An Anecdote that is Supposed to Prove God

Great Debates
1

I found this little story the other day and was wondering how you would respond to it.

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects.

When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: “I don’t believe that God exists.”

“Why do you say that?” asked the customer.

“Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn’t exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can’t imagine a loving God who would allow all of these things.”

The customer thought for a moment, but didn’t respond because he didn’t want to start an argument.

The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop. Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt.

The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber: “You know what? Barbers do not exist.”

“How can you say that?” asked the surprised barber. “I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!”

“No!” the customer exclaimed. “Barbers don’t exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside.”

“Ah, but barbers DO exist! That’s what happens when people do not come to me.”

“Exactly!” affirmed the customer. “That’s the point! God, too, DOES exist! That’s what happens when people do not go to Him and don’t look to Him for help. That’s why there’s so much pain and suffering in the world.”

Personally, I don’t think this proved the existence of God at all. One could just as easily replace “God” with “The Flying Spagetti Monster”. Stories with parallels like the barber/God one found above often convince people just because of their slickness. What do you all think about this?:dubious:

2

Uh huh. So only people who don’t believe in God suffer or experience pain or get abandoned as children or get sick and die? Interesting theory. It’s got just a tiny whiff of “blame the victim.”

By the way, OP, you’re starting a lot of threads like this - maybe you should just have one thread and keep posting new examples?

3

It certainly would disprove the existence of omnipotent barbers who want everyone to have a good haircut. Is the argument positing that God has limited powers, or that God doesn’t want to stop bad things from happening?

4

Are you saying the existence of Evil and suffering is some kind of Problem when dealing with the idea of an all-powerful god? :wink:

5

The problem with this analogy, other than the fact that it’s puerile and childlike, is that the omni-benevolent Christian rhetoretician that always appears in these anecdotes is, ummm, telling it to a barber. Had this conversation taken place between, say, a man just shorn at the barber and another man yet unshorn, or the like, then this analogy would work slightly better. But working better is not the same as working good, and this would still be confined to the nebulous garbage realms inhabited by forwarded e-mails and old-people mailing lists, the sort of things that the brave people at Snopes wade through so the rest of us don’t have to.

6

… and about whom everyone knows and has access, and who everyone trusts to give a decent haircut and wants a haircut from.

7

Why would the omnipotent barber need me to know about him or trust him to give me a good haircut? Such concerns are for non-omnipotent barbers.

8

I’d point out that atheists make better livings and live happier lives, statistically.

9

Aside from all the other problems with this story, as already mentioned by sharp eyed dopers, is the idea that “God helps people who come to him”. If that were true, there would be some statistical link between religiosity and success, but there isn’t (there may actually be a negative correlation).

However, if you did a survey and study of hair and beard length as it relates to knowledge and patronage of barbers, I think you could prove the connection quite easily.

The problem of Evil is a significant challenge to believers in an omnipowerful loving god, (as has been attested by former Christian Bart Ehrman). It may be reconcilable, but you need to jump through some major hoops.

10

Ah, but then the narrator can say that they haven’t REALLY gone to God. You see, no true Scotsman and all. Don’t try to win with logic, it never works.

11

Whether your post needed the additional qualifications I imposed depends on what is implied by “wants”. The existence of an omnipotent barber who “wants” to give everyone a haircut is not necessarily falsified merely because there is a hirsute man nearby, unless you assume that the omnipotent barber would not only want to give, but would will forcibly impose a haircut on all.

I don’t think Xtians assume that about their god.

12

So you are saying that God has walked up to those lepers living in the gutter in India. And he has told them who he is, and has proved to them that he can cure them?

And they actively told him they didn’t want him to cure them ,even though he proved that he could do so at not cost or risk?

Because if that isn’t what you are saying then the analogy falls apart. Some people may actively *choose *not to have a haircut, even if a reputable barber offers them one at absolutely no cost and that will take less than a second to complete. That’s plausible.

I do not believe that large numbers of people would choose to slowly die of a painful, crippling and disfiguring disease, even if a reputable doctor said that he could give them a single pill that would cure them, and offered it to them for free. Claiming that millions of people are making that choice every day is simply unbelievable.
That is the difference between these analogies.

Hair styles are of little or no importance. Especially for people who are unemployed they are of no practical importance whatsoever. It’s quite plausible that large numbers of people might choose to forego a free haircut even if it is offered.

It is utterly implausible that billions of people forego risk free, cost free, lifesaving medical interventions that they are perfectly aware of.

13

**Blake **you’ve just wasted five minutes of your life. We are in furious agreement. My very point is that the parallels between haircuts and serious life problems are so tenuous that you have to assume an array of silly non-existent conditions concerning the omnipotence, fame, accessability, etc of barbers and the importance of haircuts before the customer’s attempt to rebut the barber’s point makes any sense. My only disagreement with leahcim is that I think that that you have to assume an even greater number of silly non-existent conditions before the argument makes sense, than leahcim proposes.

14

As Sage Rat said, statistically atheists are more wealthy (they’re also less likely to go to prison and countries with more atheists have consistently higher standards of living), couldn’t you make the case that God obviously loves atheists more or that being an atheist is the way you come to God or something. You can’t make a No True Scotsman argument when we can prove the English are just plain better.

Even in the best situation, you say: Successful Christians are graced by God, atheists are the baseline because God doesn’t help them, then God or the Devil or someone must be actively punishing the misguided Christians in order to bring the aggregate Christian total down below the baseline. If that’s the case, better to be an atheist still, because you don’t know if you’ll be getting God’s carrot or stick.

Alternatively, what if God is helping the true Christians, the non-true Christians are left to their own devices and languish, and the atheists are being helped by some other being (again, like the Devil) to throw off the averages. If that’s the case, you’re still better off as an atheist as you’ll get a better average return.

15

That comparison is silly, one could pay the barber and the man would then not have long sloppy hair,The man chose sloppy hair, and must have known there was a Barber or didn’t have the money, or desire to have his hair cut! The barber doesn’t exist because of a person doesn’t go to him,he can be seen, and touched by anyone who chose to see him, or if the barber came out of his shop, This is not the way a beliver looks at God, there is no proof as even some believers say God is the unknown.

Even when Adam and Eve was supposed to talk and walk with God according to the scriptures, he didn’t teach them anything and didn’t want them to know right from wrong, and as soon as they did, he punished them and their offspring. This would prove there was a cruel being not a loving God. But it is a Myth some human wrote to explain evil in the world that God Could have prevented, and didn’t. but punished the human race because he made them with flaws,and let a monster he also was to have created exist, so that would mean ,if ther was a supreme being he wanted evil to exist and even destroy good people who are called his children.

16

What if the man in the street had long stringy clean hair and a tidy beard? Would that prove the existence of Richard Branson?

17

Anecdotes don’t prove anything. And that one isn’t even an anecdote. It’s a cutesy little folk story that isn’t particularly interesting.

18

Non-Wikipedia cite, please?

19

I declare it to be the truth!

I’m not Wikipedia, so that counts, right?

20

  1. The barber in this story gets paid by his customer, right? So if we want help from God, we need to pay him? So it isn’t the Christian God, who is very much against this, but a more primitive form of God where you pay with sacrifices to make the rain fall and the corn grow.

  2. There’s a phrase I think of whenever I read glurgy little tales about how a family was saved from an avalanche or a girl prayed and wasn’t raped…

“After Auschwitz, God is dead”.

Or if you want to stay out of Godwin: “Thousands of children died today of preventable illnesses, lack of clean water and food, despite their parents praying fervently for help. Does God care more about a white American family than about starving brown children?”