This Atheist Activism Failure Might Actually be a Win for Skepticism

Last updated on: August 21, 2012 at 12:24 am by Leah Libresco

This Atheist Activism Failure Might Actually be a Win for Skepticism 2012-08-21T00:24:42-04:00 Leah Libresco

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

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.

I ended up promoting the petition drive on the blog, but I’ll confess, I did it much more in a Squelchtoadian spirit of giving a gift to a friend, than because I thought it was a good option for activism. And I followed by general rule of using pseudo-activism as a trigger to give to empirically validated interventions through Givewell.

Off-hand, I can’t think of any successful WhiteHouse.gov petitions (so I welcome examples in the comments). And this ask seemed particularly dicey: the president doesn’t have any kind of authority over the Indonesian penal system, and he’s unlikely to take a “cops of the world” approach to religious freedom. There’s already another blasphemy law case in Pakistan, where an eleven year old girl (who is reported to have Down’s Syndrome) may be sentenced to death. If the president isn’t planning to back up exhortations with force, there’s little power in a moral appeal when blasphemy laws enjoy substantial support in the relevant countries.

But Fidalgo had an answer for people like me, who didn’t think these tactics would pay off:

I would ask those who presume the ineffectiveness of the petition, “so what?” Click the buttons anyway. If for no other reason, it would show you, Alexander, if not our president, that we stood in solidarity with you.

But, in any given day, I get a lot of opportunities to show solidarity with causes I support. I sign petitions, repost those “repost this if you x….” statuses, add a like to the “One million strong against X…” pages, give buying-a-coffee amounts of money to causes, post action alerts to this blog, etc, etc, etc. Taking any of these actions might give me the warm fuzzies, since I’ve reminded myself I’m on the right team, but most of them won’t do much good for the person or cause I’m ostensibly supporting.

It’s true that any of them might pay off. (Reporters do like citing rival facebook like counts, so those sometimes do drive coverage). But without a heuristic for judging how likely they are to pay off, the organizer is essentially presenting me with a Pascal’s mugging. How seriously would you take a “nothing tangible may ever happen as a result, but we don’t know that, and it does send a palpable signal either way” if it were said by an organizer for a cause you weren’t personally invested in?

Atheists have had a lot more success when they’re organizing for a cause where the connection between action and result is clearer. People turned out to be more likely to give money to the college funds of Jessica Alquist and Damien Fowler than they were to spend an equivalent amount of time “showing solidarity” with Alexander Aan. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

If CFI and others want to up participation for the next drive (and embody the best bits of skepticism), I’d love to see some research on which kinds of activist interventions are most effective. I’ve seen a lot on the best ways to get a target to sign a petition, but not much on whether you’d rather ask for the signature or money or volunteer time or what. From my experience in advocacy, it can feel a bit like a cargo cult, where we’re endlessly petitioning capricious deities (read: elected officials) without much data on what will actually spur them to act. We can end up measuring success by things that are easy to quantify (how many signatures?) but are not necessarily proxies for our actual goal (is Aan more likely to be released?).

So why not do the research and offer people better activism opportunities, or (while you’re running some experiments) offer them weirder asks. As Sherlock Holmes would say, “Data data data! I cannot make bricks without clay!”

And, in the meantime, to make sure you’re not just rewarding yourself when you follow up on an action alert, why not pair petition signing, facebook liking, etc with a donation through Givewell? They’ve done the research, and you can check out their approach to evaluating charities. Yay empiricism!

UPDATE: Michael Nugent is offering a list of alternate actions you can take to help Aan now. No efficacy estimates, so you’ll have to make your own.

Atheism

Epistemology/Philosophy

activism

empiricism

Previous Post

August 20, 2012

"It's not so hard to be married. I've done it three or four times."

Next Post

August 21, 2012 Who are you dressed up as today?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 7 Quick Takes Apologetics Atheism Book Conversion Debate Tactics Debates Epistemology/Philosophy Housekeeping Ideological Turing Test Marriage Morality in Practice Parsing Catholicism Possibly Heretical Radio Reviews/Recommendations Sequence Index Spiritual Practice Uncategorized

Select a Month April 2017 March 2017 January 2017 December 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was the name of the Jewish ruling council in Jesus’ time?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Essenes Sadducees Pharisees Sanhedrin