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Tension in Skepticland

A long-simmering feud came to a public head yesterday, with skeptical heavyweight Paul Kurtz – founder of CSICOP (now CSI), the Council for Secular Humanism, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) and Prometheus Books – tendering his resignation from the Center for Inquiry. Kurtz’s decision comes nearly a year after he was (in his words) “unceremoniously ousted as Chairman of the Center for Inquiry/Transnational on June 1, 2009″. In the interim, Kurtz has been highly critical of the CFI for participating in the growing trend of hostility and intolerance towards religion:

…the problem of atheist fundamentalism is a very real one and needs to be faced. We are not going to solve the massive problems facing civilization on a global scale by merely attacking and ridiculing religion. Questions about human rights, abuse of power, and the creation of meaning and value for a secular age are as vital today as ever.

Coming from the guy who founded, and has been the driving force behind, the highly intolerant organization CSICOP, Kurtz can probably afford to step down off his high horse on the particular criticism of ridicule. I think the more central problem is that the 84-year-old Kurtz is, towards the end of his life, losing control of his vision for a secular world. Nevertheless, his shock resignation is another strong indicator that all is not well in Skepticland, with growing friction between ‘militant atheist’ skeptics, and ‘accomodationist’ (or religiously inclined) skeptics (see this blog by Daniel Loxton, and 230-odd-comments, for a taste).

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