The Internal and External of Criticism or How things are rigged by and for atheists

One of the more surprising details found while researching organized atheism/skeptcism was that in  1984 the atheist/skeptic icon, Richard Feynman gave a banquet address to the Parapsychological Association.  That, in itself, was surprising since in the previous decade Feynman had included the study of parapsychology as falling within "Cargo Cult Science".   Apparently in the decade that separate that speech and the one at the PA Feynman had revised his opinion of parapsychological research as he is reported to have said that parapsychology had good internal critics and didn't need  external critics to maintain the integrity of its research.   Of course you don't have to believe in PSI to judge the integrity with which formal, controlled research into it is conducted so I don't know if Feynman changed his opinion to that extent.  But since his famous Cargo Cult Science speech deals with the integrity of research, he seems to have looked more closely at that and saw the scientific research into those reported phenomena is conducted with the highest level of care and integrity.  I dare say it's entirely better than the widely accepted research into psychology and the other social sciences within which a number of the quasi-professional critics of PSI work.

In reading the blog reaction to the new pope my first reaction was, as I said, mention Catholicism and a lot of people who believe themselves to be leftists or liberals start channeling the fundamentalist and old-line Anglican tradition of anti-"Papist" invective.   I saw stuff I'm pretty sure was derived from Foxe's totally discredited "Book of Martyrs" and other classics of the genre, counterparts to the infamous "Protocols".   More of it was just the opportune and predictable blog atheist crap.  Anyone who would think they were going to get accurate, honest information about the pre-papal history of Pope Francis from online atheism is looking for it in the wrong place.   You might as well get your information about Islam from Pam Geller or about GLBT folks from the Phelps family.  Or, indeed, from the upper reaches of the Catholic hierarchy.

Unknown to just about all non-Catholics and even many Catholics is the fact that there are numerous internal critics of the papacy, the hierarchy and Catholicism in general.  There always have been.  In the 14th century, St. Catherine of Siena openly criticized  Pope Gregory XI, forcing his return to Rome and they made her a saint.  When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope, his own brother Georg Ratzinger, a priest, said he thought that they should have elected a younger man.

And there are more stringent critics within the priesthood.  Hans Kung, who with the young Joseph Ratzinger was one of the theologians involved with Vatican II,   has made no secret of his criticism of the papacy, especially the idea of papal infallibility.   His criticisms of his former colleague, Joseph Ratzinger, were among the more scathing of the informed criticism.  That tradition of criticism within the Biblical religious tradition is as well founded as possible.  The author of the book of Isiah was absolutely unbounded in slamming the establishment of The Temple, calling it useless in the face of its participation in injustice,  and they put it in the scriptural cannon.  And that is only one of the prophetic books, including the Gospels, which are full of internal criticism of religion.  

Some of the most persistent and accurate criticism of the sex abuse scandal has come from Catholics who are disgusted with the crimes against children and women by priests and the enabling of that by bishops, Cardinals, including the future pope Benedict XVI and other, sitting and former  popes.   You might know that if you read their literature or Catholic media not controlled by the hierarchy.  

You might be shocked to find that  independent Catholic media exists if you buy the line of anti-Catholic invective mentioned above.  Many of those whose motives is hatred of Catholics and, or, religion in general, the Catholic church is a totalitarian dictatorship, the dream of some of the most demented old line integralist Catholics, the traditional internal counterpart to Protestant fundamentalism.   But that's not the Catholic church, even among the ordained and those in religious orders.   The greatest resistance to Benedict XVI's crack down on Catholic nuns and sisters was to be found among those same nuns and sisters and their many supporters among lay Catholics.  

The internal critics of an organization or group are often represented as being suspect because of asserted conflict of interest.  And sometimes that is true.  But that conflict of interest isn't only a possibility with internal criticism,  opposition to something is as much of problem for honestly addressing it as support of it.   I think in the past forty years that fact has been lost, especially when the topic is religion and the opposition to religion.  The organized skeptics(you can accurately read "atheist" here) set themselves up as reliable skeptics claiming the presumed integrity of scientific methods.  Which is something that those who organized CSICOP immediately disproved by the completely sleazy, corrupt, incompetent and most un-sciency sTARBABY scandal.   Only the media didn't cover that, it took the press releases issued by CSICOP and went with their PR.   Much later several members of CSICOP left when their review of the evidence showed that the worlds most famous organization allegedly dedicated to the "scientific investigation of claims of the paranormal" was an incompetent and dishonest fraud.  However, most of those who were documented by both ex-CSICOPpers, Denis Rawlins and Richard Kammann of having known the scandal in detail, didn't leave the club or do much to clean it up.   Neither did it do much to expel Vern Bullough as he openly was also a board member of Paidika, which advocated the legalization and "normalization" of pedophilia.  The atheist/skepticism industry hasn't got a particularly good track record of internal criticism and they almost completely reject external criticism.  

I can assure you from my experience over the last six years that one of the surest ways to get mob attacked is to post a criticism of CSICOP, its abbreviated current form, CSI, or one of the atheist or "skeptics" organizations or celebrities online.  

A good internal critic has the virtue of wanting to clean up, correct and reform the organization.  Whatever conflict they can be accused of, it doesn't contain the desire to destroy or discredit what they criticize.   External critics often escape a charge that their motives, desiring to destroy and discredit, are as ripe for distortion and outright lying as an internal critic might have for covering up.  Any criticism, outside or inside, is only as good as it is honest, fair and measured.  That is if correcting a wrong is the motive.  These days the alleged potential for covering up by internal criticism is used to debunk the integrity of those wanting to clean up an organization,often it is taken as a given, no evidence of that needed to fulfill the intentions of those making the charge.  On the other hand,  the potential for distortion and lying by those intent on destroying an organization is hardly ever taken as needing consideration when judging the quality of the charges.  That is a double standard that has been insisted on and practiced by atheism and their front of pseudo-skepticism more effectively than just about any other ideological faction in the West.   The practice of criticism, itself, is in need of internal criticism.

Update:  One of the current lines of online anti-religious paranoia is based in the number of Catholics sitting on the Supreme Court.  As noted above, it is a line of bigoted propaganda that has its counterparts in the charge that Jews control the media and banking.   Apparently the bigots who say that ignore that one of those Catholics is Sotomoyer , hardly in the Pope's pocket.