New Atheist Domains

June 1, 2008 By Guest Contributor 10 Comments

Len at Blogesque noticed a slight problem when he was looking for Christopher Hitchens‘ website.

Google seemed to turn up some non-personal results. (Granted, there is a website with Hitchens’ published works, but it doesn’t look like a personal site.)

Then, Len tried to manually type in christopherhitchens.com… and then christopherhitchens.net… and so on. All the extensions he tried seemed to be owned by someone who was not Christopher Hitchens.

So he bought one of them for himself. And linked it to his own site.

He’ll give it to Hitchens, too. All he asks for are autographed copies of God Is Not Great and The Portable Atheist :)

But it raises the question of which websites are owned by the New Atheists. Do they own all the extensions on their own names?

Have their critics snatched them up first?

I tried to compile a list below.

To explain the last column:

In the Results section, “Good” means it is owned (or approved) by the atheist. Or it speaks favorably of them.

“Bad” means a critic has gotten to it. Or the atheist wouldn’t approve of it.

“Neutral” means it’s not an atheist-related site.

“Unknown” means I have no clue what’s going on.

If anyone figures out some of the unknown info — or finds any mistakes — let me know and I’ll update the chart.

New Atheist Extension Owner Result
Richard Dawkins .com Unknown Good
.net Josh Timonen/Richard Dawkins Foundation *Official Site* Good
.org Dennis Wagner/Access Research Network Bad
.info Petr O Kozyrev Unknown
Sam Harris .com Sam Harris (singer) Neither
.net Unknown Neither
.org Sam Harris *Official Site* Good
.info Sam Harris (singer) Neither
Daniel Dennett .com Unknown Unknown
.net Unknown Unknown
.org Unknown Unknown
.info Unknown Unknown
Christopher Hitchens .com Unknown Bad
.net Unknown Neither
.org Len at Blogesque Good
.info Christopher S. Pennington Unknown



[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]

Filed Under: General 10 Comments
  • http://www.efildenimaxenu.blogspot.com/ postdiluvian

    Hitchens has a site at http://buildupthatwall.com/

  • http://www.arthwollipot.com/ Arthwollipot

    Sure, cause everybody has a website these days, don’t they?

  • http://www.blogesque.com/ Len

    I didn’t think to extend it all the way out, thanks for finishing the thought. That’s a great chart, but there’s a small error: richarddawkins.com should be Unknown Unknown, not Unknown Good (starting to sound like Rumsfeld).

  • http://friendlyatheist.com Hemant Mehta

    I didn’t think to extend it all the way out, thanks for finishing the thought. That’s a great chart, but there’s a small error: richarddawkins.com should be Unknown Unknown, not Unknown Good (starting to sound like Rumsfeld).

    Actually, even though it’s not a Dawkins-approved site (I don’t think), it does speak favorably of him. By that measure, I’m calling it “good.”

  • http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/ miller

    richarddawkins.info appears to be positive or neutral (and Russian). Google translations are your friend.

    I’m not sure what goes on in the inner workings of the internet, but I suspect that when a domain is deleted, the powers that be often replace it with a bunch of automatically generated advertisements. This is what appears to be going on for several of the listed domains, including christopherhitchens.com, which you labeled as bad. The fact that christian bookstores are included in the advertisements looks like a coincidence to me.

  • http://www.otmatheist.com/ hoverFrog

    Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are English. What about .co.uk domains?

  • Vincent

    miller has it almost right.
    I forget which registrar it is, but one of them works this way:
    You want to register a name so you go to the name registry website and you check to see if the domain name is available. The registry site does a search, and if the name is not registered IT REGISTERS THE DOMAIN NAME!
    It then throws up a place holder site (with ads).
    Their stated reasoning is that you have expressed interest in the name so they are holding it for you (domain names can be held without fee for a few days) so nobody else registers it while you’re considering it. Of course the unstated reasoning is that now you HAVE to register it with them instead of someone cheaper like godaddy (if you now search for availability at another site it will show as unavailable) – unless you wait out the few days til their temporary registration expires. But as most don’t know that, they think they are stuck.

    So Miller just had it backwards. It’s not that the name has gone dormant, but that nobody has registered it except someone searched it through that particular registry.

  • http://atheistblogger.com Adrian Hayter

    The http://www.christopherhitchens.com isn’t a case of a critic getting hold of it, it’s a company that buys popular domains, places automated adverts on it, and then try to sell them for high prices.

    Since a load of searches for hitchens’ name will turn up results relating to christians and islam, that explains all the weird links. I wouldn’t call it “bad”, it’s only a robot making the best out of the information it’s given :P

    The other “bad” Richard Dawkins site seems to be down at the moment so I’m not sure about that one.

    Also, it seems some company called “crescent media” have purchased hemantmehta.com

  • Xeonicus

    Awww snap… those IDiots are parading around just like web spammers and other undesirables. Setting up a pro-ID site at http://www.richarddawkins.org? Feh… How desperate.

  • http://religiouscomics.net Jeff

    Perhaps I should check out the pro-Christian websites and try to guess which bloggers might make something of themselves and write a popular book and buy the domain name matching their name before they think to ;)