With all the controversy going on between “accommodationists” and “asses”, a new friend I met this weekend at the Center for Inquiry, Randy Pelton, sent me a message with one piece of the puzzle we are ALL missing. He says it beautifully, and has given me permission to share.
“Hello Heidi. We met and spoke very briefly this weekend at the CFI conference in Amherst. Randy Pelton is the name. I was the one who spoke to you about the ethical and moral dimension of the snark in the skepticism movement.
Greatly enjoyed your talk and allow me to reiterate my agreement with your main thesis that the snarkiness needs to end. But I think it needs to end less because of the image problem it presents and more so because it demeans real humans.
It is easy to dismiss a person via electrons when you have never met the person, never seen them face-to-face, never had to actually confront their humanness. We all, regardless of what label we place upon ourselves (atheist, skeptic, freethinker, humanist, materialist, naturalist, etc.) need to approach every human and conversation with them from an ethical posture.
Every person needs to be accorded a modicum of respect and dignity. I am a humanist and this conviction threads deep into my emotional, rational, and intellectual marrow.”
Thank you Randy, for this. People like you inspire me to be a better person.
It is easy to dismiss a person via electrons when you have never met the person, never seen them face-to-face, never had to actually confront their humanness.
I’m about to write a post refuting some of the arguments I’ve been seeing against skeptical social events, and this connects directly to one of my most deeply felt points. Well said, Randy.
whatever, losers.
Yes, yes, yes – at the heart of the extremely dismissive language used by many skeptics is a vehemence so ingrained that it’s almost anti-democratic: if you don’t agree with us, you’re stupid. We’ve come such a long way in Western society over the last 100 years – we no longer believe the state has the right to sterilize the developmentally handicapped or lobotomize the mentally ill – we’ve enacted legislation to ensure people aren’t discriminated against on the basis of race, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, or differing abilities (unless the job actually requires a certain physical capacity). And yet it’s perfectly all right to call Jenny McCarthy a blonde bimbo or to tell others they’re stupid because they cling to beliefs that are unprovable. The problem with skeptics using vitriolic language to mock and attack anti-vaxxers (or anyone else, for that matter) is that it leads to increased polarization of opinion. You don’t persuade someone to your way of thinking by yelling at them and by verbally beating them into submission. You persuade someone by seeking out areas of agreement and building on them.
To Anac. I take it that your comment means you are unable or unwilling to present an argument. Instead you choose to dismiss myself and those who agree as “losers,” without proffering any evidence that this is true of any of us. I hold three undergraduate degrees, was formerly a journalist, and have been for the past 18 years a high school science teacher. I know myself to be well-read, well-educated and think myself reasonably articulate and capable of forming well constructed arguments and thinking critically. If this is the description of a loser, then I plead guilty as charged. I am not bragging. I only request that instead of dismissing me, you engage my arguments. Offer a substantive rebuttal. Add to the conversation. If I am wrong then illuminate me, convince me. “Whatever, losers” is just to easy and intellectually hollow as a response. I am not insulting your intellect. Instead I assume that your intellect is of sufficient caliber as to be capable of challenging my comments. You do a disservice to your own powers of reasoning when you chose to fire a volley aimlessly and then retreat.
Ruth: I agree entirely with your sentiment. It is not alright to call Jenny McCarthy a “blonde bimbo” or to use “vitriolic language to mock and attack.” But I hope you realize that this concession is where the agreement ends between us. I am a skeptic. And the preponderance of evidence leaves no room for appeasement on the merits of the argument: The anti-vaccine arguments simply are not supported by empirical evidence. Rather they are underpinned by emotional, even visceral, reactions to a tragic event. And they employ one of the most insidious of logical fallacies: confusing cause and effect. In this case the anti-vaccine crowd, who misappropriate the label of skeptic, have jumped to the unfounded conclusion that since autism occurs at approximately the same time as when vaccines are given, the vaccines must be the cause of the autism. Again this is a logical fallacy. (See the website: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/confusing-cause-and-effect.html for a description of this fallacy.)
@Randy I think you’re presuming something about my beliefs that was neither implicit nor explicit in what I said. I am by no means an anti-vaxxer – on the contrary, I’m currently fighting to get the MMR vaccine since I didn’t have either rubella or mumps as a child – yet I’m being told by my particular provincial socialized medicine health care system that because i was born before 1957 I have immunity. Luckily my doctor has authorized blood tests to determine whether that’s true or not. If it is, fine, I don’t need the vaccine. If it isn’t, I intend to challenge some public health assumptions that have no basis in fact. It is also possible to be pro-vaccine and NOT be a skeptic. Or at least not want to assume a label worn by so many who are, frankly, confrontational and abusive to others. Personally I haven’t noticed anti-vaxxers appropriating the skeptic label. I do wonder why you’re so anxious to slap a label on yourself though. Isn’t human enough for you?
Ruth,
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I did blunder in making an assumption. My apologies. I assume you are referring to the “skeptic” label. There is no anxiety involved in my labeling myself. No, human is not enough. It fails to adequately distinguish by viewpoint and lifestance from the others. We are all humans, and as such members of the same family. But just like families, we are not clones of one another, and this of course includes our viewpoints and lifestance. The labels I choose are intended to help draw the distinction between myself and others. They also shed light on where my philosophical and political affinities lie. I am unapologetic about labels. However, the ones I chose have been selected after careful thought.
Isn’t it great that anac posts “whatever, losers” , totally missing the points being made. One might imagine this arrogant self involved person as some emotionally stunted adolescent, but who can say? The message of the original post is to highlight the need to be more humane, not less. The easy impulse of a snarky remark on the internet is just because the person is not here in the room. Hiding behind insensitivity is as dumb as getting overemotional. I’m amazed at some of the intimate details people like to share on the internet, stuff that should remain within a therapists confidence or a psychiatrists private room.
Take care on the WWW folks. It’s a jungle out there, because it’s a jungle within most of us.