Your resource center


Also…

Here’s how the left margin of their Twitter account looks.

globeyOh really? My and our resource center for international policy? Really?

What makes it that? Who says it’s that? How can it possibly be that?

There’s not a trace of internationalism in their lineup. Not a whiff. There’s not one person who’s not pale, when internationally and globally, a lot more people are not pale than are pale. This joke of a “Global” council looks as if some twenty or thirty conceited Yanks and Brits have gotten together to reinvent the East India Company. I suppose Shermer wants to play the John Stuart Mill part, since Mill used to take his trousers off every day when he got to the office.

Comments

  1. says

    This is one of the reasons I don’t take the “movement” seriously. It seems to be a bunch of self-selected arrogant jerks and their rabid fans. There’s a whole bunch of declarations about stuff with zero achievement, experience, or knowledge behind it.

    I wasn’t kidding on Twitter… you have just as much right to declare yourself Secular Thought Leader Ophelia Benson ESQ, LLC or whatever.

  2. says

    Imperialism is nothing if not global, after all!

    From their web site:

    The Global Secular Council is the policy research center for the secular movement. Here, you will find analysis and commentary by the world’s leading thinkers on the scientific, social, and political issues of our day: separation of church and state, the legal privileges of religious organizations, women’s health, gender and marriage equality, evolutionary biology, education, and more.

    What I’m sensing is that the policies advocated by these overwhelmingly white, Western, self-declared “leading thinkers” will come with a hefty dose of libertarianism; torture, racial profiling, and military-aggression apologia; sexual harassment tolerance; sympathy for Christian conservatism; and racist and sexist Evo Psych pseudoscience. So not really my resource center.

  3. says

    This is just another cash grab/tax shelter, isn’t it? ISN’T IT?!?!

    Funny we’re talking about this the same week as an Adam Sandler movie comes out. Actual headline: “Adam Sandler Admits ‘Blended’ Was an Excuse for a Vacation”

    Adam Sandler makes films like those people are a global secular organization.

  4. Blanche Quizno says

    “I suppose Shermer wants to play the John Stuart Mill part, since Mill used to take his trousers off every day when he got to the office.”

    Best laff of the day! Except now I need to go bleach my brain >.<

  5. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Seconding Blanche. That was brilliance, Ophelia. Brilliance.

  6. says

    Ah, yes: “the head muckety-mucks of Saudi Arabia, a clique of oil-rich Bedouin barbarians (think bloodthirsty Beverly Hillbillies),” “the Bronze Age,” “(And don’t start giving me PC flack for making bigoted remarks about Arabs. Surely you can see I’m sticking up for a group of Arabs, the atheists upon whom open season has just been declared),” “our enlightened Western civilization and the backwards culture of Saudi Arabia,” “the hyper-sensitivities of a decadent culture (the West) are aligning with the primitive half-civilization of the Middle East.”

    That sort of rhetoric from a white guy from the US will undoubtedly appeal to Arab atheists and secularists. It’s not like there are Arab activists who might have insightful analyses. Very global.

  7. says

    Most of the world’s great minds place precedence on science and reason, but they have often acted alone. The Global Secular Council has brought together dozens of authors, professors, researchers, and other experts to collaborate on the toughest issues facing rational progress today.

    Unsurprisingly, of the world’s great minds, 20 are men and 5 women.

  8. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    They’ve told us they’re our global resource, Ophelia. I don’t know what else there is to say or why you think it’s appropriate to express confusion.

  9. says

    Who wrote that thing?? It’s full of “I” and “me” as if we’re supposed to know who it is but there’s no name anywhere.

    The best in their field. Ok.

  10. chigau (違う) says

    Robert M. Price
    Theology & Biblical Criticism
    wrote it
    At least his picture pops up when you go from the previous page.

  11. says

    Robert M. Price. On the home page, the title is accompanied by his picture, so I looked through the pictures (assuming, perhaps too generously, that this wasn’t random) to identify it. The World’s Leading Thinkers deserve more credit!

    They’ve told us they’re our global resource, Ophelia. I don’t know what else there is to say or why you think it’s appropriate to express confusion.

    😀

  12. says

    What’s sad is what a missed opportunity this is. A genuinely global secular organization would be a great thing. It could involve activists and academics from around the world, experts in their own countries or regions, sharing and exchanging a variety of concerns, viewpoints, and experiences. It could find atheists and secularists able to translate works into other languages. This organization just seems narrow, pompous, and superfluous, and it could actually harm global relations among secularists.

  13. says

    There’s still the International Humanist and Ethical Union. I think this new one is just going to cut into their membership and funding while pointlessly duplicating their efforts.

  14. says

    Anybody who unironically calls themselves “world’s greatest thinkers” is not to be taken serious.
    And yeah, I’ll totally ask them about issues of secularism in Germany. I mean, most of them have been there once, right? Makes them total experts, I guess.
    White men telling the rest of the world how to behave. As if the 20th century never happened.

  15. Anthony K says

    A genuinely global secular organization would be a great thing. It could involve activists and academics from around the world, experts in their own countries or regions, sharing and exchanging a variety of concerns, viewpoints, and experiences.

    Right. That’s how organisations doing global work generally attempt to operate: by liaising with local, existing organizations in the target region to utilize local skillsets and knowledge wherever possible. Not only do such approaches make local buy in, and thus sustainability, more likely, but they reduce the likelihood of paternalistic, wrong-headed projects that look good on paper from afar but fail to account for realities on the ground.

    It’s not like there’s an entire field of development that’s learned some of these lessons the hard way.

  16. Anthony K says

    As THE global experts they should know, right?

    When has lack of knowledge about a subject stopped Dawkins or Harris before?

  17. rq says

    I found a lot of things wrong with that particular article, including the use of pronouns. But hey, they’re global and diverse and they’re telling me so – no need to worry, right?

  18. HappyNat says

    Thanks for your work on this Ophelia.

    I’m just glad that FINALLY rich white powerful men from the US/UK will be able to have their voice heard and be able to speak for the globe. It’s refreshing, they have been silenced for too long. /snark

  19. says

    That sort of rhetoric from a white guy from the US will undoubtedly appeal to Arab atheists and secularists.

    -It might. Most Arabs in the U.S. aren’t Muslims, much less Saudis, so it is doubtful that most Arab secularists in the U.S. were once Muslims.

  20. HappyNat says

    Enopoletus,

    Why do you focus on Arab secularists in the “US? It’s a “Global” organization, right? Not to mention it is still racist as all shit whether you are religious or not.

  21. lither says

    I suspected that Mill and Shermer took their trousers off in the office for different reasons, but didn’t know the anecdote. Google intoduced me to Reeves’s biography, which I now want to read. Thank you.
    Otherwise — oh, dear, it’s “brights” all over again on a larger scale.

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