Matt Dillahunty is the main host of The Atheist Experience, that I’ve mentioned before. Matt’s a very smart guy. Every now and again he lets his ego get the better of him when dealing with callers but on this occasion he was on fire.
A few weeks back, there was a caller named John. Matt asked whether John thinks that as an atheist he should go to hell. Over and over again, John replies that it’s not his decision and only God can decide. In the end, Matt gets so frustrated with the inability of John to think for himself that he hangs up on him and launches into this fantastic rant:
Right inside of you right now, dealing with those difficult questions, there is a moral struggle where you’re beginning to realise that you are more moral than the God that they forced you to believe, that they’ve conned you into accepting. You don’t believe that I necessarily deserve to go to hell for exercising the ‘free will’ that you think your God gave me. You don’t think that the dictates of a conscience, whether or not somebody believes, is a sufficient justification for eternal torture, and yet you’re just too damn cowardly to say it!
You are better than your God, you are better than your religion, so am I, so is Don (co-host) so is damn near everybody on the planet. I wish you people would wake up and see this. Stop apologising for this! (holds bible up) 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.
This perfectly sums up what I find most disturbing, dangerous and downright offensive about religion – namely brainwashing, deference and the loss of personal identity.
Part 2 is the best bit but you can watch part 1 here if you like.