The Atheist Experience
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The Atheist Experience is a weekly online (formerly also broadcast on public access television) talk show based in Austin, Texas, paid for and broadcast by the Atheist Community of Austin.[1] The show has been on the air since 1997 and takes calls from viewers as well as featuring discussions about the reasons for not believing in God. It was hosted by Matt Dillahunty, a former Baptist seminarian turned atheist,[2] and Russell Glasser. Former hosts include Jeff Dee, Martin Wagner (an American artist, cartoonist and film maker), and Ashley Perrien.
The show became notable through some extremely stupid callers, videos of which went viral on YouTube. Often their callers may engage in PRATT type arguments, while others would just be hilariously wrong, such as a man who didn't believe that your body could contain naturally-occurring electricity, because you would then be electrocuted in the shower,[3] and a quote mine so tired and old that Glasser was able to bring up the full quote on his laptop before the caller had even started reading it out.[4]
In the summer of 2009, due to renovations in the Austin public access studio, the show was not broadcast live on public access but through self-described "Guerrilla TV" format with a camera set up in Matt Dillahunty's apartment and streamed on the internet. The recordings were submitted to Austin public access for taped broadcast.[5] Subsequent changes in Austin public access policy also cut the length of the show by 30 minutes down to one hour.
In March of 2010, they had a live debate with Ray Comfort.[6]
The unofficial blog for the show became a member of Freethought Blogs on September 29, 2011,[7] although PZ Myers would expel them on May 2019 because of them embracing a transphobic YouTuber known as Rationality Rules.
In August 2015, the show stopped airing on Channel Austin and switched to a solely online format, with callers instructed to message a Skype account instead of calling a telephone number. Due to this change, the shows went back to the 1 hour 30 minutes format.
Iron Chariots.org[edit]
Iron Chariots was a wiki founded by Matt Dillahunty, writing under the name Sans Deity. Iron Chariots focused on providing responses to Christian apologetics. The site also had a forum.
The name is derived from a Biblical verse in which God appears to be stymied by iron chariots:
And the LORD was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron. — Judges 1:19
This is commonly reckoned to be an amusing contradiction of the idea that God is omnipotent.[8]
External links[edit]
- The website
- Available in Podcast Form
- Official Youtube channel
- Iron Chariots wiki - Considerably more narrowly focused, much less snarky (currently offline, July 2018), Dump of site on archive.org
- Active fork of the Iron Chariots wiki: Religions Wiki
References[edit]
- ↑ Atheist Community of Austin's home page
- ↑ http://www.atheist-experience.com/people/matt_dillahunty/
- ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9rh8m-KZSk#t=4m22s
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfFXH3VqcCM
- ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKANzIAR7wk
- ↑ Ray Comfort on The Atheist Experience - Full Debate (High Quality)
- ↑ Introduction: The show
- ↑ 170. Can God stop iron chariots?, Skeptics Annotated Bible