Abolish Christmas: Socmas and its "Atheist" Enemies.

hi welcome to december the atheist base project covers a whole lot of ground and one of the things that i wanted to cover along with my lovely wife was this idea of atheist christmas what what what's that all about can atheists celebrate christmas well clearly i mean she's dressed up for christmas i'm at least wearing red today we've got our tree here the issue that we keep coming across is this idea that some people are trying to tell other people what they should or shouldn't celebrate yeah that's pretty true christmas or as you will see it referred to if you debate with christians online christmas it's right there in the name it's a christian holiday why are you atheists celebrating it that's true and yeah that's true origins don't matter cultural context matters that's true that's true that's pretty true and what's the cultural context of christmas today well 93 of americans celebrate christmas that's pretty true i mean that's true 96 of american christians so that means four percent don't three math challenged people 81 of american non-christians celebrate 87 of the nuns the unaffiliated which includes atheists and agnostics celebrate it so that's about 18 of christmas celebrators since 93 and america is about 75 christian yeah that's true moreover if you ask is christian chris christmas primarily christian or primarily cultural millennials say that it's primarily religious only 39 of the time over 65 say 66 of the time um that's true and real modern christmas came into being in the victorian era so late 1800s or so that's when charles dickens queen victoria and a few other people really made it what it is today it would not be the popular thing it is today without this family giving charity love holiday not really centered on christ that's [ __ ] true when we think of a modern christmas in the west anything in my lifetime for sure has very very little to do with christianity if anything uh the decorated trees candy canes lights santa frosty rudolph yeah that's pretty true that's true and yeah that's true that's true that's true that's pretty true that's pretty true i mean that's true yeah that's true um that's true that's [ __ ] true no christian can say keep christ in christmas and ask why an atheist celebrates christmas they're lying to you [Music] when i was at this convention i got to the feeling that this woman beth presswood who was matt dillahunty's wife was sexually interested in and uh now it's possible that i completely misread the situation 100 possible but what i will tell you is is after we left there the first thing i told my friend nate jones he was my destinative the first thing i told him when we were in the car was those guys are definitely slingers and she was trying to have sex in here she's trying to gauge my interest in her and uh i'm i'm hopefully this will come up raggedly but in the year i was single i had a lot of experiences with women and i got to be a pretty good judge of when they were interested in me and not interested in me and you could tell their body language and side glances and the way they look and i could tell by the dynamic between her and her husband matt that they were swingers and i had no idea at the time like nobody told me that period and now i've since found that that was true you know um it's been told that these atheist conventions are like you know swinger disneyland everybody's [ __ ] everybody at these atheist conventions and i was being a [ __ ] dick about it this picture got taken to me and beth in the air getting [ __ ] and uh so anyway uh i took a lot of [ __ ] a lot of people were like no dusty that is impossible this woman could never be attracted to you how would this woman ever want to have sex with you you arrogant [ __ ] maybe maybe i'm wrong but and so he refused to go on the show if i was allowed on there to debate him and talk about this uh so i was not allowed on i went on the very next week to discuss this and so he was on there and he basically said i was full of [ __ ] there is no possible way that she could have ever been attracted to me or wanted to have sex with me at all that's what he said but i felt bad that i said all that [ __ ] in public i don't think i should have said that i think it was immature of me to say that but i did now that told you that story let's start over and talk about the dave silverman situation all right so for those who don't know who [ __ ] dave silverman is dave silverman is uh the former president of the uh i think it's the american atheist association or uh and as you can see here i made this back in i think 2015 and i made a folder called personal heroes and it only has two people in it dave silverman and matt dilla honey 2018 he got fired from the american atheist because sexual assault allegations came out and i think there's also allegations about some kind of uh financial improprieties but i looked into that and i couldn't find any evidence of that i don't think anything ever came of that they didn't prove that he did anything wrong financially so that seemed like that was [ __ ] the sexual assault allegations really did him in in my opinion so let me read you uh the buzzfeed article and this buzzfeed article was really the the nail in the coffin for dave this is what everybody read and afterwards everybody thought dave was a sexual predator right he was hated he was ostracized by his friends uh lost his job wasn't able to get a job anywhere like many other communities in the metoo era the atheist movement is undergoing a reckoning over the treatment of women in its ranks in february buzzfeed news exposed allegations of sexual harassment against other prominent atheists the physicist lawrence krauss in the wake of that story two women told buzzfeed news that they were assaulted by silverman they each filed written in complaints to american atheists this week in one of those complaints a woman described a hotel room party held at the end of 2015 american atheist convention in memphis so i just want to say um all this was made anonymous at this point and uh even david silverman is still keeping who this person is anonymous but i've looked into it and i've been told by dave silverman's people that the lawsuit has already been filed and the names are already public and then i also did my investigative journalistic work and i verified the name of this person with several other people so the only reason i am making this public is because it's already public if it wasn't public i wouldn't be putting this out there or if i wasn't under the impression it was public i wouldn't be putting this out there it turns out that who he's talking about is this woman beth prestwood who is matt dillahunty's ex-wife they were married at the time this happened of course in one of those complaints a woman just got a hotel room party held at the end of 2015 american atheist convention in memphis this is right around the time do that stuff with me and her having she and silverman had known each other for years and he flirted with her throughout the evening she wrote in the complaint after the other guests left r wrote that silverman asked her to join him in smoking marijuana on the roof but before they left the room he suddenly forced himself on her he physically pressed me to the wall and began to kiss me forcefully grabbed my breast and put his hand into my leggings where there was actual penetration of my vagina she wrote i believe silverman knew she was interested in bdsm and wrote that he began using insulting language calling her a dirty little [ __ ] he then pushed her to her knees where his penis briefly made contact with my mouth she wrote alright got her got her feet and said no she wrote silverman then lightly slapped her face and said you don't get to say no to me at that point ours said the widely used bdsm safe word red which stopped him and then she left the next day r took photographs at bruises where she said silverman had grasped her and these pictures were included in her complaint to the american atheist but turns out there's more to the story i've reviewed the evidence and what it said here is not true she lied about it you know she hasn't publicly told the truth about this in my opinion well a lot of people don't understand about these atheist conventions this is something i said back when i was talking about how i thought beth presswood was trying to gauge my interest for a sexual encounter is that these atheist conventions are like a meat market right people go there just to [ __ ] the [ __ ] out of each other and also i mentioned this kind of before that there are a lot of women out there who are what you call atheist groupies who have this thing where they want to have sex with all the prominent people in the atheist community i've encountered these women before i would not be surprised if me and david silverman have had sex with the same woman basically she's lying about the whole thing basically she pursued him and there's eyewitnesses that have come forward and say that they saw this happen that she was the one actually kissing him she was the one pursuing the flirtation with him and uh despite what she says about going to go to the roof and smoke pot and him sexually assaulting her before that the evidence seems to suggest that no they had some kind of uh consensual sexual encounter they went up to his hotel room and he's explaining what happened once they got up to the hotel room i'm gonna play a small clip of this and you guys can check it out so she's standing in front of me she's taking off her clothes and she says um call me a [ __ ] call me a [ __ ] call me a whole and she mentions a former lover by name and she says he's not even man enough to call me a [ __ ] um keeps us robbing and uh she i get her on her knees at the foot of the bed she tells me again call me a [ __ ] i used to be a prostitute i should be ashamed for it and that's when i called her a dirty [ __ ] it's hard because this is a woman who yes i called her a [ __ ] after she told me to call her [ __ ] twice this actually happened and this is what's been disturbing for me so much so um i i grab her by the hair i pull her hair back and i uh say i'm gonna spit in your mouth open your mouth she says no i tap her lightly across the face i say you're not allowed to say no to me no doesn't stop me stop doesn't stop me the safe word is red do you understand she looks at me she says i understand then i said open your mouth i'm going to spit in your mouth she opens her mouth i spit in your mouth this is the way b asm works safe words red means no so i'm holding her like this yeah red means i spat in her mouth and i said i'm going to do it again and that's when she said red and when she said red i like over hair and i said oh you don't like that huh and she says no i don't like that i said okay let's do something else she's okay get up on the bed so it's not like when she said red of course i stopped immediately but we didn't stop playing we kept going um so basically the story he tells is that they were flirting all night um and making out at different times where they're walking along together and um there are multiple witnesses that saw this happen that saw her kiss him at one point uh he tells her to go into the bathroom and take a picture of her vagina which she does and she brings the phone back and she hands it to him and he looks at it and he sets the phone down and this other woman camilla harris who i know she comes up and she grabs the phone before it times out and picks it up because it looks exactly like her phone it's the same phone case and everything she's like hey this is my phone case she picks it up and she looks at it and she sees the picture of the woman's vagina on the phone uh which was beth prescott's phone and uh she out triggered a minute she has gone public and said yes this happened so she has confirmed um and other like i said i said other white witnesses that say that they saw them flirting together they saw beth beth press would be aggressive towards him and be the one to kiss him in the elevator and whatnot so apparently he says they went to the hotel room to have sex play and uh rough bdsm sex and this happened her phone rings and it's uh matt de la honey and matt dunham has specifically said he does not want them having sex even though matt dillahunty and her are swingers uh they have an understanding uh he has to get permission and he does not want her having sex with dave he specifically forbids it but beth is doing it anyway and dave knows that matt doesn't want him having sex with his wife but dave is doing it anyway and i guess dave is going to bring this out in his lawsuit where he i don't know if this was uh he where he secretly recorded a conversation he had with matt dillahunty two years after this happened where basically he asked matt if he has a problem with him and matt says no i'm fine with you i wanted to share the stage with you and and he says well clearly matt doesn't believe that he assaulted his wife because would you say you're fine with the guy that you thought was not your dog your wife would you share a stage with a guy who you thought was sochi why you wouldn't so this is proof that he didn't think that he knew he thought beth was lying and he continued to try to destroy david silver's career and so dave is suing him for blackballing him and try destroying his career because according to dave they believes that matt de la honey knew his wife was lying but try to destroy him anyway i guess out of vengeance because he was mad they slept together or whatnot i'm not you know i guess the trial will happen we'll figure out exactly um it seems like to me that this dude slept with his wife without his permission and then it it was one of the catalysts that led to their marriage breaking up i think [Music] people need encouragement encouragement matters whether you are thinking of that in terms of personal transformation or social and political transformation on a larger and larger scale you can measure this scientifically this is a great example of how it can be very difficult to draw a line between science and pseudoscience sometimes there are studies that show people will lose body fat and gain muscle and respond to training better just when they have someone to encourage them you know you see it all over the internet people will line up to pay money just to have a coach or a trainer or a psychotherapist or somebody tell them you can do it you're doing well give it your all it's crazy and it's measured in sports medicine maybe more than any other field because i guess that's where there's the most money to be made out of it all right people need encouragement if they're gonna start a lawsuit challenging city hall about the fact that government buildings are displaying the ten commandments of moses and the government buildings are violating the principle of the separation of church and state do you want to do that alone join me that with no friends wouldn't it matter wouldn't it mean a lot to you to have matt dillahunty or one of these other guys get on the phone with you and just maybe they don't give you any money maybe they don't you know put you in touch with a lawyer who can help you just to have that encouragement matters and as stupid as these people may be i think they understand that i think on some level they're aware that just like a weight loss coach they are themselves in the encouragement business so isn't it strange isn't it striking isn't it remarkable that they discourage you from challenging changing and overturning the culture of christmas why would they do that why wouldn't they reach out to you the way my youtube channel does i don't know any other youtube channels doing this and say you can make a difference you can change this yes you can you just sat through the longest 10 minutes of your whole entire life i found that 10 minutes heroin to listen to i found it shocking and disturbing and unexpected but before if you cast your mind back to about 15 minutes ago you heard the structure of the argument that matt dillahunty and his wife presented to you edited down in brief they try to claim that christmas profoundly is not rooted in the divinity of christ is not about the nativity of christ or not anymore they try to make an argument that christmas is or can be purely cultural but that is in the strictest definition of the term merely a begging the question fallacy if you are telling me that the problem is not religious but cultural then i am just going to press ahead and ask you why is it that you resign yourself to the notion that the culture cannot be challenged that the culture cannot be improved that the culture cannot change if you read newspapers at some point you've seen images of men and women in blackface in the netherlands in luxembourg in some part of germany celebrating christmas with a tradition they call black pete or black peter they have this tradition that santa's little helpers are white people in blackface or some kind of 18th century stereotype oh do you want to defend that do you want to say that because hey it's not connected to the bible it's not connected to the nativity of jesus anyway do you want to just stand by that and say this cultural tradition should go on forever and ever and it's completely irrelevant to offer an argument about its origins that at some stage of history this wasn't considered racist or wasn't perceived to be racist or wasn't intended to be racist well it's racist now it's a problem now and it's gotta change now it's a completely self-defeating argument to say that frosty the snowman is not religious rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is not religious that the charles schultz peanuts cartoons and many attempts to commercialize these things through animated tv shows and movies that those those aren't religious they're just cultural so what the culture of racism can change the culture of homophobia can change quote-unquote rape culture can change the culture of gender roles however you want to put it they can change and they will change and i want to come on youtube and encourage you you and you and you to say we can start making that change now all you have to do is stop compromising with the excuses for the past encouragement matters in my own life also i reached out to matt de la unde i sent him email to my knowledge the emails went to him and i think i got one reply from him it's totally possible it's possible that reply was written by his ex-wife or by someone else on his team you know a lot of successful people they have 10 different 10 different employees answering i i don't know that okay but yeah there was a time when i wanted to collaborate with this guy on a youtube video when i wanted to just appear on his call-in show to call and talk to him because i had spent about 10 years of my life as a scholar of buddhism not just a casual cult member or something you know i did research including the languages and history and politics of these countries in asia i moved to and lived to in these countries in asia all right i had a kind of experience with an insight into buddhism ancient medieval and modern very few english-speaking people on earth have ever had or ever will have and good luck good luck finding a buddhist monk or finding anyone born and raised in east asian culture or southeast asian culture who will be honest with you about these things there may be a few but it's it's scarce i really felt there was something positive i could do for myself for others and for the future of the atheist movement if i could share what i know with these people if i could even just do a q a and start to engage in a semi-scholarly discussion of what's wrong with buddhism in part because i think we gain a deeper understanding of what's wrong with christianity what's wrong with our societies in the western world by having some comparative analysis by having a contrasting awareness of a completely non-christian culture and history and then you start to ask interesting questions like well if you wouldn't make these excuses for prayer why are you making these excuses for buddhist meditation oh yeah yeah there's scientific literature proving how effective prayer is remember what i said about encouragement oh yeah oh we can prove oh prayer it has all these positive things yeah yeah yeah and there's there's scientific evidence there's scientific literature for meditation and what's your role in this as an atheist activist there are really important questions for the future the united states of america for the future of christianity for the struggle of atheists and anti-clerical people against christianity that come out of an examination of buddhism even if you feel buddhism plays no part in your life okay i've been poor i've been broke i've had to worry about saving up money for the next pair of shoes i've bought i've i've lived in some rough circumstances over the years it's come and gone and i've also had periods of time when money wasn't a problem i've been honest about that on the ethernet too it would have meant so much to me at that time if matt dillahunty or any of these other guys had invited me to speak on their show and i would have scraped the money together to take a bus trip to austin texas some place a place i never want to go and to attend one of these conferences just to share what i have to share and to try to find the few other people who i would imagine are positively motivated to make this change to to draw a line in the history of the world and say the dark ages are over and that didn't happen right i never had that encouragement so my youtube channel went on to become something very different and my own life went on to become something very different if you even look at the name of this youtube channel it was created with the assumption that atheist activism anti-clerical activism would be a huge part of my life what i was doing the internet what i was doing everywhere else i am so glad i was never invited to speak at that conference i'm so glad i never met you and i never met your wife and i never met any of these [ __ ] scumbags who took the name of atheism and dragged it through the mud who made of this most important political project nothing more than an opportunity to indulge their own reckless pursuit of money fame power respect and sex the catholic church is not bad because it's corrupt the catholic church is not bad because priests become motivated by sex to some extent money fame power respect and sex not necessarily in that order okay the catholic church is evil to begin with and is then further corrupted by these all-too-human motivations but it's the corruption of the best that's the worst and in the same way that you matt dillahunty corrupted this movement to offer your own shitty selfish short-term justification of continuing the rituals and tomfoolery of christmas you perverted the movement as a whole from its core and what atheism will accomplish and what atheism won't accomplish in the next 10 years has everything to do with your personal shortcomings intellectual ethical and emotional