Hey Rutherford, Goldacre, Humanists and Skeptics

@TheColourOutOfSpace Thank you for those links. 😊 I'll watch them later when I have a bit more time. If you're interested there's a Facebook page called 'My Stealthy Freedom' run by Muslim women living in islamic countries where they're being oppressed. Some of the stories are heartbreaking. It's definitely a feminist issue.

I like Anti-Social and Adam Fleming. He seems to be trying to do his bit for a reasonable approach to free speech and rational discourse and investigation. Instead of "look at me I'm a pop skeptic" the approach is let's talk about this, let's hear from everyone.

I heard about the issue, but haven't listened to the Anti-Social episode. I shall check it out, thank you. I'm very pleased that CEMB was invited to contribute! Seems like journalists and media are finally catching up.

Hello @SapphireSeptember , I don't want to divert the conversation too much from the original message of the thread, but here are some videos of women sharing their experiences of leaving Islam.

This is a much longer video, and one of the women interviewed speaks about losing custody of her daughter after renouncing her faith and requesting a divorce. FYI My earlier comment wasn't based on her story.

My own personal experience is a bit different as I left a Christian cult. But I was raised in an Islamic country and was part of a forum for ex-muslims for a number of years so heard plenty of experiences in confidence from women and men around the world.

👏👏👏

I'd love to hear him respond to that!

Thanks 🙂

Just going to highlight this. I'm not an atheist, but I'm very interested in hearing how hard it is for people to leave religions that aren't Christian.

Are you speaking from personal experience? Either way it's insane that this sort of thing is being ignored. Anyone going through such an experience needs to be helped and listened to.

In a sense skepticism is another kind of religion - it pretends to be about questioning received wisdom, using critical thinking skills and so on but as far as I can see it has its own dogma that you're not allowed to challenge.

And I think this is why the skeptics have gone along with gender ideology. Even though it's clearly nonsensical, the important part of skeptic identity is being members of the skeptic club, not being a person who employs skeptical thinking skills.

I also wonder what it must be like to call yourself a skeptic and go about debunking or interrogating homeopathy or religion or whatever, and then suddenly deciding, or pretending, you're going to go along with the idea that humans can change sex, or there are gendered brains in the wrong body, or that experimental use of known dangerous drugs on children is "lifesaving" - without wanting to look into it or get to the bottom of it and see if it's really true. Either they are real skeptics who are keeping their doubts to themselves, which is not really fulfilling their remit, or they were never genuine skeptics.

It's been obvious to me for a long time that the tide would eventually turn because you cannot simply force a nonsensical ideology on the entire population for any length of time.

Totally agree, and another thing that will always eventually collapse is puritanism and trying to control people's thoughts and behaviour to a ridiculous extent.

I think a lot of these skeptic types don't have a very strong sense of history and the parallels with this happening before in various guises. These types of movements depend on the gullible and the power-hungry to latch onto them. It always falls through and there's always a backlash.

One thing I wonder about all these sceptics, though, is whether they ever think ahead. It's been obvious to me for a long time that the tide would eventually turn because you cannot simply force a nonsensical ideology on the entire population for any length of time. You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

Knowing that I would eventually be vindicated is one of the things that has kept me going through all the madness. I am fairly sure it must have kept people like Graham going too, because otherwise how would he cope? But people like Rutherford, Pullman, Dara O'Briain etc have sacrificed long-term glory for the sake of short-term comfort.

What I mean is that at the moment they can go along with the crowd, shake their heads sadly at the angry feminists, bask in the warmth of the praise they receive for their progressive values...but eventually they're going to look like the people who didn't speak out against McCarthyism, or the people who toadied up to the Eastern European communist regimes, or (I hate to say it) collaborated with the Nazis. Do they realise that?

In about 2014 my son was at university and went to a couple of skeptics talks. I presumed they would tackle gender ideology as to me it seemed an obvious target for a group looking at things "sceptically". I was amazed to realise that gender ideology was accepted like a religious belief by these groups and was considered above analysis and critical thinking. That was the start of me realising how captured and fearful many institutions were including those who were supposed to be good at scientific analysis and debate.

I agree that so many secular and 'rationalist' organisations and high-profile individuals have been exceptionally weak and cowardly when it comes to challenging quasi-religious beliefs like gender ideology.

I think a lot of the rot set in with the shift from the Atheism movement, to what was termed as Atheism+
It is what we might recognise today as identity politics / woke-ism / social justice. There was an expectation that atheism or any kind of activism around it shouldn't be just about criticism of religious beliefs (predominantly Christianity) or supporting secular values, but should include championing social issues, defending minority groups and so on. The inevitable result is that any group that positions itself as 'oppressed' will start to escape criticism, and the assumption is that they must be loyally defended against the oppressor (Christianity).

I encountered this phenomenon about 16 years ago as a fresh faced atheist. I was so thrilled to be living in the UK - I never had the luxury of living in a country where people could speak their mind, criticise and oppose the iron fist of religion and even have the freedom to offend. It wasn't just freedom of belief that was protected, but freedom from belief.

I was very critical of Christianity, but also very critical of other religions I was familiar with such as Hinduism and Islam. I was (and still am) extremely supportive of Ex-Muslims because they faced very serious repercussions compared to other types of apostates. Many experienced intense harassment and even death threats.

I thought the UK atheist 'community', secular organisations and even politicians would rally around and support Ex-Muslims in the same way they vocally defended people who were affected by various Christian denominations. As they found out about the experiences of Ex-Muslims, surely there would be outrage.

Instead there was silence. Tumbleweeds.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain had such an uphill struggle. Ignored by so many politicians and organisations that I thought were supportive of apostates. (But as we now know it's only Christianity they are interested in opposing.)
Mainstream media just ignored press releases, media statements, invitation to events etc. Many Ex-Muslim activists faced a dilemma - the only type of media / blogs that seemed interested in publicising the plight of Muslim apostates were far-right or Christian types of groups. So they turned down the offers as it made them feel uncomfortable.
If any relatively mainstream media or journalists took any interest, it was probably still the more conservative, right-wing leaning ones - which of course would be snobbishly dismissed by any lefty / progressive types (sounding familiar?)....

Ex-Muslim campaigners would be de-platformed or refused venues at universities and other institutions at the behest of various Muslim groups. Even feminist groups and orgs turned their backs and instead held events hosting Islamic speakers to show off their 'progressive' credentials.

A (white) bloke making a sexist joke or comment would be 'news' for weeks by various feminist commentators and feminist orgs issuing statements of how 'outraged' they were.
But, for example, if a young (brown) Ex-Muslim woman was forced by her family to go to Pakistan to 'help' her get rid of any 'blasphemous' ideas around leaving Islam... And forced to marry a Muslim man and have children with him... And if she managed to escape back to the UK after several years, but is unable to bring her children with her, because in islamic law the father has custody.... And she knows she will never be able to see her young children again and it breaks her heart and crushes her spirit that they will be told she hated them and abandoned them, and she cannot go back to even visit them because she might be imprisoned or killed by the in-laws... And she still has to watch her back in the UK and keep a low profile because there might be extended family members here that can find out where she lives etc.
Yeah you won't see feminist outrage and media statements or any organisation championing her cause.

I was so angry and disillusioned by all the left wing, atheist and feminist groups and people that I assumed would be supportive of actually oppressed minorities ... But nah.... This shit has been going on for a LONG time. Gender ideology is just the latest iteration.

There was an interesting episode of the Jon Ronson podcast in Radio 4 where he spoke to a Chinese American journalist who merely recorded and broadcast the opinions of a Black man during the BLM protests saying it would be good if people also addressed why Black people were being killed every day by other Black people ( in other words, addressing poverty, drug use, educational inequality etc). He was shamed by a White colleague and forced to apologise. He said he then realised what was happening was that he had apologised for giving a Black man a voice by a privileged White woman.

I wonder if it might have been Cornell West she was talking to? I think they've had discussions in the media a few times so I'm not sure which one binary was thinking of.

I find Candace Owens quite frustrating, she is so intent on proving her opponent wrong she often doesn't really listen, and will use thes set-pieces that sometimes aren't really addressing what the other person is talking about. Even when I think her conclusion is reasonable, she won't admit that anyone else could have any legitimate reason for their view if it is differernt than hers.

That being said, she has the courage to stand up for her views.

I like Glen Loury and John McWhorter's podcasts on American race politics a lot though, they are well worth watching.

Could you post a link to that? Sounds fascinating.

There are some pretty selfish people.

In some cases though, even when it's extreme, I think it can be a differernt view of pragmatic elements that is the real differernce.

There is a tendency for many people on the right to think that better economic performance will ultimately better things for everyone. Sometimes that's justified in certain instances, others it's a sort of magical thinking (imo), but certainly it's true that without economic productivity there isn't any money for social programs of any kind.

There is also, I think, a stronger tendency for conservatives to think that helping the poor with social programs can have negative outcomes, even for those people. I've recently watched a film from a few years ago about black conservatives in the US, and it's fresh in my mind, so I'll give an example from that. Many of the people interviewed felt that the increased social supports in the 1970s had really screwed up the economic progress that the black community there was making. Because of the nature of the supports, the number of single mothers increased hugely, and coming from a one parent household is itself one of the biggest risks for poor outcomes and poverty.

One of the common themes that comes out for me is that Tories in general seem less concerned about whether their policy ideas are "nice," or whether people think they are kind.

As I see it, the "left" in the West have more or less given up on economic equality or economic justice (socialist ideas), so are going for social equality/justice instead. It is an easier option, and allows them to have their cake and eat it - benefiting from capitalism and economic inequality whilst still seeing themselves as "the good guys".

I think your last paragraph has hit the nail on the head.

So do I! Perfectly put.

As a simple example, they wouldn't tend to assume that it is necessary to have an equal number of men and women in every type of work.

I’d agree with that and I’m very left-wing. But I agree there is such a thing as moderate right-wing thinking that is basically reasonable and involves social conscience. And I do like and respect some moderate tories. But some of the tories and other right-wingers in the public eye do definitely seem to actively oppose helping the poorest or fighting injustice, eg some recent cabinet members.

I think it's probably more accurate to say that conservatives see equality or inequality rather differently than people on the left. For a couple of reasons. Pragmatically, because they think it's not possible to actually eradicate it without creating other, worse problems. And also they are not as likely to assume that differences between groups are always a problem, reflecting some kind of social or economic injustice. As a simple example, they wouldn't tend to assume that it is necessary to have an equal number of men and women in every type of work.

That leads to a different way of thinking about policy, it's more about balancing the benefits and costs in society rather than working towards some ideal endpoint, so the policy approaches are differernt. Traditionally, conservatism does think justice is important and that includes fairness in employment and responsibilities that people like employers have to employees. (That's less the case with right wing liberals, in the same way that left wing liberals don't care much about balancing the benefits and costs of social freedoms.)

So apparently Goldacre has been off doing a proper job, making it possible to use NHS data for research without compromising patient anonymity:

open.substack.com/pub/jamesomalley/p/how-to-use-nhs-data-for-scientific?r=xhvm&utm_medium=ios

That seems like a reasonable excuse for why we've not heard from him for a while. He's science-doing, not science-journalisting.

Also many things are predominantly practiced by women like herbalism, meditation etc ( also homeopathy but that is rubbish) and has been laughed at for being ' anti science' when actually later, after years of scientific research these things have proven to have worked. A lot also comes from Eastern medicine. I know science involves a lit of research and evidence, and that is good, but anecdotal evidence from predominantly female practitioners is dismissed favour of profit making drugs and people saying ' no evidence'. Even placebo, previously dismissed has been shown to ge valuable illness, for example, using the body's own ain receptors as medicine.But gender ideology is mainly a male driven phenomenon,. It's automatically accepted with no scientific basis. I believe becsuse the main advocates of this are middle aged middle class males. Just like them.