My purpose for writing the article A
Lesson in Creationist Ethics1 was to expose a
serious lapse of honesty and integrity by two well-known Creationists. One of these
Creationists, Fred Williams, has responded to my article.2
In his response, Williams admits that the most serious charges against him are true. These
charges were: 1). He anonymously moderated a debate in which he was taking part, and 2).
He initially denied this (in his own words, he "was not forthcoming").
In Williams' response, he tries to
characterize my article as largely untrue by focusing on peripheral issues. In fact, the
five statements he took exception to comprise less than 5% of the overall article. Clearly
the tactic here was to address this small portion and then try to leave the impression
that the bulk of the article was refuted. Since he has characterized these five claims in
the article as "false", I wish to set the record straight.
The specific claims with which Williams takes
issue are listed below. My original statements are in bold, Williams’ responses are
in blue, and my response follows. For background information, “Optional” was the
pseudonym for the former administrator at the message board of OCW (Organization of
Creationist Websites), which later became CreationWeb. Samuel Bollinger is the current
administrator there, and “BobM” is a long time moderator there.
1. "I
later learned that the original takeover of the board by Fred Williams et al. had been
hostile".
Williams: This is obviously false, as all the preceding emails proved.
At no point in the goings-on of OCW did I ever even remotely attempt a "hostile"
takeover.
My source for Claim 1 was a Young Earth
Creationist who was a former administrator at OCW. I received this information from him
unsolicited. He was upset about the events that had transpired at OCW, and told me that he
wanted to be honest with me about what had happened behind the scenes. The exact wording
of the statement regarding the takeover of the OCW board was “The upshot is OCW members voted to can Optional
(as administrator) and set it up their way - spear-headed by Fred.” I will let
that statement speak for itself. The fact that Optional resigned shortly after the new
moderation began is strong evidence that he was displeased about something.
In addition, a recently publicized e-mail
from Optional to a former frequent OCW poster known as “Sumac” lends additional
support to my account.3 In part, on January 18, 2002 Optional wrote to Sumac:
I have long been disappointed by the
lack of participation of OCW members and scathingly told them so (after repeated polite
nudgings) in an email, pulling no punches. In short, the membership, foisted a couple of
people on me I did not want and knew would destroy the board. I have not been back to see
what is going on, but I did see what everyone posted at NAIG, so I assume my nightmare
scenario is coming true.
Basically, what happened lately, is a
power play was pulled by 3 of the members and rather than fight it, I resigned.
2.
"...Optional had eventually written a script to disable them and
regain control of the board (for which he had been paying the bills)."
Williams: This
implies that a hostile reclaiming of the board was required, which the emails above prove
is not true. In fact, the email I sent to Optional and all the OCW members proves that I
recommended letting Optional pull the plug on the board! I also have amiable emails from
Optional immediately after he pulled the plug, though we did disagree on board management
and I bowed out in protest.
The source for Claim 2 was the same source as for the Claim 1. The exact wording
of the statement given to me was "By this time
he (Samuel Bollinger) and BobM were freaking out about the moderation and in talking
between each other over the next few days decided we would do a hostile takeover more or
less since none of the current members had ever paid a dime for anything. Optional wrote a
script that would disable Fred and anyone else from access to the message board and would
add himself back as administrator."
In Williams’ response, he acknowledges
that Optional essentially reclaimed the board. He is basically protesting the usage of the
word “hostile”, which was the exact wording as described to me by my YEC source.
In addition to the statement written to me, Optional wrote on this matter in the e-mail to
Sumac:
"OCW (or someone) has until the 28th of
this month (January) to have stuff switched out of my name and reimburse me for 9 months
of hosting paid in advance. My hunch is this won't happen since they're all talk about
stuff. If I am correct, on March 1st, I will execute a cgi script I wrote which will
restore my admin privileges and delete everyone elses. Upon regaining my admin priveleges,
I will delete all moderators and effectively shut down OCW, re-opening the doors as
'Creationweb'. Any former members, except for a certain 3 will be invited to join this new
organization and I will move on from there."
3. "It
was not lost on me that every post deleted to that point had been critical of Mr.
Williams" and "...all of the original posts that were edited or deleted were
those critical of Williams"
Williams: This is false, as my moderation sample proves. Also, the
original policy called for removing posts in their entirety and sending the post intact to
the author with the corrections noted. If the post was resubmitted, it likely would not
have had an indication it had been moderated. Thus, Robert could have easily missed these
particular moderation events. This policy changed after a moderated
post was sent to John Boy via PM but was not received. Unfortunately John Boy
had to retype most of his post from memory. His frustration over this was certainly
understandable.
I remember clearly taking great care with the moderation I performed in
the thread I had posted to. I removed non-related posts, and edited a single
unsubstantiated accusation in a lengthy post by John Boy. But this is not excuse, I have
admitted since this occurred that moderating in a thread I was posting to was an error in
judgment on my part, regardless of what I edited.
To address Claim 3, Williams provides three
examples from his early duties as an anonymous moderator. In the first example, he warns a
poster, but does not delete his post. Therefore, it is not relevant to the charge that the
original posts that were deleted were critical of Williams.
In Williams’ second example he indicts
himself. Williams claimed that he “edited
a single unsubstantiated accusation in a lengthy post by John Boy.” First of all,
the “unsubstantiated accusation”, from John Boy, was in fact addressed to
Fred Williams! This post was not merely edited, as Williams claimed, it was deleted in
its entirety (twice). Therefore, this example completely supports my point that Williams
deleted posts that were critical of him. John Boy’s “unsubstantiated
accusation” addressed at Williams read "Perhaps you just got the idea
from extrapolating an out-of-context Gould quote about mosaics as they apply to
evolutionary theory?" For this, Williams, as Moderator 3,
promptly deleted the entire lengthy post. It was resubmitted, and once again deleted
because Williams objected to this single statement in John’s rebuttal. I wrote to
John Boy and questioned him regarding this event, and he confirmed my version of events.4
John wrote to me:
“Anyways, to answer your question, yes, indeed, that
comment was directed toward Fred. If I recall right, Fred was trying to claim that a
mosaic discounted classifying a lifeform as a transitional. At very least he was
using the terms as antonyms of each other, which they definitely are not. I was
asking Fred if, perhaps, he got this wrong idea from reading (mis)quotes of Gould from
various YECist sites rather than anything he encountered in a science book.
I included the line Mod 3 wanted me to remove in all of my
responses (the first one that disappeared and the next one, which was bounced as well).
I told Mod 3 I was posting it anyway and my reasons for leaving that particular
line in. It was finally accepted and Fred gave a really long response to that one
throwaway line in his response to my post, which struck me as weird and lead me to wonder
if maybe Fred was Mod 3.”
In Williams’ third example, he removed a
post addressed to Walter ReMine. However, before this post was removed, a number of other
posts were removed, including several from me, which were addressed to Williams.
Therefore, my statement - that all of the original posts that were removed
were those critical of Williams - remains intact. As shown above Williams even provided
corroboration for this in his second moderation example.
It is true that after the initial rash of
deletions of posts critical of Williams, the next rash of deletions were of those critical
of ReMine. However, Williams’ entire objection here is a red herring. Nowhere in the
original article did I ever imply that ALL of the deleted posts were critical of Williams.
I was merely commenting that it was the initial rash of deletions that aroused suspicion
that Williams was an anonymous moderator. Since Williams has now admitted that he did in
fact delete posts critical of him, his objections here are puzzling.
4. However,
I was recently informed that not only was Williams Moderator 3, Walter ReMine was
Moderator 4!
Williams:
First, though a Mod 4 account was set up, I am unaware of anyone ever being assigned to
Mod 4 during that time. To my knowledge, the only anonymous moderator in the
Creation/Evolution forum was Mod 3. Here is an email I sent to an evolutionist named Steve
(aka Sumac). If there was a Mod 4 there would be no reason to not include his edits in the
stats I gave Steve.
Sometime in June the OCW message board crashed and from what I
understand much data was lost. Apparently during attempts to retrieve the data Walter
Remine's name appeared in some of the garbled data and the speculation was that he was Mod
4. But Mr. Remine's only involvement in the board was via an email to me, which I shared
with OCW, where he offered suggestions for forum guidelines (a few of which were
incorporated). I also asked Mr. Remine if he would help moderate, but he declined. For the
record, Moderator 3 was a YEC friend who wishes to remain anonymous. I am the only one who
knows his identity.
It is quite odd that Williams characterize
this as a false charge, since he acknowledges that he doesn’t actually know whether
it is true. A more appropriate characterization would have been for him to say that he did
not personally know whether ReMine was Moderator 4.
For the record, I was given the information
that ReMine was Moderator 4 by two independent sources. Both of these sources are Young
Earth Creationists involved in the administration of OCW. I received the information
unsolicited, and they would have had no motivation to make this information up. In
addition, Samuel Bollinger made a public confirmation of this information at Creationweb
on October 8, 2002. Mr. Bollinger did not state that he thought ReMine was Moderator 4, or that he speculated that ReMine may have been Moderator 4.
He unambiguously wrote “ReMine was Mod
4”. It is highly unlikely that Mr. Bollinger, a Young Earth Creationist, would
have made such a damning public acknowledgement if he had not been 100% certain of his
position.
5. I want
to state for the record that I gave Fred Williams a chance to respond to these accusations
by posting some of this information in the guest book at his website.
Williams: Robert never directly gave me a chance to respond. Instead,
he anonymously posted some information to my guestbook under the name "Bob
Marley". I did not respond to this entry because it was anonymous and there was no
return email. If anyone checks my guestbook they will see that I very seldom respond to
people who do not leave their email address.
I also chose not to respond to an email I received about that same time
from Scott Page (aka Huxter), because I was aware of Optional's condition and out of
respect for him I didn't want to engage in any public battle over these allegations that
may involve him.
It is true that I posted the information in Williams’
guestbook using a pseudonym. The reason for this is that Williams had previously banned me
from posting in (or even viewing) his guestbook. I thought that I had a better chance of
eliciting a response from him if he didn’t immediately recognize that I was the
source.
In the guest book entry, I made Williams
aware of Mr. Bollinger’s public acknowledgement that ReMine was Moderator 4. At that
time, Williams had an opportunity to address the allegations. Instead of doing so, he
merely pressured Mr. Bollinger to remove the information from his web site.
In conclusion, Williams’
“rebuttal” is nothing more than a desperate attempt to save face in light of
this scandal. The statements that Williams seized upon were all peripheral to the main
issue that he and ReMine engaged in unethical behavior. Since Williams has since admitted
that this was indeed the case (for himself, at least) then there is really nothing else
that needs to be said on the matter. I merely wrote this rebuttal to address the charge
that any of the claims in my original article were false.
References
- lesson_cre_ethics_rr.htm
- http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/NAG_response/index.htm
- This e-mail from “Optional” was posted by “Sumac” on
January 5, 2003 on the NAIG debate board.
- Personal e-mail received from John Douglas, AKA “John Boy” on
January 6, 2003.
