....The first sign that his response is not going to be critical in the intellectual sense but ad hominem, is the title, "here come the loonies." I say he unwittingly puts himself in the mold of a fundamentalist preacher, he says I'm "Loony." Is that really commensurate criticism? He includes AW in a little list of fundie sites that say stuff about him. So that creates the impression "AW must be fundie and creationist because he's being listed with them." Guilt by association (still a fallacy btw)."So I find it ironic," he says, "that AtheistWatch calls me a “completely opinionated, hate-group bully.” Why ironic? because set down along side these other guys and I'm criticizing him too, so therefore I must be one of them. Thus i must be a hate group bully as Ken Ham and the creationists he talks about are (according to him). I may or may not have been unfair to call him a bully but I didn't try to lump him in with a group that he's clearly opposed to. This is obviously guilt by association and nothing more. But then atheists play that game all the time. They are always trying to lump Chrsitians in with Nazis and so forth. He also complains that i got it wrong that he lives in Denton. Well I can't remember where I saw that but I did see it on some internet thing that was talking about him. So it may be a mistake but not mine. It's no crime to come from Denton so it's not an accusation. He says he doesn't know the Kryptonite quote, but it was on Wiki page. Of course those things are changed all the time by anyone or his dog.
....He says:
My favorite of the criticisms against me on AtheismWatch is this one:
“the standard that he uses to hold the bible to sees the Bible as cliaming on behalf of God:“I know everything I’ve always been there here’s what hapepned in the past.” That’s a log of hog wash. It’s not true God knows all that is knowable but the bible never makes such a claim for itself. It never presets itself as an accurate history book such that it says ‘here’s what happened in the past.” That kind of blanket statement is the all or nothing bunck that atheists thrive on.”It wasn’t me who recited that ‘log of hogwash’; it was the Young Earth Creationist, Ken Ham who described the Bible exactly that way. I was merely quoting his ‘bunck’. But it is nice to see how venomous believers can be when one of their own people says something wrong, -but they think I’m the one who said it.
Of cousre I meant "load of hog wash." Since atheists can't deal with substance they have to rag on superficial mistakes like spelling. Ok so he was quoting someone but he did it as though he's assuming that's "the Christian stance." So he's reducing the diversity of the faith to just the fudines and pretending the rest of it doesn't exist. So the rest of it get's the criticism and the guilt by association but no credit for avoiding the stupidity of fundamentalism. But why should he care? I'm sure he's willing to lump Bultmann and Crosson and Tillich all the liberal theologians in with Ken Ham and Kent Hovind the fundies. I once saw an atheist who called Thomas Kuhn a "fundie creationst hack." It's that kid of slip shod pseudo scholarship and lack of attention to truth that I'm criticizing him for. That's what makes him preacher man-like. He's more considered with getting the propaganda line out than with getting it right. After all I never say "all atheist are like X, all atheists are a hate group." I have always been careful to make clear that I don't include all atheists in the criticisms of the new atheists that I make or even all atheists. I call the segment of the atheist world that I criticize "Dawkamentalism." Maybe I should change the name of the blog to "Dawkmentalist watch." I don't think anyone would read it.
////He closes with "I wonder what the next paranoid tabloid sensationalist opposite-accusation of me will be." The criticisms I made of him were pretty accurate. Its' obvious I wasn't doing paranoid tabloid thing because I talked about ideas and the way he handles them. That is not sensationalism nor is it tabloid. I also notice he doesn't defend them or try to argue against what I said. Notice none of these guys argue ideas. Like most atheists on message boards they are totally focused on the people. Their number one come back to disagreement is "You don't don't conform to my ideology so you must be stupid."
Now let's see what his groupies had to say:
Monocle Smile
About halfway through I was expecting something about six heads and breath of fire.
This is not meant to be insulting in the least, but you’ll have a hard time convincing me that at least some of these bottom-feeding cretins aren’t mentally unsound.
John Nugent
I always know they are desperate and clutching at straws when they go after the spelling. He admits he can't make out half the things I wrote, while my spell check says there are no mistakes. What is then that people are trying to encourage me to do when they say "use the spell checker?" Maybe the reason the can't understand half of what I say has more to do with him and not me. Whey do they relate the preacher man thing to insult? Because they hate preachers. they assume i must hate them too. I don't hate them. It wasn't an insult per sue but I'm sure they take it as such because they are loaded with hatred against preachers.I just made an attempt at reading the Atheistwatch article…
I know, the spelling and grammar of an argument, has no bearing on the argument. However, if I have to work to figure out, just what is being said, then it does spread doubt on, whether or not, the poster should be taken seriously. Anyone too lazy to make a coherent argument, is probably going to be too lazy to research said argument.
But anyway, I kept on through it.
I do like the comparison of Aronra’s style to that of preachers, and quite frankly, I think this attempted insult, should be taken as complimentary. Fighting fire and brimstone with fire and brimstone! Hallelujah, brother, and amen! In other words, Aronra, keep it up.
But being a subscriber to Aronra’s channel, and now, to this blog, I cannot say, I agree with the other things, the poster wrote.
On the other hand, I still cannot make out, half the things, the poster wrote….
It is a criticism there are problems with preachers, but not an insult. His little statement about "fighting fire and brimstone with fire and brimstone" really speaks volumes. First of all if they bothered to find out anything about me they would find that I don't believe in hell. But they are probably too stupid to even understand why that means I'm not a fundie. Then it also shows that they are into an eye for an eye, fight fire with fire. So they perceive fudnies as hating them, they hate fundies so fight hate with hate. it's a frank admission that they are full of hate and are ready to unleash it.
Lord Narf
He’s very dyslexic, which would explain a lot … except EVERYTHING has a spellchecker built into it, nowadays. I give a lot of room for issues like that, but it just seems lazy to post things to a blog with errors that a simple web-browser interface would catch. I don’t know what to think of the guy.
Jingle Dela Torre
AtheistWatch says he was an atheist before there was an internet and reason led him to god. LMAO.
here'a real moron:
michaelbusch
Do we know what fraction of evangelical US Christians claim to once have been atheists?
_
A little bit of demography says that less than 5% of American Christians can possibly have been atheists at some point in the past, and we might expect the fraction to be lower still in fundamentalist Christian groups. If we had the number that claim to once have been atheists, we could figure out how many are likely telling the truth.
His argument is "this guy couldn't be a real atheist becasue duh, there aren't enough Chrsitains who become Christians,.duh." I couldn't be in the 5% that's impossible. they have to deny it at all costs so their brain washed lackies wont hear that they can be forgiven and find God. Got to keep them in the dark. the determinists among them have to think that it's so impossible to change because that disproves little pet ideology. Now how do I conform to his assumptions for the prior when I was a Christian and a communist at the same time? how many people do that? I'm already breaking most molds.
Monocle Smile
AtheistWatch is strange. He’s wrong about the Bible in the opposite way fundamentalists are. Also, based on his Blogger user profile, he seems like a supremely boring person.
I stumbled through links onto this gem, which IMO demonstrates how so many of our counter-arguments just sail over the heads of these types.
That's enough. the hate group is alive and well. The mission of Atheist Watch is still fresh and needed.
