Atheism is an essential part of skepticism

Daniel Loxton is an annoying fellow. He does good work for the skeptic movement, and he’s got an excellent record of working for the cause, but he’s also prone to flop into simpering, pandering mode at the first sign someone disagrees with him (not in my case, though, but then I’m particularly annoying myself). This time, what prompts my mixed feelings is his summary of the diversity panel at TAM. This was a panel moderated by Desiree Schell, and containing a group of people who actually were diverse: D.J. Grothe, Debbie Goddard, Greta Christina, Jamila Bey, and Hemant Mehta. It’s a sign of good things in the skeptic movement that we did actually have some different backgrounds represented on a prominent panel, and not a collection of old white guys.

This has long been an issue with the skeptical movement. I used to subscribe to the Skeptical Inquirer, a very good magazine with well-written and substantive articles on skeptical issues, but I let my subscription lapse. It was a strange thing that prompted it; several years ago, there was an issue lauding the leaders of the skeptical movement, and it had a nice line drawing of four or five of these Big Names on the cover: and every one was white, male, and over 70 years old. I looked at it, and I wasn’t mad or outraged — every one of them was a smart guy who deserved recognition — but I saw it, sighed, and felt that not only was this incredibly boring, but that organized skepticism was dead if it was going to turn into a gerontocracy. I didn’t let my subscription lapse in protest, but out of lack of motivation.

So I attended that panel enthusiastically — it represented a growing, positive pattern of change where we would actually see young people, brown people, gay people, and female people identifying with this movement and expressing themselves. Daniel Loxton was not so enthused.

While billed as a discussion of “Diversity in Skepticism,” the panel—featuring D.J. Grothe, Debbie Goddard, Greta Christina, Jamila Bey, Hemant Mehta, and moderated by Desiree Schell—actually drew spokespeople from several related but distinct movements. For this reason, I’ll confess that my hopes were not high. There can be deep, serious, and sometimes poorly-articulated philosophical differences between activists for skepticism, atheism, secularism, and humanism, and these differences can badly derail conversations. (At the same time, all of the panelists were personally atheists of one stripe or another, raising the opposite specter: undue uniformity.)

Whenever I see one of the big voices in the skeptical establishment pontificating about “poorly-articulated philosophical differences”, I just know we’re about to get a load of rationalizations for not changing, remaining stodgy and conservative and boring, and repudiating progressive differences in opinion. Loxton is no exception. And when I hear them complaining about all these atheists, a refrain that has been very common in the last few years, my grumpiness gland starts secreting voluminous quantities of bile.

Jebus, Loxton, would you be complaining about uniformity if they were all skeptics? Hey, maybe we need a token psychic, or ufo nut, or climate change denier, or creationist on the panel. You’re on the wrong side of history if you’re going to start whining about the high frequency of atheists in the skeptical population, because that value is just going to go up and up. Just going by the odds, you’re going to find more panels filled to the brim with atheists, and the only ones that might include the odd theist will be panels that don’t actually demand a thorough commitment to, you know, skepticism. I don’t believe in excluding theists — and I’ve said so — but when we get down to putting our ideas on the table for discussion, virgin-born zombies who do magic tricks aren’t going to hold up very well.

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