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Wednesday, February 06, 2019

The Saga of AtheistWatch




On Monday's post, in the comments Ryan M criticizes my linking to a certain blog: "Linking to a blog called 'Atheistwatch' certainly doesn't help either. "[1] [2] Atheist Watch was my blog. This is not a counter attack nor am I reviving AW. It affords me an opportunity to explain a lot about where I am coming from. .Atheist watch [3]was my blog.I conceived, researched and wrote it all. Atheistwatch was hated by atheist. It was shunned by many Christian, always very controversial,very surly reputation,  seldom did it deserve the  enmity or the ire, It began as a way to blow off stream against mocking atheists on CARM but finished as a sociological experiment.

I began posting on message boards in 1998. I've been on thousands of boards and had several of my own, My boards were always well used. CARM ATH was my main board. I even posted on Secular Web and still believe they banned me because I converted someone.I was obsessed with posting A lot of it was ego, a lot of it was seeking the joy of real debate. 

Prior to lunching AW I had been through 10 years of constant abuse day in and day out every time I tried to discuss with atheists. I would have loved to find a sight like Secular outpost,I did look for sources of intelligent discussion but I assured, wrongly that SOP would be like secular Web because they were both ran by Lowder. If only I had known how Lowder felt about Sec Web! He was not at all pleased with it. Eventually, after years of abuse and abusing them back I realized trying to feed them back their medicine accomplished nothing. The internet ridicule artist thrives on that.

I devised  AW as a means of analyzing their rhetorical appeals.I had majored in communication theory and sociology which uniquely qualified me to understand the sociological nature of their rhetoric. It first I had a simple theory that in the atheist community a segment was evolving to a hate  group. I applied the FBI criteria for accession hate groups to their rhetoric, and argued that that segment was in stage four of a seven part stage. I reformulated my hypothesis and then altered my whole theory.

Now it became an attempt to show that there was an atheistic social movement that reacted to criticism the way Kuhn says scientists react to paradigm change, i.e. like a political regime under fire. lacking funds top do real research I tried to provide attacks then gauge their reactions. I think most of what I did with AW was to force atheist's awareness of that segment of hater in their ranks, typified by the John Loftus crowd. By the end I had refined my hate group hypothesis to the effect that there was a segment of the atheist community which was made up of five sub segments , none of them was an actual  hate group but there were real hate effects. in the end AW itself evolved into a source of general criticism of the entire atheist community but i carried on the hate group analysis. All of that was part of the attempt to give them things to react to. That was part of showing how they react like Kuhn says politicos react. There is an organised atheist movement.[4]

No one really picked up on the nuance here. The atheist community reacted in a visceral fashion  from the beginning. I get the impression that very few atheists actually read the blog. Criticism of it went viral.it was reacted to all over the place.  That original article on the FBI criteria was commented on far and wide that shaped  the major image of AW forever. There were big hateful reactions against it. It was denounced. It was labeled by organizations that are supposed fight hate speech. So pointing out other people's hateful semantics makes you hateful. The lesson is people do not want truth they want confirmation.

I had a lot of good research on  AW. some of the best deserve mention. articles identifying mocking as a brain washing as socialization . One of my major articles was a two part   on link between atheism and self esteem. Note that I point out the same material links low self esteem to  fundamentalism as well:rejection of Christianity and Low self esteem and Atheist Self . Esteem Part 2 The saga of the Jesus  project: These are the Voygaes of the Jesus Project (part 1) and Jesus project (part 2): Orwell hits the fanLink between ridicule and socialization into the community:Atheist use ridicule to compel belief
a project of center for inquiry. and Brain washing and Atheist Socialization
Several indicating organizational stricture for the  the movement:


The Atheist Movement and It's Organization

So there's no Atheist Movement Hu? (part 4)  

Cracking the Jesus Myth Phony Scholarship code

Center for Inquiry: Atheist Propaganda Machine



Psychology Todoay Scam 

Nigel Barber: The Uncertainty Theory of Religious belief:
Bogus atheist social sciences.


The Atheist IQ bad science and Racist Assumptions: Kanazawa,Nyborg, Lynn, Hamilton.
Looking back I can see how I did lump atheists  into general categories and wasn't fair in many cases. The Christian apologist who gave AW it's break was Victor Reppert,

I put AW to bed in 15 for two reasons. (1) I realized it was being used to feed right wing hysteria. (2) I just did not have time to keep that going and do activism in the resistance. I wish I had checked ot secular outpost long before I actually did.






[1] Ryan M. Comment on "Atheist Claim of No Evidence".Metacrock's blog Comments (FEBRUARY 03, 2019https://metacrock.blogspot.com/2019/02/atheists-claim-of-no-evidence.html  (accessed 2/6/19)

[2] This is a link to the article to which I linked in Ryan's comment. "Atheist Rejection of Bog Bsng Totally  undermines their Enterprise" Atheistwath, (June 8, 2010)
http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/2010/06/atheists-rejection-of-big-bang-totally.html
(ACCESSED 2/6/19)


[3]Atheistwatch
http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/


[4] I was always careful to distinguish between atheism itself and the social movment,




15 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:42 AM

    It's too bad you are done with it, but it was a good blog that served it's purpose. Thank you for your efforts on that one. I really enjoyed that site.

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  2. If you want to use the source as a reference (For an atheist or otherwise non-convinced person to check out), then my suggestions would be to add a side note to ignore the title or else credibility might be lost from the perspective of the other person.

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  3. If you want to use the source as a reference (For an atheist or otherwise non-convinced person to check out), then my suggestions would be to add a side note to ignore the title or else credibility might be lost from the perspective of the other person.

    12:43 AM

    Man why the hell are atheist so offended by that title? One of the major human rights groups was called Ameicas watch but they were not being derogatory of America.

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  4. Maybe I'll start a blog called "Hinman Watch".

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  5. Obviously that's an attack,you should say Joe Hinman because there are other Hinmans and you are not attaching the whole family Some of them are atheists.

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  6. No attacks. Just "analysis".

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  7. Anonymous1:22 PM

    Looking at your page on the Big Bang, just because that is linked from here, it is seriously flawed. You have taken what is very much a minority position, and presented it as though it is virtually universal to atheism. I have never come across anyone who rejects the Big Bang before reading your links, and Rhawn Joseph (the first link) is clearly very much a fringe atheist, as he pages on life on Mars and God as an extraterrestrial show.

    The article in Scientific America is not accessible from your link, but the quoted paragraph indicates they are not saying there was no Big Bang, and instead are wondering if there was time and indeed a compacted universe prior to the moment.

    Pix

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  8. I never tried to indicate that was the atheist position,It seemed like a growning movement at the time It was 2011.

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  9. Looking back that move went way beyond that one sight, yes the guy I wanted was a flash in the pan but over on CARM I had been getting anti Big Bang arguments from more scientifically substantial atheists such as Hans Grum ("HRG") a mathematician with physics addendum.M theory was being presented as anti singularity, in my mind that was anti big bang.

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  10. Modern physicists don't support the idea of a singularity. That was the concept before inflation was postulated (based on quantum theory). But it never made real sense.

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  11. "offended"

    I generally do not know what that term means other than being synonymous with "dislike". Why might atheists "dislike" it? Dislike really isn't the issue. Rather, it's an issue of seeming like a credible source. If, say, someone posted a reference for something medical related from a source that had "Natural" in the title, an informed person would rightly be suspicious that it's not a source worth their attention. "Atheist Watch" seems similar for atheists IMO.

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  12. It's not the title. It's the content.

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  13. Ryan M said...
    "offended"

    I generally do not know what that term means other than being synonymous with "dislike". Why might atheists "dislike" it? Dislike really isn't the issue. Rather, it's an issue of seeming like a credible source. If, say, someone posted a reference for something medical related from a source that had "Natural" in the title, an informed person would rightly be suspicious that it's not a source worth their attention. "Atheist Watch" seems similar for atheists IMO.




    Does that mean you think Americas watch is just some fly by night organization? you really need to read up on human rights organizations, btw this is a bog not an academic publication.take our ideas seriously not ourselves

    ReplyDelete