Considering religion’s status as the primary and most obvious example of irrationality in the world I think pandering to it undermines the entire purpose of a group dedicated to promoting rationality.
I suspect this would find little dispute, and I completely agree, but “pandering” is a word containing an emotional load of “bad thing to do” so may inadvertently lead us away from being effective at increasing rationality (the original purpose). And the dispute turns to what behaviour constitutes “pandering”, the measure of which is subjective and thus more trouble. “Appeasement” suffers similar problems.
Note that these words are problematic due to their emotional load even if we think they’re an accurate description of what’s happening, and even if we think that noting this explicitly is important.
Considering religion’s status as the primary and most obvious example of irrationality in the world I think pandering to it undermines the entire purpose of a group dedicated to promoting rationality.
I suspect this would find little dispute, and I completely agree, but “pandering” is a word containing an emotional load of “bad thing to do” so may inadvertently lead us away from being effective at increasing rationality (the original purpose). And the dispute turns to what behaviour constitutes “pandering”, the measure of which is subjective and thus more trouble. “Appeasement” suffers similar problems.
Note that these words are problematic due to their emotional load even if we think they’re an accurate description of what’s happening, and even if we think that noting this explicitly is important.