Atheist trolls

The new atheist Richard Dawkins has encouraged his supporters to go beyond humorous ridicule. He wrote, "I lately started to think that we need to go further: go beyond humorous ridicule, sharpen our barbs to a point where they really hurt." See: Atheism and mockery

Reverend Mattew P. Schneider wrote concerning atheist trolls:

“

Two weeks ago, I posted a version of the popular meme-like format of “Don’t say it.” It pointed out the logical inconsistencies of atheists online. This lead to days of atheists trolling me with 100s of tweets in reply. I want to share a bit with you so you can respond when atheists come after you online. I know a few who have faltered when faced with an online atheist onslaught and my purpose is to help strengthen you in case you experience something like this. Throughout the five days of being trolled and seeing 100s of atheist messages, they seem to fall into a limited number of repeated errors. Many of these errors are forms of confirmation bias or assuming what they are trying to prove.

”

Internet trolls often employ mockery and atheists have a history of engaging in mockery (see: Atheism and mockery). In his article, Mockery - the M.O. for atheists, Matt Barber discusses an incident in which the Freedom From Religion Foundation encouraged atheists to engage in tactics which Barber considers to be acts of hateful mockery.

Atheist trolls and abnormal psychological makeup

See also: Atheism and sadism and Atheism and psychopathy and Atheism and mental illness

The abstract for the journal article Trolls just want to have fun published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences indicates:

"In two online studies (total N = 1215), respondents completed personality inventories and a survey of their Internet commenting styles. Overall, strong positive associations emerged among online commenting frequency, trolling enjoyment, and troll identity, pointing to a common construct underlying the measures. Both studies revealed similar patterns of relations between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality: trolling correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, using both enjoyment ratings and identity scores. Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the relationship was specific to trolling behavior. Enjoyment of other online activities, such as chatting and debating, was unrelated to sadism. Thus cyber-trolling appears to be an Internet manifestation of everyday sadism."

A few studies have found that there is a positive correlation of atheism and psychopathy (see: Atheism and psychopathy.

Vox Day on dealing with aggressive atheists online

"Every man has built a roof over his head to shield himself at the point of tension… The Christian lovingly, must remove the shelter and allow the truth of the external world and of what man is to beat upon him.” - Francis Schaeffer See: Francis Schaeffer's "taking the roof off" method of apologetics

On September 4, 2011, Vox Day wrote concerning the evolutionist and atheist PZ Myers:

“

As for the PZ Myers Memorial Debate, we are still in search of an atheist to champion the argument that the logic and evidence for the nonexistence of gods is stronger than the logic and evidence for the existence of gods. It is certainly informative to see how many atheists do not appear to believe they are able to effectively make this case; in light of this, many Christians may find this to be a useful tactical approach when confronted by aggressive atheists in the future. This tends to confirm my previous observations that while atheists like to challenge the beliefs of others, they are very ill-prepared, and in many cases downright unwilling, to defend their own. So, if you want to shut them up, simply go on the attack. They'll run away with alacrity.

”

See also:

• Rebuttals to atheist arguments
• Responses to atheist arguments
• Francis Schaeffer's "taking the roof off" method of apologetics

Atheism debates:

• Atheism debates
• President of the British Humanism Association pulling out of a debate
• Richard Dawkins and debate
• Dr. Michael Martin backing out of his scheduled debate with Dr. Greg Bahnsen
• Prominent atheists being afraid/reluctant to debate conservative Christians
• Creation vs. evolution debates
• Atheism and cowardice

See also

• Mocking of atheism
• Atheism and humor