For Reason and Science?

[lordpasternack]

By the way - I want to add something just to address anyone who might accuse me of "hypocrisy"...

I am a total slutwhorebag. This is no secret. I lost my virginity at 13, and I've long since lost count of the number of men I've had sex with - and though I can remember all their faces when I see them, I've forgotten plenty of names. I have done plenty of sexual things which creep up in my memory every-so-often to deliver soul-crushing embarrassment.

BUT, not once have I ever had sex with a work colleague, or a superior in an office job or at university. I only had sex with one fellow student, once, while at university. My entire university career notched up one shag with a fellow student. I think a lot of my fellow students probably assumed I was a virgin, until they heard me come out and talk about deep-throating and spitroasting with the same nonchalance as some people talk about crochet and flower-pressing, on the occasions when it came up in conversation.

The fact is that I have always had an almost primal "incest" aversion to getting into sexual relationships in academic or professional settings - and though there were some attractive people there to whom I probably wouldn't have said no if it came down to it - I really don't go hawking for shags and romance in places where it's likely to lead to conflict of interest.

So when I come out strongly against Dawkins perverse attraction towards mixing his serious professional commitments with his penchant for mistresses, I am not being hypocritical at all. Being prolifically sexual does not mean that I lack sexual ethics or mores, or am not fit to criticise someone's questionable sexual conduct.

[Tero]

Some people will see academic sex as safe sex. Not scary. But of course when money or grades are involved...well its just people being people. Most people have no scruples about manipulating others.

I steer in the other direction, no playing golf with the bosses. It's a wonder I still have a job. You let the bosses win at golf.

[DaveDodo007]

I think there is something to be said about him spending much of his childhood between a boys' boarding school, and the English countryside - followed by adulthood in Oxford academia.

It's probably not an environment that instils basic common sense and social savvy. It's probably an environment that instils the value of maintaining a front of respectability, even if you are a disrespectable sod behind closed doors.

and some people from the same background borough in the greatest humanitarian reforms in the UK. Don't tarred all of them with the same brush.

He was probably shagging his students, and arranging special academic favours for his chosen "mistresses" back in his days as a respectable professor, too. Wouldn't even be surprised if he had an lovechild or two, for whom he quietly pays the child support and hasn't mentioned to Lalla. All while strenuously maintaining the image of the respectable and diligent English academic.

Mere speculation and very nasty as well.

I've actually mused that I might well open a can of worms, alla Rolf Harris, if and when this goes to press. Because I don't think that his current habits only began to emerge in his sixties. He will have done things that would have had him fired from Oxford, if word had got out. He will probably have used his status to dismiss "rumours" at the time - and he's probably outright smeared people other than myself, as being headcases spreading "ridiculous lies".

Again mostly speculation and very nasty. Stick to your core principles: the nepotistic recruitment policy of his charity and how it doesn't even seem to attempt to achieve its stated goals.

Promiscuity doesn't bother me - but hypocrisy, dishonesty, inauthenticity and pretension do. He is not a terrible person - but I think it would be better for everyone to know him a bit more, warts and all - and have a little more healthy skepticism for him. And it would be better if Dawkins had some of his pretensions dismantled, and felt compelled to maintain a more honest and authentic persona.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." In any honest self reflection we would all be guilty of the above on a sliding scale of course. We are human after all. What happens in his marriage is up to him and his wife as far as I'm concerned. He is not a terrible person as he is a great person. He has been the face of promoting science and reason, the author of many books which have helped in that endeavour. He took on religion and its pernicious influence on society and got a lot of flak for it. To that end he has a lot of hard core support who will defend him to the ends of the earth. So it is in your best interest to cut out the ad hominems as they will only undermine your case. If this goes to press then a shitstorm is coming your way so don't give them any ammo. Yes the forum debacle pissed a lot of online atheists off but we are a very small group of people.

[lordpasternack]

Why is it nasty to speculate that he has run his professional life in the past, similarly to how he runs his charity at present? Of course it's speculation, but I'm afraid it's very plausible.

If what I'm suggesting turns out to be close to the truth, will you consider it "scandalous", then?

Yes, okay, I should steer away from speculating such things and just let it come out, if it comes out - but I'm still going to consider them very possible in my mind, for what it's worth.

As for promoting reason and science - well, outside of his own books and documentaries (for which he is compensated handsomely with both cash and fame), his commitment has been lacklustre - as demonstrated in that charity that he set up, "for reason and science". He is not half as good at putting his money where his mouth is, as he is at putting his mouth where his money is.

[lordpasternack]

Luke Ashton and George Scales will be rolling in their graves...

[Surendra Darathy]

As for promoting reason and science...

Do you mean here to indicate Reason And Science, in the sense of a program tossed around as religion-substitute? Or Reason and Science, the political football?

I ask mainly because science, in small letters and ordinary font, doesn't so much require promotion as funding. And the Dawkins foundation, whatever its virtues and flaws, is not in the business of funding scientific research. I'm no stranger to the role of politics in science, but that doesn't seem to be what you're on about, although if it were, you might be catching more flies with it. Do you think that you're revealing any timeless wisdom in the observation that foundations exist to perpetuate themselves? Welcome to the real world. How could it constitute a scandal unless you regarded the mission as a sacred one?

Why is it nasty to speculate that he has run his professional life in the past, similarly to how he runs his charity at present?

It's nasty only in the sense that, after years of retreading the same tired innuendo, with a few new flourishes on every turn of the wheel, your 'speculation' looks like nothing so much as an ongoing attempt to draw the spotlight off Dawkins and place it on lordpasternack and pretending it's something entirely different, to nourish the cause of Reason and Science complete with uppercase and font package.

[lordpasternack]

I love how non-believers come out with this when it's "one of our own", while wanting religious charities to be exposed for their various indiscretions and hypocrisies, no matter how commonplace they are.

As for funding research - they applied for tax exemption in part to fund scientific research - well, to use RDF to fund Richard's mistress's research, at any rate.

From their original Mission Statement:

1. Research. We intend to sponsor research into the psychological basis of unreason. What is it about human psychology that predisposes people to find astrology more appealing than astronomy? At what age are young people most vulnerable to unreason? What are the correlations between religiosity and superstition on the one hand, and intelligence, educational level, type of education etc. on the other? Research of this kind would be supported in the form of grants to universities in America and Britain or wherever the best research can be done.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20071011041 ... ourMission

But Richard's mistress never followed through in her research (despite being handed funding on a golden platter), and RDF apparently had no further interest in the matter.

[JimC]

Juxtaposition of threads...

On top:

"And that's why we carry them!"

Below:

"For reason and science?"

[lordpasternack]

I want to answer to another charge, and to do so I'm going to produce a brief testimony of someone who used to be on the inside in RDF:



Specifically I want to highlight this claim:

"And then there were famous people (like Sam Harris) who wanted to be officially involved with RDF, & whose involvement would have greatly benefitted RDF, but we couldn't bring him into RDF because Richard didn't want him to know he was traveling on RDF business, & later RDF funds, with a mistress."

If this is an accurate account of how things were being run behind the scenes - that famous, qualified people who could have benefited RDF’S stated mission were being purposely kept at arm's length, in order to keep Richard's exploits under wraps - then that really underscores the sentiment behind much of what I have been trying to argue, and what I suspect about Richard.

At a very basic and fundamental level, when forced to make decisions on the matter which must choose one over the other, Richard consistently decides that his mistresses > RDF’S public mission and donors. It is more important to maintain the lies, and keep getting laid, than pursue his objectives fully and honestly and risk getting caught in the process.

That's it, in its ugly, raw form. Just one little neat exemplar of it. And that's why they call it "conflict of interest" - because the interests are in conflict with each other. Richard can't simultaneously claim that the relationship was of no consequence - while accepting this account that he had been keeping talented people a step removed from RDF, in order to protect his, ahem, shag banditry. How many more ways did he consciously hamstring his charity, in order to preserve his short-term self-interest?

You cannot address the fact that RDF is profoundly dysfunctional without placing significant stress on Richard's sexual indiscretions. It is a major part of the problem. It would be ignoring the elephant in the room. He might not be a bastard, but he does seriously bastardly and foolish things under the influence of his selfish genes.

[Calilasseia]

What was that quote from Hamlet about the state of Denmark?

Fucking hell, if I was running an organisation like that, and Sam Harris turned up asking if he could participate, he'd be in danger of having his arms ripped off as I pulled him in!

This really is chronic.

Let's think about this for a moment. An official partnership between Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins would have been solid gold, in the absence of RD's shag banditry.

Sweet George Osborne in a gimp suit being queened by a 300 pound negress snorting cocaine, how much more incompetence arising from Dickie's dick are we going to see?

[lordpasternack]

Another salient thing - Cornwell was, and is, apparently more than happy for Richard to carry on with his inverted sense of priorities.

There's no evidence that she has ever objected to Richard being unscrupulous and dishonest for her sake. No evidence that she has ever given a sober reminder of what his aims for the Foundation should have been, and how he really should have been behaving if he wanted to fulfill those objectives. No evidence she ever suggested that they make any sincere effort to eliminate conflict of interest within the Foundation, so that they would feel that they had less to hide from genuine people like Sam Harris.

It appears she was more than happy for Richard to continue to lie and cheat, and hinder and damage his charity's potential for her sake. A great deal of evidence that she's been continually encouraging him, and advising him on which people to lie to and manipulate, and how to go about it.

And Richard has been seemingly too naive, and too preoccupied with protecting his immediate self-interest, to spot this, and recognise it as a red flag that perhaps this woman isn't quite the dreamboat he has been imagining her to be.

[Tero]

He's just a guy. He needs people to pat him on the back. Good job Richard. He needs women to tell him and prove he "still has it" for sex. He is like any guy his age.

[Surendra Darathy]

He's just a guy.

There ya go. The additional observation is that anyone who ever gave up god-bothering in favour of believing in Richard Dawkins as a dear leader for reason and science (or anything but any of the science he ever did that hasn't been improved on by later work) is going to feel let down by the imperfections of some presumed hero. Even if this is not the opposite of hero worship, feeling let down by the movement itself is always a great excuse for casting down its leaders, even if only in one's own cosmology.

I'm all for a little iconoclasm, once people have wised themselves up, but the long and narrow echo-chamber surrounding this obsession with Richard Dawkins' financial and sexual peccadilloes, real or imagined, is taking the impulse to purify the movement to depths only otherwise explored by the goons over at Atheism+, and is transparently a regurgitation of the angst surrounding the demise of the RDF as anyone's personal intellectual playset.

That spirit of no-holds-barred political banter is just what makes Rationalia the vibrant intellectual community it has inevitably become.There's a clear distinction between critiquing someone's ideas intellectually and aping the same old hominid moral condemnation that the god-botherers do or the conspiracy-theorising that the climate-change lobby does to explain in either case why no action is taken against their forecasts of apocalypse.

[lordpasternack]

I agree that Richard is just a guy. A guy with some issues who is making serious mistakes, which he needs to work through without making excuses for himself.

It is he, and plenty of his fans, who still want to insist that he's an eminently respectable, honest, smart, honourable, unwaveringly decent, consistently scrupulous, fine example of a human being who wouldn't lie to people or engage in any base pursuits.

If people walk away from this with the realisation that Dawkins is just a guy, and give him and his charity the exact amount of credibility they deserve - which is not a lot - then I will be pleased. If they criticise Dawkins as they would any other guy, and if Dawkins stops reacting like a scandalised virgin at the fact that he gets criticised like any other guy who's made the kinds of mistakes he has - then that will be progress.

Dawkins deserves to lose the tax exemption of his charity, and to be criticised and chastised for serious mistakes and wrongdoings, as much as any other guy who had run their charity as corruptly and incompetently as he has.

[lordpasternack]

To clarify - I think that Richard's books and documentaries deserve as much credibility as other good works of non-fiction. I think that Richard as a person deserves as much credibility as any other guy (while accounting for the fact that he's seriously naive and plainly quite narcissistic). And I think that Richard's charity deserves very, very little credibility at all.