Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve detailed the issues being faced by the Philippine Atheists’ mailing list. I made my way to a post on Rationally Speaking which was oddly familiar. It seems that atheist organizations, from my very limited knowledge of them, have a common weakness.

The parallels I will enumerate below are based off Massimo Pigliucci’s viewpoints on Rationally Speaking as well as my personal viewpoints on pinoy_atheists@yahoogroups.com and atheistangpinoy@yahoogroups.com:

a prominent and active member of the group was summarily dismissed by Bronstein on the grounds that he was “undermining the organization” (he had the temerity to think that atheism is not just about activism, but also about relaxed, social gatherings).

Now, we don’t have a formalized organization back here yet, but there have been talks of acceptance to start a branch of the Center for Information in the Philippines under the leadership of (surnames witheld): Josh, John and Poch (yes, they like their o’s and h’s). A member of the mailing list, M_Y was told he was not welcome to be a part of CFI-Philippines because of continuous criticism of the way things were being done, particularly, the impression several of us in the list had of the CFIP, which was a particularly combative one.

Bronstein immediately told me that those were the “old” bylaws, and that a new set had been passed, giving him total and complete control of the group, financially, in terms of activities and policies, and, of course, in matters of expelling members and calling for Board meetings.

As written by Josh on the mailing list, “Norm and Paul Kurtz has given me the authority to take CFI in whichever direction I see best.” In a nutshell, he was telling us, that he was not going to take any of our arguments into consideration. That is, in spite of our rational approach.

Oops. It was time to get out of an organization run by an autocrat who responds to challenges with a rude “my way or the highway,” and whose bylaws are probably illegal in the State of New York. So that is when I resigned.

The same argument presented to us by the CFIP. There was nothing for us to resign from, but several people withdrew support for it before it even started.

They, including Ken Bronstein, have been doing quite a bit of good work for the atheist movement, but they — particularly Bronstein — don’t seem to realize that much damage to the same movement can be caused by precisely the type of intolerant behavior that we all criticize in fundamentalist churches

Another parallel. All three mentioned previously have been very active in Philippine atheism but the actions of the CFIP were no different from those of whom it was against.

As things started getting dirty, Josh withdrew and John was nowhere to be seen (due to personal issues). After a few weeks of Poch’s personal attacks on the group’s detractors, John came back and calmed everyone down.

It’s fortunate that this happened before the organization was formalized. Things appear to be calming down with Poch cancelling his subscription to one of the lists and Josh’s enlightenment to the true persona of his mentor. I’m still skeptical of the whole situation, though.

This was very disturbing for me, though. Although I’ve been an atheist for many years, this was the first time I had joined an atheist group and my first few days there brought this fiasco around. I had debated leaving the group and getting on with my life without it, but I decided to give it another shot.

Josh is back and being more rational. John is still away and Poch has restricted his activities to just one of the mailing lists… the one I no longer bother to read. I was beginning to settle down when I learned about Rationally Speaking.

Is this behavior common to Atheist groups? If so, that’s scary.

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