Matt Dillahunty - Do "credentials" / qualifications matter?

 

The new atheists aren't like the old atheists who had "credentials" / qualifications in philosophy (and thus logic). It definitely shows! The new atheists tell everyone about their atheism whether you want to know about it or not. Their atheist evangelism becomes incredibly boring and they use the same high school level methodology from atheist blogs and podcasts.

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.

BRIAN DUNNING AND NLP BULLSHIT

I had an atheist mate tell me that a "skeptical" podcast now destroys the whole of the psychological assumptions behind education. Absolute bullshit! ( Nor is scientific scepticism exactly the same as scepticism in philosophy. This is a verifiable fact that he also doesn't seem to comprehend.)

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Similar podcast transcript.

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4155

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The "Bright" atheist (but not so bright in education) who stated this in his quaint little podcast ( the most popular form of gathering information for atheists) is Brian Dunning (convicted of wire fraud) who has absolutely no qualification in education. He is a "computer scientist by trade". Another example of a person speaking outside their area of expertise.

See https://skeptoid.com/bios/brian_dunning.php

I attended a NLP seminar in the 1980s by Michael Grindler (brother of John Grinder) when it was beginning to become popular. If NLP is wrong (as proven by science) then teachers will not use it. Teachers aren't stupid. Teachers still have a huge amount of material from psychology (to name but one discipline) that they can use in educating students. NLP is only one tool in many hundreds that may be used.

In particular, it appears that the academic evidence against NLP is not about “learning styles” at all but items such as the concepts within NLP of "mirroring and matching" (and other areas such as eye movement as indicators of preferred learning styles, etc) and being a “tool to influence others”.  If "mirroring and matching", and eye movement as indicators of preferred learning styles, and NLP as a “tool to influence others” are all wrong then it does absolutely no damage whatsoever to education and various competing theories on learning styles.

The most annoying person at any concert - "The Whistling Arsehole".

The most annoying person at any concert - "The Whistling Arsehole". This person apparently is not interested in listening to the music played by the band on stage. Instead, "The Whistling Arsehole" has paid for a ticket so that they can give continuous ear-piercing whistles (usually out of key and out of time) directly behind your head. As a result you can't hear anything except the deafening noise as they blow air out their orifice.