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 fan. Link 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, 2019) https://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,