The New York Times on CFI’s ‘Deeper Division’

I don’t trust Mark Oppenheimer as far as I can throw him. In his coverage of Scientology, he took a laissez-faire stance that light-heartedly presented it as wacky and eccentric, rather than dangerous and impoverishing. He acted as if Richard Behar’s famous Time Magazine article had never been written. Oppenheimer’s piece on Scientologist acting coach Milton Katselas missed the point by a country mile. I am not surprised to hear he is at the helm of an article showing secularists in a bad light.

This airing of dirty laundry (which is of no interest to most of the population) really makes me sad.

Emphasis mine:

According to Mr. Kurtz, skeptics must do more than just deride religion. “If religion is being weakened, what replaces it in secular society?” he asked. “Most of my colleagues are concerned with critiquing the concept of God. That is important, but equally important is, where do you turn?”

“what replaces it”? “where do you turn”?

I would really like Mr. Kurtz, (whom I admire and respect) and everybody else who toss about unexamined questions like that to step back and question the unquestioned assumption that religion needs a replacement, that we must “turn” to something else instead. This sounds a lot like a drug addict feeling insecure about the prospect of soon losing his supply. “What will I replace it with? Where will I turn?”

You don’t replace it with some other debilitating habit, you get busy with all the rest of life that you’ve been neglecting.

Perhaps there is plenty in life do do, to enjoy, to love, to focus on, to have meaning, to wonder about, to self-define, to self-justify, to self-whatever, perhaps more than enough for us without having to come up with a specifically-designed spare tire for the broad loss of religion in society.

I’m just saying that we should question this assumption about needing to provide a “replacement” for something that was never needed in the first place.

@Hemant – I just want to emphasize that this is all regarding the US CFI. The other CFIs, worldwide, have their own leadership, their own strategies, and are not connected to all this silly business. I know that this is an American blog, but I’m a little concerned that your readers, who are not all Americans, may get a bad impression of their own local CFI because of this.

@Richard Wade – What aspects of religion are we talking about? There are plenty of areas that religion has traditionally covered, such as social aid and community support, that we do need. Now, the secular government is not doing too badly (in most countries) at taking over the social aid, but what about community support? What about secular alternatives to AA? What about emergency babysitting services for when everything goes wrong?

Ironically – considering which post I am responding to – these are things that CFI is starting to provide in Canada.

I think it’s a good thing in some ways-it means that nontheists are being seen as less fringe and that our inner workings are of (some)interest to the general population. While it may not be the coverage CFI desires, it is still light years ahead of Christine O’Donnell. 🙂

@Richard I agree with the idea of not replacing religion per se, but many people use religion as the means to an end-they might need some help to identify how they use religion and put into place some other means to achieve that end. Which coincidentally is something I’ve noticed you are very good at in your posts.

@Muggle: Your incredibly snotty, ignorant, and adolescent attitude towards the man who has done more for the non-theist (and skeptic) community than anyone else in the history of the movement reveals more about you than it does Kurtz, Lindsay, or CFI.

As founder of the CFI (and its largest benefactor) Kurtz has every moral right to be chagrined about the change in direction under its current leadership (arbitrarily chosen by Lindsay). Whether you agree with it or not is beside the point. If you want an organization that focuses mainly on aggressive, in your face atheism join the FFRF or American Atheists. These are not the values CFI was founded to embody. Its ambit was to be much broader, basically to move beyond atheism by advancing a positive and constructive worldview based on science and humanism. If you want to learn more about what these values were and meant under Kurtz’s leadership, try reading his countless articles in FREE INQUIRY magazine or his many books. Hell, try reading the original CFI mission statement and its accompanying philosophical explanation before Lindsay and his cohorts got around to changing it about a year ago. Under Lindsay, CFI has essentially become a civil rights organization for atheists. Not a bad thing in itself, but this already exists with the ACLU, American’s United, and FFRF. The only thing that CFI has not abandoned, to their credit, is skepticism.

Kurtz’s disagreement with Lindsay go WAY beyond “his replacing him.” (In fact,the disagreements are not even related to this misstatement of yours; Lindsay never really “replaced” him. But that is a much larger story) Rather, the disagreements are fundamental and based on principle. I suspect that these will be revealed more and more as time goes on, for they are well-documented in countless e-mail exchanges and public battles on the internet. Your claim that Kurtz is a “snob” reveals your anti-intellectualism, pure and simple. Kurtz is a distinguished philosopher, author, and institution builder, with an incredibly productive 40 year career, not a snob. Kurtz never drew up a set of “rules” for non-believers to follow. What an absurd, uninformed statement. What Kurtz did do was articulate the meaning of ethical humanism; a core set of values around which humanists could defend their worldview and find some guidance in the pursuit of the good life.

Taking the measure of the tone displayed in your attack on Kurtz, I can’t help but think that you and your ilk represent the Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh wing of the atheist movement. I’m sure many more attacks on Kurtz in this thread will demonstrate this. Finally, the ageism displayed in your comment is beneath contempt. You are the one who is most definitely NOT a humanist, or even humane. No wonder you prefer the current CFI!

I disagree with both bashing the reporter and saying “We wish you’d focused on positive things we’re doing instead.” Both are tactics we rightly deride when used by religious organizations.

Whether you like Oppenheimer, or what he’s done on other subjects, is immaterial. The only relevant question is: Is this story accurate? If not, criticize away – but I haven’t seen a complaint about the facts so far.

If the story’s accurate, we should take our lumps and move on. When a religious figure tries to distract from his misdeeds by saying “Oh, why don’t you ever talk about all the good I’ve done?” – how quick are we to ridicule that excuse? I reject it immediately.

This, of course, is a story about internal politics and differing styles, not actual wrongdoing. If we wail about something this mild, how can we honestly look down on religious institutions for similar responses to unfavorable coverage?

Spinozaist_4, in other words, all hail the patron saint of humanism, Kurtz, and to go against him is tantamount to going against the pope.

Oh, and I have read some of his articles in Free Inquiry. If you can read, I dropped my membership because he turned me off.

“positive and constructive worldview” = religion, especially in that it utterly must conform to one man’s view. “core set of values” + this = rules.

I rest my case.

Actually Ophelia Benson has a follow-up piece that examines Paul’s claims, it’s quite detailed and enlightening: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2010/more-on-cfi-with-some-actual-information-for-a-change/