As can be seen by the screen capture of his Twitter account, David Silverman, ex-president of the American Atheists, after leaving two atheist organizations amid sexual harassment allegations, calls himself a former atheist activist.
In terms of its editor base and content, the website RationalWiki skews left of center politically and the majority of editor base are atheists/agnostics.
For the last decade, atheists, humanists and others secularists have worked hard to organize a “secular vote” that would counter the political clout of the religious right.
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory dealt that movement a body blow when he garnered 81 percent of the white evangelical vote and 60 percent of the white Catholic vote. Mormons, too, voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
Despite Trump’s not being a particularly religious person, his platform was seen as anti-secular in many atheist and humanist circles. He said he would appoint religiously conservative Supreme Court justices, ban Muslim immigrants, favor Christianity and repeal the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits certain tax-exempt organizations from endorsing political candidates — issues antithetical to organized atheism and humanism.
The U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump, is a judge who has ruled in favor of religious liberty in his past decisions.U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was also nominated to the court by Trump, gave a favorable ruling in the Hobby Lobby case in respect to religious liberty. At the 2018 American Atheists National Convention, the ex-president of the American Atheists organization David Silverman declared about atheist movement post President Donald Trump's election:
It is a hard time to be an atheist activist. This has affected us. And it has affected our community...
...it has really affected us. We are suffering a level of defeatism that I have never seen before...
We feel the loss. And we feel like we have lost. We feel like we lost the election]]... We see this cascade of attack coming down at us over and over from all different directions and we feel like it's over. I have heard so many times it makes me sick. It makes me sad. It feels like we lost.
The apathy that follows. It doesn't matter. We can't win anyways. It's useless to fight. This apathy is infecting us. It's hurting us.
And people are reacting to each other now. And so that is causing a division. Lots and lots of division in our movement. Hard, bad division... And that has resulted in a splintering and factioning of the movement that I have never seen before and none of us have.
In other words, we're in a bad situation and it's getting worse.
In January of 2017, the atheist and secular leftist PZ Myerssaid about Donald Trump's presidential victory:
This span of time representing the agonizing death of American idealism, decline of liberalism, and collapse into corruption has played out as the background of my life.
That’s depressing. History is not going to remember me, but I managed to live through a terrible period that will be remembered, unpleasantly. It would be nice to go out on a note of optimism, but that’s probably not going to happen.
The website Marketwatch reported concerning the aftermath of the 2016 presidential race: Trump’s win is causing a surge in demand for mental health services.
In 2019, John Feffer wrote at the left leaning The Nation:
In the Americas, the Trump tsunami has swept across both continents and the 'pink tide' of progressivism has all but disappeared from the southern half of the hemisphere...
In this planet-wide rising tide of right-wing populism, the liberal left commands only a few disconnected islands — Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, Uruguay... Worse, crafty operators with even more ambitious agendas stand ready to destroy the liberal status quo once and for all.
So how much did Donald Trump's 2016 victory affect RationalWiki and its editor base?
In May of 2020, former RationalWiki Foundation board member and admin GrammarCommie reported that: he was cutting himself; he had thoughts of wanting to die and that he had feelings of low self worth. During this time, RationalWiki editor LeafyGreen Mario indicated that GrammarComie's mental health crisis was affecting the mental health of the rest of RationalWikians.
On May 17, 2020, the RationalWiki administrator who goes by the moniker DuceMoosolini, stated that RationalWiki "attracts all sorts of weird people".
On May 24, 2020, the RationalWiki administrator Oxyaena wrote: "it's just that i am probably raging too much most of the time to form coherent sentences."
On May 24, 2020, the RationalWiki editor who goes by the moniker Amassivegay indicated: "I am never sure I am even coherent most of the time."
Please look at the Google Trends graph below for Google searches for the term RationalWiki in the United States.
April 14, 2014 was the peak month of people Googling the term RationalWiki according to Google Trends. Post Trump inauguration things were more subdued in terms of people Googling the term RationalWiki so there were no spikes near the value of 100. By the time Trump left office, Google searches for the term RationalWiki was far less than the day Donald Trump was inaugurated.
The Freedom From Atheism Foundation was founded in response the Freedom From Religion Foundation and other like-minded militant atheistic organizations.
Dan Barker is a co-founder and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Writing on the sexism within the atheist community, atheist Victoria Bekiempis wrote in a Guardian article entitled Why the New Atheism is a boys' club:
Annie Laurie Gaylor, who founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation with her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, in 1978, sums it up succinctly: “One word — sexism.” Gaylor’s husband, Dan Barker, who helms the organization along with her, is usually the one invited to speaking engagements, despite her longer tenure as the organization’s leader and her numerous books on atheism.
However, as can be seen below, Google Trends shows a marked decrease in the searches at Google for the term "Dan Barker" in the period from 2004 to 2020.
In addition, Google Trends shows a marked decrease in the searches at Google for the term "Annie Laurie Gaylor" in the period from 2004 to 2020 as can be seen below:
The Religion News Service reported:
For the last decade, atheists, humanists and others secularists have worked hard to organize a “secular vote” that would counter the political clout of the religious right.
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory dealt that movement a body blow when he garnered 81 percent of the white evangelical vote and 60 percent of the white Catholic vote. Mormons, too, voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
Despite Trump’s not being a particularly religious person, his platform was seen as anti-secular in many atheist and humanist circles. He said he would appoint religiously conservative Supreme Court justices, ban Muslim immigrants, favor Christianity and repeal the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits certain tax-exempt organizations from endorsing political candidates — issues antithetical to organized atheism and humanism.
The U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump, is a judge who has ruled in favor of religious liberty in his past decisions. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was also nominated to the court by Trump, gave a favorable ruling in the Hobby Lobby case in respect to religious liberty. And Donald Trump is the favorite in 2020 and he very well might replace Ruther Bader Ginsberg with a right-wing conservative very much in favor of religious liberty. Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, expect the Google searches for your names to go further down while the Google searches for God and Jesus in the world continue to go up and up! And expect many of your future atheist lawsuits to hit Donald Trump's wall of religious liberty!
Next, according to Google Trends, worldwide searches at Google for the terms God and Jesus are up from the period of 2004 to 2020 as can be seen below:
On behalf of Freedom From Atheism Foundation, it supporters and all of Christendom, the Examining Atheism blog declares total and glorious victory over the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor!
The Christian internet evangelism organization Global Media Outreach indicates that as of September 2019 over 1.9 billion gospel visits have occurred on their websites.
On the other hand, no atheist organization has ever accomplished such a web marketing feat. In fact, internet atheism has been in a slump since 2011.
Consider these two questions:
1. Has the global market share of leading atheist websites plunged since at least 2011?
2. Is global atheism declining as a percentage of the world population and will it decline in an accelerated fashion in the 21st century?
Decline of internet atheism post 2011
Here are some web traffic graphs from leading atheists websites taken from the leading website web traffic companies of Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, SEMrush along with some data from Google Trends.
1. 2004 to 2020 Google searches for the terms atheist, atheism, agnostic and agnosticism according to Google trends
2. New atheist Richard Dawkins - Google Trends data 2004 to 2020
Richardawkins.net - Quantcast data 12-28-2011 to 12-21-2012
Richarddawkins.net web traffic according to Alexa.com:
Richarddawkins.net Compete.com internet traffic data for 4/2011 to 4/2012:
3. Atheist PZ Myers - Google trends data 2004 to 2020
4. Atheist Christopher Hitchens - Google Trends data 2004 to 2020
5. Atheist Dan Barker - Google Trends data 2004 t0 2020
6. Freethoughtblogs.com
The web traffic of Freethought Blogs saw a dramatic decline from June 2019 to September 2019 according to the web traffic tracking company Alexa.
On June 23, 2019, Freethought Blogs was the 90,953th most popular website in the world according to Alexa, but by September 23, 2019 Freethought Blogs was merely the 170,112th most popular website in the world according to Alexa.
Freethoughtblogs.com 2012 - web traffic according to Alexa.com:
7. Infidels.org
The atheistic website Secular Web declares about itself, "By providing information which is nearly impossible to find elsewhere, the Secular Web has sought to level the playing field by offering arguments and evidence challenging supernatural beliefs."
From January 2015 to December 2019, the Secular Web saw a steep loss of Google referral traffic according to the online visibility and marketing analytics company SEMrush (Google traffic is commonly called organic traffic by web marketing professionals).
According to Google, "To give you the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors, including the words of your query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources... To help ensure Search algorithms meet high standards of relevance and quality, we have a rigorous process that involves both live tests and thousands of trained external Search Quality Raters from around the world."
It would seem that the Secular Web's "information" is hard to find period! If only atheists had proof and evidence that showed the validity of the atheist worldview, then a popular search engine that begins with a G would find them more relevant and also deem them to have more expertise! Miss G is quite demanding in her expectations, however - much to the chagrin of atheists worldwide!
The Secular Web website experienced a large drop in its global market share from November 29, 2019 to December 29, 2019 according to the web traffic tracking company Alexa. Specifically, the Secular Web website went from being the 315,007th most popular website in the world to being the 577,111th most popular website during this period according to Alexa.
Infidels.org Compete.com internet traffic data for 6/2/07 to 7/30/11
8. American Atheists at Atheists.org
Atheists.org Compete.com internet traffic data for 6/2/07 to 7/30/11:
Atheists.org Compete.com internet traffic data for 4/2011 to 4/2012:
9. Atheist James Randi - Google trends data 2004 to 2020
10. Skeptic Michael Shermer - Google trends data 2004 to 2020
11. The Orbit
In 2016, The Orbit website lost a considerable amount of its global market share according to the web traffic tracking company Alexa. On September 4, 2017 it was the 357,369th most popular website in the world according to Alexa. On January 14, 2020, Alexa ranked The Orbit the 924,521th most popular website in the world.
12. Other atheist websites which have seen a decline in web traffic
Internet atheism has been an abysmal failure!
In 2007, the Bible believer Chuck Norris noted that atheists were making a concerted effort to spread atheism via the internet. As you you can see above, it has been an abysmal failure! The atheist community flooded the internet with a lot of shallow, ill-reasoned fluff that many in the public quickly dismissed.
Atheists, you forgot one of the most important rules of Business 101: When you have a very bad product, increasing the advertising budget is not going to make it a long term success! And atheism is definitely an errant worldview - see the web resource: Atheism
Is atheism boring or are atheists bad digital marketers who have difficulty understanding search engine algorithms? Or is it both? Oh atheists, feel the sting!
The Decline of atheism - an established trend - other resources
Public domain, see: http://www.bestthinking.com/thinkers/business_and_finance/sales_and_marketing/consumer_behavior/ekant-veer?tab=blog&blogpostid=16381%2c16381
The atheistic website Secular Web declares about itself, "By providing information which is nearly impossible to find elsewhere, the Secular Web has sought to level the playing field by offering arguments and evidence challenging supernatural beliefs."
From January 2015 to December 2019, the Secular Web saw a steep loss of Google referral traffic according to the online visibility and marketing analytics company SEMrush (Google traffic is commonly called organic traffic by web marketing professionals).
According to Google, "To give you the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors, including the words of your query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources... To help ensure Search algorithms meet high standards of relevance and quality, we have a rigorous process that involves both live tests and thousands of trained external Search Quality Raters from around the world."
It would seem that the Secular Web's "information" is hard to find period! If only atheists had proof and evidence that showed the validity of the atheist worldview, then a popular search engine that begins with a G would find them more relevant and also deem them to have more expertise! Miss G is quite demanding in her expectations, however - much to the chagrin of atheists worldwide!
The Secular Web website experienced a large drop in its global market share from November 29, 2019 to December 29, 2019 according to the web traffic tracking company Alexa. Specifically, the Secular Web website went from being the 315,007th most popular website in the world to being the 577,111th most popular website during this period according to Alexa.
