10.21
I am not prone to giving credence to conspiracy theories.
I prefer direct evidence, logic and reason.
It is interesting to note though, that in the past 48 hours, there seems to have been a pattern of what appears to be a deliberate attempt to silence critical opposition to reason.
Firstly there was the sustained and continuing DDoS attack on the atheist convention website http://www.atheistconvention.org.au/.
Due to the technical nature of what has happened here, with the attacks moving to the IP after the domain name was null routed and then the new IP being subsequently attacked, one could make the assertion that this was a targetted attack on logic, reason and freedom of thought by those who feared it in some way.
There is an article in The Age on the attack on the atheist convention website.
Today, we have seen the twitter trending topic “no god” suddenly disappear and be replaced with “know god”.
The “no god” topic, started by a theist http://www.examiner.com/x-8776-Boston-Atheism-Examiner~y2009m10d20-No-God-war-raging-on-Twitter seemed to backfire when rationalists, humanists, secularists, atheists and free thinkers decided to have a bit of fun.
Religious types became somewhat outraged by this, though in their outrage, assisted the topic in trending by repeating the phrase and adding the #nogod hashtag.
A war waged, with the theists becoming increasingly upset and leading many people to speculate that twitter had censored the “no god” topic due to pressure by religious organisations for fear that they may offend them.
As we know, one is not supposed to question “faith”, it just isn’t polite to suggest that a grown adult has conversations with themselves inside their own mind (unless of course they have a certificate).
Perhaps it wasn’t due to pressure by the theists, perhaps it was just due to “operational reasons” and the amount of fail whales that began to appear as the topic trended, but both of the aforementioned events raise an interesting point:
Why do religious types feel so threatened by people advocating logic and reason and daring to question their unsubstantiated “faith”?
The DDoS attack on the atheist convention website is clearly the work of persons or groups who are offended or outraged by the thought of a viewpoint that differs to their own and, instead of engaging in robust debate in a supposedly free society, they seek to silence any opposition to their view.
Perhaps they have gnawing self doubts and are terrified that and exposure to critical thinking, reason and logic will disrupt their blissful ignorance or perhaps they are just conforming to the theistic stereotype that makes a wonderful argument for the “slippery slope” that leads to such wonderful things as theocracy.
The outpouring of outrage by theists when “no god” was trending is another example of this. Instead of engaging critically, there was, to paraphrase the Nazarene; “much wailing and gnashing of teeth”.
Typical of the “very christian” sentiment espoused is this lovely piece:
“@PrttyBella All #nogod supporters shouldve been ABORTED & im against it but ima have 2 do an exception #GOODISGOOD!!!!!!!!!! ( #No God )”
One does wonder why a group, so convinced by their beliefs and “faith” that some of them are willing to die for it (and all of them are content to abdicate reason) would need to behave in such a manner that seeks to silence their opposition, rather than one that seeks to prove their postulations.
One possible reason could be that they know that their position is untenable, and, like a petulant child that covers its ears and screams out “lalalalalalalala” when faced with a request that they wish to ignore; have chosen to create white noise and interference instead.
It is sad that human nature has yet to evolve to the point whereby we can all engage critically and without fear; and that some people use the technology that science has bequeathed us with to engage in modern day crusades.
An evaluation of the trending topics in this debate can be seen here:
http://religionlulz.blogspot.com/2009/10/twitter-censorship.html
Footnote: It seems as if the “Know god” trending topic has now been given the ability to search for either “no god” or “know god” from twitter’s website:
http://twitter.com/search?q=”Know+God”+OR+”no+god”
The topic name as represented on the site however has been changed from “no god” to “know god”
Conspiracy theories aside, that seems somewhat suspicious.
It’s hard to reduce out all the factors, but I agree that the trend behavior suspicious. If it was theists responding and overwhelming the non-theists you’d expect, of course, no god to stay flat, or descend somewhat, and know god to rise.
-@qaphsiel
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Monica, leapingjudas, leapingjudas, ladymidnight, Alias Surname and others. Alias Surname said: RT @Monicks Censorship on twitter, DDoS attacks on atheist websites – modern day crusades? http://bit.ly/3ZQa5c by @leapingjudas #atheism [...]
We are bringing the site back up on a secure host built to sustain these attacks. it should be up shortly, along with the atheistfoundation.org.au site, the other site being hit.
Both were on different servers, and different IP’s .. bit of a ‘coincidence’ to say the least
As to who perpetrated the DDoS, who knows, we probably will not know.
People seem to be protesting by adding the hash tag #censorship. I am not a twit(terer) but I thought you might be interested.
I don’t have time to hunt down sources right now, but it might be worth researching the similar censoring of #luciferiscoming a couple of months back – it was an ironic expression of excitement for the season premiere of the TV show Supernatural, not a push by Satanists, but it was taken that way by religious types who react before reading. This trend, too, was subsequently removed by Twitter. Interesting?
I wonder why ignore the fact that communism as an atheistic regime sought to silence Christians and other religious people because they saw religion as evil? Not to mention the early Roman empire which also persecuted believers in another God, because it did not fit with their polytheism or emperor worship of the first century?
Surely the matter of openness (or bigotry) can’t just be directed against religious people? Isn’t it more honest to say that we all get threatened when someone attacks our belief position – whether that be a commitment to theism, atheism, or religious practice?
@Philip – thank you for your comment.
To tie atheism and communism together is akin to tying Catholicism and child sexual abuse together – it can happen, but the two aren’t inseparable… and it is a somewhat tired argument that has been done to death and effectively debunked.
One should, I believe, attempt to focus on the actions of atheists in democracies and compare and contrast them to the actions of theists in democracies, that is probably more of an apples and apples comparison.
The issue here is that people are attempting to censor people for *not believing* – which to me is somewhat odd.
If I engage with a religious person in a theological discussion, I don’t attempt to shout them down, I merely ask them to lend weight and credence to their position using logic, critical thinking and reason.
Not too much to ask I feel.
@qaphsiel, Davo, Bruceh, Leisabet – thank you for your comments and contributions
Yet many Atheists are content with there belief system that they don’t need to resort to violence or DDOS attacks.
“Not too much to ask I feel.”
hehe Judas, a belief that was never based on logic wont be destroyed by logic. I have given up on such arguments a long time ago(after plenty of attempts… I attended a fundamentalist christian school for a while.. that was painful). These arguments become frustratingly illogical and unreasonable very quickly.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by leapingjudas: My thoughts on the past 48 hours of attempted suppression of free thought http://bit.ly/3hTwww – #nogod #atheist #religion…
Thanks for speaking out on this topic. I came late to that #nogod Twitter party and so didn’t participate, but I did find the vitriol from the theists quite remarkable. I don’t like hate speech of any kind, so I appreciate your thoughtful examination of the issue. Someone sent me a Ghostbusters Youtube video last night and said that atheist activists were the new Ghostbusters, then he said that these are “dangerous times” for those who don’t believe. I don’t like to think like that, but he might be right. History tells us that the religious tend to be proactive in silencing opposition. You’re right to call this hacker attack of atheist websites, a modern crusade.