waiting for reciprocity from the world of woo

It’s hard to believe, but months after Phil Plait’s oft cited speech at TAM urging skeptics not to be dicks to the woo faithful or religious fundamentalists is still being debated in skeptical and popular science circles. While my personal preference was to mention the topic and then move on to talk about the facts and issues which I tend to find far more interesting than vague debates about civility, some atheists, skeptics, and pundits trying to cash in on the accommodationism trend, are still at it. The topic of tone and politics in debates involving a whole slew of scientific or religious issues regularly reappears from Ophelia Benson and Jerry Coyne, along with the blogs with which they constantly start back and forths, blogs usually ran by people who seem to have more of an interest in political strategizing than in tackling any real issues on a case by case basis. And really, with all the navel-gazing I come across, a question comes to mind. Why is it that skeptics and atheists seem so involved with meta-discussions about tone and how to properly approach the forces of woo and religious indignation while fundamentalists or the woo-faithful don’t seem to spend a lot of time reciprocating? For just about every skeptic saying that maybe we should be quieter, there’s a woo-meister or crank eagerly jumping into the fray to say “oh yes, absolutely, in fact, why don’t you all just shut up and go to away?”

I mean, here we are, thinking about what we could do to come across as more friendly and excoriating each other for not being friendly enough, with some skeptical groups going as far as to purge atheists to better fit in with the local religious communities, and what do we get in response? Indignant fuming about how we still aren’t quiet and pliant enough? Yes, let’s spend another few months discussing when it is appropriate to call an idiot such, or in what context can we call out a raging crank on his or her nonsense. Are we going to go for our best public BDSM impression and buy some ball gags so a local creationist horde could threaten your local school board into turning science class into a Sunday School in peace? Doubtfully. Are we going to wear collars and give a fundamentalist bloviator the leash so he can yank on it when we say anything he feels to be offensive? Again, probably not, especially because we know that he will yank on that leash an awful lot. There are people who are offended by our very existence and unless we completely retreat into the shadows, we will always offend someone. So maybe we could spend a little less time arguing about how to debunk something and more on debunking it, since after all, we’re damned if we do and damned it if we don’t?