Matthew Wade Dillahunty (born March 31, 1969) 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.
Dillahunty is a regularly invited speaker, or debate participant, for local secular organizations and university groups as part of the Secular Student Alliance Speakers Bureau. In the summer of 2017, Dillahunty joined a speaking tour promoted by Pangburn Philosophy, where he shared the stage with fellow atheists Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Lawrence Krauss.
Biography
Raised Southern Baptist, Dillahunty considered becoming a minister. His in-depth examination of his Christian beliefs, instead of bolstering his faith as he had intended, led him to no longer believe in the basic tenets of Christianity and, eventually, all religions. Dillahunty spent eight years in the U.S. Navy before leaving to work in the field of computer software design. Dillahunty later became a founding member of the Counter-Strike team Clan Killers 3, and participated in early Cyberathlete Professional League events and the QuakeCon 1997 event. He now streams a variety of video games regularly on Twitch.
He first co-hosted The Atheist Experience in March 2005 and would go on to become a regular host of the program. In October 2011, he married The Atheist Experience colleague and co-host of the Godless Bitches podcast Beth Presswood; the couple divorced in 2018. On the October 2, 2022, broadcast of The Atheist Experience, Dillahunty announced that this episode would be his last as host after 17 years of participation.
Dillahunty describes himself as a feminist. He is one of the subjects of the documentary films My Week in Atheism (2014) by director John Christy, and Mission Control Texas (2015). He is also a magician. He has no formal degrees, and did not attend seminary.
Speaking and debates
"I am absolutely convinced from my experience and the evidence that I've gathered over the years of doing this that [debates] are incredibly valuable." He has spoken at atheist and freethought conferences around the country and debated numerous Christian apologists, including Ray Comfort (on The Atheist Experience), and David Robertson on Premier Christian Radio's Unbelievable. At the 2014 American Atheists convention in Salt Lake City, he gave a workshop that outlined some key ideas in effective debating: "Take the opponent seriously: 'The audience has to sense that I can perfectly understand their views, and have rejected them.' Use logic: 'I tell them that I can write a better book than the Bible. Simple: I copy it word for word, except the parts about slavery.' And don't forget emotion: 'It is theater. That is my advantage with a Baptist background over someone like Richard Dawkins, although he knows more about science.'" He has also stated that he is willing to say "I don't know" in a debate, a "scary concept" to some of his audience. Alongside fellow activists Seth Andrews and Aron Ra, he traveled to Australia in March 2015 as a member of the Unholy Trinity Tour. In April 2015 he was an invited speaker at the Merseyside Skeptics Society QEDCon in Manchester, United Kingdom. In 2018, Dillahunty participated in a discussion with Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson for Pangburn Philosophy in which they encountered areas of disagreement about religion, specifically its relationship with values and culture. The debate was uploaded to Pangburn Philosophy's YouTube channel.
Views on morality
One of Dillahunty's recurring themes has been the superiority of secular morality over religious morality. His key contentions on the issue are that secular moral systems are inclusive, dynamic, encourage change, and serve the interests of the participants, whereas religious moral systems are merely unjustified pronouncements. He touched on the subject again at a lecture at the 2013 American Atheists Convention in Austin: "They say we're immoral, when we're the only ones who understand that morality is derived from empathy, fairness, cooperation, and the physical facts about interacting in this universe. They've broken their moral compass and sacrificed their humanity on the altar of religion. They say we're lost and broken and in need of salvation, when we're the ones who are free." Dillahunty holds the view that advocating infinite reward or punishment for finite deeds is "morally inferior".