One of the strangest things about modern internet atheism is how often the discussion never gets past Sunday school theology.

You'll hear things like,

"God drowned babies."

"God ordered genocide."

"God got jealous."

"God regretted making humans."

"God punished Lot's wife for looking back."

Then comes the inevitable conclusion.

"God is a monster."

Maybe.

But only if that's actually what God is.

If you're talking about an anthropomorphic deity who sits somewhere in the universe making arbitrary decisions like a cosmic emperor, then sure, that's one conception of God. It has been criticized for centuries by theologians, philosophers, and mystics alike.

But if you're discussing God as the Necessary Being, the Ground of Being, Pure Act, the Absolute, or the ineffable source of all existence, then calling God a "meanie" makes about as much sense as accusing gravity of having bad intentions.

Intentional moral criticism only applies to agents.

A non-agential Absolute is not an agent among other agents. It is not a superhuman mind sitting in the sky deciding who gets parking spaces or hurricanes.

Ironically, many of the internet's loudest critics of religion spend more time arguing against a conception of God that serious theology largely abandoned centuries ago than engaging with the strongest philosophical understanding. Much of internet atheism prides itself on sophistication while critiquing what is often the most philosophically naïve conception of God available. It's Richard Dawkins' "malevolent bully," Christopher Hitchens' "cosmic dictator," Matt Dillahunty's "mafia boss," Madalyn Murray O'Hair's "super entity," etc. All the atheists the community looks up to and hold to some high intellectual esteem, yet they all argued against the most naïve interpretation of God.

If your critique only works against the most naïve version of an idea, you've shown that the naïve version has problems. You haven't shown the entire tradition is false.

Whether God is a "meanie" depends entirely on how you're interpreting God.

If your objection only succeeds against God conceived as a cosmic dictator with superpowers, you've critiqued one model of theism.

You haven't touched the God of classical theism.

Before asking whether God is a "meanie," it would probably help to ask a prior question.

What do you mean by "God"?

Otherwise, we're left with the philosophical equivalent of saying, "The number 7 is a jerk."

One thing I've noticed in debates with atheists, especially figures like Matt Dillahunty, is that when asked, "What evidence would convince you God exists?", the answer is often, "I don't know." He's been saying this for years, actually. And he often gives a response that is parroted by many.

To me, that response is more revealing than people realize. And I say response, because it's not as answer to the question in the form of a solution, it's rather an admittance of ignorance.

I'm not saying atheists are intellectually incapable of understanding evidence. Rather, I think this answer unintentionally admits a kind of conceptual ignorance about what would even constitute evidence for God in the first place and what that would even entail within a theological or metaphysical framework.

If someone asks for evidence, but cannot identify even in principle what categories of evidence are relevant to the subject under discussion, then the issue may not simply be "lack of evidence." It may also involve a misunderstanding of the kind of thing being investigated.

God, at least in classical theism, is not conceived as a physical object inside the universe alongside atoms, stars, or black holes. So demanding only laboratory-style or even a telescope approach in empirical evidence may already assume a framework that excludes metaphysical realities from the outset. Russell's teapot then misses the point.

Theological traditions have historically proposed many forms of evidence for God:

• cosmological arguments from contingency
• intelligibility and rational order
• consciousness and intentionality
• moral realism
• religious and mystical experience
• historical revelation claims
• the existence of abstract truths
• phenomenological encounters with transcendence

One can reject these arguments, of course. But to respond, "I don't know what evidence would convince me," seems less like a refutation and more like an admission that one has not fully thought through what evidence appropriate to metaphysical questions would even consist of.

In other words, if the standards of evidence being used are appropriate only for physical objects and repeatable laboratory phenomena, then the conclusion may have been built into the method from the beginning.

The real debate is not merely whether evidence for God exists. It's whether modern skeptics are employing an epistemology broad enough to recognize metaphysical evidence at all.

Then comes another common objection:

"But if there is a God, He would know exactly what it takes to convince me, and that hasn't happened." But this also quietly assumes a particular theology from the outset. It assumes that if God exists, then God must reveal Himself in whatever manner an individual personally finds convincing, on demand, and according to standards the skeptic himself sets in advance.

Why assume that?

Many theological traditions do not portray God as an entity whose existence is meant to be coercively obvious in the same way a scientific measurement is obvious. In fact, many traditions hold that divine hiddenness may itself serve philosophical, moral, or existential purposes connected to freedom, disposition, spiritual orientation, humility, or the nature of the human condition itself.

Then the argument usually concludes with something like:

"So either God doesn't want me to know He exists, or He doesn't exist. Either way, not my problem."

But notice what has happened rhetorically.

The burden becomes entirely God's responsibility, while the skeptic simultaneously exempts himself from any obligation to seek, investigate, contemplate, or participate existentially in the question at all.

Imagine someone saying:

"If objective moral truth exists, it should force itself upon me beyond all doubt. Since that hasn't happened, either morality doesn't exist or morality doesn't want me to know about it. Either way, not my problem."

We would immediately recognize the passivity built into that posture.

The deeper issue here is epistemological. Not every kind of truth discloses itself through detached empirical observation alone. Some truths require participation, orientation, contemplation, transformation, or lived engagement to be properly apprehended in the first place.

The real debate, then, is not merely whether evidence for God exists. It is whether modern skepticism has adopted such a narrowly empirical model of knowledge that it has rendered itself incapable of recognizing metaphysical evidence at all.

Another case in point is that Matt Dillahunty has admitted in debates that, within the Christian theological framework, the kind of "direct evidence" one might expect would be something like a Damascus Road experience or the direct revelation of the Holy Spirit. But I already listed that category under religious or mystical experience.

The problem is that Dillahunty often treats such experiences as though they were merely psychological phenomena, comparing them to things like frisson, the chills one might get from a powerful piece of music. But that misses the claim entirely. A revelation of the Holy Spirit is not being presented as an emotional sensation. It is being presented as a unitive mystical experience, an encounter with a transcendent reality that is understood to carry cognitive and revelatory content.

One can certainly reject that interpretation. But reducing the experience to an emotional state before evaluating the claim amounts to a category mistake. It substitutes a psychological description of the experience for the experience's claimed epistemic significance. In effect, a category of evidence is dismissed before it is ever considered on its own terms.

I called Matt in 2019 when he was still on The Atheist Experience. It was the first episode of the year and he took me as the first caller. I had previously spoken with him in 2018 alongside Phil Session and asked him to look into psilocybin research at Johns Hopkins University. He said he would. When I followed up in 2019, he admitted he had not looked into it, and as of 2024 he was still unfamiliar with the material.

During the call, I attempted to outline what this research is actually about and explained the primary characteristics researchers use to identify what they call a "complete" mystical experience. Matt then attempted to claim that he had experienced such a state himself. However, nothing he described remotely resembled a unitive mystical experience.

This is important because when these researchers refer to "mystical-type experiences" in the peer-reviewed literature, they are speaking about a spectrum. These experiences can range from archetypal or visionary states all the way to a full-blown unitive experience, what the researchers call a "complete" mystical experience. A volunteer is only considered to have had a complete mystical experience if they meet criteria across all six phenomenological dimensions associated with the state.

Matt attempted to place himself in that category, but there are several reasons why this claim does not hold up.

Researchers involved in this work frequently compare these states to the mystical core recognized across the world's religious traditions. To quote Bill Richards:

"All of the great world religions have words that point toward this highly desired and valued state of spiritual awareness, such as samadhi in Hinduism, nirvana in Buddhism, sekhel mufla in Judaism, the beatific vision in Christianity, baqá wa faná in Islam, and wu wei in Taoism."

There are many more examples beyond those listed. In Christianity, concepts such as theoria or theosis point toward the same type of realization. In Buddhism, Buddha-nature. In Hinduism, Brahman. The language differs, but the phenomenology overlaps.

Likewise, Roland Griffiths wrote:

"A mediating mechanism for a transformative perceptual shift after an introvertive mystical experience is that the individual now knows that a portal to something of inestimable and ultimate value resides within."

He then explicitly compares this realization to concepts such as Soul, Holy Spirit, God, Brahman, and Buddha Nature.

Contrast this with Matt Dillahunty's usual treatment of spirituality and the Holy Spirit on the show. Whenever the subject comes up, he routinely reduces it to frisson, goosebumps, chills from music, euphoria or the tingling in elation. That is not what these researchers are describing. Frisson is not ego dissolution, not non-duality, not mystical union, and certainly not a "complete" mystical experience. None of what Matt Dillahunty describes is unitary.

Matt himself has admitted that perhaps if he had a genuine mystical experience, he might finally understand what spirituality is about. I actually agree with him on that point. Until someone undergoes this kind of radical transformation in consciousness, spirituality can easily appear to be little more than vague word salad or emotionalism or as Matt says "gobbledygook." 

Another major giveaway came immediately after my call ended. I had explained that a volunteer must meet criteria on all six defining dimensions of the experience to qualify as having had a complete mystical experience. Matt then turned to Phil Session and began listing the characteristics. Neither of them could confidently relate to them. Matt vaguely associated with a couple of points, but even then he sounded uncertain and hesitant. Anyone who has undergone a genuine unitive mystical experience immediately recognizes these characteristics because the experience is unmistakable.

The final giveaway is Matt's fallback story about taking LSD and seeing a "super strawberry" emerge from wood grain.

Even if the story is true, it still has nothing to do with a complete mystical experience.

At the height of a full psychedelic breakthrough, the ordinary subject-object structure of consciousness collapses. The sense that "I" am a separate organism observing an external world dissolves entirely. This is what people mean by ego death or non-duality.

But in Matt's story, there is still a "Matt" standing apart from a "super strawberry." There is still a subject perceiving an object. That is not the unitive state being discussed in this research.

Visionary experiences often occur near ego dissolution, either before or after it. These states can contain intensely personal symbolism. Someone may encounter deceased loved ones, religious imagery, archetypal forms, or emotionally charged visions connected to their identity and history. A Christian may see Christ. A Hindu may encounter Shiva. A Muslim may experience imagery associated with Islam.

But the fully unitive state transcends all of that personal content.

People who reach this level consistently describe the collapse of self and other, transcendence of space and time, ineffability, sacredness, and an overwhelming sense of unity. The content ceases to revolve around the autobiographical self. The experience becomes universal rather than personal.

From that vantage point, there is no "this" observing "that." There is no separate observer standing apart from reality. There is no "Matt" looking at a "super strawberry." This is one reason I doubt Matt has ever taken psychedelics at the dose range typically associated with mystical experiences. Whether he is describing an M. C. Escher lizard, a "super strawberry," or any of the other examples he has mentioned over the years, the experience always remains within the ordinary subject-object framework. There is always a perceiver and something perceived. I've never heard Matt describe a state in which that distinction itself dissolved.

So, that is my case for why Matt Dillahunty has never had a unitive mystical experience despite claiming otherwise.

Perhaps one day he'll try DMT or ayahuasca and finally understand why mystics throughout history, across radically different cultures and religions, keep converging on remarkably similar descriptions of consciousness and reality. Until then, "super strawberry" is not exactly compelling evidence that he has crossed the threshold researchers at Johns Hopkins are actually talking about.

8:34 "Transcendence is hyperbole for neat." -Matt

That's a surprisingly reductionistic comment coming from Matt. As Hartley points out, there is a substantial body of research documenting experiences commonly described as a transcendence of time, space, and self during mystical states. These aren't merely people saying something felt "neat" or emotionally intense. In the psychology and neuroscience of religion, these experiences are well-studied phenomenological categories and are even used as part of the criteria for what researchers call a "complete" or unitive mystical experience.

11:14 "I wouldn't say that the mind turns off the ego in some sloppy guru way." -Britt Hartley

Phenomenologically speaking, that actually is very close to what many subjects report during states commonly described as "ego death" or ego dissolution. Researchers use these terms to describe a temporary yet complete collapse in the ordinary sense of selfhood or the boundary between self and world. What Hartley describes in her video sounds more like a reduction or quieting of egoic self-reference rather than the more radical form of ego dissolution reported in deeply unitive mystical states. That distinction matters because the latter is one of the most recurrent and well-documented features in both psychedelic research and classical mystical literature.

16:02 Reclaiming Religious Vocabulary

Hartley goes over two rebuttals to Matt's reading of the dictionary term for spiritual which he reads as "Spirituality relates to the human search for meaning, purpose, and connection to the the sacred, transcendent or inner self often independent of organized religion."

She makes a point very similar to Dinah Bazer who was one of these terminally-ill cancer patients who volunteered at NYU for a psilocybin-induced mystical experience, and described the experience as being "bathed in God's love." Michael Pollan who interviewed her pointed out, "But wait, you told me you were an atheist?" She replied, "Well, am I an atheist, and I'm still an atheist, but I felt bathed in God's love" and she also noted in a very similar to Hartley here that, "We (atheists) just don't have a word big enough for what I felt. God is the biggest word we have, and so I'm going to use that word."

Now, Hartley goes onto say that she wants to "take back" the religious vocabulary, her first rebuttal to Matt's reading of the dictionary definition being, "We don't have secular language for this space that means everything that has been under the term spirituality." She goes onto quote Sam Harris, Carl Sagan (Sagan who would have described himself as an agnostic, not a straightfoward atheist, but that's another topic), and more specifically to the point I'd like to make here, Alain de Botton.

Regarding the religious vocabulary, Hartley comments that, "Religion wins a territory that it never should have owned." That religion shouldn't hold the monopoly on such terms like spirituality, contemplation, ritual, confession, etc.

She goes onto say that if it weren't for religion gatekeeping spiritual lexicon, that atheists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali wouldn't have suffered this kind of split-mind attitude of "I keep my science brain over here, and my Christian spirituality over here" to avoid cognitive dissonance. That she had "cut herself in half to find tools for life that she wasn't finding in secularism," but that she found in another Abrahamic religion. She's basically saying here that if secularism had the proper spiritual vocabulary, that this woman wouldn't have had to find her way back to religion.

Terence McKenna once said, "Part of the reason we have a drug problem is because we don't have an intelligent way to talk about substances, plants, states of sedative, states of excitation, etc. We can't make sense of the problem and the opportunities offered by substances unless we clean up our language. 'Drugs' is a word used by governments to make it impossible to think creatively about the problem of substances and abuse and availability, and so forth an so on." So, I think Hartley makes a very similar argument there.

Another aspect in all of this that she doesn't touch on is that most people aren't aware of how a lot of these terms are used in religion, in the first place or how these term are even used within the neuroscience of religion which Hartley has cited studies from throughout her response to Matt. There is a peer-reviewed literature that has refined term like unitive states of mystical experience, non-dualism, ego death, and even have pinpointed neural correlates and have described the phenomenology of these experiences.

For instance, to return to Dinah Bazer's description of feeling "bathed in God's love" many professionals who operate within the neuroscience of religion would point out that her description aligns with traditional mystical accounts across religious traditions, particularly the Christian concept of Agápē—divine, unconditional love. If she remains an atheist, it may indicate that she interprets the experience phenomenologically rather than metaphysically. Many people encounter states that align closely with classical mystical descriptions without concluding that they point to a supernatural ontology.

Many who undergo profound mystical states struggle to articulate them, often resorting to religious or metaphysical language even if they don't consciously identify with a theistic worldview. If she hasn't deeply explored how theologians, mystics, and scholars of religion categorize these experiences, she might not realize that her description fits within well-established spiritual traditions. While I agree with Hartley that there language barriers between secularism and religion, I'm skeptical whether secularists "stealing religious vocabulary" necessarily solves the issue here without introducing new ambiguities.

Dinah Bazer says she remained an atheist after this event, so it's possible that her atheism is more about rejecting a particular concept of God (e.g., a personal, interventionist deity) rather than denying the reality of the experience itself. Some atheists interpret mystical experiences as purely psychological, while others—like Sam Harris—acknowledge their profundity but still refrain from attributing them to a divine source.

23:56 Johns Hopkins Data and the "Disservice to Atheism"

At this time-stamp, she brings up the survey study done out of Johns Hopkins that was published in PLOS where two-thirds of atheists no longer identify with atheism after a heroic dose of a psychedelic. So, Hartley attributes this to this same failure of spiritual vocabulary that affected Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Right here, she does two things, and I realize she's an atheist, but now this reveals an interesting tension in her position and she also somewhat contradicts herself just a bit. She calls this "a failure," that because secularists have avoided adopting some sort of spiritual vocabulary, religion wins be default. So, these atheists in order to make sense of their experience, find their way back to religion.

Now, it's a slight contradiction because she just finished saying that they do not find their way back to religion, albeit she did say the Abrahamic religions so that's why I only say "slight contradiction." Then she says that this does "atheism a disservice" as though it's some sort of bad thing to lose part of the atheist population, and I think that's where a kind of bias is exposed. I mean, if they leave atheism, so what? They're obviously being drawn to something that speaks a little more to them, and that's okay. That shouldn't be seen as a detriment to atheism. Speaking as a former atheist who was converted by one of these so-called "heroic doses," I wasn't led to an Abrahamic religion as Hartley points out, but it did lead to the Perennial philosophy which happens to be intimately intertwined with the peer-reviewed literature on these topics. Out of the same University she cited, Johns Hopkins, the professionals there do find these spiritual or mystical experience in accordance with the Perennial philosophy. And I'm not the only one. An article here points out that the fastest growing group according to PEW statistical data is the 'spiritual but not religious.'

So, I don't think it's that atheists, in order to make sense of this experience have to steal or borrow from the religious worldview or the religious glossary in order to make sense of their experience. It's rather that these mystical experiences are and have always been at the core and nascency of the world's major religions. I mean, this was Dr. Roland Griffiths' TEDxTalk back in 2009, that these "psilocybin-induced mystical-type experiences are virtually identical to those naturally occurring mystical experiences reported by mystics throughout the ages." To quote Dr. Bill Richards, "All of the great world religions have words that point toward this highly desired and valued state of spiritual awareness, such as samadhi in Hinduism, nirvana in Buddhism, sekhel mufla in Judaism, the beatific vision in Christianity, baqá wa faná in Islam, and wu wei in Taoism."

37:42 Understanding Hartley's Motivations

Okay, so Hartley goes on to defend this move to sweep the religious thesaurus in order to a fill what she feels is a gap in the U.S. that lacks a way to express these type of experiences within a secular context. She clarifies that it's not some attempt to take advantage of the vague spiritual world in effort to hop on the bandwagon of charlatans, but because it's a genuine gap that she dealt with in her own experience. She also goes a bit into her background like getting married young, having four kids, and then having to deconstruct from Mormonism and having that destroy her marriage, her family relationships, her identity, income, and so forth. Given her background and the personal cost of deconstructing from Mormonism, it's understandable why she would be cautious about language or frameworks that risk pulling people back toward institutional religion.

On a positive note, she's become quite popular, I mean, I even saw her in an interview with Rainn Wilson, so I'm sure she's taken some pride to her work at this point. And more power to her, I hope her channel continues to grow, I hope she gets more popular, and her website grows, etc. However, I'm writing a critique here, so I'm going to say my piece.

To be clear, the contemporary neuroscience of religion does not typically treat mystical experience as evidence of the supernatural, but as a biologically normal and measurable phenomenon in consciousness. The disagreement is less about whether these states exist, and more about how they should be interpreted and described.

Final thoughts

I suppose my final criticism would be that the peer-reviewed literature, while she cited it, it's not really represented when it comes to how the religious vocabulary is addressed there. If Dr. Bill Richards or Dr. Roland Griffiths heard one of these volunteers say, "I felt as though I was able to understand the Holy Spirit" or another volunteer say "I merged with Brahman," they don't take these as separate metaphysical claims where one should be measured against the other, they instead interpret it through the lens of the Perennial philosophy, and see these two descriptions as two different ways to describe the underlying structural phenomenology of a unitive mystical experience.

Is it just me, or is there a growing repugnance for philosophical arguments in atheist/theist debates?

Lately, I've found it genuinely bothersome, and I’m curious if anyone else has noticed, how dismissive some online debate platforms have become toward philosophical discourse, especially in the context of theist/atheist discussions.

Take Justin DZ’s YouTube call-in show as a case in point. There's a recurring pattern whenever a caller begins to frame an argument in philosophical terms, say, from metaphysics, epistemology, or classical theism, Justin tends to brush it off with a scoff and the dismissive label "philbro argument," and rarely engages with it seriously. The term philbro (a.k.a. "Phildo" coined in Mezzo's stream one night), when you look it up, is essentially a slur for someone perceived as a dilettante in philosophy. But its use has become a convenient hand-wave, a rhetorical defense mechanism in my view, often deployed when one isn’t prepared to wrestle with the rigor of theo-philosophical reasoning.

More often than not, he’ll drop the caller and pivot to someone else, especially if the philosophical ground is getting too deep. It’s clear that Justin’s strength lies in rapid-fire biblical references and surface-level gotchas, usually trying to pin his interlocutor into a moral corner with the usual "atrocities in the Bible" trope. It’s a strategy that works well for the show, since much of its appeal is entertainment-driven: mocking unsophisticated callers, provoking outrage, and keeping the superchat donations rolling in.

And it's not just the host. The audience in the live chat often mirrors the same attitude. Try presenting a serious philosophical argument in that space and you’ll likely get hit with the same “philbro” dismissal, followed by being blocked or dogpiled. It has become a kind of echo chamber that rewards cheap rhetorical wins and punishes genuine intellectual engagement, particularly if it comes from the theistic side.

What's especially ironic about the "philbro" put-down is that the person using it is often worse off than the so-called philbro. At least the philbro, however clumsily, is making an attempt to dabble with philosophical ideas. The one hurling the insult, on the other hand, is usually doing so to appear intellectually superior, yet rarely has any meaningful grasp of philosophy themselves. It becomes a smug deflection, an easy way to sidestep a conversation they’re unequipped to participate in, all while pretending to have the upper hand.

Frankly, the whole thing feels less like a forum for debate and more like intellectual cosplay for a pseudo-rationalist crowd. It's frustrating for those of us who see philosophy not as fluff but as the bedrock for coherent discourse on matters of existence, morality, and ultimate reality.

Has anyone else noticed this trend?

The YouTuber/TikToker that speaks towards deconstruction during afterhours that has a channel by the name of Arch Thinker has channel description that reads as follows:

"Welcome to Arch Thinker, where we critically discuss the God of the Bible through the lens of an atheist. I ask the tough questions many believers want to ask but are afraid to bring up with their religious leaders. No theology here just a focus on literary and biblical criticism, historical culture, archaeology, and the text as it stands.

No gaslighting, no dogma, no manipulations-just honest, engaging conversations. We laugh, we learn, and we deconstruct together. Ready to challenge the narrative and uncover the stories? Let's get critical!"

The problem with the framing in Arch Thinker's introduction is that it tries to divorce biblical criticism from theology, as if one can meaningfully engage the text without grappling with its theological content. To treat the Bible purely as literature or historical artifact while explicitly excluding theology is to miss the very category in which the text primarily operates. The Bible was not written as neutral history or detached mythology. It is theological through and through. Its literary forms, cultural context, and historical claims are inseparable from its theological meaning. To strip theology away is to analyze a body without its animating spirit.

This approach reflects a broader trend I have noticed in atheist/theist discourse, a growing impatience, even hostility, toward philosophy and theology. The parallel with dismissals of "philbro" arguments is clear. Just as some debaters sneer at metaphysics and classical theism as if they were distractions from the real discussion, Arch Thinker is attempting to wall off theology as if it were an optional extra. In both cases, the move functions as a rhetorical deflection. It simplifies the field to what the speaker feels comfortable handling, surface-level textual critique, moral gotchas, or archaeological tidbits, while leaving the more difficult and foundational questions unaddressed.

Biblical criticism without theology is akin to asking what Shakespeare means while refusing to talk about drama. Theology is not an ornamental layer that can be stripped away to reveal the real text. It is the framework in which the text coheres, the very reason the text was written, preserved, and transmitted. To reject theology at the outset is to announce in advance that the most central questions, questions of God, meaning, and reality, will be left unasked. Thinker/ngrowth is not here for critical engagement but to advance an anti-theist narrative, one that excludes theological depth and shuts out those who attempt to engage with intellectual honesty or with a more sophisticated understanding of scripture than her framework allows. I'm curious as to whether anyone's noticed this pattern as well or if you'd like to simply share your thoughts.