Matt Dillahunty - Get Them While They're Young

are you doing whoo American Atheists with an eclipse man we are screwed before I actually start first of all I don't normally give a title to my talks but David asked so I gave it a title and and it's called get them all were young but I had the privilege of doing an event with James Randi in Vancouver recently and it's worth telling people that one of the reasons one of the primary reasons I'm a skeptic and I think some of you will have heard words fall out of my mouth that have also fallen out is is because his work in skepticism I am what I am today in great part to the man you just witness not just with regard to skepticism but with regard to magic and a number of other things so one more round of applause for the amazing so my wife and I like to go antique shopping on the rare weekends when I'm home we try to find fun stuff to do an antique shopping is one of them you know I'm I'm getting older I'm finding stuff in the antique shops that I had when I was a kid which makes it much weirder than it used to be but I found this book it's called Bible stories as told to very little children it's 80 years old that's written by Bessie Edmond Andres was printed in 1937 which means it's younger than Randy just barely but I I loved it we find stuff like this all the time I collect all kinds of things but this book struck a chord with me you've already heard people talking today about and yesterday about good news clubs and other organizations and how their target is the children and I'm going to read some things from this book and we're gonna have a bit of fun and then I'm going to give advice on parenting when I have no children but I was a child and I probably still am depending on who you talk to the forward to this book is what got me started as soon as I read this forward I bought this book and I pored over it I will probably get about 23 talks out of this book alone but I'm gonna read you the foreword these stories are written with the object in view of making the Bible stories as interesting to very little children as the old-time fairy tales are to them okay so we're starting to set up some equivalency here and fairy tales yeah okay I got you in my many years experience in telling Bible stories I found that the small children grew restless and sleepy if historical facts were injected into the Bible stories I'd actually like to see more historical facts injected in the Bible story so that we get some relevance with history but yeah kids get tired and sleepy okay I found also that the more spiritual the stories were the better they understood them it was very clear to these children that evil or error which are the words she substitute sit through the entire book for Satan we're really nothing in the presence of divine love with a capital L which is the word she substitutes for God there's a lot of substitution in this book thus to tell them that the divine love destroyed evil and not Men was to present a consistent God to them whom they could love and obey yeah yeah that is a him in telling these stories I have endeavored to impress upon the child's thought what each Bible character stands for Abraham for obedience Moses for meekness is a killing it's not that Myka that sorry Joseph for forgiveness and so on I have found it wiser not to shock the budding thought by telling any tragic episode connected with Bible stories so the all-mighty compassionate loving Saviour of the universe has to be softened a bit when you're gonna read things for kids wouldn't think as others have said that the Bible should contain anything that should shock the mind of a child i if they get through a picture up on the screen there it is I went to the thrift store you can see this book is the blue and in the middle on the bottom but I went to the thrift store and I gathered up the first six or seven children's Bibles I could find some of them are going to be familiar some of them you probably haven't seen this was just a small sample of what was available at the thrift store closest to me three days ago I bought them all for three dollars not the blue book the blue books worth a little bit more but the rest of them were three dollars combined and in the top center actually that's not a children's Bible it is a fairly impressive book studying the effects of religious teaching on children specifically with a purpose of how to best tune the message and make it receptive and it has lots of peer-reviewed scientific studies from sociologists that was terrifying until I realized that damn it I can use that book to to figure out how to counter some of this so I'm gonna read to you from my lovely book the story of obedient Abraham and then we're gonna take a look at what the Bible actually says once upon a time because that's the way all Bible stories start once upon a time there lived in the Bible days a man named Abraham who always obeyed God and everything that God told him to do Abraham never asked God why did he want him to do this or why did he want to do that but just as soon as God told Abraham what to do Abraham did it at once including offering up his wife just some guy oh I'm sorry I'm not supposed to get what the Bible says till later Abraham had a wife named Sarah but they did not have any little children for big children but we needed to clarify and God knew that they wanted a baby boy so God told Abraham that he would give Abraham a baby boy because Abraham had always been obedient to him and baby girls are not as desirable and God told Abraham and Sarah his wife to name the baby boy Isaac now when God brought little Isaac to Abraham and Sarah they loved him so much that Abraham made a big feast for him do you know what a feast is well it's a big party where there's a whole lot of good things to eat and Abraham loved little Isaac so much that it looked like he loved little Isaac more than he loved God and we all know that we must love God the most of all the most of all because God is love and he gives us everything to make us happy so love came to Abraham and talked with him to find out if Abraham truly loved God more than he did little Isaac and love told Abraham to bring little Isaac to him now God did not really want Abraham to give up little Isaac but love just wanted to see if Abraham would truly give up little Isaac to God for love only meant to show Abraham that God was the true father of little Isaac and was taking care of little Isaac all the time I don't yes you are the father I get all those I didn't didn't one include that joke it's too easy now you remember that Abraham always obeyed God whatever God told him to do so when love told Abraham to give him little Isaac just guess what Abraham said and he said yes he would bring Isaac to God so you see Abraham really and truly did love God the most now in the Bible days when the men wanted to show God that they loved him they would take some meat and put it on a table called an altar and then they would build a big fire under the altar and roast this meat but they wouldn't eat the meat even though it would have tasted so good to them because they wanted to show God that they could sacrifice for God do you know what sacrifice means it means to give up something else or something else something you want for yourself to give up to someone else sorry something that you want for yourself do you ever make sacrifices now you and I know that roasting a piece of meat and giving it up for God is not the way to show God that we love him but the way to show God that we really love him is for us to be kind and loving to all God's children to sacrifice error for love to give up the error for love you see these people did not know any better when they roasted the meat and sacrificed it they gave it to God the way that's worded almost makes it seem like she's saying they should just hate it but so when God told Abraham to give up little Isaac and bring him to God Abraham didn't understand what God meant for Abraham thought that God meant for him to put little Isaac on the altar or table just like the men did with pieces of meat Abraham was just confused now wasn't that funny for Abraham to think that God meant such a thing you and I know that God did not mean that at all for god is love and everything God does is loving and kind and good and as I told you before God just meant to teach Abraham to love him more than anyone else in the world so Abraham put little Isaac on the altar but all the time Abraham had faith in God is love that Abraham knew that God would take care of Isaac that's why Abraham was not afraid to little a little Isaac on the altar with sticks of wood underneath it and the Bible doesn't say anything about little Isaac being afraid at all so we know little Isaac wasn't afraid because he knew he was God's perfect child and love would not let anything hurt him now in Abraham place little Isaac on the altar and put the sticks of wood under the altar and was ready to light it guess what happened God sent the loveliest angel to Abraham who took hold of Abraham's hand took hold of Abraham's hand and told him don't light the fire and this lovely angel told Abraham that God loved Abraham and God was now sure that Abraham truly loved God most of all and Abraham lifted up Isaac down from the altar and took him home to his mama Sarah and they were all so happy and Abraham remained always obedient to God do you know where you can find this story in the Bible it's in the book of cold Genesis well I have a book called Genesis here it's actually Genesis 22 and I don't think this is too much over the top sometime later God called Abraham and he said Abraham and Abraham said Here I am and God said take your son Isaac your only son whom you love which isn't true by the way because Abraham has another son Ishmael from his wife's slave Hagar and that's Ishmael yeah so it's not the only son maybe it's the only son that he loves that's it cuz he got rid of the rest of him so this is the only son Abraham loves take him and go to the region of Moriah sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you well it's a little easier to see how Abraham might have got confused and thought that God wanted him to actually kill his son when God said sacrifice him as a burnt offering so Abraham follows along and grabs a couple of slaves because you know that's just what you did back then hey you slaves we're gonna pick up some wood we're gonna go up here and he heads up to the mountain and in verse five he tells his servants you guys stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there we will worship and then we will come back to you that verse is important when I get to what apologists have to say Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac because you know you're gonna kill him anyway you might as well make him carry this stuff up there the two of them go up together and Isaac looks up at his father as his father and Abraham says yes my son the fire in the wood are here but where's the lamb for the burnt offering God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering my son and the two of them went on and when they reached the place God had told him about Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it he bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood well doesn't say anything about Isaac being terrified so clearly he wasn't I feel so much better for years I've sat here and read this verse and ignored what Isaac might be feeling and I remember one time after I was actually an atheist somebody came up to me and said have you ever thought about what's going through Isaac's mind your dad's got you carrying the wood up there you know shiipa Rama bowed you dad thinks he hears voices and then he binds you and set you on the altar I think I'd be my pants right about that and doing whatever I could but the Bible skips that so we are just to assume that Isaac wasn't afraid there are some apologist who will tell you that God put Isaac into a deep sleep so he wasn't aware of any of this they are doing what all Paula just do which is making up so he bound us on and he reached out with his hand and took the knife to slay his son and an angel the Lord called to him from heaven and said Abraham Abraham and he said Here I am and he says don't lay a hand on the boy do nothing to him for now that I know you fear God hey wait a minute there's a word that wasn't in that book fear is all about does Abraham love God now it's about fear now that I know you fear God which could be interpreted as respect which might be love which explains my why my wife terrifies me sometimes and Abraham went over and the God provided a ram and killed that we don't have to go through anything else that's in this story there were people who came up to me I was walk down the aisle at the age of 5 and accepted Jesus into my heart was active in the church and of course my mom will tell a slightly different story today about you know what they thought about whether or not I was saved and it doesn't matter but I was raised with this idea repeatedly that God loves you God is love God has provided a way for you to escape hell God has done all of this created all of this for you you're special and He loves you so much you are drowning and you don't know about it in God is providing you a lifejacket and with that particular framing of the story I knew my friends were going to hell but it didn't terrify me and I wasn't ever really traumatized a terrified of hell because I was saved and it wasn't that hey these people are going to be tortured and punished forever it's hey we've got a way for you to avoid that that framing keeps it positive and then I met some people who have lived their life in anxiety because the very same story to them left them with the message I have done something so terrible or will do something so terrible that God had to kill somebody to make up for it and that's a fundamentally different view of the story this story book talks about love wanting Abraham to bring little Isaac to him that Abraham was confused because God would never demand a sacrifice that's those other gods there's prescriptions in the Bible to prevent against sacrificing children so if there's also verses where that's exactly what happens with Jeptha and others there's excuses there's apologetic excuses there's tap dances to get out of all of it or almost all of it by framing it in a different way God didn't understand or Abraham didn't understand what God wanted him to do it's all Abraham's fault we know that God had this plan let me tell you the truth about this story the objective undeniable truth straight from the doctrine and that's this God as you'd be told by apologists wasn't testing Abraham so that God could discover if Abraham really loved him or feared him God already knows that God was testing Abraham so Abraham would know and understand or so that somebody else would see this and no one understand God already knew so if you're gonna go attacking this story don't go anywhere near that why would God have to test Abraham doesn't God know everything he is that's never gonna fly with a believer because they've already done that dance God knows he was testing for Abraham's sake but what kind of test is that if I'm trying to find out that you love me and understand me and that you have a good understanding of who I am and what I would want you to do and I am the kind of God that is absolutely opposed to sacrificing children then when God comes to you and says sacrifice your child the one and only right answer is depart from me foul spirit you can't possibly be my God my God would never demand something like that from me that's the only right answer from a biblical standpoint and got the right answer that was rewarded was okay I'll do it now if you're God and you're you're opposed to sacrificing children and you say somebody let's see if how well they know me go and sacrifice your child and that guy says okay no you clearly don't understand me there's no way I would ever ask you to do that this is the message you need to deliver to everybody not that I would demand it but that I absolutely wouldn't demand it you failed the test the only successful pass of that test is to say no that's not what God is but because the Bible portrays this as a pass the test was satisfactory that means the God of the Bible rewarded Abraham for having a correct understanding that he could demand anything up to and including sacrificing your own child and there is no apologetic twisting and turning that can get out of that now there's other books that are on the screen they do it differently some of them ignore the story of Abraham and Isaac entirely as I'm flipping through it goes from like Noah to Joseph and I'm like hang on I'd say there's like a couple generations there and you can skip the Tower of Babel and everything what's going on here others are a little more honest they will include direct quotes about setting up a burning a sacrificial sacrifice with a burning altar I really need this story to happen with a lot of slaughter this has to be what God's thinking I've got this bomb I got this book and I want to convey a message to everybody and there really needs to be a lot of slaughter in there because I need kids to be able to read it oh wait a minute that people would just make stuff up and twist it and turn it and provide the softest possible message to the children so that when you go to Sunday school when you go to your GA s and all the other stuff that you know son Baptists like myself form he did and you ride the bus and you sing all those songs that stick in your head until you're 48 or more I know I can't get rid of him now go away no package I got I got something else in there an hour than it's on this is the path that they use to influence the kids because despite what they what this woman thinks about them understanding spiritual things adults don't even understand spiritual things spiritual is a nonsense word that can mean anything to anybody it's a placeholder it's a cowardly term and it doesn't edify anyone about anything what those children are doing is not understanding spirituality they are relating to fairy tales and fantasy which is exactly what she said she wanted to do let's make this so that it's as palatable as a Saturday morning cartoon and that way it'll stick in their head because once the base of the story sticks in their head the truth of what the story actually says can now be excused all those years where God loves you and he's trying to save you it never occurred to me that this was going to traumatize people for years and I do this for a living both before and after it says I'm excited you heard Randi say teach kids how to think and not what to think you've heard me say it I probably stole it from him or I don't know I'd love to claim vice-versa but one of my one of my favorite moments in the entire time I've been active in the atheist and skeptic community is Randi quoted me in an edition of the Swift magazine because I was writing for this absolute trash website where anybody could come and say anything and there was a guy who would come in and he would give sermons and he went by a pseudonym of the skip to Malou and he would pick out a verse a passage and he would write a sermon and I was a budding fledgling atheist who had just discovered that all the stuff I thought I knew about the Bible was probably not as accurate as I had thought and so I would go and take the exact same passage and write a counter sermon showing how these verses could be interpreted in a completely different way and point out that this is how we end up with over a thousand denominations that identify as Christian but there were also a bunch of woo peddlers out there and I wrote a debunking about this guy who was advocating for Indian gurus who didn't have to eat they survived on prana sunlight and and I wrote something and I don't know how it got Randy got directed to this absolutely garbage website but he did been pulled it out and quoted it at the end of Swift I wish I'd saved it because I can't find it in the archive but as I was going through and doing all of that I was working through taking the baggage that had been injected to me as a child that softened all these things and trying to analyze them as objectively as possible now as I said I don't have kids so my advice is probably going to be better than any parents about what you should do with your own kids but I was a kid and not only do I think you should teach them how to think instead of what to think but you have to talk honestly to kids I understand you're gonna when I don't even baby talk to infants I talk to them like they're real people even though they're not they won't be until they're on my phone book but I I talk to them as if they were real people and I think we should talk to kids honesty honestly you can begin teaching the foundations to skepticism and critical thinking just as soon as you're able to communicate with them tell them what you believe and why not in an indoctrinating sense to turn them into atheists or set up an expectation of atheism that's probably gonna happen even someone like me who was indoctrinated from the age of four or five and served through all I was thirty thirty plus when I found my way out there's a way out of this and while the indoctrination will pester me for the rest of my life with the songs coming up at inappropriate times but I'm inappropriate in general anyways I don't mind let your kids know that you love them even if they believe differently from you don't assume when they tell you they believe something that you don't that it's just a phase don't assume that they're just rebelling and this doesn't just apply to religious things if they come out and tell you that they're questioning their gender identity or their sexuality or anything else don't just dismiss it as a phase don't just pretend like you have the answers be ready and willing at the drop of a hat to not only say I don't know but to say I don't know but let's see if we can find a way to discover what the answer is encourage and instill in them a spirit of inquiry of curiosity when they show up with an interest no matter how bizarre and and ridiculous you think it is do what you can to encourage them to go after their passion because we are here to support them we are here to nurture them children aren't property at all you're here as a guardian as a tutor as a mentor to those children they're not your property now it's a difficult decision to make about when someone should step in into somebody else's parenting when that when should the state step in you know if there's a parents over here teaching their kids that left is right and right is left you know is that child abuse yes is it probably gonna fix itself as soon as they get out of the real world yes but you've made it more difficult for them so don't do that your kids are not there for you to experiment on you're gonna experiment enough trust me it's a I've watched my brother I've watched my family kids are unfortunate unfortunately experiments they shouldn't be viewed as experiments be open to disagreement be open to being challenged by your kids there's no answer that is less satisfying than because I said so and this is the answer that religions like Christianity foster for the very foundation of everything they want people to believe why is this true because God said so so what because Captain Kirk said so because yogi the clown said so please give me a reason for that be open to disagreement I'm not talking about you know don't you know kids are gonna Ravel because they're gonna test your boundaries have boundaries have good boundaries that encourage them but you're not always right and saying because I said so doesn't teach them a thing have good reasons and good reasoning now I'm all in favor of having as many atheists in the world as we can get I'm a skeptic I'm a humanist I'm an atheist probably in that order they're all that doesn't mean that like being an atheist is vastly and significant it's not but here's the bad news which I'm going to say that the American atheist convention on Sunday before an eclipse atheism isn't the answer to the problems of the world atheism on its own is not the answer to anything it's a position they're not there's a god but there's a lot of things that get attached on to it that are the answers you won't talk about the answer to problems are critical thinking skepticism and the application of humanism that gets you to solutions because atheism isn't offering solutions but atheism is a conclusion for me based on skepticism it's not as important to me that someone ends up an atheist is that they end up a skeptic a humanist and a decent person because I think the atheism happens on its own once you get those other ones done but Matt why are you on the board of directors for American atheist why do you host the Atheist Experience TV show why do you have a patreon channel called atheist debates it's a theist atheist hated yes cuz I'm a former Christian who knows that area and I want the world to be filled with as many atheists as I can but I want them to be skeptical humanistic reasoning good atheist not just people who don't believe in God you can you could not believe in a God for any number of awful reasons oh I wanted a bicycle when I was five and I prayed and God didn't give it to me so screw him you can be an atheist to not support your state separation turn on fox news and see SE Cupp up there she's she's an atheist not on our side of anything as far as I can tell teach kids how to think encourage curiosity discovery inquiry answer honestly Dave Silverman said something the other day that I love says lots of things that I love not everything I disagree with everybody in the movement on something including myself at least once a day but he said we're right and we should act like it and I agree wholeheartedly and when you're right you have no need to exaggerate you have no need to lie you have no need to threaten faith is the excuse people give when they don't have a good reason if you have good reasons you offer those reasons when asked nobody's ever had to say I'm gonna take it on faith that there's an eclipse tomorrow it's science examination of evidence that led us to that now you watch it a cloud over and I won't have the proof that I because I said so isn't just a bad reason it's not even a reason excuse it's faith it encourages faith it encourages someone to act merely based on a claim of authority I think we look around the world right now we can see that authoritarian face Bates claims are killing us every single day and terrifying people every single day it is not the way to a better world these are just assertions oh do it because I'm right do it because they're wrong do it because religion is or do it because religion is evil those are just assertions about the way things are they are not explanations they don't encourage any sort of understanding they don't edify anybody they don't give them an understanding about how to live their lives and why they're doing it it just creates faith-based robots I think that's my alarm time to do the TV show there's another Bible story about a house built on a rock and a house built on sand now set aside hat whether or not you'd be stuck with a rock front yard or a sand front yard the point of the story is about having a good foundation and it's a great story it is apart from possibly doubting Thomas the closest thing to skepticism that I've found in the Bible why your reasons for believing something should be solid lots of solid that you're not willing to change your mind when a better foundation comes along but solid theism doesn't have a solid foundation which is probably why someone came up with this little parable so they could pretend like they had a solid foundation but that's why this room is overflowing with former believers folks who found out that the foundation upon which their beliefs rested was weak if you build atheism on a weak foundation bad arguments claims of fallacies that aren't you're not doing anyone any favors we're right we should act like it we know we're right because we have good reasons we know we're right because we've investigated the claims we know we're right because we've come out of being wrong people aren't aren't so much terrified of being wrong they're tired they're terrified of being exposed as wrong that's the fear oh my gosh someone's gonna find out I'm wrong as soon as you realize that you're probably wrong about a great many things just like everybody else identifying that you're wrong is not a big deal anymore because what it does is it gives you the opportunity to stop being wrong and when you raise children and you give them bad foundations you are setting them up for this terrifying proposition of being exposed as being wrong and are you preparing them for that how many people got called to the blackboard all right that's my age you're in class and you're asked to give an answer that you don't know you're terrified we reinforced this terror in kids all the time not just the kids and they're awful like a little sociopaths I love them but they're like little sociopaths ah you didn't know the answer I'm gonna mock you I'm gonna make fun of you make fun of you because you didn't know the answer I'm gonna make fun of you because you didn't know the answer you're too smart you're part of that book where I'm click I'm gonna make fun of you because you're too much of a joke I'm gonna make fun of you because you're too fat I'm gonna make fun of you because you look different or you're poor or you're a different color or rri and teachers reinforce this terror of not knowing the answer of being different of being out best thing we can do one of the best things we can do is to cut that stuff out by teaching them from the get-go that sometimes the one and only right answer is I don't know [Applause] when we portray a confidence level in a belief that is disproportionate to what it should be yes I'm paraphrasing Hume my favorite philosopher this said the wise man proportions his belief to the evidence and what he was talking about is your confidence level should be proportional to the evidence support when we pretend as if we have a confidence level that's justified when it might not be we put ourselves on an even footing with all the things that were opposed to in religions that's what they're doing and when we encourage our kids to have that same sort of bravado and confidence about what they my dad could beat up your dad I know it my dad's you know and they'll lie to back this up religions he was books like this and people who think like this to bolster false confidence in children to encourage authoritarian based faith based overconfidence in their beliefs and it is destroying the world and it has been and we as skeptics as humanists as atheists as American atheists have a moral obligation to stand up against that to do our best to teach kids how to think not what to think to teach them that they're all right the way they are that they weren't born bad and that the best answer they can give is I don't know and that they are going to have to fix the world that we allowed to remain unfixed thank you [Applause]

Channel: American Atheists

Views: 33,335

Rating: 4.8780231 out of 5

Keywords: atheism, american atheists, church and state, secular, #AACon17, American Atheists National Convention, Atheist Convention, Matt Dillahunty

Id: pBoDJqyONC4

Length: 36min 26sec (2186 seconds)

Published: Thu May 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/ReddBert]

Uses a children’s bible book to illustrate how kids are deceived by comparing it with the Bible. It is quite entertaining. The second half of lecture is not just packed with reasons why we should do our part, but also how. We are right, we don’t need to exaggerate, lie or to threaten (think argument from authority). Looks of advice on how to treat kids well; they aren’t property; we are tutors. Don’t teach them the fear of not knowing, don’t mock them when they are wrong or allow others to do so.

Highly inspiring and motivating. Recommended!

....

[u/ThatScottishBesterd]

When it comes to Christianity (and religion in general, it seems), the phrase "get them while they're young" has multiple meanings.

Also, replacing the word "god" with "love" is such a grotesque, slimy and insidious method of indoctrination that it makes my skin crawl.

[u/iHaveAgency]

A few funny moments.