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How Anti-Theist Atheists “Argue” Online (I.e., Insult)

How Anti-Theist Atheists “Argue” Online (I.e., Insult)

Last updated on: March 18, 2021 at 9:35 pm by Dave Armstrong

How Anti-Theist Atheists “Argue” Online (I.e., Insult) 2021-03-18T21:35:49-04:00 Dave Armstrong

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I got these examples from Jonathan MS Pearce’s A Tippling Philosopher blog, from four different comboxes with many hundreds of comments each: made between 3-11-21 and 3-18-21. Links will be provided. I am only documenting what they say about me; not every Christian or otherwise non-atheist who dares to enter their sublime hallowed, oh-so-academic and intelligent environs.

I’ve allowed a measure of the “PG-13” language. It almost had to be let through in order to illustrate the utter idiocy and worthlessness of all of these comments. So be forewarned.

*****

Proverbs 1:22 (RSV) How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

Proverbs 15:2 . . . the mouths of fools pour out folly.

Proverbs 18:2 A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.

Proverbs 26:11 Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that repeats his folly.

Luke Breuer: Curiously enough, Tippling actually manages to keep a lot of insults down to a reasonable level, such that actual discussion can keep happening. And this without uniform groupthink, . . . (3-14-21)

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HairyEyedWordBombThrower:

Still fishing for clicks, you hack? Go away. We’re not giving you any traffic, so I hope those Communion wafers have all the required vitamins and minerals, because no clicks means no MONEY. (3-15-21)

Davie-poo, stop lying. We HAVE replied, often at great length. Then you, in your predictably cowardly fashion, block / ban / rewrite the comments as necessary to make you the hero. YOUR KIND no longer have the ability to goad us into following you back. Ain’t it great? ;-) (3-15-21)

Fishing for clicks like the beggar you are. Worse, a beggar who thinks he’s a prince, a The Prince and the Pauper-style, jumped-up cretin ‘prince’. (3-15-21)

Davie-poo, YOU make the positive claim, YOU provide evidence. We just don’t believe you because
– You *haven’t* provided evidence
– You’re a demonstrated honorless lying cretin. (3-15-21)

Dishonorably lying, blocking those who counter your assertions, rewriting comments to retroactively show you to be ‘right’…. the list goes on, Davie-poo. (3-15-21)

Oh, I know YOUR KIND demand we deny reality and allow ourselves to be abused and browbeaten with your lies… but we’re under no obligation to comply. (3-15-21)

You’ve blocked / banned / removed any contesting views, no matter how respectfully addressed. Get over yourself, or at least have the honor, courage, and general decency to not lie and then double down on your Big Lie. (3-15-21)

I see you’re still raging against your insignificance. We don’t want you to go away *mad*, just go away. And we won’t visit any more than we *have*, which is why you infest our spaces with your scrofulous presence. (3-13-21)

You’re a pathetic, needy, lonely liar who tries and constantly FAILS at taunting any of us to give your page any hits. Why don’t you just go martyrbate with YOUR KIND and leave us good people here in peace? (3-13-21)

You just want to plaster your hateful authoritarian agitprop like manure on somebody else’s property. (3-15-21)

YOU have and do support Nazis. Not our problem. Get over your hate and prejudice. (3-13-21)

You’re dodging an answer, as the answer you’re itching to give would condemn yourself. And concerning just and fair moderation of fora… pot, meet kettle. YOU PERSONALLY are the least just, least fair, *most* thin-skinned weakling bully that I’ve seen in Patheos. (3-13-21)

Poor Davie-poo. IF he answers honestly, he’ll be exposed as the fascist authoritarian power-lusting scumbag that he is. (3-13-21)

Davie-poo, when you fly in, purposely try to create bad feeling to bait denizens of those fora to follow you back to your own path etic, forlorn, deserted blog for clicks, shit in the punchbowl, etc… why SHOULDN’T you be banned as a sociopathic danger to civil discussion? What makes you think you have a right to soil somebody else’s private property? Why do you hate the free market of ideas and free enterprise, complete with rules to exclude those obviously dealing in bad faith? (3-13-21)

Dave, (sadly) you’d be AMAZED at how little we care about what you believe. You’re a crybully wasting the time of everybody in this thread, and need to fix yourself, rather than lashing out at those of us who HAVE freed our minds of the supernatural terrors that still bedevil you. (3-13-21)

Poor pathetic Davie, mining for clicks and relevance again. We know you’re a liar who just wants traffic…. so I’ll do my best to make sure nobody wastes time on your martyrbating hypocritical blog. (3-17-21)

Liar. You pontificate, then either insult / misdirect / derail, or, if it’s on your own moribund blog, you deceptively edit and delete posts that aren’t amenable to such selective editing, and block those who have valid arguments that you can’t counter . . . (3-18-21)

Ignorant Amos:

You’re lying again. We know how to tell, your hypothetical mouth is moving. (3-15-21)

Bwaaahahahaha… what a cretin. You’ve banned those who attempt to defend at your dump, ya dishonest lying louse. (3-13-21)

What a lying for Jesus piece of pish, is Armstrong. (3-13-21)

Liar, liar, pants on fire. (3-13-21)

You’ll burn in Hell brother, so will you brother…see ya’ll down there.. (3-13-21)

What a lying bastard. You banned Bob Seidensticker when he went to your shitehole to respond to your dross. You were subsequently banned at Cross Examined because you banned Bob for doing that very thing you accuse him of not doing here, not hearing from him again. Now you engage in bad mouthing him, when it is you who is the chickenshite cowardly bastard who can’t hack it. I don’t think Jonathan MS Pearce should be giving you a platform for spewing this lies and slander. (3-14-21)

Well it gets very lonely in his wee “panic room” of a shite blog where he goes to hide, and where saying anything he decides is contentious, which is just about everything that is in disagreement with his nonsense, gets one the the banhammer. With nothing but a handful of toady arselickers for company in his own house, it’s understandable he can’t maintain his flounce for any noticeable length of time. (3-14-21)

He’s the proverbial “legend in his own lunchtime”, isn’t he? (3-14-21)

Ya lying piece of shite. (3-14-21)

So still a very disingenuous louse, if not technically a liar. (3-15-21)

He lies about lots of other stuff, so I’ve no reason to trust his honesty where there is ambiguity. (3-15-21)

And that is a loada lies, and demonstrably so. (3-14-21)

90Lew90:

I’m sure your six readers will be along presently. (3-12-21)

I can assure you that the level of tolerance in comments here far exceeds anything Armstrong allows. Dave, meanwhile, has me blocked and banned for daring to challenge him on his site. I should add, he locked and banned me after creating two whole posts on his blog out of our exchange, thus precluding me from replying. That’s how Dave rolls. Very poor show. (3-12-21)

It says a lot more about his ego than his readers. His books are all self-published and he has no readers. (3-12-21)

Your project of trying to show the truth of the Bible “from a Catholic perspective” just betrays that you haven’t shaken off your evangelical perspective which is decidedly un-Catholic and you’re missing the point of Catholicism by trying to stitch your evangelicalism into it. Poorly. (3-11-21)

You appear to know almost nothing about the Catholicism you have adopted and profess, and have gotten yourself a soapbox from which to wave around your ignorance of it, . . . your attempted racket, ahem, ‘blog’, ‘Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, With Dave Armstrong’. The title on its own smacks of self-promotion; life lessons from your burnt out local radio host. . . . You’re the kind of person who would be a priest if you thought there was money in it and you could still have sex. . . . you appear to have spent more time studying how much tax-deductible cash you can get for the “papers” you publish on your blog. . . . Apart from your constantly begging for money all over your posts, redirecting to more of your posts for clicks, and plugging your 50 self-published books, the detail you provide here is all about how people can give you income on which you don’t have to pay tax. As a dubious bonus, we’re treated to an unflattering picture of you looking every bit the pea-brained burnout (perhaps you thought you looked like a kinda cool “family man” or something), still aiming for that one big money maker. . . . You include in your “qualifications” your “literary resume”. Give me a break you venal little &%$@#. (3-13-21)

You’re here to drive traffic to your blog. (3-13-21)

Armstrong comes here solely to drive traffic to his own blog. (3-13-21)

Frankly, the man doesn’t know Catholicism at all, and to read one or two of his articles is enough to leave one feeling somewhat sullied. He’s applying his former Protestant, evangelical approach in a kind of Christianity where it has no place. (3-13-21)

democommiescrazierbrother:

I just took a look at his facebook page, wottan#%$@&*%. One might be forgiven for thinking it’s more “griftin’ teh roobwazee than prinicipled apologetics*. * I’m not sure if it’s like intermarriages between matter and anti-matter but, I do think that, “principled apologetics” is prolly an oxymoron or contradiction in terms. (3-12-21)

Bob Seidensticker:

In short, you’re too much trouble. Wading through the bile to find an interesting point has been too much work. (3-14-21)

WCB:

You ban everybody who does that. That is why nobody over at your black hole site does it. Banned1 Banned! Banned! (3-14-21)

You are not that good as an apologist. And when anybody starts demonstrating that on your site, you ban them. (3-13-21)

Armstrong is an apologist. Not much of a theologian, but theology is not his mission. One of the reasons to play with people like Armstrong is to see what he has been peddling to the world. So we can be sure that we atheists are not using bad arguments that do not apply to people like Armstrong. Debunking Dave is not hard really. (3-17-21)

If Dave won’t seriously discuss these issues with me, it is because I bring up issues he has no easy, glib apologist’s argument that can win the day. This is all off the apologist’s beaten path, with the usual canned answers, an my posts are designed to be that way. . . . Playing the apologist game is not new with me, and Armstrong is not much different. (3-17-21)

JMallett:

You: Nobody wants to play with me!!! This could be a hint that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t that good at your job. (3-11-21)

Tiresome drivel. (3-16-21)

Grimlock:

Lots of Patheos Catholic blogs with more commenters. Not to mention more interesting and civilized commenters. (3-15-21)

im-skeptical:

You stand in proud defiance of truth and reality. (3-13-21)

Raging Bee:

You’re the only one who doesn’t see the debunkings and rebuttals you routinely get. (3-14-21)

Maybe he should be banned from this one too, since he’s banned nearly all of us from his blog while taking advantage of Pearce’s tolerance to hog attention here — while blocking and ignoring most of the people he’s badgering here. That’s both unseemly and unfair. I don’t mind letting people with such opinions comment and argue here, but hypocritical dishonest behavior like Dave’s should not be tolerated. (3-17-21)

TheMarsCydonia:

I am unsurprised that after all these years that you believe there one iota of fair moderating practices in your forums. (3-13-21)

You do say a lot of things to avoid having rational or objective discussions whenever you’re called out… (when you don’t outright ban people). (3-13-21)

3lemenope:

He bragged of his great patience after giving up with someone over the course of a couple of exchanges. I’m not against blocking as a rule–it’s a tool with a purpose, and very helpful for preserving bandwidth for non-trolls–but this guy thinks of his own thin-skinned hair trigger banning reflex to be the height of patience and deliberation. That kind of distorted self-perception is weird almost to the point of parody. (3-13-21)

It certainly isn’t my fault that you literally stand in common cause with ‮sizaN‬, Fascists, nihilists, and neo-Confederates by supporting Trump and the modern GOP. That’s your problem. It’s just compounded by your unwillingness to notice or acknowledge that the people you stand next to, by choice, are the very worst people. Maybe you’re just an angel in a sea of demons, bringing the light of conscience to pandemonium. But it isn’t likely. And when you try to dress up the vile movement you willingly associate with as something of actual intellectual pedigree, like conservatism in its primary descriptions in the annals of political history and political science, I’m gonna call you out on that shit. (3-13-21)

Fmr ATrealDonaldTrump ��:

People like Armstrong illustrate that there are “Conservative Cafeteria Catholics” as well as liberal “Cafeteria Catholics. (3-15-21)

Neko:

&%#$ Armstrong, he banned me for accusing him of being an apologist for the insurrectionist party, i.e., the Trumpist GOP, which is nothing less than the *^&%$#@%$ truth! (3-14-21)

John Loftus [cited by “WCB” who apparently asked him why he wouldn’t respond to my critiques]:

Yes [Dave was banned], because he is ignorant and obnoxious. It’s the obnoxious part that was too much. (cited on 3-13-21)

al kimeea:

I’ve read of your behaviour to valid criticism, so no traffic for you. (3-18-21)

RoverSerton:

Funny how you go to sites like this for interaction since you have ZERO comments on your dark spot on the internet. Since you ban everyone that you can’t refute, it must be a lonely lonely place to live. (3-18-21)

Lark62:

You’re nothing but a dishonest hack begging and pleading for clicks. Everyone outside your small collection of sycophants knows you’re pathetic. (3-17-21)

Here he cannot ban anyone and everyone who hints at disagreeing with him. He cannot bear to have anyone point out his inadequacy. (3-17-21)

Ya know what? I don’t give a tinker’s dam about what King You thinks “doesn’t fly.” Pathetic hacks terrified of actual conversation are in no position to the judge whether an argument “succeeds.” (3-17-21)

Illithid:

If you wanted open-minded, rational interaction, you wouldn’t ban people from your blog for specious reasons. (3-16-21)

***

The Atheist Obsession with Insulting Christians [9-15-15]

Angry Anti-Theism Strikes Again! (“Dave Armstrong is Delusional”) [3-31-17]

Illogical Angry Atheists: Five Typical Examples [7-21-17]

Not Many “Angry Atheists” Online? You be the Judge [7-22-17]

Atheist Blogs Delete & Block Insulters & Idiots, Too! [7-31-17]

Why I Blocked Anti-Theist Atheist Bob Seidensticker [8-8-18]

Hysterical Frenzy vs. Me on Atheist Seidensticker’s Blog [8-10-18]

Atheist Eloquently & Admirably Denounces Anti-Theism [4-12-19]

Anti-Theist Atheist Snobfest & Insult Extravaganza [12-7-20]

Atheist Blogger Renounces Angry Anti-Theist Obsessions [3-16-21]

***

Photo credit: Philippe Gillotte (9-7-10) [Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license]

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Summary: I document a classic “feeding frenzy”: a regular, time-honored tactic of anti-theist atheists, who collectively decide to lie about & slander a person (me in this case), sans any semblance of rational arguments.

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