From the horses mouth; Collapse of the Richard Dawkins Forum.

We are told that the forums will cease to exist in their current form, and be replaced by – what? Some nebulous vapourware concept erected by one or two individuals who, quite frankly, have not only exhibited zero competence in the field of personnel relations, but who have, upon beginning the implementation of their New World Order, exhibited exactly the duplicity that many of the forum members spent long hours exposing on the part of your enemies….

Now, these two miserable specimens have compounded their incompetence with acts of actual deceit. Including wholesale destruction of the post history of six users, at least one of them a moderator to my knowledge, and the deliberate erasure of moderation logs in order to cover their traces with respect to other, subsidiary acts of administrative mendacity….

2.4 million posts gone as if they had never existed.

Well, you know, human beings in positions of (admin user) power, cult-leader behavior, deleted posts, shades of Charles Johnson, etc. Same old, same old.

RD bestowed plenary powers upon Josh Timonen, who wilfully and maliciously abused them to entrench his own position of power. By doing so, Timonen has inflicted enormous damage upon his master’s reputation, and indeed upon his master’s stated mission, as cited above. Indeed, Dawkins’ enemies amongst the professional liars for creationism could not have wished for a better result, had Timonen been planted within RD’s organisation by them as a mole. Twenty years’ hard work by Dawkins, alerting people to the dangers of doctrine centred world views, and attempting to educate people about valid science in the face of duplicitous ideological attack, has in effect been flushed down the toilet by his protegé.

Special treats: PZ Myers liberally drinking the Kool-Aid, and Ophelia Benson speaking up in defense and gratitude of the admin-dictatorship (i.e., Josh) whose tyrannical actions nearly single-handedly caused the meltdown in the first place!

What a stupid bint. Karen Armstrong would be proud: “Accommodation” at its finest!

If you wonder whether either PZ or OB would ever be able to “think themselves out of a cult” (which told them what they wanted to hear, and where they hadn’t had access to contrary information prior to joining), or resist being corrupted by power, you now have your answer: They couldn’t. On the contrary, they’d be the ones defending the guru and his inner circle (including themselves), even after it was obvious that those people were grossly abusing their power, even to the point of airbrushing “disloyal” disciples out of photos with the guru (as SRF did with Premananda, and Josh has done in deleting the postings of “disloyal” others on RD.net).

And given how Dawkins himself has defended his “right-hand man” in spite of the latter’s despicable actions, and blamed the people who were protesting the lack of transparency (and obvious power-tripping) of the same loyal friend of his, I think you can add RD to that same pathetic list, too.

[T]he part that does not sit well with me at all, is Myers’ focusing more on oh you guys like what you are doing at the forum, and you are having a good time, but that is not what Dawkins wants (which I found patronizing) instead of the glaring fact that Dawkins allowed the abuse of his volunteer staff [e.g., in their being misled and/or lied-to] and is not countering the lies that the media are writing. Myers probably would confront the abuse of the volunteer staff at his university, his local hospital, or museum and yet he is not doing this for Dawkins. This part is setting alarm bells off for me and is not consistent for a liberal who broadcasts that fact. Why is he not doing the same brutal search for truth that Myers always does? At this stage, Myers is ignorant of what really happened by his own choice which tarnishes his reputation since he encourages to question everything.

Yep, just what I was trying to say. And just the selective blindness which is so valuable in a “friend,” when the guru and his inner circle need to cover their tracks/lies.

It’s probably true that Dawkins is just being fed one side of the story (i.e., from his friend Josh), and reacting to that, without realizing that the real story is completely different from what he’s being told. But you know what? Rajneesh likewise made some of his worst and most-paranoid decisions based on the one-sided viewpoint and atrociously bad advice of his “right-hand woman,” Sheila, back in the day. And if you set up a power hierarchy like that, where you’re only getting information through one (biased) source, with no checks and balances to keep that source honest, you have no one to blame but yourself when it causes you to look like a fool. And that’s exactly what Dawkins is looking like, right now.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Cults 'n' Gurus, Ophelia Benson's Granny Panties. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.