Where have all the Skeptics gone? The future of a failed movement.

scepticism and secularism ultimately is
about the pursuit of cultural change don't tell me it's about a string of academic anecdotes about the progress of science it's not what do you want if you're an atheist activist secularists skeptic what do you want you want to live in a society where people do not mutilate the genitals of their newborn babies male or female male circumcision feel you want to live in a world that's not ruled by crass superstition by belief in impossible things with all the terrible social and political consequences to then follow from those beliefs right so you want cultural change that's what you want now how are you gonna get it it's sad and strange for me to say you're never gonna get there - the focus of any example of skeptic and secularists movements that I've ever seen in my life right up till 2019 I think they're all fundamentally wrong because they're being fundamentally dishonest about that simplest of questions what is the positive objective weren't pursuit of what is it we want and you find out who we are by looking around the boardroom table and seeing who wants that same objective as soon as you're really being honest about it the objective of a secular society does not actually rest on science education it doesn't rest on any high and refined principle of philosophy what it rests on is demanding new legislation that will drag religion down to the same level of marketing and advertising and demand truth and fairness and accountability in advertising I believe that a Christian friar and a Buddhist monk I believe they should have the freedom to advertise that they perform funeral services that you can pay them a certain amount of money and they're gonna perform a certain kind of theatrical ritual whatever it is involving candles music mood lighting and they're gonna lower this casket into the ground or incinerate the body they're gonna chant maybe in Latin maybe in Greek maybe they're gonna sing songs in English maybe in Pali Sanskrit you name it to perform a ritual for a certain amount of money for a certain kind of theatrical and emotional effect nobody wants to make illegal conversely to offer someone who is sick and desperate the promise that if they pay money to a religious leader if they pay so many thousand dollars that a magic ritual can be performed that will cure them to have a person refuse science-based medicine to have a person walk out of a hospital and say no I don't need treatment for my cancer because I believe in a faith-based treatment solution they believe in miracles and in this world the 21st century as never before miracles are bought and paid for there are receipts and there are websites advertising them and there are pamphlet the Rev Desmond newspaper and in the United States of America for example because of the Constitution and the way that Constitution is interpreted and enforced there's no concept of false advertising in religion and I think one of the reasons why I don't know atheists and skeptics up to this point haven't wanted to deal with this is that if you create a category for false advertising you have to reciprocally recognize that there's something that's legitimate advertising that's in some sense legitimate religion even if that's just legitimate in the same sense that theater is legitimate it's a formants art of some kind okay I looked through the websites of the four iconic names Richard Dawkins Christopher Hitchens Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris before making this video to see what they've actually been doing in the last several years and you know was they kind of reached a crescendo of public interest maybe ten years ago and we've now watched that whole movement dissipate and die and I'm gonna tell you why it dissipated and it died because it wasn't pursuing a positive objective it was pursuing a purely negative objective I got an avalanche of email YouTube messages Twitter comments from so-called atheist activists it's cavitus when I was proposing positively hey I'm gonna write a bunch of original children's stories I'm gonna write and illustrate and publish original trona stories that I can perform for my daughter or the storybook and puppets I'm gonna write these stories because I'm dissatisfied living in a world were pretty much all the children's entertainment and story she has access to or either religious on the one hand or completely meaningless on the other there's kind of junk made by Disney which is secular Disney's a secular corporation none of their stuff as religious meanings and then there's the whole world of religion being presented to enforce down children's throats and I really see a lot of danger and disadvantage even in a commercialized Christmas being in coke Aidid into children and their view of them and the messages I got back and these atheists and so-called skeptics they really are imitating the leaders of that movement over the last nine years their answer was no they don't have to do anything positive they don't have to pursue any kind of cultural change all they need to do is sit back with their sense of smug superiority and laughs laughs scornfully at the true believers whom they feel so intellectually superior to and that's what I see that's what I see in making a survey of what these guys have gone on to do in the last 10 years obviously it's not perfect but I don't see anything I would call activism you know sharing a funny little anecdote about some new scientific discovery concerning the Mars you know Mars exploration program some you know snide laughing at some ridiculous thing some creation as the United States did a whole these rednecks so these is kind of the you know elite university educated class sitting back preening enjoying their sense of smug superiority and heaping scorn on the on the plebs on the lower classes and it is especially you know the the poor and ignorant of the United States of America who become the butt of these jokes who become the stereotypical true believer why because that's safe it's a lot riskier to take on Saudi Arabia isn't it it takes guts to actually deal with say women's rights in Saudi Arabia it takes guts to take on even circumcision male-female there are other challenges for the future of you know secular education having a say or sight but actually takes some nerve Verve tenacity but it's not what's not what Sam Harris is doing it's not what Daniel Dennett always thought Richard Dawkins is doing Christopher Hitchens is dead while he was alive so he was doing either so the leaders the people who were most highly visible at the pinnacle of this movement and I would say it's more broadly I know there are many other smaller personalities here on YouTube including even the amazing atheist they really set this pattern of behavior for this preening snide fatuous self-indulgent sanctimonious heir of what it meant to be a secular activists a quote-unquote skeptic and there never was any sense of positive motivation of wow we're going up against more than 2,000 years of tradition and ritual and you know pious ignorance all these things we have this and you know what our challenge is actually very different from the abolition of slavery because it's not something that can just be expressed negatively it's something that people really need to cultivate positively like a positive appreciation for science you know a large part evidently of what Richard Dawkins cares about is trying to get people to care about even geological history natural history in that sense most people don't care they just don't care how old is planet Earth most people don't care how do we estimate the age of a volcano don't care it's not some people get motivated but that's the kind of thing he's out there lobbying on I sympathize to an extent but the real practical challenge which is attainable today in the legislature of any Western democracy anywhere in the world is actually to separate the exploitative dishonest and and harmful elements of religion from the elements that can be tolerated and in my opinion should be tolerated not everyone would agree with that and to take that step forward I don't think you need to hold the religions of the world to the high standard of the best possible philosophy or the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people or some kind of optimal or excellent standard I don't think you have to hold them even to the standard of the modern sciences of holding up the Bible the creation has to counter the history of the world and say well can this really be reconciled with what we know about geology and evolution but let's let's take seriously what a tremendous challenge it would be and yet what an easily attainable goal it would be if religion had to have the same disclaimer that today you find on every packet of cigarettes on every bottle of whiskey you know it says do not drink during pregnancy depending on what country are there some warnings on alcohol on cigarettes of all the all the dangerous things in here is your kitchen cabinet and yet the moment something passes into the category of religion you can cut off a child's penis you can cut off about 50% of the nerve endings in the male penis through quote unquote circumcision male and female genital mutilation you can get away with the most outlandish completely medically illegitimate procedures imaginable you can reach out to someone who's desperate for help who's desperate to believe and told them exactly what they want to hear which is don't worry have faith you can be healed magically your cancer can be taken away and there's a price there's always a price all of that can be stopped all of that can be ended within our lifetimes and yet it's shocking to me that in the last ten years and with so many thousands of hours of listening to podcasts and YouTube videos sometimes reading the publication's the books these guys have published to seeing this movement rise and fall the international conferences this is my modest proposal guys I have never once heard this proposed before