From the horses mouth; Collapse of the Richard Dawkins Forum

[laklak]

Hey FB, I can't find his Thought of the Day thingy on Ratz, where is it?

[Aern Rakesh]

Oh, fredbear. If your latest comments were ever up there they are gone now! What a pillock!

[fredbear]

Hey FB, I can't find his Thought of the Day thingy on Ratz, where is it?

hi lak.
his tftd campaign was ayear ago. he came to rdf to garner support. many of us signed up to his pledge to write to the bbc to complain there was no secular element to it. partially as a result of his laudable campaign the beeb changed its policy.

however seems success may corrupt.

gavin posted this blog back in jan

http://www.gavinorland.org/religion/the ... /#comments

i and others including jerome serpenti left some calm, reasoned responses to the blog which were all deleted.

this thread was posted by nastelrox on ratz

http://www.rationalia.com./forum/viewto ... 2601097b66


the comments continued to disappear

this was gavin's response to the suspension of rdf;

http://www.gavinorland.org/human-relati ... suspended/

my comment above was my latest attempt to put a different perspective on things.

as far as i can see nora the latest 2 comments are in place. i am hoping he will see reason.

[Aern Rakesh]

gavin posted this blog back in jan

http://www.gavinorland.org/religion/the ... /#comments

i and others including jerome serpenti left some calm, reasoned responses to the blog which were all deleted.

this thread was posted by nastelrox on ratz

http://www.rationalia.com./forum/viewto ... 2601097b66


the comments continued to disappear

this was gavin's response to the suspension of rdf;

http://www.gavinorland.org/human-relati ... suspended/

my comment above was my latest attempt to put a different perspective on things.

as far as i can see nora the latest 2 comments are in place. i am hoping he will see reason.

I can only see 1 comment from you on the original blog about the suspension of the forum, and there is only 1 comment on the follow-up blog in which he says the following:

http://www.gavinorland.org/human-relati ... suspended/

To people who have not connected the dots yet, I don’t publish intellectually substandard comments on my site here, so don’t be surprised if your comment isn’t turning up. Don’t even waste your time posting it. That’s one of the benefits of having your own website: you can run it however you like, as you are finding out as Prof Dawkins exercises his executive control. Tough.

I’m going to e-mail some support to Josh now, and then probably have nothing more to do with this debate. It’s just not important enough. If you have any kind of life at all you’ll do the same.

The one comment he's left is a brief one saying "thank you this clarifies the situation"



!

[fredbear]

weird nora when i look at the page it is showing my 2 last comments.

my penultimate one was;

another reasonable and calm comment for you to delete.

do you really think gavin that the readers of your tightly edited blog are buying this censorship you are employing?

still there is now enough information out there for your readers to make their own minds up. if only you were not so invested in your own version of events.

all the best

fred/lucy



Comment by fredbear — Friday 26th February 2010 #


anyway i guess there are bigger fish to fry. it just irks me that supposed freethinking activists show more censorship than north korea (tongue slightly in cheek) but you get the point.

[Aern Rakesh]

weird nora when i look at the page it is showing my 2 last comments.
<snip>

anyway i guess there are bigger fish to fry. it just irks me that supposed freethinking activists show more censorship than north korea (tongue slightly in cheek) but you get the point.

I totally get the point. Lucy, try refreshing the page. Your browser might be reloading a page where the comments still existed.

Just want to say, well done you for trying. On the other hand, do you not have a headache:

[HughMcB]

This is all kind of heartwarming, really. I haven't wanted to throw myself into it ("it" being the shitstorm) with gusto since I only signed up at RDF last October and figure it presumptuous to behave as if I meant as much to the forum as some of you have, but I have very seriously and very much enjoyed all of you guys and gals. I'm sure I'm not the only one of us who feels that a community of this sort is of huge importance to our lives as unreason literally comes at us from all angles, religion being just (the most prominent) one.

The more reasonable I get, the more alienated from most of humanity I feel, and in contrast to the trite sense in which some teenager might remark about feeling alienation, it's very palpable and real to me, and I'm sure you all know exactly what I'm talking about. So finding RDF was something I was quite excited about.... I even thought about the future, traveling and maybe meeting some of you (I have met people I knew from online many, many times and never had a bad experience). So, I guess I'm not really going anywhere with this except to say I'm super happy we're (most) all back together, and thankful that you're all so welcoming, intelligent, diverse, and fucking cool. Cheers to all, I'm glad you're out there.

And ya know what? I looked for an emoticon for this, but I won't cheapen it with one because I'm dead serious.

-S

Stephen this is a wonderful post and really gets to the crux of how many of us feel.

Cheers to you sir.

[fredbear]

This is all kind of heartwarming, really. I haven't wanted to throw myself into it ("it" being the shitstorm) with gusto since I only signed up at RDF last October and figure it presumptuous to behave as if I meant as much to the forum as some of you have, but I have very seriously and very much enjoyed all of you guys and gals. I'm sure I'm not the only one of us who feels that a community of this sort is of huge importance to our lives as unreason literally comes at us from all angles, religion being just (the most prominent) one.

The more reasonable I get, the more alienated from most of humanity I feel, and in contrast to the trite sense in which some teenager might remark about feeling alienation, it's very palpable and real to me, and I'm sure you all know exactly what I'm talking about. So finding RDF was something I was quite excited about.... I even thought about the future, traveling and maybe meeting some of you (I have met people I knew from online many, many times and never had a bad experience). So, I guess I'm not really going anywhere with this except to say I'm super happy we're (most) all back together, and thankful that you're all so welcoming, intelligent, diverse, and fucking cool. Cheers to all, I'm glad you're out there.

And ya know what? I looked for an emoticon for this, but I won't cheapen it with one because I'm dead serious.

-S

Stephen this is a wonderful post and really gets to the crux of how many of us feel.

Cheers to you sir.

+1 i just realised it's the old amethyst deceiver. cheers stephen.

[HughMcB]

Stephen this is a wonderful post and really gets to the crux of how many of us feel.

Cheers to you sir.

+1 i just realised it's the old amethyst deceiver. cheers stephen.

I forgot that too, I know he said that on Rationalia but it seemed to skip through my radar here.

Great comments from you Stephen (a.k.a amethyst deceiver), btw I greatly enjoyed your contribution to RDF and I hope to continue to see more of your great posts with that laid back and fun attitude you always seem to display.

[Agrippina]

I have to echo those comments, I'm an even newer member from RDF, I joined in November and on Sunday I was celebrating 4,000 posts and 3 months membership. Imagine my distress when I went in first thing on Monday morning to find that it was gone. Even though it was only three months, I felt so welcome and I enjoyed some really fun times with the members who never treated me like a newbie. I thought that all was lost and went about with almost a depression until Nora and a few others sent me emails to go to Rationalia. And so now I'm here and I feel completely at home.

[fredbear]

I have to echo those comments, I'm an even newer member from RDF, I joined in November and on Sunday I was celebrating 4,000 posts and 3 months membership. Imagine my distress when I went in first thing on Monday morning to find that it was gone. Even though it was only three months, I felt so welcome and I enjoyed some really fun times with the members who never treated me like a newbie. I thought that all was lost and went about with almost a depression until Nora and a few others sent me emails to go to Rationalia. And so now I'm here and I feel completely at home.

flip aggy. i only managed 1600 in 2 years ( 2 years next week to be precise). there were of course quite a few deleted into the vacuous bin to help with the overload of the system so i guess the overall total was a tad higher.

anyway i may post a bit more from now on.

[Agrippina]

What can I say, hyperactivity has made me an inveterate chatterbox, I'm hell to live with.

[Simon_Gardner]

7.5 k posts in a bit under a year which I was somewhat embarrassed about.

[Agrippina]

I do around 100 a day, and this is my 100th post before I pop off to bed.

[Emmeline]

Well done to all those people who are getting the truth published in the media.

I am so sickened and shocked at the totally unjust vilification of thousands of forum members by Richard but to see that copied in the national media has upset me more than I can describe.

You have been such wonderful people in your fight against ignorance & oppression and you have been such loyal supporters of Richard's mission, both with your dollars/pounds and your words.

Please keep pushing the truth out there - if anyone taught us all to be brave in doing that, it was Richard himself.

I'm still hanging on to the belief that he has been grossly misinformed and ill-advised because to think otherwise, is not something I can contemplate.

If he doesn't put this right publicly soon, I may have to accept that he just doesn't care about maligning thousands of people by publishing odious lies about them.

(Edited for typos)

[Rawnaeris]

If he doesn't put this right publicly soon, I may have to accept that he just doesn't care about maligning thousands of people by publishing odious lies about them.

Man, I hope this doesn't turn out to be the case.

[95Theses]

Well done to all those people who are getting the truth published in the media.

I am so sickened and shocked at the totally unjust vilification of thousands of forum members by Richard but to see that copied in the national media has upset me more than I can describe.

You have been such wonderful people in your fight against ignorance & oppression and you have been such loyal supporters of Richard's mission, both with your dollars/pounds and your words.

Please keep pushing the truth out there - if anyone taught us all to be brave in doing that, it was Richard himself.

I'm still hanging on to the belief that he has been grossly misinformed and ill-advised because to think otherwise, is not something I can contemplate.

If he doesn't put this right publicly soon, I may have to accept that he just doesn't care about maligning thousands of people by publishing odious lies about them.

(Edited for typos)

If anything Topsy I am getting more annoyed not less as this drags on. I just posted the following at Pharyngula :

Crossed wires I think.
You suggested someone should go and put these people straight, as I have been trying to run round the net doing for days now.
I'm getting sick of the fact that it is now becoming completely apparent that Dawkins is perfectly happy to let his quote mining stand, and I was saying I wished he would do something about it himself.
I really had been hoping he had been presented the quotes by someone else and hadn't seen them in context. Now I know for a fact he read my polite PM pointing them out to him (we can tell when a PM is read if you sent it) and basically he doesn't give a toss, quite happy to lie if it helps his argument by the looks of it.
but yes, I'll go and put them straight, thanks for the heads up.
If I seem a little abrupt Im just really fucking disappointed because I thought the professor was more intellectually honest than this.
If the only way for him to make his argument is for him to lie, that should tell him something about the argument he is making.

[cursuswalker]

This will surely start to impact on the RDFRS.

I'm beginning to think it SHOULD. Sometimes that is what it takes for people to learn an essential lesson.

[fredbear]

Well done to all those people who are getting the truth published in the media.

I am so sickened and shocked at the totally unjust vilification of thousands of forum members by Richard but to see that copied in the national media has upset me more than I can describe.

You have been such wonderful people in your fight against ignorance & oppression and you have been such loyal supporters of Richard's mission, both with your dollars/pounds and your words.

Please keep pushing the truth out there - if anyone taught us all to be brave in doing that, it was Richard himself.

I'm still hanging on to the belief that he has been grossly misinformed and ill-advised because to think otherwise, is not something I can contemplate.

If he doesn't put this right publicly soon, I may have to accept that he just doesn't care about maligning thousands of people by publishing odious lies about them.

(Edited for typos)

to see you so upset makes me so angry.
rest assured at least that the people who know you also know the truth. really feel for you topsy.

[Steve]

If he doesn't put this right publicly soon, I may have to accept that he just doesn't care about maligning thousands of people by publishing odious lies about them.

Man, I hope this doesn't turn out to be the case.

Very few people are really nasty. They may have axes to grind that they grind on anything that moves, but as you get to know this about them you see through it, and when it is pointed out they generally back off. Richard strikes me as no exception. He is definitely an opinionated man, but I do not think he is a nasty person at all. I don't think Josh is a nasty person, either.

This is no way excuses the way they have behaved. The time it takes for them to apologize will show how much they care.