The elephant in the room

I feel like there is a topic looming over this blog that I have to address, but I'm not sure how to approach it. I'm not at all ambivalent about the issue itself, but I'm conflicted about how to talk about it. I feel like the stakes are very high, but I don't understand why that is. I have either witnessed or participated in enough of these conversations to know that they can turn very nasty very quickly. I'm also acutely aware that discussing this topic will probably alienate me from a significant portion of the audience I'm trying to reach. On the other hand, the two main goals of this blog are to address issues of consequence from an atheist perspective and to address controversies within atheism, and this topic sits at the intersection of those goals. 

The topic is feminism.

I'm surprised by both the extent and the intensity of the hostility atheists have toward feminism. Surprised and disappointed. I'm also surprised and disappointed when prominent atheists who rarely discuss political issues not directly related to atheism still go out of their way to attack feminism. I'm surprised and disappointed that this is the issue around which factions are being formed. But if I must take a side, then I must side with feminism.

If you'll allow me a brief digression, I was aware that Richard Dawkins was controversial and divisive before I knew why that was so. Around the time that "The God Delusion" was published, I started to notice that he was frequently being denounced in rather harsh terms, and I started to wonder why. Whenever I saw one of these controversies flare up online, I would always look into it, and every time I would come away with the impression that Dawkins's critics were being totally unreasonable. After this happened a few times, I gradually became of fan of Richard Dawkins, and I owe it all to his critics.

I mention this because a very similar process brought me around to feminism. It all started with "Elevatorgate". At some point I became aware that there was a raging online controversy involving this person I had never heard of before. Her name was Rebecca Watson, and wanting to see what all the fuss was about, I watched her infamous video in which she relates a personal experience about an encounter with a man in a hotel elevator. I'm not going to go through the whole story. Suffice it to say I quickly concluded that Watson's point was quite reasonable, and I was stunned and horrified by the reaction she got for it. It just seemed grossly out of proportion, and so very hateful. When I saw that other women were dealing with similarly hateful attacks in response to similarly reasonable points, I decided that it was no longer enough for me to be passively supportive of feminism in principle. That's when I became a feminist.

To tell you the truth, I really don't understand the other side of this at all. When they talk about feminism, I don't recognize what they're talking about. They describe this authoritarian monster that ruthlessly enforces a strict conformity to dogma, but I don't see any of that. Besides, how would that even work? Shouldn't there be a trail of victims: a long list of careers ended by angry feminists? I can think of many careers which have survived angry feminists, but I can't think of any that were ended.

One thing that puzzles me is that it's not enough for anti-feminists to just disagree with feminists about something. Anti-feminists seem to believe that merely expressing feminist opinions is inherently harmful in some unspecified way. In discussing the "shirtstorm" controversy, Richard Dawkins concluded not only that the shirt was perfectly appropriate, but also that it was an outrage for anyone to think otherwise. I am aware that some opinions are so vile that they are an outrage unto themselves, but I can't see how questioning the appropriateness of a shirt could ever meet that standard.

There's something weird going on here, and I'm fascinated by it, so I'm going to talk about it on this blog. You can expect me to weigh in on these kinds of controversies in future as they arise. In addition to that, I'm also interested in applying some good old-fashioned skeptical rigor to the claims of the anti-feminists, because I don't think they hold water. As for the broader picture, I believe that some women have been driven away from atheism in part due to its hostility to feminism. I think that weakens us as a movement and hurts us as a community. That sucks, and I want to help reverse it if I can.

New Atheism, the "war on terror" and Islamophobia

The second biggest motivation I had for starting this blog was the desire to address myself directly to disputes within the atheist community. Not because I think I necessarily have anything important to add, but because I think the disputes themselves are important, and we should all be discussing them together. The day before I founded "Not Another Atheist Blog", I posted to Facebook in response to "New Atheism, Old Empire" by Luke Savage, an article which appeared on the website of Jacobin magazine.

At face value, and by its own understanding, New Atheism is a reinvigorated incarnation of the Enlightenment scientism found in the work of thinkers like Bacon and Descartes: a critical discourse that subjects religious texts and traditions to rational scrutiny by way of empirical inquiry and defends universal reason against the forces of provincialism.

In practice, it is a crude, reductive, and highly selective critique that owes its popular and commercial success almost entirely to the “war on terror” and its utility as an intellectual instrument of imperialist geopolitics.

I'm not favorably inclined toward the author's thesis, but I suggest reading the whole piece anyway. The charge it makes against the New Atheists is a very serious one, and it should be taken seriously. The "war on terror" and the imperialist geopolitics which drives it is destroying hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, and radicalizing thousands more to take up arms in the name of Islam. If the New Atheists are contributing to this problem, intentionally or otherwise, they need to stop that right now. 

On Facebook, I made what I thought were two important points which the author left out. First, the New Atheists (with the exception of the late Christopher Hitchens) are not supporters of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Second, New Atheism doesn't have a great deal of influence anyway. Each of the last four U.S. Presidents has initiated new rounds of attacks in Iraq, for example. Richard Dawkins is the not problem. I also question New Atheism's "utility as an intellectual instrument of imperialist geopolitics". Once again, this a charge we have to take very seriously, since one of the most basic principles of New Atheism is that ideas motivate behavior. If there's any connection between the ideas the New Atheists are pushing and the behavior of U.S. foreign policy, that connection must be severed.

But this is where it starts to get tricky. Is there a connection? What exactly does that mean? Sure, you could use arguments made by the New Atheists in books like Hitchens's "God Is Not Great" and Harris's "The End of Faith" to support U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. That is to say, you could construct an argument using premises from New Atheism and concluding with an endorsement of the "war on terror", but that's not to say it would be a good (valid, sound) argument. In my view, it would not. There's nothing any New Atheist has said which could ever justify the "war on terror". Is it fair to blame New Atheism if people use their ideas to construct lousy arguments to support policies they oppose?

Even if it isn't the fault of the New Atheists, it's a problem anyway, and one that they might be able to do something about, and the same is true when it comes to Islamophobia. Sam Harris can repeat until he's blue in the face that criticizing Islam is not the same thing as Islamophobia (and he's right, for all the good it does him). But there's no denying the appeal that criticisms of Islam have for Islamophobes. When Harris says "Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas", that's not Islamophobia, but Islamophobes can repeat it just as easily as I can. Even worse, such strong rhetoric quite possibly contributes to the spread of Islamophobia. If people get Islamophobia from "The End of Faith", that's a problem whether Harris intended it that way or not.

I don't know where I picked up this argument, but one of my favorite bits of anti-theist rhetoric is to ask why God, having seen all the terrible things humans have done in His name, wouldn't come down and set everyone straight. For instance, if God really doesn't have a problem with queer people, why doesn't he confront His many followers who believe that He does? I certainly would if it were me. And if I had written "The End of Faith", I would do everything I could to make sure that Islamophobes don't think I'm on their side.

I don't share Luke Savage's criticisms of New Atheism, but I have criticisms of my own. New Atheists must do more than simply distance themselves from Islamophobia and the "war on terror". We must actively take up the fight against them both. We need to spend a little less time going after Glenn Greenwald and Reza Aslan and a lot more time going after Pam Gellar and Frank Gaffney. While continuing to support Muslim critics of Islam like Irshad Manji, Majid Nawaz and Malala Yousafzai, we must also support Abdisamad Sheikh-Hussein, a 15-year-old boy who was evidently murdered last week in Kansas City, Missouri, in what looks to me like an act of Islamophobic terrorism. Part of me hopes that if we were to do these things, we would be less often misunderstood and misrepresented, but that's not the most important concern. Islamophobia and the "war on terror" are wrong and extremely harmful. That's reason enough to oppose them.

A truly progressive agenda

(Updated 12/7/14, 1:15pm)

Proponents of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) will often tell you that it is a value-free description of the world, and that its insights are equally applicable to progressive or conservative economic priorities. Strictly speaking, that's quite true. MMT corrects several fundamental misunderstanding about how the monetary system works for a country that controls its own currency. For conservatives as well as progressives, an accurate understanding of the system as it actually exists (as opposed to how it's modeled in economics textbooks) makes it easier to achieve one's policy goals, whatever they may be. And yet most of the commentary I've see on MMT has associated it with the left, and it's not difficult to see why. For a demonstration of this, take a look at the latest entry by Joe Firestone at New Economic Perspectives.

Senator Bernie Sanders just released his “Economic Agenda for America.” While that agenda is certainly more progressive than the talk we hear from Democrats, and certainly is progressive in its expression of generalities. It is not nearly sufficiently progressive in its specifics.

Firestone then proceeds to address Sanders's agenda point by point, and in doing so, he clearly demonstrates the enormous gulf between a relatively progressive economic agenda and a truly progressive economic agenda. Of course, politics being the art of compromise, there are all manner of non-policy considerations that shape any political agenda. On the other hand, let's be clear: Bernie Sanders is not going to be the Democratic Party's nominee for president in 2016, and he's never going to be president. I say that with considerable regret, and I fervently hope to have the opportunity to vote for him in New Jersey's Democratic primary. But it's true: Sanders's agenda will never have to face the obstructionism of Republicans in Congress, or the timidity of Democrats, for that matter. The benefit of being a "fringe" candidate is that you have the leeway to say what you really think.

When Sanders says he wants $1 trillion in infrastructure investment, Firestone thinks that's great as far as it goes, but what's actually needed is more like $3.6 trillion. Since Sanders isn't going to be president, I can see no reason for him to compromise so much right off the bat. The other side of the coin is that, since everyone knows he won't be president, no one pays much attention to his agenda anyway. But as the only self-described socialist in the United States Congress, many people (especially in the media) view Sanders as the left-most fringe of mainstream American politics. If $1 trillion in infrastructure investment represents the left-most fringe, then Clinton will presumably support much less than that, and a divided Congress will deliver even less. And yet the level of infrastructure investment required hasn't changed... it's still $3.6 trillion.

Anyway, it's a long article, but please check it out. It includes references to a number of important progressive policy goals rarely discussed in mainstream political discourse, like free college education, a federal jobs guarantee program, a basic income guarantee (controversial even within MMT), and the doubling of Social Security benefits across-the-board. If these ideas seem ludicrous to you, you're right, but only politically speaking. Politicians and pundits (including most economists) will tell you that they're ludicrous because they are "unaffordable" or something like that, but they're not. Everything Firestone mentions in his article is really doable. One of the key insights of MMT is that "affordability" is a concept which simply doesn't apply to a government with its own sovereign currency.

Update: Economist L. Randall Wray offers his own commentary to the Senator's plan. 

Intro to economics

My single biggest motivation for starting this blog is my desire to get atheists (especially politically progressive atheists) to start paying more attention to economics. Of the atheists I follow online, I don't know of any who have a strong background in economics. Unfortunately, I don't either. I did major in economics (and philosophy) as an undergraduate, but that seems like a very long time ago, and I've never done anything professionally with that degree. I consider myself nothing more than an interested layman. At the most, I'm just a little bit stronger on economics than average for someone who follows US politics very closely.

This puts me in something of a difficult position. I have a lot that I want to say, and I think that it's really important, but I'm not really the right person to say it. If I were, I'd probably be writing about atheism on "Not Another Econoblog" instead of writing about economics here. But I intend to do the best that I can, and I want to start with a few general remarks about where I'm coming from.

There's something profoundly wrong with how we think about and talk about economics in the political sphere. We have this idea that the economy is a real thing that exists out there in the world, and it is our job (specifically, the job of our elected representatives) to take care of it. The "health" of the economy is of paramount importance, and sometimes people have to make sacrifices in order to make the economy well again. This is one of the major political foundations for the economic policy of austerity. I can't even begin to tell you everything that's wrong with austerity, but the first thing we can say about it is that it gets the relationship between the economy and the people completely backwards. We're not supposed to serve the economy. The economy is supposed to serve us. It's not a natural entity with needs of its own. It's a creation of the government designed to serve a purpose.

I want to use this blog to encourage people to think differently about economics. I hope to encourage people to stop thinking of unemployment, poverty and homelessness as inevitable, and begin to see them as policy variables. Those things exist because our economy creates them, and it doesn't have to.

More specifically, I want to challenge the dominant economic paradigm, because I believe that it is not only harmful (in terms of creating unnecessary suffering), but also profoundly incorrect. Since the Global Financial Crisis, a little bit of room has opened up for the discussion of heterodox approaches, and we're even seeing the welcome beginnings of a more empirically robust approach to the discipline. However, the dominant paradigm (known as Neoclassical economics) is still largely unchallenged in the media and among the political class. This project of tearing down the existing orthodoxy is extremely well-suited for atheists, skeptics, and freethinkers. That orthodoxy is based on what amounts to faith claims. Neoclassical economics should be added in alongside Creationism, homeopathy, and the anti-vaccine movement as a leading target of skeptical scorn.

I also want to talk about what should replace the Neoclassical paradigm, but that gets a bit trickier. It's one thing to realize that the current orthodoxy is hopelessly wrong, but replacing it is another matter. I do have an opinion about where we should be looking for that replacement. One particular school of heterodox economics has been very convincing to me, and that is Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT. It's a little difficult to discuss, though, because I don't really have the expertise to do it justice, and it has some startling implications which seem (to say the least) too good to be true. If MMT is a) more or less correct, and b) widely accepted, it will usher in a radical, revolutionary new approach to political economy which will benefit billions of lives around the world.

But I must warn you to keep your skepticism close. I'm the sort of person who sometimes gets really taken with an idea and then sort of runs away with it. I had a rather intense Ayn Rand period in my late teens, for example. I don't trust my own judgment when it comes to my endorsement of MMT because I don't have the expertise necessary to evaluate it, so I'm not going to ask you to trust me either. But I'm going to try to convince you just the same, because I think it's that important.

So what's that graph up there all about? That's just a tease. We'll get into it later.

A modicum of compassion

Salon.con: The 4 most bizarre right-wing reactions to the Eric Garner decision

4. Bill O’Reilly

Oddly enough, Bill O’Reilly, in a surprise move, showed a modicum of compassion about the Garner case. “I will say, that upon seeing the video that you just saw, and hearing Mr. Garner say he could not breathe, I was extremely troubled,” he told his viewers Wednesday night. “I would have loosened my grip. I desperately wish the officer would have done that.”

To me, Bill O'Reilly is a symbol of a certain type of person. He is supremely confident in his own understanding of the world, so much so that he is immune to education. Facts that call his worldview into question are utterly ignored, if he manages to notice them at all. He is especially bad on the issue of race. In a recent appearance on "The Daily Show", Jon Stewart tried to walk him through the very simple concept of "privilege" by drawing on O'Reilly's own background growing up in Levittown, a safe and stable community where black people were not permitted to live. O'Reilly understands that growing up in Levittown benefited him, and that black people were denied that opportunity, but he refuses to call it "privilege". Having access to a benefit denied to others on the basis of race is a textbook example of racial privilege, but he just can't see it.

Predictably, he's been especially awful when discussing the decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of unarmed Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Like most of Wilson's supporters, O'Reilly is not at all familiar with the facts of the case, and he believes that Wilson's implausible and self-serving testimony to the grand jury has been confirmed by the evidence. He really thinks that, and a lot of other people do too, despite the fact that it is completely wrong. Wilson's testimony was contradicted by most of the other witnesses in key aspects, and the physical evidence is inconclusive (in part because the initial police investigation was so half-assed). But O'Reilly doesn't know any of that. He doesn't know how ignorant he is, so he assumes that anyone who disagrees with him (like those five St. Louis Rams players who made the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" gesture before a football game last Sunday) must be stupid. He actually said that he thinks those players were too stupid to understand what they were doing.

So I really wasn't expecting to get even "a modicum of compassion" from him on the Garner case. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to give him a pat on the back for managing to fall a bit shy of total evil. I just want to know: why this case? What is it about the Garner case that even someone as blinkered and delusional as Bill O'Reilly can see the injustice of it?

It's the camera. Many have pointed out, correctly, that the non-indictment of Officer Daniel Pantaleo proves that putting body cameras on cops is not the answer. But if that video didn't exist, O'Reilly would not have had even "a modicum of compassion" for Eric Garner. If that video didn't exist, the police would have told a story about Garner being enraged and dangerous, and O'Reilly would have believed it without question. They couldn't tell that story because of the video. It wasn't enough to get justice for the family of Eric Garner, and it wasn't enough to put a murderer on trial, but it was enough to get through the nearly impenetrable skull of Bill O'Reilly. That's not nothing.

Body cameras for cops will not solve this problem, but they will help people like O'Reilly (and there are millions of them) understand that there really is a problem. 

Not another atheist blog

I've been resisting this for a long time. I figured there were enough straight white guys out there already promoting reason and empiricism over faith and superstition. But I wanted to be part of the conversation within online atheism. If you'll forgive the expression, atheism is a broad church. There are a lot of different ways of doing it, and I have my own strong opinions. I wanted to find a forum where I could address other atheists and advocate for the priorities I think are important. I spent a long time looking for that forum, and I dipped my toes into the comments sections of several other atheist blogs, but I never quite found what I was looking for.

As time went on, I grew more and more frustrated by what I saw as the failure of atheist organizations and leaders to speak out on the most pressing moral, social, and political issues of the day. As protests erupted across the United States in the aftermath of the decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the atheists on my Twitter feed seemed more concerned with attacking the Pledge of Allegiance and erecting Satanic statues in public spaces.

I also wanted an opportunity to weigh in on some of the big debates among atheists. There's a lot of acrimony, and I've noticed that the opposing camps rarely support each other even on issues where they agree. When they mention each other at all, it is to further sharpen the distinctions. I think many of these controversies are important, and it's important to take a side, but it's not helpful to pick a team. I'm not interested in being a partisan of one or another prominent atheist.

Finally, there are some pretty important topics that I think atheism mostly overlooks. Most atheists I've found, even the politically conscious ones, don't seem to know much about economics. Discussions of climate change are most often limited to mocking the denialists, rather than facing up to the terrifying scale of the problem. While most of the atheists I follow are at least nominally on the political left, most of them are mired in the same mushy centrism that has paralyzed the Democratic Party for decades. I want to advocate for a more robust form of progressive atheism. 

Eventually I realized that if I wanted to read the blog I was imagining, I would have to write it myself. But I really didn't want to do that. I've written several blogs in the past on various topics, and it's not easy. It's a lot of work, and it's mostly thankless, and to be honest very few people ever read any of it. But it's an outlet, and I feel like I need an outlet right now.

Confession time: Yes, this is another atheist blog. But I don't expect to spend much time exposing the logical fallacies of religious apologetics. I'm sure there will be some of that, but mainly I want to take atheism as a given and look out at the rest of the world. I also want to contribute in whatever small way I can to amplifying the voices of the underrepresented within the atheist community.There may also be some jokes, but don't get your hopes up.

Welcome to Not Another Atheist Blog. I hope you like it, and if not, I hope you'll tell me why.