I've just blocked Matt Dillahunty on the Facebook page of a "friend" called "sweet little thing" (name hidden to protect the ignorant).
"sweet little thing" appears to have no other hobby than endlessly posting about atheism. A true atheist evangelist!
Matt Dillahunty went to high school. He is an American atheist activist and former president of the Atheist Community of Austin, a position he held from 2006 to 2013. Between 2005 and October 2022, Dillahunty was host of the televised webcast The Atheist Experience. He formerly hosted the live Internet radio show Non-Prophets Radio and founded the counter-apologetics project Iron Chariots.
Both Matt Dillahunty and "sweet little thing" accused me of "equivocation" for daring to ask if qualifications mattered in science. Here is the quote from Matt Dillahunty I used.
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FROM
https://twitter.com/matt_dillahunty/status/436273926654529536?fbclid=IwAR3J01G9UEP5JpG4xd1yFdILlW7OR8STpPrcBeZwr-K1ueOUbsEVSyv47h4 I've been told there's a reddit discussion about my credentials. Easy. I have none. No degrees. No seminary. Doesn't matter.
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In my country, Australia, the Australian QUALIFICATION Framework (capitals for emphasis) is how credentials are decided. Obviously these geniuses don't understand that verifiable fact.
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FROM
https://www.aqf.edu.au/The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) is the national policy for regulated qualifications in Australian education and training.
It incorporates the qualifications from each education and training sector into a single comprehensive national qualifications framework.
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The new atheists seem to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. They think they are experts in fields that they have never formally studied.
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FROM C J Werleman, The New Atheist Threat (The Dangerous Rise Of Secular Extremists), Dangerous Little Books: 2015, Chapter 3 - The Echo Chamber pp 36 -37
In 2014, I shared a bus ride with popular New Atheist Matt Dillahunty. We had a great chat and he’s a terrific fella, but he told me, “As atheists we have to be experts in theology, anthropology, cosmology, geology, and biology.” Two thoughts came to mind: why? and you’re not. That’s not a slight on Dillahunty. It’s merely an observation that one would have to be smarter than Stephen Hawking to be considered a bona fide expert in each of these respective fields. And the only reason I could think as to why he would believe an atheist has to be an expert in all those fields is if he believes atheists need to evangelize their atheism to religious believers. Worryingly, many New Atheists I have debated or spoken to actually boast that they are experts in many or all of those respective fields even when it’s obvious they have no more than a Wikipedia level understanding of theology, for instance.
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Quoting Matt Dillahunty again: "credentials (aka qualifications) ... I have none. No degrees. No seminary. Doesn't matter."
My first question: Do "credentials" / qualifications matter for a person performing brain surgery in Australia?
Doesn't matter?????!!!!!
1. It's illegal in Australia to perform brain surgery without a proper accredited qualification (aka "credential") as per the Australian QUALIFICATION Framework.
2. Supposing it were legal, an atheist car mechanic might claim that he knows everything about brain surgery but, as he has never been assessed as competent to be awarded the relevant accredited qualification, one doesn't know anything about his level of expertise.
My second question: Do "credentials" / qualifications matter for a person doing philosophy of religion (the subject area every time an atheist like Matt Dillahunty mentions God) in Australia?
An atheist car mechanic might claim that he knows everything about philosophy of religion but, as he has never been assessed as competent to be awarded the relevant accredited qualification, one doesn't know anything about his level of expertise.
Matt Dillahunty does philosophy of religion extremely poorly. His main targets are fundamentalist Christians who are easy targets. His methodology consists of asking questions and avoiding questions asked of him. It's high school stuff and it shows.
