Thunderf00t's unauthorized access and leaking of the private FTB mailing list

Recently, the Freethought Blogs staff received evidence indicating that some conversations from the private mailing list for FTB bloggers had apparently been leaked to outside parties by Thunderf00t. These conversations had taken place on the list over a month after Thunderf00t had been removed from Freethought Blogs and the private mailing list. Upon examination of the mailing list logs, it was found that Thunderf00t had seemingly been able to regain access to the list immediately after he was removed. Once this was known, he was removed again and prevented from joining. After this, he allegedly repeatedly attempted to re-join the list without success.

By the time we became aware of the breach, Thunderf00t had apparently been able to access all of the dozens of conversations that had taken place on the private list over the past month, during which time his access was believed to be revoked. This material contained the private real-life identities and personal information of a number of FTB contributors, as well as various behind-the-scenes matters that could have serious adverse effects if they became public knowledge.

The mailing list has always been intended to be private. Every message posted to the list contain this notification: “All emails sent to this list are confidential and private. Revealing information contained in any email sent to the list to anyone not on the list without permission of the author is strictly prohibited.” FTB’s bloggers use the list under the assumption that its contents will not be made public or read by unwelcome parties. If you’ve ever had a conversation in the privacy of your own home which you did not want to become public knowledge, Thunderf00t’s actions are the equivalent of eavesdropping and telling others what you’ve said. And if you can understand the risks inherent to such snooping, you can understand the risks to us – as well as the sense of violation. We’ve now been deprived of control over discussions that were not meant to go beyond a limited group of chosen, trusted individuals.

People have the right to maintain their own private discussion areas, and control who is allowed access to them. This holds true regardless of our personal stance on any other subjects, such as sexual harassment, women in the skeptical movement, the handling of Thunderf00t’s brief stay at FTB, or FTB’s various contributors. The need to hold private conversations is entirely legitimate, and respecting that privacy is a ground rule. Thunderf00t appears to have violated this egregiously, and his actions simply aren’t justifiable. If disagreement on certain topics warrants breaching the privacy of those you disagree with and publicizing their confidential information, the possibility of any kind of good-faith discussion simply vanishes.

Thunderf00t’s alleged actions in this situation are inexcusable under any reasonable standard of ethical behavior, no matter what his motivations are. The limits to the damage he’s now possibly able to do to members of this community, should he attempt to do so, are unknown. Rarely have I seen such outrageous conduct by anyone on YouTube or in the atheist and skeptic community, and he was one of the last people I would have expected to do this. To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. It’s infuriating that anyone would dare to be so disrespectful and reckless.

Thunderf00t's unauthorized access and leaking of the private FTB mailing list
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And now I'm on the Godless Business podcast

So, I recently had the privilege of being invited onto the 50th episode of the Godless Business podcast with Andrew Skegg. The topics we covered during the hour include my personal religious history, Mormonism, being transgender, my YouTube fans and foes, Mike Huckabee and Chick-fil-A, anti-gay boycotts, the importance of gay pride parades, marriage in religion and civil law, the difference between marriage and civil unions, and the effect of the contraception mandate on employers. Have a listen if you’ve got the time!

And now I'm on the Godless Business podcast

And now I’m on the Godless Business podcast

So, I recently had the privilege of being invited onto the 50th episode of the Godless Business podcast with Andrew Skegg. The topics we covered during the hour include my personal religious history, Mormonism, being transgender, my YouTube fans and foes, Mike Huckabee and Chick-fil-A, anti-gay boycotts, the importance of gay pride parades, marriage in religion and civil law, the difference between marriage and civil unions, and the effect of the contraception mandate on employers. Have a listen if you’ve got the time!

And now I’m on the Godless Business podcast

What are you afraid of?

Last week, I blogged about Christian Post writer Matt Moore, a self-described “redeemed sinner” who posted an open letter to gay youth proclaiming that Jesus would save them from a life of drinking, drugs and meaningless sex. As I’m sure you would expect, I found his goals misguided and his metaphysics incoherent. In response, one of my readers left a comment saying:

Why are people so threatened by Matt Moore’s experience? Because it takes away their excuse to continue to sin? If Matt can be set free from sin and God is real and homosexuality is sin, then it makes them wrong and no one wants have to admit that they are wrong and sinful. Is it easier to mock than face the possibility that Matt may be right? Could it be possible that you are wrong?

This may be the falsest false dichotomy I’ve ever witnessed. It seems this person believes the chance of that entire bundle of claims being true is high enough to warrant serious consideration, and they present it as though this is the only other option, rather than a conglomeration that becomes increasingly unlikely as a whole with every new claim that’s added on. But even if Matt Moore’s experiences contain some element of truth, this still doesn’t demonstrate that any of these other things are real.

While Moore might just be a religious huckster or opportunist, it’s also entirely possible that he genuinely believes being gay means a life devoid of true happiness, and he feels that God personally called him to stop having relationships with men. It could be that his life was indeed terrible, and that his religious beliefs have helped him to become happier and more fulfilled as an individual – unlikely as it may seem.

All of this might be the case, but none of it tells us anything about the validity of various supernatural and theological concepts. Moore’s religious feelings and life experiences do not mean that the idea of “sin” is actually a real thing, or something that ever had any bearing on him. It does not mean that this “sin” is something he was “set free” from, or that it is something that anyone can be set free from. It doesn’t mean that “sin”, whatever it is, has these particular dynamics at all. And it doesn’t mean that being gay constitutes one of these “sins”.

It doesn’t show how the designation of “sin” would relate to any structure of morality. It doesn’t tell us what the consequences are of this “sin”. It doesn’t say why this is something for us to avoid. It also doesn’t mean that any deities really do exist. It doesn’t mean the specific, Judeo-Christian deity named “God” exists. And it doesn’t mean this God is actually capable of “freeing” us from our supposed “sin”.

That’s a whole lot of completely unsupported assumptions packed into just a few sentences. And the idea that we would find this the least bit “threatening” further assumes that we’re just as ignorant as they are. Would they accept the testimony of a supposedly “ex-gay” Muslim as evidence in favor of a specific interpretation of Islamic doctrine and theology? It seems highly doubtful. So why would they think there’s any reason to treat one Christian’s feelings as credible evidence of claims like “God is real” and “homosexuality is sin”?

And atop this logical house of cards, they rest the accusation that we must be seeking an “excuse to continue to sin”, which Moore’s experiences allegedly deprive us of. But for it to be the case that our criticism of his writings is only a cover for our pursuit of a justification to “sin”, we would first have to accept all of the underlying assumptions that are required for the concept of an “excuse to continue to sin” to be meaningful. I certainly don’t. So why would I think I needed any sort of excuse to keep doing something I don’t believe is wrong?

As Megan McArdle said, “It is a vast, and pervasive, cognitive mistake to assume that people who agree with you (or disagree) do so on the same criteria that you care about.” And our Human Conjunction Fallacy here seems to believe the rest of us also suspect that the “God exists, gays are sinning” scenario could actually be true. In their estimation, we consider this probable enough to be scared by the possibility, but instead of accepting its ramifications, we’ve just chosen to stick our heads in the sand.

What they’ve failed to recognize is that we’re not just on the other side of the fence here. We’re actually worlds apart in our beliefs. They think we’re talking on the same level as they are, but they’ve made the mistake of assuming that the entirety of their personal theology is accepted by everyone. It’s rather like believing that those who don’t follow your god must be worshipping the devil. They really don’t understand just how much of this we truly don’t believe. That’s why they expected that out of all the possible sequences of supernatural claims, we would somehow be especially worried about this one.

If anyone is feeling “threatened” here, it’s probably the one who refuses to face the fact that their favorite god is neither loved nor feared by us, but completely absent from the equation. We see their god as no more of a cosmic danger to us than the gods of any other faith, and thus not a relevant factor in our lives. And because of us, they have to contend with the reality that there are people out there who aren’t just selfishly denying a god they know in their hearts to be real, but who honestly see no reason to believe this. Is that so threatening? It shouldn’t be, but I guess it’s easier to ignore the possibility that you might be wrong.

What are you afraid of?

Gotta disagree with you here, thunderf00t

Hi, thunderf00t. I understand that you see Freethought Blogs as unrepresentative of the wider skeptical community in terms of its views on the problem of sexism in said community. That could indeed be the case, by whatever definition you use for FTB and the community at large (who’s included? who’s excluded? are we only counting the bloggers themselves, or also the commenters? and so on) and methods you use to quantify their stances on a given issue. But I don’t think your latest YouTube-based survey succeeds in demonstrating this.

You asked your YouTube subscribers whether they agree more with your initial post on sexual harassment, or with PZ Myers’ response, and requested that they rank their position on the question from 0 to 10 – 0 for full agreement with PZ, and 10 for full agreement with you. Out of 127 respondents, most agreed with you strongly. You took this as evidence that the views of Freethought Blogs in general are “widely unrepresentative of the wider rationalist community” on the issue of sexism.

I don’t believe the results of your poll are actually evidence of that. You claimed that “this puts FTB on a trajectory to be more of a fringe group that is intolerant of non-conformity”. However, the respondents to your video were a self-selected sample. The people who watch your videos tend to be… people who watch your videos. And out of those people, the ones who responded are the ones who take the time to listen all the way through your videos, and decided to leave a comment. This can be expected to skew toward agreement with you.

I would expect similar results in my favor if I polled my subscribers on whether they agreed more with me, or with someone I was currently having a dispute with. My viewers choose to watch my videos because they tend to agree with me, and this would be reflected in the results. While I certainly expect that my viewers are all perfectly rational and able to consider any issue fairly, accurately and even-handedly, this obviously isn’t always the case in reality. I assume the same holds true for your viewers as well.

While your survey does show that some people dissent from PZ’s stance on the issue, this doesn’t actually mean that his views are unrepresentative of the wider skeptical community. It’s possible that they could be, but your poll isn’t particularly strong evidence of this. It also doesn’t mean that the views of your respondents are representative of the skeptical community. FTB could be “fringe” in terms of its collective stance on the issue, but so could your respondents. Your survey doesn’t give us reason to think either of these possibilities is more likely than the other, because there are no grounds to assume that your viewers are representative of the community as a whole, however you choose to define it. And your policy that “The thunderf00t channel is essentially a 100 % free speech zone, with no conformational bias due to blocking/ banning people”, though admirable (and one I share), is simply not enough to ensure this. Even if PZ’s views “are widely unrepresentative of the wider rationalist community”, your latest post doesn’t show this.

Gotta disagree with you here, thunderf00t

Filling in each other's blanks: The importance of listening

Why do we talk to people? Why do we bother to watch other people’s videos and read each other’s blogs? Why do we keep up with our friends, find new people to follow on Facebook, and converse with others in comment sections? Why do we take the time to connect with people? Certainly we may enjoy their company and find pleasure in talking to them, but we also do it as a way of making ourselves more complete as individuals. We learn things from other people, because they provide us with information that we might have missed.

Most of us make an effort to engage in reasoned and logical thought to the best of our ability, but our personal best is surely not the best. None of us is a self-contained generator of perfectly accurate knowledge. An individual person isn’t able to devise theories, models, explanations and predictions which are forever unassailable. We use the facts and the mental prowess that are available to us, but every one of us is inevitably lacking in certain respects. A single person doesn’t know everything, and in our personal understanding of a given situation, there may be aspects that we’ve neglected to account for.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously described “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”. In the case of a known unknown, we know that there is an open question that needs to be resolved, but we may not have the information necessary to answer it. An unknown unknown, however, is an issue that we aren’t even aware of. We don’t know enough to know that the question exists. The matter of what its answer may be is something that’s entirely overlooked, because we aren’t aware that there is an answer or that an answer is needed. With known unknowns, we at least know what kind of answer we need to look for. But with unknown unknowns, we have no idea of what it is we’re looking for, or even that we should be looking for anything.

This is where other people come in. We may have our own unknown unknowns – facts that we weren’t aware of, or lines of reasoning that we failed to imagine or properly work through. Other people can provide these to us, essentially filling in our blank spots. Our own thought processes might be compromised by a less than thorough grasp of everything that’s related to the topic at hand, and others may have a better understanding of this than we do. We can only take into account what we know to take into account, whereas other people can tell us about things we hadn’t even considered.

This is the defining feature I’ve found in the people I talk to and whose work I keep up with. They have insights that are obvious in retrospect, but I still couldn’t have come up with them on my own. They contribute to my understanding of things in ways that I might not have stumbled across if I had only kept to myself.

That’s what makes it so important to listen to people who have had experiences that you haven’t. For instance, some men doubt the very possibility that sexual harassment at atheist and skeptic conferences is a serious issue, because they haven’t personally witnessed it or been subjected to it. The experience of feeling threatened by the behavior of men in such a context may be completely alien to them. But when several high-profile atheist women tell you that this is indeed a problem that isn’t being adequately addressed, your own unfamiliarity in this area is no reason to disregard their familiarity. Listening to them will provide you with a better understanding of the situation than ignoring them. They have exactly what you need to fill in one of your blank spots.

Similarly, when the Center for Inquiry’s Ontario branch proposed dressing in drag to support transgender people, they genuinely didn’t understand why this would be offensive. But because they were willing to listen to everyone who explained why this was a bad idea, they eventually came to realize that they shouldn’t go ahead with this.

Ultimately, this is just a very detailed way of saying that we can benefit by learning from each other, but it seems that far too many people are either unaware of this, or don’t care to listen to anyone but themselves. It shouldn’t be difficult to recognize that other people can have useful and relevant contributions as well, and your personal view of a situation isn’t necessarily the final word on it. We each have an incomplete picture of how things work, but by putting each of our respective pieces together, we can build a more thorough understanding of reality.

Filling in each other's blanks: The importance of listening

Filling in each other’s blanks: The importance of listening

Why do we talk to people? Why do we bother to watch other people’s videos and read each other’s blogs? Why do we keep up with our friends, find new people to follow on Facebook, and converse with others in comment sections? Why do we take the time to connect with people? Certainly we may enjoy their company and find pleasure in talking to them, but we also do it as a way of making ourselves more complete as individuals. We learn things from other people, because they provide us with information that we might have missed.

Most of us make an effort to engage in reasoned and logical thought to the best of our ability, but our personal best is surely not the best. None of us is a self-contained generator of perfectly accurate knowledge. An individual person isn’t able to devise theories, models, explanations and predictions which are forever unassailable. We use the facts and the mental prowess that are available to us, but every one of us is inevitably lacking in certain respects. A single person doesn’t know everything, and in our personal understanding of a given situation, there may be aspects that we’ve neglected to account for.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously described “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”. In the case of a known unknown, we know that there is an open question that needs to be resolved, but we may not have the information necessary to answer it. An unknown unknown, however, is an issue that we aren’t even aware of. We don’t know enough to know that the question exists. The matter of what its answer may be is something that’s entirely overlooked, because we aren’t aware that there is an answer or that an answer is needed. With known unknowns, we at least know what kind of answer we need to look for. But with unknown unknowns, we have no idea of what it is we’re looking for, or even that we should be looking for anything.

This is where other people come in. We may have our own unknown unknowns – facts that we weren’t aware of, or lines of reasoning that we failed to imagine or properly work through. Other people can provide these to us, essentially filling in our blank spots. Our own thought processes might be compromised by a less than thorough grasp of everything that’s related to the topic at hand, and others may have a better understanding of this than we do. We can only take into account what we know to take into account, whereas other people can tell us about things we hadn’t even considered.

This is the defining feature I’ve found in the people I talk to and whose work I keep up with. They have insights that are obvious in retrospect, but I still couldn’t have come up with them on my own. They contribute to my understanding of things in ways that I might not have stumbled across if I had only kept to myself.

That’s what makes it so important to listen to people who have had experiences that you haven’t. For instance, some men doubt the very possibility that sexual harassment at atheist and skeptic conferences is a serious issue, because they haven’t personally witnessed it or been subjected to it. The experience of feeling threatened by the behavior of men in such a context may be completely alien to them. But when several high-profile atheist women tell you that this is indeed a problem that isn’t being adequately addressed, your own unfamiliarity in this area is no reason to disregard their familiarity. Listening to them will provide you with a better understanding of the situation than ignoring them. They have exactly what you need to fill in one of your blank spots.

Similarly, when the Center for Inquiry’s Ontario branch proposed dressing in drag to support transgender people, they genuinely didn’t understand why this would be offensive. But because they were willing to listen to everyone who explained why this was a bad idea, they eventually came to realize that they shouldn’t go ahead with this.

Ultimately, this is just a very detailed way of saying that we can benefit by learning from each other, but it seems that far too many people are either unaware of this, or don’t care to listen to anyone but themselves. It shouldn’t be difficult to recognize that other people can have useful and relevant contributions as well, and your personal view of a situation isn’t necessarily the final word on it. We each have an incomplete picture of how things work, but by putting each of our respective pieces together, we can build a more thorough understanding of reality.

Filling in each other’s blanks: The importance of listening

One question for Leah Libresco

(Skip to here for the question.)

My initial reaction to former atheist Leah Libresco (Unequally Yoked) converting to Roman Catholicism was one of anger and hurt. I was confused and dismayed that an atheist could in good conscience choose to join an institution with such deeply disrespectful views on women’s rights and LGBT equality, especially while offering little explanation of why they would select that religion in particular.

While that was all I wished to express at the time, I recognize that this does not necessarily constitute an argument against Catholicism’s basic tenets. If the existence of a god, the divinity and resurrection of the historical Jesus, and the Catholic Church’s unique status as the one legitimate earthly representative of Christ were actually true, then any institutional misconduct or moral error on the part of the Church would not negate these facts. The question of whether it’s ethical to affiliate oneself with the Church in its present form, which I chose to focus on, is largely separate from the question of whether these fundamental beliefs are accurate. It does not necessarily follow that believing these things are true means that one must therefore participate in the Catholic Church. It should be entirely possible to hold these tenets to be true, while finding the Church in practice to be undeserving of one’s membership.

Conversely, being an adherent of Catholicism does not require that one must agree with every detail of the various Catholic doctrines, and many Catholics don’t. A significant portion of the Church’s lay members support marriage equality, abortion rights, the use of birth control, and hold other views that are contrary to the Church’s official stances. In practice, it is wholly possible to be a part of the Catholic Church while dissenting from its more retrograde positions (though some atheists and devout Catholics often contend that one’s Catholic faith must be all-or-nothing). Libresco herself seems to acknowledge this to some extent, saying:

I think the Catholic Church has, at it’s heart, the right axioms, but that its small-c conservative structure means it takes a really long time to update the applications of those principles as new data emerges.

Of course, the tendency toward selectivity once again raises the question of why someone would join the Church, and how much they would have to agree or disagree with it before joining or leaving. The answer most likely depends on the individual (former) Catholic, and their reasons may not even be rooted in any (dis)agreement with its doctrines. As Chris Hallquist points out, conversion tends to be highly influenced by personal relationships, and not necessarily an explicit reasoning process. Consequently, any justifications offered by converts may simply be after-the-fact rationalizations, which would help explain why their stated reasons for converting often seem so flimsy.

But regardless of whether this is the case, such Bulverizing doesn’t address a position itself, only the possible reasons why someone may hold that position. Many people’s beliefs, both religious and secular, may be motivated by non-rational considerations, but we subject them to critical scrutiny anyway. As Libresco has often said, more or less, challenging someone’s views is actually quite respectful toward them and shows that you believe they care about the truth. Adam Lee of Daylight Atheism has already posed most of the questions I would have asked, chiefly pertaining to how the vague articulation of morality as a personified being leads to accepting the specific tenets of Catholicism, so I won’t repeat those here. I really only have one question.  

Leah, in your recent interview with The Blaze, you addressed any potential conflict between your bisexuality and the Church’s teachings by stating that despite your uncertainty about its stance on homosexuality, you were “willing to not date women in the meantime”. To what extent are you willing to abide by the doctrines of the church even when you disagree or don’t fully understand their rationale?

You described bisexuality, for you personally, as “gender feels about as salient to me as hair color when it comes to looking for dates”, concluding that “I don’t find it much more of a privation to not date women than to not date redheads”. While I’m not privy to your inner thoughts and inclinations, and other bisexuals may define their sexuality differently, I believe your depiction of bisexuality minimizes and disguises the actual significance of the restriction you’ve accepted for yourself here.

While you acknowledge that other gay and bisexual people may “care more about gender” than you do and you don’t intend to advise them on how they live their lives, the constraint that you’ve placed upon yourself could be much more substantial than you make it out to be, even under your personal model of what bisexuality means for you. If you regard gender as almost completely irrelevant when considering potential partners, then it’s entirely possible that you’ll find someone who you have an intense personal connection with, someone who seems to be a nearly perfect fit for you and is also interested in being your partner. But if that person is of the same sex, then the moral code you’ve provisionally accepted will prohibit you from pursuing a relationship with them, for no reason other than because they are of the same sex as you. This makes their sex relevant, just as hair color would become relevant if you were interested in a redhead but your religion forbade you from dating them. The only way that this would not constitute a privation is if you actually consider individuals to be completely fungible, and the exclusion of one person who might otherwise make an excellent partner means nothing to you. I suspect most people do not approach personal relationships in such a way.

You explained that “I’m keeping my behavior inside Church teaching, but my voice and arguments are unrestrained.” In this area, you’ve shown that you’re prepared to live in accordance with dictates that you don’t actually agree with – even when they may impose a significant hardship upon you – simply because the Church says so. Again, how far are you prepared to go? If you are willing to place your own moral judgment above that of the Church in some cases, such as your support for civil marriage equality, then why would you agree to refrain from same-sex relationships unless you personally believe that there may be a valid moral argument against them? And if you are not willing to place your own moral judgment above that of the Church, as demonstrated by your choice to forgo same-sex relationships, then why wouldn’t you join in on a campaign against civil gay marriage in spite of your personal disagreement if your local diocese deems it necessary?

It seems that no matter how vocal your arguments may be, you’ve ultimately chosen to subjugate your actions to Church teaching. Where does your obedience to the Church end, if anywhere?

One question for Leah Libresco