DAoS: Skeptics who pretend they’re professional lobbyists

“We need you to stop doing that!”

“That’s politically naive. We won’t win hearts like that!”

“Don’t criticise religion! We may want some religious people to join our cause!”

“Whaa! Whaa! Whaa!”

Who the hell put these people in charge? How can these people be put in charge?

Answer me this – what is the skeptic equivalent of Pope?

So your skeptical organisation may have an appointed leader. So what? What makes any given skeptical organisation the authority on skepticism? What makes a skeptical organisation the equivalent of The Vatican?

Excommunicate a skeptic from your ranks and they’re still a skeptic.

There is no grand Poo-Bah of skepticism because there can’t be one.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with disagreement in good faith about tactics – it’s healthy and rather obviously necessary.

But… There’s a difference between simple disagreement and authoritarian finger waving.

Ultimately, no skeptic is the boss of another’s skepticism. Sure, you may have a temporary agreement with them, such as an employment contract. But even this can be nullified and at the end of the day, it still won’t disqualify someone as a skeptic.

Which makes all the talking down-to more obscenely presumptuous.

And oh, the barracking! Yeah, there’s nothing more that I like to watch than some non-scientist, non-philosopher, insufficiently familiar with the views of say PZ Myers and Massimo Pigliucci to be able to critique them, picking a side.

Why do they pick a side? Group mentality. PZ’ pwning power or Massimo’s nicety, being the deciding factor.

I can think of an analogy – alternative medicine products. Would you buy a bottle of MAN FUEL!!!1! or Shaman-La-La-Twee pills if you were incapable of skepticism about the content?

There are occasional inconsistencies in PZ Myer’s rhetoric at time (sometimes I think by design for entertainment’s sake),  and there are a couple of philosophical points I have disagreements about (particularly ethics and knowledge pertaining to prescriptive statements) – and I take issue with Pigliucci for suspecting that Myers doesn’t make a distinction between methodological naturalism and philosophical/metaphysical naturalism – which Myers was wrongly accused of in Unscientific America, and which he roundly panned for it.

These are the kinds of important details so many of the cheerleaders miss, most likely because they don’t even comprehend them.

And this is why I like PZ’s fans more than the ‘accommodationist’ cheer squad. Sure, they may not always be polite. They may not take you seriously when they should. But they don’t tell you what to do under the pretence of knowing shit.

If they don’t know shit, and they like PZ’s rhetoric, they’ll just dribble shit. Standard Internet pwning shit.

But that’s no where near as arrogant as lecturing people about something that you clearly don’t understand, pretending to have the moral high-ground as well as the impossible authority of an impossible High Priest of Skepticism.

PZ hasn’t been as out with his epistemological leanings as he could be or as I’d like (it’s not my place to tell him to do otherwise). Into this relative information vacuum people have made up his opinions for him (particularly Chris Mooney). And people have sucked it up uncritically because it appeals to their sensibilities. Hardly skepticism par excellence.

But this team-oriented, sub-standard skepticism doesn’t seem to stop some people from telling skeptics how to undertake our skepticism.

“Haven’t you heard of NOMA?”

Yeah I have thankyou. Dimwit.

Non-overlapping?

Religious statement: The Earth is 6,000 years old.

Scientific statement: It is not.

Science can’t test every religious claim, but that’s not because they’re religious. Some religious claims can be tested empirically. There is overlap.

And as science moves into other areas traditionally occupied by religion (especially involving human nature), this overlap is going to increase. As will conflict.

Pretending there is no conflict is not only dishonest to begin with, but perilous as well.

Consider religious claims about human sexuality and associated behaviours. NOMA that for me will you thanks. Science has nothing to say? What’s that? Excuse me? You’re not what? What? A… Not a homophobe?

No you’re not a homophobe. You’re a homophobe enabler and further to that and more relevant to skepticism – you’re an enabler of quacks.

QUACK! QUACK!

No, not you, YOU! The one with the Colgate Twins t-shirt.

And don’t get me stated on the Francis “Science Has Nothing To Say About Human Nature” Collins’ appointment to the NIH. Key words – psychopathy, criminology, evolutionary psychology, mental health.

Good grief.

NOMA is not an authoritative statement. NOMA is an unsigned, unbinding treaty based on a false demarcation and cited by mountebanks.

If there were authority in skepticism, it should consider NOMA dye-bombed currency and treat the crooks using it accordingly.

And about those happy feelings…

“Arrest the Pope” was a stunt. Which “Arrest the Pope”? The considered legal proposition or the Facebook group? You mean Dawkins’ arresting the Pope and how it will offend Catholics and make them not take us seriously? Duh!

Boobquake? Women flashing their boobs? Well, if you think Boobquake is about women flashing their boobs, you need to do a bit more reading. And as for offending Muslim women subjugated by Islam – are women under Islam the point?

The Mullahs in question – source of oppression against women under Islam, sure. Husbands, the same. Okay, let’s assume that.

But what if your aim is simply to retaliate on behalf of non-Muslim women against Muslim men acting politically on a global scale? It’s not an irrelevant question.

The Mullahs (and other religious types sent into a tailspin by the sight of female skin) being offended by boobquake – not a problem. I’m not insensitive to the offence of these Mullahs – I’m quite aware of their fits – they don’t make themselves inconspicuous. It’s just that this particular suffering isn’t nearly enough, nor sufficiently antithetical to the aims of boobquake.

They can suffer in their jocks.

Muslim husbands being offended? In as far as this is true (and let’s not fall prey to stereotypes*) – I’m not insensitive – I’m aware but I just don’t care.

And the oppressed Muslim wives living in Iran where they would be victimized for participating in boobquake – where they couldn’t show a bit of leg, even on a hot day – I’m not insensitive to their potential offence via non-participation, in as far as it’s actually the case. But it’s not self-evident that this ressentiment (in as far as it actually exists*) in relation to women of the west baring flesh is antithetical to the cause of boobquake.

And frankly, I don’t think you could argue that boobquake contributes by accumulation to the Iranian populace’s grievance with the West. They’ve got a lot more than boobquake to be pissed off with the West about.

It’s not culturally insensitive to be aware, but just not care. Why should the boobquake crowd care?

If the aim is to draw Western attention to the silliness of certain Mullahs, and by extension some of their Western counterparts making similar claims linking sexual liberty to environmental disaster (Pat Robertson et al), what’s a few offended Iranian Muslim women? Indeed, why wouldn’t we want to offend them if they take offence at such a thing?

If you ask me, the West worries far too much about ‘liberating’ poor Middle Easterners, and too little about keeping ourselves free.

And since when did being ‘culturally sensitive’ in such a self-denying fashion equate to being effective? The Christian Right in the US has had three decades of highly successful campaigning riding on the back of an elephant with very, very thick skin.

It’s simply not a good idea to tell the boobquake crowd to pipe down. Nobody’s the boss of them. Even if for reasons other than those above, it’s not a good idea.

Then there’s the politics and the arseholes…

I just love when someone pulls the ‘politically naive’ card.

“Yes, what you’re saying is true, but you won’t get through to them if you let them in on it all in one hit. That’s politically naive.”

I’ve been in the Labor Party. I’ve done my union internship. That kind of stuff.

Not that I’m the greatest political operator by any stroke of the imagination – I have these things called principles that tend to get in the way – but what I can do is spot political ineptitude from a mile away. I may not always be able to articulate why, but I can usually tell who knows how to operate effectively.

Take Malcolm Turnbull – former leader in opposition and now retiring member of Australia’s predominant conservative party. (Update 5/05/2010: Turnbull has pulled a Ross Perot and has decided not to quit politics).

He has an overarching political philosophy that would have done his party a world of good, but he caved in to what the party wanted on a short-term basis – cheap points.  Malcolm Turnbull wasn’t the greatest political operator and whatever his other merits were (and they were many) it was pretty obvious from the start that he wasn’t going to cut it.

It was all too obvious when Turnbull was bullshitting people, if only because it was all so obvious when he wasn’t. The contrast was huge.

Compare straight-talking ex ALP leader Mark Latham – popular Mark Latham – with ‘reformed’ Mark Latham. The perceived need for him to clean up his image is what undid him.

He pretended he was what he wasn’t. He curbed some of his supposedly more extreme political views. Then he tanked. People couldn’t buy his story or his book – tainted as it was with the same neurotic need for self-revision.

This kind of self-denial was at the heart of the ALP’s electoral woes ever since losing the 1998 Federal election – only being broken by the electorate’s increasing dislike of the Howard Government – not some great sea change in the ALP’s position.

And the electorate hasn’t got a great love for the current ALP Prime Minister, Kevin ‘Safe Choice’ Rudd, either.

What about Health Care Reform in the US? Where did softly-softly get Obama?

I’m not talking about disenfranchising the base – I’m talking about negotiations with a party (the GOP) that won’t operate in good faith. It was only when Obama stopped playing the good host at the GOP’s tea party that he started making progress, but sadly only after giving away much too much.

The ‘hush-hush’ skeptics so often demonstrate the very same political impotence, which makes their sometimes accusations of ‘political ineptitude’ laughable.

Aside from not being able to deal effectively this way with interlocutors who don’t want to play ball, there’s the other problem…

The arsehole has tightly bundled nerve endings – hence people tend to notice when you try to crawl up it.

And the softly-softly people call PZ Myers insensitive. At least learn to use some lube people!

When you pretend to be who you aren’t, when you tell people things that you don’t believe, you give off tell-tale signs. People don’t even need to know the ins and outs of the topic at hand to pick up on these signs.

The only exception to this is in the case of particularly effective salespersons of snake oil, used cars and overpriced real estate. But as a skeptic, do you really want to engage people like this?

My objective is not to make creationists like me. Or indeed, religious people in general like me.

I don’t care if creationists get angry over court cases kicking creationism out of public school classes as long as court cases kick creationism out of classes. I don’t care so much if religious people don’t like me for not liking Francis Collins’ appointment to the NIH.

What I want is for them to know my view in as far as my view is worthy of being known, and that I’m not trying to bullshit them when putting my point across.

I can’t do this by peddling NOMA, or the idea that science has nothing to say about religious claims or even religion as a natural phenomena.

I’d rather be disliked but respected as an honest guy, than liked and seen as a convenient, dishonest wanker.

Conclusion

It’s really bad form for the (usually qualifications-impaired) cheerleaders in the skeptic movement to pretend to know shit, engage in partisanship on the basis of shit they don’t clearly understand, to talk shit to people who know their shit, and moreover to tell other skeptics in an inappropriately authoritarian, patronising, even puritan tone, just how to convey said shit in the shittiest, most dishonest way possible.

You’re a slacktivist, not a professional lobbyist. Your demands for decorum aren’t needed.

I’d suggest bossy skeptics not to expect their advice to be taken on board by other skeptics, and to just let people do things their own way.

~ Bruce

* I find the notion that Iranian Muslim women being universally offended through the supposed cultural insensitivity of boobquake, aside from being an example of out-group homogeneity bias, as about as silly as George Lucas’ insistence on having entire planets and moons dominated by singular geographical features (ice-planet, forest-moon etc).

Some Iranian Muslim women just won’t care, most probably won’t even hear about it, some may be jealous and others may be happy to see at least some women able to live such a lifestyle. Iranian Muslim women aren’t some unanimous voting bloc. It’s utterly provincial and naive to think otherwise. How about asking Iranian women what they think instead of just assuming they all think the same thing?

(Photo Source: Jeremy Kemp)