Twelve Apostates - Matt Dillahunty

I enjoy the media produced by the Atheist Community of Austin^[1].  I'm behind on the 2 podcasts, but I've been able to keep up on the Atheist Experience via the episodes various people have put on YouTube.

I've also been using YouTube to catch up on past episodes.  Roughly 150 so far.  All the hosts are good at what they do.  They achieve their stated goal of promoting positive atheism.  

They effectively counter the theist arguments presented to them by callers.  They all do so better than I'm able, and they do it better than most atheists I know.  But, as I suspect the rest of the hosts would agree, none do so as effectively as Matt Dillahunty.

When the show started in 1997 Dillahunty was still a Christian.

But when he eventually deconverted and joined the Austin folks, he took an already good show and made it better, just by knowing his stuff better than most.  He knows the Bible and the Christian arguments better than most Christians and even most atheists. 

He challenges stupid ideas, calls them stupid, and accurately details why they're stupid. He also makes it clear that he's attacking the ideas, not the people.  And he doesn't just attack the ideas randomly.  He's got a knack for attacking the foundation of wrong ideas.

^[2]

If there's anyone capable of filling the void left behind by the death of Christopher Hitchens, it's Matt Dillahunty.

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1.  The Atheist Experience, The Non Prophets, and Godless Bitches

2.  I picked that particular clip for 2 reasons.  One, it shows what I'm talking about regarding how Dillahunty doesn't call Christians in general stupid (a pet peeve of mine I'll be writing about soon), and two, it features another atheist I'm quite fond of, Dr Darrel Ray, founder of my favorite non-profit and all around good guy.