bit further afield. I think you can leave more room and make distinctions between issues that are more downstream like, oh, this arguably has some consequences that are kind of harder to see, but that ultimately may still be life and death, I think you can leave more room for disagreement on those issues. But when it's something like this trans stuff that there's, there's no debate, like it's settled, it's settled. The science is not on your side, despite the fact that Ben Shapiro and others keep insisting the science is on their side, as we covered in that episode.

0:30:55 Thomas: Science is not on your side. The science tells us that trans women are women and people, if you are not accepting their gender identity and are talking about trans women as though they're not women, you are very meaningfully contributing to their bad mental health outcomes and are quite possibly getting them killed by not only fostering an environment of anti-trans bigotry, which can kill, but also their own well-being. I mean, it is a scientific fact that when trans people's gender identities are accepted, they have far, far, far better mental health outcomes than when they're not accepted. So, so it is a very distinct, or discreet, or whichever, life and death issue about people.

0:31:43 Thomas: And by the way, the other side of it, there's no interest that you're actually protecting. It's just bigotry. That's the thing. Like it's, it's one thing when we might have a policy disagreement and you think your way is better, and I think my way is better, and it's kind of hard to evaluate, et cetera, et cetera. I think we could use to try to deescalate those a little bit.

If people genuinely think X solution to the healthcare problem we'll get more people healthcare, and you disagree, it is a little tough to be like, you are getting people killed, you want to kill people. It's like, well, okay, maybe they, you know, you can leave open the fact that they actually believe they are saving lives, um, and try to engage with it on those terms. So, but I, I think it, I think it does kind of scale with how far afield it Is like, it's a very direct connection with the trans issue. It's a direct thing.

It's very direct, and there's no other side that's worth protecting beyond just personal bigotry. But all this is to say, this is what's happening. We have a disagreement on the facts, and I get really tired of people in atheism on the other side of this who are not acknowledging that if, if I am right, which I am, about the trans bigotry stuff, but like, they're smart. They should be smart enough to recognize that if I am right about Dawkins' stuff being really transphobic and bigoted, then I am acting rationally. And by the way, if they were right about Dawkins' tweets not being transphobic, then I would be acting irrationally.

0:33:21 Thomas: Like what, what I wouldbe doing would be not the right thing, but it would be because I was wrong on the facts. So the disagreement is about the facts, bringing in all this stuff about how I'm just canceling people who disagree with me. That's all bullshit. That's not actually true. I'm acting rationally within what I believe. So if you want to engage on the fats and talk about whether or not those tweets are transphobic, that's a debate that I am happy to have with you. I've had with some people online in the wake of this. And it's not gone great and I think it's because they soon reveal themselves to be way more transphobic than they first presented. But anyway, we can have that debate on the facts, but it is inappropriate to say that I am just in favor of canceling Dawkins for quote-unquote for disagreeing.

0:34:14 Thomas: That's not really right. The thing that we disagree on is very important. Important, you know, if I think you're on fire and you think you aren't, and I'm like, no, you're on fire. And I dump a bunch of water on you. You don't get then to get to be, oh, this guy dumps water on everyone he disagrees with. It's like, No, just the ones where like the thing we're disagreeing on is you're On fire. So I hope I've made that point. And, I guess finally, and this this is a bit of a detour, but in the process of having these arguments, I discovered a really, really, really shitty person. And like, honest, honestly, I'm in disbelief. Do any of you remember the Mr. Deity videos by Brian Keith Dalton?

0:35:01 Thomas: Uh, they seemed delightful at the time. He seemed like he was a funny guy. Well, back in the day, Brian Keith dalton, Mr. deity in the wake of the the Michael Schirmer content note, going to talk about sexual assault and Michael Schermer, et cetera. If you don't want to hear that, skip, I suppose. Back in the day, I actually remembered this, but it was so long ago, back in the way of the Michael Shurmur accusations, which I fully believe, by the way, I don't know if I Google it, you know, if you want to, there's some good articles that lay out what the allegations are. They involve essentially date rape, getting somebody drunk to the point where they couldn't consent and then raping them the next day.

0:35:50 Thomas: They were like, what? You know, I couldn't consent, that kind of thing. Very unpleasant stuff. Anyway, Brian Keith Dalton, Mr. Deity, made a video like at the end, I think it was at the, I think he had Shermer on and in the end of the video made a little shitty thing that was was like, actually, I can read what it is, tell you the transcript, I remembered it almost word for word, I was actually kind of impressed, because it's very old, it's like eight years old, most of the video was about, I'm going to get to this, was about comparing, and this is a god awful fucking comparison, it is such a bad argument, this is why, if you want to know why I was really so mad about this, it was actually more about this a little bit, it also the other stuff, but this got me particularly agitated for the last, like, I don't know, fucking three days, that this, that, that quote unquote skeptics, the fucking people brand themselves as the smart guys of the internet.

0:36:40 Thomas: You know, that classic white dude, bro, skeptic branding. They're so smart. There's no logical could be making such fucking stupid arguments. You ready for this one? So the argument centered around anonymous accounts, i.e. the allegations against Michael Michael Shermer, are just like the Gospels because the Gospels are written anonymously and you should disbelieve them the same way. And if that's not bad enough, I'm going to get back to that because that's really bad. If that's Not Bad Enough, the video went on to do this. I'm reading from a transcript now. Person with a wine bottle approaches wine glass holding Mr. Deity. Quote, would you like a refill? Mr. deity says, um, no, thank you.

0:37:25 Thomas: Now, see how easy that was? Here's another little tip. If you find it hard to say no to the refill, you can just leave the glass full. Don't take another sip. That's my friendly little piece of advice to those of you without a backbone or any sense of personal responsibility. So why am I bringing this up? I know this is a tough thing. Okay, I'm calling out a person by name Brian Keith Dalton, Mr. Deity. This is fucking shameful. Why am I doing this? Well, I don't like, I Don't know what to tell you because all this stuff gets like Like discounted is if you do a show like mine, if you talk about this really shitty behavior and you actually name people's names, you know, then people just think I'm doing quote unquote drama or trying to like stir shit up for whatever reason.

0:38:12 Thomas: But like, honestly, I don't see what the alternative is. Whenever I hear this stuff about like, ah, it's just drama, I just stern shit, blah, blah, all I hear is what people really want is the status quo to continue.

Continue, people want shitty people in their movement who maybe they idolize or look up to to not have to face any consequences for the shitty things they say, and if I try to speak up about it or mention something, then I'm doing a bad thing by doing like a drama podcasty thing, but that's that's the view of some people, or at least some people that, you know, want to want to to be insulting toward my podcast, and I genuinely hate that I ever do this.

It's not, as you all know, this is not like, this is every episode, it's rarely ever nowadays, I've mainly been doing sciencey stuff, but like I have done this from time to time where I've been like, hey, this person is being really shitty, and I call them out by name mostly, and it's, it, I'll tell you, people aren't fond of me for doing that, although at least certain some people, but I, I can't, and I don't like doing it either, you know, but the only reason I do it is because, a, I think shitty people should just, you know, especially when all I'm doing is reporting on what they believe, like I'm just telling you what Brian Keith Dalton did or said, or what whoever it was back when it was small or whatever, I'm just saying what they said and giving an opinion on it, and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, you can disagree with me, that's fine, but the alternative is that nobody ever says anything thing about it and they just get to say and do harmful things and just maintain their power.

0:39:50 Thomas: It's just a status quo maintaining attitude that I don't think it's good. I think the burden is on us to create a movement that has good people in it and to criticize. By the way, I'm about to tell you that I am still, I was Facebook friends with Brian Keith Dalton. I don't know who requested at whom, I don't remember. I have no memory of this, but I was Facebook friends and I actually just figured he surely must've changed his mind by now. So like I am, I am all for personally, again, this is an individual choice. I think I meant to say this last episode. I can't remember if I did. This is of course an individual choose. If you are a victim of Michael Shermer, I don't imagine that you're doing any forgiving of A, Michael Sherber or B, Brian Keith Dalton anytime soon, even if he had totally apologized for this, which he hasn't, which I'm about to get to.

0:40:42 Thomas: But if I'm, I don't know, if I'M just a dude and I'M not directly involved and I say like, hey, person X has said some shitty things in the past and person X, you know, separate this from the Shermer thing for the moment. And person X is like, oh man, that was shitty. I don't believe that anymore. Sorry. For me, this is an individual choice. Of course, I'm not allowed to accept any apology on anyone else's behalf. I can't tell anybody else what apology they should or shouldn't accept. I could just tell you what I do. I am usually willing to just move on because growth is important. And I am someone who had shitty right-wing views back in the day. I was raised a Fox News conservative and I had shitty Right-Wing views. I would hope that people would recognize growth, personal growth and changing their minds.

0:41:32 Thomas: Because again, I used to be a Fox conservative. I had shitty views. Absolutely. So that's the thing. I'm not out here to bring never-ending shame and misfortune. Oh, that was good. I can't believe I just thought of that. Anyway, OA reference. Never-ending fame and misfortunes to people who have ever done or said a wrong thing. That's not what I'm here to do. But when people stand by shitty things, Like, if I took an old Fox News conservative belief that I had and, like, reiterated it and stood by it, you'd be very justified in judging me for that. Like, what, Thomas, you believe this shitty, like Fox News thing? Like, What the hell are you talking about?

0:42:18 Thomas: You very by all means judge me for that, you know? So anyway, that I'm not trying to, like forever cast people out and shame them in the oblivion forever. That's not what like what I'm what I am trying to do is make a more inclusive, positive environment as a whole in our little whatever community. And that involves actually calling people out when they say or do shitty things. That's part of that process. Ignoring them when they do shitty Things and not calling them out might feel good. If you want to have Mr. Deity on your show or something, that might feel great. That might be a great decision to justify. Oh, yeah, I want to he's going to have me on his YouTube. And, you know, it's better for the movement if I don't call out anything he does or ever criticize him. That's just better for The Movement, you know.

0:43:05 Thomas: It's drama, I don't want personal stuff, I don't know, what am I, I don't know. You know, that's a really easy, convenient attitude, in my opinion, and it just leads to the status quo. It just perpetuates the status quo. Nobody calls out anybody because these people who are entrenched in power, as I talked about with the Todd Stifel person, who just like inherited a billion dollars and is a big donor, um, through not doing anything on his own, inheriting a bunch of money, and then all of a sudden he gets to throw around that money and support only the people who share his views, kind of thing. And that's just an unjust thing about the world, but that sucks. So anyway, back to Brian Keefe Dalton, because this is, this sucks. I truly, truly still remembered that he did that, but I had assumed that in the wake of Me Too.

0:43:52 Thomas: This was in 2013, eight years ago. In the intervening years, we've had me too, we've Had a huge conversation. We've learned a lot. I've learned A lot, you know, about consent and all this different things. There's a ton to learn as a dude, of course, there's always more to learn. And so in my mind, with the passing of eight years, I actually assumed he must not believe this anymore and must have apologized. I actually Assumed that. So for all the people People who think I just want the worst and assume the worst and don't ever and just, you know, want to cancel people forever. It's not actually true. I had assumed that this person would have surely abandoned this view and not thought that anymore. And so when Brian Keith Dalton started being a very vocal defender of Dawkins in this instance, I was a little puzzled.

0:44:40 Thomas: I was like, oh, that's weird, he seems to be, it's very silly, his arguments are terrible, they're based around like, okay, it is fine to totally condemn Dawkins, etc, etc, but the taking away the award is where he draws the line, like that's some magical thing, like that some magical too-far line, that it's so weird, like, okay, really, that's what you care about, the official humanist rules of award withdrawal, it's just, it feels like protesting too much to me, they're bad arguments, but I had to say, I commented on his thing, I was like, hey, you know, I remember this video you did, and I'm wondering now, because I'm, I'm the kind of asshole that I am, I commented, I was like, I wonder if maybe you've been shitty this whole time and I didn't know it, and I just assumed you had abandoned your shittiness, and I highlighted, and I mentioned, like, you mocked essentially a rape victim back then, and I still, at this point in my mind, I'm thinking, he'll be like, oh no, yeah, I was a shitty person back then, I can't believe I did that, like, genuinely, that's what I was expecting, I, I swear to, on a stack of, uh, Richard Dawkins's books, no, no, that doesn't work, I'll use Bibles, I swear on a stack of Bibles, I fully expected him to be like, oh, first, he's probably mad that I brought it up, like, oh yeah, I'll bring that up, you know, like, yeah, we were all wrong back then or something.

But no, here's what he said. He responded to me, and he said, "What I mocked was an anonymous second or third hand account with absolutely no actual evidence. I still do that frequently."

0:46:12 Thomas: See my videos on the Gospels. And I was flabbergasted by this. This is really sad. I was actually more sad than anything, because this means there's one more semi-prominent rape apologist in our movement, and I was truly saddened by this and outraged, like, both because think how fucking stupid that argument is, even just on a purely logical footing. I read you the transcript where he said, "Hey, see how easy it is to turn down a drink," et cetera, et cetera, and you don't have backbone. Why don't I read it again for you in case you forgot it? "Would you like a refill?" "Um, no, thank you." "Now, see how easy that was? Here's another little tip. If you find it hard to say no to the refill, you can just leave the glass full."

0:46:59 Thomas: "Don't take another sip. That's my friendly piece of advice to those of you without a backbone or any sense of personal responsibility." Now, I referenced this in the original comment, so he knows this is what I'm talking about. But for, for him to say, "No, I'm mocking an anonymous second or third hand account." Think about how fucking irrational that is. That's not a, that you're just wrong, you're bad at arguing. If I mock the concept of date rape and say that women ought to be able to just turn down drinks and it's their fault if they don't, because let me just clarify, if somehow anyone listening doesn't understand this, consenting to drinking with somebody is not consenting to them raping you. That's not how that works.

0:47:45 Thomas: You can actually just keep drinking if you want. You can consent to drinking. You could consent to getting super drunk with somebody, as happens every day in our world, and still you are not consent to them vaping you, that's not how it works. Now, if I make a shitty wise-ass video where I, uh, let's say this story was in, I don't know, the Book of fucking John or whatever the hell they are, I don't remember now, it's been too long, what are the Gospels in the Bible, somewhere, and there's a story of like essentially a date rape, and if I mock the victim in that story and say, boy, she shouldn't have had too much to drink.

0:48:32 Thomas: It's easy to turn down drinks. Look, I just did it. Wow. I'm not mocking the fucking gospels. I'm not mocking the fact that the gospels are not supported. I'd be mocking victims. I'm mocking not only that hypothetical victim that may or may not have existed, because it's not like everything in the gospels is false. Some of it I'm sure happened. I don't know. But I'm, not only mocking that, I'm mocking everyone else who has a similar story. And then to hide behind it as though you are doing some good skepticism, that you're just here to mock second or third hand accounts, anonymous accounts. That's what I'm doing. Good skepticism. That is all I am mocking in my video where I say, "Would you like a drink?"

"No, thank you." "See how easy that is?" Yeah, I was just mocking bad epistemology right there. I was mocking the fact that the Gospels aren't well supported. No, you weren't. Shut the fuck up. I don't even believe that you, you believe that shitty fucking argument. There's a special place in my, I guess, yelly voice of hatred for people in our movement who have used the language of science and skepticism to make really shitty arguments in favor of bad things. And this is the worst I've ever seen. I think this may be the worst. I've never seen, or it's tied with the aforementioned Lawrence Krauss's endorsement of Jeffrey Epstein on the basis of him being a scientist and not seeing the evidence.

0:50:00 Thomas: It's, it's up there. It's with that. I think at least you could say Lawrence Krauss was only defending Jeffrey Epstein. Whereas this fucking shitty argument is defending every single date rapist ever not to do like a awful thing. Olympics. It's important. Who's more awful here. They're both very bad. God, can you imagine defending that video in 2021?

0:50:23 Thomas: You know, like what the fuck? Fuck. And, and yet I bet in a lot of people's mind, I will have just done an improper thing by calling out Brian Keith Dalton, Mr. Deity, and referencing an old thing. But I assure you that had he disavowed this video, I never would have brought it up again after all this time. You know, but this is, here's the thing. This is a significantly terrible fucking thing. This is awful. This is an awful thing that a person in our movement, Mr. Deedee was very popular in the movement back then. I don't know how it is now. I actually don't really know what he's doing now. So maybe he's not a big influence, but just in case he still is, this is a person who defends date rape, essentially.

0:51:10 Thomas: Like, to this day, he said it to my face, he still defends it, he didn't say, oh no, shit, yeah, wow, that was bad, I really did a bad thing in that video, after Me Too I learned a lot, that was a regressive view I had that was awful, which is honestly what you should say, if I made that video I would never stop apologizing for that fucking thing, that's terrible, that's really bad, but anyway, I guarantee that a lot of people's minds, if they even made it this far in the show, that I'm the bad guy for calling out a thing and naming names, and that in the interest of, I suppose, atheism or something, I'm supposed to just be quiet and, you know, or I'm, I'm being like the moral police, self-appointed moral police, right now, in an inappropriate way.

0:51:57 Thomas: And I hope that I've made clear what I'm trying to do here. I know these were unpleasant episodes, but, you know, transphobia and rape apology within your movement are not cool things. Those are serious things. I'm not here talking about, hey, we need to publicly name and shame everyone who's ever said a dumb thing ever, even if they accidentally did it or apologize. That's not at all what I'm saying. I don't believe that, in fact. But if somebody consistently, consistently to a large audience is saying harmful shit, I think it's very appropriate and indeed perhaps morally necessary to call that out to make a more inclusive open environment.

0:52:45 Thomas: Ironman. I just, I think that is. And so in conclusion to these two episodes, good on American humanists. I do also think they should get rid of Alice Walker's award for the sake of consistency. Take away that little argument from Godless spellchecker. So you should do that. I don't know if anybody's listening who was involved in that organization. Maybe I'll send a, send an email or something. I don't have no idea who makes those decisions, but I think it would be probably a good idea to withdraw that award. Just say, Hey, Oh, look, you brought up another person who's award, we should withdraw. Thanks. You know, call them on their shitty bad faith argument because they don't really mean it. They don't vraiment care. They're trying to show that you can't keep up with this impossible standard, but you can actually, you can just withdraw that award too.

0:53:32 Thomas: And then, oh no, two awards withdrawn. Done. All right. Well, on to, well, not more pleasant topics, I suppose. But back to our regularly scheduled part two with Lindsay tomorrow on police reform and on racism and criminal justice. Apologies if you found these episodes unpleasant. But, you know, it's an unpleasant topic and I'm very angry about it. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time.

0:54:07 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.