What’s the harm of “Mission Drift”?

Greta Christina has a good post up about the common defense against broadening the approach of an organization, the plaintive whine against “mission drift”. I’ve never quite grasped the point: if you’re a largely volunteer organization with only a minimal paid organizational structure, as is true for most skeptic and atheist organizations, it’s relatively painless to adapt to meet the desires of your membership — in fact, it ought to be considered necessary to do so.

If you’ve got a significant subset of your membership who are saying they’re really interested in, say, the application of atheism to interior decorating, you might be wondering what the heck that has to do with your ideal of what atheism ought to do, and you might have zero interest in interior decorating yourself, but you should pay attention: somehow these self-selected atheists who are already willing and enthusiastic members of your constituency see a connection. Your apathy is irrelevant; their enthusiasm matters.

Instead of announcing that interior decorating has nothing to do with atheism and your vision will not be sullied with this strange sideshow, you should instead be interested in seeing where this unexpected connection might lead. Tell them, “Cool — let’s form a committee of interested members, and maybe you can pursue this subject further under the umbrella of our larger organization.” It doesn’t mean atheism has been sabotaged, it means it has an avenue for tapping new and interesting ideas.

I’ve given a talk before where I’ve pointed to the American Humanist Association as a model for expanding these interests. Go down to the bottom of that page and look at the row of icons there: they’ve formed special interest groups for legal issues, a feminist caucus, an LGBT council, even a cinema section. It’s an embrace and sponsor approach that really works well to foster greater inclusion and widen the appeal of the movement.

Contrast that with the skeptics: instead, we get representatives angrily shouting at atheists who dare to taint their movement, which has one focus, one methodology, one pure strategy. They could have set up an Atheist SIG (or a Cryptozoology SIG, or Interior Decorating SIG, whatever) within skepticism, coopted that subset of skeptics while simultaneously keeping the overall organization independent of the narrower interests, and grown their movement. As far as I’m concerned, it’s too late for them…maybe an atheist organization will be interested in setting up a skeptics subgroup that will be a happier place for godless critical thinkers.

I see Atheism+ as being part of the same principle: recognizing that not every atheist will be interested in social justice issues, but for those who are…here’s an outlet and a focus for those concerns.

Use mission drift, people! Don’t oppose it, channel it!

Say it ain’t so, Genie!

Eugenie Scott is planning to retire from the NCSE. This is not possible. There is no one fit to replace her!

Although…perhaps I should apply for the job. I looked at the qualifications, and it was like looking in a mirror, man — especially that last bit about “the ability to work effectively and diplomatically with diverse communities and allies”. It sounds just like me, right, gang? I should go for it.

Look here, we’re like clones of each other! If I can so perfectly emulate her lecturing gestures, there’s no reason to assume I won’t be as great at the rest.

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<quick cut to directors of the NCSE, all looking horrified…then scrambling to find more inducements to Genie to keep her on>

Christian de Duve has died

Christian de Duve won the Nobel prize in 1974 (along with Claude and Palade) for his work on the biochemistry of the cell. He also wrote several books on the origin and evolution of life. Here he is speaking at the Lindau meetings a few years ago.

Christian de Duve is now dead at 95, by euthanasia.

“It would be an exaggeration to say I’m not afraid of death, but I’m not afraid of what comes after because I’m not a believer. When I disappear I will disappear, there’ll be nothing left,” he told the Belgian daily Le Soir just a month ago.

De Duve had decided to commit euthanasia after suffering a fall in his home but was awaiting the arrival of his son from the United States in early May in order to die surrounded by family.

“He left us serenely and refused to take anti-anxiety pills before the final injection. He left with a smile and a good-bye,” his daughter Francoise told Le Soir.

What a dignified and honorable way to go!

How about if we all end the killing?

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One point! One demand! Atheists must be hanged!

Half a million Islamists marched in Bangladesh, chanting their desire to murder people who don’t believe in their demented, angry god. I take that personally — they want to kill people like me, for the crime of not thinking as they do. If I’d been there, that mob would have torn me to pieces.

And it’s not just atheists they hate. Women must live in service to the men, they are to have their rights diminished. Education is to be crippled, reduced to rote memorization of their holy books. This is awful, poisonous stuff, and I condemn it without reservation.

But let me remind you, the United States has been carrying out routine drone attacks against Muslims…attacks that kill children.

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So angry mobs threaten and howl and promise to roll their culture back to the Middle Ages. Americans calmly sit in air-conditioned rooms and push buttons and joysticks and send robots through the skies to pour death on civilians. Obama calmly rationalizes the murders and cracks jokes about predator drones.

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The rules outside of the United States are going to be different than the rules inside of the United States.

One side wants to kill people like me, is furious and destructive, and rages passionately about killing the Other; the other side wants to kill people outside our borders, is calm and dispassionate, and marshals machines to execute the Other without risk to ourselves.

I cannot condemn one without condemning the other. Especially since our tactics seem to be so much more effective at butchering people.

Confession time: dental hygiene edition

In comments on PZ’s “divorce” post, Antiochus Epiphanes sez:

Skepticism™ the movement and skepticism, the practice of thinking critically, shouldn’t be conflated. The latter is no great intellectual achievement and should be in the skill set of grade schoolers. That it isn’t may be the motivation of the former, but we shouldn’t expect any intellectual advances to emerge from the movement, because what it’s doing is necessarily remedial.

I wholeheartedly agree with the above, and a couple years ago it struck me that skepticism (small-‘s’) is essentially a form of basic intellectual hygiene, something that everyone is capable of to varying degrees and something that everyone should do.

“Kind of like brushing your teeth,” it occurred to me back then, and ever since I’ve quietly replaced references to Skepticism Writ Large with “Tooth Brushing” in my mind.

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Don’t forget to keep those deep rifts flossed

Though it might seem to trivialize skepticism to compare it to brushing your teeth, that’s not at all what I intend. Brushing your teeth is incredibly important. Most people don’t do it diligently enough, and when they do many of them get it wrong. Failing to engage in proper dental hygiene can shorten your life significantly — not only can bad teeth consign you to somewhat less healthy diets, but gum disease and heart disease have been conclusively linked. And not brushing your teeth has certain social ramifications too, not to mention a likely legacy of personal discomfort.

So dental hygiene is crucial for proper health, and while we can rely on experts for some advanced treatment the responsibility is on each and every one of us to take responsibility for our own teeth.

Skepticism is to the intellect as brushing is to teeth. Sometimes we need expert assistance, but the only way it really does us any long term good is if we engage in the practice of mental hygiene as a  habit, preferably after each bout of consuming something that might cause problems down the road, whether it’s a bag of chips or an article in the New York Toast.

As A.E. says in the above-blockquoted blockquote, that’s pretty basic stuff. We really ought to learn the basics of each at around the same time in our lives. Basic doesn’t mean unimportant, as I’ve said, and there’s nothing at all wrong with devoting a substantial portion of your life campaigning to educate people who aren’t quite where they should be in their hygienic practice. People concerned with better tooth-brushing have associations and conventions. They devote a lot of time to the topic, some of it paid (and likely quite well, depending on location) but some of it on a volunteer basis spurred by their personal commitment. Again, much like skepticism.

But I’m not aware of too many people who describe themselves as “toothbrushers.” Dental hygiene seems to be something that even its most fervent advocates do, not something that they are. There seem to be no videos on YouTube by users with names like W0ndert00th decrying other Toothbrushers for getting Toothbrushing wrong, diluting Pure Toothbrushing, or threatening to destroy the Toothbrushing Movement.

It’s a trivial exercise coming up with ways in which the practice of skepticism is important in daily life. People who work in the sciences constitute one large, obvious example. As someone who writes about environmental issues and is beset by not only the whole chemtrail and HAARP crowd but also non-comprehension of basic math and science, skepticism is something I find opportunities to use every hour of my life. The same was true when I worked as a landscaper and as an (accidental) IT person. Directed at my own feelings and motivations, it’s helpful in getting through troubles in interpersonal relationships. It helps keep me from buying sugar pills when I have a cold. It’s crucial practice.

But I have to confess that for the last couple of years, every time I hear someone announce that they’re A Skeptic™ as though no further explication is necessary, this is how my brain parses that. Tell me what you actually do with your skepticism, and I may well be really interested. But claiming that the practice itself is enough to define you? Call me skeptical.

I met Ray Comfort tonight

He asked to interview me for a documentary he’s doing. I agreed because I knew exactly what he was going to ask me…and I was right, there were no surprises at all.

He started by asking me for evidence of evolution. I tried to explain the evidence for speciation in sticklebacks, but he asked if they were still fish, and when I said they were, he said that didn’t count because they didn’t become a different “kind”, like a dog becoming a cat. So I told him that doesn’t happen in a single lifetime, and that carnivores diverged over 60 million years ago. I suggested he look at fossils, but he rejected that, because he wanted “observable” evidence, and anything that happened millions of years ago isn’t observable. So I said it was, too — fossils and molecular evidence are observable.

So the usual creationist run-around, where he defines what evidence he’d find acceptable by rejecting historical evidence as nonexistent, and contemporary evidence as too trivial.

Then he tried the usual stunt: “Are you a good person?” “Yes.” “Have you ever told a lie?” “Yes, but that a person has flaws doesn’t make them a bad person. The overall estimation of an individual’s character is not determined by one mistake.” And then he dropped the whole line of discussion.

It was as pointless as I expected. I think I managed to frustrate his usual line of patter, which was the best I could hope for anyway.

Hey, lots of people were taking pictures of the two of us. Send them to me, so I have a memento!

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That’s Jessica Ahlquist dueling Margaret Downey with a banana in the foreground; the far less interesting event in the background is Ray Comfort asking me about evolution. (Photo by Kent Martin.)

Also, some of you in the comments are psychic. Yes, I mentioned Lenski’s experiment to him: “they’re still just bacteria”. I also explained to him that “just a fish” is meaningless, that we humans are derived fish. He thought that was all weird.

Another photo!

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I officially divorce myself from the skeptic movement

Thanks, Jamy Ian Swiss, you’ve opened my eyes and I will no longer consider myself a “skeptic”. I am a scientist, and from the talk he gave tonight (which was pretty much exactly the same as his TAM talk, except for the additions where he called me stupid and a liar), it is clear that “scientific skepticism” is simply a crippled, buggered version of science with special exemptions to set certain subjects outside the bounds of its purview. In addition, its promoters are particularly sensitive to having their hypocrisy pointed out (that, by the way, is what triggered his outburst — you’d have to be stupid or a liar to think that skepticism gives religion special privileges.)

But what else can you call this logic? Skepticism has no sacred cows! Except that skepticism only addresses “testable claims”. By the way, the existence of gods is not a testable claim.

That’s a pretty explicit loophole by definition.

I was also annoyed by the skeptic movement’s appropriation of the term “scientific” all over the place…except that it’s a “science” that doesn’t make use of accumulated prior knowledge, that abandons the concept of the null hypothesis, and that so narrowly defines what it will accept as evidence that it actively excludes huge domains of knowledge. It’s toothless science that fetishizes “consumer protection” over understanding.

So don’t call me a “skeptic”. I’ll consider it an insult, like calling a writer a stenographer, a comedian a mime, a doctor a faith healer, a scientist a technician. I’m out.

It was an incredibly repellent talk that was not improved in the past year, but only made uglier and more grotesque. He ignored all of my previous criticisms, answering them only by yelling louder. I coulda gagged at the end when he piously announced we all ought to be fighting together for the cause of reason…after an hour of caricaturing atheists as ignorant and smug posturing of “scientific skepticism” as the great good virtue.

Earlier tonight I spent 15 minutes getting interviewed by Ray Comfort. That was a far more pleasant experience than an hour of listening to Jamy Ian Swiss.

Bleh. And then the hotel bar was closed early.