Trouble over at the Richard Dawkins site, apparently a lot of money has gone AWOL and the finger of suspicion is pointing at the ex-Web Master Josh Timonen. Dawkins and Timonen have been friends for several years, in fact he dedicated his last book to him and although quite young and inexperienced RD had contracted him to build his Web site and film several bits and pieces for various science oriented projects. It looks like things went wrong when RD allowed Timonen to run the on-line store associated with the site, unbelievably not insisting on proper accounts or audits the result being that around £300,000 has gone missing, RD is now bringing legal proceedings against him and its all getting predictably nasty. Accusations are flying around like there's no tomorrow, Timonen's girlfriend who is much older than him is cited as a beneficiary of the stolen money as are several members of her family, hopefully they can settle the case between themselves without unnecessary public vitriol.
What makes me despair more than fraudulent use of money belonging to a charity is the response from the religious chatteratti, bile, hate and spite would be a fair summary. I suppose it's to be expected but the classic playground retort of nah, nah, na na nah, told you atheists have no morals isn't what you'd call a thoughtful analysis. Take a look at some of the exhibits over at the comments in this newspaper for example. Most of these dimwits seem to forget that there is a religious scandal in pretty much every newspaper on every day of the week in most countries of the world, and most of them a lot nastier than just a case of embezzling. What is it about these people are they so thickly befuddled by their fantasies that they are totally unable to look at themselves and realise that human beings are all the same, regardless of their beliefs and delusions, some bad, some good and some totally f**ked up, get over your sanctimonious selves for heavens sake!
4 comments:
Apart from the thought that maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster pinched it all, I'm with you that on people are people, and will tend to do things wrong and fall out no matter who they are. The Beaker Folk's festival of Religious Tolerance today proves that.
But why has the age of Josh Timonen's girlfriend been brought up so often? Is that somehow relevant?
Hi G, on the face of it the age shouldn't be relevant I agree, but I think the feeling is that perhaps one motivating factor in this behaviour is that she was somehow "pulling some strings" since cash ended up spread around several of her family members. I think Josh is only in his early 20s and so you would expect less inexperienced in the ways of the world, his girlfriend is much older with a couple of kids from a previous relationship and so obviously has more pressing responsibilities.
I not sure who to feel more sorry for, it sounds like there was a lot of naivete all round.
Oh, the shame! RD might as well have a church, where embezzlement is a common occurrence.
Hi Lisa, imagine having to logon to your RD.NET account at 10am every Sunday to chant the contents of cladograms via a skype conference with all those other godless evilutionists :)
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