Jan Steen
Introduction
The historian whose subject concerns the distant past faces different challenges than one who tries to unravel the intrigues surrounding a recent phenomenon, such as the rise and fall of a Movement whose participants are still alive at the time of writing. The former has a limited, unchanging number of sources, often incomplete, contradictory and unreliable, at his or her disposal. The latter has, on the contrary, access to a wealth of documentary material. But this too may be contradictory and unreliable. More significantly, there are witnesses at hand who can be queried, which is hardly the case when one's object of research is, for instance, some aspect of the history of the Roman Empire.
The events related in the following pages unfolded for the greatest part in less half a year, starting not long before August 2012. Almost all of it played out on the internet, with only some minor 'meat space' invasions in the form of conference presentations. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the historian therefore could obtain all his data from the internet alone. On the contrary, the most significant information is not freely accessible; it was shared in personal emails, secret message boards ('back channels' and hidden forums), telephone conversations and meetings in bars and hotel rooms at conferences.
The aim of this study is to demonstrate that the official version of the origin of the Atheism Plus movement is a well-cultivated myth, whereas what looks like an unbelievable myth is in fact the true story.
Let us briefly examine the official version of the emergence of Atheism Plus, so that we can more thoroughly debunk it later on. On 18 August 2012, FreethoughtBlogs writer Jen McCreight published a blog post with the unwieldy title How I Unwittingly Infiltrated the Boy’s [sic] Club & Why It’s Time for a New Wave of Atheism. The following excerpts may suffice to give the flavour of this post.
This post was strong on rhetoric but short on the goals of this new wave of atheism. In addition, there was as yet no name for the Movement. That was remedied the next day, when McCreight wrote:People applauded me for starting an atheist group on a conservative college campus. For blogging about our events and getting local media attention. For volunteering as a board member of the Secular Student Alliance. And most of all, for creating Boobquake.
(...)
So I started speaking up about dirty issues like feminism and diversity and social justice because I thought messages like “please stop sexually harassing me†would be simple for skeptics and rationalists. But I was naive. Like clockwork, every post on feminism devolved into hundreds of comments accusing me being a man-hating, castrating, humorless, ugly, overreacting harpy.
(...)
I don’t feel safe as a woman in this community – and I feel less safe than I do as a woman in science, or a woman in gaming, or hell, as a woman walking down the fucking sidewalk.
(...)
I don’t want good causes like secularism and skepticism to die because they’re infested with people who see issues of equality as mission drift. I want Deep Rifts. I want to be able to truthfully say that I feel safe in this movement. I want the misogynists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, and downright trolls out of the movement for the same reason I wouldn’t invite them over for dinner or to play Mario Kart: because they’re not good people.
(...)
It’s time for a new wave of atheism, just like there were different waves of feminism.
So, what was Atheism Plus?I didn’t expect you to have come up with names and logos for the third wave…and I really didn’t expect you all to basically agree. We tend to be like herding cats, but not this time.
You called for Atheism+.
The silent implication behind this seemingly uncontroversial declaration was that the atheist movement was riddled with racists, homophobes, misogynists, etcetera. That made her post highly inflammatory. The controversy had already been fuelled in McCreight's first piece, where she stated that "Now it’s time for a third wave – a wave that isn’t just a bunch of 'middle-class, white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied men' patting themselves on the back for debunking homeopathy for the 983258th time or thinking up yet another great zinger to use against Young Earth Creationists." In other words, the people who had helped build the atheist movement were dismissed as a bunch of old white men who had become irrelevant. It is no surprise that statements like this did little to win over the hearts of said white men.We are…
Atheists plus we care about social justice,
Atheists plus we support women’s rights,
Atheists plus we protest racism,
Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia,
Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.
This was bad PR, but not bad enough to prevent several 'prominent' figures in the atheist/skeptic movement from rallying round Atheism Plus. These included Adam Lee, PZ Myers, Greta Christina, the well-known copy-paster Ophelia Benson and others. Myers, not unexpectedly, added to the controversy by writing in his typically abusive way about the opponents of Atheism Plus.
However, this could all be classified as mild disagreement compared to the Pol Pot-style rhetoric that another FreethoughtBlogger had by then unleashed. This was the infamous Dr. Richard Carrier PhD. Over-endowed in the ego department, Dr. Carrier PhD was an unaffiliated historian, best known for characterising one of his own contributions to a book as "a deliberate tour de force." Dr. Carrier PhD felt that Jen McCreight had unwittingly not only infiltrated the Boy's [sic] Club but had no less unwittingly published an idea that he had been nurturing for months. As he wrote on 20 August 2012:And if you don’t agree with any of that — and this is the only ‘divisive’ part — then you’re an asshole. I suggest you form your own label, “Asshole Atheists†and own it, proudly.
Pretending to be happy to be pre-empted, he added:There is a new atheism brewing, and it’s the rift we need, to cut free the dead weight so we can kick the C.H.U.D.’s back into the sewers and finally disown them, once and for all. I was already mulling a way to do this back in June when discussion in the comments on my post On Sexual Harassment generated an idea to start a blog series building a system of shared values that separates the light side of the force from the dark side within the atheism movement, so we could start marginalizing the evil in our midst, and grooming the next generation more consistently and clearly into a system of more enlightened humanist values. Then I just got overwhelmed with work and kept putting it off on my calendar for when I had a good half a day or so to get started on that project.
So I was chomping at the bit to find time to write something on this, but still not sure what to say or how to say it. It especially bugged me because I couldn’t get to it for lack of available time (...).
Then Jen McCreight said it for me, more eloquently and clearly than I could have. This weekend she wrote How I Unwittingly Infiltrated the Boy’s Club & Why It’s Time for a New Wave of Atheism, which was so well received (and quite rightly) that she wrote a brief follow-up: Atheism +. And Greta Christina and others have taken up the banner: Atheism Plus: The New Wave of Atheism. I am fully on board. I will provide any intellectual artillery they need to expand this cause and make it successful.
