The Atheist Experience 931 with Matt Dillahunty and Tracie Harris 

I was confirmed when I was 13 to make my grandparents happy (I never believed). The next time I went to that church was when I was 39 to attend the funeral of my only sibling, an alcoholic. I sat through our friends' recollections and eulogies, then the same reverend that confirmed me got up, and after a long silence intoned, "Let us pray". I then stood up, squeezed out of the pew to dead silence, past the reverend, and out the door. I believe my brother would have been proud.

This was one of the best episodes bc Matt does not swear and get angry and the callers are all intellectually honest and they had a great productive conversation with every caller. I am going to use this episode to pass on to theists who are in the process of transitioning to becoming secular.

Aaron was a great caller! Intellectual, empathetic and genuine. I hope everything works out for you, Aaron;)

Poor Brian, trying to explain his imaginary friend into existence

I don’t need god to tell me something is wrong when a woman walking down the street barefoot, with a baby in a nappy when it’s cold.

I feel really bad for brian. He sounds like a kid that has grown up in a very christian family and is realizing he may be wrong and is terrified

The computer program argument may be the best argument I ever heard from Matt. It is now my goto.

I hope Brian isn't still teaching Sunday school.

Traci: "We have lot's of fans." Matt completely missed it.

Hahaha Randall. That was a good one. Why is carbon a 6 on the periodic table? Also a shame that Brian didn't continue the path he was on when he called in 2014. Probably a stronger believer after nearly losing his Faith.

I think one of the things that helped me conceptualized not believing in a God when I was Christian was asking myself that if I was a selfish person, how could religion serve my needs? and when I thought about that and thought about the nature of human beings especially in positions of power, it made all the more sense why people in the past would have used doctrine to control what the general population thinks. We see it in media all the time. Only back then they didn’t have phones and TVs

It says in the bible, "i want people to believe like children"

I always suspected my parents got impatient with my questions and so told me to look it up myself. I figured they knew the answer but didn't want to take the time to explain it to me. In contrast it seems most parents want to always give an answer even if they don't know, they don't want their child to think they're stupid, and a child will just assume their parents know everything anyway. At least until they become teenagers.

Now I wonder what happened to the first caller

Idk why but it would be interesting to me to know the ages of some of these people ..

Why would you want to take a position, make claims and argue, when you haven't looked up a single concerning fact or thought about the claim even for a second. Btw it's called carbon 14 because it has 6 protons (which determines what element it is), and 8 neutrons (which determines which isotope it is). 6+8=14, and that's why it's called carbon 14.

There would be some people who just drive by rather than stopping to help someone in need. Some of them christians. They didn't have time to stop...they were too busy counting the hits and ignoring the misses.

I didn't even know 'camp' could be religious. I went to YMCA camp and, despite the 'C', it wasn't Christian at all. In fact, there was a vague Native American spiritualism on the first and last day ceremonies -- which I think is great because we (non-native) children didn't see that as part of a belief system, but just part of the experience of living in the woods and doing nature stuff (though maybe it was a little racist by today's standards!)

The video quality is making it hard to keep watching, but I have faith that the all knowing god of science, Darwin will FIX the skips and gaps! Praise Charlie!

Whoa... the comment section isn't disabled for this episode... cool.

There are billions of other reasons why somebody can have as a reason for an experience,, there's simply way more than one way, one reason, one explanation, one deduction... there can be an infinite amount... it's about creativity instead of being lazy in ones own head/thoughts. about giving reason instead of God OR Supernatural OR .... Brian the caller, admitted he couldn't tell if his experience was wrong, but that is not true. A person may not be able to ask of themself if an experience were right but they can for sure gain an understanding that they are wrong. He obviously hasn't even tried to prove to himself that his own experiences don't have other logical explanations. Most people who just assume supernatural don't actually try to test themself. they don't try to even give another reason to themselves as an option. If you think there's only one option to explain your experience, then you haven't yet tried the billion or other reasons for why your experience could be explained.. Gr8! Peace ☮💜

I've seen Matt demolish faith with logic many times, why is he holding back??? (Brian)

What is that audio *quality* wow. You guys should have taken Skype calls from the get go

I'll tell you this I am a hard core atheist and I resent that I was baptized. I wish there was some way to undo that because it happened without my consent.

Brian is slow lol

on Brian's objection about 1000 people having 1000 different stories... yes, 1000 people will have 1000 different stories, even about some thing that happened that we KNOW beyond a doubt happened. In fact, we can literally use that (and police and other investigators DO use that all the time) to determine if people are telling the truth. If two people give exactly the same story, it usually means they are lying and they created the story between them on purpose. There will always be some differences between people's perceptions of an incident, and how widely that perception tends to vary can be used to determine not only how accurately they remember the thing, but to piece together the most likely actual occurrence (within the bounds of reason)

Wish you would have sound that works properly. Keeps cutting out for me. Unfortunately I have to leave. Maybe invest in better equipment if you're podcasting.

58:00 Brian invokes "No True Supernaturalist" fallacy.

Should you not tell them … It never ends .. suppose your kid is gay …. Suppose you divorce .. mine is and I did. You can’t let them dictate how you live your life.

The last caller (Randall: Akron, OH) was clearly a joker trying to make fun of creationists. Nobody is that dumb.

on Tracie's story about the woman with the babies in the cold... unless the woman driving was the only car to pass her, I'd be willing to bet at least some of the other vehicles that passed her and didn't bother to stop were "Christians"...

I wonder how Aaron & his family are doing?

Tracie single?....God I hope so...no pun intended...he,he

Even though evolution is a fact, I don't think you could use radiometric dating to verify it.

Hey Brian, is there any God/religion that you could believe in an not claim "faith" as the foundation for that belief? Therefore "faith" is not a pathway to truth. (fact)

Randall is a troll.

58:00 it's called cognitive dissonance

I'm a catholic athiest. 🤷‍♂️😁

I miss this matt. Who didn't have to apologize for calling someone stupid and stomping on everyone. These days there is an apology after anything even close. And now when someone like that matrix guy calls, matt says he understands why they think that and etc. This whole show lost its balls after the whole transgender athlete war. Matt's the only one left and now he tries to be a better sensitive to the callers. I mean he can't even say "woman" or "female" anymore. Now we have to know the person's sexual identity before addressing them. Now we have to say cis Infront of shit. We've gone our human existence using male and female man and woman. Why does everyone need to be burdened changing what they are to accommodate a break in the path. We can't we just add. If a woman is on line 3, say it. If she wants to be called something different, then she can tell us. We can't keep being offended. Being a just in case society. Tolerance is preached but it's not what we got. We got tolerant in only one direction. It goes both ways. If a she wants to be a they, SHE needs to tolerate people who have a hard time talking about them as plural. Matt says we don't give words away to religions. Same here. Me saying " did you and THEY have a nice time tonight?". "Is THEY going to the party tonight?". I have to bring my speach down to third grade ebonics level just to fit tolerance into a sentence. How about we keep the words and learn new ones for new changes. Not butcher our current language. Words are pointers. You know EXACTLY what I mean when I say "is SHE going to be at dinner?" If SHE is not going to be tolerant then give a new, non plural, non currently used words. If tolerance means changing woman to ciswoman, what's the fucking difference. If woman means generally woman and ciswoman men's in general woman, why the change? Add not butcher

The audio is total shiiiiiiiiitttt....

Social distancing? 😠😠😠😠 I'm just kidding

Tracy makes me sin because im looking lustfully

WOW.. Carbon 14.. lol... wtf!!!