This Atheist Activism Failure Might Actually be a Win for Skepticism

[rug]

August 20, 2012
By leahlibresco

Over at Friendly Atheist, Paul Fidalgo of the Center for Inquiry has posted an open letter to imprisoned activist Alexander Aan that doubles as a rebuke to the skeptic/atheist/freethought community. A month long drive to get 25,000 signatures on a WhiteHouse.gov petition failed.

We were not asking for money, we were not asking anyone to travel, or march, or even write anything. All we were asking was the click of a few buttons. Why so many thousands could not be bothered to weather whatever frustrations the White House website presented, I think, speaks very, very ill of the actual commitment to social justice and basic liberties of what we want to believe is a growing and powerful movement of atheists and skeptics. If we can’t withstand the minor inconvenience of a webform, what can we ever be expected to do?

…(T)hese developments speak to the growth of a community, not of a movement. A strong movement would have garnered 25,000 signatures on a website for you in the first couple of days. So, if anything, the silver lining of this falling-short tells us something we desperately needed to know: despite the growing numbers of declared freethinkers, we have yet to find the best ways to do something meaningful with those numbers beyond gloating.

I’m inclined to cut the atheist movement a lot more slack on this one. I was pretty skeptical about the efficacy of a WhiteHouse.gov petition when I heard about the drive. The petitions that hit the 25k mark are guaranteed a reply, not a real response (cf the multiple petitions against the drug war that cleared the mark and only got mealy-mouthed replies). I guess the idea is to bootstrap up and use a successful petition to signal to reporters, whose coverage you can use to prompt more comments, which get covered by reporters, …., some kind of action is taken.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unequallyyoked/2012/08/this-atheist-activism-failure-might-actually-be-a-win-for-skepticism.html

[Jim__]

1. I'm not sure what type of "win" that is.

To believe that a recommended action is not sufficient is not a reason to therefore ignore the cause. If people thought Fidalgo's recommended action was not sufficient, they should have recommended other actions. Apathy is not a valid response; and definitely not a win.