Just before Easter I wrote on the state of the Catholic church and proposed that if change were to come to the church it would not be from outside forces railing against the institution for its policies, but from internal forces of reform inside the church. Then on April 11, 2009 The Sunday Times (A British newspaper) published an article about uber-atheist Richard Dawkins’ plan to use legal means to arrest the pope if he sets foot in Britain, with an absurd headline claiming that Dawkins himself planned to make the arrest. The headline was attention-grabbing, but made the whole thing look like a crazy publicity stunt, when in fact it could be a very serious legal challenge to the church if properly executed.
While the stunt itself, if stunt it be, got some attention on the news, two big rationalist movements (the skeptics and the atheists) went at it again. Getting these groups to fight is like getting a puppy to chew a shoe. Back during the Bill Maher Dawkins-Award kerfuffle I considered the Venn diagram of the overlap between Skeptics and Atheists.
A Venn diagram uses overlapping circles to graphically demonstrate sets. In the case of skeptics and atheists, there we might have a large population of people who belong to both groups. But there are many theist skeptics. And there are many atheists who derive their non-belief through reactionary rejection of religion, rather than by the route of philosophical or rational inquiry.To be fair, there are also many people who use skepticism as a tool box for evaluating the world, but who do not identify as “skeptics.”
A Venn D-Cell Diagram
Empowered by the unhindered freedom to say anything, impassioned Internet activists from both communities frequently opine on the best way to move their agendas forward. Sadly this usually doesn’t end up with thoughtful, rational, coffee-shop style philosophy discussions. Instead it seems to be a jarring mix of rational discourse and irrational admonishments to self-intercourse.
Take the case of the Dawkins “arrest the pope” movement which I described above. Rebecca Watson, notable skeptic of the Skepchick blog and Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, came out strongly in favor of arresting the Pope. It is perfectly acceptable to opine on social issues – and is what many might say a blog is for. However she also had harsh criticism for those who argued that it is not the place of “the skeptic movement” to take sides on such matters. Keep in mind they weren’t arguing that she shouldn’t opine on such matters, but that the skeptics movement as a whole should not get embroiled in politics and religion. Other notable skeptics and atheists (PZ Myers, Daniel Loxton, Jim Lippard, et al) commented on the matter with similar results outcome from the feedback. I mention Ms. Watson’s comments in particular because they affected my personal net chatter the most – but no matter which way skeptical bloggers chose to speak out on the issues – the comments kicked off by such discussion seemed to turn raw and bloody as though the only way to reach consensus is to crawl bare-kneed across glass.
And the F-bombs did rain down upon the Internet, and many feelings were hurt, and the twitter did fail-whale and the Facebook comments did require much scrolling.
And I wondered if that Venn diagram might be better illustrated with two angry cats with tails tied together, the tails representing the overlap between the two modalities.
Can you spot the accommodationist?
Should the skeptics movement be involved in questions like the “Put the Pope in the Pokey” controversy?
It’s a trick question. We’ve wasted time arguing over a ridiculous false dichotomy; the equivalent of the classic “Do you still beat your wife?“
There is no single proof of membership for people who self-describe as skeptics. Anybody can say they’re a skeptic – and many do. The sailor who listens to SGU, the policeman who subscribes to Skeptical Inquirer, the construction worker who argues that a metal detector is better than a dowsing rod for finding buried cable, the cowboy who tells his friends that predators are responsible for cattle-mutilations, the biker who researches crash data to determine the efficacy of helmet laws, the native American who embraces science based medicine while still finding ways to preserve traditional culture – these people are all part of our skeptical village. These are our skeptical village people.
It is foolish to think that all of our village people will jump up and take the “right side” in questions involving politics and religion. And it is foolish to think that skepticism or atheism should have single views on such questions.
Simultaneously, it is foolish to think we could possibly not have opinions on such questions. We’re humans. We may try to play dispassionate Vulcan, but we aren’t. The pon farr always lies just under our skin, ready to make us fight our friend.
But what about the hard-liner new atheists? The ones who have no place for religion? Who call skeptics who want to co-exist with believers accommodationists?
What if we try to be dispassionate and look at the science and math of the question? What percentage of people have faith and religion as part of their lives? One can only guess, but the answer is more than 50%. That’s a lot of people with many different beliefs.
And what does science tell us about beliefs, confirmation bias, people’s inability to process disconfirming evidence, etc? It tells us many things, but one is that attacks against beliefs don’t usually change the believers position. In fact, they tend to make the believer more recalcitrant. If the goal of the atheists is to change people’s belief system, direct attacks on the beliefs and the group’s leadership are unlikely to succeed.
That’s why my personal position is to fight for a strong secular government that gives equal protection to those who want to worship god(s) and those who want to worship nothing. But no matter how rational I think that position is, I wouldn’t ask the skeptic’s movement to rise up and back it, nor would I suggest they self-fornicate if they disagree. It is for each person to decide how they want to handle religion and politics.
We need to foster civility in our intergroup discourse because that passion so many of us have for these topics is wasted when we burn it up fighting with people who are often our best allies. And we need to find ways to be constructive when dealing with ideological enemies because if we just try to shout down their walls and blow our trumpets – well, it’d take a miracle for that to work.
