Atheist organizations and scandals

Mandisa Thomas, president of Black Nonbelievers Inc., gave up her seat on the board of American Atheists on Jan. 11, weeks after she was accused of violating Black Nonbelievers’ code of conduct during the group’s annual SeaCon cruise and conference held Thanksgiving weekend.

After the allegations became public, Thomas told Religion News Service that she had mishandled a “personal situation” during the conference and had apologized.

The ethics committee of the American Atheists board said in December it was aware of the matter but the organization made no mention of an ethics inquiry when Thomas resigned from the board....

Days later, P. Andrew Torrez, an attorney and co-host of the popular Opening Arguments podcast, sent an email to his fellow American Atheists board members announcing that he too was stepping down from the board...

At the time he resigned, Torrez had not been made aware that an ethics complaint had been filed with the board by an activist working with several women who accused him of sexual harassment, he told RNS. The women say Torrez sent them text messages, which they have shared with RNS, that they say made them uncomfortable.

The messages, which date from 2017 to 2022, appear to show Torrez, who is married, commenting on the appearance of several fans of the show, then apologizing when the fans push back against him, saying they are not interested.^[3]

However, this year’s conference, held from Nov. 26 to Dec. 3, has left a rift in the organization, with leaders at most of the group’s local chapters quitting and raising questions about one of the most prominent Black atheists in the country.

In a statement dated Dec. 5, leaders from five chapters — in New York; Detroit; Portland, Ore.; Louisville, Ky.; and Washington, D.C. — said they were cutting ties with Black Nonbelievers and its president, Mandisa Thomas.

The letter mentioned “events that culminated horribly” during the cruise but did not give specifics.

“As leaders, we should take pride in modeling and rewarding the right way to treat people who follow our example,” they wrote. “While certain behaviors may be acceptable even as key goals are met, we conclude that to permit unethical behavior(s) behind the scenes will lead — and is leading — to a loss of good people and reputation for the organization that we love and spent ten years to build.”

Before the letter from chapter leaders was made public, Black Nonbelievers had 8 local chapters, though some were dormant.^[4]

In the 18-page complaint filed in a Los Angeles court, the foundation claims that Mr Timonen said the website he was running was just "squeaking by," making only $30,000 in three years, when in fact it was grossing 10 times that sum. The charity alleges that Mr Timonen pocketed 92 per cent of the money generated by the store, with his girlfriend spending $100,000 of the charity's money on upgrading her home before putting it on the market.

The funds apparently came on top of Mr Timomen's pay – of $278,750 over three-and-a-half years (£50,000 a year) – which legal documents filed by the foundation describe as "exceedingly generous and well above-market for someone of Timomen's age and experience...^[11]

But the $85 a month just touches the hem of rationality. After the neophyte passes through the successively more expensive ‘Darwin Circle’ and then the ‘Evolution Circle’, he attains the innermost circle, where for $100,000 a year or more he gets to have a private breakfast or lunch with Richard Dawkins, and a reserved table at an invitation-only circle event with ‘Richard’ as well as ‘all the benefits listed above’, so he still gets a discount on his Richard Dawkins T-shirt saying ‘Religion — together we can find a cure.’

The website suggests that donations of up to $500,000 a year will be accepted for the privilege of eating with him once a year: at this level of contribution you become a member of something called ‘The Magic of Reality Circle’. I don’t think any irony is intended.

At this point it is obvious to everyone except the participants that what we have here is a religion without the good bits.^[14]

In phone calls a few days later, the trio claimed that they were on "business" in San Antonio, Texas. A few days later, Jon ordered $600,000 worth of gold coins from a San Antonio jeweler but took delivery of only $500,000 worth of coins.

Until September 27, American Atheists employees received several phone calls from Robin and Jon, but neither would explain why they left or when they would return; while they said nothing was amiss, their voices sounded strained and disturbed. After September 28, no further communication came from any of the O'Hairs.

Ultimately, the murder investigation focused on David Roland Waters, who had worked as a typesetter for American Atheists. Not only did Waters have previous convictions for violent crimes, there were several suspicious burglaries during his tenure, and he had pleaded guilty earlier in 1995 to stealing $54,000 from American Atheists. Shortly after his theft of the $54,000 was discovered, O'Hair had written a scathing article in the 'Members Only' section of the American Atheists newsletter exposing Waters, the theft and Waters' previous crimes, including a 1977 incident in which Waters allegedly beat and urinated upon his mother. Waters' girlfriend later testified that he was enraged by O'Hair's article, and that he fantasized about torturing her in gruesome ways.

The police concluded that Waters and his accomplices had kidnapped all three O'Hairs, forced them to withdraw the missing funds, gone on several huge shopping sprees with the O'Hairs' money and credit cards, and then murdered and dismembered all three people. Waters' accomplices included Gary Paul Karr and Danny Fry. A few days after the O'Hairs were killed, Fry was murdered by Waters and Karr. Fry's body was found on a riverbed with his head and hands severed and missing. His body remained unidentified for three and a half years.

In January 2001, Waters informed the police that the O'Hairs were buried on a Texas ranch, and he subsequently led them to the bodies. When the police excavated there, they discovered that the O'Hairs' bodies had been cut into dozens of pieces with a saw. The remains exhibited such extensive mutilation and successive decomposition that identification had to be made through dental records, by DNA testing and, in Madalyn O'Hair's case, by the serial number of her prosthetic hip. The head and hands of Danny Fry were also found at the site.

The gold coins extorted from the O'Hairs were put in a storage locker rented by Waters' girlfriend. Waters had taken out $80,000 and partied with his girlfriend for a few days, but upon his return he discovered that the remaining $420,000 had been stolen. A group of thieves operating in that area had a master key to the type of lock that Waters used to secure the locker. In the course of their activities, they came across the locker, used the master key to open it, and found a suitcase full of gold coins. They eventually spent all but one, which the police recovered.

Karr was arrested, tried, and found guilty of extortion charges related to the O'Hair case. However, he was acquitted of kidnapping conspiracy. Karr was sentenced to life in prison in August 2000 by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks. Waters was arrested and found guilty of kidnapping, robbery, and murder in the O'Hair case, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison; he was also ordered to pay back a total of $543,665 to the United Secularists of America and to the estates of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Jon Garth Murray, and Robin Murray O'Hair. It is unlikely that any of these debts were paid, because Waters had no ability to earn money while in prison. Waters died of lung cancer at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, on January 27, 2003.^[19]

She stole huge amounts of money. She misused the trust of people. She cheated children out of their parents’ inheritance. She cheated on her taxes and even stole from her own organizations. She once printed up phony stock certificates on her own printing press to try to take over another atheist publishing company. I could go on but I won’t. ^[20]

The group raised money from atheists after tragic events and natural disasters, supposedly to help victims and their families, but the money didn’t always make it there. In some cases, it was given to people completely unaffected by the tragedies, unbeknownst to the donors at the time. The co-founders said publicly they weren’t taking a salary, even though they were. They said donations to the group were tax-deductible, even when they weren’t....

Several former board members of We Are Atheism later spoke up about why they resigned; their reasons included a lack of financial transparency in the organization.

Since all of that went down, Lee Moore took over as President of We Are Atheism and Amanda Brown stepped down from the board (she no longer has a formal connection with the group).

Moore vowed to get an independent tax firm to look over the group’s finances and pledged to make things right...

So what happened with that independent tax firm?...

Simply put: They couldn’t complete the audit. They asked Brown for access to certain accounts involving We Are Atheism’s money and they didn’t receive it.^[28]

Shortly after, she removed from leadership of Apastacon, Reason Rally, and Recovering from Religion. There were a lot of non-disclosure agreements involved, so we don’t know all the reasons why. But there were rumors about her character not being as it seems, which were largely rebuffed by people who thought it was the work of Ray Morehead to try to destroy Sarah Morehead’s reputation while he’s on trial.

The rumors became so confusing and pervasive that J.T. Eberhard, one of the top atheist bloggers and a friend (like many influential atheists) of Sarah Morehead’s, investigated them thoroughly. Not only did Eberhard, in his long, very well-documented write-up, find that the evidence indicated this was true — what Morehead said about several rumors in the interview he had with her for his article directly contradicted the evidence he found, evidence that Morehead seems to have tried to delete before he uncovered it. Eberhard, then, uncovered extensive evidence that Morehead systematically made sure only she had access to funds that she seems to have used personally, and lied about several other matters as well; the picture that is painted isn’t pretty.

The way J.T. discussed it, that lying was strategic and repeated. There has been suspicion that she has acted similarly in the other organizations she’s been part of — Stephanie Zvan has also said some troubling things about her overall character, making the picture even darker in my mind....

Although the evidence that Sarah Morehead lied and misappropriated funds seem undeniable, I don’t know how true the rumors about the kind of person Sarah Morehead is are.

But what was truly disturbing, for me, was finding out through Internet conversation that this was just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of good the atheist organizations have done, but there are also more rumors of disturbing things that happened, and additional blown-open scandals in the past that I didn’t know about or time had caused me to forget. It all kinda came to a head on me at the same time.^[31]