The Atheist Experience: childhood indoctrination

This is an excerpt from the Atheist Experience TV show, episode #638, with Tracie Harris and Matt Dillahunty.

If you're curious about that radio interview Tracie is talking about, it's on YouTube, too - here and here. (Note that it's only about 15 minutes long. The interview ends halfway through the second video clip.)

But it really is pretty funny. The radio host, Todd Friel, who doesn't seem to be too bright in any case, just can't seem to understand Christopher Hitchens' point.

But why not? It seems perfectly simple to me. My parents may have created me, but they don't own me. Even when I was a child, I wasn't their property. I always had at least some rights.

We used to accept slavery (for other people, of course, never for us). Well, the Bible approved of it, so of course it was moral. But we know better now. How can you even argue otherwise?

I don't believe in a god - any god, let alone any specific god - because I've never seen any good evidence that such a thing exists. But even if I granted everything in Genesis (which I don't, remember), what difference would it make?

I still wouldn't be that god's property. I still wouldn't be obligated to obey him, let alone worship him. That's a ghastly idea! I'm not a slave! If he has good reasons why I should do something or not do something, then he can convince me with those reasons.

Or, of course, he could hold a gun to my head. He could threaten to torture me for eternity if I don't do exactly what he says. And I'd probably do it, too, if I thought the threat was real. But I'd only be pretending to worship such a tyrant.

Well, that's all hypothetical. There is no god. Or, to put it as fairly as I can, there's no good evidence for a god, or for anything supernatural. Everything that we have evidence actually exists is natural pretty much by definition.