The worst argument for God...EVER

[Sick Of Sickness]

Taken from comments section of a science article online:

note: edited subject heading

 

[scalyblue]

Re: LULZ & Facepalm

..you should warn people...I...I think I've become stupider just from reading that. I think both halves of my brain stopped in my head, looked at each-other and said "it's dark in here, and we're going to die"

 

[DontHurtTheIntersect]

I love how these poorly logical arguments are formatted:

1. If x is y, then it is because of z
2. If z is n, then n is a cause of x and y
3 Therefore, God exists.

Flawless. Really.

 

[Lunar Sonata]

Does not compute.

 

[Arcturus]

Step number two can be seen as an argument from ignorance: the fact that you cannot imagine how a code could come to exist, except through the agency of a mind, doesn't mean it can't. But what I find funny is that there is a missing axiom. You have to presuppose that the theory of evolution is not true. Otherwise, step two is clearly a lie, because we in fact know of a code that does not originate from a mind: DNA.

This is the way I see the hidden parts of this argument:

0. The theory of evolution is ridiculous.
1. The sequence of base pairs of DNA is a code.
2. All codes that we know the origin of come from a mind (an intelligence), especially DNA since the theory of evolution is ridiculous.
2b. Every other possible code also originates from a mind.
3. Therefore DNA came from a mind.
4. Therefore the theory of evolution is ridiculous.
(optional 5.) Therefore Yahweh obviously exists.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Of course if you base your conlusion on false premisses you will inevitably end up in Fail.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Isn't this how almost all of these arguments go? In other words, even the "best" argument for "God" seems to fall into this exact same trap. Show me any argument for "God" and it will boil down to "I see something, somebody must have done it, I know humans didn't do it, therefore God did it."

We read the sort of thing in the OP, and we think "ignorant theist" because it is so simplistic that we believe that anyone would see how empty the argument really is. The sad thing is that the top Christian apologists are only better than the amateurs in that they occasionally come up with complex formulations that disguise the flaws in the argument. They don't actually have a better argument at all.

Look at William Lane Craig, one of the biggest and most well-known Christian apologists. Here's one of his arguments, swiped from Wikipedia:

Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion 1: Therefore, the universe must have a cause.

He wrote a whole book about it, but that's the heart of his argument right there. So basically, he's a great apologist because he can stretch that crap out for 200+ pages, where a more honest person would die of embarrassment long before that.

 

[Zylstra]

Re: LULZ & Facepalm

..you should warn people...I...I think I've become stupider just from reading that. I think both halves of my brain stopped in my head, looked at each-other and said "it's dark in here, and we're going to die"

qft

 

[Zylstra]

Reality/0 = God
:facepalm:

 

[Sick Of Sickness]

I was thinking of this and using the same logic, may be able to disprove God...feel free to help refine it:

1. The world exists.
2. Man exists in the world.
3. If there were a God, he would exist too.
4. But no science has shown that God exists.
5. God doesn't exist.

 

[borrofburi]

I love how these poorly logical arguments are formatted:

1. If x is y, then it is because of z
2. If z is n, then n is a cause of x and y
3 Therefore, God exists.

Flawless. Really.

I disagree, I think it goes more like:

1. X is Z
2. Some Z is caused by A
3. Therefore X is caused by A
(implied follows)
4. A contains J
5. J did not cause X
6. Therefore we know that there has to be another A, we shall call it K, that caused X
7. Therefore K is omnipotent, undetectable, and loves you dearly...

Problems? Premise (1.) is false (dna as a code is only an abstraction to help us comprehend dna); step 3. is wrong (just because all codes we have so far seen are designed by an intelligence does not mean all of them are); no justification for step 7. (why would this other intelligent entity be a god, why not, as dawkins has pointed out, aliens?). That's what i see anyway, feel free to modify it.

I was thinking of this and using the same logic, may be able to disprove God...feel free to help refine it:

1. The world exists.
2. Man exists in the world.
3. If there were a God, he would exist too.
4. But no science has shown that God exists.
5. God doesn't exist.

They would say you have defined god wrong.

EDIT: I noticed a mistake...

 

[buzzausa]

Re: LULZ & Facepalm

..you should warn people...I...I think I've become stupider just from reading that. I think both halves of my brain stopped in my head, looked at each-other and said "it's dark in here, and we're going to die"

Too late......I read it already.

and now........I forgot what I was going to say.......oh no....it's starting already.......

 

[Sick Of Sickness]

I was thinking of this and using the same logic, may be able to disprove God...feel free to help refine it:

1. The world exists.
2. Man exists in the world.
3. If there were a God, he would exist too.
4. But no science has shown that God exists.
5. God doesn't exist.

They would say you have defined god wrong.

But if God is eternal and perfect, (whatever the fuck that means) than he would be all things, everywhere, all the time.

So God is EVERYTHING and is impossible to define wrong. God is my naval lint too.

 

[MillionSword]

Someone needs to explain to these people what "models" are. We tend to throw out this word so often that I think creationists just ignore it. We need to tell them that the MODEL for DNA is what comes from an intelligent mind, rather than the arrangement of DNA itself. It's like saying materials must "know" what temperature they are at to melt/evaporate/condense, because they do so at the exact same temperatures every time. We should also explain the MODELS for atomic structure, evolution by natural selection, and gravity. The MODEL for evolution may be flawed (so far it has withstood every test), but that doesn't mean evolution isn't 100% fact.

 

[Lunar Sonata]

But if God is eternal and perfect, (whatever the fuck that means) than he would be all things, everywhere, all the time.

So God is EVERYTHING and is impossible to define wrong. God is my naval lint too.

'EVIDENTLY', god exists, but for every attempt of creationists to define where god is in more tangible terms of WHERE and WHEN, they can't seem to find him. In the presence of this fact, their viewpoint instantly changes from "god exists everywhere" to "well god exists outside the universe, so that scientific method would have no basis in identifying Him and therefore, He exists."

LOL

So the fact that something doesn't exist, to the reasoning of a creationist, seems to be an indication that it DOES... interesting.. :roll:

 

[Zylstra]

Isn't saying something exists outside reality pretty much a confession that it doesn't exist?

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Isn't saying something exists outside reality pretty much a confession that it doesn't exist?

Yeap.
The universe is by definition everything that exists, if god is outside of the universe (i.e. does not belong to the group of things that exist) then by definition it doesn't.

 

[mandangalo18]

Taken from comments section of a science article online:

note: edited subject heading

There hasn't been a formal refutation of this yet, so here we go!

First let's put it in proper logical form of a categorical syllogism. If he had written it properly, it would be a first figure BARBARA syllogism. Let's transpose the premises to make it so.

All codes that we know the origin of come from a mind (an intelligence)
The sequence of base pairs of DNA is a code
Therefore DNA came from a mind

uh oh something is making the middle term smell fishy...

predicate of the conclusion: from a mind
subject of the conclusion: DNA
middle term in premise 1: All codes that we know the origin of
middle term in premise 2: a code

the problem is, "all codes that we know the origin of" is not the same thing as "a code", or even "all codes".
That's called quaternio terminorum: the formal fallacy of four terms. This argument is structurally invalid, the terms are not linked in a way that a conclusion can be validly inferred from the premises.

Here it is formally

M is P
S is X
ergo, S is P

Terribad argument.

 

[borrofburi]

There hasn't been a formal refutation of this yet, so here we go!

In this thread you mean. I'm pretty sure I did a semi-formal refutation of this somewhere.... don't remember where though.

 

[mandangalo18]

ya that's what I meant