My Intro
Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2012 9:34 pm
Hey everyone,
I'm Thaumas Themelios, aka Wonderist, and I wanted to make sure I get involved in this site ASAP, because I'm really heartened by the discussion you guys were having on ERV about 'toning it down' (though I wouldn't use the 'tone' argument; but I'll get more into that later). I think this idea that you guys are pursuing is *exactly* the right move, and has the potential to become something much bigger than this current controversy/conflict would lead one to believe.
Background
My mom was a nun, my dad was a priest, and I'm a hardcore atheist. I've been atheist my whole life. Learned the definition of atheist at age 8, and said, "Oh, that's what I am!" Religion has always perplexed me; if people can stop believing in Santa, why not God? Couldn't understand why the kids in my class wanted to watch one of those old epic-style movies about Jesus. What a boring story. Jason and the Argonauts, and the quest for the Golden Fleece! Now that's a cool myth! What do you mean the religious stories aren't myths?! Come on? Noah? Adam and Eve? Seriously?
Got bullied at school because of my disbelief from age 11-12. One of my classmate's parents must have heard I was scoffing at silly religious claims, and that I was an atheist. Soon after, I started hearing strange rumours about me being a devil-worshipper. I was all like, WTF?! I don't believe in the devil either!
Well, rumours have a life of their own. Soon I wasn't just a 'devil-worshipper', I was 'evil', I was 'angry', I was 'immoral', I can't even remember all the ridiculous things these kids (most of whom I had previously called friends) were calling me. It got so bad I had to switch schools; depression set in. I've lived with low-level, chronic, life-long depression (called dysthymia) since.
Online Activism
The more I learned about religion, the more astonished I became. It was far more widespread than I could have imagined, and had one of the most obviously despicable histories imaginable, and yet people revered it. And they couldn't even tell that the myths of old were *exactly* the same fucking thing. But speaking out against it was looked down on, and you would be shunned if you did. And not only religious people would shut you up, but appeasing non-believers, too.
So I shut up about it for years. Until W.'s 'election'. Until 9/11. Until grainy sat photos of trucks with circles around them and arrows pointing to them saying, "Here be WMDs." Until Sam Harris took the words right out of my mouth. Until the US voting public let me down and 're-elected' W. Like, srsly, WTF people!?!
I've been active online in atheism-related activities since about 2004, with my first major participation being in the Infidel Guy forums for fans of Reginald Finley's internet radio show. I even shelled out for a gold membership and partook of his enormous archive of shows, which are extremely valuable. I learned how to thoroughly apply the Socratic method by listening to Reggie use it again and again with scalpel precision. The forums were equally as educational, where flaky ideas went to die. The forum participants were unforgiving interrogators of theists, woo woo artists, and unskeptical thinkers of all stripes. Many also employed Reggie's Socratic style, but each person had their own way of doing things, too. There was a lot of variety, a lot of raucous argument and debate, but also a lot of fun, and good moderation to prevent the really nasty shit from getting out of hand.
As the IG board was undergoing economic stress, Reggie tried to diversify and build up a network of freethought radio shows. Some of the members of the board, the ones most focused on the irrational claims of religion, tried to help out by starting up a radio show based on an ideal of seeking out and confronting irrational claims in the world, and especially those irrational claims of religion. The Rational Response Squad was born. Some members of the IG board were glad to see the more rowdy and confrontational types go, and stayed behind at IG. Some folks like myself weren't too sure about such an 'over the top' style of confrontationalism, but weren't necessarily turned off by it either. Myself, I kept my options open and stayed as a member of IG, but also joined the RRS forums as well, just to see what it would be like.
It grew on me. I had my hesitations, based on my stance on ethics, but I was surprised that the moderation team was rather shockingly fair. Yes, people were banned left and right, but as far as I could tell they were banned because they had broken forum rules. I personally did not witness any unethical behaviour during the 6 years I was active at RRS, although I did hear rumours of unethical behaviour from some of the folks who had been banned: mostly theist trolls.
In one particularly impressive moment of moderation, I was being falsely accused of having ulterior motives by a well-known, and popular regular at RRS, who I had had the occasional heated argument with back on the Infidel Guy forums. He began threatening to ban me. I considered this unfair because his grudge against me from the IG boards (where he was not a mod) should not carry over to the RRS forums (where he was a mod) and thus get me banned for a personal grudge. So I emailed Brian Sapient, asking him to intervene as an impartial voice of reason. I knew Sapient was not actually impartial, since he was close friends with this popular RRS regular, and I had rarely interacted with Sapient up until that point (I more focused on logical and scientific type debates; he more focused on harms-of-religion type debates), so I was genuinely worried that favouritism would win out, and I would end up banned for a grudge. Surprisingly, I was not. Sapient advised the other member to avoid interacting with me and asked me to do the same. And we did. And on we went. Bullying stopped. I was quite pleased with that outcome.
RRS was/is a good website. The core members were not perfect, and had their quirks and flaws, but they were not nearly as bad as the disgruntled banned theist trolls made them out to be. Things were moving along nicely. Blasphemy Challenge, huge success. Nightline debate with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, one word: Crockoduck!
More Drama and Rumour-mongering
Unfortunately, the RRS was not prepared for what was coming. The rumour mill of mostly disgruntled theists, and a few disgruntled atheists, was chugging along, mostly behind the scenes, building up stories and interpretations of events surrounding the RRS and its various core members.
As I detail in my post, "Still Unapologetic, Thanks for asking.", the resulting rumours put a black mark on RRS and its core members. I absolutely would not be surprised if most of you here believe most of the rumours, or at least would wager that there must be a good dose of truth to them. I even wouldn't be surprised if a few folks here feel that they themselves have personal experiences with some RRS members, and that these personal experiences constitute good reason to shun certain RRS members, or the RRS as a whole. I am not here to attempt to whitewash, or to act the apologist. I am only going to present my own experience and interpretation of what happened.
In my own experience, I was very worried that the rumours and charges against various RRS members were possibly true, and if they were, I would no longer be able to support the RRS. But unlike *most* people who heard the rumours, I wanted to get to the bottom of them to discover the truth. And I was woefully unimpressed with the rumour-mongers when I did. Not a single rumour that I investigated violated what I would consider ethical behaviour. Were there some mistakes and errors of judgment? Yes. But nothing on the scale of what the rumours made them out to be.
And yet, the damage was done. It wasn't a fatal blow to the RRS, but it was painful and sapped nearly all of the energy out of the core members, all of whom moved on to other things, with only Brian Sapient keeping the forums and website alive.
But I stayed. And I didn't lose hope. Since I knew (from the evidence I had dug up; anyone else is free to investigate, if they are skeptical, and I would actually encourage it!) that there was little to no validity to the rumours, and since I felt that Brian Sapient himself was sincere in his efforts and ideals, and since there were still many forum members who I valued as people, I kept visiting the forums and contributing. And all this while, I was monitoring the blogosphere as well.
This is the part where it starts to tie into the current situation, and why I'm here telling you all this.
If you haven't read the link I put above, I urge all of you who are interested in the long term success of the Slyme Pit and its 'reason for being' to do so, either now or shortly after reading this post. Here it is again: Still Unapologetic, Thanks for asking.
I wrote the Still Unapologetic post at a time shortly after (or in the waning days of) ElevatorGate, but it is actually something that represents a *culmination* of ideas that had been ruminating in my head since I started being an active atheist, and even before that. These ideas were collecting during my time on the Infidel Guy forum, and coalescing during the heydays of the RRS. They were taking on a more definite form as I experimented with different techniques of argument and debate with both theists and atheists during the down days of the RRS.
They were coming more clearly into focus as I was following the controversy surrounding the accommodationism vs. gnu atheism debate, during which time I was seeking some underlying principles which distinguished a) gnu atheists from accommodationists, but also b) gnu atheists from the asshole-ish straw man caricature bogeyman whom the accommodationists called 'New Atheists'.
And I finally started to put them to the test during the middle part of ElevatorGate, when I started to see the parallels with the gnu/accommo debate, and also with the RRS rumours. By the time I wrote the Still Unapologetic post, these ideas had matured. I had tested them, and they worked quite well. The Still Unapologetic post was my first attempt to write about them in a coherent way.
Since then, I have been practising using these new(to me) techniques, and getting better and better at using them. I'm sure some people somewhere would consider these techniques no-brainers from their perspective, but for me they are new and profound. And more than that, they are proving themselves very useful and effective for me.
The techniques are briefly hinted at in the Still Unapologetic post, but if you really want to get a more robust understanding of what they are, you can find some of my latest thoughts on them written out in the Ask an Atheist threads here, including a decent display of me actually using them during those threads to confront-without-escalation 1) FTBers like Ophelia, Laden, julian and Sally Strange, 2) ERVites/slymers like MKG, Justicar, franc, JCW, and even 3) the hosts, but mostly Sam:
http://askanatheist.tv/2012/06/10/the-p ... -feminism/
http://askanatheist.tv/2012/06/12/dogma ... st-part-1/
http://askanatheist.tv/2012/06/13/a-res ... ia-benson/
http://askanatheist.tv/2012/06/14/dogma ... er-things/
I also undertook a strategic action to confront Greta Christina on her own blog over what I consider a legitimate criticism and concern over her phrasing of her correction about the upskirt rumours. I call it a strategic action because I was not only attempting to make my point about Greta's post, I was also intentionally behaving in a way that would draw out and put a spot-light on the kinds of social-bullying behaviours and rumour-mongering that I was and still am very concerned about. I have several other examples of using this strategy, and I must say, it is very fucking effective, from my perspective:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/ ... ment-77101
This is what I want to explore with you guys. I want to share what I've learned, and I want to learn from you guys as well. I want to form a coalition of people who are willing to tolerate differences of opinion without throwing each other under the bus. I believe that I have a way of engaging in discussion/debate that is impenetrable to the tactics of smearing and rumour-mongering that have hurt me and so many others in the past, and I *know* you guys know what I'm talking about. The great thing about these techniques is that I *do not* have to compromise my ethics. This is of paramount importance to me. But at the same time, I *do not* have to shut up when I have something critical to say.
I won't pretend that the techniques I'm talking about are necessarily going to be for everyone. So far, I'm only claiming they work for me. But I'm hoping some of you will try them out and see if they might also work for some of you, too. And I don't think they are for all occasions. Sometimes snark is great. Sometimes hoggle-esque satire is exactly what's needed. You know what? Sometimes even shutting up is a valid and effective technique (not often, but when it's used judiciously, it can be very effective).
I'm a pragmatist. I use what works and discard what doesn't. And what works for me may be somewhat different than what works for you. That's fair, and good. Diversity is good! Diversity is what will win in the long run. I don't want to impose my ideas on anyone, but I *do* think I've got some good ones here, useful ones, practical ones, pragmatic ones. Ones that work, and work without compromise, without selling out. That is key for me, and that is why I think some (or maybe many) of you will find these techniques to be something you can actually try out without feeling awkward or icky about it. You do NOT have to change who you are, not in the slightest! I haven't changed who I am. I've just picked up a few more tools to be more effective getting my points across, and to be able to gain more allies, rather than counter-productively recruiting more enemies.
And, after all, isn't that what this is all about here? Becoming more effective in our pursuit of positive goals, finding more good allies, staying safe from erstwhile antagonists.
I'm Thaumas Themelios, aka Wonderist, and I wanted to make sure I get involved in this site ASAP, because I'm really heartened by the discussion you guys were having on ERV about 'toning it down' (though I wouldn't use the 'tone' argument; but I'll get more into that later). I think this idea that you guys are pursuing is *exactly* the right move, and has the potential to become something much bigger than this current controversy/conflict would lead one to believe.
Background
My mom was a nun, my dad was a priest, and I'm a hardcore atheist. I've been atheist my whole life. Learned the definition of atheist at age 8, and said, "Oh, that's what I am!" Religion has always perplexed me; if people can stop believing in Santa, why not God? Couldn't understand why the kids in my class wanted to watch one of those old epic-style movies about Jesus. What a boring story. Jason and the Argonauts, and the quest for the Golden Fleece! Now that's a cool myth! What do you mean the religious stories aren't myths?! Come on? Noah? Adam and Eve? Seriously?
Got bullied at school because of my disbelief from age 11-12. One of my classmate's parents must have heard I was scoffing at silly religious claims, and that I was an atheist. Soon after, I started hearing strange rumours about me being a devil-worshipper. I was all like, WTF?! I don't believe in the devil either!
Well, rumours have a life of their own. Soon I wasn't just a 'devil-worshipper', I was 'evil', I was 'angry', I was 'immoral', I can't even remember all the ridiculous things these kids (most of whom I had previously called friends) were calling me. It got so bad I had to switch schools; depression set in. I've lived with low-level, chronic, life-long depression (called dysthymia) since.
Online Activism
The more I learned about religion, the more astonished I became. It was far more widespread than I could have imagined, and had one of the most obviously despicable histories imaginable, and yet people revered it. And they couldn't even tell that the myths of old were *exactly* the same fucking thing. But speaking out against it was looked down on, and you would be shunned if you did. And not only religious people would shut you up, but appeasing non-believers, too.
So I shut up about it for years. Until W.'s 'election'. Until 9/11. Until grainy sat photos of trucks with circles around them and arrows pointing to them saying, "Here be WMDs." Until Sam Harris took the words right out of my mouth. Until the US voting public let me down and 're-elected' W. Like, srsly, WTF people!?!
I've been active online in atheism-related activities since about 2004, with my first major participation being in the Infidel Guy forums for fans of Reginald Finley's internet radio show. I even shelled out for a gold membership and partook of his enormous archive of shows, which are extremely valuable. I learned how to thoroughly apply the Socratic method by listening to Reggie use it again and again with scalpel precision. The forums were equally as educational, where flaky ideas went to die. The forum participants were unforgiving interrogators of theists, woo woo artists, and unskeptical thinkers of all stripes. Many also employed Reggie's Socratic style, but each person had their own way of doing things, too. There was a lot of variety, a lot of raucous argument and debate, but also a lot of fun, and good moderation to prevent the really nasty shit from getting out of hand.
As the IG board was undergoing economic stress, Reggie tried to diversify and build up a network of freethought radio shows. Some of the members of the board, the ones most focused on the irrational claims of religion, tried to help out by starting up a radio show based on an ideal of seeking out and confronting irrational claims in the world, and especially those irrational claims of religion. The Rational Response Squad was born. Some members of the IG board were glad to see the more rowdy and confrontational types go, and stayed behind at IG. Some folks like myself weren't too sure about such an 'over the top' style of confrontationalism, but weren't necessarily turned off by it either. Myself, I kept my options open and stayed as a member of IG, but also joined the RRS forums as well, just to see what it would be like.
It grew on me. I had my hesitations, based on my stance on ethics, but I was surprised that the moderation team was rather shockingly fair. Yes, people were banned left and right, but as far as I could tell they were banned because they had broken forum rules. I personally did not witness any unethical behaviour during the 6 years I was active at RRS, although I did hear rumours of unethical behaviour from some of the folks who had been banned: mostly theist trolls.
In one particularly impressive moment of moderation, I was being falsely accused of having ulterior motives by a well-known, and popular regular at RRS, who I had had the occasional heated argument with back on the Infidel Guy forums. He began threatening to ban me. I considered this unfair because his grudge against me from the IG boards (where he was not a mod) should not carry over to the RRS forums (where he was a mod) and thus get me banned for a personal grudge. So I emailed Brian Sapient, asking him to intervene as an impartial voice of reason. I knew Sapient was not actually impartial, since he was close friends with this popular RRS regular, and I had rarely interacted with Sapient up until that point (I more focused on logical and scientific type debates; he more focused on harms-of-religion type debates), so I was genuinely worried that favouritism would win out, and I would end up banned for a grudge. Surprisingly, I was not. Sapient advised the other member to avoid interacting with me and asked me to do the same. And we did. And on we went. Bullying stopped. I was quite pleased with that outcome.
RRS was/is a good website. The core members were not perfect, and had their quirks and flaws, but they were not nearly as bad as the disgruntled banned theist trolls made them out to be. Things were moving along nicely. Blasphemy Challenge, huge success. Nightline debate with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, one word: Crockoduck!
More Drama and Rumour-mongering
Unfortunately, the RRS was not prepared for what was coming. The rumour mill of mostly disgruntled theists, and a few disgruntled atheists, was chugging along, mostly behind the scenes, building up stories and interpretations of events surrounding the RRS and its various core members.
As I detail in my post, "Still Unapologetic, Thanks for asking.", the resulting rumours put a black mark on RRS and its core members. I absolutely would not be surprised if most of you here believe most of the rumours, or at least would wager that there must be a good dose of truth to them. I even wouldn't be surprised if a few folks here feel that they themselves have personal experiences with some RRS members, and that these personal experiences constitute good reason to shun certain RRS members, or the RRS as a whole. I am not here to attempt to whitewash, or to act the apologist. I am only going to present my own experience and interpretation of what happened.
In my own experience, I was very worried that the rumours and charges against various RRS members were possibly true, and if they were, I would no longer be able to support the RRS. But unlike *most* people who heard the rumours, I wanted to get to the bottom of them to discover the truth. And I was woefully unimpressed with the rumour-mongers when I did. Not a single rumour that I investigated violated what I would consider ethical behaviour. Were there some mistakes and errors of judgment? Yes. But nothing on the scale of what the rumours made them out to be.
And yet, the damage was done. It wasn't a fatal blow to the RRS, but it was painful and sapped nearly all of the energy out of the core members, all of whom moved on to other things, with only Brian Sapient keeping the forums and website alive.
But I stayed. And I didn't lose hope. Since I knew (from the evidence I had dug up; anyone else is free to investigate, if they are skeptical, and I would actually encourage it!) that there was little to no validity to the rumours, and since I felt that Brian Sapient himself was sincere in his efforts and ideals, and since there were still many forum members who I valued as people, I kept visiting the forums and contributing. And all this while, I was monitoring the blogosphere as well.
This is the part where it starts to tie into the current situation, and why I'm here telling you all this.
If you haven't read the link I put above, I urge all of you who are interested in the long term success of the Slyme Pit and its 'reason for being' to do so, either now or shortly after reading this post. Here it is again: Still Unapologetic, Thanks for asking.
I wrote the Still Unapologetic post at a time shortly after (or in the waning days of) ElevatorGate, but it is actually something that represents a *culmination* of ideas that had been ruminating in my head since I started being an active atheist, and even before that. These ideas were collecting during my time on the Infidel Guy forum, and coalescing during the heydays of the RRS. They were taking on a more definite form as I experimented with different techniques of argument and debate with both theists and atheists during the down days of the RRS.
They were coming more clearly into focus as I was following the controversy surrounding the accommodationism vs. gnu atheism debate, during which time I was seeking some underlying principles which distinguished a) gnu atheists from accommodationists, but also b) gnu atheists from the asshole-ish straw man caricature bogeyman whom the accommodationists called 'New Atheists'.
And I finally started to put them to the test during the middle part of ElevatorGate, when I started to see the parallels with the gnu/accommo debate, and also with the RRS rumours. By the time I wrote the Still Unapologetic post, these ideas had matured. I had tested them, and they worked quite well. The Still Unapologetic post was my first attempt to write about them in a coherent way.
Since then, I have been practising using these new(to me) techniques, and getting better and better at using them. I'm sure some people somewhere would consider these techniques no-brainers from their perspective, but for me they are new and profound. And more than that, they are proving themselves very useful and effective for me.
The techniques are briefly hinted at in the Still Unapologetic post, but if you really want to get a more robust understanding of what they are, you can find some of my latest thoughts on them written out in the Ask an Atheist threads here, including a decent display of me actually using them during those threads to confront-without-escalation 1) FTBers like Ophelia, Laden, julian and Sally Strange, 2) ERVites/slymers like MKG, Justicar, franc, JCW, and even 3) the hosts, but mostly Sam:
http://askanatheist.tv/2012/06/10/the-p ... -feminism/
http://askanatheist.tv/2012/06/12/dogma ... st-part-1/
http://askanatheist.tv/2012/06/13/a-res ... ia-benson/
http://askanatheist.tv/2012/06/14/dogma ... er-things/
I also undertook a strategic action to confront Greta Christina on her own blog over what I consider a legitimate criticism and concern over her phrasing of her correction about the upskirt rumours. I call it a strategic action because I was not only attempting to make my point about Greta's post, I was also intentionally behaving in a way that would draw out and put a spot-light on the kinds of social-bullying behaviours and rumour-mongering that I was and still am very concerned about. I have several other examples of using this strategy, and I must say, it is very fucking effective, from my perspective:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/ ... ment-77101
This is what I want to explore with you guys. I want to share what I've learned, and I want to learn from you guys as well. I want to form a coalition of people who are willing to tolerate differences of opinion without throwing each other under the bus. I believe that I have a way of engaging in discussion/debate that is impenetrable to the tactics of smearing and rumour-mongering that have hurt me and so many others in the past, and I *know* you guys know what I'm talking about. The great thing about these techniques is that I *do not* have to compromise my ethics. This is of paramount importance to me. But at the same time, I *do not* have to shut up when I have something critical to say.
I won't pretend that the techniques I'm talking about are necessarily going to be for everyone. So far, I'm only claiming they work for me. But I'm hoping some of you will try them out and see if they might also work for some of you, too. And I don't think they are for all occasions. Sometimes snark is great. Sometimes hoggle-esque satire is exactly what's needed. You know what? Sometimes even shutting up is a valid and effective technique (not often, but when it's used judiciously, it can be very effective).
I'm a pragmatist. I use what works and discard what doesn't. And what works for me may be somewhat different than what works for you. That's fair, and good. Diversity is good! Diversity is what will win in the long run. I don't want to impose my ideas on anyone, but I *do* think I've got some good ones here, useful ones, practical ones, pragmatic ones. Ones that work, and work without compromise, without selling out. That is key for me, and that is why I think some (or maybe many) of you will find these techniques to be something you can actually try out without feeling awkward or icky about it. You do NOT have to change who you are, not in the slightest! I haven't changed who I am. I've just picked up a few more tools to be more effective getting my points across, and to be able to gain more allies, rather than counter-productively recruiting more enemies.
And, after all, isn't that what this is all about here? Becoming more effective in our pursuit of positive goals, finding more good allies, staying safe from erstwhile antagonists.