There was a 19th-centure English sceptic who refused to believe anything without evidence.
And other people’s accounts of voyages around the world were hearsay, not evidence, since he had not been on voyages around the world.
And other people’s reports of ships disappearing over the horizing, with the hull disappearing 1st and the masts last, were hearsay, not evidence, since he had not been at the ports seeing these ships.
He made his own measurements at local canals, and determined that the earth was flat, with evidence that satisfied him.
Just as he did not observe other people’s voyages, these new skeptics and sceptics have not observed other people’s inner experiences,
I’ve heard all three of them mentioned for motivated reasoning on other issues too, picking and choosing evidence that just happens to match a conservative world view. Like sqlrob says, I don’t think they’ve ever actually held to the standards you describe.
I knew Dawkins had displayed sexist behavior in the past, but was unfamiliar with the other two before now. It’s distressing how many skeptics and atheists (at least the white, male ones) have drifted further and further right over the years, especially during Trump’s administration, right in the heart of the right wing’s complete abandonment of what little science and reason they did embrace.
I’ve mentioned it before at the old place, but I canceled my subscription to Skeptic magazine around that time, after noticing how Michael Shermer repeatedly wrote about what a horrible travesty and danger college “cancel culture” was, while remaining dead fucking silent for years about Trump and everything he and his administration were doing.
I don’t know much about Coyne or Pinker, but Dawkins has a long history of misogyny, and transphobia is, at its core, a subset of misogyny. Dawkins clearly believes that men are superior to women in every way except being able to birth children. And he cannot fathom why any rational person who was “born male” would want to be a woman, ergo any such person is clearly irrational and suffering from a delusion. Now, he’s smart enough to not express it in those terms, but that is, I am convinced, what he thinks.
It seems to me like a lot of “skeptics” (who really get into it as an identity thing, not just what I think of as normal healthy levels of skepticism) are Libertarians, and in my experience if you scratch a Libertarian you often find a conservative.
Natural laws was a Christian concept to start with, so I see them as Evangelicals with one less god. Dawkins in particular has struggled to leave his old religion behind.
If I was more charitable, I would say that they were dreaming of a world where they would be guillotined as reactionaries, but the evidence doesn’t support that, they seem to be dreaming of a world where everyone else is guillotined as a revolutionary.
Given the make-up of the courts, I could easily see this as an end-run around legal and ethical considerations. And one that could easily be applied to adult trans care as well. That and targeting trans-supportive physicians as “groomers” or what have you. Just found out from a good friend, whose brother is in a gay marriage, that he and his husband are being run out of Berkley Springs WV over a whisper campaign that his husband, a middle school principal, “should not be trusted with the keys to the boy’s locker room.” The fact that he has worked there for almost 25 years and has a sterling reputation and record has no bearing, and the school system was not at all supportive, basically saying “well, it’s a legitimate concern…” That town used to be a relatively liberal bastion in WV (by WV standards, anyway) but has recently had an influx of white supremacists who are trying to take over the area. Lovely times…
Beat me to it! I’m in the middle of watching it. I was going to post it when I’d finished. It could also go in the Steve Shives and Religion categories.
