Michael Shermer, meet Barbara Ehrenreich: two self-flunked not-so-#skeptics

Mr. & Mrs. Michael Shermer; not a ghost of a chance?

I've already blogged about Ehrenreich and her new book on alleged teenage mystical experience, starting with a long book review and then adding blogging thoughts about the psychological struggles I see lying behind both the teen and the modern Ehrenreich.

Well, now, Michael Shermer, at a minimum, leaves himself open to the criticism and interpretation of seeming to have dived even deeper into the ex-skeptic pool, but all based on recent adult experience.

He married the loverly Jennifer Graf (more related to this further down) just a few months ago. Shermer notes that she was raised by her mother, and describes her late grandfather, Walter, as "the closest father figure she had growing up, but he died when she was 16."

Anyway, Ms. Graf is a native of Germany. Before their marriage, they had her possessions shipped over here to the States.

Among them was one item of sentimental value once owned by her grandfather, an old radio.

Shermer gives the details:

His 1978 Philips 070 transistor radio arrived safely, so I set out to bring it back to life after decades of muteness. I put in new batteries and opened it up to see if there were any loose connections to solder. I even tried “percussive maintenance,” said to work on such devices—smacking it sharply against a hard surface. Silence. We gave up and put it at the back of a desk drawer in our bedroom.

OK, so Shermer admits he's not a professional electronics repairman, while also letting us know that he could have hit the radio hard enough to jiggle something loose.

Moving on ...

We're at their at-home wedding and reception, when this:

Being 9,000 kilometers from family, friends and home, Jennifer was feeling amiss and lonely. She wished her grandfather were there to give her away. She whispered that she wanted to say something to me alone, so we excused ourselves to the back of the house where we could hear music playing in the bedroom. We don't have a music system there, so we searched for laptops and iPhones and even opened the back door to check if the neighbors were playing music. We followed the sound to the printer on the desk, wondering—absurdly—if this combined printer/scanner/fax machine also included a radio. Nope.

At that moment Jennifer shot me a look I haven't seen since the supernatural thriller The Exorcist startled audiences. “That can't be what I think it is, can it?” she said. She opened the desk drawer and pulled out her grandfather's transistor radio, out of which a romantic love song wafted. We sat in stunned silence for minutes. “My grandfather is here with us,” Jennifer said, tearfully. “I'm not alone.”

First, we have a clearly emotional situation for both, which he later admits. And, doubly so for her.

However, he seems to "recover" with this observation:

What does this mean? Had it happened to someone else I might suggest a chance electrical anomaly and the law of large numbers as an explanation. ... In any case, such anecdotes do not constitute scientific evidence that the dead survive or that they can communicate with us via electronic equipment.

All would be fine and dandy if he ended there.

Next, he tells us:

Yet the eerie conjunction of these deeply evocative events gave her the distinct feeling that her grandfather was there and that the music was his gift of approval. I have to admit, it rocked me back on my heels and shook my skepticism to its core as well. I savored the experience more than the explanation.

Seemingly, he wants to believe. Not just wanted to believe, then, past tense, but wants, present tense, a couple of months later. Note the "had it happened to someone else" caveat from the previous pull quote. And, add to it that, even with others, he "might suggest a chance electrical anomaly." Not "would suggest," but "might suggest."

And, we're still not quite done.

But, he doesn't.

First, though, I want to go to the first sentence from the paragraph where the last pull quote came from, which says:

Jennifer is as skeptical as I am when it comes to paranormal and supernatural phenomena.

Sounds great, right? Also sounds like a typical "pitch," with the pitchman establishing his alleged bona fides before making the sale.

Now, let's go to his last sentence:

And if we are to take seriously the scientific credo to keep an open mind and remain agnostic when the evidence is indecisive or the riddle unsolved, we should not shut the doors of perception when they may be opened to us to marvel in the mysterious.

Boy, is that laden with loopholes, both stated and unstated.

First, true scientific investigation would have taken the radio to a repairman. Note that Shermer said he HAD changed batteries, so a normal power source for the radio was in place. Change in humidity or other things could have caused a connection to be made. A transistor radio would then have played for what? About a day, that's what, until the batteries died.

Indeed, he didn't even have to start by taking the radio to a repairman. A scientific investigation, or a semi-scientific skeptical investigation, would have started with carefully, carefully removing the old, dead batteries from the radio -- carefully so as not to jar again whatever loose wiring, or loose crud that can build up on batteries and connections -- Shermer presumably jarred loose with banging the radio in the first place. Then, replace the batteries with fresh ones! If it plays, voila! Solution and answer.

Second, both a true skeptic and a true scientist wouldn't operate off "sample size = 1." That's even more so when a true skeptic or a true scientist recognize that when that "1 = yourself," you don't have single-blinding, let alone double-blinding.

Third, a true skeptic, and a true philosopher, would recognize the logical fallacy or fallacies being committed. I could argue that they include shifting the burden of proof, appeal to authority, the regression fallacy (since he claims the event's importance is what it is, without looking at its cause), and the bull's-eye fallacy, also called the sharpshooter fallacy (relates to that "sample size =  1).

Fourth, you can't tell me that the phrase "the doors of perception" isn't a deliberate play toward Aldous Huxley's book of that name. Fifth, the phrase "marvel in the mysterious" also tells me Shermer wants to believe.

Thus, I have to agree with the current top commenter on the story page; the last paragraph is an embarrassment.  Next thing, Michael Shermer will join Barbara Ehrenreich in writing a book about his teenaged mystical experiences. And, per that note, and feedback I've gotten, if I'm misinterpreting this piece, I'm not alone; I may be taking my interpretation up a step from that commenter, but we're in the same neighborhood.

Barbara Drescher, maybe it's time you write about your new boss as part of blogging about why smart people do (or believe) stupid things. Beyond her, I wonder what Jim Lippard, Daniel Loxton and others at Insight think about this. I know I'm not alone in my interpretation. Besides the scornful first commenter on the piece, another person, on the place on Facebook where I saw this shared, invokes Marcello Truzzi, who fell out of the modern skeptical movement precisely because he wanted to treat the study of paranormal phenomena with too much use of intellectual kid gloves.

Does Shermer actually "believe"? I don't think so. But, the eagerness of his degree of "wanting to believe" is, in itself, highly anti-skeptical and strong enough to leave him open to the charge that he does appear to actually believe, at a minimum.

And, if Shermer didn't want to leave himself open to critique like this, at a minimum, he didn't have to write the piece he actually did write, since he had a couple of months of reflection time since the wedding. At a maximum, he didn't have to write anything.

Also, is Scientific American now embarrassed by this? No Tweet and no Facebook post about it, though it does a lot of other stuff on both its social media.

==

Sidebar: Now that he's married, that puts up another (theoretically) obstacle to his (alleged) pantsitis, which I discuss in moderate depth in this post about the James Randi Educational Foundation's problems with finances, alleged sexism, and apparent founder's syndrome, and with a more narrow focus, this piece about Shermer's alleged sexual behavior problems.

Also, per that "pantsitis" issue, which I discuss in those two blog posts linked two paragraphs up, that picture of the Mr. and Mrs., while not quite cradle robbing, seems to indicate a full decade of age difference, at least. If there's fire behind the smoke of sex-related allegations against him, the picture's a partial explainer.

So, arguably the three biggest leaders in movement skepticism today are an ill-healthed octegenarian with founder's syndrome (Randi), a mystic pseudoskeptic with a pants problem (Shermer), and a libertarian-leaning lawyer with his own baggage (Ron Lindsay of Center for Inquiry). Seriously, who would want to be involved with that until the Augean stables are cleansed?

At the same time, an overall good roundup here of why PZ Myers has no business criticizing anybody else's sexual behavior. Liquor him up as much as Shermer may have been at times, and the yucky behavior toward women he sometimes has shown himself would probably be at the level of rumors of criminal behavior on his own part.

==

Sidebar 2: If it's all for the sake of love, then surely the irrationality of love had Shermer ready to feel this way before the wedding, and will do so in the future, too. And, that's probably another reason I'm single. It's not romantic idealism about marriage or other romantic partnerships; it's compatibility idealism.

==

Sidebar 3: I don't think that most people at a skeptics' group who are commenting on my posting this there are actually reading through to read all of this.

Does #CFI, #CSH, or #SOS still have financial problems?

First, let me spell out the alphabet soup up top.

CFI is Center for Inquiry, once the leading secular humanist organizatoin and now, in my opinion, trying to become the leading Gnu Atheist organization. CSH is an affiliate, the Council for Secular Humanism, publisher of The Humanist magazine and doer of other things. SOS is Secular Organizations for Sobriety, a 12-step group alternative. (Disclosure: I have connections with another 12-step alternative, one of my reasons for interest in all of this, as well as my interest or concerns about things Gnu Atheist.)

A month ago, as I blogged here, SOS sent out an urgent fundraising appeal, with the full appeal and parts of surrounding text following.

For over 23 years, the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH) has financially supported Secular Organizations for Sobriety. Now, due to their own loss in funding, CSH will severely cut their financial support for SOS. This is set to occur at the end of March 2014; however, CSH has recently agreed to continue their current level of financial support for SOS if SOS can raise $75,000 prior to March 31, 2014. We urge you to send your tax deductible donation today to:

 

Save SOS

4773 Hollywood Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90027

(Credit card donors call 323-666-4295 24 hours)

Secular Organizations for Sobriety has helped countless thousands of addicted persons reclaim their lives for over 28 years. We need your help now in order to effectively continue the implementation of the world’s oldest and largest alternative to 12-Step religious support groups.

Thank you so very much!

Jim Christopher

SOS Founder

SOS is officially headquartered at CFI West's office in L.A., and the Council for Secular Humanism is a CFI affiliate, to spell out the connection. Sidebar to the end-of-email claim. The "largest" is highly doubtful. SOS's list of meetings is largely populated with inactive ones or "pre-meetings." Below the listings for each state is this message:

There is someone living in this zip code who has started an SOS Meeting or is interested in meeting with others.

"Interested in meeting with others" is not a meeting, and which is which aren't always clearly distinguished. (That said, the listing of "orphans seeking meetings" is not necessarily bad.)

 

Also, its online presence in general is quasi-amateurish, despite the buckets of money it gets. You want proof? Here you go: the SOS homepage. (It actually looks less crappy by far than it did 2-3 years ago, when it really looked sad.)

Well, on Nov. 11, Jim Christopher renewed the appeal. Which I posted on Facebook, in part because neither CFI nor CSH has given me a straight answer on their current financial well-being.

There's actually a third reason, specific to SOS. As noted above, I have connections another 12-step alternative. SOS not only gets whatever subsidy it does from CFI, it's also headquartered at CFI West, paying below-market rent, if any. I'd also like to see exactly how much, or how little, in donations it gets, if ithat's broken out somewhere, which it should. SOS's appeal (and I'm assuming CSH is offereing a 1-for-1 match, like enviro groups regularly do), is a month old.

That said, I'm venturing that SOS's renewed plea indirectly answers my question about it. I'm guesstimating that whatever CSH's current funding level is, whether $75K or higher, SOS does no better than one-third of that in donor contributions.

At the same time, I'm still trying to figure if the CFI complex and funding affiliates like CSH are trying to "monetize" other low-rent entities, too, whomever they might be. That's something that nobody from nowhere in either one of the organizations would directly tell me, no way, no how, when I started inquiring at the time of my initial blog post.

So, to Ron Lindsay's minions? If SOS has another email appeal in a month? I write another blog post, even stronger than this one, if I don't get more information than I did a month ago. And, I can start looking through your 990s as I have time, myself, and making guesstimates, or flat out assumptions, from there.

At the same time, to Jim Christopher and Duaine Metevia, his No. 2 and chief apple- and pedestal-polisher? I want more specific answers from you, too. I suspect the financial problems, relative to total budget, are worse with you than with CFI/CSH. Unfortunately, Christopher surely continues to be a bad manager, with the same founder's syndrome issues as many other organization starters, while Metevia not only enables this, but spreads this word to the SOS masses. (I know because I've seen it in person and know why SOS had a split/offshoot 15 years ago. And, indirectly, I've gotten additional confirmation of why that split was a good idea, and that, sorry Paul Kurtz touters, but this goes back to his doorstep.)

To be honest, SOS, with the CFI resources behind it, should be as big as SMART Recovery plus Lifering Secular Recovery combined, and I know that it's nowhere near that.

So, I suspect this is more on SOS's dime than CFI's or CSH's. It should still be honest, though. Assuming this is an SOS issue, and more precisely, a Jim Christopher issue, CFI isn't doing SOS any favors by not being even sterner than it is. And, being that much on the CFI/CSH dime is as bad as the larger CFI, under Kurtz (even if this has allegedly been overstated to a degree) basing a quarter of its budget on one donor.

And, this is also why, although I don't cotton to most of Gnu Atheism, I know that CFI needed to make some sort of "move" a few years back. Ron Lindsay may have been the wrong move. But, Paul Kurtz could have prevented that with his retirement and a name of another successor.

And, that all said, this may be a "test" of Christopher. If he gets close to the match amount, he may stay on. But, if not, CFI and/or CSH may pretty bluntly tell him it's time to retire.

Galloway v Town of Greece — legal strategies v Gnu Atheism (updated)

University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock
took part in a moot court session Monday in preparation
for oral arguments in Town of Greece v. Galloway
at the U.S. Supreme Court./Photo via U.Va.

Update: Galloway lost, Greece won, on a 5-4 vote; Wikipedia has a good overview. Per my comments below, plaintiff attorney Doug Laycock couldn't get a "count" up to 5 Justices in what was a tough case, beyond Gnu Atheist kibbitzing as to strategy. I disagree with the ruling; I would have accepted Breyer's more narrow concurring dissent rather than Kagan's somewhat broader one, but certainly would not have said no to Kagan.

Now that Galloway vs Town of Greece is at the Supreme Court, we may get more clarity on an issue the Nine in Black have long dodged, and often deliberately. Or, we may not. And, from a secularist's perspective, we may get clarity we don't want.

The question at hand, based on how the grievance was filed, has two different possible legal approaches.

One is that,  the whole idea of government-backed prayer, like invocations before city or town council meetings, as in the case of Greece, is religiously coercive.

The other is that prayer itself is not necessarily coercive, but the content of it, and to the degree it can be defined, the intent of it, is, or something along those lines.

And, even though one of the two plaintiffs is an atheist, the plaintiff's lawyer, University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, appears to opt for Strategy No. 2, not No. 1. And, per my warning at the end of the first paragraph, and contra some wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in the last 36-48 hours from some Gnu Atheists, pursuing Strategy 2 is almost surely the right one, and throwing the plaintiffs' lawyer under the bus for so doing is ridiculous.

That said, as shown in the recent Proposition 8 and DOMA cases, in a situation like this, a lawyer has to count to "five," with one of those five being Justice Anthony Kennedy.That's how you win, and last I checked, a lawyer is supposed to win the case for his or her client, whether it's criminal or civil. Even if it's constitutional law.

Center for Inquiry Executive Director Ron Lindsay, a lawyer himself, has a piece that's good in some ways in lining out the case, but with bits of Gnu Atheist tone-snarking, enough for non-Gnu friends of mine to note that this is exactly the type of stuff that feeds into stereotypes of atheists. And, per what I said, basically accuses Laycock of throwing atheists under the bus. No quotes. Sorry. The more I think about it, the more I'm upset about the tone, and about him as a lawyer who knows better not writing better.

I find it pandering to Gnu Atheists, and this is nothing new, either in his doing so or in my noting that. The fact is that Laycock was the plaintiffs' lawyer from at least the time they responded to Greece's request to the Supreme Court to grant certiatori. Indeed, that response makes clear that it was about "sectarian prayers," and that's a quote from the response, and not about prayer vs. no prayer. The idea that CFI and Lindsay should know this, too, is doubly true since CFI was among groups filing amicus briefs.

So, A, this "Strategy No. 2" can't come out of the blue. B. Lindsay himself, as a lawyer, knows that in civil as well as criminal law, the lawyer's ultimate job is to win the case, even if the win is an ugly one at times. It's called legal strategy, per U.Va's PR explainer, and that piece makes that clear. That piece also makes clear Laycock's considerable experience in this area:

Laycock is best known for defending the free exercise rights of churches, having argued three cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of a Lutheran church, the Catholic archbishop of San Antonio and an Afro-Caribbean religious group. (Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Church and School v. EEOC; City of Boerne v. Flores; and Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, respectively.)

Yet he also wrote the briefs on behalf of the plaintiffs in Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe, a case involving high school football prayers.

Ergo, C as a subset of A. The plaintiffs, and the variety of groups filing amicus briefs, including Lindsay's own CFI, Laycock addresses the applicability of Marsh, or not, and more, too. 

Fellow U.Va. law prof Micah Schwartzmann, who helped Laycock prep, also weighs in:

“In Town of Greece, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to clarify the limits of legislative prayer, especially as it is practiced by local governments,” he said. “Legislative prayer is constitutionally anomalous. Usually the government is not allowed to assert religious views. When it does so in a sectarian manner and in a context in which citizens are likely to feel pressure to conform, we should be concerned about that.”

Schwartzman added that he does not think anyone has expressed that concern more forcefully than Laycock.

“The respondents in Town of Greece are very fortunate to have him representing their views in the Supreme Court,” he said.

So, Ron Lindsay or Doug Haycock? I know which one I think probably is smart on how to actually plead this case. In short, this isn't as simple as Lindsay would have it. Nor, per the other blogger, does it seem that higher-grade legal talent, per my rhetorical questions, saw a chance to overthrow Marsh or this case to be the vehicle for that.

Meanwhile, the Gnus are trying to undermine Laycock's credibility by noting he was a plaintiff for the church denomination defendant in this case. That said, the ones snickering at Laycock and my defense of him conveniently ignored that SCOTUS ruled unanimously in that case. They also ignore that Laycock's years of expertise on the First Amendment in general mean that he doesn't necessarily agree with them. And, the fact that SCOTUS ruled unanimously, is arguably a testimony to Laycock's skills. 

Related to that, Policy Mic has a piece that claims trying to overthrow the town's stance entirely was the intent of co-plaintiff Stephens. It, in turn, has its own bit of snarkiness, and somewhat ignores the whole issue of whether the Marsh v Chambers case's precedent should or shouldn't be overturned. It even more, like Lindsay, ignores whether Marsh can be overturned, either in front of this Court in general or with this case as a particular vehicle.

Greece misses a chance to clarify precedent set by 1983's Marsh v. Chambers. In that case, the Court recognized "legislative prayer" (specifically, the public salary of a legislative chaplain) as legal so long as it was primarily ceremonial, traditional, and didn't "proselytize [or disparage] any one … faith or belief."

But as Justice William Brennan noted in his dissent, that answer didn't address the important question: should religion belong in the town hall, taxpayer-funded or not, at all? "The Court is carving out an exception to the Establishment Clause, rather than reshaping Establishment Clause doctrine …. If the Court were to judge legislative prayer through the unsentimental eye of our settled doctrine, it would have to strike it down as a clear violation of the Establishment Clause."

So, the question indirectly raised by this author is, was the intent of Stephens at least, to overthrow Marsh, at least once she understood what Marsh was?

He says in his next graf:

In other words, on the matter of legislative prayer, we still don't know the Court's opinion on whether the First Amendment's instruction that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" refers to government not establishing one particular religion or, as Justice Brennan argued, a prohibition on establishing the specter of religion itself. Unfortunately, that decision will have to wait.

He's probably right. However, Lenny DiFranco, who has the excuse of not being a lawyer, unlike Lindsay, but no other excuse, started this piece off with a bit of muddle-headedness that would be worth of St. Ron of Gnuness:

The two petitioners, Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens, brought their legal action as part of an activist campaign to assert, and then entrench and fortify, the line between church and state. This righteous goal would have been well served had their case's central question addressed the legality of a town board soliciting religious prayer, which is a question the Supreme Court has, to date, skirted.

I'm convinced they acted out of this motivation, but for some reason they built their case around a nonsense claim of being offended at the explicit Christianity of the prayers. 

Note how much is fact-free here?

"I'm convinced." By what? "Righteous" goal? Assuming DiFranco is some sort of Gnu himself, doesn't this kind of illustrate how Gnus can adopt not only the posture, but the actual language of those they claim to despise? "For some reason they built their case around a nonsense claim." Again, really? The response to cert indicates this strategy is not de novo. Laycock's background indicates this is not a nonsense claim.

Back to the explicit claim by DeFranco, and the implicit one by Lindsay, that this case was "originally" about overthrowing Marsh. Set aside the fact they have no proof for any sudden bait and switch. That said, given the current make-up of the court, now is probably not the time to raise that issue anyway, and Laycock, beyond narrow legal grounds, knows that. Let's not forget that, to America at large, atheists are more vile than gays, and we just got DOMA narrowly decided in a theoretically pro-gay way. And, that said, he also appears ignorant of the fact that Laycock's been the plaintiffs' attorney for some time.

In light of that, it was Breyer and not Kennedy who invited Laycock, when he appeared to founder on whether any prayer might fit the non-coercive bill, to consider a different line of thought. As on Prop. 8 and DOMA, Breyer doesn't matter; Kennedy does. Oh, and I know Lindsay knows all of this.

That said, as Dahlia Lithwick notes at Slate, whether through how the complaint was filed, or the strategy of plaintiffs' lawyer Douglas Laycock, Marsh will likely remain in place.

That's even though Kennedy might appear poised to at least narrow it, per Lithwick:

Kennedy stops (defense lawyer Thomas Hungar again: “The essence of the argument is we've always done it this way, which has some force to it. But it seems to me that your argument begins and ends there.”

Kennedy adds, this “involves the state very heavily in the censorship and the approval or disapproval of prayers."

And, Kennedy appears to be ready to modify, at least, and potentially reject, the history as precedent idea that Hungar argued, and that was part of the basis of Marsh. That said, any good SCOTUS watcher knows not to read too much into oral argument posturing in general, and very much so with Kennedy

For a further understanding of that, you need to go to an excellent analysis at ScotusBlog. And, the Economist has a good straight news story.

An even worse problem, for me, and one should be indefensible for Obamiacs, is that Dear Leader filed an amicus brief — on the side of the Town of Greece.

OK, from here, let's look more at that Marsh decision and the dead weight of the historical background that Kennedy raised.

OK, from here on out, below the fold, I want to address two issues. One is my take on Marsh. Related to that is my generic take on how I'd like this issue to go, versus current issues of reality.

Center for Inquiry still got financial issues? Or Lindsay looking at monetization?

Per discussion below, survey says "Yes" on the first question, either about CFI itself or at least about its affiliate, Council for Secular Humanism. The lack of a straight answer otherwise falls under the old maxim: "Silence gives assent."

CFI, regarded by many as the leading outpost of secular humanism in the US, has had financial concerns for several years, ever since Ron Lindsay, hired by CFI founder Paul Kurtz to be his right-hand man and seeming eventual successor, quarreled with Kurtz over the changes in direction Lindsay was already starting to make, and what he seemed to want to do in the future.

The upshot was that Lindsay (with the seeming support of the majority of CFI's board) took over in what could be called some sort of palace coup. However, one major, anonymous donor, who reportedly had contributed so heavily as to make up one-quarter of CFI's revenue stream, stopped the checks. I've blogged a bit more about the issues here, without saying that Kurtz was 100 percent right on overall management of CFI, or on depending that much on one donor. Wikipedia has a bit more about the 2010 showdown on Kurtz's bio page.

CFI slashed staff (along with support for ventures and such) left and right after that. However, the doldrums apparently still continue. (And, this was reportedly only a one-year cut, and any other loss in revenues since then was not due to this donor. See more below.)

Per an emergency alert email sent to Secular Organizations for Sobriety's email support group, and also on its website:

For over 23 years, the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH) has financially supported Secular Organizations for Sobriety. Now, due to their own loss in funding, CSH will severely cut their financial support for SOS. This is set to occur at the end of March 2014; however, CSH has recently agreed to continue their current level of financial support for SOS if SOS can raise $75,000 prior to March 31, 2014. We urge you to send your tax deductible donation today to:

 

Save SOS

4773 Hollywood Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90027

(Credit card donors call 323-666-4295 24 hours)

Secular Organizations for Sobriety has helped countless thousands of addicted persons reclaim their lives for over 28 years. We need your help now in order to effectively continue the implementation of the world’s oldest and largest alternative to 12-Step religious support groups.

Thank you so very much!

Jim Christopher

SOS Founder

SOS is officially headquartered at CFI West's office in L.A., and the Council for Secular Humanism is a CFI affiliate, to spell out the connection. Sidebar to the end-of-email claim. The "largest" is highly doubtful. SOS's list of meetings is largely populated with inactive ones or "pre-meetings." Below the listings for each state is this message:

There is someone living in this zip code who has started an SOS Meeting or is interested in meeting with others.

"Interested in meeting with others" is not a meeting, and which is which aren't always clearly distinguished. (That said, the listing of "orphans seeking meetings" is not necessarily bad.)

 

Also, its online presence in general is quasi-amateurish, despite the buckets of money it gets. You want proof? Here you go: the SOS homepage. (It actually looks less crappy by far than it did 2-3 years ago, when it really looked sad.)

Also sad is that, even with CSH/CFI money, SOS, unlike SMART or Lifering Secular Recovery, has no online meeting room. (There's "control" issues inside SOS behind this, not money, but that's another story entirely.) 

First, Tom Flynn, a Gnu Atheist type who has said that atheists should not celebrate Christmas, even as a secular holiday, and who has also said that he would, if he could, officially rename the days of the week so as to remove the names of pagan gods, is the current executive director of CSH.

Second, CFI's rapid expansion of physical satellite locations from 2006 on probably hasn't helped the financial bottom line. 

Third, allegedly, CFI in general isn't really hurting.

If that's the case, this may be Lindsay pushing for a monetization value of CFI affiliates. Given some previous comments of his about monetary values, donors, and related things, which I blogged about here, it would be no surprise if this is the start of some new, larger, neoliberal-to-libertarian trend in how Ron is viewing CFI affiliates. (This link has a lot more about the Lindsay-vs-Kurtz showdown, via linked in-depth interviews of both of them.)

Fourth, if this is a "monetization" issue, that's sadder yet. 

That said, I know none of this for sure. Therefore, having had contact with him via Massimo Pigliucci's blog, I've contacted Michael De Dora via Facebook. I am truly curious about this.

And, Michael says he doesn't know. I can't find a direct email address so far for Tom Flynn, so my Facebook query will go in his "other messages" folder. I've emailed the "info" addys at both CFI and CSH, while not using the term "monetization," but asking if this is designed to make SOS more "self-sufficient," and if this is just SOS, or other affiliate-type organizations, too. Stay tuned. 

Update: Without providing details, but stipulating that I personally know SOS webmaster and unofficial No. 2 in the SOS hierarchy Duaine Metevia, it is as I originally suspected, before I suspected CSH/CFI. SOS isn't getting enough in independent donations relative to how much money CFI/CSH funnels.

Mr. Metevia once threatened to have me arrested should I ever show up again at the Dallas SOS meeting; given that this was a multi-party email, and an unwarranted threat, I don't consider it privileged information.

Knowing some of the details of why another group, Lifering Secular Recovery, split off from SOS, none of this surprises me. And, while SOSers who worship Jim Christopher, including Mr. Metevia, may get them to meet that fundraising drive, the organization, and secular alternatives to the 12-step world, would be better off, in all likelihood, if the matching drive failed, and failed enough to require SOS to do a bit of searching.

On the other hand, said email didn't directly address what's at the top of the alert, that CSH has lost funding. I believe CFI is a major source of CSH's funding, so, again, somebody please answer that question?

And, so far, said answers have not come to me. 

Therefore, even if there's some hyperbole, or even a bit of unsubstantiated claims, coming from Jim Christopher, I'm going to assume CSH is having some difficulty, and if so, that that in turn may stem from CFI.

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Per the end-of-Kurtz/post-Kurtz financial matters?

Here's what CFI said at the time. It followed with a timeline (PDF) relative to its attempts to work with this donor. And, with apologies to Paul Kurtz's defenders, I agree with Orac (a link to whom I can't find, but I summarized it in another post), and that is that you don't put one-quarter of your fisc in one basket, and I'm not alone in that, either. At a minimum, save and invest part of the annual contribution. Better yet, do like SOS is being told to do now, and make part of that money contingent on matching pledges from John and Jane Does. (That said, the failure to do that is not necessarily Kurtz's direct failure, but he was captain of the management ship.)

There's interesting comment on this James Randi Educational Foundation thread, both pro- and anti-Kurtz, both on financial and other management issues.

My larger summary is that this was a Gnu Atheist palace coup — but that some welcome changes could, and should, have been made, perhaps by another less-Gnuish CEO not named Ron Lindsay. That observation may not be totally satisfactory to either Kurtz's closest defenders or those of the current CFI.

To be honest, I'd like to hear from someone who left CFI before Lindsay was hired. I've already heard from people about Kurtz vis-a-vis Al Seckel, which is another reason that, although I don't like the current look at CFI, I don't give Kurtz a hall pass, either.

That, in turn, makes me thankful that I'm not, nor was I before, closely involved with CFI, or with "movement" atheism or secular humanism.

Speaking of that, since I indirectly referenced them above, here's the excellent separate interviews of Kurtz and Lindsay by Eric Veith. There's surely elements of truth in the words of both men.

Also, per some of the comment in the Randi thread, this isn't something peculiar to CFI. Transitions away from the founders of small-to-medium nonprofits are never easy.

At some point in the future, I may look at all of this more. But not now. Knowing a fair deal about SOS led me to this post; I have no desire to wade deeper in CFI history waters at this time.