Can This Day Just End Already

Good gravy.

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Forgive me for being ponderous in saying that psychics and tarot readers complaining about scammers is like flat earthers complaining about misinformation. It takes some real guts to get mad that some other people are committing fraud in your fraudulent industry. I suppose there’s many professionals in this community that really believe in what they’re doing, although there’s also certainly many that know it’s bunk and keep the con going anyway. But it ultimately doesn’t matter; when the basis of your behavior is so absurd and so lacking in evidentiary standing, you’re responsible for the fraudulence even if you believe in what you’re saying.

I recognize the point that what’s at issue here includes stuff like people on Instagram impersonating famous psychics and charging others for readings on that false pretense, and I guess that’s bad. But it doesn’t change the fact that these are scams built on the back of other scams. It’s fraud all the way down.

The first thing I ever wrote that got more than a couple dozen views, the piece that made the rounds in the blogosphere and in so doing kickstarted my writing career, was a piece of the type “I’m an atheist who can’t stand New Atheism.” Pieces in that vein became quite common over the years, but in 2008 it was still novel enough to attract all of that attention. This was an era in which the New Atheists still enjoyed a degree of cultural cachet, before the pomposity and shrill tone of so many in the movement curdled its public reputation, to say nothing of the accusations of Islamophobia. It was a different time. The basic contours of the piece still seem correct to me - atheism is almost certain factually true, and I am an atheist, but I have no interest in browbeating believers. I have no interest in converting believers into atheists, and atheism is not a movement. But not only would I not write that piece today, it’s one of very few pieces that I sometimes genuinely wish I had never published at all. Because the ground changed underneath us to such an extent that, well, millions of functioning adults proudly endorse astrology and other hooey in public.

At some point in the 2010s, the backlash to New Atheism became so commonplace, particularly on the political left, that it seemed clear to me that we had communally missed the forest for the trees. That is to say, no matter how annoying some atheists must be, the most important question when it comes to atheism remains (and must remain) whether or not God is real. If God is real, that is the single most important fact in the universe. Issues of comity and messaging take a backseat to the existence of a divine creator, and there’s something strange about being more concerned with how we express our skepticism about such a divine creator than about its actual existence. And while many people who disdain New Atheists will admit to a casual atheism themselves, they’re far less animated and passionate about that atheism than about their hatred of the New Atheists. On a really basic level this seems to be a failure of priority.