There is a private meeting of the people who are ‘running’ the movement side of atheism; it’s called “Heads”, which sort of tells you what it is about. It’s the leaders of the various disparate groups that make up the movement. You might wonder what goes on there (I’m not and never have been part of it). Much of it seems to be about silencing the people who might drive change.
The structure of this year’s meeting changed after women voiced their opinions and concerns at last year’s meeting. Some of those opinions were unpopular and unwelcome, and during the meeting, the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Secular Coalition of America requested that the next meeting be available only to member organizations of SCA. SCA ran this year’s meeting, and the change was made, excluding Secular Woman and other smaller organizations.
People continue to write “where are the women” pieces about the secular movement after years of work to make us more inclusive. Women enter this movement, then leave with stories of being talked over, silenced, and valued for their bodies over their voices. As #MeToo continues to gather momentum, the leaders of this movement have changed the rules to specifically exclude Secular Woman, the only secular organization which focuses on the concerns and voices of women.
That’s right, the powers-that-be took action to exclude innovators and representatives of new ideas. You must be a member of their in-group to participate now. Perhaps you’re wondering who runs the show behind the scenes in the atheist “movement”. Here’s that advisory board.
Woody Kaplan – chair
Robert Boston – writer and spokesperson on the Religious Right and First Amendment issues
Richard Dawkins, D.Sc., FRS – evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University
Daniel Dennett, D.Phil. – philosopher whose research intersects with cognitive science and evolutionary biology
Rebecca Goldstein, Ph.D. – author and philosopher
Sam Harris, Ph.D. – author, neuroscientist, and CEO of Project Reason
Jeff Hawkins – entrepreneur and inventor
Wendy Kaminer – author and social critic on civil liberties, religion and popular culture
Michael Newdow, M.D. – attorney, medical doctor and litigant in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow which attempted to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance
Dan Okrent – author, best known for having served as the first public editor of the New York Times.
Steven Pinker, Ph.D. – psychologist, writer and Humanist Laureate
Salman Rushdie – novelist
Hon. Fortney “Pete” Stark – The first openly nontheistic member of the United States House of Representatives (1973 to 2013)
Todd Stiefel – founder and president of the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.
Julia Sweeney – actor best known for her androgynous character Pat on “Saturday Night Live” and her critically acclaimed one-woman monologue, “Letting Go of God.”
Doug White – a long-time leader in the nation’s philanthropic community, is an author, teacher, and an advisor to nonprofit organizations and philanthropists.
Some of them are all right. But way too many of them are, at best, defenders of the status quo, and at worst, representative of the nastier elements of atheism. Old boss, same as the new boss. And we probably will be fooled again, dammit.
I wasn’t wondering. Seriously, I wasn’t.
Speaking of Sam Harris, apparently there is an event happening with him “vs.” Jordan Peterson.
I’d go, but I’ll be too busy that night pouring bleach into my ears.
Is this anything like The Global Secular Council?
Three horsemen and/or bloated HEADS with books and podcasts. Inertial.
Several woman. Goldstein seems interesting. Saw her on several segments of Closer to Truth. Recall Sweeney from SNL. Sad that women oriented secular groups are being frozen out of discussion. Maybe Harris could reflect on the “estrogen vibe” problem in their stead. That should be sufficient (snark, snark).
Is everyone still fawning over Dawkins because memes and selfish genes and other bits of excessive hero worship still after his awkward tweetfarts? I guess Harris is well marketed.
I guess that page may not have updated in quite a while. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simonyi_Professor_for_the_Public_Understanding_of_Science the Simonyi Chair is currently Marcus du Sautoy. No idea if he’s any less of an old white man, attitude-wise, but at least he’s not RD.
… and has been since 2008. (du Sautoy, that is).
Wait just a dadburn minute here. If these people are running some movement about atheism, how come I wasn’t allowed to vote on who the ‘leaders’ are? I’ve spent over fifty years as an atheist and no one ever asked me if I wanted these people to represent me. Screw them all. I don’t need them or their ‘movement’ if they cant be any more inclusive.
I had hoped, after the Edwina Rogers grand fubar, that the Secular Coalition of America had disintegrated into a mildly toxic powder that had washed away in the spring rains.
Why can’t we have good things, damnit?!?
i wasn;t wondering. i didn’t listen to priests or popes or pastors, why would i ever look for another group to tell me what to do or think.?
It’s easy to organize people who don’t think, but hard to organize people who think.
@9- nowamfound
In such an era of intense specialization nobody can recreate all the extant wheels. We must rely in experts to present ideas. As a popularizer of evolution that is a role Dawkins has played. So has Pinker and his wife Goldstein in their fields. It’s really in developing enough background familiarity with a topic and learning how to think critically where one can evaluate the merits of arguments people are making and whether the popularizers are blowing any smoke at you, whether they realize or not. And people new to atheism are looking for good starting points and the big names are basins of popular attraction…well worn ruts.
The problem I think addressed in PZ’s OP is given the initial buzz of movement atheism if it has crystallized into something a bit oppressive and resistant to change. The big names have gathered power and status and want to hold on to their prestige as opinion leaders. Outgroups such as “regressive leftists” and the lesser status female groups are barbarians at the gates or Jacobin revolutionaries hell bent on destruction of the power structure (gravy train). We must maintain the mythos of the horsemen riding tall in the saddle with proper lobster posture that shows their status and non-loser social worth.
What opinions? Is there a recording of this? Why is this organization not a member of the SCA, if they want to be heard in their meeting? Seems like a ridiculously one sided blog post. How hard would it be to contact one of the SCA members to ask for their perspective before being so bias?
Biased*
cryptic
*
I’ve never heard of Heads before, and don’t understand what they do of value. I don’t even see why we need an “atheist movement” so much as we need a secular humanist movement, which already has established organisations. I guess what I’m asking is why Secular Woman feels it needs a place at this table? (Truly, I don’t see what the advantage is other than a little leverage from celebrity atheists…who are likely the same people who wanted to cut Secular Woman from the agenda. What am I missing?)
I was confused. Are these people giving Head(s) or receiving Head(s)? Makes all the difference in the world.
“SCA” Are you absolutely sure that’s not the ‘Society for Creative Anachronism’?
Curse you, @richardelguru, with a thousand curses! Beat me to it!
(Seems appallingly appropriate, unfortunately).
I can’t find anything about HEADS online at all….have SCA said anything about the reason for the change? Seems odd as it doesn’t look like SCA have any problems involving women?
We don’t need an atheist movement. As a so-called dictionary atheist, I say that atheism is not a good rallying banner because it just means lack of belief in a god. Some of the alt-right fucks, pick up artists, men going their own way idiots, and various kinds of other slimes are also atheists. Why would I want an atheist movement? What common goal do I have with them? The only common goals that I can think of are 1) separation of church 2) fighting discrimination against atheists. However, I do not believe nowadays #1 is very significant and #2 is better fought under the banner of fighting against social and economic injustice. So no, we don’t need an atheist movement.
But as a dictionary atheist, why do you care so much if other people want an atheist movement? You appear to feel quite strongly about it.
lotharloo,
Neither “separation of church and state” nor being against discrimination against (openly) atheists flow directly from not believing in gods. So even as a “dictionary atheist”, you feel there are things we should be rallying behind. You just disagree on what those things are.
Change can happen. Remember a few years ago when some prominent leaders of the Skeptic community stood up at their big annual conference in keynote addresses and responded to new blood, innovators, people who want to fix problems, and who don’t want to spend their lives just re-investigating fuzzy bigfoot videos with the line…. “Don’t move the tent”
… OK fine. That tent collapsed. Its gone now.
The only heads I’ve listened to stopped recording ages ago. But David Byrne is touring this spring…
No movement, no heroes.
So Chris Pratt, a believer, tweeted this regarding Kevin Smith, a believer.
https://twitter.com/prattprattpratt/status/968041374565068800
I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in the “healing power of prayer”. I also don’t believe I need to be an asshole about it, unlike a lot of atheists who replied to that tweet. Even before the deep rifts, a lot of us were like this. No wonder there are so many assholes in the atheist movement. We’ve been tolerating them for years.
So Dawkins, Harris, and Pinker want fewer women, POCs, SJWs, and dissent from their edicts and fiats from on high, after appointing themselves the in-elected “heads” of a “movement.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVVH51wctLc
Was the vote unanimous?
@KG, 22:
I don’t get the comment. First, what’s the problem with feeling strongly about something? Second, it is my opinion that having an “Atheist Movement” is silly because it will try to draw in people with wildly different points of views and priorities and that’s just not going to work out (picture a conference with PZ and the Amazing Atheist together. Yeah, it’s not going to happen). Other people can futilely try though.
@zenlike:
They don’t but we can reasonably expect that the vast majority of atheists will care and agree with those. So if you want to have a movement solely devoted to either of those two causes, it makes sense to try to appeal to atheists but beyond such causes there is really no point in trying to have an atheist movement because different atheists have such wildly different priorities that it is pointless to try to put them all in one movement.
lotharloo@30,
What’s silly is to imply that it’s futile or improper to assemble a movement or an advocacy organization for Group X unless each and every member of Group X will join and agree with all of its goals. The National Organization of Women didn’t disband when anti-feminist women refused to sign up. The NAACP isn’t “silly” because, say, David Clarke and his silly hat object to its goals.
So the fact that PZ Myers and the self-proclaimed “Amazing” Atheist aren’t going to agree on much means pretty much zero in terms of the desirability of an atheist movement.
If it doesn’t work out, then why bother? Or if it doesn’t do everything you could hope for in your wildest dreams, then why bother? Isn’t that pretty much what you were saying is the problem? Not that you’re right about that, but you can’t have it both ways.
That doesn’t sound different from any other social movement. Feminists, anti-racists, progressives, environmentalists, pacifists, socialists, anarchists, anti-/pro- nuclear advocates, anti-/pro- gun advocates, small-r republicans and monarchists, education reformers, vegans and vegetarians … all of them are like that, and I’m sure the list could continue for quite a while.
Or picture hundreds of millions of atheists/nontheists worldwide, who could be doing all sorts of stuff, instead of two attending some fictional conference. If you ask me, fewer conferences (or even more strangely, a conference/cruise in the Greek Isles with the CFI gang, along with other such bullshit) would perfectly alright.
But even with PZ and Amazing Atheist at this mystery event that has no apparent purpose, I know where I would place my bets about how the ensuing arguments would unfold, if that’s the sort of thing that might happen there and is what makes you worry that it won’t “work out.” We certainly don’t agree on everything, but PZ would wipe the floor with that idiot, if that’s how it played out.
That could end up having a positive effect, no? Then that’s not nothing.
But wait … are there other people attending? Does anything else happen to anybody, before or after this one conference, or is that actually supposed to be the entirety of “the movement” as you’re imagining it? I would think it’d be more than that. And in that case, the point should be fairly clear; you just don’t believe it will “work out,” whatever that means.
I know PZ has made a heroic effort to get people to see atheism as more than just the dictionary version. I don’t think it works for reasons already mentioned in this thread.
Since 2008 when I first knew there was such a movement I have seen several atheost groups form snd then fall apart as soon as they were colonised by the narrow, mysogonist, libertarian and other hopeless dark side denisens.
A big difficulty is that opinion seems to have become exalted over knowledge
To have a successful movement we probably need some goals about a rational society and how public discourse can favour knowledge and think of a name for it later.
There is movement atheism(s) and there are the various groups at the local level. The local atheist group I attend includes a good number of women. Both women and men come and go sporadically. There are female attendees who are more involved and committed to the various group causes such as church/state and charity stuff than I am. I just chatter and drink the coffee.
We do attract a handful of people with wildly divergent from the norm views but the core is reasonable and stable. No babies are consumed. The focus is a bit heavy on Jefferson’s wall which can get a bit monomanic. But that stuff is important given who tends to be in power at state and local levels. I am more into deep esoteric stuff that others find boring.
I can’t opine broadly on the local groups. Plus I am male and a bit aloof in social situations so my lenses may be cloudy. But I would hope most local groups are better than what PZ criticized in OP.
“Heads”… hrrmm. “Heads.”
Aha! An abbreviated retread of the same bunch (in general)’s self-labeling as “tHought lEADerS”.
Either that or they all get stoned backstage before coming out to Lead the hoi polloi’s Thoughts, such as they are.