The guy who
From the Shut Up I Win files:
I feel lucky that I never wasted any admiration on Matt Dillahunty. Never listened to the podcast, only ever heard him speak once, at the American Atheists jamboree in Austin, and found him obnoxiously macho-loud and overbearing. Stamped CONFIRMED.
I never really had anything to do with him in my capital-s-skeptic days, either. He was on my radar, but only a fuzzy blip right out at the edge. He didn’t impress me enough to commend my attention. He has it now, but for reasons he probably wouldn’t enjoy.
One high note is that since my little argument with him and consequent blocking yesterday, the replies on that thread have been overwhelmingly in condemnation of Dillahunty.He had called a TIM a bigot for, basically, not agreeing with him that TWAW so most of the replies are along the lines of “you’re neither a woman nor trans but you feel entitled to tell trans people and women what they are”. It hasn’t gone well for him at all.
It really is remarkable the extent to which acceptance of trans theory compromises the reasoning of people that are quite intelligent elsewhere. Matt’s reply may as well have been “If we resolve the contested concept in my favour, then yes.” On any other topic, he’d be all over such moronic reasoning, pointing out that it is a textbook assumed conclusion, but not on this one.
He has the brain worm, and worse yet, a reputation for aggressively shouting down any argument he thinks is dehumanising. It still did not sit well with me even while I agreed that the person being shouted at was in the wrong, and now we’re going to see him really lean into that tactic. He has that most delicious of moral treats: righteous indignation.
One additional point in Dillahunty’s case is that as far as I know he says he’s a heterosexual man who is in a sexual relationship with a trans identified male. It might not be his brain that’s in charge of the thinking on this matter.
And we can speculate about internalised homophobia or feelings of shame due to same sex desire, but I feel unkind even typing it because I really don’t know enough about him to even speculate.
You have a point, latsot.
Perhaps we should be asking these people “What do you have to lose by agreeing with the scientific fact that mammals cannot change sex?”
Can’t he even see that that’s just where this all falls apart? We have hundreds of instances where this is obviously NOT the case. Pretending that ‘Jessica Yaniv’ and Karen White don’t, and can’t, exist because self-ID is magic, is plain madness.
You can’t give self-ID the benefit of the doubt if you refuse to acknowledge the possibility of doubt. Let alone the necessity.
Why does he think “I debate for a living” is some winning comeback? He’s basically Duane Gish … only without the benefit of any science education at all.
“If they’re women”. Please, show your work.
Wait, I thought MD got married a couple of years ago to … Beth? One of the women on “Godless Bitches”?
MD began a lot of his videos or statements on AXP with the notion that he only wanted to believe true things, or as many true things as possible. It’s simply not true that men are women.
He always asks believers:. What is the best argument for what you believe? Or, What convinced you that X is true? If you can’t explain the reasons why you believe X is true, then you don’t have a good basis for believing it to be true.
What happened to that?
What are the articulable, testable, falsifiable evidences for your belief?
I really did like a lot of his videos or podcasts at one time. I guess no one is immune from falling for unfalsifiable claims.
Yes but longer ago than that – they married in 2011 and split in 2018. (I just googled it.)
Funny that he was always happy to argue with believers in the major religions but he won’t argue to defend his belief in gender woo.
Because it would be “wasting his time”? Nah, I don’t buy that excuse.
I guess the fact that he’s gay probably facilitated that split. Just guessing, but 2018 is not too long after the giant FtB meltdown in which PZ was considered to be “not woke enough” for the likes of Dillahunty (haha!).
What’s this about a giant FtB meltdown circa 2018? I’m pretty sure I had stopped bothering with FtB before then, and I don’t remember the details. I do vaguely remember a number of people leaving FtB, some for reasons that were unclear to me, such as the people who created The Orbit, but I thought that was earlier.