Respectfully, it’s rather hard when I’m being accused by your member of repeatably phoning Jane when I NEVER phoned Jane. I don’t appreciate you perpetrating false information that Jane got late night phone calls then snapped with child molester accusations when the child molester accusations took place at 10:54pm 9 Aug 2008, long before the so called 3:30am harassing phone calls.

Do us a favor, perform some fact checking before you assert things that are in conflict with something that is a matter of public record.

I have provided every e-mail, every fax for public review, yet you sir, you are accepting information that respectfully NOT backed up by anything.

Jane is the communications director for your organization, is it approperate for her to threaten to spam someone over legit concerns over how she presented a speaker, concerns you concede are valid?

From: Jane Everhart NYC Athists
Sent: Thu 8/07/08 4:57 PM

“The kid is not a bible specialist. I’m not a Christian but “Bible Specialist” suggests”

Bible specialist suggests doodly squat. In the Army they have a Specialist First Class whose “specialty” is peeling potatoes. What would you suggest I call Rook? Bible aficionado? Bible Champ? Bible hound? Bible drone? Bible lover? Bible critic is my favorite. But why would you care? We don’t. If you don’t stop pestering me, I’m going to spam you.

http://igepanda.blogspot.com/2008/08/e-mail-correspondence-with-jane.html

The truth is, two people (that I know of) e-mailed Jane regarding how she was presenting Rook.

1) Public historian, bible specialist, expert
2) Translated the Bible from GREEK
3) Was invited to write for an academic series.

She addressed #1 somewhat kicking and screaming. #3 was never addressed and after I got spammed with her 96 line press release, I asked Rook to address #2, to which Jane accused me of working for the Vatican and suggested I was a child molester at 10:54pm 9 Aug 2008.

If Jane wants to blog on her own time and accuse people of being child molesting Vatican commandos, that’s up to her. But she was representing your organization as communications director, and it seems LIED about making these comments until after she got late night phone calls when they clearly clearly happened LONG before 3:30 AM 10 Aug 2008 when she claims she disconnected her phone.

1) It’s not OK to accuse someone of being a child molester if they phone you at 3:30am.
2) It’s not OK to accuse someone of being a child molester if they harass you first.
3) It’s not ok to accuse someone of being a child molester if they e-mail and hit your PUBLIC FORUM with legit criticism regarding claims that don’t pass the sniff test.

I didn’t phone Jane period. I used e-mail and the public meetup forum as I wanted a public record of everything that transpired in the unlikely event that someone was in to revisionist history. Thankfully I did. But even if I am a Christian, or hell even if I’m a Vatican Commando it’s NEVER ok to accuse anyone of molesting children without some DAMN GOOD evidence to do so. It’s not OK for you to explain away this as someone who was just upset, or got late night phone calls.

PIX or it didn’t happen. At this point Jane lacks any credibility, and as such will not accept she even got a late night phone call without evidence.

In the meantime, it is my wish that people not brand all of NYCA’s members as reactionary “cultists,” or with some of the other pejorative attacks being made.

I agree wholeheartedly that in a city like New York we ought to have the most thriving atheist group on the planet, and I am doing everything within my power to attract more youth and make the group more appealing overall. Trust that this much is true: the vast majority of NYCA members are smart, affable, open-minded, engaging, reasonable, and friendly folks.

I only ask that this be kept in mind: painting all of us (NYCA members) with one broad brush is akin to non-Americans thinking that all Americans are morons because we have a president who is one. (Not that Ken Bronstein is a moron–he’s not. I’m just trying to point out the fallacies and injustices of this type of “guilt-by-association” thinking.)

“I think the older generations of atheists are filled with iconoclasts and nutballs.”

That’s a tad harsh, and perhaps a bit inaccurate. The problem, as I see it, is presenting atheism as a religion, and religion attracting a personality type. I know this leads to the usual argument that atheism isn’t a religion, which in a vacuum neither is theism. We could call it dogmatic atheism for a lack of a better term.
http://nyc-atheists.org/blog/?p=498

Let’s say for example you have someone who was once a feverish believer who becomes a feverish non-believer. The names have changed, but you still have leaders and an ultimate purpose. The only thing missing are the gods, which never has a substantial influence in the first place as they don’t exist. The person hasn’t changed, the deep seeded need to believe hasn’t changed. In short, there is little difference between a nutter for god and a nutter for no-god. In fact, it seems to be easier to get validated in the no-god camp.

Like with me and NYC Atheists. I got accused of being employed by the Vatican and molesting alter boys. I objected, I was a Catholic or Christian I wouldn’t approve. Ah, but why would I object if I wasn’t employed by the Vatican?
http://atheists.meetup.com/24/messages/boards/thread/5222548#20229199

I’m critical of organized religion. There is a tendency to daemonize outsiders. For heavily censored post with 1300+ views and only 8 posts, why is it the feverish bigotry is considered to be acceptable? I like secularization but Jane Everhart and Bill C are bigots, they consider “Christians” to be less than human, and that makes them as bad as the worst of their lot.

I will continue to be critical of organized religion as well as secular or atheist churches. I’m going to call it as I see it. Someone proposed oversight, I propose card holding members having to right to vote out their leadership.

Now that it’s not as socially taboo to be atheist, we may see better representatives running atheist organizations.

Not to say that all older atheists are nutballs, but rather that some of the more public established atheists from previous generations tend to be somewhat eccentric.

Fortunately, things appear to be clearing up for us.

But then things began to get really weird. “Expert” is not a title to be taken lightly in any academic field. I know few 25 year old “experts” in history or ancient language, but the one claim NYCA/Jane refused to address was that Rook Hawkins “translated the Bible from Greek”. This is an extraordinary claim and is simply false on it’s face.

From this point, I was called a “rabid religionist” and the censorship began.

Fundamentalist evangelical atheism is a weird religion.

There’s an NYCA meetup tonight. I might go to scope things out. I’m not sure I want to continue my contributions, although relatively minor, to the NYCA.