Frustrating Atheist Experience

[LadyForCamus]

I used to watch a lot of Talk Heathen, The Line, and The Atheist Experience and then slowly stopped doing so. I remember why as I watch Atheist Experience this morning. Because it is frustrating to a cringey degree.

The hosts for this one were very good. Jenna Belk has a very compassionate tone even as she laser focuses on the point and doesn't allow the caller to go too far into the weeds. Anthony Magnabosco is pretty good at that also but hammers in on the point, "Why? Why do you believe that?" We want to hear the process, the pieces that were put together in the callers mind that made "thing that happened to me" = "God did it".

I get so overwhelmed and frustrated with this line of questioning though. Because I get what he's doing, what these hosts usually do. If there is logical process or hell, even evidence, we'd like to see/hear about that and examine it. If there's not, then the point is to allow a caller to realize they've come to this belief based on nothing or poor evidence. However, that's not usually what happens. It usually becomes a moment where hosts and callers talk past each other,as if callers don't quite get what the hosts are asking for and/or the hosts are not following through afterwards on burden of proof and what is acceptable for standards of believing in things. Like, as the caller misunderstands yet again and launches into another personal story(because really the why is the argument from incredulity, so, the why IS "this thing happened" to me and they can't boil it down any further because at church they're not required to do so) and we get lost in the weeds because of it.

My frustration comes from the misunderstanding and mismatched standards of belief in continuing to ask "why tho?" 

This is the clip I was watching this morning:




It's not like the hosts are unaware. I just find watching it happen to be agonizing in a very cringe way.

I love AXP but I’ll only watch the episodes that Matt D. hosts. He’s my gold standard for how this style of questioning should go; he keeps the dialogue on point and let’s absolutely nothing slide. I could watch him all day.