[TL;DR: Before commenting about the atheist rift, or claiming there is sexism/racism within the atheist community, educate yourself about Elevatorgate by reading this factually-accurate satirical epic.]
I know, I know, it’s been six years, and we should get over it, right? Wrong. Elevatorgate is important because it is how the atheist rift came to be.
And there I was, thinking every single atheist who writes about the rift has a fairly decent knowledge of how it all happened. Well, it turns out they don’t — and I learned it the ugly way: some months after I set the record straigh posting what the atheist rift actually is about, using as cue an abundantly illiterate post by some Jeremiah Traeger, he replied.
He actually chose to read out loud my post in his podcast —revealing in the process that he doesn’t know what a blockquote is— and he thought it was addressed to him. But worse than that: in my post (and its comments section) there are a number of references to Elevatorgate and all the shitstorm that came after that. Turns out Traeger and his co-host, some Ari Stillman, didn’t have any clue whatsoever about any of that. They just happily go about labeling as “sexist” and/or “racist” anyone who dares to disagree with the authoritarian and thuggish post-modernist side of the rift, and they proudly wear the SJW label.
Be that as it may, I thought it unwise to have people taking sides without knowing what (and who) they are actually standing for, and it stands to reason to think Traeger and his equally clueless co-host can’t be the only ones who believe at face value everything they are told (hey, it looks like Steven Novella and David Gorski are not the only ones whose critical thinking abilities faded away completely!).
I pointed Traeger in the direction of my very own compilation of the hypocrisy and bullying of the side he chose to side with — by now, most of the links lead to deleted pages (or tweets), and back then I didn’t screencap them, nor did I archive their posts.
So how are we supposed to let people know what really happened, before they all start writing abundantly illiterate posts about the unevidenced and gratuitous claim about sexism/racism within the atheist community?
Well, turns out An Atheist —that’s his/her handle— just made our job a lot easier: after six years, (s)he has written and published a painstakingly detailed and really well sourced Satirical Epic on Elevatorgate, quoting its main characters verbatim (it’s almost 104 pages long, but it’s well worth a read).
This is gold: it is the least anyone who pretends to talk about the atheist rift or take a side in it should read. You know, having all the relevant information to make choices and stuff.
Some of my bravest fellow SINners are mentioned and/or linked in the epic as well, as are some really interesting people I hadn’t had the pleasure of knowing about (such as Franc Hoggle).
And I also learned a few things I didn’t know! For instance, did you know Ed Brayton has an excommunication fetish? Yeah: the comment about wanting Thunderf00t “drummed out of the movement” and “forever a pariah” was just an episode of a long and systematic history of the civil libertarian poser who pretends he can build a ‘freethought’ movement one excommunication decree at a time. And there are bits of information like that through all the Epic!
If An Atheist ever gets to read this, thank you! It is very much appreciated. I’ll keep sending people to your epic to educate themselves about the atheist movement and how the Victim Factory founder brought the rift about.
