John W. Ratcliff
John W. Ratcliff is a noted game developer and the founder of the controversial website AARM.
Game Development
Ratcliff's began his career as a software developer writing educational software as well as computer programs supporting cardiovascular research at the St. Louis University Hospital.
He took a job with Electronic Arts in the 80's, and created the first 256 color VGA game 688 Attack Sub. Several years later, he followed up with a sequel entitled SSN-21 Seawolf, again to critical acclaim, and in 1997 released the game Scarab.
Ratcliff's most recent title was CyberStrike 2, published in 1998 by 989 Studios and more recently by Planetside. Ratcliff is also credited in Car & Driver (1992) and MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995).
Ratcliff continues to be an active member of the game development community and has been a contributing author to such magazines as Dr. Dobb's Journal. Currently, he works for Ageia Technologies, where his role is to provide open source tools and technology to facilitate the integration of physics into games.
Ratcliff especially enjoys teaching on the subject of computer technology, with special emphasis on algorithms. He also speaks at conferences, and most recently spoke at game|tech 2004.
Webpages
Ratcliff is the founder and creator of AARM, which stands for 'Atheist Apologetics Research Ministry.' As its founder, Ratcliff has the technical ability to moderate the AARM Forums. The name of the site is a play on words referring to the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, founded by Matt Slick.
Ratcliff began AARM up as a reaction to the moderated nature of CARM's forums, and in response to a perception that atheists were being systematically excluded from those forums. Ratcliff has expressed a preference for unmoderated discussion forums for the purpose of discussing controversial subjects, stating "Why subject yourself to 'their' rules? It doesn't make any sense at all to me."
Beliefs
Despite creating an "atheist" website, Ratcliff is not an atheist. He describes himself as a Pantheist influenced by "Neo-Platonism, quantum physics, the Seth Material by Jane Roberts, and the works of Robert Anton Wilson." Ratcliff practices Wilson's confrontational and controversial practice of guerilla ontology."
Controversy
Critics of John Ratcliff from the Evangelical website CARM charge that Ratcliff is negligent for failing to use moderation to edit or remove unspecified comments allegedly amounting to slander and libel from the AARM website. They also disapprove of unmoderated boards, where people are permitted to make personal attacks and use profanity and other foul language.
Critics also point out that Ratcliff at one point described himself as a troll in the context of posting to CARM's moderated discussion boards. [1]
Ratcliff's supporters believe that criticism of Ratcliff amounts to little more than a reflection of CARM's disapproval of AARM and of unmoderated discussion in general. [2]