Sometimes you have to be inspiring and cheerful and Carl Sagan-y. And sometimes, you have to call out fraud and superstition and mob rule for what they are.
The Four Horsemen have talked at some lengths about how they complement each other by taking different approaches and thus probably reaching different audiences. Someone who can't keep up with Dan Dennett's arguments can probably understand Christopher Hitchens just fine.
Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins have talked about how different audiences perceive them - for one Canadian (IIRC) interviewer, Krauss was the funny one and Dawkins the academic one, while I suspect that in the UK they would be seen as about equally funny and academic (depending, of course, on the audience.)
The others, as well, have their own styles and methods: James Randi, Penn Jillette, Michael Shermer, PZ Myers - more recently Ricky Gervais... I'm sure there are plenty of people who might be reached by just one person in that list and wouldn't find the others interesting or convincing, so it's good to have such a diverse cast.
Then again, whenever I list these people I fail to mention women (except maybe Ayaan Hirsi Ali.) This is a big problem in the atheist movement, but fortunately it's one that the big names seem aware of. PZ Myers has been especially vocal about the need to include more women in the movement and to make it more inviting, which isn't helped at all by the behaviour of a surprisingly large number of men in secular events and organisations. (Rebecca Watson, among others, has been the target of some particularly nasty behaviour - unfotunately including one very ill-conceived comment from Dawkins, which sparked a minor scandal.)
There have been a couple of high profile incidents recently in secularist and science advocacy movements where prominent male figures have harassed women; while part of me suspects that the relatively high ratio of such events is due to a higher standard of honesty (or higher incidence of whistleblowers,) rather than a higher incidence of such incidents, I must of course admit that it's fully possible that these movements (especially because they're so male-dominated) are particularly bad places for women to be.
Of course, whether or not the high incidence of reports is due to extra attention paid to the problem and a higher willingness to report, we shouldn't start thinking that the reports are the problem. The incidents and the attitudes behind the incidents are the problem, and steps must be taken to change things for the better.
edited 5th Dec '13 5:17:02 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.I really hate it when one's left with no choice but to play dirty.
Yeah, let's not be like the catholics.
But why is the movement such a dude thing, though?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.First of all, it's self-perpetuating. When you have a group where most of the members are male they tend to start talking "male talk" and engaging in all sorts of behaviour that is socially acceptable and "fun" in a group of men. Quite naturally, when women try to enter that group they often end up leaving because it's boring or annoying.
So that's one reason.
Another reason is that boys are usually encouraged to study and work in fields that are associated with men, and in academia these fields include mathematics, philosophy, and almost all fields of science. These fields, then, tend to produce people who are enthusiastic about science and skepticism (and thus secularism.) I hope there will come a point when all of these fields have a 50-50 split between men and women, but as it is it's a bit more likely for a boy to grow up a skeptic than it is for a girl, at least to the extent influenced by peer pressure in terms of academic and career choices.
There are also other cultural attitudes that seem to direct boys towards things like activism and non-traditional points of view more often than girls, but it's very hard to make any sort of reliable estimates of this.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.I thought women were the heart and soul of social movements, at least in the US?
Explain this please.
I live in a country that is primarily Presbyterian, with significant minority populations of Baptists, Catholics, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and Atheists. I have never attacked any of them, nor have they done the same to me (for the sake of completeness we've had one Islamic terrorist attack - it was a fiasco
◊, and not aimed at atheists either).
edited 5th Dec '13 11:08:43 AM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der ParteiI also disagree with the sentiment that it was okay back then to be pedophile/misogynist/homophobic/whatever just because everyone else was. That stinks of totall moral relativism. Everything goes as long as a majority agrees.
Define your terms narrowly enough and idiosyncratically enough, and you can declare yourself right by fiat. Doesn't actually prove anything, though.
Good point indeed. It makes me wonder about your second point, though; don't you see how universalist and potentially dogmatic it is? Also, do you think that the current understanding of morality is the ultimate be-all and end-all? My point precisely is that it is very hard to see from here which "normal" contemporary habits will be seen as monstrous by our descendants.
Maybe the future is vegan, and eating flesh is, well, a beastly, inhuman thing to do? Or polyamourous, and all these conflicts of jealousy and exclusivity and obligated family will be seen as horrible senseless sources of misery? Or maybe our current, conflicted views on sexuality? Maybe it's democratic governments selling weapons to monstrous dictators? Who knows? The future isn't going to prove you, or me, or anyone right; it's going to be weird as all hell, to us, and we will seem brutal and ignorant and alien, to them.
So don't be so quick to judge, lest you be judged in turn.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I didn't actually mention Aisha at all, nor do I. I think Mohammed was a typical mediaeval warlord and conqueror: not necessarily any worse than his peers, perhaps somewhat better than some, but still nobody to look up to as a moral leader.
That said, I agree with the need to try and understand historical leaders on their own terms; still, I'd be wary of fetishizing them the way people in the modern age seem to do: "Wasn't Genghis Khan such a badass?" etc. Perhaps he was, but he also unleashed the bloodiest war in human history (by percentage of population killed). Trying to understand historical figures doesn't mean they should be emulated or necessarily admired.
edited 5th Dec '13 4:29:04 AM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der Partei