In the middle of a bashing-ones-head-against-a-wall sort of god vs evolution debate in my World of Warcraft guild’s message board. The guy is probably thirteen and definitely uninformed.
He says something to the effect of “humans are powerful divinely inspired creatures because God made them so. The fact that they are powerful and intelligent is proof that God exists.”
I counteract with “Your last paragraph is such a mess of weird double-think that it’s really impossible to argue with. The sky is blue because the invisible pink unicorn said it was so. See how it’s blue? That proves the existence of the invisible pink unicorn. Humans are powerful, therefore they must have been given that power by the magic invisible pink unicorn, and the fact that they are powerful proves the existence of the invisible pink unicorn.”
His response?
“And it is humerous to see you bring up pink unicorns and garden gnomes when clearly they do not exist, You fail to realize we are speaking of God, Complete awareness, Complete Intelect, Complete Knowledge, Complete Power, all these things are real, you just can not understand how they can be inside of a divine unity. So try and compare your arguments with actual things it will align your theory much better.”
Oh dear. The scary thing about religion, about any absolute ideal, is that logical reasoning is not required. In fact, the less logical the reasoning and the less informed the idealists are, the more fierce they are.
To quote a Dutch writer, a political refugee from Iran: “It was there, at that border post, that I realised with horror that I might get shot there and then, by this young man who couldn’t even spell my name.”
What really stumps me is how they make the jump from “we are so complex that there must have been a designer” to…
“this designer is God, he is singular, he communicates with us spiritually, he is all powerful, he has given us books of rules to live by (bible, koran,etc.) that are all knowing all true accounts of him”.
You could just as easily make the argument that a sophisticated alien race designed us lightyears ago, abandoned us, has no idea we still exsist, and has since became extinct themselves.
It’s still creationism, just not their “idea” of it.
The best response I ever got from a Creationist about evolution was this brilliant bit of logic: “If monkeys actually turned into people, how come you don’t see the same thing happening today?”
This is a classic example of a tautology. A series of circular statements which are self-proving regardless of their truth. When the author of such lacks critical thinking skills, you’ll never be able to explain the logical fallacy of tautologies.
What is going on here has an echo of Anselm’s attempt to “prove” the existence of God. Give the kid a break, as seriouis philosophers had to go through some struggle to figure out what was wrong with Anselm’s formulation (which I’ll roughly reproduce for those who haven’t seen it).
What is called “God” is “a being than which no greater can be conceived.”
The greatest possible being would have every perfection.
Existence is a perfection.
The greatest possible being would thus have to possess existence.
Therefore, God possesses existence.
In his argument, as in the one you had, the problem arises from the tricky nature of identity statements associated with the arguer’s characterizations of the attributes that a supreme being would or necessarily ought to have – if he existed.
“Is” serves an ambiguous and not wholly consistent purpose in the statement that “‘God’ is a being than which no greater can be conceived” or your kid’s statement that “God is pure power,” etc.
Yes, God would be those things if he exists, but that’s not what the arguer assumes when he makes statements about what “God” “is.”
This is also a form of question begging, which, again, even somewhat skilled debaters fall prey to.
Oh, you have no idea, *DtC. The most recent response is this:
[quote]
The evidence I am using is the structural formation of the universe. Either your intellect can understand the data or it can not. Apparently yours is one that can not interpret the data, “does not Compute” is what pops out, i am sorry but that is your interpretation of the data. The data when computed with my intelect returns “Awareness and Forethought Detected” Evidence that leads to " Higher Awareness then Human Beings, Supreme Intelect detected". What can you really argue but that you do not understand, as i said before say you do not belive me but do not argue my ability to understand something that you clearly do not understand.*
Sigh. That was in response to Mr. Armadillo, who is a geneticist, and is actually attempting to patiently clear up his erroneous interpretations of scientific data, bless his little heart.
Damn, let’s try that again, shall we?
Oh, you have no idea, DtC. The most recent response is this:
Sigh. That was in response to Mr. Armadillo, who is a geneticist, and is actually attempting to patiently clear up his erroneous interpretations of scientific data, bless his little heart.
Unless I am mistaken, this is the reasoning Leberal often used, is it not?
I would have to say the dumbest arguement I’ve seen was from Kirk Cameron’s Christian videos where they determine that the shape of the banana being easily held and shaped to fit in the mouth is proof of God. Odd how it isn’t also proof of the religious necessity of blowjobs.
Ask your logically challenged buddy what connection there is between the god he assumes from the intelligence of humans and the god he believes in. Maybe Odin or Zeus (or Prince Philip) designed up - the argument works just as well.
Liberal’s argument was subtly different. He used existence in all possible universes as the measure of supremeness, not omnipotence and omniscience.
The problem with these is that we can show a being who is both omnipotent and omniscient is logically impossible. Without both, we can’t say if a being who is omnipotent is more powerful than one who is omniscient. Since there is no supreme being, there is no need for existence, and the argument fails.
Which is a bit over the head of the person mentioned in the OP, I’d wager.
Is it just me, or is religion getting a little more amusing lately? Between Pat Robertson, a.k.a. Rev. Hans (I guess that makes Jerry Falwell Rev. Franz?), and Diogenes’s “atheism test” thread and this stuff, it seems a bit funnier than usual. I hope it stays this way. Religion is a lot better for everybody when it’s funny-enjoyable instead of funny-tragic.
