Atheism, Reason, Skepticism, Happiness

This week PZ Myers seemed to finally be acting responsibly, announcing that FreeThought Blogs was setting up a new complaints department, with a dedicated customer service email address. He then revealed that this post was a joke, intended to mock the idea that FreeThought Blogs would do such a thing.

He added that there is no authority within FreeThought Blogs to police what any blogger writes. But the network recently expelled blogger Avicenna after receiving complaints of repeated plagiarism. So, unless that announcement was also a joke, there is an authority within FreeThought Blogs to police ethical breaches by bloggers.

PZ’s original post seemed to be a positive step in proactively welcoming and addressing such complaints in a structured way.

Instead, his second post has demonstrated, yet again, PZ’s steady drift from the principles of justice that he regularly demands of others, and his increasing irrelevancy, other than as a hindrance, to those of us who are trying to actually promote atheism, reason, compassion and justice.

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In 2006 Ed Brayton, who is now manager at FreeThought Blogs, complained about the same pattern of behaviour by PZ Myers as PZ has been using to smear me and others eight years later. Thanks to Jan Steen for bringing this to my attention.

Ed said then that PZ had lied about him several times, that PZ’s M.O. is to start personal attacks then pretend to be above it all and clam up when criticised, and that PZ seeks to demean and destroy enemies not caring whether his attacks are rational and justified.

(As an aside, while some people are comfortable accusing others of lying, I prefer to instead say that somebody has said something that is untrue, as I do not know whether they have knowingly said something untrue, which would be lying.)

Ed also said, and remember, this was eight years ago: “It simply has to do with the fact – yes, it’s a fact – that PZ has a long history of this behavior that far too many people have just rolled their eyes at and excused it away because “oh that’s just the way he is”.

Ed added that when PZ behaves like this towards him, Ed gets numerous private emails from mutual colleagues that say, in essence, “Look, we all know PZ is a jerk, he’s always been a jerk, but that’s just the way he is. You can’t let him provoke you like that.”

That was in 2006, long before PZ’s smears and misrepresentations about Richard Dawkins and other atheists that caused me to criticise his behaviour, and PZ’s subsequent smears falsely alleging that I defend, provide a haven for, and support rapists.

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