Greg Laden's Blog

Are you suggesting that #bobchickenshit would never mistake power tools for toys?

Posted by: Stephanie Z | January 30, 2010 6:05 PM

My impression of what is being asserted is not that Gee needs to "let people piss on his rug", but rather that the decision not to has implications. And my impression--based, admittedly, on hearsay evidence--is that what enraged Gee at the Civility Panel was the expression of an opinion about what some of those implications might be.

And BTW, what I don't get is why anyone would install a fucking rug in their blog anyway. When shit gets out of hand, it's much easier to clean a tile floor.

Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | January 30, 2010 6:10 PM

And something to grind up the bones.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | January 30, 2010 6:13 PM

Nicely put Greg. This whole shenanigans is turning into urinary bukkake where the act of pissing has become the point of the argument, rather than a feature of the discussion.

The majority of blogs are self-regulating, as are web forums etc. I honestly don't see what all the fuss about: if you don't like it, don't read it. It's a wonderfully egalitarian environment. I read some Scienceblogs, and I might not agree with everyone, or fancy reading everything written by bloggers I follow (you, Isis & PZ mostly). But just like in *gasp* real life, I might not agree with everything my friends and acquaintances say, or indeed family & loved ones.

And if someone is being particularly egregious, or enjoys talking about things I find distasteful (for example), why then, I can simply "not be friends" with that person, or not join in their conversation.

Posted by: Ian Brooks | January 30, 2010 6:17 PM

The point is that there is definitely a big difference between saying (1) you must/must not do X, (2) if you do/do not do X, I will do Y (for values of Y that do not include merely saying something in public you don't like), or (3) if you do/do not do X, I will say something in public you might not like.

My impression is that Gee was enraged by an instance of (3), which I find pathetic. Other than harrassment, libel, etc, why would anyone give a flying fuck that some random douche tells them they are an idiot and suck balls?

Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | January 30, 2010 6:25 PM

#bobchickenshit is not a guarded secret. There are a cache of non-SBers using the hashtag. If you want to know what it means, shoot me an email rather than assuming it's some grand conspiracy to exclude you. I'll happily tell you the story.

Posted by: Isis the Scientist | January 30, 2010 7:10 PM

Should just anyone be allowed to piss on Henry Gee's rug?

Posted by: llewelly | January 30, 2010 7:17 PM

My short answer is no, pissing on a blogger's rug does not have to be allowed.

I don't know who Henry Gee is nor do I care (I already follow 35 sources) but if a blog becomes a place for personal attacks or is ruined by trolls then I just leave. e.g. I just could not stomach Pharyngula if PZ did not have a list of banned psychopaths.

Posted by: NewEnglandBob | January 30, 2010 7:34 PM

That's what you took away?

2. In Computer Science: A fast storage buffer in the central processing unit of a computer. Also called cache memory.

Posted by: Isis the Scientist | January 30, 2010 7:41 PM

No, I didn't come away with that definition, but that's probably because no processing is done in the cache. #bobchickenshit is processing.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | January 30, 2010 7:50 PM

I'm wondering how much of the controversy here is due to people confusing "pissing on the carpet" (presumably saying/doing something that makes things awkward or difficult for *everyone* in the metaphorical blog "room" with Zuska's famous "puking on your shoes" (presumably an act against a specific individual for a specific offense).

If I had a blog, I think I would try to create an atmosphere where generalized pissing on the carpet would be discouraged, but I think I'd support the occasional well-deserved shoe puking (even my own shoes).

Posted by: chezjake | January 30, 2010 8:13 PM

Wait...this Henry Gee?

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/dr_who_dr_dawkins.php#comment-958164

I am not asking to be liked, I am not asking that people join in ... I am asking to be accorded the choice that is the privilege of all civilized societies to be allowed to practice their beliefs without molestation or being vilified for what they do, irrespective of how rational they think it.

But of course, some of you probably think I am an untermensch, as did the people who killed my grandparents and my two aunts -- one a toddler, I have recently discovered, the other a babe in arms, and then recycled them as soap and lampshades, and presumably deserving of no better fate.

...Now, back to this 'respect' thing. I am sometimes told by atheists that they 'respect' me but not my religious beliefs, and expect me to be happy with that curious point of view. My response is usually to say that if they disrespect my religion, then, surely, that disrespect must take some concrete form* - defacing stones in cemeteries, perhaps? Or torching synagogues? If not, then this disrespect is simply empty posturing. The atheist usually then gets rather cross, which suggests I have touched a nerve.

I predict that in five or ten years time, thanks to Dawkins and others, then scientists who profess any kind of religious belief will find it hard to get tenure, and then jobs, and then papers published, and finally their employers, responding to pressure, will be forced to fire them or retire them early. It will start with the Jews, of course, because these things usually do, as they have done many times in the past.

*Challenging and arguing with his beliefs is evidently impossible in this fantasy world.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | January 30, 2010 8:50 PM

Yep, SC, that's him. Thanks for reminding me. I was wracking my brain trying to remember that outburst. Gee has a talent for acting like a complete jerk - calling Richard Dawkins "Dickie D" - then affecting woundedness when people call him on it.

Posted by: Josh, Offical SpokesGay | January 30, 2010 9:11 PM

SC's right, Greg. The name-calling from Gee was really the least of it. You might want to take time to read that thread; his behavior was appalling by any standard, whether one is predisposed to give him the benefit of the doubt or not.

Posted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay | January 30, 2010 9:16 PM

Greg, I think what you may be missing is the content of Gee's criticism in that particular Pharyngula thread. It was not only intellectually untenable, it was bizarre and offensive. Offensive in the sense of making un-subtle comparisons between "new atheists" and the pogroms preceding the holocaust. You said you "don't need to be tutored" to read the thread (gosh, Greg, I just suggested it, I wasn't even rude. . what gives?), so, OK.

But that was not an example of Gee just joining in Pharyngula rowdiness. It was not just a jocular tit for tat, no harm no foul. There *is* a difference. And there *is* a reason - and it's a justified one - that some of us who've run into Gee online before are not kindly disposed to him. It would not be fair to write us off as a bunch of sassy loudmouth Pharyngulites who can dish it out and not take it.

Context or not, Gee is capable of being shockingly, dishonestly unpleasant.

Posted by: Josh Slocum | January 30, 2010 9:40 PM

I don't visit many of the blogs mentioned, mostly because I have enough noise in my life as it is... (I f-ing hate NYC, but that's an another story)
Anywho, This makes me think of the observation that the arguments in humanities are so bitter because the stakes are so small. Then there's this: You need insurance.

Posted by: Onkel Bob | January 30, 2010 9:49 PM

#26-- In Computer Science: A fast storage buffer

Let the cache wars commence!!!

The word 'cache' makes zero sense in the original sentence, despite her attempts at defending it:

There are a cache of non-SBers using the hashtag.

Posted by: ERV | January 30, 2010 10:01 PM

I'm grateful for this entire dust-up because reading about it takes me back to junior high.

Posted by: Donna B. | January 30, 2010 10:04 PM

For those curious, it's probably worth explaining #bobchickenshit. It is a Twitter hashtag, started by DrugMonkey, I believe. I was just chatting with him on Twitter (yes, we do that) and was reminded of the first time I saw it. He'd put a post up about some problem of inclusiveness in NIH-funded science. He got one of those "Oh, well in our lab, blah, blah, blah" comments that suggested that anyone for whom this was still a problem, well, they were the problem. Up popped a Tweet just a little bit later that said, basically, "#bobchickenshit always maintains a perfectly run lab."

I laughed. I understood the frustration at someone who thinks complex problems are that easily solved. I got that this was venting in the place of arguing with a commenter who wasn't really adding anything to the discussion and probably a calculation that they wouldn't even if the original thread was derailed long enough to argue it out. Sometimes talking it out isn't worth it.

That was how it was used for a while: basically a response to being told how to do...whatever. That isn't how it stayed. The current most recent #bobchickenshit Tweet as I write this is Isis saying, "#bobchickenshit always chooses the nuclear option." I don't think it's because anyone told her she was taking things too easy. It's because #bobchickenshit has turned from resisting the pressure on us to putting pressure on others.

I think that's the important point here. #bobchickenshit isn't a mark of resisting those who think you should be something other than what you are. Bora has already noted (and just about everyone has demonstrated) that avoiding proscribed language of any sort isn't a mark of civility or using it a mark of incivility. Comment moderation policies aren't a mark of being inclusive or exclusive.

They're just tools. We can use them strategically to meet our goals for blogging and other interactions online (you do think about why you spend this much time online, right?), or we can just use them whenever, for whatever. Of course, if we do that, then they'll be nice and dull when we need them for something we do want to accomplish.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | January 30, 2010 10:10 PM

Isis, this old Tweet of yours might have something to do with it:

bobchickenshit needs no clique. He's a mover and a shaker. Or maybe he just has as student writing a thesis on that.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | January 30, 2010 10:17 PM

There is nothing wrong with the idea that a blog moderator or owner has limits to what they will allow, but I agree that there is a paradox: The more thoughtful one may be of commentary and comment, the more difficult to hold to a certain standard. The internet is full of people who have little interest other than to challenge or object to whatever they run across.

Posted by: Irene | January 30, 2010 10:26 PM

Funny. At first Stephanie I thought you were answering about the paleolithic. I was going to ask "How did you see it?"

Posted by: horace | January 30, 2010 10:31 PM

The internet is full of people who have little interest other than to challenge or object to whatever they run across.

GOATS ON FIRE - that's all anyone's interested in these days.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | January 30, 2010 10:42 PM

Pak-- If you take Acyclovir and wear a condom, your rates of transmission to your partner go down significantly (~80%). Not as much as antiretrovirals+condoms for HIV-1 (~95%), but much better than nothing at all.

So, yeah, HSV-2 would be better.

Posted by: ERV | January 30, 2010 10:45 PM

@ Pierce

Has she tried Toilet Training 101?

Posted by: yolande | January 30, 2010 11:13 PM

I was in the room for the famous Gee-Zuska slapdown match. I have read no fewer than a dozen descriptions of what happened there. Almost all of the descriptions can be categorized (predicted, really) by simply knowing who hands out with whom on the blawgs, who is in which camp, who likes or dislikes whom. A grand jury being shown this evidence would drop the case, a psychiatrist looking at these descriptions would be reaching for her script pad.

No one should believe a word about this discussion having been well moderated. It may well be that it could not have been well moderated by anyone.

It was suggested that the Jewish thing never came up, and somewhere Zuska claims that she had no idea who he was or that he was Jewish. She might have listened to him when he said "I am Jewish" to find that out. He was wearing a name tag. And he is fairly well known. I find it unsavory, but I feel that I have to question Zuska's honest in this regard.

There are also differences that are unacknowledged between the cultures represented - a common language/culture and a big pond and all that.

Posted by: quietly watching | January 30, 2010 11:47 PM

How much do you pay to get into this conference? I'm just asking because I want to start saving up.

Posted by: jackie | January 31, 2010 12:03 AM

Why is it "Bob" chickenshit? and not "Arnie" chickenshit? or "Gladys" chickenshit?

Posted by: the real foghorn | January 31, 2010 12:11 AM

Thank you for writing this. I was quite annoyed to see another blogger using the 50K mark for comments as a way to denigrate rather than congratulate the Nature Network.

Posted by: Nature Lover | January 31, 2010 12:17 AM

As a regular reader of (but not commenter on) Pharyngula, I did not see Henry Gee's comments as particularly stronger or more over-the-top than 10% or even 20% of the other commenters there.

Posted by: Bryan | January 31, 2010 12:20 AM

Thanks for the link, Stephanie.

He quotes John Wilkins:

"There are plenty of places you can accuse people of being pedophilic communist sexist pigs; don’t do it here."

Substitute "Nazis."

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | January 31, 2010 12:39 AM

In regard to the rest of the argument, it just seems strange to me how people who basically agree on the majority of things end up having so many bitter arguments. I guess that's just what happens when you get a lot of people who have strong views together.

As James Madison put it in the Federalist Papers:

A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

Posted by: Blake Stacey | January 31, 2010 1:11 AM

i weren't there, so i really wish it was on youtube. i've heard so many versions of the incident in posts and comments.

Posted by: razib | January 31, 2010 1:43 AM

I think the confusion about why SC brought up the thread on pharyngula is that it happened almost 2 years ago, and so many have entirely forgotten how that exchange went.

The idea being that Henry himself has been quite uncivil not only to other commenters, but other writes, over the time many of us have been following his internet presence to a greater or lesser extent.

So the idea of Henry representing a charge for "civil discourse" seems almost ludicrous to those of us who have seen him at his, hopefully, "less than best".

so yeah, hypocrisy, etc.

I think that's pretty much the main reason.

Posted by: Ichthyic | January 31, 2010 2:12 AM

Some bloggers accept criticism (including a fair degree of unfair comments if only to show what idiots they have to deal with at times) while other bloggers choose to have a pretty little blog which only ever reflects their own opinion and that of like-minded people. The latter are blogs that I typically avoid nor would I ever post a comment on such blogs because I know I can't really bring up any substantial issues. People can do whatever they want with their own blog; others can discuss the posts on yet another blog and be as "uncivil" as the other blog owner will let them be. I must complain though, some people wish to have "uncivil" redefined as "doesn't agree with me" just as "open-minded" has been redefined as "only ever agrees 100% with me".

Posted by: MadScientist | January 31, 2010 3:22 AM

[Wrote a reply to this shortly adter it was posted, but then lost my internet connection for a while.]

SC, I haven't seen you do anything else in this thread, despite Greg pointing out that Henry isn't the point and you, apparently, agreeing.

I agreed that civility was the point. I was suggesting that Gee and *ahem* others involved in this discussion are hardly ones to lecture on civil discourse (as Ichthyic has explained in the meantime).

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | January 31, 2010 8:17 AM

As someone who is sometimes a bothersome commentator, I support the editorial power of the blogger, site editor, whomever.

Sometimes that power is exercised badly, I think, but it is a good thing that it exists--it serves to promote diversity, for one thing. Without the power to edit (even when it is rarely exercised) these quasi-public spaces would become much more alike just through osmosis--like what happened to the open usenet.

Generally speaking, I think most folks use a pretty light hand on the tiller, which I think gives us a lot of freedom and relatively few cases of just plain shutting people up.

As to whether civility is a tool of the oppressor . . .well this is a pretty tired issue, I think. The same argument was being made about rationality back in the 1990s, and, well, I don't think the advocates of this position were ever able to get over the self-contradictions inherent in these positions.

If no one is required to be civil or to be rational, how can we require anyone to be fair or righteous or humane. When the oppressed cry out why is "Tough cookies, weakling! Lick my boot! I don't need a reason." not an appropriate response?

Contrary to Audre Lorde, the masters' tools will *always* be used to dismantle the master's house. You give the masters rather too much credit if you think the process isn't reversible, revisable and inherently unstable.

Does "civility" reflect the master's preferences? Sure what do you expect? So does music, literature, science . . . and we don't feel compelled to abandon them. The constraints imposed by civility, rationality, etc. are slight in comparison to the opportunities they offer. And those constraints can be adjusted, and have been.

Rationality and civility, however badly those concepts may have been used, still reflect good universal principles, like the findings of science, as male-dominated and otherwise blinkered as it may be sometimes, reflect a fairly good picture of the universe.

Posted by: Oran Kelley | January 31, 2010 10:08 AM

qbsmd: I don't think there is any doubt that Isis and CPP and their so called "ilk" are not thinking good things when they use the word "consequences" in reference to enforced civility/lack thereof.

Posted by: Irene | January 31, 2010 10:54 AM

Looking over the Gee thread:

It's a rather weird notion of hypocrisy to claim that someone who says "there ought to be rules on a blog" is taken to be a hypocrite if he doesn't always follow said rules.

That just doesn't follow. Gee may not always live up to the standards he says should exist, and he may not be a good judge of his own case, but that doesn't go to the point or make him an unsuitable champion of his side of the argument.

He isn't saying "We are each of us morally bound to always be civil." He is saying "There ought to be rules."

Posted by: Oran Kelley | January 31, 2010 3:10 PM

As someone who is sometimes a bothersome commentator, I support the editorial power of the blogger, site editor, whomever.

I can't imagine how this could even be an issue. Of course that's reasonable to do. Even if people don't think we should be able to set standards for our blogs, they can't stop us from doing so.

As to whether civility is a tool of the oppressor . . .well this is a pretty tired issue, I think. The same argument was being made about rationality back in the 1990s, and, well, I don't think the advocates of this position were ever able to get over the self-contradictions inherent in these positions.

This is annoyingly simplistic. First, bringing rationality into it is just muddying the waters - it's completely irrelevant. Second, if people are to have a discussion about "civility," they need to define what they mean by the term. Civility is about norms, which all communities have but which vary. Some of these may perpetuate inequalities and privilege already-privileged groups or positions; others may foster inclusion and work to break down established hierarchies. I oppose the former and promote the latter.

Contrary to Audre Lorde, the masters' tools will *always* be used to dismantle the master's house. You give the masters rather too much credit if you think the process isn't reversible, revisable and inherently unstable.

This is confused. Examples were given on the thread Stephanie Z linked to of situations in which rules of civility (particularly concerning deference) work to keep oppressed people down and silence them. I've offered the example elsewhere of elite-formed standards of "civility" being used to suppress the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the '60s. They're used, often to great effect, against most social movements. Currently, rules of civility that make it bad manners to openly criticize religious beliefs work to privilege religious people and give their ideas undue power in politics. These are standards of civility that need to be challenged and change.

Does "civility" reflect the master's preferences? Sure what do you expect? So does music, literature, science . . . and we don't feel compelled to abandon them.

Ridiculous.

The constraints imposed by civility, rationality, etc. are slight in comparison to the opportunities they offer. And those constraints can be adjusted, and have been.

Vague and simplistic.

It's a rather weird notion of hypocrisy to claim that someone who says "there ought to be rules on a blog" is taken to be a hypocrite if he doesn't always follow said rules.

Not at all. To the extent that he's defined his notion of reasonable rules, they are those that he doesn't himself follow. What meaning does "there ought to be rules" have if "rules" is devoid of content? Pure authoritarianism? Reasonable people need to discuss what those rules are, and we should adhere to the set of rules we're promoting.

Gee may not always live up to the standards he says should exist, and he may not be a good judge of his own case, but that doesn't go to the point or make him an unsuitable champion of his side of the argument.

Sure, it does.

Look, in the exchanges I've seen him involved with, he's:

- attempted to be physically intimidating
- insulted Richard Dawkins repeatedly, and when people argued with him, told them not to be "impertinent" (the individual in question is a professor older than he is, AFAIK)
- misrepresented someone (Ichthyic), if I recall correctly (I don't have that link right now), as having made antisemitic remarks, on another blog when Ichthyic wasn't there to set the record straight
- bizarrely turned disagreements into accusations of "Jew-hatred," and in one case basically called his interlocutors Nazis

Frankly, I don't care what his opinions are on behavioral norms or civility. If he's promoting rules based on his behavior, they're rules I oppose; if he's promoting rules that are contrary to his actions, then he's a hypocrite.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | January 31, 2010 6:14 PM

This is annoyingly simplistic. First, bringing rationality into it is just muddying the waters - it's completely irrelevant. Second, if people are to have a discussion about "civility," they need to define what they mean by the term.

Well, I'd suggest you hop in your time machine, go back to the twentieth century, and tell those feminist theorists that rationality and civility are distinct in the way you mention, because a great many of them didn't recognize the distinction and advanced arguments against standards of all kinds using precisely the same rhetoric advanced right now against civility. Are rationality and civility the same thing? No, agreed. Is it crazy to pair the two in this argument? Not for anyone with even a smidgen of familiarity with how it has been carried on for at least the last 40 years.

This is confused. Examples were given on the thread Stephanie Z linked to of situations in which rules of civility (particularly concerning deference) work to keep oppressed people down and silence them. I've offered the example elsewhere of elite-formed standards of "civility" being used to suppress the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the '60s

I doubt Gee intended to defend all rules of civility ever having existed any time or any place. He was saying that a common set of rules are a good thing for discourse.

Frankly, I don't care what his opinions are on behavioral norms or civility. If he's promoting rules based on his behavior, they're rules I oppose; if he's promoting rules that are contrary to his actions, then he's a hypocrite.

So you are rejecting his rational argument on the basis of his incivility? What happened to the clear distinction between these two things. Seems to have gone out the window.

And there's nothing necessarily uncivil about Open Source Publishing. We can't just take any dichotomy and assign one the label "civil" and the other "uncivil."

Posted by: Oran Kelley | January 31, 2010 7:42 PM

... and so, Henry Gee and Isis the Scientist are cast upon the same midden.

Posted by: Irene | January 31, 2010 8:24 PM

So, SC, I'm still curious. How do you expect Henry to discuss the problems of attacks on religion being attacks on personhood in the context of being a Jew living among bad and worsening anti-Semitism without mentioning, even by implication, the Nazis?

Posted by: Stephanie Z | January 31, 2010 8:37 PM

From Stephanie Z's link:

I make the point that civility can be encouraged by laying out ground rules - as John Wilkins says on his admirable blog, Evolving Thoughts - and I hope he won't mind my quoting it in extenso:

'This is my living room, so don't piss on the floor. I reserve the right to block users and delete any comments that are uncivil, spam or offensive to all. I have a broad tolerance, but don't test it, please. Try to remain coherent, polite and put forward positive arguments if engaged in debate. There are plenty of places you can accuse people of being pedophilic communist sexist pigs; don't do it here.'

Much to my amazement I am criticized very sharply for expressing what I thought (and still think) to be a perfectly reasonable view.

If these are the rules he supports, and people who don't abide by them should lose commenting privileges, then he should be banned from Pharyngula.

It's funny, though, how all these people stick up for every minority you can name - except Jews.

I don't know who "all these people" is supposed to include, but it sure as hell doesn't include me. Another terrible accusation to avoid other discussions. (I've had friends who had to deal with sexism in Israeli academe and the Israeli military; I guess he wouldn't have a dodge with them.)

I pointed this out to a particularly patronizing member of the audience. I didn't hang around for a response. I thought Jew-hatred was a pathology of the militant Left in UK academia but it turns out it's rife in the U. S. and A., too.

How did that "turn out"? It's just an absurd accusation based on nothing, as far as I can see. But it's clear that he's doing precisely what he's arguing should be a bannable offense.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | January 31, 2010 9:49 PM

SC did you read the comments in the thread I linked to? The degree of anti-Semitism present in the U.K. and much of the rest of Europe is not the same as general U.S. anti-Semitism or that anywhere in the Western hemisphere. It is, as Henry noted in that comment, tied deeply to the anti-Israel movement there. Given the number of atheists in the U.K., and given the tendency of atheists to be in academia, Henry quite likely has plenty of experience with anti-religion arguments being used as anti-Semitic arguments. After all, not all atheists are the philosophical sort.

And if you read back a ways, you'll note that you did, in fact, know he was Jewish well before the comment you linked to. You'll even see that Henry was hardly the first person to bring up the Holocaust.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | January 31, 2010 10:18 PM

Greg,

I can't see what any of that has to do with Gee's accusations, to be honest. (With the exception of your claim that "The British 'left' is anti-Semitic," which would need to be made in a much more nuanced way and substantiated. As I said, there was some discussion of the matter on that thread after Gee left, involving someone who's been active in the British Left for decades and whom I've never known to misinform.) His claims were, as you note, about the "New Atheists" (us, specifically) and the US "militant" Left. Bullshit in the former, and pretty much bullshit on the latter, though the claim is made so generally as to be pretty much meaningless. The leading intellectual of the "militant" US Left is Chomsky, FFS.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | February 1, 2010 12:21 AM

What does all that have to do with Henry? It has to do with his cultural expectations for running into anti-Semitism ("some of you probably think"),

People who accuse others of sexism or racism or classism or homophobia have cultural expectations based on their experience. He's saying that such accusations have no place in civil discourse, but those of "Jew-hatred" do.

which is the only part in the comment that I can see as being interpretable as calling anyone in that thread "a Nazi."

Read the comment again, Stephanie.

It has quite a bit to do, SC, with the paragraph you felt free to cut out of your pasted quote, which specifies the reason he sees ties between atheists and anti-Semitism:

It is not insignificant, to me, in this contxt, that Dawkins has associated himself prominently with academic movements to delegitimize the state of Israel, to further ancient myths about the Jewish lobby, and combined with what one has called here 'a call to arms' I can only interpret this a physical threat, whether Dawkins intended this or not.

He supports this statement with a couple of links to a single quotation in which Dawkins talks about "the Jewish lobby" (mistaken for "the Israel lobby") in the context of suggesting that if atheists organized we could have much more political power. Whatever it says, it's a terrifically insufficient basis for the accusations being made. Gee provided no evidence for his other claims, about Dawkins specifically and certainly about atheists in general. Then there was this little bit of absurdity: "I predict that in five or ten years time, thanks to Dawkins and others, then scientists who profess any kind of religious belief will find it hard to get tenure, and then jobs, and then papers published, and finally their employers, responding to pressure, will be forced to fire them or retire them early. It will start with the Jews, of course, because these things usually do, as they have done many times in the past."

I really have no words for this, other than to quote PZ: "That's an extraordinarily paranoiac claim." Seriously, he was in a conversation about Dawkins, who focuses primarily on Christianity; the conversation had dealt primarily with Christianity; several of the commenters on the blog (including, probably, some of those invoved in that discussion) are themselves ethnically Jewish; and people had made abundantly clear what we were talking about. (Of course, my linking to Constantine's Sword which I had recently seen and mentioned on an earlier thread is clear evidence of my antisemitism. Right.) Here's the original statement about a "call to arms":

To be fair to Mr Gee, The God Delusion was hardly the best defense of atheism, naturalism, etc, that has ever been written, but I hadn't considered it be even attempting that, anyway. From the moment that I first read it I thought of it as more of a call to arms, if you will, than a scientifically and philosophically rigorous tome that would end all arguments about the existence of God.

Following a simplistic interpretation by Gee, this was clarified further at #329:

And while "call to arms" may have been poorly phrased (for the anally retentive amongst us), I specifically followed it by "if you will", which clearly suggests that it was meant figuratively. What I meant by that -- and I will try to be very specific for you from now on -- is that it has lead to the realization in a great many people that there are things that are worth defending, and that it is folly to believe that somebody else is always going to do the dirty work for you. It further means that non-believers constitute a larger proportion of the electorate than many other minorities, and that they can have an impact in elections if they are willing to work together.

Several other people made clear - still talking about Christianity, by the way - that not physical violence but challenging beliefs was the subject. For him to suggest that "combined with what one has called here 'a call to arms' I can only interpret this a physical threat" was absolutely ludicrous.

In other words, it has to do with what makes his statement relevant in context, not the embodiment of Godwin's Law you're making it out to be. Which is rather rude, by the way.

His statements were loony tunes in context, and deeply offensive, and anyone reading that thread can see why. I've argued that he's playing an atrocious rhetorical game, but seeing the pattern I do have to wonder if he isn't really that paranoid....

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | February 1, 2010 9:08 AM

OK, having now read Henry Gee's post and the comments thread that followed, I'm even angrier. He ignored the cogent and more nuanced arguments of you (Greg),* Ed Yong, and (for the most part) Eric Michael Johnson concerning rules and civility. He repeatedly dismissed and disdainfully mocked any discussion of patriarchy.** He acted as though as a Jewish person he couldn't possibly act in a way that furthers inequality or oppression (Jewish males can't possibly be patriarchal, as everyone knows). And he claimed flat out that "the Left hates Jews." Wow.

I also did a search on Zuska's blog (links would've been helpful), and came across a post from November - "Can we talk about science? I mean, really?" - that was so stupid it got my hackles up. Sigh.

*We doagree!

**The rules he quotes from Evolving Thoughts, by the way, appear to be that it's acceptably civil to be sexist, but not to call anyone out on being sexist. No, thanks.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | February 1, 2010 11:13 AM

Yeah, SC, I'm really not interested in thoughts on civility from anyone who's going to call someone one generation removed from Holocaust victims "paranoid" about anti-Semitism.

This is not about the existence or real dangers of antisemitism. His claims about the people he was making them about, if they were honest, were absolutely paranoid, Stephanie. Being a descendent of Holocaust victims would provide part of the explanation for such paranoia. If it is paranoia, then it isn't immoral, but needs to be pointed out as irrational and not based in evidence. Civil discourse isn't possible with someone who repeatedly makes suck paranoid claims about his or her opponents. If it is, as some evidence suggests, a form of moral blackmail, then it's disgusting, as Nick Gotts explains @ #428 on that thread and others as well.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | February 1, 2010 12:21 PM

No, SC, as has been repeatedly pointed out to you, this is about civility and rulemaking. The fact that you want the thread to be about Henry doesn't change that.

This is clearly going nowhere. You're not making an argument at this point. You might want to take another look at the title of this post.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | February 1, 2010 12:44 PM

If anyone finds out how to say "douchebag" in Yiddish, please e-mail me.

Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | February 1, 2010 1:29 PM

On douchebag:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/this_is_the_thread_that_youre.php#comment-2242543

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | February 1, 2010 2:00 PM

Ferkakte shpritszak!

Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | February 1, 2010 3:01 PM

Greg,
What a waste of a perfectly good Big Lebowski allusion. *yawn* "Mind if I do a J"

Posted by: viking | February 1, 2010 3:17 PM

Stephanie Z, does Laden pay you to police his comment threads according to your own secret criteria for relevance, or do you do it pro bono?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | February 1, 2010 4:03 PM

Sven, I guess that all depends on what forms you think "pay" comes in.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 1, 2010 4:24 PM

In the Pharyngula thread, Henry first brought up his ethnicity as a response to my comment where I accused him of disliking Dawkins for being rude about religion and, in doing so, was not adhering to the standards of cultured British club society; he responded by insisting that he couldn't ever belong to such a society because he was Jewish and the descendant of recent immigrants.

As I had no idea who he was at the time (nor did I know - if it is indeed true - that he would be denied access to such society) I can say with 100% certainty that I wasn't making any comment on his ethnicity.

But that didn't stop the thread sinking into a swamp of Godwinism because, in his mind, any argument raised against him after he made that comment became linked to his Jewishness.

Posted by: Wowbagger | February 1, 2010 8:47 PM

As I understand it, most of us Pharyngulans are not racist and having nothing against Jews on racist or ethnic grounds.

is not incompatible with

But of course, some of you probably think I am an untermensch...

Don't do the same thing you're trying to accuse Henry of doing. Atheists aren't any more consistent than any other group. If you haven't met thick-skulled atheists who at least imply that the religious are sub-human--on Pharyngula--you haven't been paying attention. It isn't Henry's responsibility to sort out the ridiculously OTT ("Henry, I know you're Jewish, but you can't imagine what it's like to grow up CoE") commenters when nobody else on the thread is working to distance themselves from such comments.

And really, mentioning Henry is like mentioning Hitler? Grow up a little and try again.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 1, 2010 10:53 PM

SC: "Henry, blah, blah, Henry." Get over it. He didn't tell you that you were a Nazi. He told you you were weak tea.

That's blatantly dishonest in a number of ways. I'll refer anyone to the thread in question.

And yes, of course, I haven't discussed at all the question of incivility being useful as a tool but losing that usefulness when used less than strategically. I haven't discussed some of the other problems of moderation policies. I haven't, by implication, raised questions about marking certain subjects or words off-limits for some but not others or quoting correctly or honestly characterizing your opponent's position--all of which are central to most discussions of the practicalities of civility online.

Indeed. We're definitely done here.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | February 1, 2010 11:24 PM

And really, mentioning Henry is like mentioning Hitler?

Henry is somebody who came into our living room and pissed on our rug, basically called us Nazis, who would endorse turning children into candles and soap, or maybe just pathetic, snivelling cowards without the courage of our convictions necesary to be actual antisemitic vandals and synagogue burners. (Apparently, our convictions are so evil that if we had any guts at all, we'd be terrorists. Lovely.)

Naturally, if this is the guy bringing up the idea that there ought to be rules of civility, and people ought not to go around pissing on other people's rugs, we're going to comment on the irony. Bet on it. It's interesting, and it's even relevant to the overall topic.

If we can't agree that there are some norms, even at Pharyngula, and that Henry was violating them, something is profoundly wrong with this whole discussion.

If Greg makes it sound like there was no harm, no foul because after all there are no relevant norms at Pharyngula, to dismiss our concerns, we're certainly going to point out that he is seriously mistaken.

And if you say that Henry only called us "weak tea," I say read my comment 130, carefully this time. If you still think it was nothing, well, you're just wrong. Some of us do have standards, even if you don't. (Except for double standards, perhaps.)

Grow up a little and try again.

You scream about it where the grownups whose approval you want are talking, you get sent to your room.

Stephanie, get your condescending head examined.

Posted by: Paul W. | February 2, 2010 2:29 AM

Stephanie Z [to SC, presumably]:

And the next time you want to bring up the Holocaust to a Jew to tell him how he should feel about a particular issue, don't be surprised that the sword is turned against you.

HM. It seems otherwise to me.
This is the linked exchange:

[Gee] I'm Jewish. What goes on inside Norfolk churches is not mine to judge. Neither is the way that other people practice their religion,

[SC] If you mean by this to imply that for you as a Jew the beliefs and practices of real, existing Christianity are of no real concern, well, that is just jawdroppingly naïve. Reading it, I was at first happy to see that there existed intellectual aeries somewhere in the world in which Jews could consider Christianity so abstractly. But then I remembered times in the past in which this was also the case...

I find Stephanie's accusation sophistic and maliciously disingenuous; clearly, SC refers to the entire history of Christendom vs. Judaism (cf. Lutherans or Catholics vs. Jews, for example) and the effect it has had on Jews, rather than to any specific event.

I suspect that, in the quoted reference, had Gee written 'Islamic' instead of 'Jewish' and SC 'Muslim' instead of 'Jew', but the construct remaining otherwise verbatim, Stephanie would claim SC was specifically "bringing up the Crusades" by using exactly the same mode of interpretation.

Posted by: John Morales | February 2, 2010 3:45 AM

Paul, I'll get my "condescending head examined" about the time you apologize for saying the thread was Godwined at the title and concede that there's a difference between the Holocaust and having the person on whose head you're stepping bite you in the ankle. Until then, until you can look at that comment thread and understand that there were plenty of assholes in it and that speaking German is not some kind of unforgivable crime against the internet, I really don't take you seriously. That, and you're not talking about civility. You're only talking about Henry.

No, John. I'm saying SC brought up the Holocaust this way because she said she did in comment 106. Keep up.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 2, 2010 7:14 AM

John, comment 106 of this thread.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 2, 2010 8:10 AM

Stephanie, what are you blithering about? I said in #106 that I brought it up "tangentially in response to his apparent ignorance of the history of Christianity." I linked to discussion of Constantine's Sword, I think, which I had recently seen and which covers 2000 years, up to the present (the first scenes focus on evangelicalism and antisemitism at the Air Force Academy). I was also reading Isaacson's biography of Einstein at the time, and very much had this issue on the brain. My point was a political one: Henry Gee appears to be blithely ignorant of the real history of Christian antisemitism and the threats it continues to pose today. That this point was lost on him made it even more ridiculous when he then turned around and presented atheists as some sort of physical threat to ethnic Jews. I accused him of nothing but ignorance (perhaps willful). (He's also conflating belief and politics with ethnicity, but that wasn't revealed till later.)

That, and you're not talking about civility. You're only talking about Henry.

Because he was responding to you, and Gee's all you're talking about, you twit.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | February 2, 2010 8:50 AM

This thread is where I disagree with the idea that a handful of people on the blogosphere (and this could be any handful, not just the Kliqueons ... it could be a handful of Pharynulistas or a handful of my best friends, or the College of Cardinals, or the Saint Louis Cardinals) should not take on the roll of telling other people what rules they should or should not have on their blog.

Dude, what's with you and this "rules" shit? Calling someone a douchebag for doing/not doing a particular thing on their blog is not an imposition of rules; it's an expression of an opinion about what is doing/not doing.

Like when you totally fucked up your coverage of the Linda Buck retraction, me telling you that you had totally fucked the thing up wasn't an attempted imposition of some kind of "rule" on your blog. It was simply the expression of my opinion (correct, as it turns out) that you had gotten the thing woefully wrong.

Someone accusing HEE GEE of being a fucking hypocritical douchebag because of what he asserts as his approach to "civility" is not an attempted imposition of a "rule" on him. No one is fucking with his blog code, or trying to circumvent whatever mechanism HEE GEE might implement to enforce his own conception of civility on his blog. These are expressions of opinion.

Just because some people go completely 100% apeshit when their behavior or expressions are criticized doesn't turn that criticism into some kind of mob with flaming torches outside their door.

Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | February 2, 2010 2:11 PM

Greg,

I actually agree with a lot of the things I take you to be saying... please bear with me...

If Greg makes it sound like there was no harm, no foul because after all there are no relevant norms at Pharyngula, to dismiss our concerns, we're certainly going to point out that he is seriously mistaken.

I don't know what "no relevant norms" are but I do know what PZ's point of view on Henry Gee commenting on Pharyngula and I don't think there is anything I've said here or elsewhere that contradicts that.

I think we need to get clearer on how the "pissing on the rug" metaphor is supposed to work. (I need to, at least.)
I suspect it's a disastrously ambiguous metaphor and we need a better one.

One interpretation of "pissing on the rug" is simply violating some social norm, and being deserving of censure.

Another is violating a social norm in a big way, and deserving censorship.

Those are very different things.

On Pharyngula, there are social norms; in fact, they're stronger and I'd say more civilized than on some more overtly "civilized" blogs like the Intersection.

PZ is relatively laissez faire, and lets many kinds of "incivility" pass. You can call somebody a goatfucker and it's no big deal. It's a tough room. PZ doesn't see it as his job to micromanage, and he provides something akin to a public forum, although he does occasionally ban people in extreme cases (only), and he sets the tone to some extent, in a variety of ways.

Most of the norm enforcement falls to the regular commenters, like me and SC.

For example, if somebody says something racist or sexist, somebody will generally jump on them; often several people will. Those people are generally made to look stupid, and that's generally enough to get them to go away after a while, without PZ having to do anything.

A more interesting norm at Pharyngula---which is strikingly absent at certain blogs such as The Intersection---is the general recognition that there's a crucial difference between sincere dissent and pure, shameless trolling.

People who disagree with the local consensus---such as Henry Gee, or a Christian apologist, or a radical libertarian---are welcome to come and state their view, and defend it.

They are not entitled to respect for their views, in the way many people interpret that term. They may get dogpiled with a bunch of snarky comments, even flatly called stupid sometimes, etc.

However, if the hapless dissenter can endure that, and tries to actually make arguments and address the arguments others are making, they're not considered trolls. They are playing the game, and they can continue to play.

(I have been in that position, going against the local grain, several times. I often don't bother speak up about stuff I agree with, so I'm disproportionately disagreeable, and I get dogpiled. But if I'm making a determined effort to communicate, some people will notice and say so, even if they think I'm stupidly wrong.)

Sometimes such people get called trolls by some dismissive Pharynguloids, but if they keep making an actual effort to communicate, somebody will step up and tell the dismissive, insulting people dial it down, because they're enjoying the argument, and the victim isn't just trolling.

Sometimes this is very explicit, and sometimes it's implicit---the people actually arguing just continue arguing, and ignore the sniping.

I've been on the norm-enforcing end of that many times, and once I was very much on the wrong end. I dismissed a regularly dissenting poster (a young libertarian/conservative) who I thought was just polluting Pharyngula with his ill-informed and ill-thought-out views, because I perceived him as hopeless. I told him to shut the fuck up and go away because we were sick of him, after months of his spewing drivel.

Immediately several regulars jumped on me and said that I was wrong---that they personally disagreed with the guy's views as much as as I did, but that he was not a hopeless troll. He was honest, and however much trouble he was having with the huge clash of worldviews, he didn't deserve that from me.

They were right, so I apologized humbly, butted the fuck out, and slunk away, red-faced. I hadn't been paying enough attention, and had been just an asshole to somebody who wasn't just an asshole. And that is not okay. Lesson learned.

For about a year, that guy had many long arguments with many people at Pharyngula. Over and over, and largely repetitive. Ick. But he learned some things, and came to realize that liberals aren't just stupid, and moderated some of his conservative views. He's still a regular, and that's cool. Good for him, and good for Pharyngula.

During that time, especially near the beginning, that guy did things many of us considered pissing on us. (And maybe the rug, but I don't understand that metaphor.) And I think he did, without realizing the extent to which he did, as many young men do who are smart and don't yet realize that there are smarter people out there, or don't know them when they see them.

I was the same way as a young man, I confess. I was even a libertarian and thought that any who wasn't was pretty stupid. And then one day I fell in with some folks who were willing to argue with me, and were smart and articulate, and knew what the fuck they were talking about. And they were patient with me, despite the fact that I was a cocky asshole, because they realized I was not just a cocky asshole.

I am eternally grateful for that patient, much-needed ass-kicking from some people who liked to argue, and were good at it. (I ended up apologizing to some people I'd condescended to for years, who either weren't articulate enough to kick my ass even when I was wrong and they were right, or had just dismissed me as too much of a cocky asshole to be worth arguing with.)

That's a major reason that I like Pharyngula---that sort of thing can happen there, and sometimes does---and I do not like certain other blogs, that are supposedly more "civil," notably The Intersection.

At those blogs, dissenters are not welcome, no matter how sincere. You get dogpiled by people who will never engage on crucial, major points, and freely sling invective, ad hominems, and arguments from authority, but dogpile you if you justifiably respond in kind. (E.g., impugning an alleged authority.) There is little respect for actual reasoned argument, and too much respect for patently invalid arguments so long as they get the "right" answer. And there's a double standard---you're likely to get censored or flatly banned if you keep dissenting, for things the loyalists never get banned for.

(My experience there is mostly in threads about the New Atheism and accommodationist framing; your mileage may vary on other topics. Also, I'm a peculiar exception to the censoring/banning thing---I get dogpiled by utterly evasive shits who all stonewall eternally on the two actual bones of contention, as Mooney and Kirshenbaum systematically do, but I rarely get censored and do not get banned, despite repeatedly arguing that M&K; are not only wrong, but chronically evasive and evidently dishonest. Good for them.)

On Pharyngula, there's a norm of substantive civility, not superficial faux civility.

Pharyngulans think that calling somebody names isn't the end of the world, so long as you also address their arguments, or somebody does. They think that an argument can be passionate and heated without going entirely off the rails into hateful, irrational nonsense.

For most of us, being called a goatfucking asswipe isn't a big deal, so long as we can ask you to explain why you call us that, and expect a sincere effort to answer intelligibly, which we can then try to criticize rationally amid the name-calling.

But being told we don't mind turning innocent babies into soap (because they're Jewish?), or perhaps we're just too cowardly to be the terrorists we unprincipled scum logically should be...

well, that's a whole other thing.

But even that we can more or less accept---we get called that sort of thing by fundamentalists sometimes, and we just argue that it's not true. (And make fun of them.) It gives us an opportunity to defend our worldview and criticize theirs, in a contentful way.

What is really, really not okay at Pharyngula is to use such incredibly evil accusations as an ad hominem argument, and evade the issue of whether we're right or wrong to think that your religious beliefs are false, and whether we're reprehensibly immoral or amoral to dare to say so publicly.

On a more general note, it is true that this thread is not about Henry. Henry is a loss leader here.

Maybe now you can see why I think Henry is an entirely relevant example of what I'm talking about when I make the basic distinction between substantive civility and superficial faux civility.

IMO Henry was simply horrendously, substantively uncivil in the famous thread SC quoted him from.

He was acting a goatfucking asswipe, who doesn't realize that it's not nearly as bad to call somebody a goatfucking asswipe---who cares?---as it is to call them a Nazi or cowardly would-be terrorist. The former is just name-calling, and can be discounted almost entirely, but the latter is a very fucking serious, substantive accusation.

Even at Pharyngula.

Pharyngula may be a rough-and-tumble place, and a tough room for outsiders, but it's a liberal blog.

Many of the regulars are longtime advocates for social justice and human rights. (Like SC and me.) The last thing in the world we are is Nazis, at least in our own opinion. Maybe we don't understand our own stupid reprehensibility, but if so, we need it explained to us. We don't need somebody to come in our living room and not just piss on the carpet, but shit on us in the most vicious way he can think of.

Several of the people dearest to me in the world are Jews, including one who's a Holocaust survivor whose parents and siblings were killed by the Nazis. Another is the son of a concentration camp survivor. I'm a lifelong Jew-lover who almost married into a Jewish family. (And when I didn't, it certainly wasn't because they were Jewish; oh hell no. That was a plus, I guess, compared to the typical American family; I like the demographic.)

Make me out to be a Nazi, or anything like a Nazi, and I will take it very, very personally---or dismiss you as a kook.

Which is what I did with Henry. I assume that he doesn't know who he's talking to, and doesn't understand the culture of the people he's shitting on, but I do think that makes him a bit paranoid, specifically with respect to the people at Pharyngula.

I am emphatically not saying that it's paranoid for Henry to be worried about antisemitism in general. Far from it. It's a serious issue, and he is right to be concerned.

I understand what Stephanie means, up to a point, that it's weird to call a Jew "paranoid," after the Holocaust, and given the situation around Israel, and given antisemitism in Henry's environment.

Still, that just can't imply that it's okay for Henry to come over to Pharyngula and imply that we are Nazis or anything remotely like them, without explaining how that's even plausible, and being willing to seriously engage with our actual views.

It does not make it okay for you to minimize his misbehavior by saying this, either:

So, really, unless I'm missing the point ... Henry Gee pissing all over other commenters and the blogger at Pharyngula is normal and expected and is not exceptional or relevant to this argument.

In order to move past the Henry thing, it would be helpful if you now indicated that you understand why we at Pharyngula think Henry did at least a little more than the normal, expected, unexceptional pissing.

Do you?

Maybe now you can also see why I object to Stephanie's characterization of all this:

It's also about people feeling the need to pull fights out of the cage match that is a Pharyngula comment thread and carry them elsewhere where people are trying to discuss other topics.

We don't think that Pharyngula is just a "cage match" with no rules of civility, that can be so easily dismissed. (And us along with it.)

We think it's got a culture that's an interesting example of several basic civility/incivility issues.

It's got some bad aspects, certainly. I wish Pharyngula was more "civil" in certain ways that many others do---I certainly get tired of some people there who really do act like assholes too often.

On the other hand, it works in certain senses that most blogs don't, and that includes having some (perhaps non-obvious) moral norms about fairness toward outsiders, honest argument, etc.

And it only works---it only isn't worse, at least---because there are many people at Pharyngula who oppose gratuitous incivility, if only by trying to be civil themselves and engage seriously with dissenters' arguments amid the free-for-all.

If you don't make a serious argument, as Henry didn't, of course you won't notice that. And if you don't accept that it's an uphill slog, you may give up before anybody acknowledges that you're playing the game fine.

Is Henry someone who asked for people to be nice but is not always nice himself, and is thus a hypocrite? No. I don't think he asked anybody to be nice. He made the assertion that a blog owner could set and control and moderate standards or whatever on her or his own blog. There is nothing inherently hypocritical about saying "I want everyone to be nice on my own blog or I throw them off" and to be nasty on other blogs.

I entirely agree, but I think you're still missing the real point.

Henry isn't a hypocrite for doing what you portray him doing---stooping to Pharyngula's level. He's a hypocrite for stooping well below Pharyngula's level, at least by Pharyngula standards, and then whining about getting his ass handed to him for acting like such an asswipe in our living room.

He does not understand the culture, doesn't appreciate it, misrepresents it, and makes false accusations.

We object to that, and to anybody misrepresenting what happened, using Pharyngula as a whipping boy and an illustration of what things degenerate into when "anything goes."

I'm not asking Henry or anyone else to like Pharyngula. I think you can make a good case that it's a dysfunctional culture in some ways---but you can also argue that The Intersection (or Zuska's or Isis's place, or Henry's) is a dysfunctional culture in different way. (As you seem to be doing. Great.)

Pharyngula is not simply worse by every relevant standard, such that we have no grounds for complaint about incivility by our standards, which have at least some merit in some respects.

Don't they? Or are we just scum who should take that lying down?

If you use us as simply a negative example, and dismiss us as a cage match of poo-flinging screechy monkeys not much better than Nazis---or at least, not so much better that our objection is valid---well, we'll come to your blog and disagree.

I don't think there's anything uncivil about that, or the least bit off-topic. It's precisely on topic---what does civil mean, anyway?

Although I get and in many cases agree with Salty Current's comments above, I do worry that the scrappy "don't fuck with me" European Jew of Henry's generation (which I fully understand having been captured by a band of such Jews and kept by them for several years when I was younger) is a real and understandable trope that is being used to bludgeon an already bludgeoned-enough category of people.

I worry about that, too. I've known Holocaust survivors who would never make the kind of argument Henry makes, so it's all pretty weird.

An interesting feature of the above discussion is the interesting problem of avoiding being racist/whateverist and being generally tolerant but being intolerant of religion. That turns out to be pretty tricky.

Exactly. One of the things it seems that Henry does, and accommodationists do systematically, is to beg this question. They lump religion together with ethnicity, and equate both kinds of "intolerance." They're different.

I can't change who my parents are, but I can change my mind about religious beliefs, as I have. Henry has too, which makes it puzzling to me that he doesn't seem to understand the New Atheist position, and insists on running things together.

Posted by: Paul W. | February 2, 2010 3:42 PM

John, your comment 151 (in this thread) is all about what you think is/was going on in my head. What is there to say to it except that you're wrong? If you don't understand what I said for some reason other than not wanting to, ask a question. If you ask nicely, I may even answer it.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 2, 2010 5:34 PM

Shorter John Morales:

"No! You linked to 2 Pharyngulonians 11:8, when you should have linked to Ladentations 1:10 instead! Blasphemy!11!!"

Posted by: Barn Owl | February 2, 2010 6:28 PM

Paul, I'll get my "condescending head examined" about the time you apologize for saying the thread was Godwined at the title and concede that there's a difference between the Holocaust and having the person on whose head you're stepping bite you in the ankle.

I can only assume he meant that the title (and post) led the thread to be about the Master of Godwin.

I don't know what "no relevant norms" are but I do know what PZ's point of view on Henry Gee commenting on Pharyngula and I don't think there is anything I've said here or elsewhere that contradicts that.

So? The argument was about your characterization of what’s acceptable over there, which I and someone else had already told you you were wrong about.

On a more general note, it is true that this thread is not about Henry.

Oh? It has in fact largely been.

Henry is a loss leader here. This thread is where I disagree with the idea

Well, knock me down. I thought a comment thread was where people other than you expressed their views on your posts and you responded to them.

that a handful of people on the blogosphere (and this could be any handful, not just the Kliqueons ... it could be a handful of Pharynulistas or a handful of my best friends, or the College of Cardinals, or the Saint Louis Cardinals) should not take on the roll of telling other people what rules they should or should not have on their blog.

How has this thread been about that? Your post raised numerous topics from which any number of conversations could follow.

Also, in the current discussion (not this Stephanie / S.C. discussion, but the "civility" discussion) I feel that a fetishized concept of "incivility" which is the obverse of equally fetishized "civility" has emerged and become some sort of standard for the proper way to communicate.

You’re quite wrong. I’ve said repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that people need to define explicitly what they mean by civility so that the implications of any standards can be debated.

Putting this together somewhat, I feel that many of the participants in the discussion have overlooked or under analyzed the nature of human interaction and communication and have come up with a very simplistic view of it that does not serve anyone. In some cases, this simplistic view (50,000 civil comments on Nature Network is a bad thing) is almost depressingly simple.

I don’t know who or what you’re talking about.

I think it is unfair to Henry

I’m tired of this. He, a major participant in this debate, has behaved badly towards people and shut down communication. He has also said things I strongly disagree with on the topic under discussion. Substantive criticism of his ideas and actions is perfectly valid. If you for whatever reason don’t want him criticized in your comment threads, that’s your right, but you should probably let people know up front that he’s off limits. It’s your blog, but I’m genuinely disappointed. That may be it for me here.

to spend this much effort analyzing every word he ever spoke (or a selection of those words anyway) in a novel (or at least somewhat novel) context.

I don’t know what you mean about a novel context, or anything about every word he ever spoke. I’m talking about his words and actions on relevant occasions.

Is Henry someone who asked for people to be nice but is not always nice himself, and is thus a hypocrite? No.

I really don’t know how much more simply I can explain the argument being made.

I don't think he asked anybody to be nice. He made the assertion that a blog owner could set and control and moderate standards or whatever on her or his own blog.

And I’ve said probably six times above that this is a simplified version of his argument. He quoted Wilkins about specific rules and said he agreed with him. I don’t agree with those rules, and he follows neither them nor the rules of his own blog, on his own blog or elsewhere.

There is nothing inherently hypocritical about saying "I want everyone to be nice on my own blog or I throw them off" and to be nasty on other blogs.

Specific. Rules. (And as I said above, I think there is.)

There is not a universal rule, and there is not a rule demanding universal consistency in behavior. If there were, there would be no Hockey [?], there would be no UN, there would be no Graduate Seminar and there would be no sex.

There is a powerful argument that we adhere to rules we set for others, on the reasoning that it would be immoral to make rules for other people that we don’t follow ourselves. And your assertion is confused.

Although I get and in many cases agree with Salty Current's comments above, I do worry that the scrappy "don't fuck with me" European Jew of Henry's generation (which I fully understand having been captured by a band of such Jews and kept by them for several years when I was younger) is a real and understandable trope that is being used to bludgeon an already buldgeoned-enough category of people.

Oh, fuck that. If that’s a trope, it isn’t specific to any ethnic or other group with a history of oppression.

What if Henry as a diminutive heavily wrinkled tough old broad who escaped from the holocaust and now goes around to blogs and public events and tells people to go fuck themselves because they don't get what happened in the 1930s and 1940s and they don't believe that antisemitism is real and effective and scary today? She would be revered, even by those she told to go fuck themselves.

You know, these “what if” scenarios only work if you hold one part constant and change the other. Here, you’ve changed not only the characteristics of the person, but the person’s behavior. That isn’t what Gee is doing. He’s flinging accusations of antisemitism at people and groups he doesn’t like or agree with politically or is losing an argument with (including people oppressed themselves) based on no evidence. And frankly, no, I don’t think your hypothetical woman would be widely revered. She may or may not be listened to, she may be pitied, but she would likely not be revered. I know a Holocaust survivor (attractive, btw) who goes around to schools and tells her story and teaches kids about that history and the present. She’s great, and I doubt they would revere her if she were telling them to go fuck themselves. She’s talking about what she personally went through. There are also aggressively-written books (Hitler’s Willing Executioners, etc.) that I might take issue with some portions of but think are important for people to read, and have assigned. I don’t revere Goldhagen, but he presents an evidence-supported argument. Also not what Gee is doing.

And if “[telling] people...they don't get what happened in the 1930s and 1940s and they don't believe that antisemitism is real and effective and scary today” were the issue, I’d be berating myself. Years of studying the Holocaust, fascism, and resistance to fascism was what led me to my field of scholarship. I raise the subject so much that almost everyone (not for this reason alone) thinks I’m Jewish. I still do it now, and the only reason I don’t talk about it almost constantly now is that there are other pressing cases of oppression and violence. FFS, I was trying to get Gee to recognize some real threats. Further, even when I’m reporting on those it’s never something I leave behind.

http://saltycurrent.blogspot.com/2009/10/honduras-update-10-9-09-continuing.html

It is possible, on the other hand, that Henry does not realize how big and scary he is in real life (or with his words, and he has words like the Jets have Knives), and could do well with a shift in tactics if he wants his points to be carried off in a tsunami of finger waggling.

No, it isn’t at all possible. Not only does he realize it, he uses it. He’s a bully. One thing I keep coming back to when reading these threads is that I shouldn’t know how big and scary he is in real life. He’s a scientist and a journal editor, and none of this story involves bar brawls. I know it for three reasons: he’s made reference to it himself, he’s accused others (including women) of “hiding” behind the internet or pseudonyms, and he’s been physically aggressive in a conference setting. Part of civility, and one of the things that makes the internet slightly more democratic, is that your arguments are judged and you can’t cow people into agreement no matter what your size. You’re only as big as your words. He wants to reverse that. It’s creepy, it’s wrong, and it’s the opposite of civil. And for the record, there are commenters at Pharyngula who could no doubt take him out, whatever his size. They don’t go on about their toughness, because they have reason and evidence on their side.

An interesting feature of the above discussion is the interesting problem of avoiding being racist/whateverist and being generally tolerant but being intolerant of religion. That turns out to be pretty tricky.

I don’t find it tricky at all.

saying the same thing I've said since you joined and disrupted a conversation already in progress. If you want to suggest that a person has to be civil by your definition in order to be heard, I'll do the same to you with my definition of civility. If you want to insist this thread be about one person, it will be you. If you want to insist that someone be judged by the worst possible interpretation of their words, you'll get the same. If you want to live by "Nothing's sacred" and dismiss a person's feelings as irrelevant, I'll step all over yours. In other words, if you claim offense in order to start rule-making in my presence, particularly over something that was finished a year and a half ago, and ignore it when you're told it's irrelevant, the rules will be used against you. Because if you reread the post, you might note that the point is that we need something more thoughtful than rule-making.

You’re really mixed up. OK, make it about me. I can’t imagine how that could serve your purpose. I’m making no rules (how could I?). Step all over my feelings? Stephanie, I don’t care what you think of me. You’re not going to hurt me. Get over your arrogant self.

CPP, what makes it rule-making is the notion that whatever was done is far more important than actually working together to accomplish shared goals. If doing something puts someone beyond the pale, it's "forbidden" whether someone expresses it as a rule or not.

No one has been put beyond any pale other than by you and Greg. He is being criticized. You said yourself that you thought he was wrong in some ways. A better tack would have been to acknowledge that and have the argument, rather than petulantly demanding that no one speak about his arguments or behavior.

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | February 2, 2010 7:19 PM

Stephanie Z,

[1] John, your comment 151 (in this thread) is all about what you think is/was going on in my head. [2] What is there to say to it except that you're wrong?

1. Yes, it's my opinion, but I explicitly stated the basis on which it was formed, and I still feel it was justified. Your ongoing avoidance of it and your evasion is only strengthening said opinion.

2. You could say why it's wrong, other than by assertion.

Again: did or did not SC "bring up the Holocaust" in the cited comment? You implied that she did, I consider she didn't (and stated why), and you haven't addressed my very specific contention.

--

Barn Owl,

"No! You linked to 2 Pharyngulonians 11:8, when you should have linked to Ladentations 1:10 instead! Blasphemy!11!!"

Very droll, but when someone hyperlinks to something, with the claim¹ as the title² of the anchor tag, one expects the link refers to (and sustains the claim of) that title.

--

¹ The claim being "bring up the Holocaust".

² By 'title' I refer to the technical term for the visible text of a hyperlink.

Posted by: John Morales | February 2, 2010 8:24 PM

(Third post to be held?)

The pissing on the rug metaphor is perfect. A metaphor that is a perfect match is a description.

Yet Wilkins described specific rules - a description. And Gee quoted them approvingly. And I quoted Gee quoting Wilkins here.

My position is that determining that a blog owner is acting inappropriately because they don't act like you (you being anybody) wants them to act is itself asshatery.

How ridiculous. So there's no room for criticism at all, in your view.

If you...want to complain about how [Chris Mooney] runs his blog, fine, but to say that he does not have the right to run his blog like he does and that running it like he does oppresses people then that is out of line.

He runs his blog like a total assclam, because he is an assclam. He has every right to be an assclam, and I have every right to point out that he's an assclam.

What is so fucking complicated about this?

Posted by: SC (Salty Current) | February 2, 2010 9:20 PM

John, you can make up anything you want to and believe in it as hard as you want. I don't really care. Go write slash fiction about me and SC if you like. It has no bearing on reality.

And are you asserting that SC did something unwillingly in the argument with Henry? Can you really not find a better example than that?

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 2, 2010 10:27 PM

[meta]

Thanks, Greg.

FWIW, I use the HTML entities ¹, ² and ³, and I endeavour not to require more than three such (there is no fourth).

I find it much more user-friendly than using asterisks such as * and **.

Posted by: John Morales | February 3, 2010 12:14 AM

Stephanie Z:

John, you haven't even made any accusations in comment 151 that were about anything other than vague speculation about my state of mind and what I would have done in a different situation that paint me as a bad person.

Really. I'm not "painting" you as a bad person, I'm holding you to account.

Did you or did you not link to a comment by SC in Pharyngula which purported to be a citation of SC "bring[ing] up the Holocaust"?
Did I or did I not accuse you of sophism and disingenuity for so doing?
In what sense is this vague?

Now, really, you're getting boring. [why] Don't you stalk off in self-declared triumph about now?

I just wonder if there's any kernel of integrity inside of you that may push you to acknowledge the actual issue: to wit, that you made a spurious, apparently malicious and evidently unsupported accusation towards SC as a rhetorical point, and you are doing your best to avoid confronting that.

Posted by: John Morales | February 3, 2010 12:55 AM

Don't you stalk off in self-declared triumph about now?

Is it still self-declared if I also think he ran you into the ground?

Posted by: Ichthyic | February 3, 2010 2:37 AM

Greg, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with the original post any more. I'd agree the post had nothing to do with Henry other than using that kerfuffle as a jumping-off point. But somehow the question of a year-old dispute about Henry's behavior in PZ's comments was raised in your comments. Then it became like the party crashers who erupt in fisticuffs in your living room (that's blood, not urine on the carpet) over some issue that had nothing to do with your party.

'Tis a pity, since there was actually something to be discussed with respect to the multifarious nature of "civility" and the sort of anti-civility that some folks find strangely attractive.

But I can't let you off the hook -- you no doubt knew things could get heated when you used the HG/Zuska conflagration as a starting point. But I'm not lecturing you; rather, I'm entreating you to come back to the issue at some point in the future in a way where discussion is possible.

Posted by: idlemind | February 3, 2010 4:39 AM

John and Icthyic, if you want to take:

Reading it, I was at first happy to see that there existed intellectual aeries somewhere in the world in which Jews could consider Christianity so abstractly. But then I remembered times in the past in which this was also the case...

and

In fact, I think I myself brought [the Holocaust] up tangentially in response to his apparent ignorance of the history of Christianity. So? Making a historical point isn't the same as accusing your opponents of wanting to deface graves and send you to the gas chambers because they openly criticize religious beliefs and oppose its influence.

as something other than

bring[ing] up the Holocaust to a Jew to tell him how he should feel about a particular issue

all luck to you. Seriously. I'll be over here, yawning.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 3, 2010 7:27 AM

OK... my take:

No reasonable person would think SC is anti-semitic. It is therefore completely unnecessary to even suggest it. It appeared to be a gratuitous debating tactic to set the opponent back on their heals. It is wrong to say things like "some people might think you're an anti-Semite--not me of course, but you know, some people." Especially so when a friend is involved.

Posted by: mk | February 3, 2010 8:28 AM

Are you seriously telling me that you think I was subtly and indirectly accusing Salty Current of being anti-semetic? I wasn't. I don't think she is. All you have to do is read my words to get that.

I'd say 'accuse' is too strong, but I think 'suggest' is fair. You phrased it cleverly, but rather transparently. It's similar in a way to, 'when did you stop beating your wife?'. If I say, 'from what I've read on your blog, some people may think that you are a condescending ass who is trying to account for some kind of childhood abuse issues by lashing out at anyone who dares disagree with you and your overinflated yet fragile ego. I'm not saying that.', you think it would be unreasonable for some people to be able to see through the lame disclaimer 'I'm not saying that' to perhaps think that I'm suggesting exactly what I'm saying I'm not? By saying 'some people' without adding 'I think said people are entirely crazy' or some other opinion on why these people are so wrong, you leave interpretations open. As you like to say, 'this isn't hard'. It's an accusation/insult by proxy, and it doesn't really seem to tie in with any particular point you were making; it just looks tacked on to your response.

When you were discussing what 'shrew' 'means' a while back, you had no issue appealing to interpretations beyond what any dictionary supported and appealed to what some people infer from that word; here you seem to want to do roughly the opposite.

And to be clear, I do not think any of the things in my 'some people' example about you... well maybe condescending sometimes but that's cool. But I guess you would agree that my mentioning that I don't think that is entirely unnecessary and made absolutely clear just because I said 'I'm not saying that'.

Posted by: Spartan | February 3, 2010 8:41 AM

Hmmm...I totally missed out on this conversation - which apparently has gotten rather bizarre...I apologize for going off the topic that the comments seem to have gotten to, but I am actually trying to craft a post about deleting comments, banning commenters and comment policies.

I rather like my general methodology for rules about comments. Pretty much the only actual rule I have, is that people sign their posts when posting anon. Beyond that I have no specified rules and won't. Beyond that, my decision to delete comments and/or ban commenters is somewhat arbitrary. Not that I will do so without reason, I have had very good reasons the few times I have done it. But I really don't like the idea of having actual rules, because to some degree that imposes a limitation of me.

The last person I banned (one of two) was banned because he was both insistent on discussing his pet issue ("you atheists") in the thread of posts where it is not relevant and because he is a dehumanizing, hateful fucking bigot. I could have quite reasonably banned him for the latter a long time ago, but rather appreciate having the example. I also could decide to ban people for posting about their pet issue in irrelevant threads - but deleting such comments is easy enough and I don't even always feel the need to do that.

Which is why I think hard and fast rules - or at least too many of them, are a bad idea. I think it is totally reasonable to get irritated with people who have them and only arbitrarily enforce them or arbitrarily delete/ban outside the context of those rules.

(sorry for the interruption)

Posted by: DuWayne | February 3, 2010 10:24 AM

Greg! Stop quote mining me!

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 3, 2010 11:41 AM

Paul, what Henry said was, "What goes on inside Norfolk churches is not mine to judge. Neither is the way that other people practice their religion".

Was he factually wrong?

Of course he was.

If scores of million of people in my country think I will be tortured forever, and that that's divine justice---I have every reason to be concerned about it, and to publicly disagree.

Even if those people didn't already have tremendous political power, it's an incredibly dangerous and very popular idea that will inevitably have real consequences in the real world for other people.

And they do have huge political power. They're denying people civil rights at home, and having a disastrous effect on our foreign policy. (For example, inhibiting the distribution of condoms in HIV-afflicted subsaharan Africa, with the predictable consequence that millions of additional people will die of AIDS.)

How can that not be my business?

If I think that those real-world consequences are partly due to the ideas being promoted inside churches---and I definitely do---how is that not my business?

If those ideas come out of the churches and become demonstrably decisive political issues---and they do---how is that not my business?

Who does Henry think made George W. Bush the most powerful man in the world for eight years? (Or Dick Cheney or Karl Rove, if you prefer.)

Why and how does he think they managed to do it?

Hint: it wasn't just fundamentalists. It wasn't even just fundamentalists plus big money interests.

There's a reason Proposition 8 passed, and it's because mainstream, "moderate" Americans do indeed believe exactly the kind of "first grade" theology that Henry says they don't.

And that is everybody's business.

Given the context, all of this was pretty clear. (Read negentropyeater's post that introduced "Norfolk", for example.)

I have to agree with S.C. that it's rather ironic for a Jew to be so oblivious to the likely real-world consequences of Christian ideas being promoted inside Christian churches, and to affect not caring what other people believe until they actually come to do him harm.

Henry may have a good strategic point to make---that at the moment, it's better to avoid the open, direct conflict of basic ideas as much as possible---but what he actually says is patently absurd. (Maybe mostly sketchy and simplistic on its face, but in the context of that thread, just silly.)

Note that he was specifying their religion, not their politics.

As if they were clearly separate, when in the context of that thread, it was quite obvious that they are not. That was exactly the point he was avoiding responding to.

He's advocating a "live and let live" policy, when it is quite evident that many millions of voters in this country favor policies that amount to live and let die---e.g., from prohibiting embryonic stem cell research, to denying people civil rights at home and letting millions of foreigners die for lack of condoms.

Why? It is not unrelated to mainstream orthodox Christian theology promoted in most churches---not just fundamentalist churches, but supposedly "moderate" ones. Churches with what Henry portrays quite falsely as harmless "grown up" theology that Dawkins shouldn't stoop to refuting, because supposedly sensible mainstream people don't believe that sort of thing. He's wrong. Most do, and it matters to a whole hell of a lot of real-world political issues.

It's also not unrelated to very basic religious ideas---e.g., that there's a soul, that morality comes from God, and that God has a plan for what you do with your genitalia, which you should pass laws to make other people obey, even if it will cause predictable suffering and death.

Yeah, I'd say that what goes on in other people's churches is my business, and Henry's.

Posted by: Paul W. | February 3, 2010 12:00 PM

Oh, and Paul, if I thought you were dumb, I wouldn't bother arguing with you.

Greg, fine on the "air quotes," but I expect you to go on record tomorrow. Speaking of which, we need to get some questions to Mike.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 3, 2010 1:29 PM

Yeah, yeah. I'll take it to email.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 3, 2010 1:39 PM

And that's Henry's decision to make, Paul.

Do you prefer the word "concern" as a synonym for "business"? It's the only other relevant one I found out there, but I avoided it because there's a rather unfavorable term for people who tell other people what their concerns should be. Either way, once again, people can only be concerned with so many things, and it's up to them which ones.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 3, 2010 2:08 PM

I don't get why Henry takes it in the neck for complaining about the sometimes loud and scary voice of so called "new atheists" in a loud and scary voice.

Jeez Greg, try a little harder to say what you mean, clearly, and what and who it's in response to.

I, for one, am not complaining about Henry's literally loud an scary voice (if that's what it is).

And I haven't been complaining about his metaphorical "voice" being "loud and scary." I've been saying

1) He was at least a bit uncivil at Pharyngula, by pretty much any standard, even Pharyngula's allegedly simply low standards---which you seem to again falsely imply are either nonexistent or utterly irrelevant. If you want to know why we keep talking about Henry, it's because you and Stephanie keep saying stuff like that, unclearly.

(If that's what you mean, spell it out and claim it, rather than making it sound like you more or less agree with me and then turning around and saying it again.)

2) He was bit hypocritical about it in a way that you mischaracterized---as I explained before, the hypocrisy was not in failing to live up to the standards he requires on his own blog, but in failing to live up to even the "lower" standards prevailing at Pharyngula, or indeed pretty much any standard of discourse above utterly shameless, dishonest poo-flinging. He evaded the issues people raised and implied that they were the most vile kind of people---not just assholes in an argument, but truly, profoundly sick immoral and amoral fucks of very nearly the worst sort he could imagine. Sheer weaselry and the vilest ad hominem arguments are an unacceptable combination, even at Pharyngula, and Henry shouldn't stoop that low, there.

And apparently I need to clarify: We are not surprised that sometimes that sort of thing happens. That doesn't mean that when it happens, nobody did anything wrong or uncivil, or that nobody said anything that was factually in error and worth correcting. One does not imply the other.

(Again, if you disagree, spell it out and claim it. It's another reason we don't let go.)

3) He's wrong about where the line is between reasonably criticizing other people's religious views and being an immoral/amoral asshole who's singling people out for persecution.

4) It is wrong to conflate that issue with the civility issue, without a really good argument as to where to draw the line about what is "mine to judge," such that you're an asshole if you don't respect that line. We haven't seen anything remotely like that yet.

5) It's not wrong to point out that somebody's being paranoid toward you, if they actually are, even if they're Jewish and rightly concerned about possible effects on Jews, and especially if they're wrongly accusing you of Nazi-like traits. (That tangent is mostly in response to Stephanie.)

I also didn't get why Henry takes it in the neck for screaming about how people need to be civil by people who are screaming that people need to be uncivil.

This sounds like you're responding to somebody like maybe Isis or Comrade PP, not me or SC or John. (We are not screaming that people need to be uncivil. We're arguing about what the relevant standards of civility are.)

Is that correct?

Posted by: Paul W. | February 3, 2010 2:46 PM

Henry takes it in the neck for screaming about how people need to be civil by people who are screaming that people need to be uncivil.

Greg, you really have no clue what you're talking about any more, do you?

do please find ANY post in this thread, or on pharyngula, or anywhere on any even remotely related blog, where someone is actually screaming that people NEED to be "uncivil".

the way you paint things is... colorful.

and that's putting a positive spin on it.

Not only is this thread a waste of time, but with the "clarity" of your writing skills, I rather think you might at least need a break from blogging for a while.

Posted by: Ichthyic | February 3, 2010 3:06 PM

SC quotes Greg, then replies:

An interesting feature of the above discussion is the interesting problem of avoiding being racist/whateverist and being generally tolerant but being intolerant of religion. That turns out to be pretty tricky.

I don’t find it tricky at all.

It's a pity that SC is exiled (temporarily, I hope), because the intersection between racism and intolerance of religion is where I ran afoul of her on Pharyngula a while back. It was on a thread about the attack by an outraged muslim on the Danish cartoonist who drew Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.

In that exchange, it seemed to me that she interpreted a defense of the cartoonist's right to publish an anti-religious cartoon, as a defense of the cartoonist's notorious xenophobia -- arguably, his racism. My clumsy support for the cartoonist got me dogpiled, albeit by fewer dogs than routinely pile on some other unwary commenters there.

In retrospect, my impression is that SC's priority is to confront racism in any form, wherever it appears. My own priority is to defend freedom of expression, especially anti-religious expression, whatever other motivations the persons expressing it may have.

To be clear, I have no problem with SC confronting racism, because racism assuredly is morally repugnant and a key cause of injustice in the world. It's just that I'm more worried about violent reaction by religious extremists to criticism of their religion, because as an atheist I'm often impelled to criticise religion myself. By accident of birth (my privileged status, I readily aknowledge), I'm much less likely to be a target of racism personally, than I am to be a target of religious extremism. Be that as it may, religious extremism assuredly is another key cause of injustice in the world. Which is the greater injustice depends on one's point of view -- that's the tricky part.

Now, all I know about Henry Gee's rhetorical style is what's been said on Scienceblogs recently. My impression is that his first priority is to confront anti-semitism in any form, wherever it appears. Perhaps this makes him prone to Type I errors. Perhaps the same is true of SC with respect to racism.

Posted by: Mal Adapted | February 3, 2010 4:54 PM