Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Roasting David Silverman

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April 14, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

17:14

Roasting David Silverman

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	Hey folks, sorry I'm doing this in a lazy way, but I'm waiting for a taxi to take me to an airport to take me to Boston so I can go and speak at the Patriots Day rally in Concord.
	And I needed something to pass the time and this fell in my lap.
	And my goodness, this was just too good to pass up.
	You may remember David Silverman.
	David Silverman is one of those people who's famous for popularizing atheism by insulting religious people.
	And in fact, he was so good at this, he became a meme back in 2011.
	The message says this about religion.
	You know, they're all scams.
	Picturing Christian, Jewish, and Islamic symbols on the sign.
	So what's going on?
	Well, there's now David Silverman, president of the American Atheist Group, which is responsible for both billboards.
	So why the insults?
	Well, they're not insults.
	They're truthful.
	We just heard Nancy Pelosi said that it's pay as you go.
	So let's try to get away from the people.
	This isn't the truth as you go.
	This is about telling the truth.
	Now, if people are not.
	Let's just be regular guys instead of I'm a Catholic, you're atheist.
	We're just regular guys now, okay?
	You say something's a scam on a sign.
	And then you come in here where millions of people are watching you and say that's not an insult.
	What does the word scam mean to you?
	Scam means it's deliberately misleading people.
	That's not an insult.
	It's not an insult to the people.
	The people are just following.
	It's not an insult to the people.
	It's a statement to the people who are following the religion.
	Okay, so I think we've made the point.
	Bill O'Reilly is clearly very insulted by David Silverman calling his religion a scam.
	But that's okay in David Silverman's world.
	Attacking the people who are in the pews.
	Wait a minute.
	Now I'm stick with the insult.
	Because this is certainly an insult, in my opinion, and I know I'm not the smartest guy in town, but okay, so...
	But it's okay to insult Bill O'Reilly, I guess because he's a Catholic white male.
	Religion is a scam, but it's not the people's fault.
	They've just been lured in.
	That's right.
	Whose fault is it?
	It's the leaders of the religion.
	The leaders.
	Of course.
	This is not brain surgery.
	The Pope.
	Absolutely.
	Look, all of this.
	This is not brain surgery, and this is not world news.
	Everybody knows religion is a scam.
	The only news here is that people are...
	Everybody knows.
	I don't know.
	Mr. Silverman.
	No, I don't.
	I got to tell you.
	You sit here and you're skeptical every day and then you go to church and you get on your knees and you pray to an invisible man in the sky.
	Invisible man in the sky.
	I don't think that's a scam.
	No, I don't.
	You know what I mean?
	I'll tell you why.
	You know, I'll tell you why it's not a scam, in my opinion.
	Tide goes in, tide goes out.
	Never a miscommunication.
	You can't explain that.
	You can explain why the tide goes in.
	The tide goes in, tide goes out.
	The water, the tide comes in and it goes out, Mr. Silverman.
	Maybe it's always coming in.
	No, no, but you can't explain religion.
	See, this clip was from 2011 when David Silverman went on Bill O'Reilly and just insults him to his face, mocking his religion to his face.
	And that's fine.
	I'm all for mocking Bill O'Reilly's religion to his face because I'm an atheist as well.
	But really, it's only because it's Bill O'Reilly and Bill O'Reilly is an asshole.
	It's okay to be an asshole to an asshole because they set the rules.
	They decided what the standards were.
	And I enjoyed this clip way back when because it was funny.
	Because Bill O'Reilly deserved it.
	David Silverman also insulted Sean Hannity and in general religious people in America with his billboard campaigns, which I fully support.
	Just so you know, I'm all in favor of insulting people if you feel insulted by them.
	But that's not the argument.
	You want to insult people.
	You want to attack them.
	You want to stick them in the ribs on their holiday.
	And you just want to be rude and narcissistic and mean.
	Why?
	Sean, we have never put up a billboard criticizing people.
	We criticize religion and religion is perfectly open market.
	Please believe in religion.
	I'm a Christian.
	I look at a picture of Jesus and you want to, you just want to rub salt in a wound.
	No.
	Why are you doing it that?
	Because this is the time of year when so many atheists who call themselves Christians drag themselves to church against their own will because they think atheists who call themselves Christians.
	So I think it's pretty clear that Sean Hannity is also insulted by this, which is why he led with the assumption that David wanted to insult people because it's not like, and this was from 2012, it's not like David didn't have a history of doing this.
	In fact, he's one of the people who kind of popularized it, to be honest.
	Because of course, not only do we have International Women's Day, we also have women and equality questions every month in the chamber, which we don't have for men.
	So the opportunity for men to raise issues that are important to them is very limited.
	And just to give you a flavour, Mr Chairman, of the type of things that may...
	Do you see a last thing up in the corner there?
	Do you think that's funny?
	Do you think that's not a massively assholish behavior, like you were doing to Hannity, and like I'm doing to you?
	More men commit suicide, get cancer, or the victims of violent crime than women.
	So why was an MP laughed at for suggesting men's rights should be a topic of parliamentary debate?
	And you may remember Thomas Smith from the debate I had with him where he stormed off stage like a baby.
	And the reason that I'm really happy to be on this show with you is that the love was inspired, the love theme was inspired by Mythicon.
	Wow.
	It was inspired by this idea.
	I used to be a very, very, I used to be the extremist as far as Big Ten atheism.
	Okay.
	And I used to say, all you have to do is be an atheist to come and to be included.
	And people would come to me and say, well, Dave, what about atheist Nazis?
	Yeah, Dave, what about the atheist Nazis?
	There are presumably millions of them.
	What if they all join your atheist movement?
	What's your final solution to the atheist-Nazi problem, Dave?
	And I would laugh at them.
	I would like I'm laughing at you now.
	Bro, push them off.
	I would say, come on.
	There are no atheist Nazis.
	What is it?
	One or two?
	There's more than one or two.
	And there might even be four or five.
	And so I had to yield the point that sooner or later, we as a movement need to just pull back just a little bit.
	The theme for the American Atheist National Convention is atheists show up for good.
	That's the official theme.
	And the unofficial theme is, can I swear?
	Ah, sure.
	Okay.
	So the unofficial theme is hearts plus brains minus assholes.
	Sounds like you're going to be full of shit.
	But let's see if you are.
	That's what we're doing this year.
	We're bringing the love.
	We're bringing the firebrand.
	We're bringing the fire.
	We're bringing hardcore firebrand atheism, which is, of course, based in compassion.
	But we're not bringing assholes to the stage.
	David, you are the asshole.
	You are the asshole to Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and millions of other Christians.
	And I'm on your side on being an asshole to millions of Christians if you feel it's necessary.
	It's okay to be an asshole if you want.
	Just not all of the goddamn time.
	But sometimes to certain people who deserve it because they've been an asshole first, it's okay to be an asshole back.
	They are the ones who set the discourse.
	They made their bed.
	They can lie in it.
	Popularizing atheism has always been a big challenge.
	You know, there's such a stigma.
	There's such a social idea, a prevalent idea in our society that atheists are kind of, you know, they're assholes.
	They're the people you're talking about right now.
	He popularized that, you fucking idiot, Thomas.
	It's because of him.
	He went out and was an asshole to Christians.
	That's why people think atheists are assholes.
	You're talking to the man who did this and he's saying, well, we shouldn't have assholes at our conventions.
	I think it's something we can't prevent.
	I think that by definition, to someone, you guys are going to be assholes.
	But you've got a new religion, haven't you?
	And I'm an atheist to that religion.
	There's nothing I need to worship.
	And I think that it could be really cool if we can get any sort of mainstream support to the idea that, no, you know, you don't have to be some weird, like, asshole nihilist hater to, you know, to be an atheist.
	Oh, yeah, inviting the feminists in is really going to change people's minds on that.
	I didn't even know they were atheists.
	People don't think feminists are assholes or anything.
	Everyone thinks you're a lovely bunch of people.
	It's not that people actually already hate you, regardless of your status as atheists, because of your status as feminists and the way you guys act to other people because of that.
	Yeah, that's awesome.
	I'm really excited about that.
	Gosh, so much to tear apart here and to go into because I really am glad.
	And it honestly, at a time that was kind of difficult for me this past October, November, your statement on MythCon, I really liked and it made me feel a whole lot better.
	And that's what you've been doing for the last six months, isn't it, Thomas?
	People send me stuff about you bitching about me.
	I'm never bitching about you, Thomas.
	I guess we know how the debate went.
	Thank you.
	Because it was alarming to see kind of where this division led to.
	You know, people who you would have thought it would have been easy, the easiest thing in the world to say, hey, let's not platform people who sexually harass women online.
	That seems like a big interesting lie, Thomas.
	I'm not being accused of sexually harassing anyone.
	Even the person you are defending, a notorious man-hater, is not accusing me of sexually harassing her.
	You've made that up, Thomas, because you really can't get over this, can you?
	You know, like politically, where do you find yourself?
	I'm not a conservative.
	I'm a fiscal moderate and I'm socially very liberal.
	Okay.
	And I am a loud and proud feminist.
	I don't allow anybody to take the word feminist away from my name.
	David, you can absolutely keep the word feminist.
	I personally would rather it if you would keep it away from me and stay with the man-haters, because I actually stand with the overwhelming majority of women who are also not feminists.
	American Atheists was the first convention to have a comprehensive sexual harassment policy for our conventions, a comprehensive code of conduct.
	That's very interesting, because I've never been to an atheist conference that needs a comprehensive code of conduct beyond what the laws already state about sexual harassment.
	But then, like I said, I'm not being accused of sexual harassment.
	You, however, are, which is why you've just been fired from your position as the president of the American Atheists.
	I can't tell you how funny this is to me, David.
	Not that you're being accused of assaulting multiple women, but hang on.
	Let's put our pink pussy hats on for a moment.
	Not that you assaulted multiple women, but the fact that you are yet another male feminist who is covering up for their own despicable actions.
	I have done nothing wrong.
	You absolutely have.
	David Silverman, a firebrand atheist with a knack for generating publicity for his cause, has been abruptly fired as the president of American Atheists, one of the leading secular organizations in the US.
	The group's board held an emergency meeting on Tuesday evening and unanimously voted to fire 51-year-old Silverman based on explosive written allegations of sexual assault and undisclosed conflicts of interest.
	BuzzFeed has learned.
	Wow, you're in bed with such good people.
	Last night, the American Atheist Board of Directors voted to terminate David Silverman as president of American Atheists, they said in a statement.
	The board made its decision after reviewing allegations raised regarding Mr. Silverman's conduct.
	My goodness, it seems you needed that code of conduct after all, doesn't it?
	I mean, if you're planning on having male feminists in a room full of women, you're gonna need one.
	So Silverman's lawyer said, Mr. Silverman denies any wrongdoing and has never had a non-consensual sexual encounter.
	Well, I'm afraid, David, you don't get to decide that.
	The woman who is accusing you gets to decide that, and as good feminists with our pink pussy hats, we have to listen and believe.
	You're a disgusting monster.
	But it's okay, because at the time, Silverman and his wife were in an open marriage.
	So, BuzzFeed say, like many other communities in the Me Too era, the atheist movement is undergoing a reckoning of the treatment of women in its ranks.
	Do you know what's not undergoing a reckoning for the treatment of women in its ranks?
	The shitlords.
	The anti-SJWs.
	In one of those complaints, a woman described a hotel party at the end of the 2015 American Atheist Convention in Memphis.
	She used her name in the confidential complaint, but because of concerns about hostility experienced by other women who have made allegations of sexual misconduct against prominent atheists, man, your community sounds cancerous, she asked BuzzFeed to use her first initial R.
	She and Silverman had known each other for years and had flirted throughout the evening.
	Well, that was your first mistake.
	I mean, did you even get written confirmation that you could flirt with this woman?
	You had no consent there, David.
	This is disgusting.
	I hope it doesn't get any worse.
	After the other guests left, R wrote that Silverman asked her to join him in smoking marijuana on the roof.
	Before they left, he suddenly forced himself on her.
	David.
	It's a shame I'm honour bound to believe every word of this anonymous allegation, isn't it?
	But I guess if you're the feminist, he physically pressed me to the wall and began to kiss me forcefully, grabbed my breasts, put his hand into my leggings where there was actual penetration of my vagina.
	Holy fuck, David.
	R believed Silverman knew she was interested in BDSM and wrote that he began using insulting language, calling her a dirty little whore.
	Wow, no assholes in the atheist movement.
	He then pushed her to her knees where his penis briefly made contact with my mouth.
	She got to her feet and said no, and then Silverman slapped her lightly across the face and said, You don't get to say that to me.
	Wow, David, I can see why you really object to me mocking a man-hating politician.
	Now I understand why you can't say to a woman, I wouldn't even rape you.
	At several points during this encounter, I hesitated to continue, she wrote.
	I believe that if I did anything to upset him, my chances at being involved in the secular community, especially with American atheists, would be ruined.
	David, I won't let you take the word feminist away from me.
	Silverman takes advantage of a drunk student.
	Great job, David.
	Great job.
	She said that she quickly became drunk and remembered Silverman flirting with her and then suggesting that they go to his hotel room.
	I don't believe I was in a position to be able to give consent.
	I was very intoxicated.
	She said that Silverman did not have any condoms and pressured her into having anal sex, pressuring a drunk college student into anal sex, David.
	Wow, I would love to give you the benefit of the fucking doubt, but I can't because I'm a feminist.
	I'm sorry that I have to believe every word that a woman says when they're making an allegation against a man, but this is the future you chose.
	This is the road you wanted to go down.
	You actually wanted to give the people under you this kind of power over you, so now I have to believe anything that they say and you will have to lose everything.
	Ashley Miller, an atheist activist, wrote to the board on Thursday corroborating both R and ST Claire's accounts.
	Wow, it's almost like this has actually been a conspiracy against you, David.
	I would love to be able to speak in your defense, but I hear you're a rapist, so I'm not going to do any such thing.
	Another friend of St. Clair's, Dustin Tucker, also wrote to American atheists on Thursday saying that St. Clair told him about the incident in 2013.
	I've dwelled on these feelings for five years.
	Well, I'll just take his word for it.
	I still cannot think of that man without experiencing rage.
	David, that's terrible.
	Not only are you an arsehole, you're actually a rapist by your own standards.
	That's really awful.
	I don't know why you've done this to yourself.
	Personally, it sounds to me like you're being the victim of a feminist witch hunt, but I'm not a feminist and I wouldn't want to take your feminist label away from you.
	So I guess you can wear that like a scarlet letter.
	Can't you, David?
	Listen, you rapey male feminists.
	You are assholes.
	Feminists in general are arseholes for the same reason that atheists are arseholes to the religious.
	You think that they are oppressing you.
	And now feminists are in positions of power, you are being arseholes in exactly the same way.
	Hence my tweets.
	And no, saying you won't do something is not a threat.
	But it really pissed you off, didn't it?
	Deal with it, you arseholes.
	Deal with it.
	Because you're assholes too, and you have absolutely no moral high ground with which to complain.
	Anything you say about my refusal to rape people is deeply hypocritical.
	And it's obviously not a position that you can share.
	See you at MythCon, where I'll be debating Richard Carrier, who has been at the receiving end of such a feminist witch hunt.

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