The Secular “Global Institute” has added a new fellow. He’s in Australia, so that’s a huge boost for this absurd little institute’s claim to be “global” when it’s actually almost entirely American.
They’ve been filling out the website, too. There’s a Newsletter page, with news stories on it. One news story on that page is titled Roundup of Recent Activities, Honors, and Events of Our SGI Famous Team. Yes really; I’m not making it up; that’s actually the title.
We are pleased to report that many SGI Fellows and communicators have made the news and are engaged in spreading secularism to our growing non-religious brothers and sisters worldwide.
Ouch. Jeezis. Can’t they get a better press person than that? Our growing brothers and sisters? The brothers and sisters are getting bigger, are they?
- Michael Shermer’s latest book “The Believing Brain“In this, his magnum opus, one of the world’s best known skeptics and critical thinkers Dr. Michael Shermer—founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and perennial monthly columnist (“Skeptic”) for Scientific American—presents his comprehensive theory on how beliefs are born, formed, nourished, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. This book synthesizes Dr. Shermer’s 30 years of research to answer the questions of how and why we believe what we do in all aspects of our lives, from our suspicions and superstitions to our politics, economics, and social beliefs.
Uh huh. Good choice. Top guy; super-famous; one of the greats. Well done.
Gettin’ more global every day.
“[S]preading secularism to our growing non-religious brothers and sisters…” If you’re losing weight, they don’t want to talk to you.
Help, help, I’m drowning under the smug! Being crushed by the weight of the ego!
They sure don’t have grandiose opinions of themselves, do they? 😉
Someone else landed on their feet. The ex-Executive Director of the Secular Coalition of America, Ms. Edwina Rogers, is one of the thinky leaders of the SGI Leadership Team.
Hey, you can have dinner with Shermer and Steven Pinker at Shermer’s house in Los Angeles for only $600/plate:
http://www.skeptic.com/upcoming-lectures/
You might even get to meet Shermer’s new wife:
https://twitter.com/michaelshermer/status/481952278950051840/photo/1
Well, yes some of them are making news. Of course traffic accidents make news as well.
Can’t . . . comment . . . too . . . much . . . smug. *gasp* (h/t UnknownEric)
Well, from that link (he’s the first reply to the tweet) I learned that DJ Grothe has finally taken the JREF position out of his Twitter bio.
Wow. So many levels of gross.
From the site:
Hurlpuke. That was never a word in my vocabulary before today, but it is now.
Spreading secularism to the already secular – now there’s a mission I can get behind!
Ahem. Attempt two:
Bu-but I was assured that accusations of sexual assault were devastating to a person’s career… Now I’m wondering just what it takes to be kicked out of one of these organizations. Excessive feminism?
Oh, and Russell Blackford’s now part of the gang? He’ll fit in well.
@ 7 leni
Let me guess. Dr Shermer won’t be participating in the tasting, but he’s volunteered to be in charge of refilling glasses. 😉
The point of organizations like that is to allow the fellows to honor each other. Its an old boys club (with some girls). And of course the fellows get to pick new fellows which is a way to try to pick the future leaders of the movement.
Blackford’s ‘analysis’ of Ophelia’s weird letters looks so much like the statements made by numerous UK politicians as they were covering up the fact that they had allowed numerous children’s homes in the country to be run by pedophiles. There is the determination to look for any explanation but the obvious one.
Depending on jurisdiction, writing threatening letters can be a crime. So it is not unusual for threatening letters to be written as non-threats in such a way as to make it obvious that they are a threat. The Kray twins who terrorized London’s east end would walk into an establishment they wanted protection money and say ‘nice place you have here, shame if something happened to it’, it being obvious who was going to cause the trouble. The Monty Python team ridicule the Kray twins in a few of their sketches. And warning someone that they are in danger is a tactic commonly used by con-artists intending to rob them. And the ‘security’ advice given is stupid. You are almost always much safer in a crowd than alone.
Good to see Russell’s doing well for himself. I remember he accused PZ of lying about him. I guess accusations, true or false, don’t hurt so much if you’re one of the lads.
Is it possible this organization is a complete fraud? I’ve tried to contact them using their contact form, but it doesn’t seem to work. I’ve send email to them directly and never gotten a reply. If they are real, then they are giving secularism a really bad name simply for being (a) pompous, (b) obnoxious, and (c) incompetent.
Well I think it’s possible that it’s at least an “organization” that is really nothing more than a list of mostly-male hotshots, and some advertising of those hotshots. It apparently doesn’t actually do anything. It’s just a website. That’s not really fraud, I guess, depending on what “institute” is supposed to mean.
It occurs to me that Ed and PZ should have called this network The Freethought Institute. Why not, after all?
Why not?
“FreeThought Intimidators” doesn’t sound as crass as “FTBullies”, for one.
So the Global Secular Council became the Secular Global Institute. Either way, they say the Bella & Stella Foundation founded it. Salty Current explained how this is a transparency problem, and Karen Owens added:
I’d like to know what the GSC/SGI team knows about The Bella & Stella Foundation.
Russell Blackford? Really? Reviews ‘team’ under the introductory paragraph as follows:
Then, compared to ‘deep rifts’:
1. Russell Blackford
2. Sam Harris
3. Michael Shermer
4. Peter Boghossian
5. Richard Dawkins
This does not count those ‘great minds’ who have dabbled in the ‘deep rifts’:
1. Daniel C. Dennett
2. Jerry Coyne
Does this mean that Michael Nugent should be getting his call to join the ‘great minds’ pretty soon? Because, we know that great minds
think alikestick together.