Incomplete
Mooney has done another “What Tom Johnson has taught Me” post. It repairs some previous omissions, so it is a small improvement, but it is flawed.
I regret that I gave this story undue prominence, and I want to apologize to all who were affected by that action.
No he doesn’t, not really. As usual, he omits some people, so he doesn’t want to apologize to all who were affected by that action. He doesn’t want to apologize to me, for instance. I was affected by that action. He shouldn’t give himself the moral credit for a blanket apology when he’s not in fact making one.
Mooney goes on to insinuate that gnu atheists did something to make Tom Johnson so crazy – but – that is
no justification for the trumped-up original story or for his other actions—which, as we now know, included creating multiple sock puppets over a long period of time and using them to nastily trash his “New Atheist” opponents.
Yes, and it was Mooney who hosted those sock puppets; it was Mooney who banned me for asking him questions about his book while allowing those sock puppets to trash-talk about his gnu atheist opponents, for months. Mooney helped to create the climate in which TJ grew and festered. Mooney obviously liked the nasty trashing of the gnu atheist opponents; that’s obvious because Mooney has a very quick hand with the delete button, so if he doesn’t delete something, it’s safe to assume that he likes it. TJ is the child of Mooney – that is, a product of the vituperative atmosphere Mooney created.
We are left with no reliable evidence of loud, boorish, confrontational public behavior by atheists at events with religious believers. Those who have problems with the “New Atheism” should not use this line of argument in their critiques, unless or until such evidence is produced.
We never had any such reliable evidence. We’ve had ten months with this lie out there, painting gnu atheists as rude stupid belligerent vulgarians. It’s ten months too late to say we have no reliable evidence for that now. We never did have. Mooney should have been able to see that last October.
Jean Kazez…has been sorely and unjustly abused online over this affair…
Bullshit. She’s been disputed and criticised, not abused and not unjustly. She wasn’t, for instance, called anything even approaching “useless putrid twat.” I was. Kazez was not subject to any misogynist raving, but I was. Yet Mooney weeps crocodile tears for Kazez and doesn’t mention me. Mooney probably realizes that he did a lot to create TJ and his sock puppets, and thus that he did a lot to inspire the sewage that TJ and his socks flung at me; but he doesn’t mention me. Mooney is at fault here, but he doesn’t mention it. His post is, as I mentioned, incomplete.
In conclusion, I want to thank everyone who has tried to establish and to explain the truth here: “Johnson’s” adviser and Jerry Coyne; and also TB and Jean Kazez.
That’s another one of those fake blankets. I did a lot more to try to establish the truth “here” than TB and Kazez did. I also did in fact point some of it out a hell of a lot sooner than they did – starting last October. So when Mooney says “everyone” he is misleading the reader; he doesn’t mean “everyone” at all. He doesn’t, for instance, mean me. Well he should. I suspect he knows he should. But he won’t admit it.
Furthermore, to repeat, TB is not a truth-seeker. TB called me a liar just for asking M&K a list of questions about their book. I was not lying when I did that. TB is not an honest broker here.
I’m disturbed that someone on my “side” of this debate would do the things “Johnson” has done, painting a group as uncivil based on what is at best a serious exaggeration, while simultaneously spewing reams of incivility towards that group online, under multiple identities. There is no excuse for such behavior–and moreover, there has been a very big cost in this case to a lot of people, both in time and in grief.
Quite, and I’m the one who got the worst of the spewed reams of incivility; yet Mooney never mentions me throughout the post.
If there is any silver lining at all here, perhaps after working to find out the truth together about “Tom Johnson,” so-called “New Atheists” and “accommodationists” might feel the inclination to be just a little bit more civil and trusting towards one another. We do have a shared commitment to the truth, and a means of discerning it—and those have won out in this case. Let’s not forget that as we carry on the argument for science and reason in the future.
Oh dear god. Mooney is the one who picked this fight, and then went on picking it and picking it and picking it – pissing on gnu atheists in every major media outlet that invited him, for months – yet he pretends both sides are equally to blame. And as for the shared commitment to truth…………that’s just beyond even ridicule. Let’s not forget that Chris Mooney is the last person in the world to be giving advice on either “civility” or truth-seeking.
I just wrote this at the Intersocktion:
So, you outline what you did to see that TJ was indeed who he said he was. What did you do to verify that what he claimed he saw actually happened? This is still not clear. Please clarify.
I’m thinking he did very little, maybe even nothing, to confirm that what TJ saw happened happened. Obviously he could not have found other witnesses to something that never happened. So what we’re left with is him simply confirming identities; yes, TJ is a real person at a real university attending real conservation events hosted by real organizations and people. So what. If you can’t confirm the actual occurrence you’re actually making a big deal about, why run the story. Sure there is a place called Jerusalem that was occupied by the Romans, but that doesn’t mean the Resurrection really happened. After all this we’re left with Mooney running with this story because he wanted it to be true. He had no particular reason (apart from the high improbability of the events as described ) to think he was being lied to, but he also had no particular reason to believe that the story was true because he must not have, could not have gotten verification for the events TJ allegedly witnessed, because they never happened. If he’d dug for witnesses there would have been none. I still don’t see him admitting this.
Mooney is a ridiculous clown. “This story was the only proof I had that the Gnu Atheists were bad. Even though it turned out not to be true, it still could have been true, because something happened to TJ to turn him away from the Gnu Atheists. Therefore, I am holding firm to my position that the Gnu Atheists are bad.”
And it won’t be long now before we get a “there’s just no pleasing those New Atheists” blog post.
This cannot be stressed enough. In the “Strengthening Public Interest in Science” and “The Value of Science Blogs?” threads among others, they manually approved a lot of very nasty posts (mostly by sockpuppets, but not all) because they were trashing Myers for comments at Pharyngula (many of which did not even exist) that were not at all vetted by Myers. As well as allowing blatantly dishonest and misleading posts. One could even say they ” like it that way”*.
*If you get the reference, I feel sorry for you.
This whole event has brought Kirshenbaum and Mooney’s scholarly abilities into question. So why doesn’t someone rewrite “Unscientific America” from an different perspective using nothing but UA’s citations? It wouldn’t take very long to do.
Hitch has practically already done Chapter 8 in his comments at the Intersection. I’ve all but done Chapter 1 (admittedly, an easy task).
Hitch has already put far more work into chapter 8 than its authors ever did. Salty Current put far more work into Mooney’s new blog post than Mooney did. So it goes.
How slimy. Look, Mooney, you are criticizing particular individuals (PZ, Dawkins, Ophelia, Jerry Coyne). If you have criticisms of them, these should rest on their actual behavior or behavior that they clearly or directly encourage and its demonstrated effects. In other words, show “loud, boorish, confrontational public behavior” in specific contexts by them or at their behest or clear encouragement. Johnson’s claim about how his colleagues quoted PZ and Coyne in describing the inspiration for the behavior claimed was never even questioned by you. What did they quote, specifically? Where do PZ and Coyne say people should do this in this context? I mean, if you could find these quotes and behaviors by the Gnus you criticize, you wouldn’t need to rely on these tales at some remove. (Of course, your own descriptions of Gnus’ behavior are somewhat less than honest, so I don’t expect much.) Even if it were true that some atheists had behaved like this at some events, that would only show that these were loud, boorish, confrontational people. Nothing else. This whole business is just very stupid.
Wow, not only does he falsely hold up TB and Kazez as trying to establish the truth (as if Mooney was for that) he omits any mention folks like Ophelia, the posters he falsely vilified for being skeptical of his false claims and banned, and continues to ban, or of where the story really broke open, this thread:
http://thebuddhaisnotserious.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/the-curious-case-of-the-youre-not-helping-blog/#comment-536
by Oedipus
It is amazing that Mooney can’t actually just admit he was wrong, instead he is still trying to frame his involvement as merely passively “giving undue prominence” to a false story, as opposed to his actual role, which was actively citing the false story as proof positive of his claims and then vilifying people for being skeptical of the facially incredible, un-verified story by an anonymous source. Mooney is a real piece of work.
Why the heck are people devoting so much time to this? Why are people so obsessed with Mooney? I could understand some degree of care, but the amount of time good and smart people have spent on this boggles my mind because it seems such a minor issue.
Sigh…………..
Because Mooney isn’t just a minor blogger (like me), he’s a journalist who had a best-seller, so he can get his stuff into a lot of major media, and he does. He spent much of the last year-plus trashing gnu atheists in the LA Times, the Guardian, and the Washington Post to name just a few. He is trying hard to work up a backlash against gnu atheists, and he is having some success. I’m a gnu atheist; I resent this campaign; I also think Mooney should know better.
And then, there are a lot of specifics, and Mooney keeps doing new posts about the specifics, which get things wrong.
I hope that clears that up.
Now, in return, can you explain what possessed CFI to hire him for Point of Inquiry?
A journalist propagates lies about a group of people, and both encourages and engages in the trashing and smearing of the reputations of individual members of this group, but why should we care? It’s such a minor issue. Your concern is noted.
As far as I can tell, that ‘shared commitment to truth’ involves the accomodationists believing implausible things because they confirm their prejudices, gnu atheists doing the work and finding out the truth, then the accomodationists giving a shifty, uneasy ‘thanks’ to the gnu atheists.
It not all that unlike the shared commitment to truth between religion and science.
Why do people care about this, Michael? Because Mooney is either a terribly sloppy thinker, a callous manipulative jerk, or some combination of the two, and this situation makes that painfully obvious to anyone open-minded enough to see past his “framing.” And, as Ophelia pointed out, this matters because Mooney is a pretty big name both generally and in our little “movement.”
Any other questions?
Michael, I’m not obsessed with Mooney. I’m obsessed with an honest and fair discussion culture.
Heck, we are the people of free and critical inquiry aren’t we? The first thing we have to work for is the space where free and critical inquiry can happen.
Currently Mooney censors all dissenting comments, that’s not free inquiry. Oh and he allows bullies to troll those dissenters that do come through. If you say that is OK well be my guest.
Chris has actively contributed to create a divisive culture among skeptics. If there is a wedge strategy it is working. We are badly wedged. Lots of unnecessary animostiy simply created by stereotyping and smears. You ask what the obsession is? Wake up.
Is it a minor issue to call Dawkins a bully?
Is it a minor issue to call someone a liar?
Is it a minor issue that massive sock puppets create a wall of stereotypes to smear an array of bloggers and it gets backing and elevation from an employee of CFI?
Michael are you serious that this is a minor issue?
Should I donate my money to CFI or find another institution to promote free and critical inquiry. What’s your suggestion Michael?
Yes I am pissed. Minor issue. Perhaps we need a boycott on CFI just to show how minor the issue is to piss off people and then minimize the issue.
The first sentence is true, at any rate. The idea I had was that you take the citations and see what story they actually tell. I’d be interested in seeing what people think about the material in the other chapters as well. People like Michael DeDora are presumably quite curious about the actual substantial motivation behind the ridicule. They simply don’t know, or are tone-deaf to accounts of, the Summer of Moonenbaum dramatic activities last year. What might impress them once and for all would be a book-length critique.
‘Working to find the truth together’? Hardly. When one side works to find out the truth and the other first attacks that side for looking and then denies that truth exists for as long as possible then insists that it might be indicative of a larger ‘truth’, despite not being actually true, before being forced to admit they were played like a dime-store fiddle is by no possible analysis of the situation, ‘working to find the truth together’.
You might as well describe the police catching a gang of bank robbers as ‘having worked together’ to solve the crime.
Considering that, thanks to Mooney’s idea of ‘moderation’, the ratio of fawning anti-atheist suckups to adversarial commenters is about 10:1 it’s not all that different from how it was with sockpuppets anyway. Good on people like Hitch who can get through and insert at least some truth in between the lies and intellectual dishonesty of people like star forelock-tugger Anthony McCarthy.
Someone as in Ophelia and others. Sorry, I’m still in the self-censorship mode that was required on Discover/Intersections. Yes the name Ophelia cannot be uttered on Mooney’s blog. Minor Issue. That’s what our community has become. We self-censor names!
Michael? Any comments?
Wowbagger: I’m gone. I won’t be commenting on Discover/Intersection anymore. I put in all this work and still get bullied over there. I had enough. So forget it. No dissenting voice on Discovery. It’s a pure echo chamber now. I have some pride and dont need to take that crap. So much for free inquiry.
You’re free to fawn over Mooney, or you’re free to leave.
My name can’t be mentioned, comments are closed on the post he did about me, I of course can’t comment at all…A few people have asked me if I’m going to reply to the post he did about me, and I’ve said nah, too much trouble, too much other stuff to do, plus I did confuse TB with bilbo…….But now, after this post – I dunno; I might.
Well done for trying, Hitch. And you did get a lot of stuff on the record, which is more than anyone else (other than sycophants) did.
OK, which one of you people was sorely and unjustly abusing Jean Kazez while the rest of us weren’t looking?
We know it wasn’t Ophelia.
@21
Well, here’s an example that was edited for “unjustly abusing” Kazez:
So really, what we’re looking at is Humpty Dumpty. Everyone has sorely and unjustly abused Jean Kazez, should Humpty Dumpty decide to define the terms to make it so.
Well, in the Mooney dictionary, sore unjust abuse is disagreeing with the claims of self and allies. Simple!
Commenters or comments? Without the socks, I’m not sure there are 10 even semi-regular non-hostile commenters on his posts. I’m willing to be shown I’m wrong – I don’t pay close attention – but it seems like maybe seven people.
Anthony McCarthy
“Jon” (not Kwok, he’s banned now, apparently)
“TB”
Jean
JJ Ramsey
Rob Knop
that’s all I can come up with for regular pro-accommodation commenters, excluding Chris and Sheril themselves.
So, Hitch, do you have your Greatest Hits of UA Chapter 8 collected anywhere? I’d rather not go digging through the Intersection comments looking for the good stuff.
Funny you should mention JJ Ramsey. I’ve just found, via Hitch’s posts at the Buddha that Ramsey squandered thousands of words on another blog arguing that YNH wasn’t misogynist because hey it only called me a useless putrid twat once.
JJ Ramsey. Jeez. Crazy obsessed guy who is so incensed at the fact that I banned him from Pharyngula that he shows up at any blog that criticizes me to chime in with a hearty “Me, too!” He’s a tiresome twit.
And of course he’s going to be a fan of Mooney.
Hitch wrote:
I don’t blame you; even if I wasn’t banned over there I doubt I’d be bothering. But at least those few who go there, unaware of what a closed-shop echo-chamber it otherwise is, will see at least some deviation from the fawning, forelock-tugging, arse-licking party line – well, until now of course.
As for Mooney’s standards (using the term loosely), all I can say is anyone who considers Anthony McCarthy – arguably one of the most odious, disingenuous and blatantly intellectually dishonest anti-atheists I’ve encountered on the internet – to be worthy of inclusion into his super-exclusive club of commenters has some serious problems with honesty.
PZ Myers wrote:
JJ Ramsey displayed exactly how disturbed and personally slighted by your ban when he went to the effort of measuring the length and width of knifeblades and calculating exactly what kind of damage that might do to a human orifice while attempting (with help from the ‘Tom Johnson’ sock-puppet army) to keep the lie about Pharyngula posters advocating rape going.
Not Gurdur? The only time I was blocked from The Intersection was when I tried to comment (to something Anthony McCarthy said) after Gurdur had already gone apeshit over a previous comment. I honestly don’t know whether it’s appropriate for a weblogger to block comments from someone they don’t know in order to avoid provoking someone they do.
Ken Pidcock wrote:
Well, I said that she should report “TJ” to his university, which she found totally unreasonable because wasn’t her responsibility. And I pointed out that she could have put an end to all the “baying for blood” that she was complaining about, because she’s “known all along” that “TJ’s” university was aware of their problem student. She chose not to. Pointing out those ethical issues got my comment vanished from the ethic teacher’s blog.
Hitch,
Speaking of CFI, you sure remember when they decided to replace DJ Grothe with Chris Mooney as one of the new hosts of the podcast show Point of Inquiry, their CEO Ronald A. Lindsay pointed out when facing criticisms over Mooney’s hiring:
1. We should not “quick to pass judgment based on assumptions and suspicions.”
2. Mooney’s assignments will not focus on religion and accomodationism.
3. We should let reason defend itself.
(Admittedly, Lindsay did tone down in his subsequent exchanges with Russell, Coyne, Ophelia, among others.) The thread in question is below; see for yourself:
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/02/mooney-goes-to-point-of-inquiry.html
The point here is that we should collectively (in form of an open letter, for example) demand Lindsay and CFI to look into Mooney’s ethical and journalistic standards over this Tom Johnson scandal. We should point out, with ample and easily available evidence, that Mooney’s behaviors throughout are incompatible, subversive, detrimental and antithetical to FREE INQUIRY.
Since Russell has been very supportive with CFI all along, has been following and covering this scandal from the very beginning and is well-respected from all sides, I nominate him to spearhead such a collective effort. (That is, of course, if Russell and others think it’s a good idea.)
If CFI still hold onto Mooney after we make such a vocal and reasoned demand, then well it would be the right time (for me at least) to move on.
Oy! Don’t tar the entire enterprise over one bad egg. Admittedly I’m hard put to understand why they wanted M**ney in the first place, but apparently the sketchy guy behind Sb was smitten with him as well. But Carl Zimmer and Phil Plait are excellent people, so I’m not gonna think less of them for being on the same site as M**ney. (Though I’m disappointed that Phil considers M**ney a friend and gets testy when he’s criticised. If you don’t want your friends to be talked about, you shouldn’t post about them.)
Notice this comment by PZ at the Intersection, where he names a bunch of socks before any of this came to light:
This among many others (sans Intersection advocates) who expressed amazement at the ignominious level of discourse coming from that cadre of commenters. No stronger hint could have been given to check for socks.
Now compare with Mooney’s latest,
That is messed up.
@Cam: I’ll see if I can compile something.
@Smith: Mostly I think there is need for dialogue. If Michael DeDora does not understand the problem, then that really is part of the problem. The problem is real and serious and it’s not getting better if it’s not resolved.
@Sili: Mistype by me. I was a little emo. I meant Intersection not discover. I know there are good people on there. I didn’t mean Discover or other bloggers there.
Thanks, Hitch. I just wanted to make sure.
One is still left to wonder what in the name of fsck made Discover invite M**ney over in the first place, though.
This may not be the most appropriate thread, but I just had to share this bit of extraordinarily high irony that I just re-remembered.
As I’m sure everyone is tired of hearing, “TJ” edited some comments of mine on his YNH blog in order to try to make me look ridiculous. In the YNH thread, What’s up with “Oedipus Maximus?” (a thread I didn’t even read until July 14th!), someone named “Wandering Internet Commenter” (WIC) showed up out of the blue to ask anyone at YNH about the accusations I’d been making about “TJ’s” edits. Without a hint of shame, “TJ” replied (22 June 2010 at 1pm):
Emphasis mine.
Of course, all of it was true. Basically, “TJ” was accusing us all of “discovering” exactly what he’d been doing for months already.
(I’m a little jealous that I haven’t yet received an apology email, yet. Sure, “TJ” acted horrifically towards Ophelia, but he didn’t go so far as to edit her comments to try to make her look psychotic. Of course, I’m not going to hold my breath.)
Sorry, Smith – I have enough on my plate at the moment. I’ll doubtless keep coming back to this issue from time to time (e.g., I have a comment that was still in moderation at The Intersection last I checked, and it’ll be interesting to see what comes of it), but there’s a limit to how much energy I can devote to it. Also, I think it’s counterproductive in the broader scheme of things to go around making more trouble for the CFI. As far as the decision to hire Mooney goes, it’s not the decision I would have made but what’s done is done. And the current management there have enough headaches as it is: really, I’d rather do anything I can to lighten their load than to make it even heavier.
More generally, strong general support for the CFI shouldn’t depend on agreeing with everything it does. Obviously the situation would be different if it turned around next week and gave jobs to Kwok, TB, and Ramsey, but that won’t happen.
Russell Blackford
Though we all disagree with Mooney over the accomodationist argument he is still largely a pro-science atheist, going with the forced “mainstream” argument around science.
It is only a matter of time until he gets caught out doing the same thing with creationists – at which point they will quite justly point to him as an example of dishonest (And I don’t mean lying here, I am talking about the sort of dishonesty that comes from being not too picky about your cherries) reporting.
Which they will then use to whine about how they are mischaracterised in the media, by reporters with a history for this sort of thing who only seem to get promoted for it.
Creationists have mastered getting a lot of mileage out of bad science reporting in their war on science. See the example in my country with a science seminar my mother attended (And yes, I actually do still have the original notes on my desk.)
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/expensive/2010/07/26/the-creationist-war-on-science/
Mooney left out some words there; it should go something more like: ‘Let’s not forget that was we carry on the argument for science and reason – except where the religious beliefs of moderate, evolution-accepting, non-creationist Christians are concerned, of course; they’re sacrosanct and aren’t subject to reason like everything else is – in the future.
Russell,
I find your reply (#38) both myopic and ironic, and seriously doubt how much you really care about CFI.
First, it’s very disappointing to see that you interpret my suggestion as making “trouble” and “headaches,” given how much you know about this scandal.
Suppose you are in charge of CFI yourself and there is a Mooney-like character on your staff co-running one of your flagship programs in the public eye. If someone you trust bring forward concrete evidence showing this Mooney-like character’s unethical behaviors (w.r.t. free inquiry, at least) elsewhere over a long period of time. Would you consider it a headache? Will you decry this fellow for making trouble? Or rather, would you be grateful that this fact is brought to light to you long before a potential PR crisis happens in your own organization?
Notice that I do think you are such a trusted fellow, as you can tell from my last post.
Of course, maybe my suggestion is indeed ill-conceived in one way or another. Or maybe we should let the matter sit for awhile to see if it would get any worse. Maybe…
You also said:
Even if CFI continues harboring Mooney after his unethical behaviors are undisputedly exposed?
But then you finished off with a personal deal breaker:
So are you suggesting that Mooney’s behaviors are in some way more acceptable or palatable than Kwok’s, TB’s, and Ramsey’s? That’s a really strange observation, Russell.
Anyway, please don’t take this post as my plea for you being our spokesperson or anything, even though I still consider you are the ideal person for this collective effort. The fact that you don’t think it’s worthy of your time is fair enough for me.
I stopped commenting there as soon as I noticed the bad craziness! For that reason. I didn’t trust “them” not to do something exactly like that. As it is “they” just told lies about what I’d written and done here (whoppers about my deleting comments of theirs, comments that never existed). TJ did everything he could to make me look psychotic.
At WEIT, Jerry recently pointed to Barbara Forrest’s paper on methodological and philosophical naturalism, to which I was first introduced here. So, it was interesting to be led by Smith, through Russell, to Chris Mooney’s report of Forrest’s remarks at the Michigan State C.P. Snow conference.
Now that’s some kind of framing, that the eloquent author of that paper can, with a a straight face, offer up the old Science can’t prove a negative argument in public. But you know what? I trust her judgment. To my mind, accommodation is not an especially dishonest undertaking, and is helpful to the teachers who stand at the front line defending science education from creationism. Where Mooney seems to have been led astray is in convincing himself that frank atheism is, necessarily, harmful.
(I won’t defend Forrest’s apparent opinion that Seeing and Believing was misguided.)
Hello Ophelia. I’m a new reader and am finding a lot that resonates here. Thanks for speaking out!
Here’s my own attempt at a comment on the Intersection, we’ll see whether it gets approved or not, despite being as civil as I could manage! (Difficult, when considering the nature and extent of ad feminam attacks you’ve described.)
—
Chris, I’ve been reading your writings for over five years and am a great fan of your early work.
But your role in bashing those with a “commitment to the truth, and a means of discerning it” can’t be whitewashed with this tactical apology. Have you truly learned nothing?
The overlapping-but-not-identical scientific, atheist, and skeptical communities are filled with people who are *obsessed* about getting things right. To the point of checking their sources, doubting themselves constantly, but finally venturing their best shots *in defense of the truth*. I choose that last phrase carefully, because truth and reason do need defending.
Those who have done their homework should be forgiven for getting heated in attacking falsehoods. The only civilities I expect, for my friends and for my opponents, are that arguments be taken seriously, while being supported or demolished, and that unsubstantiated accusations and ad hominem (as well as ad feminam) attacks — the kind aimed at removing honest contributors — be rooted out.
(An aside about labels, and what I mean by “falsehoods”. I’ve come back around to the old-fashioned label of “secular humanist” for myself. I really have no beef with religions, so long as they have no special standing nor get-out-of-argument-free card. It’s not how people worship the divine that bugs me, it’s whether they then claim authority out of thin air.)
To paraphrase a quote that’s as old as I am: ridicule in the defense of truth is no vice, and civility in the pursuit of liars is no virtue.
Interesting, I didn’t kn0w about the Forrest paper. It’s both weak and flawed philosophy. Why is she arguing scientific naturalism rather than straight epistemology? Her statement that there is philosophical naturalism is at best confusing, because it muddles the boundary between what is natural and supernatural (supernatural being a bad word, actually, it should be “a negative definition, i.e. anything that is not natural, for example a-natural or non-natural).
Now of course the real problem is what I call the goo-definition of god. We selectively forget and reintroduce aspects of god depending on the argument.
Theists will often argue that god cannot be proven ala Forrest, but then make claims that are in the natural realm. For example people claim that prayer works, but is spiritual, hence supernatural, but of course it is a perfectly measurable thing.
It’s basically bad philosophy, because it doesn’t honor it’s own assumptions. For example Dawkins is perfectly happy to concede the possibility of an Einsteinian conception of a deity But almost noone who uses this defense ever actually seeks to defend the Einsteinian god. They try to defend the Christian god with claims rife of testability many of them tested to be wrong.
But that is unspeakable to Dawkins must be a bully and not understand philosophy!
Oh and there is a neat fallacy in that blurring of “philosophical naturalism” with the “supernatural”. Here is the key question: Do all aspects of philosophical naturalism have the same quality as the supernatural? If you answer this no, and give the correct explanation you know science. And you have basically refuted the claim of the paper. Else you try to defend a god that can be implicated scientifically and actually misconstrue or misunderstand science.
Just read the conclusion:
“Science, because of its reliance upon methodological naturalism, lends no support to belief in the supernatural. Consequently, philosophical naturalism, because of its own grounding in methodological naturalism, has no room for it either. While for the supernaturalist, this absence may be the chief complaint against both science and methodological naturalism, for the philosophical naturalist, it is the source of the greatest confidence in both.”
It’s illogical. Of course philosophical naturalism does not provide “the greatest confidence” in supernaturalism. It makes no positive statement to anything at all, because it isn’t epistemic.
It’s basically the equivalent of saying “there is comfort in naturalism that cannot be proved by method because it is as yet safe from inquiry so fill that space up with whatever you like!”.
It’s the metaphysical free-for-all. Cannot be disproven, but it’s the dumpster for any conceivable fantasy and best keep for goo-like fantasies!
Gnu-like fantasies are much better.
Hitch, assuming I understand you correctly, and assuming I understand Forrest correctly (I’ve only skimmed the paper)…
Forrest might reply that the goo-definition of God is ontologically confused and procedurally meaningless, and hence beyond the scope of her argument. Ontologically confused and procedurally fungible claims are unlike claims about either the natural or the supernatural, since both make definite ontological and procedural commitments. (Of course, we think that the supernaturalist makes ontologically false and procedurally impractical claims, but that’s not the same thing.)
You might criticize her for not being properly in touch with the opinions of fools of the sort that try to pull the bait-and-switch on Dawkins that you mention. But I think she has different fish to fry.
Hi Paco – welcome!
I definitely agree it’s not Forrest’s fault if people misuse what she says. And I agree that she is after something different than how she’s been used in UA, in fact rather almost the opposite.
Michael De Dora’s comment indicates there is a large information gap concerning Chris Mooney. The case against Mooney is quite strong, though the pieces are scattered about.
For instance I didn’t pay attention to Mooney at all before this episode. I had no opinion of him, and I was pulled into this rather unexpectedly. I didn’t even know who Ophelia was (sorry, OB), as my “curious case” post says. Mooney’s actions in this incident alone are rather damning, and I would be surprised if someone knowing all the facts could reasonably conclude otherwise.
The information gap should closed; the various pieces should be centralized, complete with references and a facts-only approach. Perhaps http://rationalwiki.org is the place to do this?
No reason you would know who I am, Oedipus; I’m a very minor player, as I’ve said many times.
I did get into the middle of this particular brawl, as it happens. I was (and am) a fan of Jerry Coyne’s and I was annoyed by Mooney’s “atheists uncivil” post about him, and I started asking Mooney exactly what he thought Coyne should be doing. I then got more annoyed by Mooney’s refusal to answer. I then received a review copy of M&K’s book, and read it, and commented on it here – I was one of the first, maybe the first, to say what was in chapter 8 and take issue with it. And so on. It was stuff like that. (It wasn’t because Mooney or M&K talked about me; they didn’t; they talked about famous gnu atheists, not about me. I talked about them; they didn’t talk about me. YNH gave a very misleading impression in that sense, by talking about me so much. This overall dispute has never been All About Me. It’s never been about me at all.)
Oed, that’s a great idea — though I don’t think most people are going to be very interested in the internet shenanigans. I do think that people will be (rightfully) interested in the unsupported material in UA and its effects on the major philosophical and political issues.
I think I’ll write a quick essay on chapter 1.
If you want to make a case against Chris Mooney, I think you could do worse than starting with Jerry Coyne’s summary, and elaborating on Mooney’s behavior at the time of different events.
Personally, I haven’t been convinced that Mooney was a malicious actor in all of this. I see him as just trying to navigate through, and stumbling badly on multiple occasions. I do agree that he should take more responsibility for the outcomes of his actions, which have hurt a lot of people and promoted the myth of the vicious anti-accommodationist.
Ken
Nonsense. There are three major events which had Mooney been ethical, would have killed this a long a time ago.
The first is if he had checked the TJ account. He clearly hadn’t. All he had checked was TJ’s name (which is unknown to us.)
The second is after major criticism was leveled against the TJ account. Again, he didn’t do it.
The third was when the TJ account was revealed, by TJ, to be a lie. He should have fully retracted right away – he hadn’t.
His final retraction, ultimately had to be dragged out of him once Coyne quite thoroughly demonstrated how lacking in journalistic ethics – because this is an issue of ethics as much as competence – Mooney is.
Now why do I say this is an issue of ethics? Because people lie to journalists all the time. We are trained to expect the people who are talking to us, to be talking shit. So, what do we do? We check. We do not wait until people are jumping up and down saying “How could you believe this bullshit” we check before it goes out.
And when people are jumping up and down, and pointing out valid concerns, we check again. We do not rely on figures like a certain TB (Funny that his make me think tuberculosis) to silence our critics.
And when it turns out the story is false we don’t say “it may still be accurate” we fucking say it isn’t.
It was only after Jerry Coyne nailed him to the wall on it and people started complaining to CFI over it, that Mooney issued what could be considered a reasonable retraction. The story was known to be false long before that.
Frankly reading around I think Michael should really understand what is going on here. And frankly both sides have contributed to alientation. Michael had to take some colorful language himself.
Problem is that really the dynamics is such that aggression is only recognized, in fact constructed and amplified on one side and used to silence that side. Basically atheism that in any way is visible or dares to say things that might be unwelcome to a believer is prone to this kind of treatment.
Here is the problem. Atheism is already a massively negatively stereotyped group. We have powerful groups invested in us staying there.
Now on top of that we get atheists stereotyping atheists and feeding into exactly the narrative that those powerful groups want to promote. This is not a minor issue, it is the issue for atheism.
If skeptics do not understand this, there is a major awareness problem. A very major one.
Atheism will not succeed if the wedging of atheists against atheists, the amplification of branding and bad-mouthing keeps going.
That does have to stop. Michael and others at the CFI could play a very helpful role in lifting the community from the ditch into which it is forced by this ongoing, let me actually call it strategy.
Gee, the interest groups that want our failure must be gleeful how we are reeling from our internal torments. They don’t even need to do the branding. They can just site Mooney’s blog to justify that Ophelia is a liar. They just cite commenters on his blog to justify that PZ promotes rape and so forth. They just need to read UA to learn that Dawkins is unscientific and a bully.
We have split the difference, divide and conquer and you know what. It is working brilliantly. And as long as people minimize the problem it will keep working.
I think the CFI should either stand against this and work to resolve it, in fact assume leadership, or it should be considered part of the problem and if necessary rejected and replaced with an organisation that is for free and critical inquiry and does not stand for agents who torpedo exactly that. Right now it is part of silent complicity. It employs people who actively stir up this problem and keep it alive. And it acts as if there is hardly a problem.
Here is how this looks to an uninformed commenter:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/07/30/tom-johnson-a-final-word/#comment-65970
“22. Razib Khan Says: July 31st, 2010 at 2:09 pm
i’m rather sketchy on the fine-grained details of this controversy, though i know of what happened in broad strokes. but let me say that the amount of energy, time and effort going into what really is internecine disputation is kind of disconcerting. there are creationists on the religious right, and now scienceblogs.com is being attacked by a writer in the new york times magazine who seems to exhibit a soft-spot for climate & public health denialism. from the “outside” it looks like things have gotten super-personal, and i can totally understand why it’s not productive to just wonder if perhaps people should just “drop it” and move on.”
Unfortunately we cannot move on. If you are negatively stereotyped and branded you can not just sit and accept the branding. If you are misconstrued and attacked on misquotes, you cannot just let it sit. This is not a minor issue to atheism, it is working against some of the worst stereotypes any group in the USA has. It is perhaps the issue for atheism as people being allowed in the public sphere.
If the only acceptable atheist is the one who cannot speak to their world view, we have lost. That’s how simple this is and that’s how serious the problem is.
And we have people who internally fight us for our own world view. No way we can just drop it and move on. That means we have defeated ourselves.
Michael De Dora’s comment @ #9 is right about the time that’s been wasted. I hope his voice has been and will be directed towards those of an accommodating bent who started, and continue, this misguided and unnecessary debate? The attack from Mooney and others has caused the schism, if that’s not too grand (or religious) a word, since their hypocrisy could not be allowed to stand. I’m thankful to all those like Ophelia who ‘waste time’ arguing the corner for honesty and truth.
Incidentally, not sure if anyone else has seen this, but a friend drew my attention to this article; Thank God for the New Atheists, written by Rev. Michael Dowd, a moderate theist of sorts, in praise of the new atheists. It contains some interesting comments; I really would like to see some more evidence on how moderate theists are affected by the more prominent atheism of today. He seems to suggest that the ‘gnus’ have pushed him to accept science more:
Who’d have thunk it? Of course, he’s probably *too* moderate and it would be ridiculous to raise this to the level of evidence or, dare I say, an exhibit.
Brilliant link. Thanks Mark.
I think I remember hearing Rev. Dowd on an old CFI podcast. (What was it before Point of Inquiry?) From what I gathered, he’s no theist. It’s that old John Spong claim: Christianity must abandon supernaturalism if it is to be relevant in the third millennium. That’s not going to happen, but folks like Dowd are really quite popular among liberal clergy. I remember once being asked to attend a presentation by Spong to a community interfaith group. The room was packed. They weren’t going to say it, but they sure did love listening to him say it! Funny world, ain’t it?
Anyway, Dowd’s article is delightful, along with its message: You’re Helping.
Indeed; many thanks, Mark.
Right. I don’t know much about Razib Khan except that he did an excellent bloggingheads with David Sloan Wilson. And that he has a Discovery weblog. (No, really?) But his characterization of Exhibit A as an internecine disputation has me genuinely pissed, and I am the most compliant person you’ll ever meet (see above, and above). Moving on just allows the responsible parties to escape accountability.
Here is why censorship works to give impressions:
“25. Andy Says: July 31st, 2010 at 10:13 pm
I was pretty irritated by this whole kerfuffle (I’m one of those clairvoyant folks who claims to have smelled bullshit from the moment I first read TJ’s recollections), but I appreciate the candor with which Chris has handled it. A lesser blogger would have shrugged it off, or got in a pissing match with his critics about the minutiae of what happened. Chris has owned it, like an adult.”
Excellent post! Mooney may not appreciate your work in exposing the fictional basis of the TJ story, but many of us do. Mooney was not the only one to allow the sockpuppets to make up stories about gnu atheists either. Kirshenbaum let stand some of the most vicious fables (in my opinion) of TJ’s against gnu atheists at Pharyngula in a thread dominated by his sockpuppet that were right up there with his deeply sexist remarks to you. How very very civil of the two of them, Kirshenbaum and Mooney.
Oh yes? That was TJ, and the thread is still there? No update, no disclaimer? That stinks if so.
Ohhhhh jeezis, you’re right. I’m only on the 13th comment, and most of them are TJ. That whole damn Pharyngula-smearing thread is contaminated at the outset by fraudulent comments by one lying creator of sock puppets. Bloody hell.
Ophelia Benson #63,
That’s the one. TJ’s toxic socks are so smelly on that thread that you’ve got to hold your nose to read it.
That is really……repugnant. Morally repugnant. They need to do some housecleaning. They should at least post an update on that post and clean out or fraud-stamp the sock comments.
Sigh. I thought I was going to be able to ignore M&K now, but no.
TBH, I was reasonably happy with Mooney’s “Final Word” on Tom Johnson. It read like a genuine mea culpa, and he barely did any weaseling. I too was unhappy with the insinuation that “something happened” to Tom Johnson… but he also unequivocally stated that nothing even vaguely resembling his story had actually occurred. I think it was about the best we could expect at this point.
Mooney was hired because he is an acolyte of Kurtz, one of those “framers” whose cohorts from the CFI youth programs include Dacey, Grothe, and Nisbet, and who makes hay (and gets attention) by publicly scolding fellow skeptics and atheists (mostly “strident” atheists”) as each of these young gentlemen occasionally have done.
.
I think so too, but can’t help remarking that they seem to have a soft spot for accommodationism as well. Carl’s otherwise superb book Evolution has a final chapter that is rather strange in its plodding rehash of NOMA and compatibility-as-coexistence. And Phil’s recent ‘jerks’ talk was almost bizarre in its description of how he apparently thinks some ‘New Atheists’ behave and communicate.
And as Kurtz himself has taken to doing, most disconcertingly. We’re allowed to be atheists – as long as we don’t say a word about it. We can have free speech, as long as we never use it.
I realise this is not particularly high-minded of me, but we atheists need to start quoting Bill Hicks at Chris Mooney every chance we get;
“…everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink.”
I don’t think it’ll do much good changing his ways (his behaviour to date indicates he is pretty much immune to shame), but it needs to be said, to his face and often.
I took up Oedipus’s suggestion. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Unscientific_America