A sampling of our latest, exactly as written:
FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT LETS ASSUME THAT GOD EXISTS ,WHO DO YOU BELIEF CREATED HIM?
I WOULD ALSO ASSUME THAT FROM YOUR POINT VIEW THAT MATH IS 100% TRUE. SO LETS ASSUME THAT THEIR IS NO GOD, SO ARE YOU 100% CERTAIN, AND IF YOU ARE WOULD'T THAT GAVE YOU A TITLE OF BEING GOD.. SO NOT BEING SARCASTIC BUT TRYING TO UNDERSTAND YOUR POINT VIEW, CAN YOU BE THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS...
[...Long, deep sigh...]
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WTF - why do believers think they have a clue about logic?
ReplyDeleteThere is probably more evidence for god in that e-mail than there is of any ability of clear thinking on the part of the writer.
You know what I love about these kind of people (and maybe I'm also thinking about that guy Kenny that called in on the last show, reading off a website)? Every last one of them is convinced that it's going to be them that proves God exists to all us nasty, brutish Atheists out there. Pure hilarity!
ReplyDeleteIf it were possible to 'prove' God with the knowledge and resources we have as a species, it would have been done long ago by minds far more brilliant than every Tom, Dick and Joey-Boy-Incest on the internet who thinks he's going to make headway recycling the same tiresome, self-refuting arguments.
Until they've got something in the way of cold, hard physical evidence (you know, something we can actually measure and test), I for one am not interested.
Wait just one second....Who says that math has to be 100% true? I thought that math didnt exist during my school years and boy did it bite me in the ass in the end. I blame math on the devil!
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the axis of evil Math!
WTF? Now that's something! :b
ReplyDeleteWell, go on then. Answer the question!!! :-P
ReplyDeleteI'm curious... do you usually respond to emails like that or do you ignore them (aside from posting the more entertaining ones on the blog)?
ReplyDeleteI'd think that replying to all of them would eventually turn your brain to mush. ;-)
Forward some fun ones to me. I'll debate them. I get bored as hell at work.
ReplyDeleteForward some fun ones to me. I'll debate them. I get bored as hell at work.Hell yeah... group project! Sign me up too!
ReplyDeleteSo what they say about excessive capitalization is true then?
ReplyDeleteI've been saying it for more than thirty years - if God does exist, it does him absolutely no good in his bid for recognition that the people most vocal in the case for his existence are abject morons.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of a believe starts his argument with 'FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT LETS ASSUME THAT GOD EXISTS'?
ReplyDeleteApart from Ray Comfort, obviously.
I'll make an attempt at mind reading.
ReplyDeleteIf we're 100% certain that makes us god because only god (under definitions of god) could possibly be 100% certain.
Because we can't respond that we are the creator of all things (ignoring the possibility that I am the creator of all things but happen to have amnesia) then he'd say we're not god and therefore can't be 100% certain and therefore (large jump in logic here) god exists.
If he's really trying to understand our viewpoint (but expressing himself poorly) then...you know I'm not actually sure where to start.
@Barnetto
ReplyDeleteYeah, it sounds like "You can't prove there is no God, so therefore you must " followed by either:
"believe in God, pascal's wager! pwnd! Look at the banana and weep, mofo"
==or==
" say 'i know nothing and can not know anything with 100% certainty' as the response to every question, for the rest of your life."
Ok if he is claiming we can't be 100% sure in the existance or non existence of a God my standard reply is for the person to prove their own existance. As far as I know they could just be a hallucination and the entire universe is images projected into my brain as it sits in a pickle jar in Danny Bonaduchi's living room. I'm not 100% sure that the person actually exists, but since I get some outside confirmation and all that, I'm willing to place my certainty at 99.99999999%. My weighed uncertainty towards the brain in the jar idea is statistically negligible. Likewise my uncertainty that Zeus exists is bellow the acceptable range of error.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good thing that this person types in all capital letters, otherwise his points wouldn't come off so perfectly.
ReplyDeleteThat was just...I don't even...ow, my brain hurts...
ReplyDeletePS To Vinifera7: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
ReplyDelete"What kind of a believe starts his argument with 'FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT LETS ASSUME THAT GOD EXISTS'?"
ReplyDeleteQuite a lot of them do. It's a whole branch of apologetics called "Presuppositional apologetics", and they'll present arguments like the Trancendental Argument for God etc. There's actually nothing wrong with presuppositional arguments, if they are invalid, you may be able to detect this by absurdities arising during the argument. Even if they don't, you're free to simply not accept the premise if this seems more reasonable to you than accepting the conclusion.
Presupp arguments are circular arguments, yes, but all worldviews end up being circular no matter what. I believe my senses are generally reliable because of what my senses tell me. Even splitting them up like Matt does, it's still a circular argument - and that's fine, circular arguments aren't necessarily bad, they're just not convincing to people who have strong reasons to reject all the premises. The moment you accept one however, like "logical absolutes exist", a circular argument may possibly convince you that the other things the argument talks about are true.
What we want out of a worldview is that it is internally consistent, has high explanatory power, and no inconsistency with respect to observed reality. It's not given that a presupp argument couldn't produce something like that.
The only real problem with presupp. is that its proponents tend to assume that you have to accept that their god exists if you can't see any logical flaws in the argument, but this is of course not true at all. Simply being aware that that these arguments can be used to argue for virtually any religion is reason enough to be highly skeptical of any conclusion they appear to produce.
It's also dangerous to pre-suppose something that you don't have a clear idea how to test. Say an argument went "Let's assume the moon is a yellow cheese, that it loves mankind and ... blah ... logical absolutes exist ... blah ... the moon being a yellow cheese is therefore the only possible root of logic and reason", and for some reason I'm unable to spot an error in the argument. I may still have severe problems with accepting that line of reasoning - to the point where it seems best to reject the argument on the grounds that I'm fairly sure the argument is missing some crucial insight about reality.
TAG etc are probably most effective when used to enforce the theists existing belief. They already have this huge emotional attachment to the superstitious ideas, and it must be very comforting to have a good apologist confidently assert that believing in god for no reason is the only way you can defend logical absolutes.