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Matt Dillahunty

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A god that does not manifest in reality is indistinguishable from a god that does not exist.

Matt Dillahunty (born March 31, 1969) is a public speaker, internet personality and the former president of the "Atheist Community Of Austin". He hosts the live internet radio show Non-Prophets Radio and the Austin-based public-access television show The Atheist Experience. He is also the founder and contributor of the counter-apologetics encyclopedia Iron Chariots and its subsidiary sites.

He is regularly engaged in formal debates and travels the United States speaking to local secular organizations and university groups as part of the Secular Student Alliance's Speakers Bureau.

Quotes

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  • I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible.
  • It's a meaningless panacea when we invent a god that can do anything and be anything… It serves as an answer to every question and an explanation for nothing.
  • While many Christians claim divine revelation — some even claiming that the truth has been revealed to them in such a way that there's no possibility that they could be wrong — there's hardly any points of doctrine upon which all these purported conduits of divine revelation agree. Which means that some if not all of them are wrong. And if you want to know what's wrong with Judaism, you ask a Christian. If you want to know what's wrong with Christianity, you ask a Muslim. If you want to know what's wrong with Catholicism, or Protestantism, or Calvinism, Hypercalvinism, Neocalvinism, Southern Baptists, the Church of Christ, or the First Baptist Church of Memphis, you can go to the Second Baptist Church of Memphis or any other denomination.

The Atheist Experience

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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into The Atheist Experience. (Discuss)
A god that rewards credulity, a god that sanctions slavery, is unworthy of any kind of reverence or respect or devotion.
The Catholic Church is not a necessary organization. It is a nonsensical organization; a bunch of fat lazy do-nothings who have been living off the public dole for centuries.
  • You are better than your god. You are better than your religion. So am I, so is damn near everybody on the planet. I wish you people would wake up and see this. Stop apologizing for this! [holds up The Bible] It's not the Good Book, there's nothing good about it. All it does is poison minds. All it does is make you sacrifice your humanity— the only thing that you have that is of any value— in order to sit around in deference to your gods.
  • I made a list of things that I might consider sin if the concept of sin were valid:
    Number 1: Credulity, gullibility. I'd say that's a sin.
    Voluntary willful ignorance. I'd say that's a sin.
    Letting fear prevent you from understanding reality. I'd call that a sin.
    Limiting the rights and freedoms of others in order to make them abide by your standards. That's a sin.
    Sacrificing the mental, emotional and physical well-being of a child in deference to your religion. That's a sin.
    Wasting the one and only life that you know you're going to have, worrying about and working for an afterlife that somebody told you might be there. That's a sin.
  • Your god isn't real. He's not moral. The Bible isn't moral. Islam isn't moral. None of these religious systems— anything that deteriorates the value of human beings, anything that hangs on to Bronze Age ideals about genocide and slavery and murder and deference to higher powers. None of those things are moral. We've graduated beyond that, and I'm sorry that we've had to drag religions kicking and screaming into the 21st century, but some of you gotta let this stuff go. You're not gonna get anywhere until you realize that it's OK not to be afraid. It's OK to say, "you know, I think slavery is wrong. I think slavery was probably always wrong. I think that you're a good person, and yeah it does sound like a crappy system."
  • A god that rewards credulity, a god that sanctions slavery, is unworthy of any kind of reverence or respect or devotion.
  • And yet people ask what's the harm of religion - and we cite all these different problems with religion: the global gag-rules and things like that , the oppression of different people - but there's a bigger harm with religion, and it's the reason why I'm outspoken about it, and that's because the average feel-good Johnny-in-the-pew person who is decent and kind and loving and good to their family and generally a good person to be around has polluted their mind to the point where they are unable to take credit for their accomplishments and responsibility for their actions. They are unable to interact on an interpersonal level with the people around them, to build a community in this cooperative society where that is absolutely essential. They have got this mentality that they are worthless without God.
  • Despite people's claims to the contrary, I think that a proper application of skepticism when viewing religious claims does necessarily lead to atheism.
  • Your position is ... one where there is a god who has an important message for mankind, and somehow he only reveals it to certain individuals who then write this down and thousands of years after this initial revelation, we have to rely on copies of copies of translations of copies by anonymous authors with no originals, and the textual testimony to a miracle, for example the loaves and fishes; there’s no amount of reports - anecdotal testimonial reports - that could be sufficient to justify that this event actually happened as reported. No amount. And anything that would qualify as a god would clearly understand this, and if it wanted to convey this information to people in a way that was believable, would not be relying on text to do so, and this for me is the nail in the coffin for Christianity. The god that Christians believe in is amazingly stupid if it wants to actually achieve its goal of spreading this information to humanity by relying on text; by relying on languages that die out; by relying on anecdotal testimony. That's not a pathway to truth! And anything that would qualify for a god should know this, which means either that God doesn’t exist or it doesn't care enough about those people who understand the nature of evidence to actually present it. Now which of those possibilities do you think is accurate?" ... "Why would you believe anything on faith? Faith isn't a pathway to truth. Every religion has some sort of faith, people take things on, you know, - if faith is your pathway, you can't distinguish between Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, any of these others. How is it that you use reason as a path to truth in every endeavor of your life, and then when it comes to the ‘ultimate truth’ - the most important truth - you're saying that faith is required. And how does that reflect on a god (who supposedly exists and wants you to have this information); what kind of god requires faith instead of evidence? ... I have reasonable expectations based on evidence. I have trust that has been earned. I will grant trust tentatively. I don't have faith. Faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have evidence.
  • Evidently god stupidly created a system where the devil wins by default. Okay, I'm gonna set up this game with you and I'm gonna give you all the chips and the chips have to voluntarily choose to come over to my side of the table. Who sets up a game like that?!
    • Episode 697: Family Values (February 20, 2011)
  • So basically what you're saying is you believe this to be true despite the fact that you have no evidence to support that [statement]
    • Episode 452: People who hate people (June 11, 2011)
  • Existence is a temporal condition.
    • Episode 753 (March 18, 2012)
  • The police [enforcement institution] is a necessary organization and [in the cases where it is corrupt and/or abusive] it’s worth reforming. The Catholic Church is not a necessary organization. It is a nonsensical organization; a bunch of fat lazy do-nothings who have been living off the public dole for centuries. The fact that they can do good, is a testament to the fact that there are good people who will do good. But the organization is corrupt, it is poison to its core and it serves no essential good purpose – no true purpose. It’s lie after lie, promoting harm to real people and you can sit there and engage in histrionics and yelling at yourself [while] on-hold all you want, but the Catholic Church is not a force for good and fuck you for saying so.
    • Episode 771: "Godparents", Channel Austin (July 22, 2012)
  • I don't think it's an accurate definition of morality.
    • Episode 803 (March 3, 2013)
  • You could kill me right now and I will be permanently dead, and I would willing do that if would end world hunger and poverty. That's a sacrifice! Saying I'm gonna let some people beat me and torture me and kill me, and a day and a half I'm gonna rise up and become what I was before, (...) That's not a sacrifice, that's a bad weekend!
    • Episode 24.04 (January 26, 2020) from The Atheist Experience (Link is unavailable on YouTube)
  • No no no no no! No! You're done!
    • Episode 607 (May 31, 2009) from The Atheist Experience Episode 607

See also

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