This show guaranteed to decrease your productivity
Aug 25th, 2008 by Butter
I was going to get work done this weekend; really, I was, but then PZ posted a clip from The Atheist Experience, an Austin public-access call-in show, and Waffles and I got hooked. I haven’t been that entertained by something on television in a long time. (The Pegasus arc in season two of BSG—maybe.) The host, Matt Dillahunty, has a clarity of thought and capacity for unambiguous speech that I wish most of my profs had. The Atheist Community of Austin, which produces the program, has several years of archives of the 90-minute show available on Google video, indexed here. One commenter on YouTube compared watching the show to staring at a bug zapper. Listen to some of the calls and you’ll see what they mean. Here’s a sample:
I was tempted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt at first, and assume we were having a semantic problem with the word creation, which can just refer (in an antiquated and perhaps intentionally muddled poetic way) to the universe and nature as we see it—as in, “Where in all Creation did I leave my car keys?”—and not necessarily to the mythological act of an agent creating all of it. But then we go off the rails pretty quick and get to typical creationist lies and failure at middle-school level science. And I’m not sure who this “God of the Juice” fellow is. Overall, Matt and Tracie’s patience is astounding. Notice, too, the projection inherent in how the caller thinks: I think dogmatically and start with conclusions and then look for evidence, so obviously you goose-stepping Darwinists do the same thing with your ideology. It’s so textbook, such a stereotypical form of stupid, but so difficult to stop watching.
That’s what I like about Matt and especially about Tracie. Many times when a caller is presenting his or her argument, Tracie will stop them in order to define their terms. To many people this matter of semantics may seem like being overly nitpicky, but honestly, this is the best part. So many times, people will have a debate (or an argument) where each side thinks they won, because of a miscommunication over terms.
One of the criticisms I have about the show is that they let the crazies go on too long. This is a good example. Despite the fact that this dude is wacko, he is pretty funny. But, honestly, we’re not there to hear about what he decided when he took acid and watched Ghostbusters. We’re hear to learn about and discuss religion and atheism, not stand in front of a Ouji board and yell “Bloody Mary” 13 times.
But yes, I, too, have succumbed to the addictiveness of this show. I stayed up way to late watching Matt and his various cohosts do their thing. I think he has an amazing clarity of thought, and the ability to simplify without losing the message. And, while I can almost achieve that with writing, he can do it in real time, whilst having a dialog with the callers, and that is an amazing ability.
Yeah, they let the crazies—and more importantly, the liars—go on for a while. I’ll try to offer a bit of a defense of that.
(1) They’re amateurs with 90 minutes to fill. Not much of an excuse, but it’s part of an explanation.
(2) Matt’s stated purpose and interest is to find out what others believe and why. To accomplish this, he has to probe until he gets either clear answers to his questions or an ultimate refusal to answer them.
(3) The people he’s probing are people who lack critical thinking ability and are deadly afraid of introspection. Much like the first time you do any new thing, it’s full of fumbling, it’s inefficient, and it, um, takes a while—or is over too soon, or, um, Anyways:
(4) If they cut the nuts off sooner (dammit, I’m having a problem today), they’d be accused of not giving the other side a fair chance to make their case. The fact that their callers are such poor exemplars of their case doesn’t change this.
(5) The callers’ rants are informative, in that they inform the viewer of the loopiness and ignorance that lies at the base of the social structures around them.
(6) Ultimately, it’s just fun to watch. The crazy calls are what get the hits on YouTube, not the lectures about the history of Judaism or lists of logical fallacies. While I think those things are necessary and interesting, the show still has an obligation to be entertaining, and Matt’s attempts at dialog with these people do that.
So what I’m saying is, you gotta really probe the nuts to get a good handle on things, and then if it’s their first time, it might take a while before they get the hang of it. And the results are fun to watch.
Honestly, would you have become so addicted and stayed up till the wee hours if it wasn’t for the protracted scenes of fundies, ghost nutters, and so on ramming their head into the wall? I wouldn’t have.