Stormy weather
Phil Torres wrote a post yesterday about censorship among the atheists and skeptics.
As some of you know, after I published an article that was critical of what I would describe as a strain of anti-intellectualism among some skeptic leaders, Michael Shermer sent me an email complete with vulgarities, personal insults (e.g., you’re a bad scholar and you’ll never be a good scholar!), and basically a threat to harm my career because I’m a “backstabber” (search The Moral Arc for some fun reading about how Shermer sometimes fantasizes about murdering “backstabbers”! Seriously).
Similarly, after writing a critique of Peter Boghossian and James A. Lindsay‘s gender studies “hoax,” both blocked me on social media and the former even blocked my phone number! I have also been permanently banned from Jerry Coyne’s blog for literally asking, “So, why not focus on something else?,” which he angrily claimed was a violation of the blog’s rules (it wasn’t).
So what happened? Shermer popped in to rain down more vulgarities, insults, and threats. A brief shower yesterday, and then one deluge after another today.
Shermer and Douglas Murray should write a book together.
Ugh. Shermer.
He can ruin a good picnic.
Shermer’s sexual predations have been an open secret in the atheist/skeptical community for years. People knew, and continued inviting him, courting him, making excuses for him.
It needs to stop.
Yes, Lady M, I still remember what James Randi said. He had heard, and he actually apparently believed the stories, but didn’t feel there was enough reason to quit inviting him to the Amazing Meeting.
And the women who write for Skeptic Magazine, women I used to respect, have written several pieces designed to put the blame on the women – “regretted it the next morning” sorts of things.
Ugh is right. He’s always so relentlessly unpleasant on top of his disgusting behaviour.
I see in that exchange that he’s trying to stop Torres publishing the email exchange between him and Shermer. Because of course he is. Because of course he said things he wouldn’t want anyone to know about. Because of course he acted like a bully. This is somewhat ironic in a discussion about censorship.
He’s out of luck. He seems to think that a disclaimer on his emails offers him legal protection that it does not. Torres definitely needs to consult a lawyer though, given Shermer’s love of suing people.
And he probably shouldn’t publish the emails anyway, useful as it would surely be. He asked Shermer whether he could make the emails public and he said no. Nothing morally dubious about quoting or describing them though….
Phil Tores’ first sentence on that FB thread says, “I’m increasingly concerned with the degree of censorship within the “new atheist” and “skeptics” community.”
Then down that thread, Michael Shermer’s emails get ugly, and Shermer cites a nondisclosure tag.
Shermer’s First Rule of Atheist Bro Club: Nobody talks about Atheist Bro Club.
Dave,
Exactly. His first instinct is to silence Torres for talking about people silencing people!
Well, his first instinct is to childishly attack and threaten. But right after that he dutifully gets on with the silencing.
There’s a strain of social theory that holds: even if secular cosmologies are vastly more coherent than older, religious, theologically-based ones, religion is likely to survive well past such a watershed, if only because the institutions are so socially entrenched, and perform useful functions, however imperfectly…
… how encouraging, then, to see secular organizations so competently emulate the Catholic church as this.
Are your irony meters properly grounded?
The top video on Shermer’s site is about how crazy it is when people ignore or dismiss evidence when it doesn’t fit with their beliefs.
https://youtu.be/FKoSFtvzOaY?list=PLRdTugBInz1-HQDFAM_tGwFzjAPfgKcg3
After all these years I keep my irony meter directly grounded to the Earth’s iron core but nevertheless: SPOING.
It melted down when he spoke about keeping emotions out of discussions and then not using personal attacks (such as “fucking clueless”, presumably). Then he spoke about being charitable and having empathy. Sadly, my irony meter had boiled away into space by then.
This business of sending unsolicited insults to people and then claiming “You may not disclose these unsolicited insults!!” is such bullshit.
It reminds me of that time “SkepTickle” (remember her?) posted a comment insulting me on my blog and then was enraged at me because it appeared. She assumed I would delete it instead of letting it appear, so she felt free to insult me secretly and in private. How dare I make it public.
It is, especially when you cite the disclaimer on the email as some kind of universal get-out-of-what-you-said-free card.
It’s one thing to have a reasonable expectation of privacy because of the nature of the conversation you’re having or by mutual agreement, quite another to pretend to impose an expectation of privacy on someone else because of some bullshit pasted into the bottom of an unsolicited email.
Oh, she was a piece of work, wasn’t she? Is, I should say, she’s still around.
The concept of privacy is exquisitely complicated. I’ve studied it for about ten years and I’m nowhere close to running out of things to learn.
But demanding that other people don’t reveal the horrible shit you’ve said to them…. that’s really not that complicated.
The idea that having received someone’s email, you’ve tacitly accepted the terms and conditions of the sender is so….. Shermer.
I remember several years ago there was a study that showed that skeptics were not measurably better at evaluating arguments than the general public. I was kind of surprised by it at the time; I figured that surely some of the so-called skeptical toolbox must carry over to non-supernatural stuff.
I never did get around to looking at the details of the methodology or whether it’s been replicated, but it sure doesn’t surprise me any more. I think seeing so-called skeptics declare the Thunderfoot had “won” an argument because hey, look at his YouTube likes was kind of the last straw for me.
As to the whole confidentiality thing, it reminds me of this blog post by Marc Randazza
Oh, I was also thinking “idiots who think their email footer imposes confidentiality on the recipient are like the morons who blab to a journalist and then say ‘oh, all of that was OFF THE RECORD’ and expect it to be treated as such.” And then PZ reminded me that Shermer once did exactly that!
Oh my, thank you for that Marc Randazza post.