Got any spare cash burning a hole in your pocket? You could do worse than helping Vyckie Garrison of No Longer Quivering keep her house. The appeal is here. A friend of hers writes:

I know I have a deep gratitude for the support she’s given freely to dozens of former QFers who’ve come to No Longer Quivering for help in escaping and recovering from spiritual abuse. She’s poured her life into the website and support group, as well as helping other Quiverfull walkaways to establish their own websites in order to increase awareness of the problem of spiritual abuse: The Spiritual Abuse Survivor Blogs Network at NLO. In honor of Vyckie’s hard work helping others I have started a crowdfunding campaign as a project of NLQ to raise the money necessary to save Vyckie’s house. Vyckie has agreed to allow me to share this part of our FB chat conversation in order to let others know about her desperate situation.

…

I’m proud to say this courageous woman is my friend. She’s struggled to support herself and her family after leaving the Quiverfull movement. While Vyckie has been instrumental in helping others she now needs help to stay in her home with her children.  It’s why I’m asking you to help her, particularly if you’ve been helped by Vyckie and NLQ.

Please spread the word.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Father. Daughter. Superhero board game. Open the box. No female characters.

“What girl can I be?” Cassie asked, digging through the game pieces.

“I don’t think there are any girls, sweetie,” I said, anger building in me. Cause really, DC & Wonder Forge? WTF? You know it’s 2014, right?

Cassie put down the game pieces. “I don’t want to play this, then.” She turned and moved to leave the room, and it broke my heart. In part for her, and in part because I love superheroes, and this should be something we can share.

He thought of a solution: make their own female characters. They did; problem solved.

Cassie loves it and wants play every chance she gets. And this is why I am so pissed about the whole “no girls” thing. In addition to illustrating how they remain creatively stuck in the 60′s, DC is leaving money on the table by continuing to make their merchandise exclusive to boys.

And they are exclusive. I know many would argue that a kid should be able to handle playing a character that’s not their own gender sometimes. I agree! But why should that mean only the girls have to suffer that?

It’s like this: boys are future men, and men (in the aggregate! I said in the aggregate, stop yelling at me!) just are more into heroics, while girls are future women, and women (siiiiiiiigh in the aggregate siiiiiiiiiigh) just are more into that estrogen vibe.

I think businesses tend to make decisions based on more monetary concerns. Maybe statistically it’s more likely to be four boys playing, and they want to cater to that. But if so, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you market only to boys, don’t be surprised boys are your only market. And don’t be surprised if the boys with sisters and female friends end up playing something else entirely.

When comics and game designers exclude or otherwise diminish the role of female characters, they are really telling girls they are not welcome. That sure, they canplay, but they can’t have full immersion. Full immersion is for boys only.

And fuck that.

I fixed this shitty game, but I shouldn’t have had to. We have a right to expect (and demand) that comics companies and the game designers they license to do better. Sure, it’s a free country and they have a right to make boys-only games if they want, but we don’t need to support it, or stay quiet about it.

Oh please, you’re just looking for ways to be offended.

Peter W Brett wrote the piece and the Mary Sue reposted it.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Amanda Marcotte is amusing about Sam Harris and his tantrum about horrid people saying he said something sexist and wrong and silly.

Nah, he can’t be wrong. He’s Sam Harris! And so he’s going to drown us in words to show how mean we are to criticize him about his suggestion that being female makes us less critical and ugh, getting a headache now. Let’s just get into it. His response is titled, “I’m Not the Sexist Pig You’re Looking For“. Indeed, as his comments showed, we don’t have to go looking for sexist pigs, as they happen to fall right in our laps. I would like, in fact, for sexist pigs to quit falling in my lap, honestly.

Exactly. He accused me of going looking for it, but not at all – I happened to see it (on Facebook, because someone posted the link – that’s a thing that can happen), and when I saw it, I saw that it was bad, and I responded to it. That’s all. No need to go sniffing for truffles.

He starts with saying the “estrogen vibe” thing was a joke. Okay, but that doesn’t change the fact that he suggested being good at the “critical posture” is inherently male, something you’d think that he would have learned is completely false in the days after this quote. Then this:

And when I shifted to speaking about atheists as a group, I was referring to active atheists—that is, the sort of people who go to atheist conferences, read atheist books, watch atheists debate pastors on YouTube, or otherwise rally around atheism as a political identity. I was not talking about everyone on Earth who doesn’t believe in God.

Yep, a lot more male than female atheists are active about it. This should be considered evidence not that women are less critical—they are just as likely to come to the conclusion that there is no god as men—but that there’s….something….unappealing about organized atheism. Perhaps the swiftness [with] which women are treated like biologically inferior helpmeets might have something to do with it?

Or even a lot to do with it? I know I’m feeling very wary of organized atheism and organized atheists right now.

…the acerbic tone that offends him so greatly that he goes into italics-bonanza mode should suggest perhaps that he is not as masculine and tough and women are not as soft and receding as he thinks. On average, even. Also, the reason a lot of women hated Hitchens is Hitchens thought we were inferior by dint of biology. I find that offensive whether you say it gently or say it acerbically. It’s the content, not the tone. Or, as the calm, rational manly man Harris would write, it’s the content, not the tone.

Or sometimes it’s both.

I gotta go. The manly atheists have worn me out today.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Let’s take a moment to be grateful for something. I’ll choose not being a blogger in Iran. I’m so glad I’m not a blogger in Iran. One guy who is a blogger in Iran has been sentenced to death for insulting the prophet. You’d think somebody who has been dead for 1400 years could put up with being insulted – I mean who gets upset if someone insults Alfred the Great or Boethius or Eirik the Red? But Iran is different that way.

According to an ‘informed source’,speaking to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Soheil Arabi, 30, had kept eight Facebook pages under different names and admitted to posting material insulting to the Prophet on these pages.

Mr Arabi, who was arrested along with his wife in November last year by agents from the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is said to have written the “material without thinking and in poor psychological condition”.

Branch 75 of Tehran’s Criminal Court, under Judge Khorasani, found Mr Arabi guilty of insulting the Prophet, or “sabb al-nabi”, on 30 August.

Maybe the NFL should try that. Maybe it should try to make it a crime to insult a dead football coach.

But no – even the NFL wouldn’t think that would fly.

Article 262 of the Islamic Penal Code states insulting the Prophet carries a punishment of death, however, article 264 of the Penal Code says if a suspect claims to have said the insulting words in anger, in quoting someone, or by mistake, his death sentence will be converted to 74 lashes.

The anonymous source claims: “Unfortunately, despite this Article and the explanations provided, the judges issued the death sentence.

“They didn’t even take any notice of Soheil’s statements in court in which he repeated several times that he wrote the posts under poor [psychological] conditions, and that he is remorseful.”

A mere 74 lashes – for “insulting” a guy who’s been dead for centuries. Justice itself.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Guest post by J H Hornbeck
(part 1: statistics for the people, and of the people)

I just can’t seem to escape sexual assault. For the last six months I’ve analyzed the Stollznow/Radford case, and more recently finished an examination of Carol Tavris’ talk at TAM2014, so that topic has never wandered far from my mind. I’ve bounced my thoughts off other people, sometimes finding support, other times running into confusion or rejection. It’s the latter case that most fascinates me, so I hope you don’t mind if I write my way through the confusion.

The most persistent objection I’ve received goes something like this: I cannot take population statistics and apply them to a specific person. That’s overgeneralizing, and I cannot possibly get to a firm conclusion by doing it.

It makes sense on some level. Human beings are wildly different and can be extremely unpredictable because of that. The field of psychology is scattered with the remains of attempts to bring order to the chaos. However, I’ve had to struggle greatly to reach even that poor level of intellectual empathy, as the argument runs contrary to our every moment of existence. This may be a classic example of talking to fish about water; our unrelenting leaps from the population to the individual seem rare and strange when consciously considered, because they almost never are conscious.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a familiar example.

P1. That object looks like a chair.

P2. Based on prior experience, objects that look like chairs can support my weight.

C1. Therefore, that object can support my weight.

Yep, the Problem of Induction is a classic example of applying the general to the specific. I may have sat on hundreds of chairs in my lifetime, without incident, but that does not prove the next chair I sit on will remain firm. I can even point to instances where a chair did collapse… and yet, if there’s any hesitation when I sit down, it’s because I’m worried about things stuck to the seat. The worry of the chair collapsing never enters my mind.

Once you’ve had the water pointed out to you, it appears everywhere. Indeed, you cannot do any action without jumping from population to specific.

P1. A brick could spontaneously fly at my head.

P2. Based on prior experience, no brick has ever spontaneously flown at my head.

C1. Therefore, no brick will spontaneously fly at my head.

P1. I’m typing symbols on a page.

P2. Based on prior experience, other people have been able to decode those symbols.

C1. Therefore, other people will decode those symbols.

P1. I want to raise my arm.

P2. Based on prior experience, triggering a specific set of nerve impulses will raise my arm.

C1. Therefore, I trigger those nerve impulses.

“Action” includes the acts of science, too.

P1. I take a measurement with a specific device and a specific calibration.

P2. Based on prior experience, measurements with that device and calibration were reliable.

C1. Therefore, this measurement will be reliable.

Philosophers may view the Problem of Induction as an infinitely-wide canyon, but it’s a millimetre crack in our day-to-day lives. Not all instances are legitimate, though. Here’s a subtle failure.

P1. This vaccine contains mercury.

P2. Based on prior experience, mercury is a toxic substance with strong neurological effects.

C1. Therefore, this vaccine is a toxic substance with strong neurological effects.

Sure, your past experience may have included horror stories of what happens after chronic exposure to high levels of mercury… but unbeknownst to you, it also included chronic exposure to very low levels of mercury compounds, of varying toxicity, which had no effect on you or anyone else. There’s a stealth premise here: the dose makes the poison. It’s not hard to come up with similarly flawed examples that are more subtle (“Therefore, I will not die today”) and less (“Therefore, all black people are dangerous thugs”).

Hmm, maybe this type of argument is unsound when applied to people? Let’s see:

P1. This is a living person.

P2. Based on prior experience, living persons have beating hearts.

C1. Therefore, this living person has a beating heart.

Was that a bit cheap? I’ll try again:

P1. This is a person living in Canada.

P2. Based on prior experience, people living in Canada speak English.

C1. Therefore, this person will speak English.

Now I’m skating onto thin ice. According to StatCan, only 85% of Canadians can speak English, so this is only correct most of the time. Let’s revise it a bit:

P1. This is a person living in Canada.

P2. Based on prior experience, about 85% of people living in Canada speak English.

C1. Therefore, there’s an 85% chance this person will speak English.

Much better. In fact, it’s much better than anything I’ve presented so far, as it quantifies and puts solid error bars around what it is arguing. The quantity was gathered by professionals in controlled conditions, an immense improvement over my ad-hoc, poorly-recorded personal experience.

Mind you, it wouldn’t take much effort to track down a remote village in Quebec where few people could talk to me, and the places where I hang out are well above 85% English-speaking. But notice that both are a sub-population of Canada, while the above talks only of Canada as a whole. It’s a solid argument over the domain it covers, but adding more details can change that.

Ready for the next step? It’s a bit scary.

P1. This is a man.

P2. Based on prior experience, between 6 and 62% of men have raped or attempted it.

C1. Therefore, the chance of that man having raped or attempted rape is between 6 and 62%.

Hopefully you can see this is nothing but probability theory at work. The error bars are pretty huge there, but as with the language stat we can add more details.

P1. This is a male student at a mid-sized, urban commuter university in the United States with a diverse student body.

P2. Based on prior experience, about 6% of such students have raped or attempted it.

C1. Therefore, the odds of that male student having raped or attempted rape is about 6%.

We can do much better, though, by continuing to pile on the evidence we have and watching how the probabilities shift around. Interestingly, we don’t even need to be that precise with our numbers; if there’s sufficient evidence, they’ll converge on some sort of answer. One flip of a coin tells you almost nothing about how fair the process is; a thousand flips taken together tells you quite a lot, and it isn’t pretty. Even if the numbers don’t come to a solid conclusion, that might still be OK; you wouldn’t do much if there was a 30% chance your ice cream cone started melting before you could lick it, but you would take immediate action if there was a 30% chance of a meteor hitting your house. Fuzzy answers can still justify action, if the consequences are harsh enough and outweigh the cost of getting it wrong.

So why not see what answers we can draw from a sexual assault case? One problem: discussing sexual assault is a great way to get sued, especially when the accused in question is rumoured to be unusually litigious.

So instead, let’s discuss birds…

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Via Jen Phillips: University of Oregon researchers urge psychologists to see institutional betrayal.

Oh yes? [ears go up like a dog's] I’m very interested in that right now.

In their paper, UO doctoral student Carly P. Smith and psychology professor Jennifer J. Freyd draw from their own studies and diverse writings and research to provide a framework to help recognize patterns of institutional betrayal. The term, the authors wrote, aims to capture “the individual experiences of violations of trust and dependency perpetrated against any member of an institution in a way that does not necessarily arise from an individual’s less-privileged identity.”

An institution…like…a church? A university? The military? The NFL? Corporations, government, non-profits, political movements?

Sound familiar? Yeah.

While their paper focuses on sexual assaults on college campuses, in the military and in religious institutions, the authors say that such betrayal is a wide-ranging phenomenon. Throughout the paper, they discuss the case of a college freshman in the Midwest whose questionably handled allegations against a major university’s football player eventually contributed to her suicide.

“I think what struck me most in our examination of the literature was that people are starting to turn over this idea in their minds in all these different fields,” Smith said. “They are starting to notice that when we see abuse or other trauma occurring, it might behoove us to broaden our focus beyond the individual level.”

Yup. Yup yup yup.

They note that institutional betrayal is a dimensional phenomenon, with acts of omission and commission as well as instances of betrayal that may vary on how clearly systemic they are at the outset. Institutional characteristics that the authors say often precede such betrayal include:

• Membership qualifications with inflexible requirements where “conformity is valued and deviance quickly corrected as a means of self-policing among members.” Often, a member making an accusation faces reprisal because of the institutional value placed on membership.

• Prestige given to top leaders results in a power differential. In this case, allegations that are made by a member against a leader often are met by gatekeepers whose roles are designed to protect top-level authority.

• Priorities that result in “damage control” efforts designed to protect the overall reputation of the institution. Examples include the abuse scandal at Pennsylvania State University, the movement of clergy to other locations in the face of allegations and hiding incidents of incest within family units.  More recently, Freyd and Smith noted, the NFL demonstrated this quality by denying it had seen video footage of one of its players battering his fiancee and its previously long record of minor penalties for such interpersonal abuse.

• Institutional denial in which members who allege abuse are marginalized by the institution as being bad apples whose personal behaviors should be the issue.

Check, check, check, and check. We’re seeing that all the time, these days. Hour by hour, we’re seeing it. Bridges go up in flames as we see it.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Scotland voted No on independence.

The prime minister wants to move fast to show that the three main UK party leaders will live up to their commitments made during the referendum campaign to deliver what the former prime minister Gordon Brown called home rule within the UK.

Ministers believe it is important to move quickly to avoid a repeat of the 1980 referendum in Québec. The triumphalist behaviour of Ontario fuelled the separatist cause that nearly succeeded in a second referendum in 1995.

So don’t rub it in their noses. Lots of affectionate hugs, no faces rubbed in the No vote. And no mean photoshops!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Guest post by Mary Ellen Foley. 

A threat to bomb the Game Developers’ Conference if Anita Sarkeesian gets an award there…threats to murder her and make it look like suicide because she’s a worse threat than terrorists to the country…and for what? For pointing out that it’s not good that video games exploit images of women’s bodies and of violence against women as scene dressing in the backgrounds of games? Really? A veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq says she’s worse than terrorists because she suggests that it might not be a good idea for game developers to show an animation of a man slitting the throat of an anonymous woman just to get the pulses of game players racing?

I tried to watch one of Sarkeesian’s pieces about the use of images of women in games, and I had to stop pretty quickly — I don’t have a strong enough stomach — though I must point out, not least because my husband makes a living in the video game industry, that not all games are violent and not all games are misogynistic — but of course Sarkeesian doesn’t say they are.

There’s been quite a backlash from misogynist video-game fans over suggestions as mild as that the industry should, in addition to the violent misogynist games the fanboys love, make games that women like to play, too, or more games that maybe offer the possibility of playing as a female character — not that you have to play as a female character, but that other people can if they want to. They so want the Girls Keep Out on the clubhouse door that they can’t imagine life in which women play games, too; they threaten to punish the industry by not buying games at all if the developers go wild and make some more games in which players can, if they want, interact with the virtual baddies as female characters. Women, it seems, just shouldn’t play games, and female characters should be abused, killed, or rescued but certainly ought not to be heroes. Fortunately, as statistics and estimates my husband has pulled together show, the guys who think the world of video games revolves around them are wrong; the money they spend on games makes up a surprisingly small proportion of the funds that keep the industry rolling—hard to believe, but that’s because the violent action games get the press.

And they should at times get the press, and Anita Sarkeesian is part of that press, but she’s getting death threats serious enough to bring out the police and the bomb-sniffing dogs, and the FBI is now looking into who’s threatening her. I wish it were unbelievable…

Mary Ellen Foley blogs at M E Foley’s Anglo-American Experience Blog.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Guest post by Lady Mondegreen (aka Stacy).

It’s happened again. Feminists of the atheoskeptisphere have pointed out that one of our Famous Men said something sexist; the assertion has been met with intense defensiveness and downright rage. The defensiveness is understandable, but the rage baffled me until I realized that it comes, at least in part, from a profound misconception about what sexism is and how it works.

To start with, here’s a statement from a comment by Folie Deuce, on Ophelia’s post #EstrogenVibe

If everyone is sexist than nobody is sexist.

No. Category error.

The wrongness there can be understood by substituting a few other words for the word “sexism”:

If everyone is affected by cognitive biases, then nobody is affected by cognitive biases.

See the problem? Everybody IS affected by cognitive biases. They’re implicit. Same with sexist biases, and racist biases, and other out-group biases. We all share them, to varying degrees–even those of us who belong to the groups in question. We’ve internalized them. If you react with outrage when you or one of your heroes is criticized for a cognitive bias lurking behind your/their thinking on a subject, you’re being defensive, not skeptical. Since none of us is ammune to implicit bias, you should at least consider the possibility that the critic is right. Most skeptics familiar with critical thinking (or its language, at least,) will grant that in the abstract, but many can’t acknowledge it when the subject is sexism.

They should.

Like cognitive biases, sexist and other out-group biases are implicit. Their content is dependent on culture and varies to some degree from place to place (I’ve read–I can’t vouch for the truth of this–that in Japan, the notion that women are less intelligent than men isn’t common. There are other stereotypes about women to be found there, but not that particular one,) but if you’ve grown up in a culture steeped in stereotypes and biases against Group X, you’ve internalized those stereotypes and biases. Yes, even you, Mr. Big Stuff. You’re not a brain in a vat. You grew up with the same implicit assumptions as everyone else in your society.

When Sam Harris insists “I’m not the sexist pig you’re looking for,” he’s assuming that “you said something sexist,” translates into/as “you think that men are better than women,” or even “you are a male supremacist.” But that’s not what “you said something sexist” means. That’s not what it means at all.

Does this seem obvious to you, reader? If you’re a regular reader of this blog, it probably does. But there are lots of people, some very smart ones among them, who haven’t thought this through.

Ian Cromwell, aka The Crommunist, has argued against using the word “racist” as a noun. We shouldn’t characterize anyone as “a racist,” he thinks, in part because of confusions like the one I’m discussing here. I wouldn’t go quite that far–I think it’s fair and useful to call a person who holds explicit white supremacist views a racist, and a person who thinks it a shame women ever won the right to vote, a sexist. Sam Harris, on the other hand, is correct that he’s not a “sexist pig.” He is, however, sexist–along with me, and you, and everyone else. How nice if he could acknowledge that fact, and turn his attention from defending himself to examining the content of actual claims made by and about women, even–dare we hope–the implicit ones.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Michael wants me to respond to his post without the sarcastic paraphrasing. Fair enough. I can at least try, although it’s a very long and winding post, which does make it difficult. This won’t be complete, therefore, but it will be something.

Item.

I believe that the approach taken by PZ Myers, and by some other people on (for shorthand) the FreeThought Blogs perceived ‘side’ of some disagreements, is counterproductive to these aims. It is also unjust and harmful in itself, because it routinely demonises decent people who support equality but who have a different approach to it.

That’s not a good shorthand. There are a lot of bloggers on this network, and many of them don’t write about disputes within Anglophone atheism and secularism at all. It’s not fair to them to keep using the name of the network as a “shorthand,” especially when so many people use it not as a shorthand but as a code for “what we all hate.” I think Michael was hinting at that himself, frankly.

Item.

Some of these more mainstream media analyses imply that there is a single ‘atheist movement’, and that it is best analysed through some opinions of some mostly American bloggers and activists who, while committed and sincere and doing good work, are not representative of atheist activism worldwide.

There’s a whiff of xenophobia there. The claim isn’t really true, and it’s a little bit creepy.

Item.

In the last year or so, he has publicly accused Richard Dawkins of seeming to have developed a callous indifference to the sexual abuse of children…

On the basis of things RD wrote, no? I myself think Richard Dawkins has been displaying a callous indifference to the sexual harassment of women lately, because of things he’s said on Twitter. I’ve replied to Richard directly, and I’ve also blogged about what he’s been saying. I think people who have large influence and visibility have a particular responsibility to be fair and reasonable in what they say about such things.

Michael Shermer of multiple unreported serious crimes…

What are people supposed to do then? Keep the secrets forever? Never make any public warnings about guys who get handsy or ply women with alcohol in hopes of scoring? Just shut up, always, no matter what?

Item, the penultimate paragraph.

I believe that we should robustly question the ideas and behaviour of people who are, or who are perceived to be, authority figures in our own spheres of activity. I also believe that everyone, on various sides of these disagreements, should reconsider what I describe as the ethos of “You must be more compassionate, you fuckbrained asshole!”

Probably a good suggestion.

Updating to add, at Michael’s request –

There’s probably much in the post that I agree with. I skimmed much of it, and I probably agree with the skimmed part. I certainly agree that the Atheist Alliance International is a great thing. One of the many rewards of the Empowering Women Through Secularism conference in Dublin last summer was meeting and talking to Carlos Diaz.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Originally a comment by Brony on Thou shalt respect The Leaders.

Am I correct in remembering that Nugent was the one that tried to host the debate to heal the deep rifts earlier on? If so that matters.

On describing decency and demonization

So how does this,

I believe that atheist and skeptic people and groups, like all people and groups within society, should promote compassion, empathy, fairness, justice, equality and respect for people, combined with robust rational analysis of ideas.

…relate to this,

I believe that the approach taken by PZ Myers, and by some other people on (for shorthand) the FreeThought Blogs perceived ‘side’ of some disagreements, is counterproductive to these aims. It is also unjust and harmful in itself, because it routinely demonises decent people who support equality but who have a different approach to it.

…when it comes to the specific content of the characterizations PZ and others are making? He needs to define demonization.

I noticed that Nugent spared ZERO effort to actually describe the content of the controversies involving “decent people being demonized”. Is it demonization of me to suggest that Harris was dismissing his critics because he thinks that women are probably not good at criticism, because of estrogen? Those are not his literal words but I would be happy to defend that way of portraying his views. I don’t think that someone like that is acting like a decent person. If Nugent is willing to call out behavior he should be willing to get specific when he is taking sides. Otherwise this is a more complicated pissing on fire hydrants.

I don’t think that Dawkins is acting like a decent person when he literally gets personal in his rhetoric by dismissing critics as only in it for the money (and the other stuff that has been mentioned here). I don’t think that Shermer is a decent person after hearing Randi’s defense of him. Nugent is dry and tasteless without details.

I believe that the approach taken by PZ Myers has been central to the escalation of what some people call ‘the deep rifts’.

Actually some of us have decided to support him more openly BECAUSE is willing to escalate when appropriate. That is a skill I admire. Calling out behavior that is worth calling out is is critical to any society, especially among the leadership because they set moral and ethical tones for those below. I want a less hierarchical society but some parts of human psychology will be things to deal with as they are. I require Nugent to give me examples of when it is appropriate to escalate in order to take him seriously.

But something seems to happen to him when he gets behind a keyboard. He routinely demonises people in a way that he doesn’t do in person, and that he recognises as unfair when others do it to him. He routinely attacks people as individuals, as opposed to merely attacking their ideas or behaviour.

So why does Nugent keep making the claim that PZ demonized someone without actually trying to back it up? I don’t care if you are a commenter, a blogger, or the president of the united states if you are directing strong words at someone you have the responsibility to do a minimum level of demonstration. PZ and others at FTB outlined why they said what they said in specifics.

By specific I mean he should line these characterizations of what PZ said, with the reality to show why the are demonization.
*”He routinely attacks people as individuals, as opposed to merely attacking their ideas or behaviour.”
*accused “…Michael Shermer of multiple unreported serious crimes…”
*accused “…Russell Blackford of being a lying fuckhead.”
*”…described Robin Williams’ suicide as the death of a wealthy white man dragging us away from news about brown people…”
*”…a white lady who made racist comments looks like the kind of person who would have laughed at nanu-nanu…”
*”Richard Dawkins has been eaten by brain parasites and is grossly dishonest.”
*”Christina Hoff Sommers promotes lies about feminism and claims them as inalienable truths.”
*”Michael Shermer is a liar and an assailant”
*”Sam Harris has scurried off to write a tendentious and inexcusably boring defence of sticking his foot in his mouth.”

Some of these are worth talking about as problems too. But we can’t actually tell if a characterization is accurate without it being lined up with reality and I’m simply not satisfied that Nugent has even done that for himself with what I just read. He’s simply acting startled at tone towards authority figures and letting that direct his analysis. And of course he displays no problems with the tone or the content of Dawkins and Harris et al.

Dawkins inverted

Did anyone else notice the huge list of “atheists doing nice things” that was provided because Nugent was afraid of the atheist community looking bad because of press coverage? Dawkins was pointing at suffering that he believed was worse elsewhere in the world to get women to stop talking and to encourage others to stop paying attention to them. Nugent is now pointing at good stuff atheists are doing elsewhere in the world to get PZ to stop talking and encourage others to stop paying attention to him and FTB.

The measuring of “goods” is just as fallacious as the measuring of “bads” like suffering when figuring out of a behavior is appropriate. His piece could have been half as long and I would not have been insulted by him.

On tactics

I believe that this should include tackling sexism, racism, homophobia and other discriminatory biases in society, and making our groups and events welcoming to everybody who wants to be involved.

That is literally what is being done at FTB. Nugent is not helping by being an ally to sexists and creeps at best.

I believe that we can do this without routinely demonising good people who support equality but who have a different approach to it, without uncharitably misinterpreting tweets and impromptu comments as if they were formal pronouncements of misogyny, and without ignoring the principles of natural justice by publicly accusing named people of serious alleged crimes.

Given that we have no idea what he means by “demonization” there is no way to tell what he means by “ignoring the principles of natural justice”. Authorities calling out other authorities is probably part of natural justice for apes. Large numbers of people calling out authorities is natural for apes. But so is harassment and criticism can be harassment if done a certain way so I’m not saying that there is nothing that he could call demonization. I am saying that Nugent has done a terrible job of framing the conflict.

I believe that we should robustly question the ideas and behaviour of people who are, or who are perceived to be, authority figures in our own spheres of activity.

Why yes we should! So why did you ignore PZ, Ophelia Benson, Stephanie Zvan and others when they questioned Dawkins, Harris, Shermer and others? I get literally no impression from Nugent’s piece that he saw more than the twitter paraphrasing of this conflict.

Nugent is MASSIVELY mistaken in his piece and getting preemptively defensive should be unnecessary, unless he knows at some level that he did not do his homework.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Guest post by Josh the SpokesGay

I’m pondering this and haven’t come to any firm conclusions, but I want to float it for conversation.

We’re seeing an enormous number of people (who we thought would know and do better) ignore the most awful behavior from Dawkins. Obviously, not just with him, mind. It’s sometimes staggering; it’s so surprising to see people one knows to be capable of independent thought and analysis turn so completely nasty and dishonest in their attempts to stop any suggestion that Dawkins might be wrong.

We know that people have heroes. We know that we, too, are subject to the same instinct to circle the wagons. But the degree to which Dawkins supporters are doing this genuinely stuns me. It is quite literally watching rational people become irrational, fact-free, religious (perhaps ‘tribal’ is better) adherents for whom no argument is too dishonest or low.

I suspect a structural tragedy is responsible: There simply are not enough venues in public discourse for disaffected secularists to build solidarity, a shared identity, and the confidence to push back against religious privilege. Especially for those with traumatic experiences of religion, Dawkins seems like a lifeline. Finally, somebody isn’t afraid to call the emperor out on his non-existent clothes.

It felt that way to me when Dawkins wrote The God Delusion. I understand this impulse. It’s normal, it’s not weird, and it’s there for good, justifiable reasons. The first fan letter I wrote was to Richard Dawkins, thanking him for being an “oasis” in a sea of privileged religious bafflegab. And I sent this to him even before TGD came out. That he wrote me back the very next morning had me on a cloud for days.

Shorter version: many people perceive, correctly or not, that Dawkins is the only or best “venue” for people like them starved for secular discourse. The threat of that being taken away (meaning that Dawkins might actually be a jerk, or that he may be so badly wrong on other counts that one has to find new heroes) is simply too much for them.

Perhaps that explains Nate Phelps, son of Fred Phelps. Undeniably traumatized by religion, one can understand why he might see Dawkins and his circle as a haven. I recently saw Nate compare Ophelia Benson, of all people, to his father, the vicious preacher Fred. No, he didn’t come right out and say “you’re as bad as he is.” But Nate did compare Ophelia’s stance on “the whole feminism -vs- secularism issue” to the “you’re either for us or against us” approach his fundamentalist father insisted on.

We see this a lot. People victimized by religious extremism often paint other, non-abusive forms of vehement position-staking as “just as bad as the fundamentalists.” They mistake the form for the content. They react against the act of uncompromisingly defending one’s position while not paying attention to the content of the position. They don’t seem to understand that it is not automatically Wrong to have confidence—even a degree of righteousness—in one’s opinion. What matters is whether that confidence is justified.

Whether you totally dig Ophelia or not, I hope anyone can see how badly wrong Nate’s comparison is. So—is it the perception/reality of the scarcity of robust secular voices and spaces, particularly in the US, that causes people to defend Dawkins doing the indefensible? Is it a deeper structural problem that can only be effectively addressed over a long time by building other and better “venues” for being a non-apologetic secularist?

Shortest of all: Is Dawkins a case of perceived but artificial scarcity?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)